Edward Aubyn - On the Edge

Peter leant over and kissed her. They sat beside the waterfall in the late afternoon sun.

‘The trouble with that theory is that she wasn’t haunting me until she turned up, and now she’s just puzzling me for a minute or two. You’re the one who’s been haunting me. But you’re right, seeing her again is liberating. It makes me realize that what happened between us — which was extraordinary — wasn’t something contained in her, or in me for that matter. We were just the landing site for a strange ecstasy. It was a sexual ecstasy which didn’t connect with anything else. We were just in bed for three days, hardly even talking, and when we did talk I was rescheduling flights to London and she was saying something unfathomable about the universe.’

‘It’s a hard thing to say anything fathomable about,’ said Crystal.

‘Quite,’ said Peter. And then, changing the subject, ‘I wanted to clarify something that John said about ejaculatory control. This PC muscle, should you clench it without clenching your buttocks, or as well as?’

‘It’s a free country,’ said Crystal. ‘You can clench anything you like. I guess if you’re trying not to ejaculate you’d better use every muscle you’ve got.’

‘It’s hard to imagine that it would do the trick on its own,’ admitted Peter, experimenting. John had said that the PC muscle was the one you would use if you wanted to stop peeing halfway through. It seemed a feeble instrument to pit against the sense of manifest destiny which was the birthright of every ejaculation.

‘Maybe we should concentrate on the sacred spot massage,’ said Peter, ‘rather than the ejaculatory control.’

‘Let’s concentrate on everything,’ said Crystal.

‘Definitely,’ said Peter, getting up. ‘I just wanted to “process” Sabine with you.’

‘She’s in the can,’ said Crystal, accepting Peter’s hand and letting him pull her gently to her feet.

* * *

‘One of the sisters in our circle was raped at gunpoint,’ said Karen. ‘It was just so upsetting to hear her…’

‘Gee,’ said Stan solemnly.

‘One of the other sisters said that we should take a moment to grieve for all the women who had been raped in the history of the world. I thought it would be nice if we could take a moment to grieve for the woman who was right there in front of us, crying.’

Karen rarely allowed herself to question another’s path, but she had to admit that she had taken a dislike to the hawk-eyed sister, or stepsister, who had stolen and generalized the suffering of the rape victim. Her face was lean and angry and her jaw muscles spoke of an Olympic dedication to clenched teeth.

Now, nobody was more planet-minded than Karen, but sometimes you had to be practical, and so she had gone to fetch a Kleenex box, only to find that it had been emptied during John’s demonstration of the loosening and opening effects of the sacred spot massage. The empty Kleenex box now symbolized the perfectly liberated yoni , and the pile of tissues, which Karen soon located, stood for the discarded layers of shame, guilt and fear. She hesitated to offer this pile of toxic emotions to her weeping sister. Everybody else in the room seemed to be channelling the female predicament since the eclipse of the Goddess had cast the shadow of war, industrialization and rape over the Earth. Sensing the insult of this transpersonal sorrow Karen, heartbroken and precise, picked up a handful of pale-orange tissues and sat next to the crying woman.

‘I want to honour your courage in sharing that,’ said the muscle-jawed woman, noticing the counter-attack of personal sympathy. ‘It gives me hope for all the other women who’ve suffered a similar experience.’

‘There was a man in our men’s group,’ said Stan, interrupting Karen’s memory of this incident, ‘who was caught masturbating by his parents, and got sent to a psychiatrist.’

Karen came to a halt and let loose a deep sigh.

‘That poor man. Can you imagine the effect that had on him?’

‘I didn’t have to imagine it, I could see it.’

‘We are so privileged to be in this workshop,’ said Karen, shaking her head. ‘Just talking about sexuality in an open way is a healing process. Our generation was given such double messages. What was it that John said? “Sex is dirty: save it for the one you love.”’

‘Right!’ said Stan. ‘Can you believe that?’

Stan and Karen drifted back to their room, hand in hand. Stan felt the calm depths of a forty-year marriage being stirred by the influx of new perspectives. He loved Karen and had always been faithful to her (except that one time at the insurance conference in Oklahoma City) but the idea of sexual passion with his aged wife was a challenge he had barely considered. Now he felt ashamed of the rift between devotion and excitement which scarred his sexual nature. Could the tranquillizing familiarities of their marriage be transformed into the conscious intimacy which, according to John, was the fuel of sexual ecstasy? John had even deprived Stan of the painful refuge of his impotence, when he had talked about sex with no goals, and non-ejaculatory orgasms, and the pleasure a man could give his beloved with a soft-on.

Stan was confused and apprehensive, but also excited, as he opened the door of their room.

‘This isn’t our bedroom any more,’ said Karen.

‘It isn’t?’ said Stan, thinking his wife had planned a surprise.

‘It’s our love temple,’ said Karen.

‘Oh, right,’ said Stan bashfully, descending deeper into his mixed emotions.

* * *

Jerome was standing on his head in lime-green boxer shorts, his legs slowly scissoring the air. Standing on her feet in the bathroom, Sabine looked quizzically at her red and gold sari. That shakti red was guaranteed to make her feel like the ultimate temple dancer. On the other hand, Jerome had seen it before. The alternative, which Jerome had not seen, was a kind of tattered suede wrap, hardly big enough to polish a windowpane. Very cavewoman at the dawn of history, it was devastatingly sexy, with its rough edges effortlessly failing to hide her freshly groomed yoni. The trouble was that it lacked any obvious spiritual quality, and Sabine wanted Jerome’s soul, not just his lingam.

She finally made her decision and went through into the bedroom.

‘Shall we chant?’ she asked, walking past Jerome with a little spin.

‘Woah!’ said Jerome, leaping back onto his feet. The only mantra that goes with that rag is “Yabadabadoo”.’

As if inspired by the laws of cartoonland, he threw himself on to the bed in one smooth gesture, his head already resting in his palm as he hit the mattress. He raised one knee and lay there in the posture of a feasting Roman.

I knew I should have worn the sari, thought Sabine.

‘Do you like it?’ she asked, pretending to pull a few strands of suede over her pubic mound.

‘You bought your own nakedness at a clothes store,’ said Jerome. ‘That’s what I call capitalism.’

Sabine joined her hands together in prayer and bowed to Jerome.

‘Yabadabadoo,’ said Jerome.

‘You are a silly man,’ said Sabine, beginning to be irritated. ‘This is supposed to be a meditation.’

‘Meditate on this,’ said Jerome, clasping the silken bulge in his boxer shorts.

‘Be serious,’ shouted Sabine, stamping her foot.

‘You come in dressed in a couple of moose sinews, and you want me to behave like I’m in church.’

‘My God,’ said Sabine, ‘what are you doing in a Tantra seminar if you are making a separation between sexuality and spirituality?’

‘Lighten up, will you?’ said Jerome.

‘I think you’re the one who needs to relax,’ said Sabine, getting up and stepping into a pair of jeans. ‘I’m going for a walk, maybe when I get back we can start again.’