New Animal

by Ella Baxter

  He continues flicking through the album and speaking about various photos, and it takes all my willpower to keep still and listen, because this is very, very uncomfortable. I want to shake Jack and tell him that nostalgia is not an antidote to grief. Nothing will stop us from enduring this for the rest of our lives, and there’s plenty more to come. He will die. Simon will die. Judy will die. There are five ways you can be thrown out of your body, and they drum like a marching beat inside me. Accident. Suicide. Homicide. Natural. Un-de-ter-mined! Accident. Suicide. Homicide. Natural. Un-de-ter-mined! Accident. Suicide. Homicide. Natural. Un-de-ter-mined! They will be divided up between us all.

  He turns to the next page, where there is a photo of my mother squeezing a wet sponge into the kitchen sink. It was before she had us, and she has a scarf tied around her head and is wearing an old sarong. She’s smiling at the camera, but I get the sense that the photo was taken after she had spent a whole day cleaning.

  ‘She was sick of all the dust in the house. It was filthy when we moved in here. I sneezed dust, it was that bad. Even now, I worry that the dust might have made its way up to my brain. I asked your mum at the time if she thought the dust went that high, and you know what she said? Probably. She said it with that smile of hers that acted more like a frown. She was so bossy. I loved it. I loved it. I used to suggest things just to rile her up.’

  I let my eyes blur, wondering if I’d ever truly understood grief before, even though I worked in a funeral home. I knew it was the catalyst for books and songs. People wax lyrical about grief and death. People win regional arts grants for their essays on watching people die. I never read or listened to any of it, because I thought I knew it already. Every day, every single day, I would lecture someone about grief. It’s profound. It’s necessary. It’s human. I would repeat these words that I had heard other people say, with no personal experience of them. Which part of grief do you want to know about? The developmental? Physiological? Emotional? I’ve got facts; I’m full of facts. It’s profound. It’s necessary. It’s human. Nobody tells you that it drips like dye into your life, slowly colouring everything. Nobody tells you how unhelpful people can be, or how unfriendly the world can seem. Nobody tells you the hours involved in processing all the feelings and memories. Nobody. Nobody. Nobody. Nobody tells you any of this.

  I sit at the table and implode while looking at photos of my dead mother. I would rather fly to Abu Dhabi and bury myself alive and alone in the boiling sand, because it would still feel better than this. I am so mad that I could hit Jack with my fists to make him understand that it is unforgivable to make a grieving woman sit at a table and look at photos of her mother, who is right now being burnt to pieces, to specks, to dust. Unthinkable. This is more uncomfortable than painting a man in my menstrual blood, more uncomfortable than being flayed alive in front of a crowd. It is so uncomfortable that I need to feel something else of equal intensity. If anyone ever asks why I went back to the Widow Maker, I will tell them it’s because Jack pulled out photo albums of my mother, and I saw the face of the woman I loved—not radiating happiness or joy, but enduring a marriage that didn’t suit her. If anyone ever asks me how I dealt with this grief, I will tell them honestly: by killing the light of everything else around me.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Vlad turns the aquarium until she is face to face with the fighting fish. She holds the tank between both of her hands, and touches her nose to the glass.

  ‘Are you alright in there?’ she asks softly.

  She’s changed clothes since I saw her this afternoon, and now wears a lace teddy with a baggy sweatshirt over the top, and thigh-high patent leather boots. I feel conservative by comparison, in a loose floral dress. I had no other options really; my Marquis costume is torn and dirty, and I haven’t wanted to wear my black outfit since the experience with Leo. Tanya doesn’t like the horse mask and I don’t know I can be bothered trying to get a different body by squeezing myself into something tighter or shinier. It doesn’t work for me. I just feel even more uncomfortable.

  ‘I’ve told Bronwyn and Tanya that he’s not thriving, but they don’t listen.’ Vlad picks up a small plastic container and picks out a couple of freeze-dried worms, dropping them into the water, where they sink to the bottom, unnoticed.

  ‘He’s usually a deep red but he’s faded a lot lately, and he’s not feeding readily, which is what all the websites say he should be doing.’

  ‘He’s probably bored,’ I say, looking at the small square tank.

  ‘I actually can’t stand it.’ She looks around the room. ‘Is there anything we can give him to look at?’

  ‘We could put him near the window?’ I suggest.

  Vlad carries him over to the windowsill and I pull the drapes aside. The fish looks nonplussed as his tank is pushed right up to the glass.

  ‘Look at your world,’ Vlad says, bobbing down near the tank to see his view from that angle. I do the same behind Vlad, and all three of us scrutinise the hydrangeas outside, which are lit from above by the security lights. The fish flares his gills, as if pleased with the new arrangement.

  ‘Imagine being a fighting fish and having nothing to fight,’ Vlad says, while shifting the enclosure an inch to the left. ‘He doesn’t even know the destruction he’s capable of. The level of aggression that he was born to feel.’ She stands looking at the tank with her hands on her hips.

  I nod. ‘Truly a waste.’

  We leave the fish and walk to the aftercare room, where we sit facing each other on opposing couches. She pulls a pair of tweezers from a backpack and hoists her leg over the arm of the sofa, plucking at the stray hairs along her pubic line. I watch as she pulls repeatedly at a stubborn hair, realising that this is the most comfortable I’ve felt around someone since arriving.

  ‘Did you grow up around here?’ I ask.

  ‘Canberra,’ she says. ‘But my name confuses people. I took it from Vlad the Impaler. I use the strap-on so much, it just made sense.’

  ‘Right,’ I say.

  ‘Don’t be nervous about Jay.’ She rests her tweezers on the arm of the couch so that she can pinch her false eyelashes to her real ones. ‘He’s a really special dude.’

  ‘Righto.’

  ‘Just let go, and don’t let your brain tell you it’s pain; your brain is irrelevant.’

  ‘I was kind of into the pain at first, when I subbed for a guy called Leo, but then—’

  Vlad interrupts: ‘Leo the sadist?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He’s the worst; he was banned from here last year. Hand on heart, Amelia, he’s awful.’

  ‘It felt like I was breaking, and he didn’t wear a condom …’

  ‘Yeah, and I bet he used that shitty little bullwhip he takes everywhere?’

  ‘Yep.’ I turn around and lift my dress, showing her my welts.

  She exhales slowly and shakes her head.

  ‘To be fair, I told him to hit me harder,’ I say.

  She laughs. ‘You might be like me. I have hormones that are on a high boil. I get these surges of energy where I either have to fuck or fight, or stick my fingers in someone’s mouth just to see how warm it is in there. I lost a tooth last year because I fell off a fence I was climbing for no reason, except to see how high I could get.’ She smiles broadly and points to a particularly white tooth at the front.

  ‘Is that why you’re here all the time?’

  ‘Yeah, and I teach workshops now. But I also just like being around Tanya and Bronwyn and the regulars. They are my family and this is my home.’

  ‘Do you ever find yourself needing to have sex in order to stop thinking?’

  ‘No, never,’ she says. ‘That sounds really toxic. Tell me more.’

  ‘Like, my body feels as if it’s made bigger and more powerful when I have another person inside me. You know, like I have two sets of lungs, two hearts, two brains. I am a beast, and I can’t think because I’m in beast mode.’

  ‘Sounds like you can’t b
e vulnerable.’

  ‘But I’m constantly vulnerable.’

  ‘Nah, not if you’re fucking to stop feeling. That’s disassociation. There’s lots of stuff online about it; definitely worth a look.’

  She crosses her legs. ‘You should come to one of my breath-play workshops. I teach people about how to be fully present and respectful, but mainly how not to squeeze too hard on the internal and external jugular veins.’ She looks up to the ceiling and traces a finger down each side of her neck.

  ‘I know those veins. I do mortuary make-up, and they reach from your heart to your brain.’

  ‘There’s a song in that.’ She pulls a battered notebook from her bag, opens it and scrawls across the page, muttering, ‘Heart … to … your … brain.’ She closes the book and looks up at me. ‘Mortuary make-up?’

  I nod.

  ‘You’re too young to be around dead people.’

  ‘I’m not. It’s beautiful; I love it. It’s my home and family, just like this is to you.’

  ‘So let me get this straight: you have so many thoughts that the only thing that can stop them for a moment is banging another person?’

  I shrug. ‘I have a level of thought-fullness in me that medication doesn’t fix, so I use sex.’

  Vlad raises her eyebrows and opens her notebook again. I wonder what else I can say that she could use as lyrics.

  ‘Well, if it were up to me, I would say that you’re on the side of your body, and even other people’s bodies both dead and alive, but not on the side of your mind …’ She turns to look out the window, tapping a finger to her chin. ‘But why?’

  ‘Because the two don’t like each other,’ I say.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The head and the body need each other, but they don’t like each other.’

  There’s a pause between us.

  ‘Wow, you’re crying really loudly,’ Vlad says, picking up a box of tissues. She pulls a few out, and pushes them into my fist. ‘Whoa there, take it easy.’ She stands and comes over to sit next to me. She pats my back rhythmically with one hand.

  My body and my head don’t like each other, maybe they never have, but they should be able to work together. If I could estimate the length of things that I’ve done that are good for my body, it would be about twelve metres long. If I measured all the things I had done wrong to my body, it would be at least a kilometre—maybe more—and I’m not even that old yet. The scales are imbalanced, and I’ve felt it for a while. I like to think in terms of measurements; quantifying things this way helps me to understand them better. Everyone should do this. Monks. Police. Everyone should measure the good and bad like this. If I wasn’t crying so goddamn hard I would invite Vlad to try it.

  ‘Hey, how about I do your make-up before I take you in to see Jay,’ she says. She pulls a beauty case out of her rucksack. ‘It will make you feel put together. If I’m a mess inside, it doesn’t matter as long as my make-up is perfect. It’s like a mask, you know?’

  ‘Yes,’ I say, wiping my face, my head already nodding and my chin jutting forward, waiting for her to begin.

  Vlad shakes some foundation onto her fingers and then lightly pats it over my face in a slow and methodical way that I find entrancing.

  ‘My mum died,’ I say.

  ‘You’ve already told me.’

  She pushes the foundation around the crease of my nose, and when she gets to the edge of my lips, I realise that my mouth is still open, and I snap it closed.

  ‘I’m sorry that happened,’ Vlad says, blending the concealer with a fluffy brush.

  My head is surrounded by the sweet mint of her breath, mixed with the powder of her make-up, as well as the perfume from her wrist. I rest my head against her hand, as the awful feeling that this might end soon fills me right up to the top.

  I open my eyes. ‘I feel like I might not be coping.’

  ‘You’re definitely not,’ she says. ‘And no one expects you to.’

  She sweeps her hands over my eyes to close them again and I let her.

  ‘You don’t have to do anything at all, except feel. That’s your only job at the moment.’

  ‘I can’t,’ I say, lulled into honesty.

  Vlad spritzes my face with a fine mist that smells of freshly cut cucumbers.

  ‘You will.’

  She pulls away, and I open my eyes to check where she’s going.

  ‘You look really good,’ Vlad says.

  ‘I feel a bit better.’

  ‘I’m just going to finish with a light layer of this stuff.’ She holds up a compact with the lovely golden nectarine colour, and brushes it from my cheekbone to the top of my ear.

  ‘Thank you,’ I say.

  ‘My pleasure.’ She starts packing away her make-up. ‘It’s time for your session now.’

  I stand, smoothing my dress down and wondering how to thank her.

  ‘You’ll love this,’ she says, packing away her make-up and heading for the door.

  ‘Will I see you afterwards?’ I ask. I know I sound clingy, but I’m trying to feel all the emotions, like she said.

  ‘No,’ Vlad says, ‘I’m busy till late. Just enjoy yourself and I’ll catch you around.’

  I let myself feel the discomfort at the distance growing between us as I follow her out of the room.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Vlad knocks on the door twice and then opens it, smiling. I wait near the entrance until she beckons me forward. ‘I have the beautiful Amelia for you to play with this evening.’

  I shuffle in, and Jay looks me up and down.

  ‘Oh,’ he says after a moment. ‘And what would you be in the mood for, Amelia?’ He looks back to Vlad, as she twirls her hair in his direction.

  ‘Whatever, really,’ I say.

  ‘Go easy on her,’ Vlad says. ‘She’s very new and wants to learn.’

  ‘People don’t realise how nuanced it is, do they, babe?’ he says. ‘Too many dickheads out there beating women up in the name of kink.’

  She winks at me before closing the door behind her, and I see a faint look of resignation pass across Jay’s face, which he quickly replaces with a smile. I don’t look like Vlad.

  Jay sits cross-legged on a king-sized mattress in the centre of the room. He’s wearing loose harem pants and a long-sleeved shirt with Feminist written in block letters down one arm. The only other furniture in the room is a gymnastic apparatus in the corner and a chest of drawers against one wall. There’s a window to the left with opaque glass, letting the light of the nearby lamppost stream in. This is the room Tanya told me that absolutely anything happens in.

  I shift my weight from foot to foot in front of him. I should ask about his previous experience, or what the plan is for this session. I tuck my hair behind my ears. He hasn’t commented on my make-up yet, which is fine. A car horn sounds outside, and I startle a little.

  ‘Let’s take it all off,’ he says.

  I drop my bag on the floor and unzip my dress, letting it fall. I unclip my bra and sweep my underwear down and off. I am feeling that this experience might already be adding quite a bit to the negative column of putting my body in situations where it doesn’t want to be. It’s a trade-off, I tell myself. If we do this, we can hang out with Vlad, and domme again, and the grief might pop and we will be happy.

  He holds out one hand. ‘Bring me your panties.’

  I scrunch my underwear into a tight ball before walking over and passing them to him. He pushes them into the front pocket of his pants and they sit at his hip in a bulge. I look at it, realising that I will have to ask for them back at some point. The control has already started.

  Jay pulls his shirt over his head and I see his torso and arms are covered in tattoos. Finches, hornets, lizards and elephants roam around his body in different shades of black and grey. I perch on the edge of the mattress as he runs both hands through his long hair, plaiting it carefully.

  ‘You’re going to do what I say,’ he says, securing the end of the plai
t with a rubber band from his wrist.

  I sit up straighter. ‘Maybe I could have a safe word?’

  He twists his head from side to side until his neck cracks. ‘I don’t use safe words.’ He smiles. ‘I use intuition.’

  I notice he has a small circular scar just down and to the left of his nipple.

  ‘You’ve had a lung drained,’ I say, pointing to it.

  He covers the scar with his hand. ‘I have, yes …’

  ‘Roughly five years ago.’ I can tell from the colour.

  He nods.

  ‘Painful?’ I ask.

  ‘What do you think?’ he replies.

  He steps back from the bed. ‘Turn around. All fours. Spread your knees.’

  ‘Yes, Master,’ I say, and he grimaces.

  ‘Master is kind of passé now.’

  My face flushes. I’ve never felt like I’ve read more things wrong than in this subculture.

  ‘Forehead to the mattress,’ he says.

  I lower my head, finding that I have to rest my weight on my chest and neck to keep upright.

  ‘Cross your arms behind your back.’

  I do as he says, while my body tells me the first quiet no of the evening. I should listen. Now would be the perfect time to listen to my body.

  Jay kneels behind me, pulling my arms further back until my shoulders are no longer touching the mattress and all my weight now rests between my knees and on my head and neck. I feel him lightly swipe his palm over my bruises as if letting me know that he sees them. He binds my hands together tightly in a reverse prayer position.

  ‘Right ear down.’

  I turn my head and look at the bare white wall. I am supporting myself on the side of my throat, breathing shallowly. Both my mind and my body are finding many aspects of this exchange uncomfortable.

  ‘Open your mouth.’

  I open my mouth a small amount, but he squeezes either side of my jaw until it opens wider. With his other hand, he pulls my underwear from his pocket and shoves them to the back of my tongue. I try to push them out, but he clamps my jaw shut. A roll of gaffer tape sits near the bed and he grabs it, tearing a piece off and smoothing it over my mouth. He slaps my cheek twice. ‘Good girl.’