Innocents (16 page)

And you'd go: ‘Mmmmm.’

It was a higher-pitched, more feminine tone than your usual, bass voice. It was you admitting that you needed me. Ten points.

I can't tell you how satisfying I found the sight of your big legs, curled on the cushion. I loved to see your chest swivelled towards me, your arms lying limp and forgotten by your sides. I loved to see your whole body in that mute C-shape, every shred of your attention centred on the point of contact with me. You eyes closed, your face contorted, you suckled urgently.

‘Mmmmm.’

I'd sell my soul to hear it now.

*

Sneakily, I drew you.

I drew you as I saw you from the upstairs bathroom window, outside in the garden with your jeans rolled up and a watering can in one hand. I drew you cooking. I drew you reading the newspaper. I drew your face from a thousand aspects.

You'd find my scraps of sketches about the place, when I was called away, and left my interrupted work where it lay.

‘They're very good,’ you'd tell me. ‘You're very talented, angel.’ With that little pout of self-deprecation. ‘Except for your choice of subject matter. Why don't you draw some young Adonis with his shirt off?’

I knew what to do when that happened. I saw the pinhole and plugged it with my whole body. I slid the flap of paper from your hands, tossing it, extravagantly forgotten, onto the floor. I flung my arms around your neck, pulled your face downwards with all my strength, kissed you with all the passion I could muster. ‘I don't want a stupid Adonis!’ I whispered fiercely. (I would have liked to stamp my foot, to add to the unselfconscious childishness of my agitation, but your height left me on tiptoe.) ‘I want
you
.’

You looked at me looking up at you. My mouth was open, as though straining to say more but unable to find the words. It was an expression which came easily to me when I needed to mask inarticulateness. With delicate fingers, you smoothed back my hair, which was damp and did not need to be smoothed back. My eyes were wide with innocent passion.

‘Oh, I want you too.’ Your eyes were moist with sentiment. ‘I want to do everything for you. I want to love you so hard.’ Gathering me in your arms, whispering ticklishly into my ear, you added, ‘Sometimes it scares me, how much I need you.’

I thought that was a bit tacky but I didn't say anything.

The drawings don't stir me, now. You could be anyone. I'm used to seeing you from an inch away. I remember the side of your nose as I kissed you. I remember your eyes closed and your face very still, kissing me. I remember your eyes growing big with worry too, and the backs of your hands that I stroked, and your square fingers that touched my face. You're all made of moving fragments. The man in the pictures is still and whole, like a butterfly under glass.

Our little jokes were devices only. Our easy humour was a gimmick to keep you close.

Now, without you, they really do seem funny.

Watching a lifestyle program, I said, ‘Maybe I'll go to South America.’

‘Would you like to go there?’ Already calculating airline tickets, passports, customs, time off work, time off school.

‘I could buy a small country and start a tin-pot dictatorship. I'd have a General called Enrico and I'd pay my mercenary army in drug money.’

‘Could I come? I could write propaganda for you.’ You were being shy.

‘No,’ I said, blithely refusing to let you play. ‘I'd write my own propaganda, and draw my own posters. I'd live in a hacienda and spend my time founding a dynasty so I could assassinate them one by one.’

‘Can't I come? I could wave you with a palm-leaf and keep you cool.’

I shook my head. ‘No. Your name's not Chico.’

‘I could change it.
Your
name's not …’ You couldn't think of an appropriate name.

‘But I won't need my name,’ I explained patiently. ‘I'll go by
El
something. El Commandore.’

Every so often, I reminded you of my ethereality.

I took you to places swarming with young people. I pretended to feel at home among those tribes of aliens.

I wanted you to see me as one of them, like a bee which might at any moment return to the swarm. I made it clear that I was as hard to pin down as a ray of moonlight, as unstable as a soap bubble. I wanted to wake in you the suspicion I might flitter on and disappear at any moment.

We rode the bus to the markets one Sunday. It was hot. Our legs stuck to the seat. My legs stuck to your legs. We had to peel ourselves loose.

I jumped from the bottom step of the bus onto the kerb, and led you to the great wire gates.

Socialists with shaved heads tried to press left-wing newspapers into your hands. Awkwardly, you folded your arms.

‘Bizarre,’ you murmured. Or maybe it was ‘Bazaar.’

You were startled by a giant koala seeking donations.

‘Stop the woodchipping?’ it asked, shaking its bucket imperiously.

‘Um,’ you said, plunging your hand into your pocket. ‘Oh, er.’

And you gave it two dollars.

I led you past the portals and into that strange carnival.

The place was thronged. Fiddle notes thrilled the air. Turning to see that you were still behind me, I saw chimes swing sweetly about your head. You ducked, grinning apologetically at the woman who kept the stall, and trotted after me.

I knew it was a risk. There were fifteen-year-old girls
everywhere
, clumped in slow-moving, giggling troupes. They wore midriff tops and had pierced bellies. They slung rough hessian bags across their lithe bodies. Their hair was henna'd red; dyed green; or shaved completely away. They pawed sensuously over silver medallions and they held empty sea-green bottles up to the light. They laughed loudly, and tickled each other. They were charming and unaffected.

It was a test of your faith.

I wove through the crowds like a rabbit. You, lumbering bloodhound, became the inefficient hunter. Spying a trinket, I'd loosen my hand from yours and duck into a space between two fat women that I knew was too narrow for you.

When you caught up with me, moistening your lips with a hesitant tongue, I'd turn shining eyes up at you. Holding up some ring or chain or beaded bracelet, I'd say, ‘Isn't it
gorgeous
?’

And you'd buy it for me.

I remember the time I made you take the day off work, just to hold me.

I used my trembling voice, my uncertainty, like catnip.

I'd woken before you. Our faces were inches apart. You slept on your stomach, one fist nestling next to your mouth. With your rounded nose and half-open mouth, you could have been a three-year-old.

I smiled at you, tenderly.

I wanted you awake. I wanted you to see me smiling, tenderly.

Gently, I blew on your forehead. Flinching, you stirred. I blew again, harder. Half-mumbling, you rolled onto your side.

‘Hello!’ I chirped, cupping your cheek with one hand.

You smiled. ‘I love waking up,’ you told me, ‘and seeing that bright little eye staring back at me.’

Because I could, I reached under the covers, taking your erection in one hand.

‘Don't go to work.’ I pulled, very gently, to watch you close your eyes and wince with pleasure.

‘I have to go to work.’

Moving my hand up to the smooth skin of your shoulder, I slithered myself in close, breathing warmly on your forehead. ‘No, you don't.’

Savouring my presence, smiling blissfully, you said, ‘Mmmm … yes, I do.’

Taking my hand back, leaving a sudden cold, exposed spot on your shoulder, I put on my best protruding lower-lip pout.

‘I'll be home again soon,’ you promised.

I shook my hair over my eyes. With one hand, you smoothed it away. ‘I could come home for lunch.’

Silently, I shook my head.

‘I could try and get off early. I could say I had a dentist's appointment.’

‘Call in sick.’ I kissed your cheek, delicately.

‘I can't, baby. I've got to work. And you've got to go to school.’

‘I feel sick.’

Concern massed in your eyes. ‘Sick? What's wrong?’

I laid my arm over my face, curling one hand over my ear, and peeped at you from under my wrist. ‘Love sick.’

It was tacky, I admit; but it worked, didn't it?

‘Oh, my angel.’ You melted. I watched with satisfaction as your resolve all dissolved away, like a disprin in water.

‘I just want to feel myself next to you,’ I confided, still hiding behind my arm. ‘I just want you to lie on top of me and keep me from
flying away
.’

Wriggling downwards, you brought your eyes level with mine. ‘I think,’ you told me sincerely, ‘that if I did that, we'd both just shoot up into the air.’

I moved like lightning, flinging my skinny arms around your neck and pulling myself in close. ‘We'd float out the window.’

‘We'd waft away on the breeze.’

I used your cheek as a pillow, rubbing gently at the night's stubble growth. ‘Will you stay with me today?’

You turned under me, onto your back, your arms under my arms, your hands along my shoulder-blades, your wrists pressing against my waist.

‘Of course,’ you said.

My days at school passed in a dream.

I mean, I talked to people. Sue, the most popular and most pleasant girl in Year Ten, took me under her wing. She insisted I sit with her friends at lunch, and made a point of asking my opinion every so often. She had dimples and a wide smile. I hardly saw her.

I talked, I ate my lunch, I did my schoolwork, but I did all these things on autopilot. When I walked, I carried a low, heavy cloud over me. A heatwave. It made me squint as I walked. At my desk, I thought of your limbs and liquids, my eyes half-closed in a somnolent daydream. Looking out of the window at the trees, I was taking your fingers in my mouth. Walking down the lino-swathed corridor, I was not listening to my peers shout, whisper, laugh, gossip.

I was saying: ‘I want you to…’

I was listening to you say: ‘I want you to…’

I was glutted with you.

I was greedy for more.

At night, you read to me. You liked classic children's stories. We got through all of
Alice in Wonderland, Through the Looking Glass
, and most of a book of Hans Christian Andersen fairy tales. You got quite into them. It was cute.

I chose the books. It was easy to react to them—little eyes wide open, eager, distracted, absorbed. I'd lie curled with my head on your knee; or you'd sit up in bed and I'd lean against you, looking up. For variation, I could put the tip of my thumb against my front teeth as though I'd been about to suck my thumb but had become so enthralled by the story that I'd left it there. Or I could pretend to fall asleep in uncomfortable positions, like a cat.

This took patience and endurance. My body would scream with cramps while you ever-so-cautiously discovered that I was asleep—calling my name and stroking my hair gently.

But it was a useful investment. Invariably, the next day, you'd say, ‘You fell asleep with your legs all twisted together and one arm behind your back, last night.’

Then I could say nonchalantly, ‘Did I?’ and you could nod and say approvingly, ‘You must be made of rubber!’ I must be young and pliant, was what you meant. One point to me, despite the kink in my neck.

There were certain minor rewards during the stories, too. I liked the passing smiles you threw me. I liked the way you leant in, dramatically, at the most exciting moments, your voice exaggeratedly clear, the way one speaks to babies.

But I hated the sound of your voice. At least, I hated to hear it so monotonously pronounce words that had nothing to do with
me
. Those unexpected, unwanted sentences disturbed the surface of my consciousness.

I was always trying to think about you. Eyes closed or glazed, I'd be imagining kisses, grasping hands. Endlessly, I'd drift into daydreams in which I stood on tiptoe, moulding my body to yours, letting you give me a shape. (All my daydreams then were small-scale but engulfingly intense. I'd spend hours devising a single kiss, a single movement of your hips.)

Your voice nattering on about the Mad Hatter and the Queen of Hearts was an annoying noise which kept me from important dreams.

My desire for you is difficult to quantify. At the beginning, it was not so much the
act
of sex as the
idea
of it; not so much the heavings of physiology as the compulsions of psychology.

At the beginning, all my sexual responses were artifice. I gasped when I could just as easily have remained silent. My curiosity alone was as instinctive and severe as your desire.

I remember the first moment when the possibility of physical arousal woke in me.

You didn't notice anything different. I didn't let you.

It happened after school one evening.

We were on the floor of the lounge room, in front of the heater.

I lay on my back with my hands behind my head, sucked in my stomach, and let you touch me.

You lay on your side, propped on one elbow. Softly, you ran your hands all over my body.

What I remember most is your eyes, half-lidded. You were somnolent with it, engorged all over, blood flowing just below the surface of your skin.

I had my eyes closed. I became so drugged, so dreamy, so relaxed, that your gentle touch on my belly, your light fingers running over the curve of my hips, actually provoked an involuntary reaction from me. I twitched suddenly, victim of a swift, unplanned contraction of the abdominal muscles.

You smiled. ‘Is that nice?’

I nodded, as I would have nodded had you tickled me, had your hands been slightly too rough, had your caresses awoken a latent itchiness in my skin.

‘Yes!’ I affirmed, with my usual enthusiasm.

And you smiled with quiet pride, as you always did when I said you were arousing me.

I thought, So this is what all the fuss is about. Normal people must feel like this everytime!

More and more often, I was called from my dreaming by Mr Harrison. He was very subtle. When I was staring out the window, he'd cross the classroom, and fiddle with the blinds, without pausing for breath. He'd insert himself between my eyes and the blank blackboard I was using as a backdrop for my thoughts, whistling tunelessly so I couldn't concentrate. He'd ask me a question, oh so casually, and I'd have to fumble quickly around in my forebrain and find the answer.