by Coote, Cathy
This fallibility, this little patheticness, I surmounted in an instant. If you were a slightly different shape to the one I'd been led to expect, that was okay. I'd just tailor myself around you.
It was two years out of date when I found it. I suppose this only demonstrates the sameness of those magazines.
The stories were all simple; too simple. There are only six or seven adjectives you can use when writing smutty porn. The same words crop up again and again: hot, wet, thrust. The women all seemed to have silly, dated sex-kitten names like Kimberly and Taylor.
They were powerful images, of course. Especially for one with my past.
I'll admit that my heart beat a little faster and my hands shook imperceptibly when I saw the pictures. But it was more the idea that such pictures existed, than the images themselves. All those splayed airbrushed thighs, those pink plastic fingernails, those shameless cunts shaved in funny bikini patterns, grated on me. I soon grew bored. Besides, the models seemed to have such terrible taste in shoes. It was all gold sandals, pink slippers, thigh-high leather fuck-me boots. How can you have elaborate, operatic fantasies about a woman wearing gold sandals? I wondered.
There were a few erect penises, but again, the men to whom they were attached left me cold.
I had hoped vaguely, after the initial shock passed, that the magazine would give me some ideas. Clues. I turned the pages with my usual professional detachment.
But I soon realised that these trite fantasies wouldn't do at all. They were nothing like as vivid, as charged, as the scenarios I created every moment and lived out with you.
I smoothed it shut, and tucked it back underneath the socks, where it belonged.
But your own writings were different. They were personal. They were like private poetry; too exquisitely ridiculous to be read aloud.
I perused my treasure silently, speedily, braiding it in with my picture of you as I went.
You had never used words like cunt and cock and cum to my face. Whenever I swore—‘Fuck!’—you shook your head, more lover-injured than parent-angry. And yet here those harsh guttural words jumped out like splashes of red across the white page, impossible to ignore or excuse.
They aren't calm and sensible and well ordered like all your other correspondence. The writing is messier, too. They're fragmented—a paragraph on a scrap of tracing paper, a page torn from a notebook covered front and back—all savagely wrinkled with the force of your furtiveness as you shoved them into the envelope.
They're like a kind of shorthand. They're something you knew already, but took a deep pleasure in articulating.
I tell her to do it harder. She obeys.
The scenarios were already there in your mind, before you ever took up a pen. They've burned holes, they've been sitting there for so long.
I stand at the foot of the bed and just watch.
They're like my pictures.
You were never as thoroughly bad as me, of course. Your fantasies, compared to my discarded ones, were almost tame. They bordered on the normal, though they had more bite than the everyday, the long-married. I couldn't imagine my uncle whispering such things—
I tell her that I'm going to fuck her harder than I ever have before. She's scared and I have to hold her legs apart.
—to my fat indifferent aunt.
Seeing these deeper desires—scrawled as intensely as I had once scribbled the outlines of my victims on expensive sketch paper—parading across the pages, made my mouth dry with a powerful, psychological lust.
I wanted to hear you confess your desires. I wanted to see you shiver and almost break before the weight of acknowledgement.
It wasn't your fault, what happened.
I provoked you, knowing what provocation would reveal. You were a scorpion I poked and prodded into stinging me.
It's funny how lusts don't seem to exist for you in your other secret world, in your journal. Nothing else is taboo in there. You confess to worrying you'll go bald; to fearing impotence; to hating yourself; but never to these desires. They're segregated from the rest of your secrets, in their manila envelope. They're like a limb you've tried to amputate.
And that's so terribly good of you that it brings tears to my eyes.
You were prepared to be a gentle man. Civilised, you had succeeded in subordinating your sadistic desires. They didn't fit in with your picture of humanity, and so you fought them down, lulled them into an uneasy slumber at the bottom of your consciousness.
I woke them. I did it deliberately.
Once, I read a magazine article about sadomasochism.
You can't guess, it said, under which neat lawn in this city lies the dungeon.
And I wondered about the anonymous man they'd interviewed, living above the dungeon. Were there times when, changing his socks or buttering toast, he forgot about the chamber under his feet and the racks and the whips and the manacles and the Internet site and the coded advertisements in obscure magazines? Or were his very footsteps charged with sexual significance, as he strolled about over the realisation of a fantasy?
Did he ever long to move house, to go somewhere innocuous, some house where there were no concrete neuroses buried beneath the kitchen tiles?
I did more than build a simple house around my fantasies. I built a whole artificial self.
I've realised now, too late, that sexual fantasies are fictions. Trying to make them real is like trying to converse according to an opera score.
I can't stand violence.
I close my eyes in graphic movie scenes.
I can't bear to see sadism made flesh. I hate booted feet belting into stomachs, blood dripping down foreheads, gunshots, stabbings, punches, slaps.
It's the risk that bothers me, I think. The risk of pain, to the hitter, the kicker, the shooter of guns. I can't bear the thought of risking myself, of leaving myself open to reciprocal attacks. I hate the way victims can so easily get up and retaliate, in the movies. So, for some funny twisted reason, my sympathy latches irrevocably onto anyone who's being hurt. I feel every blow. I wince and wince. My friends used to piss themselves laughing at the way I closed my eyes in horror movies, protecting my neck from the vampire with one hand.
In all my imagined violences, I existed only as a thin thread of control. I was all mind, in those fantasies, barely present save to shape and direct the responses of my victims.
I'm starting to do weird things, here on my own.
I've heard that if you deny yourself all stimuli—block your ears, cover your eyes—you can excite your mind to hallucinations. Visions.
I bought ear-plugs from the chemist's.
I no longer give a damn how I appeared to any other living being. The chemist's assistant might have glanced at me with hostile curiosity as she handed me the change. She might have raised her eyebrows, affronted, at my arsenic-white face, and my red, sunken eyes. I wasn't even looking.
Back in this room, I made myself blind with an ancient airline eyemask. I bottled the sound of my rushing blood, stoppered my ears with twists of wax.
In the void, I waited.
I expected avenging angels, terrible seraphs pointing accusatory swords, the pure light of vengeance in their eyes. I expected monsters: the demons swimming at the bottom of my subconscious, come up at last for air.
I expected to be judged.
Nothing happened. Thin tears oozed at the corners of my eyes. I resisted the urge to squash them away with one finger.
I fell into an uneasy sleep.
I hate being here without you.
I spent an unspecifiable age, last night, staring at the air in front of the white wall of our bedroom.
My eyes hovered in some focusless hinterland and I saw coloured shadows, dancing. Once or twice a cloud of yellow and some spots of reddish-black coalesced. They seemed to become a hand, sitting in repose as if in a lap; or an eye, blinking and looking to one side, avoiding my gaze.
I could not make you real. I didn't learn you as you learnt me
, with the meticulousness of passion. Of love.
You said you could make me again, out of the air.
I know what you meant now, when in the shower you put your hands on my shoulders and turned me full circle.
Blinking through the steam, your thumbs on my collarbones, you confided, ‘I know every inch of this.’
The hot water brought your blood to the surface in blotches. Rivulets ran down your red face. As if to demonstrate the truth of your words, you skimmed your hands over my shoulders, my neck, my cheeks, my arms, hands, waist.
You said, ‘If you disappeared, I could make you again, out of the air.’
Fishing in my false heart, I hooked false comforts and offered them to you, earnestly. ‘I won't disappear! I'm not going anywhere!’
And you, misguided visionary, looked into my treacherous eyes, and saw nothing amiss.
‘You're beautiful,’ you told me. The words broke, passing the lump in your throat.
I didn't seek those pages out again for days. I buzzed with the secret knowledge of what I'd read. I kissed you, talked with you, squeezed your hand in the street, thrilling every moment with a strange expectant nervousness.
Carefully, carefully, I prepared myself for the final assault.
I sugared my lips with cherry-flavoured lip balm. I washed my hair in coconut shampoo. I smothered myself in cheap teenage scent, till I reeked of strawberries.
‘You always smell the same underneath,’ you told me.
I laughed. ‘What're you trying to tell me? I should shower more often?’
‘No, it's that childish smell.’ I felt your nostrils flare on my shoulders as you inhaled. ‘Babies. Milk.’
After that, I was careful to have milk more often. I left on my face the traces of it that clung round my lips after drinking. I rubbed it into my skin like perfume.
I made my first move at one of our picnics.
It was your idea entirely. It was you who loved picnicking under the huge spreading tree in our backyard. It was you who made the sandwiches and folded the tartan blanket for me to sit on.
I've never really liked weather. Being outside could be good, if it meant solitude. If it left me alone with my dark thoughts. If it freed me from the pin-pricks of guilt that human contact engendered.
I used to hate it, for example, if my aunt came up and offered to make me a sandwich when I sat at the kitchen table, daydreaming. I'd always shake my head and disappear out the back door, to be alone. I hated to have human decency and my mind in the same room at the same time.
But rain, wind, sun … they smacked too much of cleansing, sandpapering forces, abrasive against my secret thoughts.
Outside's too big, as well. I preferred the safe spaces of the little burrows you and I made beneath blankets. Even with the curtains drawn, there was always enough light to see your face.
So all that time, as I giggled and threaded daisy chains (how charming, how adorable!) I was slightly uncomfortable. But like a true opportunist, I was able to work under any circumstances.
I wore jeans, rolled up at the ankles; and one of your white work shirts, far too big. Through the thin cotton, the black shadow of my bra was obvious. My feet were bare, so that you could tickle the instep.
We sat on the cool grass in the deep shade of the biggest tree. When we'd finished with the food, we pushed the bones of sandwiches and the dead husks of salads to one side.
I yawned expansively. ‘Can I lie on you?’
That wry, through-the-nose laugh, as though I kept asking, in my naiveté, Can I give you a million dollars?
‘Of course.’
I settled my head on your outstretched legs, near the top of them. I looked up at the leaves. I felt a creature come crawling over my ankle. ‘Ugh!’ I squealed. ‘There's something on my leg!’
Indulgently, you reached out. ‘Where is it?’ You searched with your hands over my two calves, flicking the unseen little legs away. ‘There. It's gone.’ You didn't move your hand, however, but left it motionless, a big solid warmth on my skin.
‘No,’ I said, wriggling. ‘There's still something there.’
‘Oh, there is too!’ Your fingers drummed on my ankle. ‘It's a huge big spider!’
‘Yuck! Get it off!’
You walked the spider over my jeans, over my belly, until you held me awkwardly round the waist.
‘What is this? Spiders don't do this.’
‘This one does.’
‘Oh!’ I was tired of boring euphemisms, silly games. I wanted to hear you declare yourself again. ‘What do you want to do, spider?’
Your lips against my ear blew hot breath as you whispered, ‘I want to run my hands all over you. I want to feel your skin under my fingers.’
I made you go further. ‘What else?’
‘Pinch your nipples.’ Your eyes were closed. You swallowed.
This was getting close. I watched you keenly, through narrowed eyes. ‘What else?’
‘Unzip your jeans and put my hand down them and—’ You gave a short embarrassed laugh. ‘I'm not getting carried away …? You're not offended?’
‘What else?’ I pulled your hand up under my shirt. Your hand splayed, inoffensive, on my belly. You laughed nervously, not meeting my eyes.
I pulled my shirt off.
‘Hey!’ You glanced around, as though expecting to see hordes of respectable citizens come charging over the walls armed with pitchforks.
‘No-one can see us.’
You snorted through your nose, shaking your head. ‘Crazy girl!’
I pulled your head down until your face hovered over my breasts. ‘Is that what you want?’ I asked, sweetly.
And you made no reply, but only stared, overwhelmed.
*
I have a recurring dream.
I'm lying in a hospital bed. At the same time, I'm watching the action as though it were a film: I'm an invisible presence. My uncle and aunt are there, and a well-meaning delegation of girls from St Mary's. They're all standing around awkwardly, trying to make conversation, feeling terribly sorry for me.
There's been a shocking accident. I'm terribly afflicted. I've gone blind, or lost my legs, or had my face all scalded away. These injuries are always very graphic. I see the bleeding stumps of my legs, the scarred hollows where my eyes were, the red monstrosity my face has become.
Eventually one of my visitors breaks down, and blurts out, ‘Oh, it's terrible! What a dreadful thing to happen!’
And the me-in-the-bed thinks about this, and I say, ‘Oh, it's no more than I deserve.’ There is a feeling of calmness, of things having come to a conclusion, like the end of a film. The statement seems a fair summing-up. Oh, it's no more than I deserve.
It occurs to the me-that-floats-unseen, the disembodied observer, that this statement is more dreadful than the accident which has befallen me. There is a sense of tragedy, and I feel like weeping.
We ended up inside, as I'd hoped. You carried me there, cupping my neck and knees over your forearms. There was a strange, magnetised distance in your eyes, and your footfalls were slow and deliberate as you climbed the stairs. I could feel your arms through your shirt. They were scorching hot, as though the skin was sunburnt, as though your shirt would ignite.
You laid me like a doll on the bed, kissing me fiercely on the forehead.
Removing my clothes, you were as careful as usual, but somehow less tender. Kneeling between my legs, removing my jeans, you met my gaze. Your eyes were burning. You looked over me, at every inch, holding my knees. You were biting your lip and your hands trembled. You seemed to have to concentrate very hard on every breath you took.
I smiled serenely, like the Madonna. I had read in a journal of psychology that an important part of the Lolita Complex was the need to violate innocence.
‘Come on,’ I said, quietly.
And then you were above me.
With a terrible thrill, I realised what I'd so easily wrought. There was such a suppression of violence in your
touch that I nearly flinched, I nearly fainted. Your fingers were light against my skin, but you were being consumed with desperation.
You bit at my neck, with the sharp points of your teeth. Those pin-pricks were the beginning of all this, weren't they?
You felt your way down my neck with lips clamped tight over teeth, leaving a snail-trail of spittle which flared coldly on my skin.
Your sharp teeth clamped sharper than usual into the soft skin around my nipple. Taken genuinely by surprise, I gasped in pain.
‘Oh! I'm sorry, baby!’
The skin on my breast throbbed sharply with the pain. ‘It's okay.’ It always hurt, when you did that.
‘I never know when to do that!’ You sounded miserable. ‘Sometimes you seem to like it. But sometimes I get it wrong.’
I made a mental note to be more consistent with my reactions.
Then, judging my moment perfectly, willing you full of that need, I moved as though to roll away from underneath you.
I saw you struggle with yourself and start to lose.
‘No,’ you said, or made a noise that meant no. And you held my wrists together, with one hand.
With your feet, you hooked my legs apart.
Your face shone with sweat. Your eyes, sheathed over with an animal intensity of purpose, were on my face. You bit your lip, concentrating, as your body arced and dipped above me.
I lay supine, my thin wrists tacked to the bed under the iron span of your right hand. I knew a moment of the most intense, stifling, true panic when I realised that I couldn't move. I couldn't make you stop without crying out. A shout or a whimper at that moment would, I knew, have shattered the careful connection I'd wrought between us.
I couldn't close my eyes, chew my lip, give any sign that I was taking a punishment. Your bulging eyes were inches from my face. Any indication of dismay would break the spell, leave you scrambling off me, apologising, reduced, afraid to come near me. Perhaps you would even be revolted by the urges my flimsy body had awakened in you.