With My Body

by Nikki Gemmell

  You breathe shallow; fear he is someone who will always feel strongest when he’s by himself, that he will never enfold anyone with the great calm of ownership—so while anyone is with him they’ll be obsessed, always thinking, ‘when’s this going to end?’ and never knowing and tormented by it.

  This is impossible, you must pull out.

  I will change him.

  Written, more than once, in your notebook.

  ‘But you are strong,’ he is murmuring, more to himself than to you. ‘Much stronger than me. And a better writer. A ruthless observer. I know it already.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Oh yes. It’s in your eyes. You’ll write something one day, I just know it. You’ve got the chip of ice.’

  Lesson 114

  Tom, Dick and Harry, their brothers, has each had it knocked into him from schooldays that he is to do something, to be somebody

  Languid in the stillness of his dam. Floating on your back, naked, your arms outstretched.

  ‘Are you ready for my cheongsam?’ He teases from the dam bank, holding out the flat black box. You laugh him off in the sparkling light. Take your time coming out. Let the sun be your towel; it leaves you brushed with the finest, silkiest ochre.

  You finally smile, yes.

  Slip on the dress in the open air.

  ‘Oh my,’ he whispers, as he closes up each silken bud of a button across your breast, and sanctifies each knot with a kiss. He takes out a camera from a worn leather satchel.

  You step back. Hang on. You weren’t expecting this.

  ‘Please?’

  You shake your head, not sure you like this; don’t know why but you’re suddenly thinking of those lost three days and the guests he won’t talk about—others, watching; some kind of auditioning shot. For someone, something, else.

  ‘Why are you doing this?’

  ‘So I always have you.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘I’m a collector, you know that. Plates, shells, paintings, pencils, ravishingly beautiful photographs … ’

  ‘So how many times have you done this bit? With how many other girls, mister?’

  He laughs in bewilderment. He doesn’t say; ignoring enrages you, it always has.

  ‘Tol?’ Serious.

  ‘What do you think?’

  You, standing there, stilled by suspicion; he, still fiddling with the lens of a heavy Nikon FM. You’ve never seen such a camera up close, your family are instamatic people. He, clicking tentatively, once, into your scowl and then again, smiling, moving around; you, now, leering at the lens, crinkling up your nose and poking out your tongue—cheekying up—not giving him what he wants, anything but that.

  ‘Lift up your skirt a little,’ he cajoles. ‘Just for me. Come on.’

  ‘No.’

  His hand drops the camera.

  You fold your arms. ‘Not until you say you love me, mister.’

  A vibrating silence.

  Your hands gather the cloth at your hips. Inch it up, teasing. Stop, just. ‘I’m waiting.’

  He says it.

  He says it. He says it.

  Shy. As if the words are not used to his mouth.

  You grin, on that dam bank, in chuff, and lift up your skirt in triumph. Nothing underneath, of course. Freshly bare, raw—your choice. The cheongsam is now bunched around your waist. You spin around, laughing in the light. He closes his eyes for a second then lifts up his camera half playful, half hopeful but your hand snaps to attention and covers his lens, strong.

  Blazing. ‘Put it down. Say you love me again. Just that. No more photographs. I don’t get why you’re doing this.’

  He looks straight at you. ‘There is nothing to “get”. From the first moment I saw you I was caught.’ Speaking sincerely, it is in his face. You are quiet. ‘My whole body resisted … but it didn’t work.’ A pause. ‘And so here we are.’ He places his camera back in his satchel. ‘I wanted to have you forever, by my desk. That’s all. Somehow. However I could. In case you … disappear … somehow, from my life.’

  You look at him doubtfully; it will never come to that, how could it possibly? He sighs and picks up your book in the pocket of your abandoned overalls. You let him, you trust. He takes out his nub of a flat architect’s pencil and writes in his allotted space at the back, only there.

  You must look in it tonight, not before; you must resist.

  That is the request as he walks up the steep bank of the dam, without looking back. That you obey, of course.

  Because he said he loved you. He said it.

  At last.

  Lesson 115

  To ‘grow old gracefully’ is a good and beautiful thing; to grow old worthily, better

  That night you open his words from under your pillow like a favourite chocolate you’ve hidden in a box, for this exact moment, your midnight treat.

  I feel there is some obligation I have to fulfil with you, in the way of a gift.

  Something spiritual and rare. We ‘ fit’, so to speak, and I feel an enormous calm because of it.

  Believe that.

  The golden thrum washes through you like liquid sun under your skin. Does he attract you because of his certainty? You feel he knows exactly who he is in life and will not change and there is something so solid, so settled about that; whereas you are anything but.

  Another gift, you have been tardy of late: a battered, rectangular tobacco tin, words barely upon it.

  CAPSTAN

  Navy Cut Cigarettes.

  W.D. & H.O. Wills, Sydney.

  Perfectly the length of his architect’s pencils; the entire collection of them.

  Lesson 116

  How mysteriously soul and body act and react upon one another

  The lessons gather pace. He tauntingly resets your experience of sex, obliterating every touch, every thought that has gone before him; wiping you clean, saturating your memory with his caress and his alone. He slips inside with a groan, as if it’s all, almost, too much. He roams your body, discovering new nooks, crevices, valleys, new plains of torment.

  ‘I like exploring,’ he smiles.

  He’s meticulously careful never to come inside you; he ejaculates on your stomach, neck, through your hair, dabs it tenderly on your lips and kisses it off, spurts it in triumph. He’s always careful, so careful, to never rub away at the skin around your lips—the moth’s kiss, first, always—so as not to draw attention to any of this. Your father must never know, no one must.

  Now you’re on top—‘Throw back your head,’ he commands as his eyes eat your body up.

  ‘Keep laughing,’ he commands. ‘That’s it, glorious.’ You feel empowered, strong, lit.

  ‘Love that body God has given you, all its miraculous gifts,’ he commands, ‘what it can do, what it’s changing you into.’ As you do, you realise the great secret: an enjoyment of sex isn’t about technique, or cleavage, or a perfect body.

  It’s about confidence.

  Lesson 117

  The perpetual dread and danger of exposure

  Returning, always returning. Because he has burnished your days with light. Your emboldened back as you walk down the corridor of your house, as you roam the aisles of the supermarket. You’re sure everyone must know, something; it is in your eyes, your shoulders, your new height, spark. Love, you now know, is the supreme propulsion of life—the great repairer, rescuer, uplifter. You feel sexy, sexier than ever before, you are turning into someone else.

  He says you have the most beautiful innocence, a radiance. He loves your passion for life, for living, he says it shines from you and is in awe of it. He says you have an absence of cynicism, you’re not afraid to lower yourself with enthusiasm and some people think that’s a weakness—like a smile or an apology—but he doesn’t. He loves that you don’t wear perfume. The smell of the earth in your skin, your hair. Under your arms, between your legs. He wants you to love your body, to know it, to not be afraid of it. He says you must never lose your sense of ludic, a word he l
oves, your playfulness, your spark. You must never be pushed to the side of your life, from the core of who you are, you must never let a man do that.

  He could never do anything to hurt you, he pledges, doesn’t want to push you, needs you. You cannot sleep properly, cannot eat properly. You keep running to the toilet, diarrhoea, can’t stop smiling, staring into space, lost. You fly on your bike and then fling it aside in its ditch and run up his road; never quite sure if he’ll be there, jittery, craving. Turning your head at his gate as you whizz past in the car—always checking—that it’s not stopped, this secret Woondala life, that it will never stop.

  You will do anything for him now to keep that gate ajar, you are bewitched. He has whispered of collars, of handcuffs, other people, men, women … let’s see how far we can take this. You do not know what is next. You want it. You trust him. You are ready to be laid bare, stripped.

  Ready, at last, for the next step.

  As you walk away on a sun-smeared afternoon there’s an enormous joyous raucous shriek: a white cockatoo—then twenty, maybe thirty—before you, all around you, playing. Landing on the roof and the falling fences and flimsy tree branches that don’t quite support their weight, flopping upside down, clinging to the rocking branches and working their wings, squawking and playing and squabbling and you laugh out loud, at all of it, all, its joyously screechy fabulous magnificence. Seizing life, seizing all of this. You sit in the middle of the dust and extract your battered little book.

  I am becoming known. I have found the courage. I am ready. I trust.

  Lesson 118

  Perhaps she makes a pride, and her husband a joke, of her charming ignorance in common things

  But then other days: a souring. A falling away. No, not today, you just want to read a newspaper, rest, in stillness and laziness; put it all aside like the richest of chocolate cakes you have gorged upon too much.

  And then.

  The whisper behind your ear.

  ‘I want to do so many things with you. Before it’s too late.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Explore.’

  He turns you around, he kisses you tenderly, once.

  ‘Please,’ he says. ‘Will you let me,’ he says. ‘For a lot of women experimental sex is associated with pain. Coercion. Fear.’ His lips, a flutter of a butterfly against your ear. ‘But it doesn’t have to be like that. It can be a gate opening to an entire other world of … bliss. If you want it. Enough.’

  You say nothing. You give him nothing. You squeeze your legs on your bareness. Gasp, just.

  The grand and meticulous experiment.

  Lesson 119

  Ladies, ’tis worth a grave thought—what would the most of you leave behind you when you die? Much embroidery, doubtless, various pleasant, kindly, illegible letters; a moderate store of good deeds and a cartload of good intentions. Nothing else—save your name on a tombstone, or lingering for a few more years in family or friendly memory.

  He brings out a small leather suitcase.

  ‘We’ve only just begun,’ he smiles. ‘But it all, of course, has to be on one condition: everything we do is of your own free will.’ You nod. ‘Just remember that pleasure is all about surrendering ourselves, and accepting pleasure is a big leap for a lot of people. No one’s born a lover—we all have to learn.’

  ‘Even you?’ You tease.

  ‘Oh yes. Me most of all.’

  He opens his suitcase. Takes out a blindfold. The softest velvet, as black as midnight. He ties it around you; his cock in readiness, firm into your back. Gently, so gently, he turns you around. He slips something flat and heavy into your hands.

  A book.

  The surprise of it.

  The Letters of Abelard and Heloise.

  Written eight hundred years ago.

  ‘Don’t return to this house until you’ve read it. Until you’re ready for the next step. They were medieval lovers. And this is to show you that these things have always been done, and will always be done. If you dare. If you want it.’ His voice drops to a whisper. ‘And I think you do.’ He kisses you on the lips, once, the moth’s kiss. ‘With someone you trust … ’

  Late, at home, you devour the words, hidden under your blanket as if not even the walls or the night air can bear witness to what you are reading; midges hovering and you slam the book shut on them as you come—your fingers between your legs—and come, with anticipation.

  Our desires left no stage of lovemaking untried, and if love could devise something new, we welcomed it. We entered on each joy the more eagerly because of our previous inexperience and were all the less easily sated.

  The key word: joy.

  Those two deeply religious, searingly intelligent people were having a huge amount of fun.

  JOY.

  Written in your notebook, in readiness.

  You are a foreigner in his country, a child in his nursery; all is new, wondrous.

  You are ready.

  For anything.

  Because you are doing this to learn.

  It is, after all, what you asked for in the first place.

  VII

  ‘ … he forgets his mother and his brothers and all his comrades, couldn’t care less if his property is lost through neglect, and, in disdain of all those proprieties and decorums whose beauty he once cherished, he is ready to be a slave, to sleep anywhere he is allowed, as close as possible to his desire.’

  Socrates

  Lesson 120

  Women’s work is, in this age, if undefined almost unlimited, when the woman herself so chooses

  He is ordered, he is ready. Before the two of you can proceed there are two things you must know.

  ‘I want you. You. No one else. Believe it. And secondly, stop worrying. About everything.’ He taps your head, his voice lowers. ‘Trust me.’

  The softness of his cheek against yours.

  You have been reading, preparing, priming, learning. For this moment, the next step. You no longer angle yourself during sex as if you’re viewing the scene from the ceiling, no longer direct yourself into the most flattering positions. You’ve learnt to accept your body, with all its faults, don’t care what you look like.

  ‘I just don’t notice, alright,’ he’s admonished more than once. ‘I’d much prefer you relaxed.’

  You nuzzle in gratitude, breathing him in deep, and you open your body wide, wider to him, wanting to offer yourself for his pleasure and his alone, wanting to snare him forever with infinite sex.

  And lo and behold, you feel more womanly than ever before.

  He is right.

  You are ready.

  Thrumming with it.

  The day is stretching into lengthening light, soon you must go. He asks you to stand. Naked, still. He says he wants to prepare you for next time. When it will start. Give you a little taste.

  He slithers off the silken grey ribbon from its black box, kneels, slips it around your waist like a tailor at a dummy and ties it just above your belly button, in a bow.

  A present, to be unwrapped.

  ‘Close your eyes,’ he whispers.

  The long trails of the satin are teased over your bareness, goosebumps spring to life under their coldness. Gently, so gently, he instructs.

  ‘Now put on your clothes and pedal away tall, on your bike, and imagine all that is ahead. In two days. Don’t undo this ribbon until you’re home. Think of everything we’ve learnt so far. Anticipation. Secrecy. Imagination. Surrender. Trust.’

  He kisses your lids, first one, then the other.

  ‘Love.’

  The moth’s breath against your ear.

  ‘Restraint … ’

  The trails of satin whisper between your thighs.

  ‘And release.’

  Lesson 121

  ‘To know’ gradually becomes a necessity, an exquisite delight

  It is the weekend. Two days—two churning days—of waiting ahead. You’re like a horse straining at the starting gate, kicking out
strong in your box.

  You drive past Woondala with your father.

  The gates are locked. Locked.

  Your head whips back.

  ‘What’s up? You alright?’

  ‘Nothin’.’

  But your groin. Squeezing in want as it bears down on the car seat. Still feeling those slices of satin lingering, teasing, electrifying; long after they’ve gone.

  What you have learnt:

  We love the things we are not meant to.

  What you have learnt:

  Love is a restless absence.

  What you have learnt:

  You shouldn’t be doing this.

  What you have learnt:

  You are enslaved, you can’t stop.

  Lesson 122

  Published or unpublished, this woman’s life is a godly chronicle

  ‘I need your notebook.’ First thing he says.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I have to write something down.’ He smiles. ‘One last time.’

  ‘But it’s all my notes now.’ You hold it protectively at your chest. ‘I don’t want you seeing it anymore. Anyone … ’

  He laughs. ‘Give me my page, you. I’m not looking at anything else. Trust me.’

  Reluctantly you hand it across; he turns obediently to the back.

  ‘Just one more thing, alright. To mark the next stage, to frame it.’ He looks up; a roguish smile.