Extract from The Act of Creation by Arthur Koestler
The ordinary mortal in our urban civilisation moves virtually all his life on the Trivial Plane.
You are not ordinary, Natalie.
I saw Matthew a few hours later and all seemed normal, but as he poured me a cup of tea he asked nonchalantly, ‘Why didn’t you tell me you were wondering about such things?’
I looked at him blankly.
‘It’s perfectly natural. In fact, it’s essential for Uncles to be open to love in any possible form. Most people go through their lives too afraid to admit their desires; they lock them up and only let out what their mummies say is okay, then end up in dead-end marriages having sex twice a year and finding their wives have been having an affair with the gardener.’
I giggled at his wild, angry gesticulations.
‘Your friends at school are just threatened by your insight. They probably go home and masturbate over you, wishing they had the guts to follow through.’
‘I don’t know about that,’ I smiled. ‘But is it okay then? Is it normal?’
‘Why on earth would you want to be normal?’ he chided. ‘But of course it’s okay for you, it’s what you feel. It’s exciting.’
There wasn’t a day that innocence turned to deception and friendship to seduction. The declarations of love and the poetry we were reading lent themselves to hypothetical discussions about erotic possibilities, but they began in the abstract.
‘If society is so wrong that it forbids a perfectly healthy friendship between an old man and a young girl,’ I’d ask, ‘how can we be sure that everything else it deems “wrong” isn’t just as natural?’
‘Exactly,’ Matthew would grin. ‘The machine is there to perpetuate itself, not to protect us. You must find your own rules.’
‘But it’s absurd that a society it doesn’t affect in the slightest condemns it so forcefully. What difference does it make to Mrs Roberts and my mum and Pat down the road whether you’re my best friend and I want to tell you I love you?’
‘None.’
‘And obviously I don’t, but what difference would it make if I wanted that to be romantic love? As long as it made you and me happy and Annabelle was not hurt by it, who else could it possibly affect?’
‘No one.’
‘And it makes you wonder what else we’re being conditioned to disapprove of. Why is euthanasia banned? Why is bigamy illegal? Why can’t tribes live as they want? Homosexuals get married? Lesbians adopt? Prostitutes work in the open and couples swing?’
‘Because true freedom is too much for most people. Only Uncles realise the true possibilities of love and life. And sadly it means they must spend their lives fighting against society just to stay alive.’
By mid-September, we’d all but given up on sorting books. Instead, we’d carry a tray of tea and Eccles cakes into his study and close the door. We’d sit sideways on the chaise and I’d snuggle into his arm while cradling a cup in two hands. Being cuddled by Matthew was my favourite thing and I conveniently ignored the occasional slip of his hand or sniff of my hair.
Sometimes, if we were having an impassioned debate about literature or the world, our faces would get close, our eyes locked together in intensity. One day, his argument trailed off and I thought I must have won my point, but his face remained close and my eyes couldn’t turn away. I felt something tingle in my throat and shoulders. I had a sensation like pressing a bruise and became strangely aware of my sandalled toes. Was it my imagination, or was his face inching closer, were his eyelids drooping closed?
I pulled away and straightened my T-shirt.
Matthew reached for his mug and sat back, smiling.
‘You almost let me kiss you then.’
‘No I didn’t!’ I blurted out, then blushed.
Matthew sipped his tea and muttered, ‘Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,’ before replacing his cup and asking what time I’d be able to come tomorrow.
The scene of the almost-kiss was repeated a few days later on the couch in the living room and again over the table in the kitchen. Each time, I allowed myself to indulge that dizzying feeling for a moment longer; smelling his musky cologne and studying his wrinkled lips; tasting and enjoying the unknown before being plunged into the confusing rapids of shame and regret.
I wrote pages in my diary each night, convinced this elastic band of emotions was true passion and I was the only person ever to have felt it so potently. And every second or third weekend, Matthew read my angst-ridden thoughts and told me my soul was beautiful, my life would be incredible.
On 28th September, Matthew succeeded. I wrote in my diary it was ‘Nothing huge, but special all the same.’
That evening, he sent me an email:
From: Matthew Wright <[email protected]>
To: Natalie Lucas <[email protected]>
Sent: 28 September 2000, 22:37:31
Subject: Thank you
Your mind was beautiful today, your body pure bliss. I belong to you.
Ancient Person of thy heart
*
You can probably see where this is going now. It wasn’t quite as clear-cut and sordid as it might appear. Naive as I may have seemed thus far, I realised there were certain lines that required more consideration than others before crossing.
While the kissing gradually led to ‘sorting books’ in a horizontal position in the top room, I was quite insistent that whatever his hands and mouth did to please me, his belt-buckle was not going to budge. And though we sent emails most evenings telling the other of our desire, dreaming of total abandonment from the safety of separate bedrooms and discussing the orgasmic meeting of my ‘baby kitten’ and his ‘throbbing doppelgänger’, I was certain of one thing: I didn’t want him to be my first.
I was aware mine was an unorthodox adolescence. I realised I could grow to regret it, despite my enlightened knowledge that this was the real world. So, for the sake of damage limitation, I wanted to lose my virginity to someone else. Matthew and I discussed the situation via email only, never referring to it between declarations of love in person.
From: Matthew Wright <[email protected]>
To: Natalie Lucas <[email protected]>
Sent: 4 October 2000, 09:20:12
Subject: Two roads in a wood
I see you worrying about what the world will think and whether you will be able to take things back, whether you’ll regret our friendship in later life or discover you chose the wrong yellow-brick path. I see you struggling to find the answers and I wish I could take your pain away, because this time for me is beautiful and relaxed. As you grow, you will understand the world has its reason and things will happen as they please. Our decisions always seem more significant before we have made them.
So, if in your deliberations you ever worry about me, please don’t. I am a happy voyeur of your beautiful mind and the conclusions I know it will eventually reach. I cannot, of course, give you advice, but perhaps if you have your A* mathematician’s hat on today, you will appreciate the words of Mr Einstein: ‘Pure logical thinking cannot yield us any knowledge of the empirical world; all knowledge of reality starts from experience and ends in it. Propositions arrived at by purely logical means