With My Body (20 page)
Authors: Nikki Gemmell
A verbal response: ‘Too many women believe sex is a spectator sport,’ he has said. ‘Silence is not always golden. Women want to feel loved, desired, attractive—well, we men do too, only we don’t like to admit it. Verbal encouragement is the biggest turn on. It confirms desire. And we all want to see that.’
Enthusiasm: ‘We don’t want to feel a partner’s just going through the motions. If you love someone, yet get the feeling during sex that they’re just not that interested, it’s such a turn off.’ You can’t ever imagine that, with him. ‘If the man’s always the one to propose sex eventually we feel like some small kid pestering Mum for sweets—unwanted, undesirable, a nuisance.’
Happiness: ‘All I want is a woman who’s happy.’
‘Really?’
‘It’s all a man ever wants.’
‘Why?’
‘Because from that comes everything else.’
Imagination: It’s not unusual, or wrong, or odd, to be thinking of another scenario entirely as you’re being made love to; a scenario that has little to do with the person having sex with you. They may be just a trigger for the process, a trigger for the movie in your head. There shouldn’t be any guilt about it; you have come to this conclusion yourself, haven’t discussed it with him.
You slam down your pen, it’s what he wants, of course: to chisel out your innermost thoughts. Jackhammering away at all the defences you put up, that anyone puts up. What is he writing himself? You wonder. Turn back to your book with a furious pen.
HE WILL NEVER KNOW. THE CORE OF WHO I AM. NO ONE WILL EVER KNOW THAT.
He will not let you go until he knows, instinctively you sense this. You are gaining knowledge, strength.
He will no longer write in your book. You will not give him the chance.
The potency in withdrawal, in silence. The magnificent coldness of the punishment.
Contemn her not, for her state might not have always been thus; you know not the causes which produced it; and—stay till you see her end
But then you soften, can’t do this; the cruelty of no explanation. Can’t live with the sourness of your stepmother, it’s not in your heart.
He has laid a claim over you. Over land, property, possessions, a body—the violence is the same; there is nothing economical or skimped about your obsession—it is fulsome, extravagant, wasteful.
Complete
.
On the outside Tol’s everything your father couldn’t bear, couldn’t understand. But you have found who you should be with him. It feels like he is more you than you.
Your father will never understand.
I HAVE NO CHOICE.
You write jagged in your notebook.
Like a butterfly you are pinned, by desire.
So. Back. Of course. You will always go back.
This, her life-chronicle, which, out of its very fullness, has taught her that the more one does, the more one finds to do
His smile on the verandah, as he waits, as you walk up the path, says he knows exactly where you’ve been and why you’ve done it.
‘Your lesson today—a treat,’ is all he says, leading you inside by the hand; just squeezing it tight, in thanks. ‘If you’re up for it.’
You squeeze your readiness back.
Leading you to a razor placed carefully on a folded linen napkin. Pleasingly weighty, silver. Waiting in readiness, by the chaise longue.
‘Take off your clothes,’ he breathes, ‘and lie down. Now, think of O. Being readied … ’
He retreats to the kitchen and returns with a bowl of soapy water.
‘Trust me,’ he whispers, tenderly parting your legs. ‘This is not going to hurt. But tell me if you want to stop … ’
You wince at the first stroke, the shock of the cold. He is removing the hair in long, practised strokes, gently guiding the instrument in all the dips and crevices.
Wetter, and wetter, and wetter, as he works.
‘Women have been doing this for centuries,’ he explains softly. ‘They used tweezers in Roman times. South Sea Islanders did it and then tattooed the lovely, brave flesh. It’s a tradition in Arabic cultures. It increases sensation, apparently. Just you wait.’
You can’t. You come.
Feeling so raw, open, exposed. Can barely contain your coming, the spasms tripping over themselves. His head dips down, he is laughing in delight, he is lapping you up in eagerness. When you come again you almost break his neck—he is scissored between your legs, trapped, drenched, you have varnished his face. He laughs and you laugh and now you know why men perceive women in terms of the sea, water, fluids, and you have no idea what is next, how this ends, does it ever end? He is like dry ice on the tongue, you flinch in shock but you can’t help tasting again and again, coming back for more, always more, in blind and furious want.
‘It’s so weird,’ he murmurs in the solid quiet of afterwards, ‘that what began as a trend purely for male fantasy—to maximise exposure, if you like, as in porn—has become this amazing symbol of sexual empowerment for women. Do you feel empowered? Does it really work like that?’
‘Yes,’ you whisper, ‘yes.’ Opening your raw lips for him with the V of your fingers, spreading yourself wide, in wonder, splitting yourself apart. ‘Yes, yes. Come in. Now.
Please
.’
He is a drug. You are enslaved.
Back and back you will go, always back. You can’t not.
Maria and Bob used to go home laughing, and thanking their stars that they
did
live in that shocking place London
A constant state of readiness, now. Bare. Sublimely aware, and knowing you’ll have this raging sense of illicitness later, and days later—every time you move, as you peel the potatoes, eat the Sunday roast, vacuum and sweep, clean out the chook house—all the time you’ll be squeezing your legs together and thinking of
him
, what he has transformed you into; a woman bound. By want.
‘It’ll start to itch,’ he’s warned you, his fingers tracing his handiwork and bringing on the stirring all over again, the slightest touch triggering you off. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Well, we’ll just have to keep doing it. Maintenance. It’s always important, that.’
Aware, as you walk inside your house with a childish slap of the screen door.
Aware, as you brush past your stepmother and put on your apron.
Aware, as you greet your dad from his shift and yarn over the bonnet of an old Ford Falcon up on bricks, yakking away about the heat, how it’s bringing out the snakes, and the dams
are dropping and church, on Sunday, you need to get back, yes Dad, yes.
Almost coming with it as you talk, squeezing your groin on it.
Do they see it in your face, your stroll, your stance? Your proud, walk tall love. Do they have any inkling, of any of it?
This threshold you have crossed.
You congratulate yourself on your cleverness. Squeezing your rawness, smiling, exquisitely calibrated.
The wonderful law of sex exists spiritually as well as materially
He has taken to writing on sheets of paper, he has retreated from your book but he will not give up.
THE KEY
One of the most transcendent joys available to women.
‘And I’m so jealous of it.’ He smiles a knowing smile as he holds up the page. ‘Ready?’
You nod. Bite your lip.
Delicately, he parts your lips. Licks, once; a shiver of tongue. You exclaim as if you’ve been burnt.
‘God has given women the most glorious gift imaginable.’
‘Which is?’ you groan, clutching his hair.
‘The only organ on the human body—on either body—that’s devoted entirely to one thing.
Sensation
,’ he chuckles, stroking, teasing. ‘Endless, lovely … sensation. It is, of course, the clit. Which has eight thousand nerve endings. Can you believe it? Twice as many as the boring old penis. And you must never,
ever believe that the vagina is the explosive centre of female pleasure. Alfred Kinsey found that its interior walls, deep inside, actually have very few nerve endings, that they’re really quite enormously insensitive—compared to what’s on top.’ He smiles conspiratorially. ‘But this is something, I think, that any woman knows.’
He kisses your clit in reverence.
‘This tiny, beautiful bud is the doorway to all the mystery and power of making love; a woman’s gateway to the divine. In Greek mythology, when Zeus and Hera visited the hermaphrodite Tiresias—trying to work out whether it was men or women who experienced the more pleasure from sex—Tiresias replied, “If the sum of love’s pleasure adds up to ten, nine parts go to women, only one to men.” And it’s all down to this.’ His tongue gently encircles your clit. ‘The one thing
guaranteed
to lay a woman waste. If she’ll let you near it.’
You push Tol’s face onto you, into you, can hardly bear it anymore; need all this talking to stop.
He bobs up, grins. ‘I need to get your toes pointing. That’s my next task.’
‘
What
? Just get on with it.’
‘It’s a sure sign of orgasm. And there’s an awful lot of toe-pointing with cunnilingus. It’s a much more certain way of bringing a woman to orgasm than vaginal sex ever is.’
Your toes as flexed as a ballerina’s, again and again, that afternoon. Until you have to push him from you, away, get him off. Because your nerve endings are aching, exhausted, screaming for rest.
We just plod on together, men and women alike, on the same road
A grave instruction, the next time: you must always,
always
tell him if you don’t orgasm, if what he is doing isn’t working, you must never pretend; this whole process will grind to a halt if you do that.
‘But wouldn’t you know?’
‘Sometimes, believe me, it’s hard for us Neanderthals to work out.’
‘I thought modern girls knew how to have orgasms like their mums knew how to cook Sunday roasts.’
He laughs. ‘You’d be surprised. It’s extremely easy for a woman to pretend. But if you do it means I’ve failed. I have married friends—women—who’ve never had an orgasm in their life. I need to know. So I can help. I need honesty, that’s all, you know that.’
‘Are you doing this for me, or for you?’
He rolls his eyes, he says nothing.
A chill, again, at why exactly he is doing this. You will never know him; you love him. The impossibility of that. You wonder if you love him because of the chip of ice within him—that rangy, jittery distance you can’t quite broach. He says he is obsessed,
can’t get enough of you and then he walks away, because of his work, apparently, shutting you out; he goes off to his room and locks the door and tells you to go away, time is up, he needs to be alone. For a day, two, sometimes three. And then he rushes to you when you walk your bicycle up his drive and you are so pathetically grateful; craven, greedy, lost. Ready. For anything. He knows it.
Resistance is sexy. He has mastered that. The tension in a stretched wire, singing with tautness.
You are writing all through the notebook now, cramming the margins of the author’s written words, the bottom of her pages and the top of them.
The awful question, the perilous dynamism; a dynamism of absence and presence. If he wanted you completely and consumingly, if he conveyed that weakness—would
you
want him? Would serenity, stasis, knowing sink the boat? This love is a verb not a noun. It is galloping, withdrawing, retreating, surging—backwards, forwards—forever restless, refusing stillness and rest.
It is exhausting.
You are becoming thin with it, skin and bone. And it can only get worse.
You can’t get it stopped.
You need to know what’s next. Always what’s next. It’s how he has bound you to all this.
You are on a path.
And every morning now your little diary of observation is slipped into the pocket of your overalls, the new journal
that your stepmother will never find because she would never think to glance at it; just another old book with a patched-up cover, from school no doubt. It is your explosive instruction manual for encroaching womanhood, the words you must never forget.
Your
words, now, more so than his; as you become more aware. As you step into being the woman he wants. And observe. Detach.
In any profession, there is nothing which is so injurious, so fatal, as mediocrity
Exploring what your body can do.
To the limit
, he commands.
His project. That he will facilitate. That he will observe. And take mental notes, you are sure; so keenly he watches.
He tells you he wants you to be in awe of what your body can achieve, to learn it, revel in it,
unlock it
.
‘Work out what’s best; use me, come on. Position me. Find out what you want. Every woman is different. Should I be behind you, on top, underneath? Experiment. Live with audacity! Make your man a better lover. Every man you have.
Teach
them. We need to learn as much as you. Find the animal in you, the carnal, what you feel not what you think. What
works
.’
You do. Working out the best ways to orgasm while he’s inside you; angling him with hands on slim hips. So he’s rubbing against your pelvic bone, so he’s stimulating your clit; guiding him, talking him through it, yes, over there, yes, more, that’s it!