The Bride Stripped Bare

by Nikki Gemmell

  But that night you’re awake, vastly awake as Cole presses his trusting warmth into you. His hand rests on your hip and your eyes are owl-wide with this appetite for something else unleashed, it’s all violent and terrible and exhilarating within you. Did Theo ever feel like this? Did she have guilt? Would she now happily resume her life? For you’d dreamt not so long ago of one transgression, just one, stemming the tide of marital disintegration and flushing you out, so you could begin, afresh, your married life; and never look back.

  Your teeth nibble at a stubborn flap of skin on your lip, they nibble until there’s a warm rush of blood in your mouth.

  Lesson 72

  it is everyone’s duty to be kind to and help her fellows as much as possible

  So it begins.

  A weekday afternoon. Once a week. Always Gabriel’s flat.

  You’re a good teacher, you always have been, and now after years of being the good teacher you don’t want to just give, you want something back. There’s one condition, you make it clear from the start: this arrangement must not, in any way, intrude upon your regular life. It’s the only way you can make it work. When the lessons come to their end you will both disappear back into your worlds so that in the future, if you ever pass by chance on the street, you will not acknowledge each other or what you have done during these weekday afternoons in his flat. This will free you to explore exactly what you want. There’ll be no photographs, no letters, nothing concrete about any of it, nothing to seize as proof. Memory is all that either of you will be allowed to keep. The rules come quickly and clearly, and make it easier to justify what you’re doing.

  Once a week. It’s the only time you meet. For the rest of your waking hours you feast on the memory of what you’ve done.

  The throb of that.

  He opens the door in his suit, always, as if he’s just come from work. The air in his flat smells of inner London, of too much traffic standing still and the taste of iron is in your mouth. Business people walk by his ground-floor window, chatting on their mobiles, in their clattering heels and brisk shoes. It makes the lessons seem more willful, childish, indulgent, like a sunny afternoon stolen from work, spent, secretly, at a film. But worse, much worse.

  So, week by week. Slowly, you do not hurry. You feel you have all the time in the world to savor each other, having rushed in with that first, miraculous fuck: it was just a start. There’s so much to learn, now. For both of you, for as you teach him you’ll be teaching yourself although he doesn’t have to know that.

  A rough agenda is set.

  One, the removal of clothes. You learn his skin, inch by inch. He, yours.

  Two, the touching, the licking. Exactly where you want. The lobe of your ear, the tip of his tongue on your upper mouth. The skin below the vagina, its tender rim, your clit. You tell him exactly where you want him, you guide him, instructing him to slow down or not stop or don’t move or stay on track. And with that, finally, as he listens intently and does precisely what you want you have your first orgasm and a whole new world is opened up: your eyes are clenched with the warm flooding wet and you scissor on the bed and arch your back, trying to squeeze the last shudders out or prolong them, you know not what, and still the implosions shoot through your belly and then soften and stop, and you can’t move, you’re drained, all you can do is lie on the bed and laugh, in shock. Gabriel looks at you. My God, he says, my God he repeats. You sit up. Run your hands through your hair. You have to concentrate: this can’t be just about your pleasure, it’s Gabriel’s turn. With him giving you so much you want to present him with a flooding of delight back: you have a goal, for the very first time in your life, to see a man completely laid waste.

  By your hands, lips, tongue. If you can.

  So, the licking, where he wants: most of all, the flattened front of the tip of his cock and then its underside, he can hardly bear your mouth on it and yet can’t get it enough and while you’re doing it you squeeze the base of him tight. You discover it all together, you’re both learning so much and you look up, to his eyes: astounded, delighted, both of you. Then the rim of his asshole. His balls, the firmness beneath and it’s his turn to tell you not to stop.

  Three, the clandestine public kiss, fully clothed. The bedroom kiss, unclothed, the places for it.

  Four, a candlestick. The handle of a hairbrush. The neck of a champagne bottle, and how thrillingly gentle you both have to be. Why is it that inanimate objects can excite you more than a penis ever does?

  Five, the vibrator. Teasing your clit and hard in you. Under the head of his cock and in his ass and you savor the clench in his face as he comes.

  Six, porn magazines. He has to buy them, it’s his task. You want the letters pages, nothing else; you’re not interested in what he does with the rest. You revel in saying all the words that’ve never slipped comfortably from your tongue: cunt, fuck, ass. You’re the housewife with the angel face and a sudden grit in her talk and it’s as if your outside and insides no longer match. Fuck me, you tell him, come on, fuck my cunt and you’re appalled and aroused by the words slipping from your mouth.

  Seven, wrists bound to the bed posts. Disabled, blindfolded, tied up.

  Eight, the shower, rammed against the tiles.

  Nine, sleep. Curled around his back, your body his blanket, your palm on his heart because sometimes, you tell him, that’s all a woman wants.

  Ten, the fuck. The first time didn’t count, there was nothing to be learnt, it just had to be done. You need time for it now, to get it right; you’re determined, finally, to make it work. He’s too jerky, grating, mechanical, you knew it would be like this, there’s no music to what he’s doing and he comes too quickly, of course. You’d always wanted it quick with Cole; but this is different, you have to find the exquisiteness you know exists. You’d been hoping for something different with Gabriel but the fucking, for you, is still not catching alight. You make a heroic effort not to show him your disappointment, not to turn away in frustration, sulk.

  You take a deep breath.

  Tell him, gently, that you both need some practice at this. Tell him he needs to slow down a little, look at you, not lock himself into his own little world. Tell him you’re not, actually, getting a thing out it. He snaps his head away from you, he’s so annoyed, feels he’s come so far, it’s hard to tell him it’s just not far enough. He gets off you. Leaves a sticky mess. You grab at him, tenderly, in apology, but he storms to the bathroom and tells you he’s had enough.

  You don’t contact him for a week.

  Ring the morning of the next session and he answers, too quick.

  Can I see you this afternoon?

  Yes: grumpy, abrupt.

  Good, you say, I’m so glad, you say, warmly, knowing this would be his response. And wanting him so much.

  Gradually, gradually, you slow Gabriel down, allowing him in a fraction at a time, pulling away if he tries to rush. Teaching him that a key to the exquisiteness lies in the waiting, the refraining, the holding back; and you’ve both been experts at that, ever since your hands brushed a touching in a café as a phone number was handed across. You tap into that now: enforcing the rules of no contact during the week, not removing your clothes the instant you walk through his door, sitting down over a cup of tea and then slowly, absently lifting up your skirt, no underpants, of course, and lightly touching yourself as you chat. Widening your legs, flexing your back, watching his distraction, his inability to stay seated: gathering his head to your kiss as you come.

  You get Gabriel to feel you as if he’s a blind man reading the secrets of your inner skin. You make him vary his rhythm, gently admonish if it strays into monotony, teach him the secrets of tenderness, relaxing, surprise, teach him everything that you want. You iron him out until your inner thighs are fluttering and your pelvis is aching from stretching under him, until your thighs are trembling hours after you leave and into the next day.

  Gabriel wants the lessons more frequently than you, he rages agains
t the pleasure he’s missed, he’s afraid of time running out. It’s as if he wants to make love incessantly to cement what you’re doing in his life, to make your time together solid and settled and a habit you both cannot break. He says he is happy, so happy. He never thought he could have such greed in him.

  You hold him, you laugh, squeeze him tight. You don’t tell him you feel that too.

  You will not be hurried. You refuse to increase the frequency, to quicken your pace: you want to linger. You will not lengthen the lessons into the evenings, despite his insistence. When the dark comes you must stop. The lessons can only be conducted in the light, it’s like you’re living in fear of falling asleep with Gabriel and being kissed awake in the morning light, and being trapped, forever, in his life.

  It’s as if you’ve never felt pleasure until now. It’s as if what passed as pleasure before was a cardboard cut-out of it. For you’ve never been in control, until now; you’ve never, before, had exactly what you want.

  Lesson 73

  hints on shopping: always buy the best article of its kind

  You want Gabriel’s finger in your ass as he’s fucking you, you tell him that, you’ve always wanted to try. There are so many things you’ve always wondered about and now there’s a willing partner who’ll never embarrass you, for he’ll never be entwined in your normal life. With his finger in your ass you have your first orgasm while a man is in you and you smile wide, you can’t stop: you could grow to love this too much.

  And then the licking, whole golden afternoons of it. It’s never quite worked for you: Cole, particularly, always thinks he knows best. Now you tell Gabriel exactly where you want him, around the clit most of all and you splay your fingers on each side of it, you straighten them to draw back the flesh. It stands bold, a wild red. You lift your lower back and press his mouth on to you and you won’t let him come up as you twist your fist into the sheet. And then he breathes you in gently and his tongue dips into you, it sweeps deeper and deeper and you didn’t know you could ever get so wet. He stares at you as you come, stares at what he’s done and you turn your face and tell him not to look, go away; you don’t want him to see you so cracked apart. But he keeps looking, gleefully, his fingers held over a smile, as if in prayer.

  But I love you like this, he says. I just love it.

  Gabriel’s not afraid of your sexuality. Your pleasure is giving him pleasure, it arouses him and he asks nothing physically of you in return: no one has taught him to do that, to expect. He’s your first lover who’s utterly selfless, there’s no request to go down on him, it’s purely unselfish, feminine sex.

  Your orgasms are becoming increasingly intense, they trip over each other until almost as soon as his tongue touches your skin you have to push him away and thrust your fingers between your legs, trying to stem the coming, to slow it down, and you slam your face into the pillow, muffling sounds you’ve never uttered before that break from the base of your spine.

  You feel so alive. Shaken awake after years of apathy until you’re almost coming with just his kiss in greeting, or the sound of his voice on the phone.

  You wonder sometimes if he enjoys the licking that much, for a colleague let slip once that the taste of a woman, when he went down on her, always made him gag, that there was no woman whose smell he’d ever liked even though every woman’s smell was different. But you’re addicted now and many afternoons he’ll be between your legs until your inner thighs are trembling and you’re begging him to stop for it’s too exquisite, it verges into pain now, you can hardly bear it. And yet he goes on, as if he’s trying to stamp out the memory of any other man’s fuck and you’re drowning in the pleasure of it, you’re glutted, keeling, lost.

  You kiss, softly, the valley at the base of his neck, you kiss, softly, the pale clearing behind his ear, you breathe him in deep, kneel, swell him. Want to give so much back, to have him as stunned by sensation as you are.

  Changed, utterly.

  And each week hurtling home on the tube you wonder where it can all end, how much more can you ask of him. For everything else is obliterated by that explosive pleasure at the base of your spine, your whole other life is wiped away. Neither of you talks about husbands or families, or what on earth comes next, because you can’t bear to think about anything that might put a stop to all this.

  Lesson 74

  go to bed not later than ten and get up at five or six when you are grown-up

  You ring your mother. It’s her birthday; you’ve sent some lovely, hand-made Spanish riding boots that were way too much but you feel so generous and large-spirited in this new life.

  Hey, you sound great, she says.

  Yeah, I feel it. I’m getting lots of rest, and exercise.

  You want to tell her about Gabriel, burstingly, but if anyone finds out you’ll have lost a little of your control: you’ll never know when it could slap you hard in the face.

  Keep doing what you’re doing, she says in farewell. It’s working, darling.

  You smile. Take down an old photo from the mantelpiece. Your mother’s in the Gobi Desert, on a dig site, a bucket in one hand and a spade in the other, and her eyes are narrowed against the sun and strands of hair whip across her face. You used to hate her loose, loud life when you were growing up: the way she’d wander around the house naked, push you out to experience something of the world, take you to interminable dinners to meet yet another of her men.

  You recognize now that your mother was doing exactly what she wanted and, in her mid-fifties, she’s still doing it. She’s now contentedly celibate. Living a vivid life, which sometimes involves watching old black-and-white films until three A.M. and sleeping until midday and having just tea for breakfast and nothing else. Jumping on a plane at the news of a fossil find, gone for a month. Reluctant to go on dates. Shying away from what they might lead to: some sort of sharing of her life.

  They’re so boring, the lot of them, she says. All they want to do is talk about themselves. Or stand you up. I’d much rather go out with a girlfriend than a man.

  Most of her friends are divorced, don’t want another man, seem happier by themselves. They’ve done the kids, they’ve been the good wife. But you wonder if your mother’s being completely honest with you. Who really chooses to be alone? So much energy, in your adulthood, has been spent trying to escape from that state.

  You wonder what your mother would make of you now, with your secret life. If she’d approve; if she’d worry for Cole or say it’s the best thing for you both. He’s been so buried in his work that he doesn’t seem to have noticed the languorous fullness of your movements as you prepare his dinner. Hasn’t noticed your fingers savoring your swollen, reddened lips as he watches television, chats, eats.

  You’re a good wife, a good actress: it’s surprisingly easy, the cover-up. You were acting all along and scarcely realizing it. But you want to grow old with Cole, you still want that. You’d be perfectly happy never to have sex with your husband again, except to create a child; and you’ve heard that before from married friends. Cole represents something larger than sex: he’s embedded in your life plan.

  But where does desire go? Will this fugitive feeling eventually die out? Or now that it’s loosened will it lurk within you into old age, all rangy and discontented, just waiting to trip up your life?

  You’ve been careful, Cole will never find out. Gabriel won’t tell, for you’ve been entrusted with a secret about him that virtually guarantees that. How mutually beneficial it all is, how perfect: you’ve found a lover who’ll do exactly what you want.

  Who’ll never talk.

  Who’s woken you up.

  Lesson 75

  the shoddy trade

  A gift box, just like the one that held your vibrator. It’s beautifully wrapped. Handcuffs. No note. You smile, you don’t need to ask anyone now.

  They lead to a new lesson, with the bedhead. There are the sharp, hot spurts of your cum; it’s such a lovely shock. Your voice is deepening when Gabri
el’s in you, it’s dropping an octave and you listen, astounded, to the woman you’re becoming.

  To be fucked in the ass, something you’ve always wondered about. The pain, the exquisiteness, the illicitness of it. You don’t want it often, it has to keep its edge, you need it to remain unique.

  Gabriel wants it a lot, but he respects your wishes when you say no, he backs off.

  There’s a beauty to his carefulness, his intent; you think, with some amusement, that he learns with the focus of a first-time driver who’s never before sat behind the wheel. He’s so earnest and grateful. You teach him to touch with assurance, confidence; you teach him to mask his fear, but you can tell that love, for him, will be a vice when it comes, will grip him hard, will swallow him complete. Your heart already bleeds for him, for what is ahead.

  He’s still glamorous to you; his honesty has glamour. You love his chuff when you come, you love watching his eyes, delighted and astounded, at you as much as himself. You can’t bring yourself to tell him that so much of this is new for you, too, that in some ways you began these lessons as virginal as he. That everything you want has been, for so long, in your head; that you’ve never spoken out.

  Your Elizabethan woman did, it’s in the confidence of her voice. You hear her whispering, delightedly, through your blood: go deeper, further, don’t slip back.

  There are many women admired not so much for their virtues, as for their vices and imperfections.

  Lesson 76

  few women pass through life without being called upon to nurse a relation or friend

  Your mother rings. Theo has called.

  Really? Why?