The Change Room

by Karen Connelly

  “She had her back to the wall much of the time, but still. One imagines.”

  “What does one imagine?”

  She turned over and arched her back to lift her own ass up to him. “Her pussy, of course. Shaved. So tidy, like a new bud. Mmm.” He started to massage her. “Closed flower.”

  “Isn’t the pussy always like a closed flower? I mean, if the woman is just, you know, standing there.”

  Her voice was thoughtful. “Sometimes they’re more open. Oystery. A little…frill. Every woman’s different. I wanted to see it. And her ass. Bent right over like that in a public shower room.” She gave a quiet mock howl.

  “You really are horny.” Eliza’s legs were still closed, though as he massaged, he pulled apart the cheeks every once in a while and pushed his cock in between them, teasing, up and down, from one hole to the other, until the head was wet; she was already slippery. And swollen. She started moaning. Which meant soon she wouldn’t really be able to talk. Sadly. She was a great talker, up to a point. Then she went pre-verbal. He leaned down and gave her neck a chomp; she squealed.

  They often used to have sex this way, before the kids. The two of them would undress and conjure other people into bed with them: friends, sometimes strangers, that checkout girl from the Shoppers Drug Mart who was so proud of her piercing—who could ever forget her, sticking out her tongue to show it to them?—the handsome Japanese chef from their favourite sushi bar.

  It was Eliza’s doing; she’d shown him how to find sex everywhere, anywhere, and bring it home to play with. That’s exactly what it required, playfulness, and these days most of their play went to their children. Eliza complained that it was unfair, how the latter (healthy offspring) cancelled out the former (the amorous activity that had created them). But Andrew didn’t mind. With the boys, he had entered the expansive country of fatherhood. He adored his sons in a way that he did not adore his wife. That was healthy, he thought. Until his forties, he was sure he wouldn’t have children. Then, unexpectedly, they had arrived. The having and the raising of them was the best thing he had ever done. It was true that he often preferred wrestling and looking at the stars with them to lying down naked with his wife.

  This year he would turn fifty-four. He just wasn’t as horny as he used to be, especially after herniating that disc two years ago. His physiotherapist’s verdict: too much improper bending to lift up toddlers. It gave him a reprieve; he had a medical reason to stop thrusting. Eliza invested in some sex toys. Once or twice a month was enough for him, and he didn’t notice if it was just once a month. Or once every two months. They’d seemed to reach an understanding. At least, she’d stopped complaining. When she started rubbing up against him and demanding some attention, he would tease her by asking, “Honey, who’s counting?” To which she always replied, “Me. I’m counting.”

  He kept rubbing his penis up and down, hoping she would say what she usually said after that particular bit of foreplay. And she did say it. “Let me suck your cock.” He loved his wife. She turned over easily between his long legs and wriggled down between them and opened her mouth, took him in, swirled her tongue around the head of his penis, mouth full, moaning; he felt her hand in the dark go down to touch herself. Greedy. She would come once, quickly, out of pure and seemingly mechanical lust, then again, with more intent, after he pushed inside her. He loved it when she came first on her own like that, partly because he could watch her, partly because she was so tight after an orgasm. He knew this about her; it felt like an extraordinary secret. Or was it just…anatomy? It didn’t matter; he had never known a woman’s body so well.

  He loved entering her just after she came, and, sometimes, if it had been a long time and if he rubbed up close, right on top of her with his thrusts, she could come again without touching herself with her fingers. Occasionally, while all this was going on, she would manage to keep talking about their invisible third lover, though usually she became the invisible one, and emerged on the other side, known, unknown, this hungry, lust-drunk woman he had married. Who was she? It shocked him when she said, “Fuck my mouth,” because it had been months since they had had sex like this and somehow he had forgotten it, he had forgotten that this busy woman with her silver laptop and her smartphone and her slightly obsessive housecleaning could also turn into this naked animal. Were other women like this? He couldn’t remember; it didn’t matter. He obliged his horny wife, dropped down on his hands, braced his knees against the sheet and started to thrust his cock into her wet open mouth as though it were her pussy.

  Against the underside of his leg, he felt the muscles of her shoulder working as she rubbed her clitoris, back and forth, back and forth, he knew the rhythm though he never got as good as she was at playing it with his own hand. He kept thrusting; her sounds turned into vibrations along his penis before they emerged as moans. She had once told him that sometimes it was better to have his cock in her mouth than in her pussy because it became more a part of her body. She liked the force of it that close, on her face, in her face, against the back of her throat, while knowing that she was also driving him on, eating him up, just like her vagina took him in, pulled him in, the mouth of her cervix open, hungry. Sex was always about consumption, in one way or another, tender or violent consumption, eating, merging one part into another. He stared down at her face as his cock went into and out of her mouth. Then he had to shut his eyes, to make sure he didn’t come.

  He knew she was close herself: her breath was faster, louder. It made him want to come, too, but he held on as her orgasm began. He knew she would be annoyed if he followed her lead and came himself. He loved the sound coming out of her, over him, on him; the moans and cries pouring rough and loud over his penis. He could feel her hips bucking on the bed, knew that her muscles were tightening so hard around her fingers that for a moment she wouldn’t be able to pull them out, she was locked in. She slid her fingers out as he drew his cock out of her mouth and moved down the bed until his face was floating over her face and he felt her heat and wetness. Her legs rose and opened like a wishbone on either side of him and he pushed against her, trying to get in, pushing the head of his cock against the wet softness, that slippery, pillowed tightness; suddenly she gasped, rammed her heels into the bed and propelled herself away from him.

  “Fuck! I’m so horny I forgot I’m ovulating. Or have ovulated. Or will soon. Dammit. I wonder if any sperm got in there just now. I’ll get a condom for you, you have to fuck me. Penetration is the priority here. Don’t go anywhere.”

  “I can get one. Just give me a second.”

  He jumped up and disappeared into the bathroom. Listening to him rummage through the first drawer, she groaned. He seemed programmed to forget where things were located in the house. He needed a domestic GPS. “Andrew, they’re in the bottom drawer. On the right side. You know, that purple box.” Another drawer drew open, slid shut, hard. Like my libido, she thought, closing her legs and pulling the duvet up over her slowly chilling body. She sighed. A neural ghost of anger floated through her brain. That he hadn’t called about missing dinner. Had gone out with Martin.

  From the bathroom, Andrew called, “Sweetheart, I’m sorry but I can’t find them.”

  It was a good thing that she’d had an orgasm already. “It’s all right.” She hopped out of bed and walked blinking into the starkness of the bathroom. He stood there naked, the bottom drawer open in front of his ankles. She cupped his balls and kissed him, hoping to encourage the slowly departing erection to return. “Come back to me, darling,” she whispered. “Don’t leave me like this.” Andrew did not laugh or smile. She kneeled down to rummage around in the bottom drawer. “I looked,” Andrew said. “They’re not in there.” She shuffled a tube of first-aid cream, looked under a box of Band-Aids. She held up the box. “Here they are, darling. Come. Watch me in the mirror for a bit. That will get our friend to return.” She closed the drawer and walked on her knees to his thighs, then leaned against them, making him walk backwards until he
was in front of the mirror. She already had a condom in her hand, the little square silver package torn open.

  “Put your hands on my head,” she instructed. He obliged, and pulled her head, her open mouth, toward him. “Now think of the shower room.” She licked. “Bright light like this, and two women taking a shower together.” She put her lips against his penis and talked. “Kissing and touching each other. Tonguing.” She demonstrated. He started to get hard. “And you walk into the women’s change room by mistake. It could have happened this morning, really, there was nobody but us at the pool. And we wouldn’t have minded if you’d been there. The tall woman waves you in and gets down on her knees and starts sucking your cock. Just like this.”

  She knew his penis so well. It could be timid, worried, preoccupied, but some tongue and storytelling restored it to its assertive self. She knew he was looking down her back to her ass, which she stuck out for his benefit. She pulled her mouth away to say, “She has the most beautiful ass. And I say, Go behind her and push your cock into her pussy. I want to watch you fuck her. Fuck her for me.”

  Andrew was so into it that he was going to do exactly as he was told but Eliza jumped up, grabbed his hand and said, “Let’s save our knees and go back to the bed.” She was so pleased with her success at restoring his hard-on that she skipped back to the bedroom and threw herself spread-eagled on the mattress. The condom was in her hand; she slid it onto him. And there he was, above her, finding home; his cock pushed in slowly, impressively. He had the discipline to tease her. She moaned, and grabbed his ass, and pushed herself farther up. Right now she didn’t want any teasing. The last two months had been one long tease.

  She was wet from her orgasm. She whispered, “Andrew, please don’t make me wait any more.” She felt him pull out a little and brace himself to thrust, which is what she wanted. Needed. It was need, to have his cock push in there and open her, reach into the centre of her body, to her heart way up there, past her clit, through her pussy; she knew he could go all the way in, through her cervix, her uterus, in and in and in, to penetrate the tiny egg floating down, waiting for the teardrop of sperm that might escape from the edge of the condom. The thought of getting pregnant again made her suddenly hornier. “Please just fuck me. I want you to fuck me.”

  He paused. “Shh. Sorry. Do you hear that?”

  She didn’t care; she didn’t want to listen. If it was a burglar, he could take the silverware, the computer on the table, the Cuisinart, her wallet on the sideboard….She knew it was not a burglar, but Andrew had stopped; he lifted himself off her like a man in mid-push-up, his head held in the tense aspect of listening. She sighed, loudly. That was just like him, to hear a sound at this moment when much of the time she wondered how soon he was going to need a hearing aid. “What is it?” she asked, though she could hear it now, too. “He’s just down in the kitchen getting something to eat. You didn’t have to stop. It’s like you stopped on purpose!”

  “I did stop on purpose, to try and figure out who might be in the kitchen at eleven thirty at night.” He moved off her body and folded up into a sitting position.

  “You know it’s our son. He’s getting a midnight snack.” She sighed again. Andrew didn’t like to have sex when the boys were awake.

  In a voice of genuine perplexity, he asked, “Why is he doing that?”

  “He’s going through a growth spurt or something.”

  “Do you want me to go down?”

  “On me,” she said, grabbing her crotch. “On me!” He didn’t laugh. Good thing. She wasn’t really joking.

  “Eliza, please don’t be upset. I’ll just go see what he’s up to.”

  She gasped. It was that bad: she was at the gasping level of indignation. “I’m sick of this.”

  “What?” Though he knew. But he also knew that she needed to say it. At the moment, it was the only satisfaction he could offer.

  “It has been months. Since before Christmas. Since before Christmas shopping. Which I did early this year.”

  He heaved his own sigh. Which reminded her, precisely, of Marcus. Also given to the dramatic sigh of disappointment, her oldest son was in the kitchen two floors below, eating chocolate ice cream or (she hoped) Cheerios. She heard the spoon clank against the bowl. And, now, because she had begun to listen carefully to keep herself from saying anything else, she could hear that he was humming a little accompaniment. It was that Korean YouTube hit: “Gangnam Style.” Ooo, sexy lady, sang his little counter-tenor voice. God help me, she thought. Though she had not believed in God for a long time.

  She said, “Don’t you find me desirable anymore?” There it was again. That troublesome old word. De sideris.

  “I do. I do find you desirable. But I’m tired. I’m older than you by more than a decade.”

  “Don’t start with the age thing. Please. You’re fifty-four. So what. Men in their fifties can still have sex once a week. Once a month!”

  He shrugged. “I just…” Guilty resignation suddenly flipped inside out. “Couldn’t you be more relaxed instead of keeping an orgasm chart and demanding another star? The pressure makes the whole idea of sex so stressful.”

  “I never even complain about it anymore. We rarely even mention sex, let alone talk about it.”

  “But you always act like you’re…starving. It’s not starvation, you know. Sex is not as important as food.”

  “Sex is more important than food because we already have food!” She realized, belatedly, that she was almost yelling.

  From the second floor came the call, “Mommy!” Jake. He was crying.

  “Great,” said Andrew. “They’re both up now. Just like old times. I’ll go.”

  “Never mind. I’ll do it,” she snapped, wanting him to feel guilty. And unhelpful. He expected her to do night duty. “They go to sleep faster with me.”

  Jake’s crying intensified. He howled, “Mommy! I had a bad dream! Where’s Marcus? I had a dream of a big crash!”

  Eliza was already off the bed, pulling on a T-shirt and sweats, muttering under her breath. That child. He was connected to her by some as-yet-undiscovered genetic telepathy. Earlier that evening, while snow-shovelling and secretly worrying about Andrew, she had thought about her dad’s death, wondered about the car accident; she’d never asked her mother about the details. And Jake had suddenly lifted his head out of the snow, looked right at her, and said, “Mommy, don’t be sad about Daddy. I’m an angel!” How long would this thought transference continue to work? She knew what he would tell her through his breathless sleepy sobs. It wouldn’t be a train or a plane or a building. It would be a car crash—the spectre that had haunted her all evening.

  —

  The feeding and calming took forty minutes. She timed it; the boys had a digital clock on their dresser. Once again, and metaphorically for the rest of her life, she lay sandwiched between her two children. She looked at one, Master Marcus of the mysteriously Asian eyes, long dark eyebrows pointing toward his temples, his dark, thick hair already sticking up here and there where the horns were poking through. He slept curled up, his back pushing hot against her, like an athlete crouched and frozen before the starting gun goes off. And Jake, the milder child, brown hair with blond sifted in, like hers, every part of him rounder and softer than Marcus. The toddler reappeared in slumber, his hands together in prayer position, tucked under his pillow-side cheek. From the time he was born, he had slept that way; he must have rested like that in the womb. His blue eyes were not quite closed; she could see a grey-blue sickle of iris. Then, as she watched, they swivelled back and forth under their blue-white lids. Her sons were dreaming a million miles away from her, and yet were right here, pushing against her flesh.

  She would lose them. She knew she would. That was the whole outrageous point of parenthood. You taught them to walk so they could walk away from you. You raised them well so they could move far away for university and forget your birthday and love other people and want to go to Barbados instead of suffering th
rough Christmas with their parents.

  She carefully dislodged herself. Then she lifted Jake and managed not to drop his little wrestler’s body onto his bed. What toddler? He weighed almost fifty pounds. She pulled his dolphin quilt over his torso and looked back and forth, from one boy to the other. How had either of them ever been so small as to fit inside her body? More improbable, she had grown them in there, with her blood—it was science fiction, the basis of Aliens—then pushed them out into the light and air. Birth was ridiculous. And banal. It happened every day, over and over. Yet each time was always the first, like falling passionately in love.

  She turned off their little lamp, thoroughly awake. It was after midnight now. She heard Andrew snoring. Should she clean the boys’ filthy bathroom or go upstairs, get the Wave and masturbate down the hall in the TV room? Since she’d walked up the stairs, wine in hand, penetration had been the goal. It was still stubbornly there, the physical longing. But the sharpness had dulled. That’s married sex, she thought; the sharpness dulls. The Wave—the model’s actual name—was a large, marine-blue dildo. Lately, she and the Wave had developed a deep bond. A very deep bond. It was consistently dependable. Always available. Happy to do the job. Housework or the Wave? Orgasm or sleep? She shook her head. There was no door on the damn TV room. And the office, which had a door, was a mess of her and Andrew’s paperwork. It was also a guest room, with a single bed lining one wall, but the bed was covered with a hundred student papers and at least two dozen textbooks. Never mind. There was always the morning. Not for sex, anymore, but for masturbation. At least Andrew got up first with the boys. That was why she did middle-of-the-night duty, she thought, more generously: Andrew let her sleep for another hour in the mornings.

  She went up to the third floor and lay down beside him. Breathe deeply, she said to herself. Don’t just sigh. She went through the yoga thing, relaxing her shoulders, her jaw, her forehead. It was helpful to do nothing but breathe. Difficult to breathe and not think. To think of nothing but breathing. She sank straight down, weighted with the fullness of the day, the fullness of her life, into a dreamful sleep.