by Ella Baxter
‘I am not coping,’ I say.
Leo zips up his trousers and rethreads his belt. He keeps me in his line of vision, confused and a little wary of what I might do. Like I’m something wild he doesn’t want to further alarm, he picks his shirt up off the floor slowly, holding it up like a matador’s cape as he takes small steps towards me. He looks genuinely concerned, and I sense he regrets plugging into a socket that is so electric.
‘I am really, really, really not coping.’ I can hear my own ragged breathing circling around my ears. I can turn the sound up or down but not off, and I wonder if it will be with me years into the future, because it feels permanent.
The bouncer shifts his position and gives me a quizzical look, while Leo extends his shirt towards me. I remain still. He covers me with it and takes my hand, tugging my arm gently until I stand. Leo gathers my clothes into a pile and holds them in one arm as he helps me limp slowly towards the steps, but the bouncer jogs over and blocks our way. He’s frowning but also seems thrilled to be required to leap into action tonight. All that training, all those eighteen-dollar Muay Thai classes, will finally pay off.
He says to Leo, ‘You can’t interfere with a performer while they’re on stage. Get down.’
Leo looks to me for input, and I close my eyes in response.
‘She’s freaking out—I need to get her out of here,’ he snorts, a tinge of aggression in his voice.
The bouncer rolls his eyes. ‘It was obviously going to be a fear scene. You need to learn to recognise the art form.’
‘She’s never been to a club before and it’s her mother’s funeral today. She told me she’s not coping.’
The bouncer looks to me. ‘Your mother died? Oh lord, I cannot imagine what that must be like.’ He puts his hand over his heart. ‘My mother is my backbone. She is my life. I would die for that woman. What are you doing here? You need to be next to her! This is no good.’
‘I want to go home.’
The bouncer steps to the side and Leo, victorious, yanks me towards the bathrooms, stomping down each step. We hold hands loosely, not really signalling connection or romance, but more as a way to match our strides. In the bathroom he hands me my clothes and washes his hands at the sink as I check the stalls for a toilet that still has its seat attached. I find one and sit down heavily, flinching when my sore thighs hit the cold metal. I can still feel the inversion from him imprinted inside. My body is swollen and throbbing, and I blink a few times, trying not to cry. I inspect my vagina for damage, and wipe myself, but I can’t see any blood on the paper. Dressing is painful, and when I come out, Leo is leaning against the wall waiting for me.
‘It’s not too bad.’ I let the sentence hang.
‘Good,’ he says, puffing out his cheeks. ‘Good, good.’
On the way home, I recline the seat and try to sit with my weight resting on the outside of one thigh, to avoid putting pressure on my welts, but it’s still uncomfortable.
‘I probably went a bit hard for your first time. It’s just that you seemed into it, and I figured you would have said no if you weren’t.’ Leo looks over to me, but I’m so far away I can barely understand him.
‘So, you might feel a bit down for a little while—it’s called a sub drop. You had the high, and now there’s a low. Sugar helps. Keeping warm, cuddles, me telling you it will be alright …’
‘Are you telling me it will be alright?’
‘If you’re interested in learning more, or if you want to debrief about what happened tonight, they hold workshops at the Widow Maker—it’s a clubhouse for kink, you can go there any night of the week and play.’
‘Hmm,’ I say, looking out the window.
‘Or you can contact me again, I guess. I usually try to avoid aftercare as much as possible, as it kind of impacts on the experience for me.’
I don’t respond, because I can’t really be expected to talk or move now. Maybe I should ask him to slap me, like they used to do to newborn babies who were silent. I feel even more removed from myself, drifting further and further away. I wonder if Leo feels as distant as I do. Should we even talk to each other at this many paces? Or should we just gesticulate wildly?
My poor body. I shift again, trying to find a comfortable position, but it’s useless. I wrap my arms around myself as my heart continues to knock against my chest, as if it’s desperate to get away from me.
CHAPTER TWELVE
At home, I peel out of my clothes and toss them into the corner of the bathroom. I run the shower, letting the ensuite fill with steam until it’s cloudy, then step carefully into the recess, closing the glass door behind me with both hands, so that it doesn’t make a sound. The welts sting as they come into contact with the water, and I squeeze my eyes tightly shut, but it doesn’t ease the pain. I let myself remember the moment when the whipping was so intense that the grief had gone. My feelings, which were shoved to the outer by the hot pain, are once again running riot through my system. Therapy suddenly makes sense. I could talk them out, feel them trundle from my oesophagus to my tongue until, finally, I could spit them onto the floor of a therapist’s office. Or I could take drugs, wrapping them up in a chemical blanket. Place little happy masks over their faces. I could even birth them through my pores, through exercise, like Judy suggested. Anything. I will try anything to get these feelings out.
I kneel on the shower floor, lifting my hips so that my thighs are not in contact with anything. Hot water runs over my back as I grip a bar of soap, rubbing it between both hands until it foams into silky bubbles which I push into the folds of my body. Back of my heel. Forearms. I stay kneeling and washing until the water runs cold.
I wrap a towel around myself and walk to the window, letting the chill from the night radiate out from the glass and onto me. I step closer until I’m nose to nose with my own reflection. So close that my vision blurs, and I can see the shed and the silver banksia overlapping and merging with my features. I blow a long stream of breath onto the window and then pull away and write my mother’s name, but the fog evaporates before I’ve even reached the third letter. I inhale again, filling completely with air, before blowing it back out with purpose. I write across the glass, and watch as it turns again to nothing. I inhale. I blow. I write her name. I inhale. I expel. I write, and keep going until the oil from my finger smudges her name onto the glass, and instead of writing it, I can stand there watching as it reappears with each breath.
There’s a strong cramp in my lower abdomen, and I cup my hand between my legs. My period. I completely forgot. I try not to drip blood on the carpet as I stumble to the bathroom. With one hand, I check the cupboard under the sink for any tampons, knocking over hairspray and bottles of calamine lotion. Behind a plastic bag full of hotel soaps, I find an open box of applicator tampons. I pull one out, and as I turn to prop a leg up onto the toilet seat to insert it, I see the back of myself in the bathroom mirror. There are welts down my lower body in uneven stripes. Some have split, and one looks wet. I am so swollen that my thighs look heavier, warped and lumpy, and I am shocked by how much damage there is.
I sit on the edge of the bed with my shoulders hunched, wrapped in my father’s robe, letting the events of the evening settle over me like a rude cover, nailing me down. My pinched face looks back at me from the wardrobe mirror, all sunken-eyed and miserable.
I spend the next few hours scrolling through my phone. I look at social media, at memes, at photos of property renovations. I keep falling face first into the internet, tracking down viral videos, movie clips, pictures of pastry chefs piping icing onto cakes. I let the internet flow like water over my gills. I am letting myself mourn, and it is a fresh hell. Maybe, like Leo, I should find another willing person to be my worry doll; ask them to be the bag into which I can stuff all this feeling.
I recall the club he mentioned—the Widow Maker—and google it. The homepage appears in red and black with a filigree border. The Widow Maker: A Private and Notorious Corrections Facility. As I sc
roll down a little further, I see that they are holding workshops and play sessions every day of the week. Enjoy the thrill of debauchery and excess … Welcome to hedonism reborn. In large letters at the bottom of the page there is a flashing sign: 18+ ONLY.
They have a link to blog posts and I scroll through the headings that are listed down one side of the screen. The first on the list is titled A Good Domme Requires Listening Skills. The next, How to Be the Best Rope Bunny: Questions for Riggers. The next, Bespoke Spreader Bars. And then a bunch of questions, comments and queries about scenes. I click through a few, but I have to pause to look up each new word or phrase that I see. The general vibe of the site seems quite upbeat and practical.
I email them.
Hi, I recently experienced being a sub, but am more interested in trying out domming. I am also interested in receiving some aftercare too—please let me know if I can get some tomorrow, or when the soonest available slot is.
It’s four a.m. but within a few minutes I have a response.
Welcome Amelia, I’m Tanya, the facilitator of this place. You’ll need to learn the ropes with me, then you will be on probation, and then you will be a member. Just some light housekeeping: it’s sexual and it’s consensual but not always in a traditional class setting; we believe that you learn about it by doing it. Like play groups—but for adults! In regard to the aftercare, it’s something we educate on but don’t really provide unless it follows a play session here. If you are feeling particularly vulnerable we recommend tea with sugar and keeping warm. Also, don’t forget to treat your wounds following standard first aid procedures : ) Let’s schedule you in for an orientation and training session with me—today, if you like? Come by any time after midday.
A plan is progress, so much so that I feel I might actually be able to sleep. I turn the bedside light off, pull the covers up to my chin. My head sinks down into the old pillow, until it’s almost level with the mattress. I close my eyes and will sleep to come to me.
There is something small and irritating flapping at the window. I get up to check what is making such a distracting sound, and see a tiny silver moth beating its wings in one corner of the windowpane. I try to open the window, but the wood is so old that it’s stuck and won’t shift. The moth slaps at the glass repeatedly, desperate to escape. It’s going to hurt its wings if it keeps on like this, and I can’t stand the thought of it knocking all its special powder off and becoming flightless. I try to catch it on my hand but it evades me. I try again, making my hand flat like a plate and sliding it stealthily over so the moth steps onto it, but this moth knows that trick and it turns away from me with such insolence. It becomes more desperate to get out, and its wings blur with the effort of trying to free itself. It’s painful to watch, and without thinking I grab one corner of the curtain and cover the moth, pushing it into the glass with the heel of my palm until I hear the crunching sound of it dying. As soon as this happens, I see all the alternative actions I could have taken. I could have caught it in an empty cup, slid a piece of paper underneath, then walked outside and set it free. Instead I crushed it.
I drop the curtain and return to bed. Nothing feels more useless than killing a moth. There’s nothing more unnecessary.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
I wake from a dream in which I am trying to wrap an infant version of myself in banana leaves. I pull at the palm fronds, desperately trying to get the two ends to meet around the baby’s tiny shoulders, but the baby feels cold—far too cold for something living. There are no other leaves available, and in a panic I run in small circles with the child in my arms. The baby touches my face with one hand, and with the other points towards a banana palm in the distance. I wake up while sprinting towards the plantation.
I raise the back of my hand to my own cheek, which is warm and dry. Without getting out of bed, I lean across and open the curtains to let the light seep in. It’s a grey day and the nearby shed creaks with the effort of staying upright in the mild wind.
My mother will be buried today.
I send a message to everyone back home—Thinking of you—before lying back down and rubbing my eyes. It’s not enough, I know that, but I don’t feel as if I can say anything else. Perhaps it would have been better to send no message at all.
I can hear Jack unstacking the dishwasher in the kitchen, while listening to the morning news on the radio.
‘Jack!’ I yell towards the door until the sounds stop. ‘Is the coffee on?’
I hear him ignite the stovetop and run the tap. ‘Yes!’
I get dressed—noting that Simon has read the message I sent but not yet replied—and enter the kitchen just as Jack’s shaking a frying pan full of bacon over the heat.
I sit down gingerly at the table and he turns the heat down on the stove before bringing a cup of coffee over and placing it in front of me.
‘Voila!’ He does a jerky two-step near the kitchen fern. ‘Coffee for the queen.’
I bow regally as he picks up a tea towel from the table and flings it over his shoulder.
‘Do you want the bacon now or later?’ he asks.
‘Now, please.’
He opens the cupboard and rummages for a plate. I wait for the lull between us to become generous in nature. I want a fat pause to lead me into talking about last night. I could explain to him why it is so painful to sit like this right now. Jack has always been the most liberal of all my parents, the one who talked to me openly about adult things; in hindsight, it was perhaps because he knew us less. At some point we grew as tall as adults and that was enough for him to start talking to us as if we were. I don’t need to protect Jack from the truth of things like I do for Vincent. Jack is generally a little more resilient.
There’s a nice long break of nothing in the air, so I draw a deep breath in to fuel my opening sentence.
‘I went to a kink party last night.’
He stands up abruptly and inclines his head to the side, his mouth turned downwards.
‘Oh.’ A short gap this time. ‘With that friend?’
‘Yeah, I met him on the internet and we went to a party in an industrial lot and it was full on. Lots of whipping.’
I sip my coffee. If I can’t be candid with my distant father, who can I be candid with? I feel like grief has stripped me bare and I can really be raw and honest here. She’s going in the ground today. Today. Who has time for lies and subterfuge anymore? I look out at the water as a wave of gulls lift up into the air and collectively flap away from the riverbank.
‘Well …’ he says, looking fundamentally panicked, a strip of bacon dangling from the tongs.
‘I think I’m going to join a club. You learn things about the body, like pain, pleasure, limits …’
‘You know about the body, honey.’ He puts the bacon on the plate, then turns to the sink and rests the tongs on top of the scourer. Then he picks them up again and shakes them into the open bin. He runs them under water. I wait until his focus on the tongs lessens a bit.
‘If you need something to do, I’ll give your details to Shell. She owns Clear Skies, the funeral parlour in town. I think it would be a good idea to talk to her.’
He picks up the dishwashing liquid and covers the length of the tongs in a long squirt before rubbing at them vigorously with the sponge.
‘You don’t want to get caught up in all this … this kind of thing,’ he says while hunched over the sink scrubbing.
‘Why?’ I say. ‘Getting whipped was the closest I’ve felt to being nothing. I think I need the pain. Maybe we all do?’ I sip my coffee while he dries his hands. ‘But I’m also curious to know what it would be like to do the whipping—you know, like, where does that take you mentally?’
He picks up the plate of bacon and brings it to the table. ‘My honey muffin, you need time to heal. Stop pouring acid on an open wound.’
He places the plate in front of me and I pick up my fork, skewering a piece of bacon.
‘Well, I’m going to meet the owner of the
club anyway. I just want to see what it’s like.’
He raises his shoulders up to his ears and looks out the window. ‘I’m not going to stop you, but I really want you to meet with Shell as well.’
‘I’m not against the idea,’ I say. ‘But only when I feel up to it.’
He nods, and walks back to the sink to continue scrubbing at the tongs. It’s too intimate, eating bacon and listening to him clean, so I start talking again.
‘I had a bad dream about wrapping myself up as a baby in banana leaves. I don’t know what it means.’
I roll another piece of bacon up, and chomp down on it in the same way I’ve seen guinea pigs eat carrots.
‘Well,’ he says, ‘there are some shrubs down by the river. You could go sit under one of them and ask the land for wisdom. You know how healing that place is. It might be good for you to reacquaint yourself with it.’
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Great idea.’
I walk along the river, matching my pace to the bubbling rapids. The sun has warmed the rocks on the bank, and there is the herbaceous smell of leaf humus drying. Jack had told me it flooded a few weeks ago in a lightning storm that split a tree a kilometre away. I curl my toes in my boots as I step on granules of quartz that have erupted from the river bed onto the path. Ancient sediment. Dinosaur bits. Slivers of granite and obsidian. Fossils and space ships in rubble beneath me.
Years ago, when Simon and I were teenagers here on holiday, it had rained for a full week. We were bored, so Jack led us down to this spot to pull clumps of clay from the bank, collecting big chunks of it into metal buckets that we then carried back to the deck. He showed us how to make cups with the clay by holding a lump in your hand and sticking a thumb inside it, then winding it around until a vessel opened in your hand like a flower. They were the colour of mustard streaked with grey sediment. These are spectacular, Jack said, when I placed my cups along the balcony rail to dry. They crumbled during a thunderstorm the following week, dissolving under heavy drops of rain, but even after the clay was washed away there were evenly spaced starbursts along the plank of wood where they had stood.