by Ella Baxter
I sit down in the shade with my back to the trunk of a tree and ants immediately begin crawling in frenzied zigzags over my shoes and legs. Still guilty about the moth, I brush them off gently into the nearby grass. My wounds from Leo still feel sore and I lean further back to be more comfortable. I pick up some dried leaves and sprinkle them over my lap just like in the dream; I want the river to heal me. Here I am, ready and waiting for the epiphanies to occur. I look around. The view is not bad.
I hear some sticks cracking along the path and look up to see Jack wandering along the embankment, sliding down every so often due to the lack of purchase in his rubber thongs.
‘Oh Lia, honey, hi,’ he says as he falls sideways slowly. ‘I didn’t want to intrude, but I wasn’t sure if you still knew the track.’ He pauses and puts both hands on his hips to catch his breath. ‘I didn’t want you getting lost.’
‘I’m not lost, just waiting for some kind of healing to take place.’
He begins to sob. ‘She haunts me, honey. It’s like I can hear her voice in my head asking me to check on you. Has she eaten? Is she happy? Is she washing? Is she depressed?’ He wipes his nose on his sleeve. ‘Mothers never leave, you know.’
He sits on the trunk of a fallen tree. ‘When she was pregnant with you, we did those bloody classes at the hospital, the ones where they tell the women that they’re going to be torn apart, and also kind of let the blokes know too, so they can be prepared for it.’ He watches the river. ‘And I mean, you do need forewarning, because no one has ever really seen someone split to their arse under fluorescent lighting before. It’s quite new and you can forgive first-time fathers for feeling a little …’ He waves his hand around as if searching for the right word.
‘Stressed?’ I offer.
‘Fucking terrified,’ he says.
I shuffle across the grass and pat the spot next to me, but he remains sitting on the trunk.
‘But fuck, Lia’—tears are streaming down his face now—‘they told us that the mother’s heart changes when she has a baby inside her. It gets bigger and kind of collapses to one side, and there’s this tube that runs from her heart to the baby’s and they share blood. A woman is changed after that, isn’t she? How could she not be?’
He looks at me, hands open to the sky.
‘I mean a woman stays connected to her children forever. Death can’t negate that. She’s in you and you’re in her.’
‘And you came here to tell me that?’ I say.
‘No, I came here to make sure you’re safe, and to tell you to ask if you need anything—like money, for example—and also to take a shit. I always shit outside. It’s part of giving back to the earth.’
‘Every day?’
‘Most days. You are totally one with the land then—you should try it.’ He walks away from the riverbank and into the scrubby bush.
‘Just go and enjoy your shit,’ I say, standing and brushing any remaining ants and twigs from my body before heading back to the house.
‘Can I borrow the car?’ I yell into the trees, and wait for his reply.
‘Of course!’ I hear some more sticks breaking, and some rustling. ‘The keys are on the hook near the door. Just ignore the petrol light—it’s broken.’
As I begin to walk back down the path I hear him call, ‘And drive defensively, honey. There are some absolute idiots on the roads at the moment. Seriously, assume that no one else knows what they are doing.’
I think about my mother’s heart once being a conduit to my own and whether that means we are still connected. I think about Daniel’s heart lying at the bottom of the ravine and whether his mother would have felt it there. Her own heart might have dropped the same moment as his did, and she would have known right then that he had torn the cord between them. There’s too much responsibility with being tethered to someone else. They are at the mercy of your own decisions. Anyway, my mother is gone now, so I don’t need to think about her, or me, or anyone else, like Daniel and his mother. I don’t need to be safe or responsible. I can hit the bottom of the ravine and she won’t feel a thing. No one will feel a thing.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
I’m surprised by the plainness of the entrance as I pull up in front of the Widow Maker. I turn off the ignition, move my seat back and sit for a moment, sipping a takeaway coffee. I am momentarily overcome by a yearning for Aurelia’s and the cold prep room full of utensils that my mother would have washed and set up for me. She had even gone to the effort of labelling the brushes so that I knew which ones were for the base primer and which were for colour. She always set me up to succeed. She would be horrified to know I was here.
I angle the rear-view mirror towards me to check my reflection. There’s a series of bumps on my chin and I lean in closer to see whether it’s a rash. I run my finger over the pointed tips of them; they feel oily. Pimples! Is there no mercy? I smack my cheeks lightly to see if I can detract from the breakout with even more redness, but now I just look flustered and splotchy.
I turn my attention back to the clubhouse. The Widow Maker occupies a mid-twentieth-century, single-fronted house that looks like it has been renovated on a small budget. Flowering hydrangea bushes obscure the lower half of the building, giving it the homey feel of a dental practice in a country town. Out the front is a plastic sign that reads: W.M. Associates.
I put my coffee down and clap my clammy hands together to create a bit of energy. ‘You are here to learn,’ I say, maintaining eye contact with myself in the rear-view mirror. ‘And you will find a way to cope.’
Long ago, soldiers would gallop onto battlefields screaming and waving their weapons to expel their nervous energy. I decide I need to meditate for a minute or two to gather my strength, and I visualise myself as one of these soldiers, enveloped in silver armour, hugging my horse with my legs, riding into the face of fate itself. I surface from my meditation briefly, realising that I was picturing a male soldier. Maybe I should make it a woman? Or not. I can be a man, I guess; it is my meditation. I don’t have to be beholden to my own gender constantly. I start again, visualising myself as a man on a horse, riding into battle, sword raised, yelling, Ai, Ai, Ai, Ai! An image of my mother lying crumpled at the bottom of the stairs appears briefly in my mind, and I rub my hands along my thighs quickly to dispel it.
Enough meditating. I check to see whether anyone from home has messaged back, and double-check that the messages I wrote actually sent. I don’t even know what time her funeral begins. I turn the volume up on my phone, so that I don’t miss any messages or calls that might come through, then I leave the car and walk into reception where I am relieved to see a fire extinguisher and two alarms amid the rest of the fantasy aesthetic. This calms me. There are two red velvet chairs arranged in front of a large framed photo of a naked woman wearing a pair of oiled thigh-high latex boots. The whole place has the distinct aroma of vanilla soy candles and bleach. Heavy red drapes cover all the windows, and the wallpaper is gold and black stripes. I wonder how it looks with the morning sunlight streaming in. A place like this loses its appeal as soon as rubbish trucks squeal to a stop out the front.
A woman sits in a huge leather chair behind a small wooden desk. She shuffles papers while, beside her, one lone fighting fish circles a tank with nothing but pebbles on the bottom. There’s an economy-sized bottle of hand sanitiser in front of her and a laminated card with the wi-fi password. Rolling my shoulders back and straightening my spine, I stride towards her, ready for my initiation.
‘Welcome,’ she says, pointing the air conditioner remote at the wall and pressing many of the buttons at once. The cooler jerks into action and begins noisily blowing air through the room. ‘I’m Tanya—you must be here for the training?’ She is still squinting at the remote and pressing buttons. ‘Amelia Aurelia—is that right?’ She sounds doubtful.
‘Yes, sir!’ I say, smiling at her until she offers a small, forced smile in return.
‘Any drugs or alcohol in the last twenty-four hours?’
I shake my head vigorously, and then slow it down because I don’t want to seem drug-affected. I try to calm myself again by looking at the fish, which nibbles optimistically at the edges of the pebbles.
Tanya is tall, potentially even six foot in her socks, and she’s much older than I expected; the face that peeks out from under the fringe of a neat bob is lined. She is wearing a pantsuit, and a thick stripe of red lipstick. I look down at my own outfit, which is jeans paired with a denim shirt and sneakers, and as I lean my head to the side, a sour waft of unwashed clothing greets me. I try to ignore my smell and how blunt the edges of her hair are as she shakes my hand formally.
‘Let’s get sorted with the paperwork first.’ She tosses the remote onto the desk as two women walk through the front door laughing. Tanya shushes them but they seem unfazed, though they lower their voices into hushed whispers as they exit through a door on the left. She watches them go while clicking her pen and shaking her head, before reaching into a filing cabinet and pulling out a form.
‘You’re required to answer a few questions, if that’s okay.’ She writes my name in capital letters at the top of the page. ‘Anything you’re not comfortable with doing?’ Her pen hovers over the form as she begins reading from a checklist: ‘Anal? Strap-on? Double penetration? Triple penetration? Flogger? Retractors? Mummifying? Electrodes?’ She looks at me expectantly. ‘Most newcomers have a limit, that’s why we have the glossary on our website. Did you see it?’
‘Can’t I just decide when I’m in there playing?’
She shakes her head. ‘Definitely not, sorry. All hard limits have got to be documented now.’
‘I’m happy doing everything,’ I say, though I’m not sure it’s true. I won’t know till I try it, I reason.
‘And you identify as a sub or a domme—or would you be both: a switch?’
‘Switch,’ I say, unsure. ‘Actually, maybe more of a domme.’
She slurps loudly from her coffee mug and clicks her pen a few more times.
‘And breath play? That has its own consent form.’
‘Yep, whatever.’
She ticks all the boxes and signs her name at the bottom, and then hands the page to me to sign. I scrawl something not dissimilar to my signature. She passes me three more pages—a disclaimer, the breath form and a confidentiality agreement—and I sign them all without reading.
‘I’ll give you a tour later, but let’s begin in the aftercare room; your email seemed particularly focused on aftercare.’
‘I’m fine now,’ I say.
‘Good to hear.’ She leads me down a corridor.
We pass a cactus that must be almost two metres high. I press my finger to one of its prickles and a tiny drop of blood appears, which I wipe along the wall, as Tanya prattles on about opening hours and upcoming events. I immediately feel more in control, even though I recognise that this behaviour is not acceptable, not even by my standards.
I follow her into a large room with three plush sofas and two lounge chairs, upholstered in red and scattered with black-and-gold cushions. In the centre of the room is a huge hamper full of faux fur blankets, and there’s a tall bench along one side, with a bar fridge beneath and a coffee maker on the counter. Above are shelves on which I see boxes of tissues and jars of teabags and lollies. The room matches Tanya’s demeanour; both she and the Widow Maker announce that they represent people who love sex, but the lurid saturation of it all makes me suspicious. Is this sexual? I imagine her asking herself before making every tax-deductible purchase.
Within five minutes Tanya has told me how old she is (seventy-two), and how she keeps so slim (starvation). She acknowledges that she is taller than me, which is rare for a woman of her age given the poor nutrition after the war. Then she turns her attention to me.
‘I’m not sure where you got this ensemble’—she frowns—‘but it’s really unbecoming.’ She inhales deeply, looking at my torso. ‘Never wear that volume of denim again. It’s not flattering even to the most slender of us.’ She sweeps one arm down the length of her body.
‘Now,’ she continues, ‘I want you to meet Steven. We’ve been working together for over fourteen years and I use him for all my training sessions.’
‘Great,’ I say. ‘Looking forward to it.’
‘Steven!’ she yells, and within seconds a nude man appears in the doorway, panting melodramatically. He bumps into the corner of one of the lounges as he scurries in and crouches at her feet. She responds by landing a heavy-footed kick in the middle of his thigh.
‘Four seconds too long, you fucking eunuch.’
Steven continues kneeling at her feet and staring ahead.
‘Hi, Steven,’ I say, but he doesn’t respond.
‘He won’t answer you because I haven’t given him permission. He’s very loyal and committed to the theatre of it all.’ She pushes her knee into his ear.
I notice that every time she addresses him it’s in the same frustrated tone of voice that librarians use when people unwrap food near any of the books.
‘The first rule of domming,’ Tanya tells me, ‘is that it’s important to know why people need pain. If you know, you can take them right up to the edge and then pretend to push them off.’
I’m not sure if I should be taking notes, but I left my bag over near the door and it would break the flow of this interaction to get it now.
‘Domming is an art form. It is about tension and release, and it involves an understanding of what control is, and what it is not.’
I shift my weight onto my left leg and clasp my hands together, arranging my listening face.
‘A lot of things are referred to as scenes, just like in a movie. A fear scene, a kidnap scene, a crushing scene. You have to learn to say scene on the end so there’s no confusion as to what you or your partner are asking for.’
‘That’s interesting,’ I say.
‘It is a restorative practice. Whether you are domming or subbing, you are the point of solace for the other person. There is a momentous amount of trust involved: kill your ego as a sacrifice to being a good scene partner. Don’t ever let the feeling of controlling another be greater than suspending them perfectly in their fantasy.’
I make a sound of agreement because I don’t know what else to do.
‘Take sensory deprivation, for example: that is about feeling held and contained. If your partner wants you to vacuum seal them, they are going to react differently to the process than if you just grabbed some man off the street and did it. The man off the street is going to be hysterical, he’s going to think you’re killing him and try to fight you, but someone who needs this, who needs to feel harnessed, protected, enveloped, will find a sense of ease in the process. You are enabling true surrender and you need to be able to handle that expertly.’ She tousles Steven’s hair roughly while stepping carefully on his little toe.
‘Oops,’ I say, seeing Steven’s face redden.
‘I take great care of Steven. It’s important to me that he is happy and that his body is healthy. I’ve put him on my private health cover and we regularly debrief and reset boundaries. I’m not relying on guesswork or assumptions. Steven is a fantastic communicator, and I am a fantastic listener. I care if he’s had enough water to drink, I care if he stays up too late. Lots of my contact with Steven is telling him what to do in order for him to be the best he can be as a human and as my sub.’
Her knowledge is impressive, but a lot of what she’s saying is going over my head, so instead I focus on her manner and movements, because my ability to mimic them is more developed than my short-term memory at this point in time.
Tanya gets Steven on all fours while she sits on his back, crossing her legs neatly and fanning her face with open palms. She tells me about a time when she was asked to wear a feather coat and eat a large quantity of foie gras so quickly that she threw up—much to her scene partner’s delight—and thus was able to empathise with the goose that had been force-fed to fatten its liver.
‘It was all very meta,’ she says, shaking her head and laughing, and I laugh too, both from nerves and from the desire to be liked by her.
She stands briefly and helps Steven to his feet before kicking him in the back of the knees so that he falls onto the floor again.
‘That’s how you get them down,’ she says.
‘Cool.’
‘Nothing will make a woman turn to this more than having children,’ she adds, while massaging the top of her neck. ‘Children constantly want to sit on you, to kiss you, to touch and manhandle you …’ She shudders. ‘So when you finally feel like fucking again, it has to look very different from the constant affection of motherhood. It has to look a little more savage. Who in their right mind would be able to bear their partner suckling at their swollen breasts like a poddy calf?’
My phone rings in my bag and she watches as I frantically lunge towards the door, scrambling for it.
‘Yes, yes, you’d better get that—you never know if it will be important or not.’ She brushes her hand through the air as if flicking me away.
I answer the phone in a harassed whisper.
‘Amelia, hon, it’s Judy.’ Her voice is full of care. ‘I’m just checking in on you.’
‘How did it go?’ I ask.
She breathes heavily into the receiver. ‘Very difficult.’ The way she says it makes me think that Vincent was trouble.
I feel the need to tell her everything that has happened so far, even about this training right now, but Tanya is pointedly checking the time in front of me.
‘I really want to talk, but now isn’t good. Can I call you back later?’
‘Of course. Any time. And just so you know, we all love and miss you here.’