Chapter 9

1. James Salter, A Sport and a Pastime

She is in a good mood. She is very playful. As they enter her building she becomes the secretary. They are going to dictate some letters. Oh, yes? She lives alone, she admits, turning on the stairs. Is that so, the boss says. Oui. In the room they undress independently, like Russians sharing a train compartment. Then they turn face to face.

"Ah," she murmurs.

"What?"

"It's a big machine à écrire."

She is so wet by the time he has the pillows under her gleaming stomach that he goes right into her in one long, delicious move. They begin slowly. When he is close to coming he pulls his prick out and lets it cool. Then he starts again, guiding it with one hand, feeding it in like line. She begins to roll her hips, to cry out.

It's like ministering to a lunatic. Finally he takes it out again. As he waits, tranquil, deliberate, his eye keeps falling on lubricants—her face cream, bottles in the armoire. They distract him.

Their presence seems frightening, like evidence. They begin once more and this time do not stop until she cries out and he feels himself come in long, trembling runs, the head of his prick touching bone, it seems. They lie exhausted, side by side, as if just having beached a great boat.

"It was the best ever," she says finally. "The best."

***

2. Stephen Elliott, My Girlfriend Comes to the City and Beats Me Up

I make her a cup of coffee. She stands by the window peering cautiously through the blinds to the street. I crawl to her on my knees. She looks down at me skeptically. "You couldn't give me what I want in a million years," she says.

She places her leg on a chair and guides my face to her and tells me where to lick and where to suck. "That's where my husband fucks me," she says. I'm stretching my neck as she lifts beneath my chin, surrounded by her legs. "Stop," she says, pushing me away. Stripping her top and skirt. She's getting fat. "Do you think I'm the most beautiful woman?"

"I do," I say. We're going through the motions. The next forty minutes is spent with me trying to please her with my tongue until my mouth is dry and sore.

She slaps me a few times over by the couch and for a moment I think this is going to work. She hits me particularly hard once and I feel my eye starting to swell again and she stops. "Lie down on the bed," she says. "My husband doesn't want me to do this."

She slides over me. Of course I'm not wearing protection. Nothing is safe. She rides up over me. Like an oven. She says, "Theo, darling." She grabs my hands and places them on her thighs. She lies on top of me, biting me lightly. I grip her legs and stay quiet.

Her chest is against my chest. This is sex. There's no real threat. If I yell loud enough she'll stop, which leaves us with nothing. And when I say I exist only to please her I don't mean it. And when she tells me how beautiful she is it's because she doesn't believe it. Or when she says she has to punish me and asks me if I'm scared, she doesn't mean it. We don't mean it.

***

3. Paulo Cuelho, Eleven Minutes

'Sit with your legs apart.'

She obeyed — impotent out of choice, submissive because she wanted to be. She saw him looking between her legs, he could see her black pants, her long stockings, her thighs, he could imagine her pubic hair, her sex.

'Stand up!'

She leaped up from her chair. She found it hard to stand straight and realised that she was drunker than she thought.

'Don't look at me. Lower your head, respect your master!' Before she could lower her head, she saw a slender whip being removed from the suitcase, then cracking through the air, as if it had a life of its own.

'Drink. Keep your head down, but drink.'

She drank another one, two, three glasses of vodka. This wasn't just theatre now, it was reality: control was out of her hands. She felt like an object, a mere instrument, and incredible though it may seem, that feeling of submission gave her a sense of complete freedom. She was no longer the teacher, the one who instructs, consoles, listens to confessions, the one who excites; before the awesome power of this man, she was just a girl from the interior of Brazil.

'Take off your clothes.'

The order was delivered abruptly, without a flicker of desire, and yet, nothing could have been more erotic. Keeping her head down as a sign of reverence, Maria unbuttoned her dress and let it slip to the floor.

'You're not behaving yourself, you know.' Again the whip cracked through the air.

You need to be punished. How dare a girl your age contradict me? You should be on your knees before me!'

Maria made as if to kneel down, but the whip brought her up short; for the first time it touched her flesh – her buttocks. It stung, but seemed to leave no mark.

'Did I tell you to kneel down?'

'No.'

The whip again flicked across her buttocks.

'Say, "No, sir!"'

Another stinging whiplash. For a fraction of a second, it occurred to her that she could either stop this right now or else choose to go through with it, not for the money, but because of what he had said the first time – that you only know yourself when you go beyond your limits.

And this was new, it was an Adventure, and she could decide later on if she wanted to continue, but at that moment, she had ceased to be the girl with just three aims in life, who earned her living with her body, who had met a man who had an open fire and interesting stories to tell. Here, she was no one, and being no one meant that she could be everything she had ever dreamed of.

'Take the rest of your clothes off. And walk up and down so that I can see you.'

Once more she obeyed, keeping her head down, saying not a word. The man who was watching her, still fully dressed and utterly impassive, was not the same person who had chatted to her on their way here from the club –

he was a Ulysses who had travelled from London, a Theseus come down from the heavens, a kidnapper invading the safest city in the world, and who had the coldest heart on earth. She removed her pants and her bra, feeling at once defenceless and protected. The whip cracked again, this time without touching her body.

'Keep your head down! You're here to be humiliated, to submit to my every desire, do you understand?'

'Yes, sir.'

He grabbed her arms and put the first pair of handcuffs on her wrists.

'You're going to get a good beating. Until you learn to behave yourself.'

He slapped her bottom with the flat of his hand. Maria cried out; this time it had hurt.

'Oh, so you're complaining, are you? Well, I haven't even started yet.'

Before she could do anything, he had placed a leather gag on her mouth. It didn't stop her speaking, she could still say 'yellow' or 'red', but she felt now that it was her destiny to allow this man to do whatever he wished with her, and there was no way she could escape now. She was naked, gagged and handcuffed, with vodka flowing in her veins rather than blood.

Another slap on her buttocks.

'Walk up and down!'

Maria started to walk, obeying his commands: 'stop', 'turn to the right', 'sit down', 'open your legs'. He slapped her again and again, whether she deserved it or not, and she felt the pain and felt the humiliation – which was more intense and more potent than the pain – and she felt as if she were in another world, in which nothing existed, and it was an almost religious feeling: self-annihilation, subjective and a complete loss of any sense of Ego, desire or selfless!? She was very wet and very aroused, but unable to understand what was going on.

'Down on your knees again!'

Since she always kept her head down, as a sign of obedience and humiliation, Maria could not see exactly what was happening, but she noticed that in that other universe, on that other planet, the man was breathing hard, worn out with wielding the whip and spanking her hard on the buttocks, whilst she felt herself filling up with strength and energy.

She had lost all shame now, and wasn't bothered about showing her pleasure; she started to moan, pleading with him to touch her, but, instead, the man grabbed her and threw her onto the bed.

He violently forced her legs apart – although she knew this violence would not actually harm her – and tied each leg to one corner of the bed.

Now that her wrists were handcuffed behind her, her legs splayed, her mouth gagged, when would he penetrate her? Couldn't he see that she was ready, that she wanted to serve him, that she was his slave, his creature, his object, and would do anything he ordered her to do?

She saw him place the end of the whip handle against her vagina. He rubbed it up and down, and when it touched her clitoris, she lost all control. She had no idea how long they had been there nor how many times she had been spanked, but suddenly she came and had the orgasm which, in all those months, dozens, no, hundreds of men had failed to give her.

There was a burst of light, she felt herself entering a kind of black hole in her soul, in which intense pain and fear mingled with total pleasure, pushing her beyond all previously known limits and she moaned and screamed, her voice muffled by the gag, she writhed about on the bed, feeling the handcuffs cutting into her wrists and the leather thongs bruising her ankles, she moved as never before precisely because she could not move, she screamed as never before because she had a gag on her mouth and no one would be able to hear her.

This was pain and pleasure, the end of the whip handle pressing ever harder against her clitoris and the orgasm flooding out of her mouth, her vagina, her pores, her eyes, her skin.

***

4 . A.M. Homes, Music for Torching

The kiss, unbearably fragile, a spike of sensation, shoulders the frame. Everything Elaine thinks about who she is, what she is, is irrelevant. There are no words, only sensation, smooth sensation. Tender, like the tickling lick of a kitten. Elaine feels powerless, suddenly stoned. Pat is kissing her.

She is kissing Pat. They are standing in the middle of the kitchen, giving and getting every kiss they've ever gotten or given; kissing from memory. Kissing: fast, hard, deep, frantic, long and slow. They are tasting the lips, the mouth, the tongue.

Elaine puts her hands to Pat's face, the softness of Pat's skin; the absence of the roughscruff and scratch of a stale shave is so unfamiliar as to seem impossible. Pat rubs her face against Elaine's — sweeping the cheek, the high, light bones, muzzling the ear, the narrow line of the eyebrow, finishing with a butterfly flick of the lashes.

Pat is at her breast. A noise escapes Elaine, an embarrassingly deep sigh — like air rushing out of something. Elaine can't believe that she's letting this happen; she's not stopping it, she's not screaming,

She's enjoying it. Pat is kissing Elaine's belly, tonguing the cesarean scar that no one ever touches. Elaine reaches for Pat — there's an incredible strangeness when they touch simultaneously. Elaine can't tell who is who, what is what — Marcel Marceau, a mirror game, each miming the other. Phenomenal confusion.

Elaine touches Pat's breast, pressing. Her knees buckle, she collapses to the floor. Pat goes with her.

Luscious. Delicious. Pat is smooth and buttery, not like Paul, not a mass of fur, a jumble of abrasion from beard to prick. Pat is soft, enveloping.

Elaine is thinking that it'll stop in a minute, it won't really happen, it won't go too far. It's just two women exploring. She remembers reading about consciousness-raising groups, women sitting in circles on living-room floors, looking at their cervixes like little boys in circle jerks, women taking possession of their bodies. Only this is far more personal — Pat is taking possession of Elaine.

Pat is pulling Elaine's pants off. Elaine is lifting her hip, her khakis are tossed off under the kitchen table. Pat is still in her robe. Elaine reaches for the belt, half thinking she will use it to pull herself up, she will lift herself up and out of this. The robe opens, exposing Pat.

Pat spreads herself out over Elaine, skin to skin, breast to breast. Pat against her, not ripe, repulsive. She almost screams — it's like a living thing — tongue and teeth.

And Pat is on top, grinding against Elaine, humping her in a strangely prickless pose. Fucking that's all friction.

She reaches her hand under Elaine's ass to get a better grip. Crumbs. There are crumbs stuck to Elaine's ass. Horrified, Pat twists around and begins licking them off, sucking the crumbs from Elaine, from the floor, and swallowing them like a human vacuum cleaner. "I sweep," she says, wiping dust off her mouth. "I sweep every day. I'm sweeping all the time."

"It's all right," Elaine says. "It's fine."

Fine if it's only on the outside, fine if it's just a hand. Fine if it's fingers and not a tongue, and then fine if it is a tongue. Fine if it's just that, and then it's fine. It's all fine.

They are two full-grown women, mothers, going at each other on the kitchen floor. A thick, musky scent rises, a sexual stew.

Pat's fingers curl between Elaine's legs, slipping in.

"Aooww," Elaine says, combining "Ah" and "Ow," pain and pleasure. It takes a minute to figure out what hurts. "Your ring," Elaine pants.

The high diamond mount of Pat's engagement ring is scraping her. Pat pulls off the ring, it skitters across the floor, and she slips her hand back into Elaine, finding the spot. She slips in and out more quickly, more vigorously.

Elaine comes in cacophonous convulsions, great guttural exaltations. She's filled with a flooding sensation, as though a seal has broken; her womb, in seizures, squeezes as though expelling Elaine herself.

And just as she thinks it's over, as she starts to relax, Pat's mouth slides south, and Elaine is flash-frozen at the summit of sensation, her body stun-gunned by the flick of Pat's tongue.

She lies splayed out on the linoleum, comparing Pat to Paul: Paul goes down on her because he saw it in a porno movie, because he thinks it's the cool thing to do. Paul goes down on her like he's really eating her, like she's a Big Mac and he's got to get his mouth around the whole burger in one big bite.

Elaine is concentrating, trying to figure out exactly what Pat is doing. Every lick, every flick

causes an electric surge, a tiny sharp shock, to flash through her body.

She is seeing flashes of light, fleeting images. It's as though she's losing consciousness, losing her mind, dying. She can't bear any more — it's too much. She pushes Pat away.

***