by Alan Duff
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
THE EXPERIENCE WAS BIGGER THAN a seventeen-year-old had words to describe. I knew it had special meaning, even importance: it wasn't just sex.
My first time, but obviously not hers; a mother of two children, the youngest my school classmate and fellow band member. She just didn't seem old, not once we lay together. She had the energy and hunger of youth the same as I did. With experience's teaching and self-restraint, till the differences no longer mattered.
At some stage of this unbelievable happening I had thought I was re-enacting my mother's life: she the naive, unknowing young Waiwera inhabitant, seduced by Jess and the broader world he came from. Me seduced by a married older woman's sophistication and womanly wiles. Yet who was the seducer? Lena or Jess? Me or Isobel?
Showing her around our village, I took her places no ordinary sightseer would get to see. Same places I intended taking my father — if he ever came. Got a few sideways looks from locals, but she was too old for anyone to think that far. Couple of mates did give me funny grins, and I gave my most innocent look back. I guess sluts do it naturally, make deception an art of conveyed innocence when the loins are bursting and the lustful mind has no conscience.
Felt like I was my mother parading her lover for the whole village to see.
I started to worry I'd read her intentions quite wrong for she was full of questions about the place and we must have spent over two hours walking around. The rarely seen area where Barney had built a seat Isobel found scary and exciting: why didn't we open this area up to tourists? I explained it was volatile and kept changing so was too dangerous.
She said, like you perhaps?
I was too inexperienced to throw something witty or bait-accepting back. Just my loins stirred even more. Me, dangerous? Mrs Blake, what do you mean? Was her who looked dangerous.
That's where I live, I pointed out as we came right by our house that yet had never felt completely mine. I didn't want Isobel seeing inside as her home was beautifully furnished compared with ours. Promised myself I'd learn how to furnish my own house one day, like the Blakes'. We moved on.
Took our turn of gazing into the crystal clear blue depths of Wharepapa pool, like a million tourist eyes over the years. Its white-crusted silica sides you could see thirty, forty feet down before Hell's black claimed it and sent fast-rising bubbles like warning signals from the Devil's raging domain. Green stain from a bag of greens cooking. Another bag of shucked corn cobs attached to a flax string gleamed juicy yellow in the boiling wet. A woman's smile white in the sun. Beads of nervous sweat trickled back of my neck, or else it was the heat coming off the pool.
On the conventional tourist route we ran into Chud, who wouldn't take the hint three was a crowd. Catch up later, I said, dismissed him. Got a long stare to say our friendship came first. Not today, bud. Chud kept getting bigger every time I saw him, tall and muscular. Like his father, except with a prouder bearing. Poor Chud. But this is private business.
King George Geyser erupted on cue for her. She stood staring as it blasted like a pub full of angry drunks going off. I gazed at her form beneath the blouse, the breasts my classmate had suckled on, the body that had carried Nigel and gave birth to him. Not that I had these thoughts attached to any guilt. But it did seem bizarre.
King George hurtled skywards and my eyes admired the slim ankles, sign of a good figure old Merita would say, long as the calf muscles aren't too formed and weight is not showing above the knee, and look at the hands: fingers must be long, wrists skinny. And when you behold the most important part, the eyes, remember: they are the windows to the soul.
So the eyes might turn to me, I asked, are you enjoying this?
Yes, her blue eyes paler than the sky answered. Very much so, more than you think.
Through the clear blue windows at a soul I'm staring, and trying to figure what I'm seeing, what my mind is trying to understand. My age and her age cannot surely be a match? It is supposed to be confusion meets confusion, fumbling inexperience collides with groping unknowing. First-time teenagers don't know what to say. They don't have to.
But I need her to say something, to define this for me or I'll not be able to go through with it. Hold my hand, walk me through it, or it won't happen. I know it won't.
We're in her parked car up at the redwood grove, fifty years tall, planted by some visionary for the public's enjoyment but surely not what was starting to unfold in Isobel's car. Out her windscreen the soaring giants so far from their native American soil, like massive erections — symbols of pending event?
Farther in, beneath the giants' shade, awaits intimacy, the new knowing; somewhere in there it will take place — if her soul reads true.
I could not have recalled but a couple of sentences what she said, not hours, weeks, months later. Had to wait, until my mind caught up with my emotions. I could not tell a soul, especially not Chud. No one, or all its meaning would be lost.
But of course I do recall how it started, how it became inevitable. Of course I do . . .
She said, listen. I am not calling you that name. Not any name. You are someone special and so I wish to start this part of your life with something special. Give of myself to you; who I might have been but did not — perhaps could not — become. Many people are locked into situations they cannot escape.
You in turn must give of yourself, your best self, even your confused self. For clarity will surely come, not now, but afterwards.
That's what she said, nuzzling my ear. I swear the hairs back of my neck crackled.
She told me another thing: Do not ask why this is happening, seek only to lose yourself in every moment.
Of course she knew that I the virgin youth wanted a singular part of me lost in a singular place in her (though to recall only the physical is to miss the meaning) . . . That occurred, somewhere in the tall shadows of giants, a place off the track where we lay down on soft moss and fallen needles and the trees stood like guarding sentinels and birds trilled as if glad for us.
Before we coupled in the act of sexual union, her breath was sweet upon me but not as sweet as her sounds, she dripped them over me, put her mouth to mine and broke me open.
She made sighing sounds and soft moaning, a hand stroked my face while the other snatched at my hair. And she said, this is what I have long wanted to be. Just this. Complete.
In the joined wet of our mouths, her tongue that knew and had teachings for my own. The smooth arc of her teeth, yet feeling every slight indentation. The perfect form of woman to my unknowing hands.
Our clothing came off. I'm trembling. Now touch me. She meant down there. Where man's meaning awaits like some vast wordless learning gained in just a touch.
Down there is velvet damp with scent I know in the instant. Feels immediately familiar, as if I knew it all this wondering time.
There is texture alongside my spread fingers; fine down, thick tuft, and the slick-covered folds and crevices men are made to explore. Electrical charge when she takes me in her hand, sends my head spinning. Her mouth works, maybe she spoke.
Too young to know she is guiding until I am held against her damp place and she rises to meet me, takes me inside. A surging sense of belonging, returning.
I know now what she gave, in being the woman she craved to be. And maybe Isobel was like my mother, the secret longing she must have had, seeking something beyond what she had words for, something beyond her own circumstances. Maybe my unusual parentage, the natural environment, its thermal activity, my Maori background, village innocence . . .
Yet I know she was teaching me love. Simple love. Not so much her own as how to receive and in turn to give back. Expressing like dance, like poetry, as kissing, feeling, clinging, writhing, sweating, thrusting, moaning human animals extracting treasures of the soul from each other. Without necessity for as much as a thought, a learned word or formed sentence.
Afterwards, driving me back to Waiwera, she didn't speak, though a hand did fall for a time o
n my knee and she did smile. I didn't know what to say. I wanted to, but words wouldn't come and I could tell she didn't want to hear words from me.
Boldly, I thought, she took me over the bridge and through the village, turned left down our road to Henry's house.
Then she said, I trust you. No more needed. She trusted me, which she was right to do.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
IT'S THE TOWN'S BEST DANCEHALL, with new lighting that pulses and darkens and brightens as the light operator wishes and the selected music track dictates. Mirrors pick up all of it but like in a dream, where the meaning shifts and you need an eye to interpret it. Six hundred persons its operating permit allows, being about five hundred dancing and the hundred wallflowers pinned to the walls and glued to the benches that lined them. Looks of hurt and lack of confidence, caught in the stark light even in this darker place, of boys and girls knowing what they aren't before their time.
Not that the dancers care; they are relieved and glad not to be socially disabled, imprisoned in an attitude. Lost they are in rock 'n' rolling, not wanting to miss twirling the partner, catching a hand: lost in the throbbing voice and beat Mister Elvis Presley is giving them. The boys are but poor imitations and self-conscious clones of the world's most popular pop singer, Brylcreemed hair catching the ceiling lights, licks and kiss curls stuck fast to sweating brows. Bodies moving frantically yet with deliberate plan inside skin-tight pants stove-piping into winkle-picker shoes, suede and leather going this way and that on the wooden floor.
Girls are made up to the tops of their beehive hairdos, make-up plastered on by the inexperienced, the unsure, not those who know mascara mixed with perspiration turns beauty into the beast. And there's a certain confusion, a hesitation, as if wanting to be told what next in this gathering of small-town rustics unwittingly at the forefront of an international social revolution, loose skirts flying, tight skirts pasted to rumps and grinding hips, high heels twisting and clacking, straining under dancing's demands. Some just follow the leaders, who themselves lead only by having more self-confidence; others have mouths agape in no less than astonishment at being part of this benign revolt when it feels like a mob knowing not what nor why it does.
Boys are primed to scatter their seed in any pretty girl's vagina, vaguely aware there's never been a time in history with so much chance of succeeding — not just at sex, till now a dirty fact of young maleness punishable by law by social disgrace by damnation, though the act, the desire, the animal urge feels so natural.
Look, the girls are exertion-wet and excitement-damp between thighs and yet unsure of what exactly sex is, other than the dire warning of pregnancy; the dreaded unwanted unplanned child growing a girl's shame; her grubby little secret told against her will. And what if this exciting thing called sex hurts? What does a girl do — how does she do — the big It? Why is It so much more important to boys than to girls?
But hell, there are more than a few young women quite comfortable, at home with their bodies, happy to let nature take her course, eager to experience, impatient for a desirable boy's intimate touch. A lucky chosen boy can have his way with her, as she will have hers with him.
The better dancers are smooth in delivery of this primal ritual, postures more upright, timing last-second. Confident they'll make the move, with cocky grins and prowess extended to flashing eyes. Some hog the centre floor, others prefer the reflection feedback in the mirror. Here you go, hon, flicking female partner in a twirl on her toes, connected by single finger digits, she threatens to lose her grip then he draws her back, hips going, on fire with sexual movement and desire set free.
Chud sees his friend Yank is on fire, his feet move in perfect easy time with the beat; he spins his partner, she's one of the prettiest ones in the vast, seething room, but other girls are eying the handsome bastard, wanting a turn with him, to lay best and, they hope, final claim. Lucky shit.
Yank's too engrossed in the dancing — in himself, his brooding friend observes — to notice that the gain of girls also earns other males' dislike.
Chud is flattened against the wall, features creased in frown. Wants to be out there but can't; wants to show he can dance, but something inside holds him back.
He knows he's a good dancer, how otherwise if he's such an outstanding rugby player? Yet his feet turn leaden, heart heavy with despair. Waves of self-loathing wash over him, a dark sense of lovelessness grips him. The whole ill direction of his life, his bad upbringing, becomes known now and it's so awful a truth someone has to pay. No person can carry such burden, for it says he does not belong, not here not anywhere except maybe, one day, in the company of others angry like him, filled with hate yet with a wanting so much to love and be loved in return. A geyser rumbles inside him.
Another song finishes; sweating, hard-breathing, breathless dancers smile, laughing with disbelief at what mere dancing can do to the soul. Young women sip air to maintain dignity, knowing dignity will be discarded soon as the next song starts and moves five hundred young bodies to an instinct they know nothing of, despite the self-consciousness many can't shed. Hardly time to exchange names then the next amplified number booms out, wallflowers tightening as the magic wand of music casts its spell over the dancers and leaves those wallflowers frozen stiff, wretched, stranded.
We flail and wriggle and twist bodies and stomp and slide on smooth floorboards wet with sweat. This is fornication in public, with clothes yet to be removed. Statues line the walls as if stuck here forever: every Saturday night, it must be unbearable. Look at poor Chud. I know he can dance. But when he gets here he freezes up.
Think I'm in here, the girl's every look and suggestive movement says so. I push my dance moves to the boundary; I haven't practised this it just comes as I slide into her crotch to crotch and meet no resistance. See her eyes pass briefly through that gimlet look of raw sex on offer and her hair would toss back if not confined to a sprayed net like a fat fish, but her eyes again flash signal like a beacon that her cunt is mine. It's yours, Yank! And I thank Isobel for the cloak of sexual confidence: with love, everything happens beforehand. No need to rush it.
Whipped up, I thrust a leg between her again; she throws her head back, a sex-glazed smile to the mirror, her weight held suspended in my arms; laughing she is, hips still wiggling.
Hauling her to me I plant a kiss on her grinning gob and for some reason in the turn have Chud in my vision, a man wilting before my eyes.
I see a young man who in the old Maori days would have been adopted by a great warrior's family because of his physical prowess, his parents banished maybe killed. Back then he'd not have to prove himself through dancing. Back then it would all have been different.
A pushy girl cuts in on my partner. Move aside, kid, give someone else a turn. Your mascara's running, you look like a drunk clown. Immediately she gives me message simple: I'm yours, darl. All the way to the sack.
Me, I just put on my nonchalant mask, to let her know who's running this show.
Meanwhile the angry one stuck fast to the wall squints round the vast room at the bobbing, sinking, rising heads all aflutter; skirts flying, hips going, five hundred pairs of shoes squeaking and rasping and clacking and clattering on the laid polished timber lengths, wet with sweat, the odd fallen tear; his eyes sweep what he can see of the figures seated and stuck to the walls, nailed to the floor, minds refused permission for bodies to dance.
For all the girl's attention I can see Chud knows they have it all in common, clammed and jammed up like this. Chuddy, Mum's Boyboy, I wish I could play back your life and start the reel again. But I can't.
From just a baby the stunting took place. When baby needed comfort, baby wanted crude sounds to be soothing voice, wanted hands to be soft touch, wanted to stare into big faces all asmile for him, babybaby, baby Chud boy, boyboy. To take deep breaths of the walnut vanilla scent of their love for him.
Boy, every boy, wants mummy closeness, mummy always near, mummy anytime he needs her and when he d
oesn't need, just in case. Boy wants daddy to talk to him teach him life lessons, put arm round him walk out in public show the world boy got daddy's love, not that difficult, not that hard. Boy wants daddy to take him out into the wild of nearby trees and make them seem the forest, the jungle, pretend to hunt wildest animals, father and son together, bring home the kill for happy mummy to cook for happy family even if father did buy the kill from the meat man.
Boy needed daddy to go swimming, let boy show him spots up river down river, eddies and fast flows, how he can run underwater, swim a hundred yards with the swift sweet current, come with me, daddy, come with boyboy, let's do it together, eh, daddydaddy, let's, eh? Boy needed this. He needed.
His anger requires a victim. Chud moves around like a wild beast prowling for the kill.
Yank has lost himself in the new girl's arms and in the low lighting has been allowed fingered access to her most private place, and such a joyous, nerve-tingling place it is too. (Though he has known better and sweeter and meaningful truth.) Murmurs escape him, like the war-damaged man his mother sees, of meaning to him and her, him and her. The girl's mouth is slightly ajar, like the door to herself opening wider. Like her low intelligence being allowed out to play.
Wild beast can scent his prey, there. Now he is flooded with his other self, he is someone. Now he feels as close to being loved as he'll ever feel. The boy alone no more, he has company of his other self. Look after me, boy. I will, Chuddy. I will. And over the both of them go, two Chuds one in their hatred.
Yank picks up the flurry of movement even in the toned-down light. He senses it must be his friend, always knew the reason why, but hates it no less. We made a vow, remember, Chud? That when we grew up we'd do it different, do things better. You said, may as well lie down and die if life is going to end up the same. Jeezuz, Chud. Jeezuz.