It's Been a Pleasure, Noni Blake

by Claire Christian

  What I’ve always found fascinating about these stories is thinking about the moment when the person finally admitted defeat and headed to the emergency room—because you assume by that stage they would have tried EVERYTHING to get that foreign object out of their body.

  This is no longer theoretical for me, however. I know for certain it’s the case, because I have tried every single possible yoga position, squat, lunge, dance, and pelvic floor wiggle I can muster. I have prayed, cried, tried to relax, and convinced myself I am surely going to die from either some kind of plastic poisoning, or toxic shock, or embarrassment—because my moon cup is well and truly stuck.

  I message Lindell. Bear down, sweet cheeks, is all he replies, along with four baby emojis.

  I lie helpless on the floor of my tiny Scottish unit realising, quite poetically, that I am well and truly alone. Well, not completely alone—I am meant to be going on a date with Beau today. I sent him a text telling him I was feeling poorly, that I’d call him later, and that I was most definitely not blowing him off. I thought about making a joke about actually blowing him off, but decided to refrain. I refrain, too, from explaining exactly what my affliction is. I don’t think he needs to know just yet about the capacity of my vagina to both swallow and lose objects. The word lose in this sense is not quite right, I know, because the moon cup isn’t lost, I know roughly where it is, I just don’t know exactly where. Kind of like telling someone you’ll meet them at the Botanical Gardens.

  I have a day off tomorrow. I want to see you, he’d texted the afternoon after the booty call.

  I’d exclaimed ‘YESSSS!’ so loudly that everyone in the coffee shop stopped and looked at me. I’d smiled politely, but I felt like jumping up onto my chair and making a speech that would’ve gone something like…

  ‘I’ve met a Viking. He’s good at conversation. And he told me he likes me. And then we had great sex. And he’s good at it. Like really good. And he just texted me. A very excellent text. No games. No bullshit. Straight to the point. Vikings don’t fuck around, do they?’ But I didn’t say any of this, of course, I just grinned excitedly instead.

  We’d agreed that he’d pick me up at eleven. There’s a twelve-hour limit of moon cup insertion. I’d already gone over this as I’d slept in. I’d then spent about two hours trying to get the damn thing out, which meant I was verging on the sixteenth hour. I finally admitted defeat, decided I needed help and headed to the emergency room. There was no way I could go out on my date knowing there was a foreign object stuck inside me.

  The first nurse I spoke to didn’t know what a moon cup was so I had to google it and show her.

  ‘Blimey, love, that’s a smart idea isn’t it? Economical.’ She smiled. ‘If I was still getting the bleed I might’ve given it a go.’ She called it the bleed!

  I nodded, horrified. The very young, very blonde, doctor similarly had no idea, so the nurse explained it to him like he was a fucking idiot while winking at me. Knowing what it was didn’t help him, though, because he just fumbled about in my vagina for a bit before admitting he wasn’t feeling too confident about this specialist gynaecological assignment and called in a second doctor. Great.

  Now, a spotlight is shone into my vagina and there’s a fair bit of standing about and musing before the crabby nurse calls both of the young doctors blathering idiots, tells them to get out of the way and shuts the curtains. She gives me a wink as she reaches inside me with a giant fucking dildo-looking tool, explaining that she thinks the moon cup has suctioned itself very securely onto my cervix. She cheers when she finally pulls it out, and I die from embarrassment. She leaves the room while I get dressed.

  My phone rings. It’s Beau.

  ‘Hello,’ I mutter.

  ‘Just wanted to see how you were feeling?’ He sounds concerned, as a message blares loudly over the hospital PA system. ‘Where are you?’ he asks.

  ‘At the hospital.’

  ‘Shit, Noni, are you okay?’

  ‘Yeah, fine, just needed a hand with—’

  The nurse reappears and throws me a pad and my now-clean moon cup in a plastic zip-lock bag. ‘It’s been a pleasure, Noni,’ she says and I laugh, unable to believe I’m going to be one of this woman’s vagina stories tomorrow. Serves me right.

  ‘Noni? Are you okay?’ Beau asks again.

  ‘Shit. Sorry. Yes. I’m fine. I’m leaving now.’

  ‘Wait there. I’ll come and get you. Like ten minutes, okay?’

  ‘You don’t need to do that—seriously it’s—’

  ‘I’m coming. Just wait.’

  I find a bathroom and stare in the mirror. I look like a fucking wreck. I’m wearing a tracksuit and no bra. I had let my hair dry on its own after getting out of the shower, being too distracted trying to reach my hand into my own vagina to worry about the perfect blow-dry, so I look like an adolescent boy trying to be Eminem circa 2002. I wet my hands, dampen my hair and try to take back some control. I look in my handbag, where I’ve got a roll-on perfume, some pink lipstick and an old crumpled compact. I work with what I’ve got. This master absolutely, one hundred per cent blames her tools.

  I’m sitting in a plastic emergency room chair as the Viking bursts in through the doors. If the nurse hadn’t found my moon cup, the flood of feeling in the pit of my stomach at seeing him surely would’ve popped it right out.

  ‘Fuck, Noni, you okay? You good?’ He grabs my shoulders and looks at my face, worried.

  I grab his hands with both of mine. ‘Yes, all good,’ I say with as much positivity as I can muster.

  ‘What happened?’

  I smile. ‘Can you take me home?’

  ‘Of course.’

  When I accepted the job with Lil I decided to rent a one-bedroom flat that belongs to a lovely woman named Pam, who has a penchant for floral decoration and lives in Spain for half the year.

  We pull up outside and Beau leans over the back seat, pulling out a bunch of what look like flowers.

  ‘Here, I got you these,’ he says.

  I take the cellophaned bundle and look at the blooms, but I realise very quickly that they’re not blooms at all. They’re fabric. I look at Beau suspiciously and he nods, suggesting I unravel one. I do and I instantly start laughing when I realise what they are. They’re tights. Six pairs of different coloured tights rolled up to look like flowers.

  ‘Apparently this brand is the best for bodies like yours.’

  I laugh loudly from a deep, glorious place. ‘This is the best thing that anyone has ever…oh my god.’ I laugh again. ‘Thank you. This is brilliant. Thank you.’

  ‘That’s okay. I asked for some help at work and, well yeah, I didn’t realise what an ordeal getting dressed was for women.’ He smirks.

  ‘This is truly amazing. The best present ever.’ He looks coy, he’s blushing, and I reach out and squeeze his arm. ‘Beau, really, I love this.’

  ‘Good. I’m glad.’ He looks me in the eye and there’s a silence that feels like it’s purposely built for smiling at each other.

  ‘So, you coming in?’ I finally ask, undoing my seatbelt.

  ‘I thought you might need some—’

  ‘I need to get changed, but come in. I wanted to see you today, just not in a tracksuit, without a bra, you know.’

  ‘You’re making that a bit of a habit.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Me seeing you without a bra.’

  My cheeks flush. ‘Come up.’ I pause. ‘You know, if you want.’

  ‘Oh, I want.’

  We trudge up the stairs and I try to mentally assess the level of disarray that I left the flat in before I marched out the door to the emergency room. I do a quick scan as I open the door and realise it’s okay.

  ‘This is nice.’ He smirks, pointing at the palm-leaf wallpaper, which clashes with the floral couch.

  ‘It’s good, isn’t it? Do you want a drink? I have green juice and that’s it. I’m not obsessed with tea like the rest of you lot, if that’s what you w
ere hoping for, but there may be some in the cupboard.’

  ‘I’ll make it.’ He comes into the kitchen and starts poking around. He’s close to me but he doesn’t touch me. I watch him delicately rip open a small paper packet with some fancy teabag in it. My mind flashes back to his grin as he’d done the same with the condom the other night. He rips open a second teabag and my face feels hot. The kettle pops and whirs and I look at it, grinning. I know how you feel, kettle.

  He hands me a cup. ‘Here. You’ll find that tea makes everything better.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Are you sure you’re okay?’ He looks so worried. His big eyes are looking at me with real concern.

  ‘I’m fine, really.’

  ‘But, the hospital? Noni—’

  ‘My vagina swallowed my moon cup,’ I blurt without thinking, or rather I was thinking I should tell him some version of the truth because I didn’t think he was going to let up with his concern, but before I could put a cool and planned response together my overzealous mouth was like the drunk teenager at a party all, ‘Don’t worry guys, I’ve got this,’ before they set their eyebrows ablaze by getting too close to the fire.

  ‘Your what?’ he asks.

  Oh god. Here we go again. I pull it out of my handbag, still in its plastic bag, and throw it at him. ‘This. Was stuck.’

  I tell him about the grouchy nurse and the two young blushing doctors and about my mum and the guy with a mackerel up his arse. Beau laughs. A lot. With tears streaming down his face he leans back into the counter, the hem of his jumper lifting slightly above his belt, showing his bare skin. I want to reach out and place my hand there, my mouth there, but I refrain.

  He wipes his eyes, pulling it together, and looks at me. ‘I could’ve helped you—’

  I cut him off. ‘Absolutely not. There are stages of intimacy I think, and you reaching into my cavernous vagina to find a plastic cup is not the stage we are at right now.’ He howls with laughter, and I join in. I like that I make him laugh. ‘Just give me ten minutes, okay?’

  ‘Take as long as you need.’

  I shower quickly, imagining the Viking striding in here naked and joining me, but I have to shut that thought out to be as productive as I need to be to get ready as quickly as I’d promised. The door to the bedroom is open just a crack and as I dress I can see Beau standing near the bookshelf, reading. He puts the book back and undoes his hair, which had been tied in a messy, low-slung bun. He throws his head back, shakes it out and loops it up in a bun on the top of his head with a band from his wrist in one fluid movement. The stretch of his shoulders, the pull of his jaw, the hair cascading down his neck, the flex of his biceps—it all pulsates something primal deep in me. My desire escapes my mouth in a breathy noise and if I didn’t have my period right now I’d be sure he’d just impregnated me from across the room.

  ‘Alright?’ I say, hoping he hasn’t heard the mouth orgasm I just had. I step into the lounge room. ‘If you could replace your image of me from this morning with this one I’d be deeply appreciative.’

  He turns and smiles and looks at me for longer than the agreed social contract. He looks at me so long that I start to feel self-conscious. ‘I wish—’ I stop myself. I wish I could read your mind feels entirely too naive.

  ‘What?’ he asks.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘So,’ he says, taking slow steps towards me. ‘Can I ask you a really important—’

  ‘Yes,’ I cut him off and he laughs. He’s standing right in front of me. I glance up at his lips.

  ‘Can I kiss you?’ he asks from his throat. His closeness means that words don’t formulate and instead I make a weird throaty adolescent rasp, nodding. He kisses me, lips soft against mine. Pulling back he smiles slightly and I breathe him in as he pushes against me, his hands wrapping around my waist, his tongue in my mouth and my stomach at my knees. I grab at his shoulders, trying to pull him in as close as possible.

  He looks at me, staying close to my face, and it’s too intense, so I look away. ‘Okay, I concede, Ginger Spice is the best,’ I mumble.

  He laughs loudly, and his chest muscles tense under my hands. He kisses me lightly under my ear. ‘So,’ he says, whispering in a way that travels right into my pelvis and explodes. I tense my legs. ‘You need to go and put on the warmest things you own.’

  ‘So I should just put all of my clothes on?’ I ask.

  ‘It’s kind of the opposite of what I actually want you to do, but yeah.’

  I’m not used to this kind of unabashed flirting. This direct level of dreamy-wants being spoken loudly. I’m used to ambiguity, confusion and long hours spent pondering whether the emphasis on particular words was in fact a clue signalling desire. I’m used to weeks, or even years, of not being sure how they feel and plotting ways to talk to gather more evidence. But this? I don’t know what to do with this. So I say nothing.

  ‘I want to take you somewhere,’ he says and I draw on every inch of my willpower to not utter the words, you can take me anywhere.

  25

  Beau takes me for a walk up Calton Hill and I marvel at monuments to philosophers and sprawling city views. ‘I can’t believe this is just in the middle of the city,’ I say repeatedly.

  We talk as we walk up the winding gravel path.

  ‘Do you have brothers or sisters?’ he asks. It’s windy so our hands are stuffed into our pockets and we walk close together.

  ‘Nope. Just me. And my dysfunctional parents.’ I stop and explain. ‘Like, a normal level of dysfunction. A manageable dysfunction.’

  ‘Oh yeah? Tell me more.’

  ‘We’re talking parents who hate each other and couldn’t bear to be in the same room since I was eleven. A messy divorce and a father whose life kind of halted around that time, and has never started up again. Who absolutely blames my now happily remarried mother for every misfortune in his seemingly fine life,’ I say, raising my eyebrows to provide a real-life exclamation mark.

  Beau takes my gloved hand and kisses it. ‘I worry about my kid. He was five when we split up.’ He pauses. ‘His mum, Sabine, and I were young, just in our early twenties, when we had him.’ He pulls his phone out of his pocket and shows me a recent photo of Zeppelin. He’s gorgeous. His mum must be gorgeous.

  ‘He looks like you.’

  ‘Sometimes.’ He smiles, looking at the photo with a kind of longing in his eyes. ‘Sabine got a job in London. That’s why they moved. She’s a TV producer. Some bigwig job. Apparently she’s a big deal.’

  She’s beautiful and smart. Great. Be cool, Noni. Be cool.

  ‘And it fucking sucks not seeing him every day.’ Beau looks sad.

  ‘I bet.’

  ‘He comes up whenever he can. I go down whenever I can. They’ve only been down there for six months or so.’ He flicks through his photos and shows me one of the two of them. Zeppelin has tight ringlets sprung into a bouncing afro circled around his soft features. He’s broad like Beau. They have the same beaming smile.

  ‘We FaceTime—but yeah, it’s not the same. He’s like the coolest person I know.’

  His mouth is closed in a sweet, pained, love-filled smile, and I swoon. Like I’m a blob of paint and a brush has come in and swirled me in a perfect circle.

  ‘We need to talk about the fact that you named your kid Zeppelin,’ I tease.

  He chuckles. ‘We thought it was the most badass fucking name in the world at the time. But it suits him.’

  ‘I like it. So many names are ruined when you work in schools.’ The view has changed to another part of the city where the ocean is in the distance, smashing into the clouds. This incredible collision of nature and concrete all at once.

  ‘Yeah, I’m sure.’ Beau stands behind me as I stop and take it in. He puts his arm around my shoulder, and I lean my head into his chest. ‘We were together for six years—we weren’t right for each other. But we’re close. I mean, we have to be. Our relationship is solid now, because we’ve done the work o
n it.’ He seems so together. It makes me feel so untogether.

  ‘That’s good. That’s good for him. I know so many kids whose parents really fuck it up. Exhibit A.’ I point to myself. ‘So that’s good.’

  We keep walking, and I put my arm around his waist.

  ‘She’s married to a nice Brazilian guy. He’s a great stepdad to Zep. Which makes me equally love him and hate him at the same time.’

  ‘What’s he like?’

  ‘He’s a cameraman,’ he says.

  I shake my head. ‘No, Zeppelin, not the Brazilian stepdad.’

  ‘Yeah, right.’ He laughs. ‘He’s so much more confident than I ever was at sixteen. He loves music and politics and he’s emotionally sound. He talks a lot. Writes wild rhymes. He’s funny. He’s into clothes and that’s what he wants to do. Fashion. Tailoring. He makes his own stuff. Screen prints. That t-shirt you liked the other day, he made that.’

  ‘Amazing.’ Of course this human has created a whole other brilliant young man. Of course. I smile at Beau.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I like watching your face when you talk about him. You smile in a way that I haven’t seen.’

  He blushes. ‘He’s my kryptonite. Completely. I can’t talk about him too much because I get emotional. Wanna cry.’