One Hundred Strokes of the Brush Before Bed

by Melissa P.

  “You look like a frightened chick. Forgive my intrusiveness, but I was overwhelmed.”

  He embraced me gently, while I kept my arms at my sides. I couldn’t imitate his gesture.

  “Melissa, would you allow me to invite you to supper this evening?”

  I nodded my consent and smiled. Then I sweetly kissed his cheek and went back inside.

  “Who was he?” my mother asked, intensely curious.

  I shrugged. “Nobody, Mamma, nobody.”

  12:45 pm

  We spoke about ourselves. We talked about more than I had expected to say and hear. He’s twenty and studies modern literature. His face has an animated, intelligent look that makes him incredibly attractive. I listened to him attentively; I liked watching him speak. I feel a flutter in my throat, my stomach. I feel as if I were bent back upon myself, like the stem of a flower, although I haven’t snapped yet. Claudio is gentle, calm, reassuring. He told me he has experienced love, but it slipped from his hands.

  He ran a finger around the rim of his glass and asked, “What about you? What can you tell me about yourself?”

  I opened up. A tiny gleam of light tore through the dense fog that enveloped my soul. I told him a bit about me, about my unhappy affairs, but I did no more than glance at my desire to find and uncover true feeling.

  He gazed at me with attentive, sad, serious eyes and said, “I’m glad you’ve told me about your past. It reinforces the idea I’d formed of you.”

  “What idea?” I asked, fearful that he might accuse me of being too easy.

  “That you’re a girl – excuse me, a woman – who has gone through certain situations to arrive at what she is, to assume an outlook and absorb it so deeply. Melissa, I’ve never met a woman like you. I’ve gone from feeling an affectionate tenderness to experiencing a mysterious, irresistible fascination.” His conversation was broken by long silences, during which he offered me his eyes and then resumed.

  I smiled and said, “You still don’t know me well enough to say that. You couldn’t possibly have experienced all the feelings you’ve mentioned – maybe one of them, or none.”

  “But it’s true,” he said after listening to me carefully. “I want to try to get to know you. Will you allow me?”

  “Of course, I’ll let you!” I said, grabbing his hand from the table.

  I felt as if I were in a dream, Diary, a most beautiful, endless dream.

  1:20 am

  I just received a message from Valerio, who says he wants to see me. The thought of him has now receded into the distance. I know that all I need to do is make love with the Prof one last time to be sure of what I really want and what Melissa really is, whether a monster or someone who is truly capable of giving and receiving love.

  10 June 2002

  Fabulous: school is over! This year the results have been rather disappointing, I didn’t apply myself very much, and my teachers didn’t make an effort to understand me. Nonetheless, I did merit promotion. They stopped short of destroying me for good.

  This afternoon I saw Valerio. He asked me to meet him at Bar Epoca. I rushed to get there, thinking it would be an opportunity to find out what I really wanted. When I arrived, I slammed on the brakes and left skid marks on the asphalt, drawing everyone’s attention. Valerio was sitting at a table by himself, watching me, smiling and shaking his head at my every movement. I tried to appear nonchalant, walking slowly and assuming a serious expression.

  I headed toward his table, swaying my hips, and when I got close to him, he told me, “Lo, didn’t you see how everyone looked at you as you walked over?”

  I shook my head no.

  “I rarely pay attention to the looks.”

  A man came up behind Valerio. He had a mysterious, somewhat crusty air. He introduced himself to me, saying his name was Flavio. I scrutinized him carefully, but he cut off my investigation by remarking, “Your girl’s eyes are too beautiful and too sly for someone her age.”

  I didn’t let Valerio respond. “You’re right, Flavio. So, are we going to be a threesome or will others join us?” I cut to the chase, Diary. I can’t bother with smiles and pleasantries when there’s only one item on the agenda.

  Slightly embarrassed, Flavio looked at Valerio and said, “She’s skittish, but you should listen to what she says.”

  “Look, Melissa,” Flavio continued, “Valerio and I intended to include you in a particular kind of soirée. He told me about you. I was a bit taken aback by your age, but after seeing what you’re like … well, I’ve given in, and I’m curious to see you in action.”

  I said simply, “How old are you, Flavio?”

  He said he was thirty-five. I nodded. I thought he might have been older, but I believed him.

  “When is this particular soirée?” I asked.

  “Next Saturday, at 10 pm, in a villa by the sea. I’ll come to fetch you … with Valerio, of course, and—”

  “If I should agree,” I interrupted him.

  “Certainly, if you should agree.”

  A few seconds of silence. Then I asked, “Do I have to wear something special?”

  “It’s best if your age isn’t too noticeable,” answered Flavio. “Everyone thinks you’re eighteen.”

  “Everyone? How many are there?” I asked, turning towards Valerio.

  “We don’t know the exact number. Five couples for sure. Other people may show up, but at this point we can’t say.”

  I decided to participate. I feel sorry for Claudio, but I’m not certain someone like me is capable of loving him. And I don’t believe I can make him happy.

  15 June 2002

  No, I’m not the girl who can make him happy. I don’t deserve him. My phone keeps ringing with his calls and messages. And here I am, dropping him. I’m not answering, I’m ignoring him altogether. He’ll get fed up and look for happiness elsewhere. So why this fear?

  17 June 2002

  In silence, amid sporadic chitchat, we headed for the place that had been arranged for the gathering. It was a villa outside the city, on a part of the coast where the rocks break up and turn into sand. The place was deserted, the house set back from the road. We entered through a tall iron gate. I counted the parked cars: there were six of them.

  “We’ve arrived, sweatheart.” Flavio really rubs me the wrong way with these terms of endearment. Who the hell does he think he is? How can he allow himself to call me sweatheart, darling, little one? I’ll strangle him!

  The door was opened by a forty-something woman, attractive and perfumed. She looked me up and down and gave an approving glance to Flavio, who smiled faintly. We walked down a long hallway whose walls were hung with large abstract paintings. When we reached the living room, I felt deeply embarrassed: ten pairs of eyes suddenly fastened on me. Most of them belonged to distinguished-looking men who sported ties. Someone was wearing a mask that covered his face, but the others were barefaced. A few women drew near and asked me questions to which I responded with a series of lies rehearsed beforehand with Valerio. The Prof came to my side and whispered, “I can’t wait to begin. I want to lick you, stay inside you all night, and then watch while you do it with the others.”

  I immediately thought of Claudio’s smile: he would never desire to see me in bed with someone else.

  Flavio brought me a glass of cream liqueur. It brought to mind that night last December. I went to the piano to think about how I’d got rid of Roberto a few days ago. I threatened to tell his girlfriend everything if he didn’t stop calling me and didn’t tell his friends to keep their mouths shut about me. It worked: I haven’t heard a peep out of him!

  At a certain point, a man of about thirty came toward me, walking with such a light step he seemed to be flying. He wore a pair of round glasses. His huge eyes were blue-green, his face pockmarked but handsome.

  He scrutinized me carefully, then said, “Ciao. You’re the one I’ve heard so much about?”

  I gave him a questioning look and replied, “It depends on whom
you have in mind. What exactly have you heard?”

  “Well, we know you’re very young, even if I personally don’t believe you’re eighteen yet. And not because you don’t look it, but because I feel it. Anyhow, they told me you’ve participated in soirées like this on many occasions, although only with men.”

  I blushed and wanted to sink. “Who told you this?”

  “Bah, what does it matter? People talk … You’re a pretty little slut, aren’t you?” He smiled.

  I tried to stay calm and play the game without ruining everything.

  “I’ve never been into planned encounters. I agreed to do it because I wanted to.”

  He stared at me, knowing full well that I was lying. Still, he went along with it. “There are always plans of one sort or another. Some people have plans that are linear and orderly, while others prefer a more rococo caprice.”

  “And then there’s mine: a bit of both,” I said, fascinated by his response.

  Valerio approached and told me to join him on the sofa.

  I nodded to the man, although I didn’t say goodbye since I was almost certain that during the soirée we would wind up penetrating each other.

  Sitting on the sofa was a muscular young man and two vulgar women wearing heavy makeup, garish and provocative. One had platinum blond hair.

  The Prof and I sat in the centre of this huge sofa. With one hand he began to caress my breast beneath my pullover, immediately dragging me through shame and embarrassment.

  “Come on, Valerio, do we really have to be the ones to start?”

  “Why not? Don’t you like it?” he asked, biting my earlobe.

  “I was thinking just the opposite,” The muscular one brashly remarked. “She has desire written all over her face.”

  “Desire for what?” I said defiantly.

  He didn’t respond. Instead he shot a hand beneath my skirt and worked it between my thighs, kissing me furiously. I was beginning to let myself go, but his silly violence was dragging me away again. I lifted my buttocks a bit to kiss him, and the Prof took advantage of this move. He caressed my ass with slow, gentle gestures that gradually turned hot and determined. The people around me no longer existed, even if they were there, watching me, waiting for one of the two men to penetrate me. While Muscles was kissing me, one of the women snaked her arms around his chest and kissed his neck. Then Valerio lifted my skirt: everyone was admiring my ass and my sex, flaunted on a strange sofa amongst strangers. My back was arched, and I was offering myself completely to him while Muscles was grabbing my tits and squeezing them hard.

  “Mmmm, you’re as fragrant as a young peach,” said a man who had come up to nuzzle me, “soft and smooth, just washed, fresh.”

  The young peach will ripen, whereupon it will lose first its colour, then its taste, and then its skin will soften and sag. Finally, it will rot, and worms will suck out the pulp.

  I opened my eyes wide; my face reddened. Suddenly I turned toward the Professor and said, “Let’s go. I don’t want this.”

  It happened just at the moment when my body was yielding completely… Poor Flavio, poor Muscles, poor everybody, poor me. I abandoned them all, including my hard-as-nails self. I got it together fast and, with tears in my eyes, ran down the long hallway. I opened the door and made for the car sitting in the road. Its windows were fogged with the thick humidity that wrapped the house and me.

  Not a word on the way back. Only when I reached the gate of my house did I tell him. “You still haven’t said anything about the letter.”

  A long silence, then simply, “Adieu, Lolita.”

  20 June

  6:50 am

  I put my lips to the phone and heard his voice scarcely roused from sleep. “I want to live with you,” I whispered, my voice a thread.

  24 June

  Night has fallen, Diary, and I am on the terrace outside the house, watching the sea.

  It’s so calm, quiet, pleasant; the tempered heat tones down the waves, and I hear their roar in the distance, peaceful and delicate … The moon is partly hidden; it seems to be watching me with its compassionate, indulgent gaze.

  I ask her what I should do.

  It is difficult, she tells me, to strip away incrustations from one’s heart.

  My heart … I don’t recall having one. Perhaps I’ve never known if I do.

  A touching scene at the cinema never touched me, a powerful song never moved me, and I’ve always only half-believed in love, thinking I could never actually experience it. Yet I’ve never been cynical. No, the fact is that nobody ever taught me how to express the love I kept hidden inside, concealed from everyone. It was somewhere, it needed to be tracked down. I tried, flinging my desire into a world from which love was banished. And nobody, I mean nobody, blocked my path, saying, “No, little one, you can’t enter here.”

  My heart was locked in a frozen cell. To break through it with a decisive blow would have been risky: my heart might have been shattered forever.

  But then the sun arrived, not this Sicilian sun, which burns, inflames, belches fire, but a mild, discreet, generous sun, which melted the ice slowly and thus avoided any sudden flooding of my arid soul.

  In the beginning, I felt I ought to ask him when we should make love, but later, when I was about to, I bit my lip. He realized something was up and asked me, “What is it, Melissa?” He calls me by my name; to him I am Melissa, I am a person, an essence, not an object, a body.

  I shook my head. “Nothing, Claudio, really.”

  Then he took my hand and placed it on his chest.

  I took a deep breath and stammered out, “I was asking myself when you’d want to make love.”

  He was silent, and I was mortified. I felt my cheeks burn.

  “No, Melissa, love, I’m not the one who should decide when we’ll make love. We’ll decide together if and when we do it. It’ll be you and me, together.” He smiled.

  I gazed at him, astonished, and he realized my stunned look begged him to continue.

  “Because, you see, when two people join it is the height of spirituality, and this can be achieved only if they love each other. It’s like a whirlpool enveloping their bodies, and they are no longer themselves. One is inside the other in the deepest, most intimate, and most beautiful way.”

  Even more amazed, I asked him what he meant.

  He replied, “I’m in love with you, Melissa.”

  Why does this man believe so deeply in what I considered an impossibility only a few days ago? Why has life shown me nothing but wickedness, filth, and brutality till now? Can this extraordinary creature offer me a hand and raise me from the cramped, stinking hole where I crouch in fear? Moon, do you think he can do it?

  Incrustations are hard to remove from one’s heart. But perhaps this heart can beat strongly enough to shatter its carapace into a thousand pieces.

  30 June

  My ankles and wrists feel bound by an invisible rope. I’m suspended in the air and someone is pulling from below, shouting in a hellish voice, while someone else is pulling from above. I jerk up and down, weeping, sometimes touching clouds, sometimes worms. I keep repeating my name – Melissa, Melissa, Melissa – like some magic word that can save me. I grab hold of myself and cling to me.

  7 July

  I’ve repainted the walls of my room; now they’re pale blue. Marlene Dietrich’s languid gaze no longer looks over my desk; now there’s a photo of me, my hair in the wind, as I calmly observe the chalk-stained boats in the port. Behind me stands Claudio, his arms encircling my waist, his hands resting delicately on my white blouse, lowering his face to plant a kiss on my shoulder. He seems not to notice the boats, but rather to be absorbed in contemplating us.

  After the photo was snapped, he whispered in my ear, “Melissa, I love you.”

  I rested my cheek against his, breathed deeply to savour the moment, and turned around. I took his face in my hands and kissed him with a tenderness I never felt before. Then I whispered, “I love you too, Clau
dio.”

  A shiver, then a feverish heat ran through my body till I abandoned myself in his arms and he held me more tightly, kissing me with a passion that wasn’t sexual desire, but a yearning for something else, for love.

  I wept uncontrollably, wept as I had never done in front of someone.

  “Please help me, my love,” I implored.

  “I am here for you,” he said, holding me as no man has ever held me.

  13 July

  We fell asleep on the beach in a tight embrace, warmed by each other’s arms. His integrity, his respect make me tremble with envy. Can I ever repay him for all this loveliness?

  24 July

  Fear, utter fear.

  30 July

  I run away, and he catches up with me. It’s so sweet to feel his hands hold me without oppressing me. I weep often, and whenever I do, he holds me tight, his breath in my hair, and I rest my face against his chest. I am tempted to flee, to slide back into the abyss, to return to the tunnel and never leave it. But his arms support me and I trust them and I can still save myself …

  12 August 2002

  My desire for him is strong and intense; I can’t do without his presence. He hugs me, asks me who I belong to.

  “I’m yours,” I answer, “completely yours.”

  He looks me in the eyes and tells me, “Little one, please don’t hurt yourself. That would hurt me very much.”

  “I wouldn’t ever hurt you,” I tell him.

  “You shouldn’t do it for me, but for yourself, above all else. You’re a flower; don’t let them trample on you anymore.”

  He kisses me, softly grazing my lips, and fills me with love.

  I smile, I’m happy. He tells me, “Look, now I have to kiss you, I have to steal this smile from you and print it forever on my lips. You drive me crazy, you’re an angel, a princess, I want to devote an entire night to loving you.”