Yearn (20 page)

Elise sat beside her sporting a Comme des Garçons dress and white silk stockings with French slang elegantly stitched into the seams (by La Perla), below which a pair of state-of-the-art Nike runners squatted incongruously. Her gaze was set with flirtatious determination as she scanned the crowd.

“Port side, red shirt,” Elise suddenly murmured, with the discretion of a ventriloquist; Tigger wasn't entirely sure she'd spoken at all. Nevertheless Tigger cast her gaze to the left and immediately sighted a lean young man who appeared to be ostentatiously ignoring her (although whether he was or he wasn't I cannot remember). He looked like the kind of man she used to be attracted to in her early teens. More disconcertingly, he had exactly the same look she had affected during that era: shoulder-length hair, T-shirt, flared jeans, and a sultry pout. He bore a strong resemblance to the young Mick Jagger, his physique glimmering with an unabashed feline sexuality. Now, to her amazement, she saw him looking back at her. She almost checked behind her, wondering whether she had mistaken the direction of his gaze. Elise nudged her sharply in the ribs, spilling a little of the margarita into her lap.

“Want an intro?”

“I dunno—is he legal?”

“Don't be fucking stupid; of course he's legal. I know him; he's a traveler, a Californian—been working here for a couple of years. He's got a wild reputation but, hey, you're not after marriage, right?”

Tigger glanced back at the young man, her heart and groin uncomfortably jumpy. If I remember, and I should, he was very good-looking in that dark, troubled way, with high cheekbones, intelligent eyes, and a kind of self-deprecating posture that she immediately responded to. Tigger recognized herself in it, or so she told me. Okay, perhaps at a younger, more self-conscious age, but nevertheless she empathized with that prickly awareness, that inability to completely own your own power, sexual or otherwise. She wanted him but why on earth would he want her? He was far too handsome; he could have had any of the young girls milling around the tables. Or at least that's what Tigger thought.

“Go on then,” Elise prompted.

Tigger glanced at the youth again. He met her eyes, smiled, then looked down at his feet. His jeans were torn, a slash of tanned and muscled thigh visible through the denim. She battled the urge to glance appraisingly at his crotch, uneasy with what she felt might be blatant gender role reversal. But she knew the longer she waited to drum up the courage to speak to him the harder it was going to be.

“Jesus, Tigger, what's holding you back?” Elise, frustrated by her hesitation, pulled at Tigger's arm.

“I don't know. It all seems a bit predatory. Besides, how do you know he even likes me?”

Elise rolled her eyes. “Okay, this is what you're going to do. I'm going to get a glass of champagne and take it over to him. After a beat you follow, walking toward us with that famous hip-fuck of yours, all right, and you hook him. Got it?”

Before Tigger had a chance to answer, Elise had grabbed an extra drink from a passing tray, sauntered over, and sat next to the youth. Elise now waited with a plastic beaker of champagne in each hand, signaling wildly to Tigger with her eyebrows and then nodding in the direction of the unsuspecting youth, indicating it was time to make her approach. Tigger nearly died with embarrassment.

Finally the terror that Elise might actually tell the youth that her friend fancied him drove Tigger into action. She stood and began walking over. As she moved she tried not to think about what she was doing but instead allowed the inherent grace she was so famous for to flow through her: from the way she placed each foot on the pavement to the ripple up the slender thigh to the hip, the faint shudder of gravity, of momentum, undulating upward through the pelvis, diaphragm, and rib cage and up through the throat to finish like a lingering sweetness at the back of her tongue. Within seconds she was aware that several men had turned to watch her, the heat of their eyes brushing against the thin cotton of her skirt.

Reluctantly, Tigger joined Elise at the young man's side. For a moment the three of them sat in uncomfortable silence.

“Seth, isn't it?” Elise handed the youth the beaker of champagne. “I met you through Mark, right?” Mark was Elise's younger lover at the time, an aspiring website designer with a penchant for custom-made skateboards.

Trying desperately to retain his cool, the youth nodded. And again the three of them fell back into an uncomfortable silence, while Tigger frantically searched her mind for witty opening lines.

“Seth . . . Tigger . . . Tigger . . . Seth,” Elise announced, pointing to the two in turn. “So, I'll leave you two to it,” Elise concluded before getting up and walking away, to Tigger's secret dismay.

She stayed glued to the milk crate, surprised at her sudden apprehension. This is what older blokes must feel when confronted with a far younger and better looking female, she thought—fear of rejection. Then she reminded herself how all her womanizing male peers (and she knew a few) always seemed to have an infinite supply of confidence. They were never frightened of rejection, so why should she be? Besides, all she had to lose was her pride, and one of Tigger's great strengths was always to regard pride as an obstacle.

“Seth—so you're the seventh son, right?” She was careful to sound as nonchalant as possible.

Surprised, he looked up. His eyes were a disturbingly deep green, or so she told me later.

“Wow, you guessed.”

Back then his accent had the flatness of a Californian surfer with an undertone of irony. I remember he grinned; one of his front teeth was chipped, an imperfection he was deeply conscious of, but Tigger focused on it as a counterbalance to his otherwise perfect beauty.

“What are you, psychic?”

“No, just a good detective. Seth is a biblical name, associated with the number seven. And isn't there an American movie with “seven sons” in the title? One of them's a Seth.”

“Yeah, I think my parents were into that film. They're total film buffs—old hippies, really.”

And probably only a couple of years older than I, she noted darkly, after which they both fell into the kind of silence that makes you want to tear your clothes off and dive in, regardless of the consequences. Tigger shifted to the edge of her milk crate and clutched the hem of her short dress, terrified her body language would give away the wave of lust swelling through her. Many years later she told me she was even frightened that she had started to radiate a scent, a dangerous musk that screamed, “I want you at all costs.”

“So you're from California?” Her voice echoed in the sexual tension that hung between them. To her ears it sounded thin and pathetically transparent in its intentions; to his ears it was the key he'd been praying for.

“Totally. Encinitas—it's a small town just north of San Diego.”

“Sounds very exotic.”

“In a New Age meets
The Last Picture Show
kind of way.” He rolled his words out languidly, a very deliberate vocal mannerism he'd spent hours practicing, convinced it was sexy. And you know what? It was. “I guess that's why my parents chose the town—that and the surf. My dad was a total gypsy; he used to run organic vegetables down Big Sur from Northern California. My mom had a whole-food café right next to the old twenties movie house that's still there. They met at a full moon ceremony on the beach. It was lust at first sight. It still is,” he concluded, his eyes telegraphing the clear message that lust at first sight was a family trait.

Flushed, Tigger took another sip of her lukewarm champagne.

“It sounds like an idyllic place to grow up.” To her embarrassment her voice squeaked with nerves—not that he noticed; after all, he was secretly as nervous as she was.

“It's okay for the first twelve years—after that there's no edge. And I hate L.A.”

“I guess that's why you're in Melbourne—lots of edge here,” she replied, deadpan.

The youth laughed. He liked the irony, and there was a sophistication about this woman that he hadn't yet encountered in Australia—plus she had great breasts, and he was a breast man. Still is, actually.

“I kinda landed here and liked it. I got involved with a local artists' co-op—they needed a talent manager, someone who could promote and help show their work.”

“Really? You manage an art gallery?” This time she failed to keep the incredulity out of her voice. She thought he didn't look old enough to have that kind of responsibility or ambition. He picked up on her patronizing tone immediately.

“It's a collective. Some of my artists are just graduating and they're really good. It's important to get in early while I can sign them.”

And then it happened. They smiled at each other, one of those gloriously spontaneous smiles unrelated to their actual conversation, a kind of mutual unspoken acknowledgement of attraction, the kind that has you soaring through all kinds of impossibilities. Again, Tigger wondered whether she was imagining it. But he, in all the blind courage of his youth, he knew. An instinctive flash of intuition and in that moment he wanted her more than anything.

Unable to maintain the gaze without blushing, Tigger glanced down at his hands: long sculptured fingers, broad palms, and the tips of his fingers slightly blunted and thick. She wondered how they would feel touching her, in her, her mouth, her sex, between her thighs.

“And you?” He interrupted her erotic reverie. She breathed in, reassembling herself.

“I lecture at Sydney University, in the anthropology department. At the beginning I had these illusions of fronting documentaries about ancient tribes, educating the world about the wonders of the indigenous civilizations of the Pacific.” She didn't know why she was telling him all of this; it just spilled out of her like a confession. Perhaps it was his youth, some unconscious reminder of an enthusiasm for both life and the world that she had once had herself.

“What happened? You didn't want to pursue it?”

“Financial realities set in—that and the limitations of the Australian market back then. I guess I was before my time.”

“There is no ‘time'; only now.” A philosophy you might think all youths subscribe to, but this one really meant it.

He stood, the full height of him unfolding. In those days he was at least six foot two, and for a moment the seated Tigger was presented with a view of his crotch as he stood directly in front of her. She tried to stop that automatic evaluation of his hidden penis all women succumb to sooner or later—hardwired as it is—feeling as though that would be too exploitative of her. But he felt her gaze and loved it. It felt like a caress, like long cool fingers around his cock.

“Are you going on to the Velvet Glove later?” He looked down at her, not moving, totally aware of his provocative stance.

The Velvet Glove was a bar that a lot of the young artists frequented and Tigger knew Elise planned to take her there.

“I think so.”

“I'll see you there, then.” His eyes traveled across her shoulders, cleavage, and skirt, a blatant sexual appreciation of her figure.

“Nice blouse, by the way. Vintage, right? Some things just seem to get better with age.” He grinned and then winked before walking away, his hips rolling ever so slightly at the top of his long slim legs. It was another mannerism he'd practiced in front of the mirror—ah, the insecurity of youth! Tigger, trying not to stare after him, reached for another drink.

“He's yours, for sure.” Elise had magically reappeared beside her.

“Is he?” Tigger groaned faintly, wondering whether she had the emotional stamina for such a sexual adventure.

 • • • 

The Velvet Glove was at the top end of the city in a narrow 1930s building. It had a small bar and dance floor on ground level with a roof garden on top. Iconic images from the sixties and seventies were projected on the back wall of the dance floor and electronic punk boomed out. Elise led the way through the crowd—mainly young art students and a few businessmen packed into the bar. Perspiration seemed to be steaming up from the young skin of the patrons to drip down the walls, which seemed to be sweating too. Tigger clutched her bag as she was shoved up tightly against young hot bodies. It was uncomfortable for her—if her personal space was to be invaded she liked the purpose to be clearly delineated, and she found that the promiscuity of such ambiguously close proximity was distressing.

Yet she was impressed with the respect her friend engendered: Elise was greeted like an honorary leader or muse. The young male art students, pretentious in their finery, waved at her, some even abandoning small entourages of fellow intellectuals to push their way over to the artist. Here Elise was queen, shouting introductions over the pounding beat, pointing to Tigger as if she were a trophy. Barely able to hear anyone over the music, Tigger smiled back blankly while surreptitiously scanning the room for Seth. She told me later that was all she could think about. But he was nowhere to be seen.

Surprised by the jolt of disappointment that ran through her like she was some love-struck teenager, Tigger reluctantly followed Elise into a booth by the dance floor. Mike, Elise's lover, squeezed in beside them. While the two gossiped about the gallery opening and cattily critiqued other artists” work, Tigger took in the various courtships unfurling around her: nearby the awkwardness of a lone bespectacled young girl hovering beside a table reminded her of when she was young, how the hierarchy of what was perceived as “cool” dictated one's whole outlook—and one's prospects. Tigger had been lucky; she'd been attractive and in her youth the priorities were different—they hadn't cared about money or material stability. Back then it had been about experience, cramming in as much as they could and escaping what they perceived as the terrible ennui of living in Melbourne.