You feel so alive. Shaken awake after years of apathy until you’re almost coming with just his kiss in greeting, or the sound of his voice on the phone.
You wonder sometimes if he enjoys the licking that much, for a colleague let slip once that the taste of a woman, when he went down on her, always made him gag, that there was no woman whose smell he’d ever liked even though every woman’s smell was different. But you’re addicted now and many afternoons he’ll be between your legs until your inner thighs are trembling and you’re begging him to stop for it’s too exquisite, it verges into pain now, you can hardly bear it. And yet he goes on, as if he’s trying to stamp out the memory of any other man’s fuck and you’re drowning in the pleasure of it, you’re glutted, keeling, lost.
You kiss, softly, the valley at the base of his neck, you kiss, softly, the pale clearing behind his ear, you breathe him in deep, kneel, swell him. Want to give so much back, to have him as stunned by sensation as you are.
Changed, utterly.
And each week hurtling home on the tube you wonder where it can all end, how much more can you ask of him. For everything else is obliterated by that explosive pleasure at the base of your spine, your whole other life is wiped away. Neither of you talks about husbands or families, or what on earth comes next, because you can’t bear to think about anything that might put a stop to all this.
go to bed not later than ten and get up at five or six when you are grown-up
You ring your mother. It’s her birthday; you’ve sent some lovely, hand-made Spanish riding boots that were way too much but you feel so generous and large-spirited in this new life.
Hey, you sound great, she says.
Yeah, I feel it. I’m getting lots of rest, and exercise.
You want to tell her about Gabriel, burstingly, but if anyone finds out you’ll have lost a little of your control: you’ll never know when it could slap you hard in the face.
Keep doing what you’re doing, she says in farewell. It’s working, darling.
You smile. Take down an old photo from the mantelpiece. Your mother’s in the Gobi Desert, on a dig site, a bucket in one hand and a spade in the other, and her eyes are narrowed against the sun and strands of hair whip across her face. You used to hate her loose, loud life when you were growing up: the way she’d wander around the house naked, push you out to experience something of the world, take you to interminable dinners to meet yet another of her men.
You recognise now that your mother was doing exactly what she wanted and, in her mid-fifties, she’s still doing it. She’s now contentedly celibate. Living a vivid life, which sometimes involves watching old black and white films until three a.m. and sleeping until midday and having just tea for breakfast and nothing else. 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