But just when it seems like Cymbeline will dissolve into tragedy, the deus ex machina appears.
In sleep, Posthumus dreams of his lost family. They gather around him and summon the “thunder-master”—Jupiter, the Roman god of thunder. Posthumus’s dead father, Sicilius Leonatus, scolds Jupiter for having let Posthumus fall into imprisonment, saying: “Thou orphans’ father art, thou shouldst have been, and shielded him from this earth-vexing smart.”
Jupiter descends in thunder and lightning.
“No more, you petty spirits of region low, offend our hearing: hush!” he commands. Happiness and satisfaction await Posthumus, Jupiter tells them.
“Whom best I love, I cross,” he explains. “To make my gift, the more delay’d, delighted.”
Good things, in other words, come to those who wait.
What is intimate is what is inmost, whatever that may be. The deepest trauma in Posthumus’s psyche—the one that had to be resolved before he could be a whole person—was the loss of his family. It was always about that pain. Posthumus didn’t lose his mind because he thought Imogen slept with someone else: he lost it because he thought she had, like everyone else always had, left him.
In a life where no one was ever there for him, Posthumus just wanted to believe that Imogen would be there.
It wasn’t a sex thing.
My friend Abby is, like me, a spanking fetishist. Our stories are similar: we looked up the same words in the dictionary, read the same books, and blushed when the same movie scenes appeared onscreen. (The big difference is that Abby was never spanked as a child and was therefore spared having her sexuality nonconsensually inflicted on her at an early age.) And Abby, like me, does enjoy sex. But it occupies a far less critical space at the core of our identities than our fetish does.
That’s why although Abby identifies as heterosexual, she had a deeply fulfilling relationship with a dominant woman named Samantha. Abby and Samantha loved each other—and, yes, Samantha disciplined Abby every time she broke one of their mutually agreed-upon rules—but they never had sex. It wasn’t a sexual relationship, but, for Abby, it was every bit as intimate as one, if not more so. When that relationship ended, Abby was more devastated than she had been after the breakup of any previous sexual relationship. Sex is intimate. But it’s not the only thing that is. Abby and I have both tried to masturbate to the thought of sex but found the experience as gummy and anticlimactic as masturbating to the thought of toothpaste. We are not asexual, but neither are we “sexual” in the normative sense: we exist in an undefined third space.
My fetish makes gender irrelevant. It makes conventional physical attractiveness irrelevant. It makes even sex irrelevant.
Does it make love irrelevant, too?
Cyan disappeared into the next room. When he returned, he was holding a belt.
“This is the one I told you about,” he said. (Earlier that week, Cyan had texted me about a new belt he bought to use with one of his recent play partners. “I know a good trick with belts,” I had replied. “But I’ll tell you about it later.”)
“So what’s the trick?” he asked.
“Here, I’ll show you,” I said, reaching out.
Cyan handed me the belt. I looked at it, turning it over in my hand. The outer side was smooth, and the inner side was faintly rough. The leather was thick.
“You fold it like this, right?” I said, folding the belt so its smooth half was outside.
“Yes,” he said. “Of course.”
I reversed the fold, so that the leather bent against the direction of its normal curve.
“This is better,” I said, passing it back to him. “Trust me.”
“Really?” he asked, frowning at it. “Huh.” He flicked his right wrist back and whipped the belt against his left palm. The crack echoed through the room.
I shook my head.
“Don’t do that,” I said.
“Why?” he asked.
“Because I like that sound,” I said, sliding onto a bar stool.
“I know you do,” Cyan said.
“I know you know,” I replied.
Cyan grinned.
“Want a drink?” he asked.
“Yes,” I replied. “Please.”
“Red or white?” he asked.
“Whiskey,” I said.
“I bought this white at a winery in Virginia last year,” Cyan replied, ignoring me. He opened his refrigerator and removed a tall green bottle. He pulled a corkscrew from a drawer.
“Wait, don’t open a special bottle,” I interjected. “I’m not—”
Cyan looked over his shoulder at me.
“It’s too late,” he said. “The cork is pierced.”
“Now I feel bad,” I protested as he poured. “I’m not staying long.”
“Don’t worry about it,” he said. He poured one glass, handed it to me, and put away the bottle. He wasn’t having any. I rarely saw him drink.
I sipped my wine.
I swallowed.
I hesitated.
“I never asked what drew you to North Africa and the Middle East,” I said.
Cyan raised an eyebrow.
“You want to talk about work?” he asked.
I shook my head.
“No,” I said, looking down. “But I just realized I never asked you that.”
Cyan leaned against the cabinets in his kitchen. He cleared his throat.
“Why are you curious?” he asked.
“It doesn’t matter,” I said.
Cyan was frowning at the floor.
“In ’97, there was a massacre in Relizane,” he said. “It’s a long story.”
I looked at him.
“Where is Relizane?” I asked, mentally flipping through a list of global conflicts from the late nineties. “Algeria?”
He nodded.
“Were you there?” I pressed.
Cyan’s lips formed the thin line between a grimace and a smile.
“I’ll tell you about it someday, kid,” he said. “But not today.”
I nodded.
“Sure,” I said, blinking fast. “Someday.”
After Posthumus sees his family inside the jail cell, he wakes. He assumes it was merely a dream—until, to his astonishment, he finds a tablet from Jupiter still beside him.
It says:
When as a lion’s whelp shall, to himself unknown, without seeking find, and be embraced by a piece of tender air; and when from a stately cedar shall be lopped branches, which, being dead many years, shall after revive, be jointed to the old stock and freshly grow; then shall Posthumus end his miseries, Britain be fortunate and flourish in peace and plenty.
“’Tis still a dream,” Posthumus says, amazed. “Or else such stuff as madmen tongue and brain not; either both or nothing; or senseless speaking or a speaking such as sense cannot untie.”
The jailer arrives and tells Posthumus that it is time for his execution.
“I am merrier to die than thou art to live,” Posthumus replies. He is ready for death.
But Shakespeare hits rewind.
In Cymbeline, every old wound heals. No one repeats the choices that echoed into grief the first time around. King Cymbeline doesn’t repeat King Lear’s mistake and throw away his daughter. Posthumus doesn’t repeat Othello’s mistake and murder the wife he suspects of infidelity, or Leontes’s mistake and throw her in prison. The lovers don’t repeat Romeo’s or Antony’s mistake and commit suicide when each thinks the other is dead. The King doesn’t repeat Hamlet’s mistake and kill a man he does not recognize.
Cymbeline walks the precipice of tragedy. But it does not fall.
“I need to ask a favor, Cy,” I said. “It’s going to be difficult for me.”
He frowned.
“Okay,” he said.
I spoke into my wineglass.
“I hope you have a really good summer,” I said, carefully. “But . . . I hope I won’t hear about it.”
A pause. I swallowed.
“And I’ll need your help to make sure I don’t hear about it,” I finished. “Because if I hear from you, I’m scared I’ll respond.”
Cyan frowned.
“What does that mean?” he asked.
I wrapped my arms around my stomach. I couldn’t meet his gaze.
“We can’t be friends, Cy,” I said. “We’re not really friends now.”
There was a long pause.
“Why are you saying this today?” he asked.
I shifted on my stool.
“All morning, I wanted—” I broke off. This was embarrassing.
I looked down.
“I just wanted to come over here and clean up your apartment.”
Cyan looked surprised.
“Wait, why does that matter?” he said. “So you’re a nice person.”
I looked at him.
“Come on, Cy,” I said, in a low voice. “That’s not what it means.”
He crossed his arms over his chest.
“We’re friends, Jillian,” he insisted.
“My ‘friends’ don’t put me in this headspace, Cyan,” I replied. The truth was, no one had put me in that headspace since John.
Cyan sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose with his knuckles. He walked across the kitchen, reopened his refrigerator, and picked up the bottle of wine.
“So what does this mean, exactly?” he said, pouring himself a glass. “We’re never going to talk again?”
I shook my head.
“I don’t know,” I muttered. “Maybe.”
He leaned against the cabinet. I looked at the floor.
Cyan shook his head.
“We’re just friends,” he said again. “I’ve never touched you.”
I rubbed my eyes.
“It’s not really physical, this thing we do,” I said. “It’s wordplay. That’s the part that matters.”
Cyan took a sip of his wine and frowned.
“Well, of course I’ll respect your wishes,” he said. “You won’t hear from me again.”
I nodded and blinked. Seconds passed.
“You’re not losing anything today, Cy,” I finally said, in a bitter voice. “You have these conversations with so many women.”
Cyan looked up. His face was tight.
“What ‘conversations’ do you assume I have, Jillian?” he asked.
I pressed my eyes into my fingertips and tried to laugh. It sounded forced.
“Conversations about the Spratly Islands, of course.” I sighed.
Cyan nodded. He was looking at the floor.
I was not prepared for this. When I had tried to foresee this conversation, I’d imagined that Cyan would respond with indifference or, at worst, anger. But this was sadness. I hadn’t considered the possibility that Cyan would look sad.
I stood up.
“Did you have any other questions?” I asked. Maybe a brusque, businesslike tone of voice would cauterize the wound.
Cyan looked at me. He seemed tired.
“It looks like you’re leaving,” he said. “So I guess I don’t.”
I clutched my umbrella, bracing myself against emotions that threatened to make me stay. Cyan walked me to the front door and put his hand on the knob to open it.
“It’s a shame,” he muttered.
I looked at the floor.
“Some words are more sexual than sex,” I mumbled. “This isn’t fair to David.”
The best sex advice I’d ever heard, delivered by a virgin on the far side of the world, echoed in my mind: Find a good man and figure it out. You’re not dead yet.
I stepped outside. Cyan closed the door behind me.
Khalila was right: Love is miraculous. But Soraya was right, too. Love is only half a miracle. The other half is choice.
It’s just not always a painless choice.
Blinded by tears, I stumbled into the street and poured myself into a taxi.
AT THE END of Cymbeline, Posthumus learns that Imogen is still alive.
“Hang there like fruit, my soul, ’til the tree die,” he says, embracing her. In his dream, Posthumus finally takes control of the greatest trauma in his life—the loss of his family—and becomes the whole person Imogen deserved.
My point is, a tree’s fruit falls. But, with water, it grows again.
The taxi pulled up to the apartment I had rented. I paid and stepped outside.
In front of the building there was a tree, its long, thin branches speckled with buds of early spring. I scrubbed away my tears with the back of my hand and reached up to rip a branch from the trunk. As I jogged up the steps to my door, I stripped the buds off the branch. They fell behind me like bread crumbs.
I let the door slam shut. Helena was sitting on my bed.
I pointed at her. My chest rose and fell with breath and steadied me.
“This is your fault,” I said. “You’re the one who started this. But I’m the one who ends it.”
Helena slid off the bed, eyeing the switch in my hand. She raised an eyebrow.
“What do you think you’re doing?” she asked. “You don’t dominate anything. You never have.”
I crossed the room and grabbed a fistful of hair at the base of Helena’s neck. She gasped out a laugh of pain and disbelief. I twisted her head to the side to speak in her ear.
“You are set in ink, but I am not,” I said in a low voice. “I write my own story. I choose what I dominate, and I choose what dominates me. Understood?”
Helena looked at me.
“I understand,” she said.
“Good,” I replied, releasing her hair. She rubbed the red spot where the hair had strained against her skin.
I leaned the switch against the bed.
“I refuse to live half empty,” I told her. “Turn around.”
Slowly, she obeyed me.
I stepped up behind her and ran my fingers along the hem of Helena’s dress, letting the fabric dance against my fingertips. My hands slid under her skirt and up the backs of her thighs to her underwear. I pulled them down to her knees.
I picked up the switch again. Our eyes met.
I pointed at the bed.
“Bend over,” I said.
Helena put her hands on the bed and stretched down, slowly. From behind her, I slid the fabric of her skirt up to her waist.
I ran my hand against the unmarked skin on her butt. It was perfect. Pristine. Untouched.
Blank pages beg for language.
I stepped back and flicked my wrist. The switch made a loud crack at impact. Helena winced and arched her shoulders as the wood made contact.
“Why am I spanking you?” I murmured.
I reached out to brush my fingertips against the white mark that was turning red.
Helena looked back over her shoulder at me. There was a satisfied gleam in her eye.
“Because this is a metaphor,” she said.
I hit her three more times, harder. Helena sucked in a breath.
“Does that feel metaphorical to you?” I asked, leaning forward to catch her gaze.
“It’s a metaphor for your desire to master Shakespeare,” Helena replied, breathing hard.
I seared a fifth red welt onto her skin, parallel to the first four. Helena grimaced and shook her right hand in front of her chest, as if the motion would release the pain. It occurred to me that I could paint a bar code on her body if my aim were accurate.
“It’s a metaphor for your desire to take control of your sexuality,” she said.
This time, I aimed the switch at the sensitive skin at the tops of her thighs. Helena cried out as it hit, again and again, fighting to catch her breath. On her skin I wrote paragraphs, pages, volumes of red words that turned purple in my sight. I watched her face. I watched her chest. I watched every bead of sweat that ran down the crevice of her ass. Her pain was mine; her body was mine; my body was hers. In attention and agony, we were one flesh.
“Or maybe,” Helena murmured, her voice low, when I finally stopped be
ating her, “you want to punish yourself for what happened with Cyan.”
I paused.
Helena’s butt was zebralike in banded symmetry. With my left hand, I reached out and spread her cheeks apart to reveal the space between. I spit into the fingertips of my right hand and wiped the liquid across the black bull’s-eye at the apex of her gorge, then placed the tip of my switch against the wet spot.
“When we feel,” I said, leaning forward to press my weight against the wood, “we don’t have to think.” The point of the stick disappeared into Helena, like a lock into a keyhole. Her body expanded to swallow it whole.
She inhaled. I exhaled.
“How does it feel?” I asked.
“It hurts,” Helena murmured. I nodded.
“Do you have any more theories to share?” I asked. I pressed the stick an inch deeper.
Helena shook her head. Her hips trembled.
“Good,” I replied.
I pulled the switch out and dropped it to the floor.
Helena reached behind herself and put her hand on top of my own.
With both of our hands still pinned to the back of her body, Helena stood up and turned around to face me. Our hands slid across her skin as she moved. It was a dance without music.
“I didn’t say you could stand up,” I told her.
“I’m being disobedient,” Helena replied. Her eyes were gentle, tender, forgiving, full of trust. She put her hands on my waist and pulled my dress up, off my body, and leaned forward to kiss me. Together, our mouths tasted sweet, but also tart. I thought of Demetrius. I understood why he describes Helena’s lips as cherries—a fruit whose sugar is cut with the tang of acid.
Helena dropped to her knees in front of me. She pulled me down to her level, her torso close to my own. She picked up my hand, pressed my palm against her chest, and inhaled. The rhythm of her heartbeat fluttered against my hand.
“Can you feel it?” she asked me. “Do you recognize that rhythm?”
I swallowed.
“I do,” I murmured. “I feel it.”
Helena leaned forward to whisper in my ear. I tipped my face down and slid my hands around her waist.
“I know what you want,” she said. “You’re looking for three little words inside a haystack of language. You’re looking for the words that will teach you how to love.”
I pulled back to look at her.
“Yes,” I said. “Tell me.”
Sex with Shakespeare Page 26