Joanna Rakoff - A Fortunate Age

Will finished off his drink, with a low rattle of ice, and placed the glass on the shelf behind him, next to a wild-haired troll doll and a worn-looking Raggedy Ann. “Take off your skirt,” he said, gesturing again. What could she say? What reason could she give him? She had started this and she couldn’t stop. She should have said no in the first place. She should have left in a flurry of moral outrage. She should have kissed him and shut him up.

“I,” she started to say, but the sound didn’t really come out. A muscle in his jaw twitched. He nodded at her, as if to say Go on, now, silly girl . Before she could think better of it, she unhooked the fastenings on her skirt and stepped out of it, bending carefully at the waist and knee. He took that from her as well, folding it neatly, and smirking slightly at the label. “BCBG. That’s hilarious.” She smiled at him blankly. “Do you know what it means?” She shook her head. “ Bon chic bon genre. It’s a term for a certain sort of Parisian young person. Kind of like calling someone a hipster or a yuppie or a Sloane Ranger. But there’s no real equivalent in English.” She nodded. The throbbing between her legs continued, and her heart thunked loudly below her breasts, but a certain calm was settling over her. “Take off your bra,” he said, as she’d known he would. This time, she didn’t hesitate. She reached behind her and undid the hooks and eyes, slid the straps off her shoulders, and handed him the bra. Her breasts hung heavily, loosely on her chest. In junior high she’d wanted to have them reduced—the horror of gym class. Without waiting for him to tell her to do so, she stepped out of her underwear—plain, black cotton—and found herself standing naked but for her high boots, like a girl in Playboy , in front of a man she barely knew, a man who, she had an inkling, was not interested in the sort of relationship she was accustomed to, would not even tell her that he loved her, as a manner of courtesy, as had Glyn, the Welshman she’d dated on and off in Milwaukee, who was, honestly, an asshole, as were, she’d found, all men with an overhealthy interest in Star Trek . “Why don’t you come here,” he said now, gesturing toward himself. He’d placed the rest of her clothing over the back of one of the wooden chairs at the table, a small action that she found stupidly reassuring as she crossed the room—taking care not to move too fast and cause her body to ripple unduly—and sat down next to him, a bit too stiffly, unsure of what to do with her arms or her breasts or the small pouch of her stomach, until she busied herself with—at last, thankfully —unzipping her punishing boots and stripping off her thin black socks. As she did so, he stroked her hair—paternally, she couldn’t help thinking now, knowing about Sam—and said, “You’re lovely.”

“Oh,” she said foolishly, pressing her face into his chest, which smelled of tobacco and laundry detergent and sweat and something else she knew but couldn’t name, all of which was too much for her, and so she turned herself from him and pressed her back against his side, her legs curled on the couch. His feet were still stubbornly set on the wood floor, legs uncrossed now. “Oh,” he said, too, his breath close in her ear, ragged and short, his hands now running lightly over her body, reaching down and unbending her legs, stretching them long on the couch, stroking up the bone of her shin, over her knee, along her thigh, a brief visit between her legs, then up over her stomach, her ribs, and onto her breasts. As his hand—large, alarmingly masculine, a father’s hand, with gold hairs sprouting off its edges—cupped her nipple, she realized, with alarm, that his other hand (Left? Right? She’d lost all sense of orientation) had moved from her hair to her mouth, smelling more strongly of the elusive scent she’d detected earlier, peppermint, a bit antiseptic, vaguely loamy—it came on her slowly—Dr. Bronner’s, the all-purpose liquid soap that she’d used in college. They’d bought it in large bottles at the health food co-op in Harkness. Supposedly, you could dilute it and use it as mouthwash, but she never had—could never figure out the ratio of soap to water—and as this thought slipped and faded into the hills of her mind, she felt her body come unnervingly alive. Her mouth opened and released a moan that seemed to come from someone else, or from somewhere behind her, and released moist particles into the palm of his hand. His other hand still circled her one breast, then, without warning, slipped away from it and scrambled behind him on the futon for something.

She shifted, stretched one hip down, then the other, and felt her spine release with a small, ladylike pop, along with a decidedly more animalistic throbbing between her legs. Oh God , she thought senselessly. Her head now rested in his lap. Then his hand was leaving her mouth—she’d closed her eyes at some point—and something soft and cushy was being tied around it. She wasn’t sure she wanted this—scarf? gag?—and moved her head from side to side to indicate her ambiguous feelings about the device. But she was unable—or unwilling—to speak and break the spell, for she didn’t want things to end, didn’t want him to stop touching her. It was all fine so long as she kept her eyes closed. As though from a distance—from behind the lens of a camera, perhaps—she saw herself lying naked on the couch, him fully dressed, his slightly scratchy wool trousers against her cheek, and again thought of Playboy . Was that her only pornographic reference model? Yes , she thought, yes it wa s. As a kid, she’d stolen a copy from her father’s nightstand and hid it under her bed. Her pose now reminded her of the black-and-white comics scattered, New Yorker –style, throughout the magazine, in which large-bosomed girls lay naked, just as she was, their heads lolling in men’s laps.

No, she didn’t want it to end, so she didn’t say no. Nor did she open her eyes. Instead, she moved her head and moaned slightly, this time consciously, which made him pull the cloth tighter, then reach down and pinch her nipple, forcefully—something she’d always hated, squirmed away from, but which sent a hot shot through her midsection, and caused her to arch her upper back into his hand, which he promptly moved to the scarf, fastening it firmly. She writhed, unsure of what message she was sending by doing so (and equally unsure of what message she wanted to send). Again, he reached back, lifting her head slightly as he did so, this time placing a similar fabric on her forehead, no, down, over her closed eyes, quickly pulling it tight and tying it. She offered no resistance this time, though she felt both more frightened and more excited, almost inconceivably so. But as his touch turned more gentle—removing her head from his lap and placing it carefully on a small, hard pillow—and her mind stopped racing, she became fraught with the foolishness of her immediate situation: she had gone home with a man she barely knew, a man with a wife and child (Where? Who knew? Lil; she would ask her tomorrow), whom he had neglected to mention until moments before instructing her to strip. What kind of person did something like that? What else was he not telling her? Were there bodies beneath his floorboards?

Here she was: naked, gagged, and blindfolded, like something out of a movie (a porno? She’d never seen one), or something more risqué than Playboy — Hustler , perhaps, or Screw . Of course, this wasn’t a movie, this was real life, her life, and this man—this virtual stranger—could kill her or rape her or, or, do anything with her that he liked. What did she know about him? Nothing, really, but that he was Tuck’s friend and she barely knew Tuck—really, she didn’t know Tuck at all. A warm trickle of something leaked down from inside her, cooling her thigh. Oh God , she thought again, oh God . She felt his hands part her legs, just slightly. She could feel the soft, dense hairs of his thighs rubbing against the back of her own. He was kneeling on the futon, beneath her legs. And he’d removed his pants. His hands, again, moved up her legs, inside her thighs, which were now embarrassingly moist. She moved to close them, making awful “uhhh-unnn” sounds, like a sheep. “No, no,” he said, firmly holding them apart, and placed his hand there, then slid a finger back. What was he doing? His finger, wet, slipped in behind, then another finger.