Helen Zuman - Mating in Captivity - A Memoir

He stood up, stunned. “It hurt a lot,” I said. “I didn’t expect that. But I didn’t wanna stop.”

He shook his head, eyebrows peaked in shock. “I had no idea. I was just playing my part, and now…” He gestured at his cock. It was sprouting red droplets. I grabbed the roll of toilet paper and tore off a few sheets to swab my rip. His eyes followed my hand.

“I can’t believe I did that,” he said.

The next morning I showed Shure the rip, plus the mysterious bump inside my labia that burned when I peed. She gave me ointment to dab on the rip. The bump? That was herpes. Too late, she disclosed Dymion’s reputation for flash outbreaks. I was too drained to blame her. Then again—was there blame to be laid? Would disclosure have dissuaded me? Had the sores even figured in transmission of the virus? No one had known we’d both bleed.

Ordinarily we girls were eager for the details of each other’s sexual experiences, especially when we sniffed date-space disaster. Debacles made great stories—and only constant vigilance could keep the tinder of our corrupt sexuality from setting the Farm aflame. But this time no one showed interest in hearing what had happened or seeking what it meant.

Had the rape date served its purpose? Vaporized my rape fantasy? I was too battered to answer. Instead, I went quiet. I wrapped myself in my own arms, knowing this was the only holding I would get.

I didn’t see Dymion the day after. He departed at dawn to go selling in Athens. I learned of his reaction from Zylem.

Sometime in the afternoon, Dymion called Zylem from the street, plagued by guilt. Zylem knew that Dymion, like me, had been raised Catholic. He also knew that, for the good of the Farm, Dymion needed to forget the date and focus on moneymaking. So Zylem said, half-joking, “Pretend I’m the pope. I absolve you.”

A couple years later, after Dymion had left Zendik, I would happen to answer the phone when he called from his new home, in Hawaii. He would apologize for his role in the rape date; I would accept his apology and let it touch me. Eventually I would acknowledge how I’d harmed him by asking him to hurt me.

Yet we had not acted alone. Wulf had been there in the date space, chuckling as we performed a version of the Girl tale. And Arol had been there, ensconced in her director’s chair, goading us to twist our simple hope for simple love into something dark and bloody. Watching us betray ourselves to serve the Zendik story.

“I WANT YOU TO BREATHE deeply, relax, let your worries go. Okay?”

Amory, my boyfriend of four months, was standing behind me, his hands on my head. As I inhaled, blood swelled the twin nodes of wasp venom under his palms. I’d just been stung, twice, while sitting on the porch swing. With my exhale, the pain eased a trace. I shifted my tailbone off the lip of the five-gallon bucket he’d turned upside-down for me to sit on. Through the bathroom door roared a tide of voices, as the Farmhouse living room filled for dinner. Steel forks clanked against steel bowls.

By May 2002, the shower line had migrated to the Bathhouse. Still, I worried that someone might barge in and mistake our Reiki session for an illicit date. When else did two Zendiks get to spend time together, in private, behind closed doors?

I shut my eyes and let Amory’s warm touch coax the scorch out. I’d been told stings were linked to anger. What was I mad about? Had I gotten pissed at Riven for saying I should do more road prep? Had angry thoughts drawn the wasps to sting me on my head? My shoulders tensed. I needed an answer to the question I expected to hear, the moment the door opened: “Why do you think you got stung?”

Amory added a gentle pulse to his touch. “Just relax, okay? Keep breathing. The more you let your energy flow, the more I can use it for healing.”

A few weeks earlier, during a rare Sunday afternoon soccer game, the ball had hit me in the face. Amory had joined me on the grass and rested a reassuring hand on my back. He hadn’t asked, “How’d you vibe into that?” The previous afternoon, Riven, flanked by Eile and Karma, had skewered me for not volunteering to help them prep for their upcoming selling trip. He’d given me a hug and offered to help. He hadn’t said, “Looks like you’d better get to work on your competitive philosophy.”

I deeply appreciated Amory’s kindness, his unconditional acceptance. I also feared it. Over and over, I’d heard Arol and others blame offenses such as poor selling performance on couples’ “square” behavior. I’d seen lovers leave, both alone and in pairs, under the pall of Arol’s belief that devotion between intimates turned them against Zendik. I’d come to understand sexual attraction as a force that threatened both my place in my tribe and my tribe’s survival. According to Wulf, “A good friend nails you quickly.” Amory didn’t nail me at all. I linked my love for him to a recent incident that had almost pushed me off the Farm.

On a late-March trip to Charleston, Riven had confiscated my ammo, saying I was so “negative” she didn’t want me around. Later, after begging forgiveness, I’d called home. Amory had answered. I took this as a sign that I’d gone soft on the street because he was too good to me.

Back home, loath to betray others as I’d supposedly betrayed Riven, I asked my peers for a break from selling. They refused. When my name appeared on the selling schedule for the next weekend, I realized that my only escape was to leave the Farm.

Midmorning on the last Friday in March, as the van I was supposed to be in departed for Columbia, South Carolina, I sat alone in the Farmhouse office and called an old boss, hoping he’d rehire me as a cook at the Idaho resort where I’d spent a couple summers during college. No answer. The number didn’t work.

Plan B was to call my brother, who lived in Boise. As I moved to lift the receiver, the phone rang. It was Arol, calling down from the Addition. For me.

“I heard you were thinking about leaving,” she said.

“Yeah, I’m thinking about it.”

“Is it the selling? Do you need a break? Do you wanna stay home for a couple months?”

Relief seeped like honey through my body. How did she know exactly what I need? Can she read my mind? Now I knew why Tarrow, who’d known Arol for over twenty years, had once told me that her greatest gift was saving people’s lives. I failed to consider that she had ears everywhere. Or that I could easily have acted on my own desire for a breather, had I had the power.

“Yes! I would love a break! Thank you so much.” I would have hugged her, I would have kissed her on each translucent cheek, had she been in front of me.

“All right, then,” she said, and hung up.

Staying home meant I’d get to spend more time with Amory. It also meant I’d have to be doubly careful: I was sure to betray Zendik again if I let complacency creep into me with his sweet regard, his healing touch.

Amory rested his left arm on the sill of the van’s open window and steered with his right, his bicep bulging ever so slightly as he rounded the curves on Lake Adger Road. The late-morning sun brightened his skin. A contented smile played over his lips. A cool breeze teased the fuzz on his forearms, his cloud of brown hair.

A week had passed since he’d laid his hands on my head. The bumps of the wasp stings were gone.

From the passenger seat, I felt the down on my own arms prickle with the memory of his skin against mine in the date space the previous night. In a flash I imagined the van careening off the next sheer embankment. Focus on the mission, Helen. Being off the Farm alone with Amory, in a vehicle, was dangerous enough. I couldn’t risk dwelling on my attraction to him or slipping into fantasy.