Tie Me Up

by Cathryn Cooper

  ‘Good old Merril, always so accommodating,’ friends and colleagues say to my face; reliable, but boring, they might as well add, I see it in their eyes. My name, the only thing about me deemed worthy of real interest.

  ‘Oh, as in Streep?’ strangers say, once they’ve cottoned on; and I smile, after all, she is something of a heroine of mine, before pointing out that hers has only one ‘r’ and a ‘y’. Two years ago, on my fiftieth birthday, I toyed with the idea of changing my spelling to hers, so that when asked the question, I could simply smile and say, ‘exactly!’ Perhaps then some of her kudos would rub off, and I too, would become a woman of substance, a woman to be reckoned with. But I was put off by the thought of having to explain it to everyone. I think that was when the thought of running away first occurred.

  Running away seems something men do rather than women. Certain middle-aged men, with families and mortgages around their necks, who one day, without warning, simply leave their desk at the Inland Revenue; close the door on their tidy semi, leave the people carrier in the garage, and walk right out of one existence to begin again from scratch, leaving no forwarding address. My first ever Relate client sixteen years ago was married to such a man. She was a Linda, and was utterly devastated, poor thing. It was a week before the first postcard arrived, bearing a Spanish postmark, saying simply, Sorry – I’m all right. A week later, another, saying, Please don’t worry about me. Love to the kids; before the third and final instalment dropped onto the mat, Just get on with your own life.

  It was the ‘just’ that upset her so much; as if it were that simple. I helped her voice her anger. I felt it too, what a cruel thing to do to someone. Whereas now, travelling alone on this train out of Waterloo, with no one but my solicitor knowing my destination, I feel a kindred spirit. And, for the first time in my life, feel truly free. Linda’s husband of course, abandoned not only a spouse, but three dependent children, whereas ours…

  Ours, why does that word bring me up short? Perhaps because through long years of marriage ‘ours’ had gradually given way to ‘mine’ and ‘his’. Since the children moved away to forge their own lives, the house evolved into defined areas where Roger and I led increasingly parallel existences. Mine, the small sitting room-cum-study where I tend to my case-notes and read novels about lives more fascinating and fulfilling than my own. His, the large lounge with state of the art sound system and oversized TV for watching sport and the German porn channel he thinks I don’t know about. The lawns and hedges are his; the flowerbeds, mine. Money is not an issue, as an only child I inherited well from my parents, and his job provides him a reasonable income and a new BMW every two years. My inheritance (there’s that ‘mine’ again) burns no hole in my pocket, and I, being less ostentatious, am content with my little Fiesta.

  The kitchen once also came under my sphere of influence, but, since the children left, he set about re-inventing himself as a foodie and increasingly laid claim to it. Last year, he went in for that Masterchef competition on TV. He was full of it. Told all our friends, spent a fortune on recipe books, recorded every programme, rehearsed every dish. He didn’t win, but prided himself on getting through to the semi-final. It was his banana soufflé that let him down.

  He arranged a dinner party the following weekend and cooked it again for both sets of neighbours to prove he could get it right. I do not care for banana. The truth is, I envied him, at fifty-five, he’d found something in life to get excited about. And, buoyed up by his newfound fame, it wasn’t long before he found a new source of stimulation for a rather different appetite. Which reminds me, the living arrangements: once the children left home we opted for separate bedrooms. It was my idea, and given what was going on, or rather not going on, it seemed the best thing. Anyway, Roger did not object.

  Roger. No one calls a child Roger any more. The only Roger you hear of nowadays is the one some stud gives his mistress; rather different to what Roger used to give me two or three times each month… that well choreographed stiff waltz that suddenly turns into a quickstep and always ends well before the music is finished. In earlier days, his fingers would carry on where his penis left off, but as time went by, he ceased bothering with the encore. When he was away on business and I had the house to myself, I’d sometimes dance alone, and allow my hands and fingers licence to roam. It sufficed.

  Roger had always tolerated my Relate work rather than shown any real interest in it. At parties, I’d overhear him damning me with faint praise.

  ‘Oh yes, Merril’s a dab hand at all that touchy feely stuff, whereas I’m just a practical kind of guy who brings home the bacon and enjoys the simple pleasures of life.’

  Which was my cue to cut in, smile, and say, ‘Not so simple, surely darling?’

  A limited, but fair, exchange, which rather summed up our marriage, until Masterchef.

  It was a few months after Masterchef that Relate were seeking another counsellor to train as a sex therapist at my local office. My supervisor seemed surprised when I mentioned I was thinking of applying.

  ‘After all these years, why now?’ she asked.

  I said it seemed like a good idea, and was immediately aware how lame that sounded. She said I’d better come up with a more telling answer at the interview. I didn’t dare tell her I was competing with Roger.

  It was not that I lacked interest in sex, far from it. It’s just that apart from some early adolescent fumbling with a female classmate and a boy in sixth form who later turned out to be gay, my hands-on experience had been limited to Roger, and what Ben Elton quaintly called the pleasures of the palm. With Roger, the action and the feelings never quite got in step.

  However, my counselling work at Relate provided a measure of excitement, allowing me to gaze through net curtains and peer under the duvets into intimate corners of people’s lives. I would eagerly explore my clients’ sexual lives, but with more interest in meanings than mechanics. What does it mean to this woman, to feel her husband’s penis inside her; or to this man, to offer that part of himself to her? What message does this hand bear, as it snakes across the silent reaches of the marital bed? And what is this breast saying, as it tenses under his touch? I’m skilled at helping couples find language for such ritual thrusts and fumbling, and even if Roger and I never spoke to each other like that, the loss was ours alone, and at least I could take comfort in my ability to enable others to relate at a deeper and more rewarding level.

  I suppose, if I’m honest, there was always a part of me that wondered about what I might be missing; perhaps that’s why, before it was too late, I put my name forward to train as a sex therapist. It seemed safer than an affair.

  In the days prior to the interview, I devoured the course prospectus and a weighty tome called Understanding Sexual Dysfunction I found on the counsellors’ bookshelf at Relate. It’s not that I was shocked, or embarrassed, by photographs of vulvas and penises in various states of arousal; it was the text that put me off; the starched white- coated language of clinical gravitas. It might prove interesting to analyse humour but it’s hardly very funny; something similar can be said of sex. Here was sex reduced to a complex system of neurotransmitters, plumbing, and hydraulics, culminating in a four-stage model of Desire, Excitement, Orgasm, Resolution, which has more to do with mechanics than with persons, meanings and feelings.

  I tried explaining as much at the interview, but sensed that my examiner thought me a prude. Was I perhaps, ‘a little too buttoned-up’ she asked, to put clients at sufficient ease to discuss their orgasms, erections and ejaculations, whether premature or retarded? She then stared hard, presumably to ascertain whether I understood the latter term, or defying me to shatter the image she had of me. I considered demonstrating my knowledge, and whether or not to allow the odd ‘cock’ or ‘cunt’ to slip from my lips in order to prove that I, too, was at ease with my sexuality, but didn’t like her enough to indulge in those kind of games. So, I just smiled.

  When I informed Roger of her decision, he expresse
d a level teaspoon of disappointment before retreating into his recipe for Magret de Canard au Poivre Vert with Dauphinoise potatoes. I think he was rather relieved.

  It was at the Relate Christmas party that it must have started. Jas (short for Jasmyne, I gather) had not long moved into the area. I’d met her only a couple of times at our fortnightly case discussion group. On the first occasion, she showed particular interest in a case I was presenting in the group. My client was Harry, a slight, rather attractive, young GP, whose partner had come home early from work to find him wearing her underwear, lipstick and squeezed into her lycra mini-dress.

  She had accompanied him to Relate merely to state in front of a witness that their relationship was over. ‘I only hope you can do something with him,’ was her parting shot to me, as she slammed the door. Poor Harry looked across at me, mournfully. I saw him for seven sessions after that, during which we explored the origins and meanings of his cross-dressing and what, if anything, he wished to do about it. Shame always shrinks from the light of day, and I told the group I was impressed by the trust Harry had shown in me. At which point, Jas interrupted, saying she thought I should look more closely at what I might represent for Harry.

  ‘How do you mean?’ I asked.

  ‘Well, I wonder how he sees you, Mary?’

  ‘Merril. My name’s Merril.’

  ‘Oh, well Merril, you’re clearly considerably older than Harry, perhaps he sees you as, a sort of, mumsy confessor?’

  Mumsy. Hmm. I smiled.

  Actually, I think Harry rather adores me. He certainly seems to admire the way I dress for counselling: usually trousers or a dark suit, skirt just below the knee, crisp shirt or top, all appropriate to role, age and figure (12/14). I wear little jewellery, but quality, and always understated. At the start of each session Harry always comments thoughtfully on my appearance; something Roger only ever does after someone else’s observation prompts him to do so. Harry liked my new skirt and even noticed it was cut on the bias! He said it went well with my new kitten-heel shoes.

  ‘Aren’t you being a little naïve, Merril? You’ll be going shopping with him next.’

  Jas’s final comment pricked the atmosphere like a dart just as the facilitator was attempting to move us on to another member’s case. She was right. I may indeed have been naïve about Harry, but not about her.

  I was alive to Jas before she even opened her mouth. I knew she and I wouldn’t get on; I didn’t take to her physically. Her hair is cut in that short funky style that is probably called bed-head or wash-and-go, and always looks good, but on me would just look a mess. She dresses casually, more casually than I’d like if I had to suffer her picking through the entrails of my marriage. Hipster jeans, see-thru voile shirt worn over clingy white vest, pretty tasselled scarf thrown loose about her neck, low-slung belt, its large buckle drawing the eyes to her crotch, long painted nails that clearly don’t suffer housework or gardening.

  What her female clients make of her as their husbands eye her up and down, I dread to think. She clearly wants to look younger than her years, which I take to be mid-forties, but that slender frame somehow lets her get away with it. She reminds me of Trinny or Susannah on TV, whichever is the tall thin one with no tits but you still can’t take your eyes off her.

  And neither could Roger, at the Relate Christmas party, where he spent most of the evening telling Jas all about the ‘Masterchef experience’ and what a truly sensual and artistic activity cooking is, and how we all need to educate our children to appreciate and revere it the way the French and Italians do as a matter of course. Apparently, she and her husband have a second home in Tuscany, and she ‘adores’ the Italian way of life. In fact, her husband runs a property development business over there and is across in Italy for weeks at a time.

  The signs are always there, if you look for them: a husband’s more rigorous attention to shaving, the newly purchased soft-touch shirts and boxer shorts, late evenings at the office, and the sudden overnight meeting down in Bristol. That was the night I cracked the password for his computer: masterchef1, easy.

  So Roger, your SENT email box states that our marriage is ‘a sham’, that in bed, I’ve been ‘like a fridge’, and you’ve come to see that your life with me has been like ‘living in a cage’ and it took ‘just one kiss’ from her ‘luscious lips’ to teach the caged bird how to sing!’

  And Jas, such fulsome ejaculations by reply: so you l-o-n-g for him. Long to feel my husband’s ‘sweet kisses all down your spine, and beyond!’ You lie awake, ‘dreaming of a whole night together’ when he’s meant to be down in Bristol. In case discussion group, you almost feel sorry for the ‘old sack’ sitting opposite, as your labia ‘glisten at the memory’ of her husband’s cock sliding up and down between your (little) breasts. How encouraging, Roger, for you to read of the ‘electric thrill’ at the Relate Christmas party, as your fingers brushed past her nipple as you reached for her glass, and how glad she was that she’d decided not to wear a bra. And to be told how welcome your cock feels inside Jas’s ‘warm, flowing cunt,’ as she sits astride you. How uplifting, Roger, to be informed by such a woman that you were not born to live a caged, half-life.

  Roger’s company appeared to be taking off in Europe, judging by the number of meetings he was now required to attend in Brussels and Paris. He was away overnight at least a dozen times over the next three months, while I held the fort at home. At Relate, I continued to tend to my clients, and revealed no sign of chagrin at being rejected for sex therapy training in favour of Jas, who delighted in telling me how well she and the interviewer had got on and how much she was enjoying the early parts of the training. I simply smiled.

  The shopping expedition with Harry was a great success. I took him to Monsoon where I helped him choose a rather fetching dress, and M&S, where I helped him select a skirt, two tops, a pair of ‘Shapewear’ knickers, some leggings, hold-up stockings and tights, as well as a pretty silk camisole that I rather wish I’d bought for myself. In return, Harry handed me an envelope containing a super-strength sleeping draft, which he said I should dilute in a sweet milky drink, sometime during the evening after which I should on no account drive or operate machinery. I thanked him and before going our separate ways, he promised to take some self-photos to show me at our next session. I smiled, knowing full well there would be no next session, at least not at Relate.

  The Internet holds no truck with boundaries of class, gender, or attire. Anyone can go anywhere, and via links through Google and Wikipedia, I was soon gazing upon vivid testimonies to man’s ingenuity and the triumphs of mechanics and engineering. I spent an enthralling hour perusing various items with names such as ‘Houdini’, ‘Stallion’, and the more prosaic ‘CB2000/3000’, along with several user reviews. These all came under the heading of male chastity devices, and usually consist of two main sections: a leather, metal or plastic cage for the penis, attached to a heavy-duty ring for the balls, the whole ensemble secured by a steel padlock. The more substantial versions are made of chrome, sometimes plastic coated in a range of colours. These devices are claimed to render intercourse impossible and masturbation/erections if not entirely preventable, then certainly extremely uncomfortable. I was sorely tempted by one called ‘The Curve’, its clear, polycarbon downward-curving tube fully enclosed the placid penis, and several photographs of it in situ I found extremely appealing. However, I rejected this in favour of an earlier model, the CB 2000, for the sole reason that its use of a series of bars, rather than the one-piece tube gave a more authentic cage-like appearance. This, along with its tamper-proof qualities, steel padlock and two keys, made it seem a bargain at £79.99 inc p&p, and I readily placed my order online. I was in buoyant mood as I lay back enjoying a leisurely candlelit bath and contemplated my purchase. Over the next few days as I awaited delivery, I found myself humming under my breath, lines from an old pop song lodged somewhere in the far reaches of my mind, ‘You can look but you better not touch!’

  Ro
ger was at work the day the parcel arrived. Before opening it, I had the brainwave of heading straight out to WH Smith where I bought a large pack of Plasticine and, back at home, set about sculpting a set of male genitalia on the kitchen table. It was most absorbing, being able to give the penis any girth or length I wished, and I set it at various provocative angles. Eventually, I stopped giggling and gave serious thought to my fading memories of Roger’s equipment in its un-aroused state. Circumcised, with a pronounced bell-shaped head, his member hangs slightly to the left, as seen from his perspective, and his balls hang low, and seem of average size; nothing to compare it with really, other than the Relate books and a few Internet images. At last, my sculpture was complete and I set about fitting the CB2000 to the model. I found it awkward, and it took some time before I finally snapped the steel padlock securing the cage’s somewhat squashed and mangled contents. Showing great patience, I repeated the entire procedure several times until I was confident I knew what I was doing and had no need to keep checking the written instructions. After all, I could expect no assistance from the wearer. As I put it away, I re-read the accompanying blurb, which suggested that many men find an exquisite satisfaction in being restricted in this manner, and their dependence upon the key-holder’s benevolence to release their pent up sexual urges. I found this intriguing, but disturbing, as I had no intention of adding one iota to the ecstasy Roger and Jas found in each other’s bodies; quite the reverse. I read again every one of their desire-drenched emails, which served to reassure me as to the unlikely possibility of such an outcome. I printed off the emails, sent copies to my solicitor with a covering letter regarding my intention to commence divorce proceedings, and settled down to await Roger’s return.