New Animal

by Ella Baxter

  All is well, stay where you are. We got white roses, as Vincent said that’s what she had in her wedding bouquet. I’ll look for the watch and ring in the morning. We decided on ‘I’m Every Woman’ by Chaka Khan because it was on her birthday playlist twice. Be well, love J.

  Chaka Khan. I lie face down on the bed, howling. Finally I’m crying, salt water streaming from my eyes. Chaka Khan. I can’t deal with this. I need to remove this head of mine and replace it with the two-headed thing. I need to flee these feelings. I need someone unfamiliar. I need skin-to-skin contact like a newborn.

  I grab my phone and open the dating app, flicking quickly across the faces of local men, swept away by my seemingly sentient thumb. Some of their photographs are taken at such close range that there is no other colour on the small square except for pixelated tones of skin. So many forced smiles and tensed abs. My thumb hits a steady rhythm of rejection and I rearrange one of the pillows so that I am more comfortable. ‘Chaka fucking Khan,’ I say while flicking them away. I’m still crying. Wishing desperately for someone to appear on the screen who will meet my slowly lowering standards.

  Mike, 28, likes: Treating you like a princess, and fish dinners on Fridays.

  Mike has a shiny, thin-lipped mouth.

  Lachlan, 32, likes: Whatever! I hate answering these things.

  Lachlan looks reasonably tall and wears a faded flannel shirt.

  Trent, 27, likes: Movies, driving, my kelpie pup, beer.

  Trent has a scar across his jawline.

  Bibi, 30, likes: You?

  Bibi has two pictures of his slightly chubby chest from different angles.

  Leo, 28, likes: Spanking and TV.

  In one of the photos Leo is topless and tensing his muscles while yawning.

  Leo wins.

  I message him: Hello.

  He responds: I don’t like messaging. Better to talk.

  He sends through his phone number, followed by a picture of him sprawled across a satin bedsheet lit by the fluorescent glow of a nearby television.

  I shuffle down the bed and kick the bedroom door closed, while typing his number into my phone. I hold it to my ear, feeling heat prickle in the centre of my armpits and at the backs of my knees.

  He picks up on the third ring.

  ‘Speaking?’ he says, his voice slightly higher than I was expecting.

  I clear my throat directly into the microphone.

  ‘It’s Amelia. You just gave me your number.’

  ‘How are you?’ He lazily draws out each word, like he’s just woken up. ‘I’m bored,’ he adds before I have time to reply.

  I like how familiar he is with me so quickly, and I make a concerned sound into the phone.

  ‘Well, life is either boring or shocking,’ I say.

  ‘I’m bored all the time.’ He laughs.

  I open my mouth to respond, but he cuts in.

  ‘I’m going to a kink club—do you want to come? It’s hardcore, though, no vanilla shit. I don’t know if you’re into that.’

  ‘What’s it like?’

  ‘It’s, like, fun, and people dance and fuck and you can watch, or you can take part.’

  I glance around the bedroom. I would rather be in a club. I would rather not be thinking of my mother’s ruined funeral. ‘Okay,’ I say.

  I hear a faint clattering sound in the background and he swears. ‘My cat just knocked over the blender—fucking Siamese. Alright then, send me your address and I’ll pick you up. The dress code is black.’

  He hangs up. I send him the address then sit looking at the phone for a minute before moving.

  I wonder if going to a kink club with someone I’ve never met is a kneejerk reaction to all the trauma. I’ve read about the science of grief. The brain shuts down when people mourn. The lobes go black, but the amygdala lights up. I walk into the ensuite and sit on the toilet. Am I being lit from within by my amygdala? I’m not sure. I wipe myself, but I don’t know if I even need to. I flush the toilet just in case. I remember to wash my hands, and do it half-heartedly, without soap. Perhaps there is an afterlife and my mother is there watching as I prepare to meet up with a man I’ve only exchanged a handful of words with.

  I pick up my phone and look the amygdala up. The first article I click on talks about how it can be activated when the body is put through triggering situations. I put my phone down and pull my hairbrush out of my toiletry bag so that I can cover my poor amygdala gently with hair. I hope that each brush is like a dimmer switch slowly lowering it, until everything inside is off.

  I could get away with saying that I have no control over my actions because I am completely lost, but it’s not true. I am desperately trying to dock at another port. I can’t make small decisions right now; I can only make big ones. I am not going to her funeral. I am going to this club. I know exactly what I’m doing. I’m getting ready. I’m going to have a wonderfully shocking time.

  I rummage through my suitcase, trying to find something to wear to the kink club. I make a pile of everything black. Most of it looks like t-shirts and jeans, a lot of cotton. Surely these parties have come full circle now and normal clothes are considered erotic. Surely the lights will be dim enough to cover the outfit, and surely I can still go and be obliterated by someone else and forget this daughter ever ran away from her mother’s death. I’ll burn this body to the ground, and then bury myself deeper than her.

  I tuck a black t-shirt into a pair of black jeans and then stand in front of the mirror, looking through my make-up case. I wipe a streak of purple shimmer across each eyelid. I put a dark red lipstick on. I line my eyes white to look alive, a trick I’ve learned from work, and when I step back to look at myself, I think I look as good as most of my clients.

  The toilet down the hall flushes and I hear Jack pad his way back to the study.

  ‘Jack!’ I yell, opening the bedroom door and sticking my head out. ‘I’m going to a party.’

  ‘Okay, honey. You want to take the car?’

  ‘No, Leo’s picking me up.’ I say his name like I’ve known him for years.

  ‘Okay, honey,’ Jack repeats as the study door closes.

  CHAPTER TEN

  I walk down the dark driveway with my arms straight out in front, feeling in front of me, in case I collide with anything. I stumble over the rocky dirt track like this for a few metres before remembering that Jack taught me how to see the path by looking up and using the stars as a guide. You can use the gap of sky between the two edges of the forest to show you where to walk. I drop my hands and continue on towards the road, moving further away from the light of the house. On my way to meet up with someone on a dark road in the middle of the bush, I feel profoundly alone. It’s the type of loneliness that someone in a one-man submarine at the bottom of the ocean might feel as they sink deeper away from everything that is familiar.

  I reach the gate and stand there waiting for Leo to arrive. Right now, I’ve got a cold heart and a sadness that makes me want to cling to anything that might make me feel warm. Like a strange man taking off his jumper at the foot of my bed. Or, warmer still, a strange man letting me render his body full of holes that I can then squeeze into. A strange man letting me loosen my own grief and squash it into him: hot. I’ve thought about her one hundred times today, but maybe Leo will distract me.

  Leo’s Commodore appears at the end of the road. As the car gets closer, he flicks on the high beams, and I am lit up like something nocturnal. I try to look friendly, but there’re speed stripes painted on the bonnet. This is exactly the sort of vehicle that women are warned to avoid getting into. As he pulls up, I glance back towards the house, thinking of my empty room, before opening the door and sliding into the passenger seat.

  ‘Well, well, well … Good evening!’ Leo says, leaning against the steering wheel and looking me up and down.

  He has a 1950s short back and sides haircut and is wearing a black shirt tucked into black suit pants. He is showered and ironed, but you get the sense tha
t something must have gone a little skew-whiff genetically; one parent was good-looking but clearly not both.

  ‘Evening,’ I say.

  ‘Sorry about the car. Usually I get it detailed once a week but I had rego due so …’

  ‘Not a worry,’ I say, as he peers into my lap while accelerating ahead.

  ‘No worries at all,’ I repeat, kicking a wad of scrunched-up paper that looks like the wrapping from a large order of fish and chips. Is it whiting that I’m smelling? Barramundi? Or just oil?

  ‘So, have you been to a club like this before?’ he asks, flicking his eyes between my hips and face.

  We make eye contact briefly and I look away. He leans over and inhales, smelling me as I shift closer to the window and let out a small laugh. ‘No.’

  ‘I think you’ll like it. It might seem intimidating at first, but everyone is just there to be a freak and have fun.’ He hunches forward and drums on the steering wheel impatiently.

  Leo drives fast down the narrow road, changing gears no less than three times, and I dig my right foot into the wrapper as if stepping on the brake pedal. I look around his car, trying to get a sense of who he is, but there are none of the traditional indicators. I make a mental note not to meet up with a man in a car again. Houses are far safer; you can tell immediately whether someone is a bit off from their bookshelf alone.

  We hit the edge of town and Leo drives confidently through a red light. ‘Have you been tested recently—like an STI test?’

  ‘Last year,’ I lie.

  ‘Yeah, cool,’ he says, looking at me sideways. ‘Me too.’

  I imagine silently unbuckling my seatbelt and tumbling out of the passenger door. I suddenly long to be in Jack’s house, lonely and painting my nails, while watching reruns of a sitcom with a canned laugh track. The first yawn of the night escapes, and as I try to clamp my jaw shut over it, my ears pop in response. In hindsight, I could have invited Bibi over. Jack probably wouldn’t have even noticed, and I wouldn’t have needed to leave the house. I am sure I could have asked the faceless Bibi to stand at the foot of my bed taking off his jumper, over and over, and he would have. The whole night could have been him threading back in and out, while I lay in bed, watching.

  I fidget with the window switch, trying to lower it to let the smell of fish out, while getting my bearings on where we are exactly. We pass a road I vaguely recognise. I could probably walk back to Jack’s from here. If I’m still uncomfortable in five minutes, I will ask him to stop and I’ll get out and walk home.

  ‘Just so you know, I identify as a sadist,’ Leo says. ‘And obviously I’m a dom.’ He pauses. ‘And I really like new subs.’

  ‘Why new?’ I ask, while looking ahead for a spot where he could pull in to let me out.

  ‘Ugh, I just really appreciate the fact that they’re not yet bogged down in the politics of the scene. So that’s me … What about you?’

  ‘Human woman, tired, sad, on a date with you, not wholly sure what a sadist is.’

  He nods. ‘Cool, cool.’

  He takes a series of turns and the streetscape shifts to being unfamiliar as we drive through an industrial area. Women disappear in places like this; I’ve seen it on prime time. A girl in a crop top wanders into an underground rave, and within two ad breaks she’s carried out rolled up in a carpet. What if he assaults me? I shouldn’t have told him I was tired. I straighten my fingers in my lap, ready to strike. I will aim for the inner corner of his eyeballs. My body, my choice. I think of everything I have on my person. No weapons, nothing. Not even keys or a bag. I only have a credit card in my back pocket. I flex my jaw. I could bite him, I suppose.

  I slow my breathing down, so it’s hard for him to tell I’m frightened. I glance over at Leo squinting through the windshield at the numbers on each of the lots, and place a hand over the buckle of my seatbelt, ready to undo it and bolt into the night. I turn in my seat to see whether the lights of the town are still visible. They’re not. I could fling myself from the car now and make a break for it, but I need more of a head start; I’ve never been a fast runner. My only other option is to attack him before he attacks me—or should I wait until the violence has begun? Or is it the fear of violence that starts the violence? Like every other woman, I have spent most of my life trying to avoid sexual violence, yet here I am on the eve of my mother’s funeral, at an industrial lot with a sadist. Interesting to note my spiralling in real time. Strange to bear witness.

  Leo stops the car and reverses for about thirty seconds. ‘It’s back here,’ he says, puffing with the effort of twisting his body around.

  He appears benign, humming a happy tune while driving backwards. Looking at his profile, I feel some baseline level of attraction. A woman walks past the car wearing a short skirt and a pair of cross nipple pasties. Leo slows to watch her pass. I focus on her boobs bobbing up and down as she jogs across to the other side of the road. She looks back at us and raises her hand in a shaka sign, grinning. My fear and tension ease a little as she continues walking along the dark path alone, her bare back luminous in the dark night. As Leo parks the car between a garbage skip filled with splintered wood and a mound of gravel, I decide I owe it to myself to commit to the experience. That woman didn’t seem scared at all, and I can’t keep running away from things at the last minute.

  ‘Let’s go!’ he says, switching off the ignition and sliding his seat back.

  We get out of the car and he guides me towards the entrance of a warehouse with his hand on my lower back. I can hear the familiar, friendly thud of music, laughter and empty bottles clinking. I walk slightly quicker than Leo as he trots alongside trying to maintain contact between his hand and my lower back. A few times I even dart to the left, to test his resolve, and I feel him lunge to keep contact.

  A rotund bouncer stands in front of a wide metal door, texting something urgently with his two thick thumbs. We stand in front of him waiting to be acknowledged until he pauses briefly, looking up and beaming at Leo.

  ‘Here he is, the master of the single tail.’ His smile drops as he looks at me. ‘And you. You look new.’

  I frown as Leo and the bouncer laugh together. I wish people who know more than others would stop doing this. If there are three people, two should not be laughing.

  ‘Here are the rules—you listening?’

  ‘Yes,’ I say, still irritated.

  ‘No drugs, no egos, no means no, we’ve got a slave zone, punishment post and rack that are not to be used for anything other than for tethering slaves, capiche?’ He takes a deep breath in. ‘One of the St Andrew’s crosses is broken so stay away—I’ve got someone in there now trying to rope it off. If you bring your own toys in, please take them back out, because there’s no lost and found here. Do not touch anyone without permission and respect the anonymity of everyone inside.’

  He smacks a notice by the door on which the rules he has cited are printed, as two feral cats start yowling and hissing near the bushes around the side of the building. Leo digs in his back pocket for his wallet then hands the man a fifty-dollar note, and they lock fists and bump their forearms together in a very sudden display of masculinity on both their parts. The bouncer opens the door and we are finally let in.

  Leo steers me through the door and into the warmth of the club. Techno blares out from a room ahead as Leo pulls me off to the side and unfurls a collar from his pocket. Without a word, he clips it around my neck and then wraps the connecting chain around his knuckles so that we are linked together.

  I fix him with direct and unwavering eye contact. ‘No, thank you.’

  He tugs on the collar. ‘It’s for your benefit—otherwise you’re fair game and everyone will approach you.’

  ‘The bouncer said people have to ask me first.’

  He shakes his head. ‘A collar means you’re part of a couple.’

  ‘But I’m not.’

  ‘I know,’ he says, sounding annoyed. ‘But you and I are here together for the night, so you are no
t open to other offers.’

  I give up because I can sense that pushing the point will ruin the small amount of goodwill between us. Reluctantly, I allow myself to be pulled through to the main room like a balloon on a string.

  The club is the size of an aircraft hangar, and throughout the space are platforms and podiums where people are either dancing or performing various sex acts. It is packed, and the scent of sweaty bodies thickens the air around me, making the atmosphere feel incredibly charged.

  ‘Why don’t you wear the collar and I hold the lead?’ I ask, unable to let it go.

  ‘Because I am the dominant one,’ he says, stretching to his full height.

  ‘I thought it was more free range,’ I say.

  ‘It is,’ he says. ‘We are free to do what we like now.’ He jangles the chain playfully, making it rattle, and I feel it snag through a few hairs on the back of my neck.

  He nods at me. ‘Get it?’

  People are frolicking around us, showing off costumes and dancing enthusiastically to the music. Their sense of freedom is contagious, and I start to feel that we are all collectively agreeing to be something different for now. I imagine people all over the island tucked into their beds. Do they know about this place? Are the passengers in planes flying overhead aware of all this rubber? The satellites and the stars I’m standing under—are they aware of this earthly situation? There is something completely liberating about being in a club with a stranger, in a town I don’t recognise anymore. I can be anyone. Anyone can be anyone. We are all beautifully interchangeable. A throaty German track begins to play, and all I can think is that I was made for this industrial lot, this club, this moment.

  Leo continues to lead me through the crowd while I observe everyone in the close vicinity. I run a few fingers through the back of my hair, trying to untangle the cluster of knots that keep dragging across the metal clasp of the collar, as someone bumps into my side. A group of people are engaging in what looks like sexual parkour.

  ‘Sorry!’ a bald, naked woman yells before somersaulting back into the group.