Jumping on a plane at the news of a fossil find, gone for a month. Reluctant to go on dates. Shying away from what they might lead to: some sort of sharing of her life.
They’re so boring, the lot of them, she says. All they want to do is talk about themselves. Or stand you up. I’d much rather go out with a girlfriend than a man.
Most of her friends are divorced, don’t want another man, seem happier by themselves. They’ve done the kids, they’ve been the good wife. But you wonder if your mother’s being completely honest with you. Who really chooses to be alone? So much energy, in your adulthood, has been spent trying to escape from that state.
You wonder what your mother would make of you now, with your secret life. If she’d approve; if she’d worry for Cole or say it’s the best thing for you both. He’s been so buried in his work that he doesn’t seem to have noticed the languorous fullness of your movements as you prepare his dinner. Hasn’t noticed your fingers savouring your swollen, reddened lips as he watches television, chats, eats.
You’re a good wife, a good actress: it’s surprisingly easy, the cover-up. You were acting all along and scarcely realising it. But you want to grow old with Cole, you still want that. You’d be perfectly happy never to have sex with your husband again, except to create a child; and you’ve heard that before from married friends. Cole represents something larger than sex: he’s embedded in your life plan.
But where does desire go? Will this fugitive feeling eventually die out? Or now that it’s loosened will it lurk within you into old age, all rangy and discontented, just waiting to trip up your life?
You’ve been careful, Cole will never find out. Gabriel won’t tell, for you’ve been entrusted with a secret about him that virtually guarantees that. How mutually beneficial it all is, how perfect: you’ve found a lover who’ll do exactly what you want.
Who’ll never talk.
Who’s woken you up.
the shoddy trade
A gift box, just like the one that held your vibrator. It’s beautifully wrapped. Handcuffs. No note. You smile, you don’t need to ask anyone now.
They lead to a new lesson, with the bedhead. There are the sharp, hot spurts of your cum; it’s such a lovely shock. Your voice is deepening when Gabriel’s in you, it’s dropping an octave and you listen, astounded, to the woman you’re becoming.
To be fucked in the ass, something you’ve always wondered about. The pain, the exquisiteness, the illicitness of it. You don’t want it often, it has to keep its edge, you need it to remain unique.
Gabriel wants it a lot, but he respects your wishes when you say no, he backs off.
There’s a beauty to his carefulness, his intent; you think, with some amusement, that he learns with the focus of a first-time driver who’s never before sat behind the wheel. He’s so earnest and grateful. You teach him to touch with assurance, confidence; you teach him to mask his fear, but you can tell that love, for him, will be a vice when it comes, will grip him hard, will swallow him complete. Your heart already bleeds for him, for what is ahead.
He’s still glamorous to you; his honesty has glamour. You love his chuff when you come, you love watching his eyes, delighted and astounded, at you as much as himself. You can’t bring yourself to tell him that so much of this is new for you, too, that in some ways you began these lessons as virginal as he. That everything you want has been, for so long, in your head; that you’ve never spoken out.
Your Elizabethan woman did, it’s in the confidence of her voice. You hear her whispering, delightedly, through your blood: go deeper, further, don’t slip back.
There are many women admired not so much for their virtuaes, as for their vices and imperfections.
few women pass through life without being called upon to nurse a relation or friend
Your mother rings. Theo has called.
Really? Why?
I don’t know. She just wanted a chat. She remembered it was my birthday.
I haven’t spoken to her for a while.
She said that.
We had a bit of a falling out.
She said that, too. What was it about?
Oh, things. I just felt that she was crowding me. I was beginning to feel a bit suffocated by her.
It’s not such a bad thing, perhaps. People come and go. I always thought she was so high-maintenance. Exhausting, you know that.
Your mother’s reservations about Theo used always to be the flint for another fight but you see it now, she’s right. Your best friend was vastly entertaining but the flip side was the constant calling, the jealousy at any new lover or friend and, most smothering of all, the insistent interventions in your own life. Your mother had categorised Theo as overwhelming from the age of thirteen: she’d requested you be placed in separate classes at the start of the next term and out of fury at her meddling you didn’t speak to her for a month.
She said that Tomas and her are trying for a baby, she says now, as the conversation winds down.
Oh?
She wanted you to know.
Oh.
So, Theo gets in first. She always does, from starting her period at eleven to losing her virginity at eighteen to getting married: and now this. Why has she chosen to keep you informed, does she want you to know that something has passed?
You hadn’t told your mother about Cole and her; dreading the knowing in her voice, perhaps, wanting to sort it all out for yourself. Now, it doesn’t seem worth letting her know. You’re moving beyond it. The rage is softening from you, at last; like a fire collapsing into its embers, it’s almost out.
rules for choosing
As autumn encroaches upon the light, sometimes there’s just sleep with Gabriel, nothing else, several hours of it; skin to skin and his lovely warmth. And as you lie there you think of the next step, perhaps: groups of men, anonymous sex, women.
You think, where does this stop?
You can’t imagine how you’ll end these afternoons but some day you must. You fear, already, they’re slipping into something else, you can feel a binding being spun over you both. On the first
