‘I have a big responsibility here,’ he has said, ‘you so young, eager, fresh. I never want to plunder that. Never want to make you cynical or bitter. I don’t get why sex always seems to … taint. It shouldn’t be like that.’
You smile as you turn from him, the rain patting softer now on the tin roof. Plumed by love; it is stealing your body, stealing your life – your future, your plans, your resolve – growing you tall, smiling you up, singing you into wakefulness. Stealing up through your limbs, stealing every part of you until finally it has snared the last resistor, your head that says no, this can never work, your father would never walk you down an aisle to this man, it cannot be, stop.
Too late.
Lesson 95
Begin again
‘Tell me about your mother.’
‘Why?’ Defensive. It’s never discussed. Any questions over the years about her, from anyone, have been bluntly headed off. Only with your father have you ever wanted to talk. And he won’t.
‘I just want to know about her. Understand. You. What’s really in here.’ He taps your skull. ‘Why did you say to Julian way back at the start that you came from “nobody”?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t want to talk about it.’
‘Hey. I’m interested. In you. A good relationship is all about listening. Understanding. No one ever listens enough. Especially me. I’ve been told I need to get better at it.’
‘But where does love fit into all of this?’
‘Ah. That’s about trusting someone enough to show them your true self. Being so comfortable with them that you can relax, completely. Be unlocked.’
You look at him. Take a deep, wavering breath.
‘I never knew her … really.’
Slowly, you begin; slowly, it all comes out. A whole afternoon of talk, the pain like a balloon of sadness within you, pressing against your insides, until at one stage the hot tears sneak through and he enfolds you silently in his arms and just holds you and holds you as the tears come and come, until you are quiet.
A wind-tossed boat, come to rest in a harbour, at last.
Thank you, you croak your gratitude at the end of it; for it feels like the first time you have ever properly talked about your past.
Lesson 96
Make your daily round of life as harmoniously methodical as possible
The two of you are lying side by side on a flat slab of rock, reading, the heat trapped in the stone that’s pressing into your stomachs.
‘Tell me what didn’t work before.’
‘Why?’
‘We have to wipe the memory of it.’
‘That could be difficult,’ you grimace.
‘No harm in trying,’ he grins.
You place your little Victorian volume face down on the stone and rest your head on folded arms, thinking of the bleakest, loneliest hour you’ve ever had in your life.
‘There wasn’t any tenderness. Even his kiss. His lips were like these blocks of wood. They didn’t know how to do it, I could just tell.’
‘Ah ha!’ He snatches up your book, scrabbling in his pocket for a pen. ‘I have just the remedy.’
THE KISS
‘The moth’s kiss, first!
Kiss me as if you made believe
You were not sure, this eve’
Robert Browning
He hands the book back to you with the solemnity of ceremony. Instructs you to turn over, to close your eyes. Leans over you, arms propped, blocking out the glare of the sun, and kisses you.
The softest tiptoe of a kiss.
Later, inside you, he murmurs, ‘Close your eyes.’ And he kisses your eyelids and whispers, close, ‘Wearing away our lips, from kissing each other’s souls.’
‘Excuse me, I should write that down.’
‘Mr Pablo Neruda, if you must.’
You pick up the notebook that’s increasingly shop-worn and try scribbling but abandon it as he kisses you, kisses you, kisses you and you, devouring, surrender and kiss back.
In the shining malaise of afterwards you tell Tol that you don’t get it, how a kiss can feel so much more intimate than actual sex, is that right, are you mad?
‘Oh no. You can’t fake it. Whereas you can with intercourse.’
‘Have you ever felt really, really lonely when you make love?’
‘Explain.’
‘Sort of like, the loneliest you’ve ever felt in your life. That there’s an absolute – shocking – lack of connection.’
‘Ooooh yes.’
‘Who with?’
‘Imagine feeling that through a long-term relationship. A marriage. And people do. A loneliness slicing through you. The kiss can signal a level of commitment that intercourse never can. There’s something about the most connected of them that points to the deepest, profoundest intimacy.’
‘Who with?’ you press.
He doesn’t say. ‘We have to wipe away all our memories of the past …’
‘Show me again.’
He smiles. He complies. ‘It’s like a communication between equals, isn’t it?’
‘Equals,’ you savour, drawing him to you again.
As you both grow more passionate he suddenly pulls back.
‘I have to be careful not to leave a single trace on your face.’ A finger travels down your cheek. ‘But the moth’s first kiss, again. Always. That’s our kiss, yes. Forever.’
‘Yes. Come on. I need to get this right,’ you giggle.
Racing home in a high wind through the rearing, leaning, talking trees it’s as if the very bush has watching eyes and applauding hearts; that the whole world about you knows your rapturous secret but you don’t care, this cannot be stopped, it will journey on and on, further, deeper. To God knows what. Forever, he said. Forever.
You suddenly realise that you’ve left your notebook behind. All your deepest vulnerabilities, the raw underbelly of your life, the truth; you couldn’t bear for anyone to read it. You hesitate, should go back, no.
You trust him, you trust.
Lesson 97
Look as you will, you cannot see your girlhood face anymore
‘Where were we again?’ he teases next time, first thing. ‘I need reminding.’
Without a word you hook your hand around his neck and draw him in strong, a shepherd with their steady crook.
The moth’s first kiss.
You have mastered it.
Wiping away anyone else.
‘A fabulous kiss can be as evocative as smell, I think,’ he smiles afterwards, in appreciation. ‘One whiff – or one kiss like it again – and whoosh, it can plunge you back to another time, another place. A brighter phase of love. There can be something so … restoring … about it.’
You wipe your lip and stop. He suddenly feels past tense whereas you – achingly, enormously – are present.
‘A passionate kiss can arrest a relationship’s slow, glacial slide towards indifference,’ he’s murmuring on, pottering about, forever thinking, teaching, musing. ‘Can wake a couple up – remind them of what they were.’ He turns back to you. ‘Thank you for that.’ Gravely, as if he’s tucking it into his heart.
You frown, wonder what he’s referring to. He has a whole other life in Sydney, you must never forget that, you barely know who he is. His former life, his current life. Beyond this hidden place, this secret summer. And he never tells you too much – he has a flat in Rushcutters Bay and a mother he never sees enough and a girlfriend who’s ex. You think.
Your hand is arrested at your mouth. He reads the confusion, the dawning. Retrieves your book and hands it across, instructing you to look at his page at the back – not now, but tonight.
Later, you read:
‘Wearing away our lips/from kissing each other’s souls.’
Pablo Neruda
In an instant, you are veered back. All complication wiped.
Lesson 98
Our value is – exactly what we choose to make it
Your gratitude, your g
uilt. That it’s starting to feel selfish. From your side, too much. That he’s giving giving giving and you’re taking and now you need to give something back. Isn’t that how the world works?
‘But my pleasure is watching your pleasure. That I can do this to someone. Unlock them, open them up. To joy.’ He smiles a dirty smile. ‘And lead you into another, better place.’
‘But what can I do for you? Tell me one thing you love.’
He pauses. Rolls in his lips. ‘There is something. But a lot of women … don’t like it. I haven’t suggested it before because I didn’t want to turn you off. I never want to do that. Some women are revolted.’
‘Try me.’
He traces the outline of your mouth with a fingertip. ‘You have blow-job lips,’ he says soft.
‘Urgh. Lune says blow jobs are just for prostitutes.’
He laughs. ‘I’d like to meet this girl some day. Have you ever given one?’
‘Nup.’
‘Do you want to?’
You think of give and take, generosity and selfishness, dispensing pleasure as well as receiving it. ‘I don’t know. Maybe I’ll just … try. A little.’
Kneeling. Naked. He standing before you, holding his penis.
‘Now close your eyes, and lick,’ he instructs. ‘Like you’re licking an ice cream. Imagine a flavour you’re unsure of, that you find, actually, you love. Can’t get enough of. Imagine.’
You giggle, hesitate.
‘Sssh, it’ll help.’ He firms your head, you lick the tip of his penis. A bead of clear liquid emerges, a single drop, you tremble it up with your tongue tip.
‘Now suck,’ he whispers, pushing the back of your head onto him, deep into your mouth, further, until you are gagging and he pulls back and you suck soft and then lick in sweeps and he groans and comes, too quick, in a great jerking spurt, it spills down your throat and over your mouth and breasts and you gag and cough the sourness up.
He loved it. You can tell.
You did not.
He catches your expression. ‘I’ll never get you to do that again. But thank you, thank you for trying it.’
‘But there was absolutely nothing in it for me!’ you muse in the quiet of afterwards, spooning side by side on his mattress.
‘You think too much, my lovely. You have to, don’t you,’ he teases. ‘Dissecting everything.’
‘It just felt so mechanical. Bleak. I could have been anyone, it wouldn’t have mattered. No eye contact, nothing. Yuck.’
‘Well aren’t you lucky I enjoy giving so much, then?’
‘Yes.’ You wrap his arms tighter around you. ‘I know, I know.’ The guilt, but you have to be blunt.
‘Some women find it incredibly empowering to be giving their man so much pleasure. They love calling all the shots, so to speak.’
‘But it just felt so selfish to me. On your part.’ You turn and poke him playfully in the stomach. ‘I’m sorry.’ You blush. ‘It’s not fair, I know.’
He chuckles. Point taken. ‘Well, you might just be on to something there. There’s this government campaign right now to reduce the teenage pregnancy rate by encouraging oral sex. Fascinating, isn’t it?’
‘Yep, and I bet it’s always meant to be girls doing it to boys, never the other way around. And I bet a roomful of blokes was behind it.’
He looks at you solemnly. ‘I’ll never force you into anything you don’t like. It’s never my intention. Everything has to come willingly from you. OK? With whatever happens beyond this.’
‘What do you mean? What’s beyond this?’
You’re teasing, he’s serious.
‘The best sex is all about equality. Listening. You’re never going to get a great experience by demanding or insisting or bullying – because the other person will only shut down. And we mustn’t have that.’ A kiss lingers on the top of your forehead. ‘I know there’s a lot going on in that pretty little head of yours. I just want to find out what. Play. But I will always give you the chance to opt out.’
‘Of what? Tell me.’
‘Wait.’ His finger on your lips. ‘Be patient. You, my love, have to lead me – as much as I lead you.’
‘But I don’t know what I want!’
‘Oh you do,’ he breathes deep, once, shutting his eyes, ‘you’re just not telling me.’ He abruptly stands. ‘I’ll see you in two days. I’ve got work to do.’
Maddened. By all of it. An electric fence he has switched on – ever alert, waiting, poised; ever ready to crackle and fizz and jump.
For whatever he wants.
Lesson 99
All I desire is that you should love worthily
That night, late, you write in your notebook something Tol said to you once, about his previous partner. ‘Sex with a girlfriend always becomes routine. Always. No matter how much you love them. The trick is to arrest the sense of sameness – if you can. If she lets you. And you hope she does. I do, at least.’
Addled, by whatever is next. By how the lessons will be ratcheted up. How to detonate ennui with difference of some sort. The grand experiment. For both of you.
You suspect it has everything to do with honesty.
That’s all he wants.
What’s in your head, your deepest, hidden thoughts.
Lesson 100
What a reward there is in this – to a woman!
‘I want to read. Learn. In the days in between. When you’re working. Give me some books.’
‘Hmm, let me think. Neruda, of course. And Sappho, lovely, sexy, stroppy Sappho. Nin. The Story of O. Oh yes.’
‘But how do I get them? I can’t just walk into a bookshop. Ask my father. Or stepmother.’
He laughs. ‘Lie down on the couch, and wait.’
Slivers your big toe into the curl of his tongue. Pushes your index finger into your cleft. ‘You have to learn to do all this for yourself, young lady. For those times when I’m not around.’
Your heart skips a beat. He reads it.
‘Like when I’m in the next room, that’s all. You. Stop thinking too much. Like when I’m choosing your latest textbook. That will give your stepmother a coronary, alright?’
‘Oh!’ A relieved laugh.
Lying on the couch, waiting, as languid as an abandoned scarf.
A battered paperback.
‘Read it,’ he instructs.
You do. Introducing yourself to a woman called O. A tingling washing through you as you are lost within her story, devouring her vulnerability, her need, her honesty, her appetite, forgetting he is watching until he is suddenly pulling away your panties – assisting, urgently – and you are pushing your fingers in further, then further, tickling, swirling, groaning; until he is taking over, with a rush dipping in with his tongue and his fingers and his lips and slurping you up until you slam the book down and arch your back and come and come, in great briny gushes, lost in the loveliness.
‘Turn over,’ he whispers.
‘I can’t,’ you murmur. ‘I have to be alone –’ as the waves of lovely pulsing pain glare on, and on, and on.
‘Trust me,’ he whispers. And when you are still, when you are quiet, you do what he asks. Because you do.
Gently, so gently, he raises you on your haunches, on all fours. Tenderly he parts your cheeks. You feel the shiver of a shock of his tongue on your arse, around it; you gasp in surprise and after the initial clench you let go, you surrender and you are suddenly thrusting your buttocks out to him – needing it wanting it your back a straining saddle and then you come again, too quick. Lying curled on your side. Spent. Away from him. Away from the world.
Wondrous.
That your body is capable of so much. So much pleasure. Cracking you open, into someone else. Someone intensely alive, fully human; to the absolute limit of who you are. You lie back and laugh in astonishment.
He gathers you up, cocooning you in his arms like a caterpillar in a leaf.
‘This is just the start, my love. And now you know the secret: that g
reat sex can only happen when we completely, totally, let go. All our masks, all our inhibitions, gone. And if we surrender completely, like that good, brave O, then we show someone else our true selves, our very core. And that can be … extraordinary. To do, and to witness.’ He’s quiet. ‘Rare,’ he whispers. ‘Thank you for that.’ A butterfly of breath flits by your ear.
You smile. At the power you have just wielded.
For he is speaking as if he has never before seen it.
Who is snaring who?
Live your life as bravely and generously as possible. Never forget that.
You find it that night, in the back of your notebook.
Lesson 101
Oh, if women did but know what comfort there is in a cheerful spirit!
It is written. What he loves:
A woman who looks like she knows what she is doing. Who laughs in bed. Who looks like she has sex every day, three times a day – whether she does or not.
‘It’s that sense of carnality, shall we say. Even just a hint of it drives me wild. I saw it in you right from the start, from the moment my groceries were dropped. Did everything to resist.’
You poke out your tongue. ‘Well I won, didn’t I?’
‘Maybe …’
It is written. What you are learning:
The more sex I have the more I want. And the more extreme I want it.
‘You’re like a baby Jane Birkin,’ he laughs when you pounce on him now, in greedy greeting, wrapping your legs around his waist and trying to scrabble his clothes off; not a second of this precious time to waste – bugger the book! ‘There’s a gamine steel to you, isn’t there?’
Nikki Gemmell’s Threesome: The Bride Stripped Bare, With the Body, I Take You Page 34
