It's Been a Pleasure, Noni Blake

by Claire Christian

  ‘I don’t know about that.’ She looks at him.

  ‘She’s not a sociopath, is she, Noni?’ Tom asks, opening a pack of chips and offering them around.

  ‘No. Just confused. She acknowledged that the thing between us was legit, that it took her by surprise and that she wasn’t thinking. But she has a fucking girlfriend. So, who knows,’ I mumble, looking out the window as the city disappears and is replaced by flashes of green. Molly had tried to call me three times and sent me five messages over the past few days. I read them out to Naz and Tom. ‘Noni, can we please talk? Please.’ ‘I hate that I’ve hurt you. I’ve really fucked up. I know that.’ ‘Let me explain. Or apologise. Both. I’m so sorry. But please. Call me.’ ‘Fine. You don’t want to talk. Just know that I want to fix it, but I respect your wishes too.’ ‘Goodbye, Noni.’ I ignored them all. It took every inch of self-restraint I had.

  ‘Not your circus, not your monkeys, babe,’ Naz says. ‘She has made her bed and now she can fuck off, and you can fuck someone entirely new and exciting.’

  ‘But also, feel what you feel, Nons,’ Tom says.

  ‘Yes. You’re both right. I don’t want to talk to her, I don’t care what she has to say. I mean, what could she say? Nothing is going to change the outcome, is it?’ I say this to myself more than to the two of them. ‘Should I message her back?’ I catch them glancing at each other.

  ‘Nope. She’s an asshole,’ Naz says.

  ‘Naz, that’s not helpful, I don’t think.’ Tom is all eyebrows and subtext, with a side-eyed glance at Naz, who shakes her head.

  ‘Where exactly are we going?’ I ask, keen to change the subject.

  ‘It’s a four-day retreat,’ Tom says. ‘Yoga, massages, spa treatments, vegetarian feasts, optional workshops, it’s going to be great. It’s on the side of a mountain, completely sustainable. Run by this amazing woman. I did it last year and loved it, so I wanted to bring Naz.’ Sheer joy is painted across his face.

  ‘He assures me it’s not all crystals and hippie bullshit, and is actually just lots of time to be quiet and recharge.’ Naz makes eye contact with me and pulls a face, before grabbing Tom’s hand supportively.

  ‘Centre,’ Tom adds.

  Five hours later, our train pulls into Edinburgh Station and we find the car-rental place.

  ‘You’re doing that drive today?’ the gruff man with the thick Scottish accent asks us.

  ‘Yeah,’ Tom says. ‘Is there a problem?’

  ‘And you’ve just caught the train up from London?’ He looks at Naz and me suspiciously and we nod. ‘You know that’s another three hours away, yeah?’

  We all nod. ‘You Aussies are looney, you are,’ he laughs, handing Tom the keys. Or at least I think that’s what he called us. I couldn’t tell.

  ‘Mate, we drive that far for breakfast,’ Naz tells him with a wink.

  Once all our gear is in the car, and we take two wrong turns getting out of the city, we’re finally on our way. Naz is driving and Tom is in charge of the playlist. He’s taking it very seriously.

  ‘I think I’ve perfectly tempered the balance between nostalgia, mood and energy,’ he announces proudly from the front seat. The trip takes us through broody forests, glassy lochs and lone stone cottages set against rolling mountains, the kind of backdrops that provide absolute assuredness that fairies do in fact exist, because this is where they live. It’s magic.

  The retreat is set into a mountain, next to a lake, with wooden buildings that blend perfectly with the surroundings. Hot tubs set in glass houses overlook tree-lined mountains. It’s unbelievably beautiful.

  We’re shown to our rooms, quaint stone-walled structures with candles burning a beautiful scent, and bathrooms with large, flat pebbles as tiles and no glass around the showers.

  We gather in a common area, and there’s a calm buzz as people introduce themselves in hushed tones with awkward smiles. There are about ten of us. There’s a mix of ages, sizes and energies, but the majority are women in their fifties with soft hair framing their faces and relaxed shoulders. I feel instantly safe.

  We’re met by a butch woman named Oona, dressed in olive-green fisherman pants and matching jumper, who runs the space and lives on site. She gives us a rundown of how the place came to be and how everything functions, and tells us that there’s no phone reception whatsoever, so not to even bother looking. Naz looks at me with such intensity that I’m sure I’m watching her brain implode.

  ‘I wish you calm for your time here,’ Oona says. ‘Get still. Listen. Follow your instincts. We do yoga in the morning at eight and again at four, and then we have a communal dinner at six-thirty. These are your only commitments for the next few days, okay?’ She smiles and introduces us to Ren, a dusty-looking man in his fifties with magnetic energy: he will be our yoga instructor.

  ‘I am very excited to hold space with you these next few days,’ Ren says, smiling. ‘Humans crave connection, so let’s connect. I want you to find someone and hug them, heart-to-heart. Connect longer than it feels comfortable. We’re doing this because when we hug it pumps oxytocin through our bodies and we feel better, we feel more connected. Don’t hug someone you know. Three people. Go.’ He is calm but matter-of-fact, like he won’t deal with your bullshit. I look at Naz and she rolls her eyes unenthusiastically, but she grabs a young brunette woman close to her wearing neon pink activewear tights and hugs her.

  An older, stiff, very tall man looks at me. ‘Hello.’ He doesn’t make eye contact. We awkwardly come together, hug, and hold it. He doesn’t relax into it at all and I can tell he’s worried about where to put his hands, as they only lightly come in contact with my shoulders.

  ‘Heart-to-heart,’ Ren says.

  A tiny blonde woman with a thick South African accent grabs my hand lovingly. ‘Hello, I’m Lil. Shall our hearts touch?’ she says.

  ‘Sure,’ I say.

  Lil relaxes immediately, her arms holding me tight and not letting me go. I breathe in, and give over to it, hugging her back.

  ‘You’re good at that.’ She smiles at me before turning away to find her next person. I think I’m going to like her.

  Tom is the only person left and so we hug tightly and laugh as I pull away first, but he pulls me back in. ‘Till past the point of awkward, Noni,’ he says. We hug far longer than anyone else and Ren has to tell us to separate. He then tells us to meet back here in an hour, ready for our first yoga class.

  Naz, Tom and I go exploring. We find a spa for treatments, hot tubs, a sauna set into the side of the mountain like something directly out of Lord of the Rings, and functioning baths strategically placed throughout the grounds. One white tub is set on a wooden platform amid a gorge directly next to a river and a waterfall. It’s stunning.

  ‘This place is magic, right?’ Naz says.

  I exhale. This is exactly what I need.

  I get through my first yoga session, panting and stretching and making mental bargains that I’ll work out more if I can just get through the next four days. I am mostly inflexible and I have zero upper body strength, but I persevere and sweat a lot and by the end I’m glad that it’s over but happy that I did it. Over dinner, a Middle Eastern-inspired mix of curries that are absolutely divine, we all get to know each other and chat easily. Everyone seems nice enough. Pink tights, a vet, has brought her mum, who is a hugely successful barrister. We find out that tall-and-stiff had a minor stroke a year ago and has completely overhauled his life as a result. There’s also a sixty-ish purple-haired sex therapist named Edwina, who I instantly adore, and my hugging-buddy from earlier, Lil, who is a photographer.

  After morning yoga I go to get a massage. My tiny masseuse is Brazilian and he adds several unnecessary letters to my name.

  ‘Okay, Norrrni,’ he says, and I like the sound of my name in his mouth. I’m sure that the entire circumference of his waist is the same as my actual thigh. He drops oil over my body rhythmically and pulls, twists and cracks my limbs. He nudges knots, and at one poi
nt I’m sure he’s actually standing on me. It hurts, but it’s a good hurt. I get out of my head and relax. When I roll onto my front, he pulls at my legs and massages my inner thighs. I can absently tell he’s moving limbs, but I’m so used to it now that I’ve kind of zoned out—that is until he slips and headbutts my vagina so forcefully that I scream loudly with pain, bolting upright and grabbing my crotch.

  ‘Oh my goodness, Norrrni, I’m so sorry. I slipped. Are you okay?’ He’s horrified. But he puts his finger to his lips signalling for me to be quiet and staring at the door. ‘Norrrni, are you okay? I’m new. This is my first day. Please don’t tell anyone. Are you alright? I’m so embarrassed, that has never happened to me before. Norrrni?’ he asks.

  I start giggling. And he starts giggling. And then we both can’t stop giggling. ‘Do you want to finish your massage?’ he asks.

  ‘No, I’m fine,’ I say, shocked and in pain and feeling sorry for the tiny, stunned Brazilian masseuse, who is absolutely apologetic.

  ‘You can’t go out yet, though, you have to wait the time, otherwise they’ll know.’ He looks at me, scared.

  So he hands me a robe and makes me a cup of sweet-smelling herbal tea and we sit on the massage bed.

  ‘Your body is very tense, Norrrni. Lots of knots. Are you stressed?’ I turn my head to face him, raising my eyebrows, and he smiles. ‘Yes. Everyone is stressed.’

  ‘I’ve had a big few—’ I was going to say days, but I stop myself. ‘Years. A really big few years.’

  He nods, looks at my hands and then hovers his own over them as if asking for permission to touch them. I give him my hand and he starts to massage it.

  ‘We forget to take care of our hands,’ he says, pressing the pressure points deep. ‘But they do the most work. Same as our hearts.’

  I sip my tea and we sit in silence for the rest of the time.

  How are you going to take care of your heart, Noni?

  When I limp out to Naz she looks at me quizzically. ‘Don’t ask,’ I say.

  ‘D’you get a happy ending, babes?’

  ‘Quite the opposite,’ I tell her. I fill her in on the way back to our rooms and she laughs so hard she needs her asthma inhaler. Which makes me feel better.

  I spend my free time in bed reading, or lounging on one of the couches next to the fire in the common room. I feel myself unwind, bit by bit. Dinner is the best part of the day as the conversation is robust and funny and I like hearing about the lives of these drastically different people. But Edwina and Lil are my favourites. Lil is a very successful boudoir photographer, and the two became fast friends when Lil took Edwina’s photo after she had a double mastectomy, and then again when she got her new boobs. We agree to sauna together the next day and they have Naz and I in stiches as they tell us about their misadventures and the highly positive sex-therapy boudoir photography racket they run.

  ‘I keep Ed around because she gets me so many clients,’ Lil says.

  ‘It’s give and take though, Lil, because your sessions with my clients often mean they come back for more therapy because someone inevitably upsets the other,’ Edwina cackles as she pours more water on the coals and they hiss with steam. She looks like a tie-dyed dinner lady but with the erotic turned up to max.

  ‘What brought you to the UK, Noni?’ Lil asks, and I take a deep breath. Lil is tiny and tanned with sandy blonde hair tied neatly back in a ponytail. She’s fit. Strong. Her muscles are perfectly accented across her whole body. She has a brilliant smile.

  ‘It’s kind of a long story.’ They both look thrilled at this, so I tell them all about the firefighter, the should’ve-boned list, Ben, Niko, Jeremy the trumpeter, the Magician and Molly, and doing whatever feels good.

  ‘I love that this is happening for you now, dear.’ Edwina pats my leg. ‘Took cancer to kick me in the arse.’

  ‘I feel like I’ve been doing a slow burn version of this since I left my husband,’ Lil agrees. ‘It really kicked into gear when I hit menopause, though.’

  ‘The older you get the less shits you realise there are to give,’ Edwina muses.

  ‘You know what it was for me? Realising that there were already so many things in the world, even people, that were inevitably going to make me unhappy, and I didn’t know why I’d been letting myself be the main culprit for so long,’ Lil says, lying back on her towel on the wooden bench. This speaks directly to my heart and makes me groan.

  ‘Do you think it’s a female thing?’ Naz asks.

  ‘Not necessarily,’ says Edwina. ‘I don’t think happiness is gendered. I think because of the structures we’ve all lived in for centuries our unhappiness has manifested in different ways. I find that the majority of us are just grin-and-bearing our lives.’

  ‘See, I hate that. I hate that so much.’ Naz sits up and stares at me.

  ‘And we’re deathly frightened of pleasure.’ Edwina smiles. ‘In every sense.’

  ‘I have never been frightened of pleasure,’ Naz says. ‘Some might say I’ve made it my number one priority my whole life. It’s the main reason I don’t want kids, and why Tom has assured me that he will divorce me if I buy another handbag.’ We all laugh. ‘But I just say, babes, you can have your fucking salt lamps and I’ll have my obnoxious Prada sneakers. We all have our vices.’

  ‘I don’t think I even really know what gives me pleasure, not really,’ I say.

  ‘I think you do, Noni, I think we all do, you just haven’t actually thought about it, and then you haven’t allowed it,’ Edwina says.

  ‘Allowed?’ I ask.

  ‘Absolutely. Humans are so habitual. We like routine,’ Lil says. ‘And then we get stuck. And we don’t like to interrogate our habits, or do anything that feels uncomfortable. But that’s where the good stuff is, in our discomfort.’

  ‘Like in the discomfort I feel right now?’ I say, raspy, damp and hot. ‘Have I sweated my eyebrows clean off my face?’ I ask, turning to Naz. ‘Because that’s what it feels like.’ We all laugh and get out of the sauna and head to the huge communal bath, breathing in the freezing air as we tiptoe across large stones to the glasshouse. I stop for a second, taking in the stunning mountain view and feeling so far away from home, and from grief, and from frustration about Molly. I feel present.

  I think about this conversation as I sit on the small couch in my room that afternoon and stew in my revelations. I realise I’ve been using other people as my biggest pleasure centre my whole life. To validate me. And I’ve been letting their acceptance or rejection of me dictate my value. I didn’t speak up when I knew things weren’t right with Joan because I didn’t value my own opinion. Our relationship went at least four years longer than it should have because I put what other people thought first. It was easier, or more comfortable, to be in it, than to disrupt it. The same is true of my friendship with Molly. I always kept her as a possibility, because I liked the idea that there was someone in the world who liked me. Someone who thought I was attractive, worthy, sexy. My messages to Molly, during the hard parts of my relationship with Joan, or in points of low self-esteem, gratified me. And the fact that I used Molly as an excuse to take a leap and come on this whole trip feels shit. I wanted to come on this trip. I wanted an adventure. Couldn’t I have made the decision to come without her validation?

  Everything I do is dictated by my relationships with other people, and I mostly like that about myself. I’m a good daughter, friend, neighbour, teacher, even colleague—I mean, I always take the time to re-fill the water cooler when it’s nearing empty. But there’s one relationship I’ve neglected my whole life: my relationship with myself.

  ‘I’m a shit partner,’ I say out loud to myself. I would never tolerate the things I say to myself if someone else was saying them. I disregard my feelings. I don’t value my desires. I don’t nurture myself. I’m mean. Holy shit. Pleasure isn’t a person. It’s personal. And I need to work out what it looks like to me.

  I take out a notebook and a pen and I write, What does ple
asure even feel like? at the top of the page.

  Noticeable, is the first word I write down. Special, is the second. Then more and more words come thick and fast. Sexy. Free. Excited. Spontaneous. Bold. Carefree. Happy. Healthy. Connected. Fun. Honest. Adventure. Love.

  There’s a knock at the door. Naz stands there with two steaming cups of coffee in her hand. ‘The barrister brought her own bloody Nespresso machine and I wangled us two pods. She put whiskey in them. She is a loose unit.’ Naz hands me a mug and walks inside. ‘What’s this?’ She picks up the notebook.

  ‘It’s a list.’

  ‘Another one?’

  ‘It’s how I want to feel.’

  ‘Great bloody words,’ she says, excited, sitting on the couch. ‘Now what?’

  ‘What?’

  Naz shifts her weight forward, looking at me. ‘What does this actually look like in your life?’

  ‘I don’t know, I literally just wrote them down,’ I tell her, sitting next to her and drinking from my cup.

  ‘Noticeable? What does that mean? Who do you want to notice you? What kind of noticing? Like getting your tits out and having people be impressed?’ she smirks.

  ‘No. No, that’s not it,’ I say, shaking my head.

  ‘Give me an example then.’

  ‘Um.’ I stop to think. ‘Like, be the kind of person who is the first on the dance floor.’

  ‘Ahh, brilliant,’ Naz says. ‘So like, confident.’

  ‘Yes.’

  She takes out her phone and hits play on a Beyoncé track, standing up. ‘Inspiration, babes,’ she says, starting to slowly gyrate her hips in my direction. ‘So, giving zero fucks, having fun.’ She lunges deep, thrusting in my direction. ‘I love it. What else? Get up, get up!’ She pulls me off the couch and moves my hand back and forth, forcing me to dance.

  ‘The kind of person who wears things they want to wear, not because they suit their shape.’