by Ella Baxter
‘No worries,’ I say, wiping her sweat from my arm.
I feel something smack into me and turn to see a woman walking blindly in a leather hood with the eyes and mouth zipped closed. Another woman gives her a sharp spank, before roughly unzipping both her eye patches. The parkour group approach the couple from behind and swallow them into their fold, while nearby a man in a gas mask gets an energetic blowjob from another in a mesh wrestling suit.
‘Whoa,’ I say.
Leo pulls me over to a gathering of people who circle around two women. One is wearing a rubber rabbit mask, and the ears are so long that they bounce forward and back as she bounds ahead of another woman who swings a lasso. Every few seconds the woman with the lasso booms, ‘Run, rabbit, run!’
The rabbit-woman picks up her pace until she is running frantically around the inside of the circle. If she gets too close to escaping, the spectators push her back. At one point she stops mid sprint and stands up on her tiptoes, sniffing the air. The crowd begins to chant.
Run, rabbit, run!
Run, rabbit, run!
My heart pounds as I watch the woman with the lasso inch closer to the rabbit-woman then throw the rope around her and cinch it tight. The rabbit-woman takes two frightened hops forward. The woman with the lasso pulls her swiftly so that she falls to the floor with a loud thump. As the rabbit-woman thrashes about, trying to get free, the woman holding the lasso hauls her from the circle. I crane my head, trying to see where they’re going, as Leo grins at me and pumps his fists.
‘Run, rabbit, run!’ he yells.
He stares into my eyes. ‘Most people consider this an imbalance of power, yeah? But it’s not. The chick in the rabbit mask is just as powerful. Both are giving the other what she needs, see?’
‘Where will they go now?’ I ask. ‘What’s the woman going to do to her?’
‘Nah,’ he says, ‘you’re not getting it—that was the whole thing. That was the erotic part.’
‘Which bit?’
‘The woman getting the rabbit, the fear leading up to it. It’s all about how it feels up here.’ Leo taps my head above my ear, and I push his hand away because he can’t just go around knocking on people’s heads.
Vincent’s meditation book suggests mirroring people if you want to communicate well with them, and so I stand directly in his eye line and mimic the position of his arms and legs. I want this night to be a good experience.
‘Leo,’ I say, ‘I really need to have a great time.’
He waves to someone over my shoulder. ‘Yeah—that’s, like, the whole point.’
I give up trying to mirror him and instead walk slowly behind him as he starts to move through the crowd, which has hit fever pitch after the rabbit scene.
While looking at a woman being penetrated by two men on a nearby stage, I wonder what the evacuation procedure is if there were a fire. It’s basically a concrete bunker. I scuff my boot across the floor, which feels slippery. They probably just hose it down at the end of the night.
‘How do you think they clean this place?’ I ask, as Leo’s eyes dart between the two men and the woman.
‘Are you worried about it?’ he asks, laughing.
I watch as the two men manoeuvre the woman so that she is like a bridge between them.
‘I mean, I guess they would just sweep it out or something?’ he says.
I look at some scattered ice that has been spilled across the floor, as well as a disintegrating feather boa, and then turn back to the woman, who is glowing with sweat. Her hair sticks to her neck and back in lines along her body, as she rocks between the two men. They run their hands over her skin as if polishing her, and I get the sense that she wouldn’t have tricky emotions that she needs to rehome. She looks like the kind of woman who has no problem making decisions based on what she likes rather than on what she doesn’t like. She would have a growth mindset.
The man positioned behind her pulls away and looks down at his penis, which has softened into a glutinous stub. He shakes it, which makes it shrink even more, while the audience gathered around the podium urge it up and out.
Shoulder to shoulder in a dense crowd, watching as a man shakes life into his own penis, I’m surprised to feel a little of the submarine loneliness from earlier. I turn to Leo and pull him into a full body hug, pressing my chest to his; I want to feel his heartbeat through his bones and skin, to know that I’m not alone, but all I can feel is the reverberating thump of music around us. Leo allows himself to be hugged but his focus is still on the three people on stage. I manoeuvre closer, until I can feel that our hearts are pushed right together.
‘Amelia, fuck’s sake—what is it? You don’t like it here? Do you need attention?’ He wriggles free and laughs, and in that moment my loneliness fades. Not by much, but it will do for now.
‘We could dance?’ Leo offers.
We begin shuffling in front of each other, moving slowly to the fast music. After a few minutes he lets go of the lead, shrugging and grinding his hips. He’s not much of a dancer but it doesn’t matter, because dancing is hard. I have to give him credit for really going for it, though, and I join in, feeling the lead of the collar lapping at my back as I throw in some moves of my own.
Leo clenches his fists and does a move not unlike shaking two maracas incredibly fast. He’s really carving out space for himself here, and I feel that I should try to match his energy. I meow out loud for effect before sauntering around in a languid circle. I flop over, and shimmy back up like a peacock on heat. I clap my hands twice, which distracts me because my skin under the strobe lights look unreal, almost painted. I kick sideways. I smile at the woman who has clapped once in response to my claps. I wink at her—I see you. She winks back and wags her tongue at me. I turn around and bounce a few steps in her direction, and we both laugh. Leo appears between us, smiling, but I shuffle off with a jazzy quickstep and he follows. The woman blows me a kiss and I bid her farewell with a wave.
I look down over my weaving body as it turns like ribbons of ink through water in this aerial ocean, in this arid party. I lift my eyes to the ceiling. It’s so hot in here. We are all sensual and amoebic. I feel like I am learning something important but I can’t put my finger on it. I want to know what I don’t; I want to be there in the centre of the unknown.
Leo pulls on the collar, drawing me towards him.
‘How are you liking it?’ he asks over the techno track that has just reached a pre-crescendo period, like a sound recording of someone sewing two lengths of foil together.
‘It’s a good distraction,’ I yell back.
‘Oh yeah, from what?’
I lift his arm to check the time on his watch, and see that it’s past midnight.
‘My mother’s funeral is today.’ My eyes water as I say it, and I blink a few times, trying to push all the feeling back into my face.
He gives me the blank look that people wear sometimes when they want to move past other people’s emotions.
‘Want me to take your mind off it?’ he asks.
‘Absolutely,’ I say.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Leo guides me towards a small stage and pushes me up the steps, but my feet tangle together and I stumble, falling onto my hands. I peek out from the corner of my eye to see whether anyone has noticed and am surprised to see a small crowd gathering.
‘You okay?’ Leo extends a hand to help me up, but I brush him away. I scramble to my feet and curtsy, and a few people clap half-heartedly in response.
‘Ready?’ Leo asks, wide-eyed and twitching. I can only imagine how wet his palms are now. He rubs his forehead with two fingers, up and down, up, down, which makes him seem manic. He stops suddenly, and holds eye contact with me, and I can see that his pupils are so dilated that his eyes look black.
‘Damn it, I forgot to get consent.’ His hands are in a prayer position in front of his chest. ‘Do you please consent to me using the bullwhip on you?’
‘I don’t know what that is.’
‘It’s just a short whip—look.’ He pulls a whip from his back pocket and unfurls it, threading his hand through the wrist loop and holding on to the wooden handle. The plaited leather is about as long as my body.
‘Sure,’ I say.
I glance around the club, reminding myself of how little people are wearing before I pull my t-shirt over my head and kick off my shoes. I unbutton my pants and pull them down over my hips, as Leo takes a step back and nods. Being nude might enable me to fit in more. I will be fully immersed in the experience then. I push my pants to my knees while doubled over, and then lift my feet one by one to push them down my calves. Being nude is totally fine in here; in fact, it’s the norm. Leo is watching me, even taking another step back to really drink in the whole picture. I keep rolling my pant legs down until they pool around my ankles. I am in a low crouch as I slowly step out of each leg. I notice a few members of the audience wandering off.
I roll my underwear down over my legs, stepping out of them triumphantly with my arms above my head, and then pick them up and fling them into the crowd. They fall to the floor and lie there, crotch open to the ceiling. I’m really bringing the energy tonight. I should tell people that I’ve never done this before, never been naked on this scale before. They would probably be amazed at how I have taken to it like a duck to water. I look down over my naked body and do a slow cha cha cha. It’s actually fine being naked in public; not too weird at all.
‘Finished?’ Leo asks.
A tall moustachioed man from the crowd lifts a chair onto the stage and Leo drags it into the middle and tells me to kneel down and place my chest on it. I hold on to the legs of the chair, and press my forehead into the plastic seat. It smells like the tarpaulin in the shed back at home. It reminds me of camping. I try to relax, but the edge of the chair digs into the bottom of my ribs and I feel uncomfortable regardless of how many minor adjustments I make. I look behind me to see Leo, now shirtless and chatting animatedly to a woman in the audience. She laughs at something he says, as I continue waiting.
I should prepare for the kink. I flex my back like I was taught to do in a yoga class once, a little cat/cow action. Vincent’s meditation guide would say that I should make room to be present. I actively encourage my authentic self to bloom, but my nose is suddenly extremely itchy. I touch the tip of it against my shoulder, but it still feels like a sneeze is coming. My diaphragm is squashed, and my eyes are bulging with all the blood that is rushing to my head. I take what I hope to be a calming breath, and roll my knees in small, crunchy circles.
‘I’m ready,’ I say, turning back to Leo, and he gestures for me to stay where I am, before languidly arcing the whip over his shoulder in time to the music. I can see the woman in the first row still smiling at him as he steps forward in a lunge and throws the whip forward like a baseball. It cracks a foot away from the chair.
‘Um,’ I say, because there seemed to be a lot of effort behind that throw, ‘I feel like maybe that was a bit fast.’
He grins and raises a finger to his lips, shushing me, before pointing to a bouncer who is making sure that the front row of the audience is moving further back from the edge of the stage.
Leo lifts the whip up into the air again, and then cracks it on the ground at his feet. I’ve never seen someone wheel a whip around before, but I have watched fly fishing shows on TV with Jack, and it is very similar.
Leo walks over, the precious whip trailing behind him, then bobs down and winds my ponytail around one fist.
‘I don’t know what you said before,’ he says, pulling my head back until it hurts, ‘but it’s important you don’t move or speak while I’m whipping you, otherwise someone could get seriously hurt.’
‘That just seemed really fast, the way you piffed it forward like that,’ I say. ‘I’m arse-naked here, and all of this is a bit new.’
I shake my way out of his grasp and glower at him, and he laughs, pushing my face down onto the hard plastic. I wonder whether all sadists are like this, or if it’s just him. I’m not sure that I have the natural inclination to be subservient, and yet here I am, being told what to do while bent over a catering chair at a sex club. My mother is dead. I’m sad. I am young. I do have excuses.
More people are milling around the platform, attracted by the sense of danger that comes from being made to keep one’s distance. A woman steps into my line of vision wearing a corset that has squashed all the meat of her body up, so that it has collected in a great mound under her chin. She looks from Leo to me and I see her smile as the first strike lands across my thighs and I cry out in shock.
He whips me again, and like a thunderclap I am flung out of my flesh and into the ether.
I close my eyes and inhale, as my heart syncs to the beat of the music.
Leo hits me again, and everything between my scalp and heels tenses. I try to make eye contact with some of the onlookers, curious to see how they respond to someone being dismantled like this in front of them. Their faces will tell me if this is a routine whipping or not. I look around at the crowd, most of whom regard me impassively. No one is particularly moved by this. People look relatively calm as I am eviscerated in front of them. In a small corner of my psyche, I suspect it is because my body is now a stand-in for all bodies. People have gathered to watch somebody be crushed into the ground, and it doesn’t matter who, or how, but the fact that a body is suffering serves as a warning to their own. Look what I can do to you.
All feeling has gravitated towards the outer layers of my skin. I focus on the heat of my flesh, which feels as if it has split in two, and for a moment I can’t even locate my sadness, and the grief has flown out of me like a gas. But then the moment passes, and in its place is a sharp physical pain that is on the cusp of being unbearable, paired with all the emotions I’d managed to repress. The grief and sadness return together, like two friends holding hands.
I reach back and run my fingers over the pattern of welts that are bubbling up along my thighs, until Leo yells at me to move my fucking hand, and for a moment all I can smell is plastic, and it is the only thing that feels familiar. People think sadness is a heavy emotion, but it can’t be heavy if it permeates everything. Sadness penetrates. It floods; a body can be filled with it. A body can absorb it like a sponge. When you are this far gone, you take everyone down with you. You snuff.
‘Hit me harder!’ I yell back at Leo.
He walks around and bends down until he is level with my ear. ‘What?’
‘More!’ I yell into his face.
Leo walks to the far end of the stage and cracks the whip so hard across my back that I feel my heartbeat pulse in my fingertips. He’s broken my skin. I shoot one hand up into the air and wave it from side to side. No more. The pain has shot up a register, and I clench my jaw while all senses overload. I wave my hand—no more—a swimmer out past the break. Not waving, but drowning. Was that a book? An album? A poem or an epitaph?
I turn around to stop him from swinging at me again, and he drops the whip and unbuckles his belt. I am crushed into the chair as his body slams into mine, bumping into the entrance to my cervix and rearranging my internal landscape. I’m actually breaking in half; he’s stretching my body to the point that it tears. He’s not wearing a condom, I realise. Maybe walking through the doorway of the club is considered giving consent. I would have thought it would involve signing something. At the funeral home we make people sign consent forms any time there is access to a person’s body. Police, next of kin, council members, doctors, cleaners. I decide, while fully penetrated, to consent, because you can always throw your body on the fire to keep others warm. I was already filled with petrol; he’s just a man-shaped match.
I focus on a fire hydrant attached to the wall ahead, half concealed by the leg of the bouncer. His jeans are pulled up so high that they must be belted over his belly button, and I shift my focus to his belt buckle as I withstand more. I swallow four times. I blink twenty-two times. I grind my teeth. Leo pushes into me harder, a
nd I wonder why anyone is interested in scary movies, or piercings, or creating drama and chaos. Why would anyone willingly fall face first into a soup of all these things, on a stage right now, in front of an audience?
A large part of me is horrified. It didn’t need to be like this. What have you done? the large part is saying. Get up and walk away, it’s yelling. Move, woman, it screams. Get your body away from this. But there’s a small part that is harping on. There always is, isn’t there? What did you expect? it’s saying. Intimate things have been brutal since early childhood. You have had metal spoons shoved into your mouth while you weren’t looking. You have had lovely, silky bananas taken out of your hand, pronged onto a cold fork and shoved into your closed mouth. Is this any different? And the larger part is screaming, Yes, yes. This is very different. And the small part is saying, Well, it is and it isn’t.
‘This is my choice,’ I say, as Leo starts to take my endurance personally. I wrap my hands tighter around the chair legs so that I can dig my fingernails into my thumbs, waiting for the endorphins, whenever they may choose to arrive.
The bouncer smiles at me politely and I close my eyes in response, letting out a groan as I cope with the friction of Leo eroding my insides. I want my head to explode and my heart to billow out my neck like a hot-air balloon, getting bigger and bigger, until the audience will be forced to cling to me as we all take off into the sky. I want to project all the emotions I have across my huge balloon heart. I want people to see my pain and to be so alarmed by it that they check books to see whether it’s normal. I want to know if it is actually normal to feel so much and so little. I want people to tell me it’s okay. I want the whole crowd and the entire world to tell me that I’m doing what I should be. That it’s not too much, and that this is as hard as it will be. I want to be told I will survive my own feelings. I want.
Enough.
I push Leo away and he stumbles back from my body, his erection bouncing in front of him. I am sore and naked on the platform. I let go of the chair and sink into a ball on the ground. I look away from the audience and lift my hands to my face, keenly aware that I got what I wanted, and I now smell like someone unfamiliar.
