Lingerie For Felons

by Ros Baxter

  ‘Oh. Great,’ I responded. ‘Er, what exactly is a wombat?’

  ‘It’s an animal,’ a Raelene on the other side of me contributed. ‘It eats roots and leaves.’ The gaggle of women fell about laughing. ‘Oh, sorry,’ Raelene said, wiping the tears from her eyes. ‘Cracks me up every time. Drink?’ Raelene had a broad, smiling face and was holding out a cardboard box of wine and a plastic champagne flute.

  ‘Absolutely,’ I sighed, realising I was rapidly losing my aversion to alcohol.

  I’m not sure if it was the wine, the company or the sunny day, but I had a blast. The game perplexed me, despite the women’s efforts to help. But my favorite bit was when one of the Wombats would score a try and the women would all leap to their feet with wild abandon, yelling things like ‘good on ya, Gazza’ and ‘take that, you fucking pricks’. Wayne seemed to get his fair share of ‘go Wayne, go you little beauty!’ and I felt weirdly proud. And, watching him throw his huge frame around, and the way he would smile and hug the other guys when something seemed to go right, I was getting pretty turned on, too.

  I caught myself once staring at his huge hands as he absent-mindedly stroked and rotated the football, waiting for a kick.

  ‘Raelene… Ah, can I ask you something?’

  ‘Want another drink, love?’ she asked, eyes on the game.

  ‘No, well yes, but something else. Do you think the Wombats are sort of…heroic?’

  ‘Eh?’ She looked at me like I was mad. ‘No, love. They’re fuckwits, mostly. But they give us a great laugh chucking themselves around like they’re 18 again.’

  After the game, the players ran off to get changed. It seemed to take a long time. The other team and all their supporters had left and only assorted Wombat hangers-on were left. The women I was with were getting impatient.

  ‘Farking ‘ell, where are they? I’m dying to get down the pub.’ Little Sharon was red in the face and stamping her feet.

  Suddenly, there was movement from the dressing rooms, and all eleven Wombats slunk out of the doors like men on a mission. They lined up speechlessly in a row about three metres from where we stood, turned around, then quite unexpectedly yanked their shorts or track pants or bicycle pants down to their knees and exposed their buttocks. Weirder still, there were letters written on most of the 26 individual buttocks. After a speechless couple of seconds, the penny dropped for us all at once, and for me in particular. If you concentrated very hard, you realized that, spelled out in magic marker across this hairy, white canvas, were the words ‘I AM NOT A REPUBLICAN’.

  I felt myself grow red under the screeching and laughter of the women.

  But I also realized that I liked this guy. Or at least, I wanted to see where this went.

  ‘Oh my God, love,’ whispered Raelene. ‘You are so getting lucky tonight.’

  And I did.

  But with the two of us, nothing was ever as easy as that.

  Wayne and I went back to his place and he prepared another divine meal. A quickie this time: a Thai curry with herbs from his garden. We gulped it down like we hadn’t eaten for a week. I was just topping up with some excellent white wine when Wayne manoeuvred me over to the couch. And there we were again, sitting way too close. Déjà-vu.

  Except this time there was no internal battle about what the hell I was doing here.

  I knew. He knew. It was just a matter of time.

  ‘So,’ he said. ‘You haven’t told me what you thought of my sign.’ He grabbed my hand and covered it with his. Then he lifted my hand to his face. ‘And, y’know, Rocket, I’m real sorry for how I handled things last time.’ He paused. ‘Not for Hunter Monroe.’ He grinned. ‘Or for...who I am. But I’m sorry I upset you.’

  I blinked, and nodded.

  And something hot and dark slipped its leash.

  First it was slow.

  He reached across and took my chin in one of those big hands. He watched me, eyes open, the whole time he leaned closer. Slowly, slowly. Then he raised one long finger and used it to press first one, then the other eyelid shut. ‘Don’t think,’ he said, pressing his fingertips to my temples. ‘Turn that busy brain off. Just for now.’

  Still slow, he pressed his lips against mine, and kissed me so softly I wondered for a second if I’d imagined it. My tummy flipped and dropped like I was perched on the highest point of the rollercoaster, contemplating the drop.

  And then we were lost.

  Lost in a jumble of arms and legs and lips and stomachs and clothes coming off faster than I could keep track. He picked me up and carried me to his bedroom like I didn’t weigh a thing. My mind wasn’t forming coherent thoughts, but I had just enough intellectual grip to croak out ‘Condom.’

  ‘Eh?’ He was obviously distracted.

  ‘Condom.’ I pulled at his heavy arm, pinning me to the bed as he burned a succession of kisses across my breasts. ‘Wayne. Condom.’

  ‘Huh?’ He looked up from his task, eyes dark and unfocused. ‘Do we need one?’

  My body froze. I pulled away. ‘What do you mean?’

  He half sat up, positioning his weight on one elbow. ‘You’re not...er?’

  ‘No, I’m not.’ Cold shivers laced my spine. He had no idea. The interruption made me start to shiver about what I was about to do. I began to babble. ‘Or what if I said I was and I really wasn’t? And what about you? What about diseases? You could have anything.’

  Wayne rubbed his hands over his eyes. ‘Oh Jesus, no, please not now, Rocket.’

  ‘When then, Wayne?’ I sat up, covering my breasts ineffectively with my hands. ‘When would be convenient? Nine months time, at the maternity ward?’

  ‘Alright, alright, bloody hell, I’m getting one…’

  But there was no way I was letting him get away with it that easily. For twenty minutes I explained that responsibility for contraception — and disease prevention — rested with both parties and that, while they were at it, men could clean up the mess too.

  Mostly because I was scared. So scared.

  ‘Okay.’ He looked defeated.

  ‘Okay what?’

  ‘Okay can I go and get a condom now please?’

  I shivered again. My body was still hot from his attention, but inside I was starting to turn cold. My hands shook at the thought of this. Fear tasted bitter in my throat.

  He looked at me as I shivered. ‘You okay, darlin’?’

  He wrapped his arms around me, and I felt the impossible heat of him enclose me like a blanket. ‘It doesn’t matter, you know?’ he said, lying me back down beside him. ‘We don’t have to do this right now.’ He ran his hands quickly up and down my arms to warm them. ‘Or at all. I just like being with you. Being near you.’

  I looked into those green eyes and I could see he meant it.

  He went on. ‘I mean, don’t get me wrong—’

  He pressed his length into me and I could feel that he wasn’t trying to tell me he just wanted to be friends.

  I turned my face to him and looked into those eyes again. They were so dark and cautious, still half-closed with the effects of what we’d been doing. I reached across and traced a finger down his forehead. He closed his eyes and sighed. I leaned in close. I felt the pull of this man, like my skin and his skin were both laced with magnets, drawing us together. Over and over again. Despite all the false starts.

  I kissed him then, with the full force of everything I had. His touch was soft and slow, at first. Like he was asking permission.

  But not for long.

  Soon he was twisting his hands in my hair and arching my head back as he burned kisses down my face and neck. He licked my clavicle, and then his mouth made its way south, my nipples aching for his tongue. When it got there, I gasped with shock.

  As I did, he pulled back, looking down at me and pulling my hands above my head, my wrists held together in one of his huge hands. ‘God, Rocket,’ he said, his voice breaking. ‘You’ve got the most beautiful tits I’ve ever seen.’ Everything inside me simulta
neously clenched and turned to water. And I felt like it was true. I was desirable. To him, at least, in this moment. I was sexy, and I could be beautiful. I felt bold. I ran my hand down to feel the real, hard length of him pressing against my thighs.

  But I heard his breath catch and he grabbed my hand away, pinning my arms to my sides. His tongue kept going, slowly but relentlessly south. When he got there, I realised the breast thing was nothing on this. His tongue shot fire right through the centre of me and my thighs clamped around his head.

  I knew I wasn’t going to be able to stand very much of this.

  I made a gurgling noise and pulled him up to me, tasting myself as he kissed me roughly. I bucked my hips against him, and it was all the encouragement he needed. As I felt him slam into me, fire shot through my stomach and I tried hard to hang on as sensation swamped me. It was mere seconds before I exploded against the aching force of his thrusts.

  Afterwards, as I lay panting in his arms, he put an arm around my waist and hauled me on top of him. Strange new muscles inside me protested the movement, but my skin lit up at the contact with the soft hair on his chest and the feel of his breath on my face. He pushed a floppy piece of hair out of my eyes. ‘Why didn’t you tell me, Rocket?’

  I shrugged. ‘You might not have wanted it.’

  He laughed. A deep, growly sound that made my tummy flip and shudder deliciously. He narrowed his eyes at me and I caught a glimpse of the full, dark depths of his desire for me. I felt breath catch in my throat.

  ‘No chance, Lola,’ he said, pressing a kiss onto my shoulder. ‘I’ve wanted you since liquored. But I might have…’

  ‘What?’ The idea he would have done anything differently made me sad. I could not have imagined anything more perfect.

  It was his turn to shrug. ‘I don’t know. Maybe made sure you were sure?’

  I studied those green eyes again, and ran a finger across his chest and over one flat, pink nipple. His eyes closed and a little hiss escaped his mouth.

  ‘I’m sure.’ As I said it, I knew it was true. I was hooked. Whatever the hell this crazy thing was, it was certainly bigger than my mortal powers to withstand it.

  So I leaned back into him, giving myself up to it.

  And when I crawled out of there the next morning, after homemade eggs benedict, I grudgingly admitted the truth to myself.

  We were a couple.

  The big trip — November, 1997

  Within a month, Wayne started talking about taking me home.

  The mere thought sent me into palpitations.

  One: I’m not good with parents. Normal parents, that is. I never learned the code.

  Two: we’ve already established I’m not interested in seeing any of the famous Australian stuff. It’s all too terrifying. Give me a library. Keep the great wild outdoors.

  Three: scariest of all, the idea of going to his home, of meeting his parents. It just made it all so real. I mean, we were a couple, but I still couldn’t work out how, or why, or where this whole thing was going. Where could it go, really? When we were just so different, in all the ways that mattered?

  Finally: he just turned up one day with tickets. Business class tickets. For us to go to Australia in November.

  ‘Twenty hours?’

  ‘Yep,’ he grinned, picking me up and spinning me around like an extra in Swan Lake. ‘And you are going to love it, Rocket.’

  ‘I mean, I know Australia’s a long way away...’ I tried to keep the whine out of my voice. ‘But I didn’t think it took that long to get to Hell with modern aeronautics.’

  In the end, as with so many things with Wayne, it was easier to capitulate. He was like a big, scrumptious steamroller and I was fast becoming fettuccine in his wake.

  ‘Two weeks,’ he assured me. ‘A few days with Mum and Dad.’ He grimaced, and I felt the familiar flare of curiosity. ‘It’s gotta be done.’ He shook his head as though casting out a demon. ‘Then a week at the Reef, and a few days in Sydney on the way home.’

  ‘Absolutely no tents?’ I checked for the fiftieth time, flipping through the ‘Poisonous Spiders of Australasia’ brochure Steve had brought home for me.

  ‘No way, babe,’ he assured me.

  ‘And no snakes?’

  He paused. ‘Not in the city, no.’

  I narrowed my eyes at him. ‘And you promise I can get CNN?’

  ‘Check.’

  And then, before I knew it, we were there.

  I loved the early part of the flight. First, the take-off: an almost sensual thrill as the plane detached from the earth and leapt bravely into the air, pinning us against our seats and sucking the complacency from our human lungs.

  ‘Wow,’ I breathed to Wayne. ‘That was almost better than sex.’

  He raised a dark eyebrow at me and I watched his eyes half close.

  ‘Almost,’ I said again, linking my fingers with his and feeling the little electric shock that always accompanied the action.

  Next, lots of vodka from cute little bottles. Like baby food for grown-ups. Wayne suggested I ‘go easy’ and muttered something about jet lag, but I was a carefree globetrotter and wouldn’t hear it. I chose movies to watch and pretended I was rich as I stretched out in my business class comfort while weary mothers carted sticky, screaming infants back and forth to the bathroom and gazed longingly at my legroom.

  But the novelty wore off after about three hours. Even with the extra comfort of business class, I couldn’t contort my body into the specific position I required for slumber. Two hours later, the beginnings of a hangover flirted with the edges of my vision.

  After twenty hours I was sore, tired and strung out with nerves as we lined up to meet his parents. My mouth felt like the bottom of a birdcage and my head was throbbing out some cruel techno beat. By the time Wayne’s Mom was hugging us stiffly in the arrivals hall and leading us out into a wall of heat, I felt like I had a thousand hangovers.

  ‘How are you, sweetie?’ Wayne’s mom trilled, patting him lightly on one of his huge shoulders. She ran a hand through his hair. ‘Few grey hairs, Wayney. The city, huh?’

  Wayne muttered something and lurched sideways to grab the handle of a trolley.

  ‘We missed you.’ She paused. ‘Didn’t we, Trev?’

  Wayne’s dad grunted, and I tried to see my big, dark lover in this slight, auburn-haired man with the wary eyes. Wayne gave them both a hug, and they looked tiny in his arms. I watched his face carefully as I tried my best to chat like a normal person. It had only been a few months, but I felt like I knew him so well. He was mine — every warm, outrageous, vulnerable inch of him. I always knew instantly how his day had been, just from looking at his face. He was real and solid, an open book. I despise having to work for crumbs of information, scraps of intimacy. But Wayne was mine. I would watch his long eyelashes as he slept in the night and cry with the hurricane force of my possessiveness.

  Before we came, I wanted to see the place he had come from. Meet the people who had raised him. But now, standing here with them, watching this thing unfurl between them, I wasn’t sure I knew how to do it. I mean, I knew a lot about some things. Like math. I knew a lot about math. And about navigating my crazy family. But I’d never had a boyfriend before. Not a real one. Surely they would look at me and see right through me.

  I could smell disaster in the wind.

  The first night, I was standing outside, near the bar-bee-cue — ‘barby’, Trev insisted, trying to sound knowledgeable about deep-sea fishing. Thinking instead that the warm night and low mosquito buzz were soporific inside my jet lag bubble.

  Suddenly, Trev turned around and started yelling at the top of his lungs, ‘Nigger! Nigger!’

  I gasped and dropped the insect repellent, racing in to Wayne who was washing dishes and watching the news with his Mom. I laced my fingers into his and pulled him out of earshot. ‘Wayne, my God, your dad’s gone insane,’ I said. ‘I think he’s yelling at the neighbors or something. They’re gonna come over and ki
ll us.’ I lowered my voice. ‘He’s calling them niggers.’

  ‘What?’ Wayne frowned, starting for the door to the patio, then his brow smoothed. ‘Ah, Rocket, I should have mentioned...’

  It emerged that ‘Nigger’ was the name of Trev’s dog. Black dog, needless to say.

  And things were not so peachy with Ma either.

  I had felt her bristling at me, no matter how hard I tried. But I couldn’t put my finger on it. I would catch her watching me during meals, her mouth moving but no words coming out. Or taking a dish off me as I wiped it after she’d washed, clicking her tongue and doing it again, as though I hadn’t quite got it right.

  On day two, her simmering animosity dissolved into downright hostility.

  She took me to one of those vast, sprawling suburban shopping malls spawned by the outer suburbs in every city on earth. I had another raging hangover from anaesthetising myself against the horrors of the night before, with some of the baby vodka bottles I’d secreted from the plane. Wayne’s parents were teetotallers, and his home was a dry zone. But I’d sneaked into my room a couple of times to help dull my mounting anxiety. And that’s right, you heard me. My room.

  Wayne and I were consigned to separate quarters in the House of God.

  ‘There’s a really nice dress shop I’ll show you,’ Suse said when we arrived at the whitest, brightest shopping centre in the universe. At least that’s how it felt to my pre-migraine eyes. Suse looked at my faded jeans and ‘Power to the People’ t-shirt and made a small noise in the back of her throat. I ran my hands down my t-shirt and pulled my pigtail a little tighter as she herded me towards a shop with the disturbing name ‘Glamma’ emblazoned across the front.

  I smiled, reminding myself how girlfriends behaved on TV. ‘Oh, that’s so sweet of you, thanks Suse.’

  After chatting a while and flicking through some racks, I decided to play the jet lag card. ‘Actually, Suse, I’m not feeling that great. The long trip and all, I think. Would you mind if we drop by a drug store? I need to pick up a couple of things.’

  ‘Oh, I noticed you were stopping by your room a lot last night.’ She gave me a tight smile. ‘I wondered if you had cystitis. Airplane travel always does it me, too.’