Nikki Gemmell’s Threesome: The Bride Stripped Bare, With the Body, I Take You

by Gemmell, Nikki

  ‘Who are you talking about?’

  He mock-groans, shakes his head.

  ‘So much to learn, young miss.’

  ‘Yep. Come on then, let’s begin.’ You rip two buttons off his shirt with sheer, brute, exuberant strength. ‘The lesson for today is …’

  Lesson 102

  The principle cause of woman’s downfall is their being afraid of truth

  But at night, late, the worry comes sneaking in, elbowing aside any sleep. Who was this old girlfriend who crushed him so cruelly, where is she, is she hovering, lingering, how far did it go? Why is he trying to do all this, with you – pushing boundaries, promising extremities until God knows what. What’s his motive? Is it dark? Are you distraction? Some kind of experiment? Is she still there, somewhere; is he using you to work out what’s best; how far he can take it? There’s a triangle here, a mysterious absence, you just don’t know enough. He won’t tell you a lot yet is asking too much now for memories, desires, thoughts, truths, with the greed of a surgeon extracting organs for research.

  ‘But what happened?’

  A sigh. Always a sigh, when he wants your probing to stop. You’re not letting up.

  ‘Tell me, or I’m never coming back. She’s like this great weight on me. And it’s because I don’t know – so can only guess. I’m going crazy with it. Julian seemed to think it was pretty huge. What did he say … that it’s taken you years to get over it.’

  An abrupt sigh. ‘She’s called Cecilia. I don’t like talking about it.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘For some people, fear ends up dictating all their choices in life.’

  ‘Fear of what?’

  ‘Oh, everything. Not pleasing, being judged, showing your true self et cetera.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Well, if you must know, there’s a school of thought that the whole point of sex is to destroy a person’s sense of self-containment. To bring them closer to living, to life, if you like. In all its magic – and all its messiness.’

  He unbuttons your overalls. Swiftly, as if he barely knows what he is doing. He folds down the flap. Undoes the shirt. His fingers hover over your bare breasts and your nipples slowly harden under his gaze but he does not touch, not touch, as if he can’t, anymore, can’t bear it, can’t do it anymore; this has to stop.

  You clamp his hands to you, hold them firm, you do not let up.

  ‘She never had the courage to be known,’ he whispers, ‘truly, deeply. She never spoke her mind.’ He looks up at you. ‘Which meant I never knew what she was really thinking. And I need to know that.’

  You step back. Why does he need to, so much? His hand brushes against the Victorian volume in your pocket, the secret rawness of all your thinking that no one will ever know; you couldn’t bear it. He comes right up close, grips your upper arms and whispers that everyone is at their most vulnerable when it comes to sex; that it’s the closest we ever get to revealing our true selves in all our banality and our beauty, our desperation and our foolishness, and it’s beautiful, so beautiful – the complexity of it – the glittering, vulnerable, fascinating, greedy, ugly, intriguing truth.

  ‘A lot of us can’t face the thought of being seen as we really are, and we never get closer to the core of our deepest selves than with sex. I failed Cecilia. Failed with her. Never made her comfortable enough.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘For opening up.’

  He slips out your notebook and you exclaim, try to grab it back but he’s got it, high, he swivels away and turns to the back page, his allotted space that only he ever goes to. Fumbles in his pocket for a pen, scribbles something. You snap up the buckles of your overalls. Want this to stop now. There’s some kind of coldness operating here; some sense of excavation, gutting.

  ‘I love you,’ you say. He doesn’t respond. Glances up with what, warmth, pity? You feel stripped.

  ‘I don’t feel like doing this anymore. Today,’ you say.

  He looks at you. Surprise. A new tone, for the first time in all this. He nods, OK, and without a word he hands your notebook back.

  It is only outside, before you get on your bike, that you open the page he has written on.

  CARNALITY

  ‘How many splendid loves I have dreamt of.’

  Rimbaud

  It doesn’t help. You snap the book shut.

  Lesson 103

  She should never lie down at night without counting up,

  ‘How much have I done today?’

  Harangued by sleeplessness.

  Learning from your stepmother. The power in withdrawal and in silence. You do not go back, the next day or the next, leaving no explanation; let him sweat.

  Feverishly you are writing in your little book, gathering all your thoughts; every page but his filling up.

  What you are learning about what men want. Your grand and meticulous experiment. You, too, can be the observer in all this.

  Precision: Saying exactly what is required, and where.

  A verbal response: ‘Too many women believe sex is a spectator sport,’ he has said. ‘Silence is not always golden. Women want to feel loved, desired, attractive – well, we men do too, only we don’t like to admit it. Verbal encouragement is the biggest turn on. It confirms desire. And we all want to see that.’

  Enthusiasm: ‘We don’t want to feel a partner’s just going through the motions. If you love someone, yet get the feeling during sex that they’re just not that interested, it’s such a turn off.’ You can’t ever imagine that, with him. ‘If the man’s always the one to propose sex eventually we feel like some small kid pestering Mum for sweets – unwanted, undesirable, a nuisance.’

  Happiness: ‘All I want is a woman who’s happy.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘It’s all a man ever wants.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because from that comes everything else.’

  Imagination: It’s not unusual, or wrong, or odd, to be thinking of another scenario entirely as you’re being made love to; a scenario that has little to do with the person having sex with you. They may be just a trigger for the process, a trigger for the movie in your head. There shouldn’t be any guilt about it; you have come to this conclusion yourself, haven’t discussed it with him.

  You slam down your pen, it’s what he wants, of course: to chisel out your innermost thoughts. Jackhammering away at all the defences you put up, that anyone puts up. What is he writing himself? You wonder. Turn back to your book with a furious pen.

  HE WILL NEVER KNOW. THE CORE OF WHO I AM. NO ONE WILL EVER KNOW THAT.

  He will not let you go until he knows, instinctively you sense this. You are gaining knowledge, strength.

  He will no longer write in your book. You will not give him the chance.

  The potency in withdrawal, in silence. The magnificent coldness of the punishment.

  Lesson 104

  Contemn her not, for her state might not have always been thus; you know not the causes which produced it; and – stay till you see her end

  But then you soften, can’t do this; the cruelty of no explanation. Can’t live with the sourness of your stepmother, it’s not in your heart.

  He has laid a claim over you. Over land, property, possessions, a body – the violence is the same; there is nothing economical or skimped about your obsession – it is fulsome, extravagant, wasteful. Complete.

  On the outside Tol’s everything your father couldn’t bear, couldn’t understand. But you have found who you should be with him. It feels like he is more you than you.

  Your father will never understand.

  I HAVE NO CHOICE.

  You write jagged in your notebook.

  Like a butterfly you are pinned, by desire.

  So. Back. Of course. You will always go back.

  Lesson 105

  This, her life-chronicle, which, out of its very fullness, has taught her that the more one does, the more one finds to do

  His smile on the ver
andah, as he waits, as you walk up the path, says he knows exactly where you’ve been and why you’ve done it.

  ‘Your lesson today – a treat,’ is all he says, leading you inside by the hand; just squeezing it tight, in thanks. ‘If you’re up for it.’

  You squeeze your readiness back.

  Leading you to a razor placed carefully on a folded linen napkin. Pleasingly weighty, silver. Waiting in readiness, by the chaise longue.

  ‘Take off your clothes,’ he breathes, ‘and lie down. Now, think of O. Being readied …’

  He retreats to the kitchen and returns with a bowl of soapy water.

  ‘Trust me,’ he whispers, tenderly parting your legs. ‘This is not going to hurt. But tell me if you want to stop …’

  You wince at the first stroke, the shock of the cold. He is removing the hair in long, practised strokes, gently guiding the instrument in all the dips and crevices.

  Wetter, and wetter, and wetter, as he works.

  ‘Women have been doing this for centuries,’ he explains softly. ‘They used tweezers in Roman times. South Sea Islanders did it and then tattooed the lovely, brave flesh. It’s a tradition in Arabic cultures. It increases sensation, apparently. Just you wait.’

  You can’t. You come.

  Feeling so raw, open, exposed. Can barely contain your coming, the spasms tripping over themselves. His head dips down, he is laughing in delight, he is lapping you up in eagerness. When you come again you almost break his neck – he is scissored between your legs, trapped, drenched, you have varnished his face. He laughs and you laugh and now you know why men perceive women in terms of the sea, water, fluids, and you have no idea what is next, how this ends, does it ever end? He is like dry ice on the tongue, you flinch in shock but you can’t help tasting again and again, coming back for more, always more, in blind and furious want.

  ‘It’s so weird,’ he murmurs in the solid quiet of afterwards, ‘that what began as a trend purely for male fantasy – to maximise exposure, if you like, as in porn – has become this amazing symbol of sexual empowerment for women. Do you feel empowered? Does it really work like that?’

  ‘Yes,’ you whisper, ‘yes.’ Opening your raw lips for him with the V of your fingers, spreading yourself wide, in wonder, splitting yourself apart. ‘Yes, yes. Come in. Now. Please.’

  He is a drug. You are enslaved.

  Back and back you will go, always back. You can’t not.

  Lesson 106

  Maria and Bob used to go home laughing, and thanking their stars that they did live in that shocking place London

  A constant state of readiness, now. Bare. Sublimely aware, and knowing you’ll have this raging sense of illicitness later, and days later – every time you move, as you peel the potatoes, eat the Sunday roast, vacuum and sweep, clean out the chook house – all the time you’ll be squeezing your legs together and thinking of him, what he has transformed you into; a woman bound. By want.

  ‘It’ll start to itch,’ he’s warned you, his fingers tracing his handiwork and bringing on the stirring all over again, the slightest touch triggering you off. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Well, we’ll just have to keep doing it. Maintenance. It’s always important, that.’

  Aware, as you walk inside your house with a childish slap of the screen door.

  Aware, as you brush past your stepmother and put on your apron.

  Aware, as you greet your dad from his shift and yarn over the bonnet of an old Ford Falcon up on bricks, yakking away about the heat, how it’s bringing out the snakes, and the dams are dropping and church, on Sunday, you need to get back, yes Dad, yes.

  Almost coming with it as you talk, squeezing your groin on it.

  Do they see it in your face, your stroll, your stance? Your proud, walk tall love. Do they have any inkling, of any of it?

  This threshold you have crossed.

  You congratulate yourself on your cleverness. Squeezing your rawness, smiling, exquisitely calibrated.

  Lesson 107

  The wonderful law of sex exists spiritually as well as materially

  He has taken to writing on sheets of paper, he has retreated from your book but he will not give up.

  THE KEY

  One of the most transcendent joys available to women.

  ‘And I’m so jealous of it.’ He smiles a knowing smile as he holds up the page. ‘Ready?’

  You nod. Bite your lip.

  Delicately, he parts your lips. Licks, once; a shiver of tongue. You exclaim as if you’ve been burnt.

  ‘God has given women the most glorious gift imaginable.’

  ‘Which is?’ you groan, clutching his hair.

  ‘The only organ on the human body – on either body – that’s devoted entirely to one thing. Sensation,’ he chuckles, stroking, teasing. ‘Endless, lovely … sensation. It is, of course, the clit. Which has eight thousand nerve endings. Can you believe it? Twice as many as the boring old penis. And you must never, ever believe that the vagina is the explosive centre of female pleasure. Alfred Kinsey found that its interior walls, deep inside, actually have very few nerve endings, that they’re really quite enormously insensitive – compared to what’s on top.’ He smiles conspiratorially. ‘But this is something, I think, that any woman knows.’

  He kisses your clit in reverence.

  ‘This tiny, beautiful bud is the doorway to all the mystery and power of making love; a woman’s gateway to the divine. In Greek mythology, when Zeus and Hera visited the hermaphrodite Tiresias – trying to work out whether it was men or women who experienced the more pleasure from sex – Tiresias replied, “If the sum of love’s pleasure adds up to ten, nine parts go to women, only one to men.” And it’s all down to this.’ His tongue gently encircles your clit. ‘The one thing guaranteed to lay a woman waste. If she’ll let you near it.’

  You push Tol’s face onto you, into you, can hardly bear it anymore; need all this talking to stop.

  He bobs up, grins. ‘I need to get your toes pointing. That’s my next task.’

  ‘What? Just get on with it.’

  ‘It’s a sure sign of orgasm. And there’s an awful lot of toe-pointing with cunnilingus. It’s a much more certain way of bringing a woman to orgasm than vaginal sex ever is.’

  Your toes as flexed as a ballerina’s, again and again, that afternoon. Until you have to push him from you, away, get him off. Because your nerve endings are aching, exhausted, screaming for rest.

  Lesson 108

  We just plod on together, men and women alike, on the same road

  A grave instruction, the next time: you must always, always tell him if you don’t orgasm, if what he is doing isn’t working, you must never pretend; this whole process will grind to a halt if you do that.

  ‘But wouldn’t you know?’

  ‘Sometimes, believe me, it’s hard for us Neanderthals to work out.’

  ‘I thought modern girls knew how to have orgasms like their mums knew how to cook Sunday roasts.’

  He laughs. ‘You’d be surprised. It’s extremely easy for a woman to pretend. But if you do it means I’ve failed. I have married friends – women – who’ve never had an orgasm in their life. I need to know. So I can help. I need honesty, that’s all, you know that.’

  ‘Are you doing this for me, or for you?’

  He rolls his eyes, he says nothing.

  A chill, again, at why exactly he is doing this. You will never know him; you love him. The impossibility of that. You wonder if you love him because of the chip of ice within him – that rangy, jittery distance you can’t quite broach. He says he is obsessed, can’t get enough of you and then he walks away, because of his work, apparently, shutting you out; he goes off to his room and locks the door and tells you to go away, time is up, he needs to be alone. For a day, two, sometimes three. And then he rushes to you when you walk your bicycle up his drive and you are so pathetically grateful; craven, greedy, lost. Ready. For anything. He knows it.

  Resistance is sexy.
He has mastered that. The tension in a stretched wire, singing with tautness.

  You are writing all through the notebook now, cramming the margins of the author’s written words, the bottom of her pages and the top of them.

  The awful question, the perilous dynamism; a dynamism of absence and presence. If he wanted you completely and consumingly, if he conveyed that weakness – would you want him? Would serenity, stasis, knowing sink the boat? This love is a verb not a noun. It is galloping, withdrawing, retreating, surging – backwards, forwards – forever restless, refusing stillness and rest.

  It is exhausting.

  You are becoming thin with it, skin and bone. And it can only get worse.

  You can’t get it stopped.

  You need to know what’s next. Always what’s next. It’s how he has bound you to all this.

  You are on a path.

  And every morning now your little diary of observation is slipped into the pocket of your overalls, the new journal that your stepmother will never find because she would never think to glance at it; just another old book with a patched-up cover, from school no doubt. It is your explosive instruction manual for encroaching womanhood, the words you must never forget. Your words, now, more so than his; as you become more aware. As you step into being the woman he wants. And observe. Detach.

  Lesson 109

  In any profession, there is nothing which is so injurious, so fatal, as mediocrity