Yearn (25 page)

Cass didn't do personal; therefore neither did Tasinis. We were both terrified. I couldn't do it; I couldn't afford to let anyone in, in this life or the Second. I had good reason: a Pandora's box of nightmares.

That evening I sent my baby in full leather gear straight to Gothic Dungeon Sex Island. It was like I needed to get violent, to get lost in the frenzy. I needed to shake off my real-life skin and get as impersonal as possible. At least I thought I did.

 • • • 

Gothic Dungeon Sex Island: 20.00 7/02/2009

As Tasinis strides into the circular arena, sawdust swishing around her eight-inch spiked heels, a steel-cage visor tugged down over her eyes, hair pulled back severely into a waist-length ponytail, she cracks her whip.

“Okay, scum, time to feel the anger of my whip!” It isn't my best dominatrix command but it works anyhow: immediately three male avatars in neck cuffs and leather hand bindings begin groveling at Tasinis's feet.

“Line up, dogs!” Tasinis orders.

The three crawl into position. Naked on all fours, cocks, balls, feathers, and tails all hanging down.

“Yes. Yes. Harder. Harder,” one of them, a muscular redhead with tattoos who for some inexplicable reason has a black penis, screams.

“Ohh! I'm coming. You bitch goddess of the lash,” the avatar at the end, a shaved humanoid head with a small dog's tail poking out from between his buttocks, moans, the tip of his modified cock flashing red. This is a sign that normally would have had her/me excited by now, but Tasinis feels nothing. I feel nothing. For the first time the room looks kind of tawdry. The ropes and metal harnessing hanging off the old stone walls appear fake, and I suddenly notice the way the simulation dissolves into obvious pixels at the edges. The jerky fashion in which the avatars wriggle their hips and legs, making them look like wooden puppets, and the way their genitals bob up and down, orifices mechanically opening and closing, is kind of weird. The usual rush of excitement I feel when Tasinis's whip touches avatar skin is gone. Totally. I can't lose myself in Second Life. For the first time I can't lose Cassandra.

I look at the time displayed in the right-hand corner of my desktop: it's already ten past eight. Starboy 8 will be waiting in Tahiti. Suddenly I'm terrified I've left it all too late. In seconds I pull Tasinis out of the dungeon and send her straight to Tahiti, a fantasy island set in the 1800s.

 • • • 

Tahiti, Fantasy Island: 20.15 7/02/2009

I find Starboy 8 dressed as a shipwrecked French sailor sitting among a group of native Polynesians watching a ceremony. I haven't had time to re-dress Tasinis and she looks ridiculous standing in full leather gear at the edge of a jungle clearing surrounded by native women and men wearing grass skirts. Starboy 8 doesn't seem to care; he looks across and immediately leaps up and leads her by the hand into the jungle. She/I walk through the trailing vines, the chattering monkeys, and the brightly colored parrots that suddenly burst out of the foliage and fly across our path. Finally the two avatars arrive at a waterfall with a grassy outcrop hanging over the rushing water beneath. Starboy 8 and Tasinis sit on the grass.

“I thought you weren't coming,” Starboy 8 begins.

“I wasn't, then I changed my mind.”

“Let me guess—you were in Gothic Sex Dungeon?”

“How did you know?”

“Your outfit kind of gives you away.”

A large crocodile's head emerges from the pool and snaps harmlessly at Tasinis's leather-clad feet. It doesn't look right; somehow I'm not convinced Tahiti would have crocodiles living on it.

“Are you from California?” asks Starboy 8.

“Maybe.”

“Do you have many friends on the outside?”

“No. I don't need them; I live here most of the time.”

“In the dungeons and sex islands? Is that what makes you alive?”

“No. But it gives me power over others. It's an equation, isn't it? I guess the less power you have in real life the more you seek it in Second Life,” Tasinis replies. It was the most personal she'd ever been.

I can't believe what I'd just made Tasinis say. I'd never even thought about it that way before. Never. But somehow looking at Tasinis sitting there, her long legs folded under her a little awkwardly on that lush green grass, her metal visor now pushed over her head, her huge blue eyes sightless and blinking, makes a crack in me, in my avatar. Starboy 8 moves closer.

“Can I take your glove off?” he asks, and I swear it was the sexiest thing anyone had ever asked me on Second Life, something as innocent as that, after all the bondage, the orgies, the sex toys.

“Yes,” Tasinis whispers back before I'd even given her permission to speak. Starboy 8 takes her hand and peels off the glove. I feel a tingle in my special edition clit, or at least Tasinis felt it; me—I'm wriggling in my desk chair.

“I'm from California too,” Starboy 8 murmurs as he caresses Tasinis's long fingers. Involuntarily my heart leaps in my chest. A tight feeling, but exhilarating, the feeling that something's changing, something I have no control over, no choice.

“In Second Life we have no places, past, or history. We're born new.”

“No one is born new. Listen, there's a sex addicts clinic on Health Avenue. Avatars meet, talk, admit their addiction.”

“Is that what you think, you think I'm a sex addict?”

“I think you need to empower yourself on the outside, in real life.”

It suddenly feels hot inside my bedroom. My bedroom in real life. A mosquito bites my arm and I kill it with a slap: a red streak of blood. My blood. I look back at the screen. Starboy 8 is poised, waiting for a reply. I make Tasinis crack her whip and catch the leg of a passing parrot. Casually she dashes it against the trunk of a palm tree. In a flurry of scarlet and purple feathers it falls to the ground.

“Why do you care?” she says.

“Because I think you're like me. I may be missing a dick, nipples, and other enhancements, but for all the sexy bits of your skin and the sex that you have, you're missing something far more important.”

Starboy 8 moves his face closer to Tasinis's. It's like I can almost smell him, and I know he will be fresh and young, spice and hope. The tingle in Tasinis's groin becomes a flashing light as her labia light up. Under my old T-shirt I become aware of my own sex, the tight warmth of it between my legs, and I become wet.

“There's something else. I want to get to know you—the real you. But I want you to want me for me, not my X3 dick or ass, not the special edition nipples or hermaphrodite option, but me. Imagine this was real life; imagine we were fallible.” And then he kisses her/me and in that instant I am there in Tasinis's skin. The touch of his lips, his tongue penetrating me tentatively, gently, and the sensation of it sending a jolt through my body, an explosion that bursts from my clitoris and ripples out up my belly and down both my legs, making me shake in my chair; a great white wave of contractions throws me back, my mouth opening as I moan involuntarily. My very first orgasm in real life. Shocked, I stay sitting as wave after wave of pure sweetness ripples through me; my body feels like it's made of white light. I feel beautiful.

 • • • 

I was woken by sunlight across my face. I rolled over to stare at the alarm clock. I'd overslept for the first time in twelve years. Without getting out of bed I picked up the phone and called work. I told my boss I'd be in late that afternoon. I didn't even bother to listen to his reply.

After hanging up the phone I stepped out of bed and stood in the middle of the room. The place looked different, brighter somehow: the colors of the walls, the way the sunlight was falling over my dressing table, picking out all the glinting silvers of my hairpins and Mom's old jewelry. Even the faded colors of my old robe looked brighter. I wrapped the dressing gown around my body, the brushed cotton incredibly soft against my skin. Everything was more vivid, each sensation heightened. It was like I'd woken up in a different world, one flooded with light and color.

I ventured into the bathroom. The sunlight streaming in from the skylight filled it, transforming it into a prism of blues and greens. I showered, the hot water spraying thin needles of pleasure across my back. I climbed out, dried myself, then stood naked in front of the full-length mirror with the bottom half still covered by the sheet of cardboard. I worried my fingers around one corner, closed my eyes and tore it away, then counted to ten.

I opened my eyes and stared at my full reflection for the first time in three years. The white full curves of my body rippled down my sides, my breasts, large and pendulous, hung almost to my waist, my thighs were covered in stretch marks, and my belly almost obscured my pubis. But you know what? It was all me. I was finally looking at me.

I skipped breakfast and drove to the local shopping mall. At the huge Walmart store I bought a new red T-shirt and a long cotton skirt covered in small embroidered flowers. I hadn't worn a skirt in years. Back at home I put on the skirt and T-shirt. It was like the colors were floating off the fabric and coloring my mood. Butterflies of dancing light. I didn't want to question or doubt; I didn't want to frighten this new Cass away.

I retrieved four large cardboard boxes from the garage and carried them up to Mom's bedroom. It took me three hours to empty her closets and drawers and pack those boxes, but when I was finished I swear I felt a hundred pounds lighter.

That afternoon I drove to work with my car top open. The wind ruffled my hair and blew against my sunglasses. I had Classic Rock FM on and they were playing Steely Dan. I sang along at the top of my lungs. Driving beside the seafront through Del Mar, I thought I saw the water spout of a whale.

I got to the call center around three in the afternoon. Walking through the parking lot, I noticed how red the bougainvillea was that was planted against one wall of the building. I'd never even seen it there before. Once I was in the office, several of the other operators looked up from their desks. I could see the surprise in their eyes, like they saw I was different but couldn't work out how. I got to my desk and sat down. Perched in the center of the desk, resting against an old pebble I once found as a child, was a postcard. A postcard with the words: “Welcome to Tahiti, island of joy” printed under a view of a green island in a blue sea. I turned it around. It was addressed to Tasinis, Second Life, and in the message space, someone had scrawled the word
Hello
.

I stared at it for a moment, then carefully slipped it into my drawer. And I knew then that I wouldn't be logging on that night. I was going to wait to meet Hector the night worker, my shadow-self. I figured we might have a lot to say to each other.

 

It was one night after work before Alan came home that Phoebe first saw him. After an item about a two-headed kitten surviving in Basingstoke, an earthquake in Midwest America, and yet more trouble in the Middle East, the BBC news had cut to that inevitable mollifier of the English middle class—the weather report. Nestling into the old leather armchair, cup of hot tea held between her knees, Phoebe found herself staring into the large, slightly bewildered brown eyes of Rupert Thornton, the new weatherman.

“Hello, he's nice,” she thought to herself, allowing her eyes to wander over the tall, angular frame of the man. He looked to be somewhere in his midthirties, his thin wrists protruding from his shirtsleeves with a certain poignant vulnerability, the longish blond hair receding slightly from the domed forehead, the strong nose and cheekbones and large heavy-lidded eyes all united in a pleasing handsomeness—an old-world elegance. He looked, she thought, as if he'd just been dropped in from the nineteenth century and not 1987, a year she'd already decided was rather horrible, even if it was only July. Not wanting to dwell on her grievances, Phoebe glanced back up at the TV screen to concentrate.

Rupert Thornton stood in front of the map of the British Isles, arms raised as if he was about to conduct an orchestra: “Tomorrow is looking a little more optimistic with a warm front sweeping in. . . .” and here he lifted both hands and, in a curiously erotic gesture, circled the air as if he himself were pushing the warm front from Ireland toward Devon.

Phoebe sat up in her chair. The weatherman's hands were well shaped with thick fingers, she noted, and before she could help herself she began wondering about the size of his penis, which was testimony to the lack of sex in her marriage, she observed ruefully. For the tenth time that day the image of her husband, Alan, flashed into her mind, the mottled, rugged landscape his naked back presented every night as he turned to switch the bedside lamp off—his way of signaling that any possible intimacy was now off the menu. It had been like that for months, maybe even a year, Phoebe calculated, trying to remember the last time they had made love. Christmas 1986 came to mind, but even then she wasn't sure she'd had an orgasm. It was a depressing scenario especially, Phoebe reminded herself, as she was only twenty-six and considered attractive. Plenty of men would want her even if her husband didn't.

She glanced at the faint reflection of herself caught on the TV screen with Rupert the weatherman gesturing blindly behind her, almost as if he were trapped behind the glass. Phoebe was a curvaceous blonde of average height, with a wild mane of hair and even features that were unremarkable except for her intense green eyes, which she always dramatically highlighted with blue eye shadow and thick black mascara. She had the kind of prettiness that was pleasant but not in the least exotic or sophisticated, and this had been a source of disillusionment for Phoebe, who, at the age of sixteen, had changed her name by deed poll from the very plain Mandy to Phoebe (after a character in a novel). She'd wanted to be glamorous and dramatic, but growing up with an alcoholic mother on an estate on the edge of Acton hadn't really allowed for such ambitions, and it was indicative of Phoebe's strength of character that she had escaped home as soon as she could—marrying Alan had been the greater part of that escape.

It wasn't as if she lacked self-esteem or sexual confidence, Phoebe thought, wondering how and exactly when her husband had fallen out of love with her. It certainly wasn't something she'd done deliberately. If anything, she suspected that Alan, a control freak, had lost interest once he realized he had won her—or, more sinisterly, now had control of her. A sudden excited utterance from the weatherman pulled her out of her reverie.

“. . . a glorious abundance of cumuli coming in from the northeast will be followed by a darker patch of cumulonimbus, rain clouds to us mortals. . . .” Cumuli. Cumulonimbus. The words seemed to drop from his mouth like an overripe plum, and again his body arched in a gesture that seemed to ripple up from his hips, traveling with a shudder down to his fingertips. Cumuli. Phoebe found herself imagining that she was riding naked, sprawled on a bank of fluffy white clouds as they drifted across the English countryside. It was a sensually pleasing vision and Mr. Rupert Thornton was a sexy weatherman, Phoebe decided, smug in the knowledge that out of the three million viewers watching the six o'clock news, there was no doubt she alone had come to that conclusion.

Part of Phoebe's grand plan to reconstruct her persona was to think herself capable of exclusivity, of originality, of finding qualities in others that no one else had noticed. A less generous person might have called it imaginative projection on her usually fairly innocent subjects—obsession, even—but Phoebe saw herself as a liberator, someone who could burrow into personalities and discover aspects unknown even to the individuals themselves. There had been some unfortunate incidents in the past—the milkman who was forced to place a restraining order on the then seventeen-year-old Phoebe, a school janitor she used to follow home—but all those were in the past, long before she'd married Alan, and besides, she still liked to think she'd seen qualities in these men that even they were not aware of. And so it was that she now relished thinking of the unwitting Rupert Thornton in a way that she imagined nobody else had ever thought of him—as a kind of sexual weather god.

The timer over the stove pinged, jolting her back to domestic reality. It was Alan's way of reminding her that he'd be home in an hour and she should start preparing supper. The sharp sound also brought into focus the more immediate consequences of Phoebe's imaginative embellishment of others. It was partly responsible for her marrying Alan in the first place, she reminded herself somewhat bitterly as the six o'clock news finally ended and the program cut from Rupert's slightly uncertain smile to the closing credits.

Phoebe had met her husband at the insurance company they both still worked for. Alan was an actuary and Phoebe was a clerk in the accounting department. Alan was involved in calculating risk—his speciality was acts of God: storms, floods, lightning strikes—and his clients ranged from farmers to owners of vulnerable historical buildings. In her role Phoebe was little more than a glorified secretary, filing, typing, and taking dictation—a tedious job that led to much daydreaming.

She'd been only twenty-one when she noticed the way Alan kept wiping and adjusting the objects on his desk so that they were kept both clean and orderly. His precision was intriguing, quite the opposite of the violent chaos of the dysfunctional home she'd grown up in. Now, five years later, she recognized Alan's need for control as compulsive, perhaps even mildly pathological, but back then she'd thought this sense of control was both urbane and inspired. And she had loved the fact that he was so much older than she and owned his own house and a nice car, as she had worried she might end up impoverished and on benefits like her mother.

It had been an easy seduction. The way she'd originally got Alan to notice her was to incrementally mess up his desk, starting with small details. She moved his pencil sharpener, swapped his paper clips for the stapler, and left his phone off the hook, all of which seemed to throw the man into confusion and then a rage (seeing him so suddenly animated turned her on). When her strategy climaxed with her “accidentally” spilling a small pot of ink over his desk, she had his complete attention. Before he could explode into irrational rage she'd asked him out—which totally disarmed him. To both their surprise he'd said yes.

“It wasn't like he wasn't a passionate man,” she spoke out loud, startling the cat, who dived under the kitchen table. It was just that sex had to be on his terms, and this meant a lot of ritual and preparation. The bed had to be folded down exactly right, they both had to have had a bath beforehand, he couldn't make love on a full stomach but not on an empty one either, and so on. It left absolutely no room for spontaneity and as the marriage had gone on Alan's prerequisites had become more and more inflexible until he appeared to lose interest altogether. Phoebe was reduced to furtively pleasuring herself while clinging to the cold edge of the bed, hoping the bed springs wouldn't squeak and wake him. It was, as her mother used to say with a great deal of relish, a miserable state of affairs.

From the other side of the house came the sound of the front door opening. Knowing that would be Alan returning from a late session at work, Phoebe hurriedly placed his plate of fish fingers and creamed broccoli on his place mat, adjusted the wineglass so it was exactly central to the place mat, pulled the chair out for him, and switched the radio on to Classic FM. She then stood waiting beside her own chair. Alan, a short man a little squashed by life, entered the room, kissed his wife on the forehead, then without a word sat at the table. Phoebe followed suit.

“Lovely broccoli,” he said after five minutes, a comment he made every Tuesday—their fish day.

“Thanks, sweetie,” Phoebe responded—it was her standard reply. Outside it began raining, droplets of water splashing against the windowpane in a sudden fecundity. Cumulonimbus, Phoebe remembered, and something inside her started to moisten.

 • • • 

That night Phoebe dreamt she was tied spread-eagled to the TV weather board, and her body had become the weather map Rupert Thornton was reading from: a relief map with mountains, gullies, lakes, and river all jutting out ripe and ready for him. Every time the weatherman mentioned snow sweeping in from the northern peaks of Scotland, his long, elegant hands would inadvertently brush against her nipples. Then when he said a warm front was moving up from France, his fingers would wander blindly across her wet lips and clit. She quivered with pleasure, but it wasn't just the touching that was erotic; it was the fact that he had to ignore her and play to the camera. She was both his prop and at his mercy, and yet she knew she was invaluable to him. And Phoebe so wanted to be invaluable to someone.

She woke to discover that Alan had pulled the bedclothes off her in the night. Aroused by her dream, Phoebe crept her hands around the soft hairy circumference of his belly and found his nestling penis.

“We'll be late for work,” Alan mumbled, pushing her hands away. He sat up, his broad shoulders slumping forward. The vulnerability of his chest—the hair graying and the slight curve of his stomach—clenched at Phoebe's heart. The trouble was she still loved him. Fighting a sense of profound rejection, she sat up and they both swung their legs around to the opposite sides of the bed, naked back facing naked back. Staring out the window, Phoebe noticed the rain had stopped, and suddenly she found herself wanting to cry.

 • • • 

The day passed intolerably slowly. All that Phoebe had to occupy herself with was a new box of insurance claims to file and several reports to type up. Several times she found herself wondering what the weatherman might be doing now—talking to the Meteorology Board, checking barometers and weather gauges himself?

The day was unseasonably warm even for the end of July, a sultry, overcast day that threatened thunder but didn't quite deliver. The silk of her blouse stuck to her back and as she swiveled around in her desk chair she was aware of the way her underpants chaffed against her sex. Neglected, I am neglected, she thought, her gaze falling upon the young intern, a pimply lad of about nineteen. But despite her frustration, it was hard to muster any sexual enthusiasm for her young colleague, who was paralyzed with shyness every time she spoke to him. No, it had to be the weatherman.

Her mind wandered back to the BBC weather report the night before, the way Rupert Thornton had his fingers outstretched when describing rain, like he was running them through hair, her hair. Again, she glanced hopefully at the window. If only the perfect blue sky would suddenly manifest a light shower or two—then she would see him do the same tender caress on the TV that evening. That would give her something to look forward to.

The ticking of the wall clock seemed to bore through her skull and it was only three in the afternoon. Bored and frustrated, Phoebe glanced back down at the report. The mundane sentences describing a small fire that had destroyed part of an old tower attached to St. Leonard's Church, Heston, had a certain poetic rhythm to them. It was an old seventh-century church building that was historically listed, and the report mentioned that the botanist Joseph Banks was buried there. The damage included several statues, some of which were accidentally damaged by the overenthusiastic firemen engaged in putting out the fire.

One outstretched stone hand broken off at wrist

One grinning gargoyle lost nose

Nymph's arms upheld toward heaven now missing

Breasts of Virgin smashed

Phoebe read the clipped sentences out loud, her mouth shaping the consonants, mimicking Rupert Thornton's rounded vowels. Again she thought of the weatherman's sensual gestures. He had moved as if he lived in the air, as if he were deeply aware of his own physicality and fluidity, as if the small gestures mattered. This had made him beautiful and it made her want to touch him, to absorb through some strange process of osmosis that particular grace of his.

It was the total opposite of the way her husband moved: a man who aggressively bustled his way through life, as if angry at the very fact of his own existence. If Alan was a building that got burnt down no one would really notice because he would be replaceable, but if Rupert Thornton were a building he would be a thing of both architectural grandeur and sensual beauty; the weatherman would be memorable—he would be listed, Phoebe thought wistfully as she doodled on her notepad. She noticed the doodle had become a large penis that was ejaculating not sperm but droplets of rain.

By the time she'd finished typing up the report she was in love.