by Nell Gavin
“May I look away?” I ask. There is more to come, and I would prefer to move on to something else.
The question is unanswered, and the scene does not even pause.
Forced to watch, I am forced to consider what Henry was. I do not want to compare him to the Henry I most recently knew because there is too much pain in that. I try to view the two Henrys as separate beings: I love one and hate the other. However, the one I loved grew into the one who betrayed me . . . They are both the same, I think, as the pain resurfaces.
But I do so love him, here. I will force myself to only think of that, and see if the pain lessens somewhat.
I find it not only lessens, but I am filled with joy. I try to sustain the sensation by forgetting all the rest and focusing on the love.
I can return to hating him in a little while, I reason. There is ample time for that later.
۞
Henry and I are finishing up our music practice in a meadow by the side of the road, and I am about to pull out my harp to practice on my own. The adults have set up camp but left the harp in the wagon, for it should not be set upon the damp ground. I am heading there to get it. Henry has things of his own that he should be doing, but he follows me doggedly, complaining of my performance at practice and criticizing me.
I glare at him and call him “Stupid”. This prompts him to charge at me and pull me to the ground where I writhe and protest under the weight of him, while the horses quietly graze nearby. One of them knickers softly toward us and snorts a greeting, which both Henry and I ignore, for we are facing each other in a challenge of some sort, both stiff and ready, it appears, for a fight. Henry starts to say something, then stops and grabs hold of my eyes with his own and looks for a long moment. Then he ventures to softly run a finger down my cheek.
He moves his face down close to mine to kiss me. I grow suddenly fearful, and stiffen, and twist in his arms. I jerk away, and he pulls his head back, not surprised.
“Let me go,” I say. “I have work to do.” Henry holds me still, now tighter, pushing his weight down so I cannot move. He defiantly attempts another kiss, and in nervous fright, I giggle then spit at him and twist away, assisted in my escape by having startled him. He lets me go without resistance, and sits for a moment wiping the spittle from his cheek. He watches me with a hurt expression as I race away from him. He looks, I think, as though he might cry.
I almost run back to console him, but I cannot stop to worry about him at this moment. Everything is going to change, and I want it to stay the same a little longer. We are going to be completely different together from any way we have known before, and I know this, and there is little time left to cling to what we had been. I am making one final effort to be with him as I always had, knowing in that instant that it is already too late. It has been too late for some time. I would have known this if I had heeded the signals in his eyes, and the peculiar feeling in my own stomach.
Recovering, he leaps up and shouts my name with a curse. He chases me across the field and into the forest, furious, reaching down and hurling rocks toward me, issuing hot threats and shouts of insult and anger. I hoist my skirts up to my thighs, and run ahead of him in manic, desperate fury, squealing and laughing, darting quick looks behind me, thinking for just this moment that we can forever be children and remain as we were. Henry does not want to remain a child, and part of me wants to grow up and join him, but for just this one last time I resist and lead him in our final childish chase through the underbrush and deep into the woods.
I see something ahead. I stop in my tracks and hold my hand up to Henry to be silent. He quells his shallow anger, creeps up behind me, and looks in the direction I point, his eyes widening. He looks down at me quickly and blushes, then returns his eyes, hypnotized, to the scene before us. A woman is bent over, hugging the trunk of a tree, with her skirt raised up above her waist and the ends of it grasped in her fingers. Her back is arched and her wide rump is exposed and tilted up as she carefully spreads her legs more widely apart. A man with his breeches around his knees moves closer behind her.
My eyes are riveted.
“How did he make his thing point up like that?” I ask in a whisper.
Henry, the expert, explains, “It just does.”
“How?”
“By itself. It just does.”
“Any time you want? Like you could make a fist? You tell it ‘Stand up’ and it does?”
Henry thinks for a moment. “It stands up when you think of doing what he’s doing. That is all. You just think about doing that, and voila, it stands up.”
“I see,” I say, but I do not really.
A year earlier I might have wondered why the woman didn’t slap the man and run, but something within me has changed, and I feel weightless and breathless. I cannot move, nor can I avert my eyes. I feel a rush of pleasure as I watch. The pleasure I feel seems to increase when I think about being touched in the places he is touching her and, when I think of that, only Henry comes to mind as the one to touch me.
My eyes widen, and I lean forward.
“Mon dieu!” I say. “What is that he is doing to her now? Why would they do such a thing as that?”
“Shh. You talk too much,” Henry answers. Behind me, his breath comes fast and shallow. I can tell without looking that he is breathing through his mouth.
We know these people. The man is a minstrel, and his wife is a dancer. They are now beginning to make the noises we had been taught to run from, as children. During forest walks we sometimes heard grunts, and cries, and moans, and had been told they came from angry forest spirits who would capture us if we did not run away. I had never before seen the source of the spirit noises, nor had I ever questioned it. I had always been too fearful of the consequences to investigate.
“Does this mean that forests are not really haunted?” I whisper to Henry, turning around to see his face. I feel very clever and mature for having deduced the truth on my own.
He says nothing and stares at me, coldly superior. He clicks his tongue at me, shoots me a look of amazed contempt and rolls his eyes.
How dare he? It was an honest question. Yet I now burn with embarrassment from Henry’s reaction.
“I hate you so much!” I whisper. “You are so—“
“I said sshh,” he hisses, and grabs my shoulders from behind. He wraps his arms around my chest in a protective gesture, as if the participants in the scene are dangerous, and pulls me backward a step or two. He leaves his arms where they are, and I do not pull away.
A moment or two passes, and we watch the couple, frozen within our own thoughts and sensations. I feel boneless, and melt into Henry, grateful that he is holding me upright. Arousal, I discover, is as contagious as a yawn. I do not know that arousal is what has taken hold of me. I feel a secret sensation I do not admit to Henry, but I now understand that the look I saw in his eyes was indication that he is feeling this too.
“We will have to do that ourselves, when we are married,” Henry finally whispers to me. He picks up a braid and tickles my neck with the end of it, pressing his lips to the top of my head. He has not kissed me since we were tiny children, and never tried until today, yet it seems natural and appropriate. I like the way he is tickling my neck.
“Us?” I ask shocked. “You would do that to me?” I sound aghast but do not entirely feel so. I stare half-interested and half-terrified. I would not have admitted this to him, but I am more interested than frightened.
“I will have to. We will be married.” Still standing behind me, he grasps me around the waist and hugs me tightly, touching his cheek to mine. Strange as it is for Henry to hold me like this, I still do not pull away. I lean back into him, and turn soft and pliable in his arms. I feel warm, held as I am against him. Safe.
“Did you know of this before?” I ask him while he rocks me back and forth. “Had you seen it done before to know?” I continue, babbling as I often did. “I did not know that it was even done at all. Who else does this? Ar
e there others?”
“I’ve seen it,” Henry answers. He does not mention where and why, though knowing Henry, I suspect he was often prowling the woods in search of it to watch, following the sounds that would lead him to it, and moving in stealth. I suspect he has been watching for quite some time. Had I any experience at all, I would soon know from the way he touches me, and where, that this is true, and that he has spent many hours thinking about it on his own. I would also know it has never been far from his thoughts when he has looked at me, of late.
“You have seen animals do it. Did you not know that we will do it ourselves one day when we marry?” His voice is even, and matter of fact—even nonchalant—as if to deflect attention from his hands, which have moved up to cup my breasts. I press back harder against him and think of nothing but his hands and how they make me feel.
“I knew,” he continues in a boasting tone. “I have spoken in secret to the men. Men and women marry so they can do that with each other. They like it. See?”
He points to the couple. The woman is grunting, “Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.”
I have to presume that, if she were unhappy, she would be saying “No”. It is somewhat of a convincing argument.
As an afterthought, Henry adds, “And you must do it if you are to have babies, which, of course, we shall have, you and I.”
I ponder the prospect while watching.
A thought occurs to me. I would wonder about the woman and whether she was to have a baby, but would do this at a later time. More practical issues are of concern to me now.
“At least you are not large like he is,” I state as fact, hoping for confirmation. “I have no place where something that size would fit. It would not work if you were large.”
Henry says nothing for a moment, thinking. “It always works,” he says, finally, with conviction.
I have not been spoken to on the subject myself, and assume he knows of this on some authority. He is older, and the man.
Still, I am not satisfied with his answer. I pull away and turn around to ask again, “Are you large?” adding, “I need to see. I want to see for myself.” I not only want to see his size, I merely want to see, right now, and am considering it with some anticipation. I do not let on to Henry.
He backs away from me, and will not say. I reach over and loosen the tie of his breeches, and try to pull them down but, irritated and embarrassed, Henry shoves my hands away. He turns his back to me then slowly, hesitantly, slips his trousers down past his hips. He turns to me with his hands covering his groin, and a look of childlike pleading on his face. I know this look. I feel suddenly tender toward him and reach up to touch his face, looking into his eyes.
“I will not laugh,” I whisper. “I just want to see.”
Henry moves his hands away in a gesture both hopeful and embarrassed. Behind them is revealed a huge, angry erection.
I stare. This is not the benign organ I had seen passing water behind trees, nor is it the tiny mushroom I had seen on him in childhood before modesty forced us into separation. It is something alive, and vulgar, and grown. I gasp and stop myself just in time from covering my eyes. I am shocked. His manhood is shocking. He grew so without ever telling me. When I look at it, then up at the start of a black beard, I wonder where my friend has gone, and who this is that I am left with.
For a moment, I am dumbfounded, then I force myself to speak, and do so gently. I know how easily he is wounded, and I take advantage of this at times. Something within me warns that this is not the time.
“It is a very fine one,” I say (just as if I had some basis for comparison), “but it would never fit. We could never do that.” I gesture first toward Henry’s organ and then toward the couple. I hug myself and make myself small while his organ points toward me, large and threatening. It seems not to belong with Henry’s hesitant and apologetic face.
Henry looks befuddled, as if at a loss for conversation now that his breeches are around his ankles. He bends over to pull them up again, then stops and looks at me as if he were not being wholly polite, to put it away so soon.
“You can touch it though,” Henry says affably, moving closer again. “Go on. I will let you touch it if you like.”
That is very generous of him, I think. I am curious, and appreciate the offer.
“Perhaps just once,” I say, and finger it lightly. The skin is as soft as silk and I run my fingers over it to savor the texture. Henry’s eyes grow sleepier and his head rolls back. He grabs my hands and presses them hard around himself. It is very peculiar, that Henry should want me to do this. I wonder if my parents have ever heard of people doing this. I make a mental note to ask my mother.
At his insistence, I obediently move my hands over him. He breathes and closes his eyes, and reaches gently for my neck, barely touching me. He fingers the hair at the nape of my neck, and it gives me a shiver of pleasure. He pulls at the ties of one braid, and then the other, and loosens them. He moves his fingers up through my hair, and leans over to kiss me. I tilt my chin up and let him, and am surprised because I like it. I kiss him back, and then I lose his lips, for they move away to cover my face and eyes with soft kisses. The arousal I felt in seeing the couple becomes my own, and the source of it, Henry.
I feel his organ in my hand and remember how he intends to use it. I pull back sharply.
“This will never fit inside of me.” Terror and what I believe is common sense take over. “You will hurt me with it. When we are married, you have to promise me you will never do that to me. Yes?”
Henry is breathing hard. He answers me with stern superiority.
“I cannot promise I will not do it. It would be against nature and God’s will to be married and not take you in that way, even if it hurts you.” Henry found pleasure in saying such things. It was manly to hurt a woman. He finds less pleasure in the act of hurting than in saying he will hurt me. He merely likes thinking he could hurt me if he willed it, and in imagining others assume him capable of being rough.
“But you are too big!” I insist, near tears. They are not entirely tears of fear and protest. They are also born of confusion. This is something I had never been warned of, and I cannot decide for certain if I am, or am not, eager to learn more. I have moved away from “eager” to “not” for the moment.
I reach up and place my arms around his neck, and hold him hard. When I am afraid or worried, I tend to run to him for hugs and comfort, and I do so now, even though he is the source of my anxiety.
Henry cups my face in his hands, attempting a bargain and a compromise. “I can do it gently. If I were to do it slowly and softly would you object?” he asks solemnly. “You must let me do it, after all. You will be my wife, and you must.”
Tears well up in my eyes. I have never been faced with such as this before. My inclination is to please him, yet I am afraid. Henry wipes the tears, then gently kisses each eye.
Nature, with some gradual, small coaxing from Henry, begins to take its course. The tears dry and are forgotten. The fears give way to something new. We are kissing and touching and breathing.
Henry speaks first.
”Perhaps we should test it first before we marry lest we make a terrible mistake. People who are married must do it, so . . . so if we cannot do it because we do not fit together, we cannot be married in the eyes of God. Everyone knows that. And if we are not married in the eyes of God, we risk damnation.” Henry’s expression is one of earnest, God-fearing, self-righteous good intent.
It is so like Henry. Had I eyes, I would roll them as I watch.
I nod, dumbly.
“I think we should test it so we do not waste any more time making plans if they should not be made, yes? It is important that we know soon, while we still have time to each find someone else we could marry . . . ” He gulps and continues in a distracted whisper, “ . . . without sin.” He busies himself with the laces of my bodice. His fingers fumble.
I feel a moment of concern that Henry is considering abandon
ing me. He has never seriously spoken before of not marrying me. I never realized that our marriage would be conditional, and would take place only if my anatomy proved acceptable. I look at him with hurt and alarm in my eyes.
He sees the look and does not need explanation. He seems slightly ashamed of himself, although I do not know why he should be. He hurries to reassure me.
“And if it fits, then we shall marry as planned,” he continues, reaching into my bodice. His fingers are cold. “Do you agree?”
“Yes,” I whisper.
“In my opinion, we should make certain right now. While we are thinking of it. Before we forget.” His fingers are making me gasp.
I nod again. I need for it to fit so that Henry will not marry someone else. I do not want to spend another instant worrying that it won’t.
I would also like for him to test it for other reasons.
We pause, momentarily, as the two people finish their business, straighten their clothes, and pick their way out of the woods and back to the encampment. We are motionless and silent so they do not notice us, but Henry is nuzzling my neck and exploring the contents of my bodice, and I can barely keep still. I need to be pressed against him and held. I need for him to find me and touch me.
“Yes? Are you certain?” He has stopped, as if the full impact of what he is about to do has suddenly occurred to him. He is looking at me questioningly, hesitantly, with real love in his eyes. I have never seen love there before—not love like this—because he is guarded, and has always hidden his love under scowls. The look shoots an arrow into my heart, which leaps and responds with a rush of feelings I had not known I felt for him. I feel so much emotion I sense tears coming to the corners of my eyes.
He stops to touch my cheek. “Because I will not, if you do not want to.” His voice is gentle, and he is in earnest.