Funny. I surrendered my virginity to a beautiful boy when I was seventeen. Part French, he fed me strawberries, sitting at the kitchen table in matching silk robes. He bought me Chanel no 5, the first expensive perfume I ever owned. I wore it ever after, my brother giving me a bottle twice a year as Birthday and Christmas presents, until my chemical exposure craze forbade its further use. No changing scents on a whim in the past though. I remained always rather proudly the Chanel girl.
Ah but he bored me too soon! Nice. Reliable. Nice. Comfortable. Those few months settling into a routine smothering me with predictability, the perpetual niceness cloying, at odds with my craving a challenge, something to fight for, a thing beyond my reach. I wanted to scream, run far, find some wild boy, a rough boy. The ones my father warned me about.
I did find those unruly boys. Drank with them in pubs, followed them home. Once or twice I screwed them. Mostly though, the minute they talked, I was bored with them also, picking up the insecurities behind their cool facades. No different from me, each battling their own hidden uncertainties. And I craved different; one to explore, one without boundaries I could meander through and learn from.
Even then, feeling I was leaving everyone behind. Despite the attention paid me, no matter how challenging a prospect they presented, I remained empty. The void inside me asking, at times begging to be filled. Me to be made whole, as though something was stolen from within, some vital part missing and I existing only to reclaim it.
I do wonder sometimes. Where I would be today, the destination arrived at during this pause, if my childhood hadn't been tainted by abuse. It haunts me only when I am stuck, or times when my writing stops. Who would I be? And emotion? Would Ifeel in this alternate existence? Would I experience joy, happiness, success? Would I in fact trust in the giving over of myself to another? I can't do this now; I instinctively hold back, a door always open. A means to escape because I assume I will need to flee yet another fabricated prison.
The terror of those long ago days... Maybe why I never want to stop learning. Those days, I didn't know! I saw, I heard, I experienced sensations. A hand. A mouth. A penis. But what did they represent apart from something evil I'd taken part in? The man-devils making me believe this to be normal at first and then making me the bad one.
Never allowed the opportunity to explore my body before others explored it. Why didn't I know, and maybe in the knowing, refuse to get in his truck, refuse to step down into the basement, never assent to any of it! Maybe in the knowing, I'd have shared the terror, sought help, not kept it inside fearing further punishment. Recreating instead distinct and improved versions of this imprisonment over and over, an entire lifetime stuck inside those acts. Oh if I'd only held the words then, when knowing them would have made all the difference!
Something else too: Why was everyone around me ignorant those years? My mother! I do remember asking to be taken along when she and my father travelled on business. I begged to be taken along. But no, he was available to mind the store, to mind me. My brother maybe travelled with them - funny - I can't recall him at the store. Only ever myself and the monster in the basement.
It existed then, this violation of children. Why didn't the possibility arise in their minds? Leaving an eight year old girl alone with a grown man? The absoluteness of this trust astounds me, especially when I factor in my continued reluctance to be left in his care. Sure, I had no words to communicate my mistrust, my distress. Yet should they not have noticed this reluctance? Oh if they'd only asked me why! A single word from them might have exposed him, saved me from the fateful day perhaps.
Blaming my fucked up life on some long-ago events is becoming more acceptable with time. Not for years though, lots of years did I perhaps attach some blame to those events. Only when I matured and paused - and - freed from the blackness, followed the steps back.They led me there. To when I became a little girl with secrets.
Before this understanding, I had no idea why I felt disparate. Why I considered myself so god-damn apart from everyone else. I assumed other things. My being a migrant for instance. The cultural differences, the duality produced by living in two distinctly opposite worlds.
I remember the crossing over, the point from when I began to think in the new language. Before this point, the internal translating, searching for new words. After the crossing over, feeling less foreign, more at home in the new culture. Now it is the opposite - I search for those forgotten foreign phrases each time I need to translate for my parents. Up to that point though, battling to co-exist, desiring to immerse myself in the new country, never tying those long ago events to my continued screw-ups.
I wonder if that one day... When he first followed me downstairs, when he lifted me for the first time on the narrow bench, when he raised my short dress and took out his handkerchief... I remember it distinctly: Square, white, a tiny embroidered flower on the corner. When he wiped me and kissed the hanky afterwards, placing it in his pocket. What was he thinking?
What did he think each subsequent time? His eyes always lowered, never in mine. Did he recognise this wrong? Did he suspect it would stay within me, the memory of his white hanky? The memory of his penis? Before I understood, had a word for that thing? Did he comprehend how it would stay within me? Was it part of his sickness, this imposing a lifelong memory, a subsequent aversion?
"Just put it in me already. Fuck the stroking, the mouthing. Fuck the parading it around so I can ogle and feel desire. It reviles me every time. Just put it in. Get it over with. For me, only the preceding steps significant. The getting to there. Physical manifestation an end, is how I view it. You may as well pull out a hanky. Pull my dress down and tell me, "It's okay. Don't be afraid."
Only ever about the journey, the word-play, the verbal dancing when two minds connect and shimmy, strut, sway, and whirl. Each added word another move, another step towards. The anticipation most of all, the moments before, suspended on a maybe that could either end, or sway towards/away. Any brief wrongly perceived gesture, any misguided phrase stopping the dance.
Like the infrequent holidays I take and those I'll never take yet plan in meticulous detail. What to see, what to do.Best way to travel, where to stay. Never mind my plans never go to plan. It's about the formation, the burgeoning anticipation. I've learned to live withdisappointment. From my first honeymoon, after devouring travel books and guides, living afore-hand the romance and mystery of walking the narrow cobblestone streets of Europe; dreaming of sipping espressos in quaint side-walk cafes. Secret gardens I'd wander into. Recognising read-about landmarks. Awed by the magnificent art and history wandering through galleries and museums; husband at my side, our togetherness enhanced by sights and smells and sounds.
But we resembled two average friends, aimlessly strolling together in search of distraction. Yeah. Romance was everywhere. The romance I devoured in those cheap novellas as a pre-teen. Stories fuelling my imagination, the protagonist always portrayed strong, commanding.
This boy man at my side failing. Other couples holding hands, caressing faces, kissing. I sat in a fucking gondola, serenaded by a heavy Italian... A horse-drawn carriage in the moonlight... Atop a frisky camel, bare legs touched by hundreds of grinning kids on the way to the pyramids. Only to try capture some of this illusive romance floating around me, appearing effortless for everyone else to attain. But we two always side by side, he never comfortable with outward signs of affection, I too badly damaged, disallowing him room or time to grow. No patience, only disappointment around each quaint new corner.
Standing before the Sphinx. This ancient monument ever a representation of myself. The secrets contained within. Standing alone, my husband's attention on the souvenir stalls nearby. Those few moments gazing up, seeing not a crumbling stone relic but a twin self, sitting ever silent. Infinite vows I ached to voice, emotions and senses tangling, my aloneness chilling despite the dry heat.
The only memory retained from this honeymoon, is that of his cousin. He had a motorbike. Spoke no English but it didn't matter. Riding on the back through hillsides and holding on tight, yelling "faster, faster!" Neither caring if he understood or if the reckless speed would kill me - the powerful bike vibrating between my legs. Some romance, a measure of sexual excitation maybe. More stimulation the few hours tearing through the countryside than in my scant marriage... I was drawn to this stranger, attracted to him only because he provided excitement, exhilaration, an element of danger.
Lots of photos from this honeymoon; I placed them all in albums. None showing both of us touching, no husband's arm casually draped across my shoulders. No staring into eyes and smiling, dreaming. Never once did I ask friend or stranger to take a photo of the two of us. What was there to capture?
On the flight home I wanted out. Out of the miserybeing brought home in the plane, out of his life. The mistake glaring: I'd replaced one type of confinement with another. Yet It took almost two years before I was free of him, this only because of William. He kept me there, suspended in adultery. Married life consisting only of waiting time until I saw him again, sat opposite. Let his conversations transport me to any place other than home. It never waned, this desire to sit with him.
Sex I could take or leave. Sometimes I wished it didn't exist, nothing interfering with the words flowing between us. I accepted the notion of sexual intimacy being needed, a bridge to cross, a way maybe to achieve greater connection. The nakedness a vulnerability we both surrendered for conversation.
Funny, I can't recall now the feel of him. Texture of skin, identifying marks, signs of living traced over by inquisitive fingers? Nothing tangible survives. Only the ambience those physical encounters produced. Safety. Comfort. Duality. Effects flowing between us, before and after each encounter. Who said what? Yeah. Sometimes my words seemed his, his mine.
Numerous times, urge overpowering logic, I'd hop on a plane and fly to William. Content to be around, a day, three days, a week. Absorbing his interactions with others, examining his conversations, analysing, always seeking to delve deeper into the who, the why, the what, everything compelling me to return again and again. William allowing it, William perhaps at times feeding off this fascination, the effect it had on other men around him. The envying my presence produced.
"The morning after leaving, the after taste of the taking because you could. Some dude, mutual friend heard my gasping goodbye, thought he was hearing surrender. His glance high-fived your luck, never suspecting luck was a fuck I let you take-away just so you could. Yeah. I loved that others envied you."
In-between, seeking mindless diversions; groups, parties, nightclubs - a constant crowd around me and always some place other than my cramped apartment. Fighting the inability to breathe there, the fear of suffocation hovering, the tiny living space stifling, no room to create any personal space, any barrier. No intimacy between my husband and I, only two flatmates sharing a zone. A place to crash after exhausting days and nightly outings lasting almost till dawn... A few shared hours of chaste sleep.
I suspected some nights, my husband perhaps enjoying my notoriety. A perverse pleasure in possessing this woman others craved. Times when I'd walk into a nightclub, the band switching to my favourite song, the dance floor clearing for me to dance alone? Eyes closed, mind elsewhere. The smirk on his face when the song finished and I woke up, returning somewhat bewildered to my seat. Was this then his consolation? The piece of paper binding us and he the owner, benevolent in his allowing me indiscretions? He the one taking me home after each public exhibition of wantonness?
I didn't care back then. What he thought, how the public judged, the many rumours circulating. The briefest attention paid to any man assumed something more perverse, something lewd. I'd write about this. Fascinated by the stories piling up around me, assumptions based on the behaviour I exhibited. Everyone allied to my father, assuming. Only I was holding the truth: This being the unbearable waiting for the real exhilaration to resume. For William's presence.
"Even with head down hurried walk some dude will stop me. Eye me and recall times when my recklessness left indelible memories. "Remember when..." The conversation starts, and I am forced to visit dim-lit smoky rooms and lovelorn songs, times when I sought to lose reality. Leading inevitably to you. My fucked-up futile packed attempts to drown my sorrow and invite plenty of controversy, enough to tide me over till the want subsided. Till you visited or I spirited my being to where you were, seeking relief and finding none, only more questions, retreating yet again to lose myself in fickle mindless sensory diversions. Conversations necessarily cut short. Polite screw you goodbyes for bringing back and laying it bare, to be observed with now wise eyes and inner mutterings that some things should be left. Alone."
Never attained since, this exhilaration. William's absence taking away my vitality, replacing energy with lethargy, desperate pauses. The being with vivid expansive colour, the being without a dull monochromatic existence filled with trivialities.
Besides, it is impossible to recreate this brilliance now, the body disintegrating, the mind unaccommodating. I shut the shop. I offer no new windows to peek into and the closed sign flashes bright. I don't sparkle. There is no inviting glow, only the incessant blinking sign, closed. Closed.