Joanna Rakoff - A Fortunate Age

Oh God, she thought, not this , she’d never thought of this, never conceived of it as an option, though she’d read about it, of course, most memorably ( indelibly , she supposed ) in Martin Amis’s London Fields , where the main character—Nicola Six, who really isn’t very much like a real person, but more like a man’s masturbatory fantasy, but that’s kind of the point, she supposed, kind of what the book is about, kind of what all Martin Amis books are about—can’t get enough of it and her doctor, Nicola Six’s doctor, that is, tells her it’s okay, as long as she does it first in the proper place, second in the other place, where one of Will’s fingers now moved gently, as it’s not healthy to do it the opposite way, a girl could wind up with all sorts of infections and things. And then there was Lucy, a strange girl from her grad program (writing her dissertation on BBC adaptations of Austen), with whom she’d made a brief attempt at friendship—a Brit, like Will—and Glyn. One night, two-odd years back, the three of them had gone for drinks at the Gasthaus, and Lucy had started in on the sexual ineptitude of British men. One boyfriend, a cyclist whom she’d otherwise adored, was only capable of doing it… this way, “in the arse,” Lucy had said, laughing.

“Well, clearly he was a fag,” Glyn had said.

“No,” Lucy shrieked, “he wasn’t! He wasn’t. He just had problems.”

Glyn shrugged and swilled his Guinness. “What did it feel like?” he asked, trying to pass this off as a casual question. “Did you like it?”

“Hmmm.” Lucy considered, pushing a bony hand into her blonde, wiry hair. Affecting intense interest in the menu board, Beth had avoided her friends’ eyes and pressed her legs together to stop the throbbing that had started up between them. “It felt a bit like going to the loo, if you know what I mean,” she said. “It felt like there was something inside me that wasn’t supposed to be there, and my body was trying to push it out.” Her thin, serious face broke into a smile. “But I also quite liked it, in a way, doing the taboo thing, you know? It added something.”

That night, Beth had expected Glyn to want to try it. Instead, he’d fallen dead asleep—no, passed out—on her tattered couch. She wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or disappointed. And now here she was, doing the taboo thing, or on the verge of it, not sure if it would be more sordid or less, for the fact of her being in New York, with someone she barely knew. Her mind raced, health center pamphlets flashing before her eyes like a grammar school slide show: AIDS, HIV, herpes, burst blood vessels, intestinal blockage, something in Story of O about being “rent” by this activity, if the man’s… organ… was too large, rending meaning, she assumed, ripping, though perhaps it was something worse.

But no, these were just his fingers— for now —and they felt strange, not necessarily painful. She could see what Lucy meant, about having something unnatural inside you. Her muscles contracted. And yet there was also this feeling—she fought against it—of his fingers being too small, too sad , of wanting more . Her body rocked, without her intending it to do so. And she felt his body—large, that smell of peppermint and tobacco and maybe shaving cream—hovering over hers, the corner of a worn T-shirt, a brush of boxer short. “Have you done this before?” he asked. His voice, she realized, was low and extraordinarily pleasant. She would not, she thought, have discovered this if not for the blindfold and the gag. It was true what they say about sensory deprivation—block off one sense and it heightens the others. Like Helen Keller. She shook her head no, rather wildly, fearing he might misunderstand. “I didn’t think so,” he said, moving his fingers more deeply inside her. His other elbow (left? right?) rested on the futon, just next to her ribs. Now he moved this hand to her breast again, clamping down on it. Hot and swollen—prickly, almost as if she were getting her period—from all this touching, her breasts seemed to be acting of their own accord, divorced from their owner.

He was holding his body off of her, perhaps not wanting to crush her with his weight, but she wanted to feel his weight on top of her, the smell of him, his body obliterating the thoughts and anxieties of her own, shutting down the system. Instead, he shifted her in one smooth motion and lay down next to her, on his side, his mouth at her ear. “I don’t want to hurt you,” he said. As one, her muscles went limp at this declaration. She had nothing to worry about. Lil or Emily would never worry in a situation like this. They would strip off their clothes and stand boldly before Will, hips tucked back to lengthen their legs, as models did. Sadie, she thought, would never be in a situation like this.

Then she remembered how they’d met—“Who’s the dark beauty?”—and shuddered. It had been four days since the wedding, four nights. Perhaps Sadie had been here one of those nights. Perhaps Sadie had been in a situation exactly like this. No, she’d seemed utterly uninterested in—annoyed by, even—Will at the bar after the wedding and she’d left early with Tal. “Are they?” Beth had asked Emily. “Who knows,” Emily had told her, with a roll of her eyes. “He follows her around. She won’t talk about it. You know how she is.” Beth did. They all, rather, followed Sadie around. Beth couldn’t blame Will for wanting her, but what bothered her was the thought that he might have treated Sadie differently. Hung on her every word in the restaurant. Been unable to take his eyes from her.

This line of thought was pointless, she told herself firmly, willing her mind back into the moment. Will, she thought, had admired Sadie, but recognized in Beth a sensual— darkly sensual—nature she’d always suspected lay dormant, unrecognized by her few, inept lovers. Yes , she thought, yes . He was stroking her now, back and front, his breath hot in her ear, and she was, she was going to come, but she couldn’t, shouldn’t, would not with this stranger watching her—and she unable to see him—witnessing whatever contortions and contractions of her body, whatever ugliness she might possess at such a moment. She fought it, willed it away, twisting her hips and shutting her legs. “Stop,” he said firmly, like a schoolteacher, keeping his hand between her legs. “You’re being very, very bad.” Oh God, oh God, this is a terrible cliché , she thought, almost against her will (why, why, why could she not simply experience things, without comment?), from a thousand pornos . She tried to remember the names of the classic ones, Deep Throat , Behind the Green Door , which she’d heard about—grad students liked to joke about them, to use puns on the titles in their papers (“Behind the Greek Door: The Frat House as Metaphor in Contemporary American Film”)—but never seen, though pretended she had on numerous occasions, Debbie Does Dallas , Anal Invaders , Electric Blue . The ridiculous titles, the list of them, calmed her and she thrashed her legs against his.

“You need to stop,” he said. His voice now closer, speaking directly into her ear. “You’re being a very bad girl. If you don’t stop, I shall have to bind your hands.” And at that, at those words, uttered in Will’s crisp Oxbridge accent, her body released in a thousand different directions, waves of hot and cold shooting through her—her low cries spilling, fuzzed, through the scarf. She pushed him, his hands, away from her, off of her—it was unbearable, too much—but he refused to move the front one, holding her against him by the pubic bone, feeling, no doubt, the mortifying waves running through her, her mouth clenched tight so as not to scream. Slowly, she became aware that he was close to her now, his front pressed to her back, and she could feel him, hard, against her. She reached behind her to touch him, thinking this the proper, appropriate thing to do, though part of her wished he would simply leave , but he grabbed her hand and said “No,” again in that firm tone. Then he gathered her other hand into his left one—the arm attached to it cushioning her head—and ran his right along her stomach. “Did you like that?” he asked. She nodded. “You did?” She nodded. “Tell me.” But she didn’t want to speak, not yet. “Yes,” she said, her mouth straining against the thick fabric. “I thought so. You’re a very bad girl, Miss Scars dale.” Why did this sound dirtier, more appalling—but also somehow more manageable , more expected —coming from an Englishman?