Edward Aubyn - On the Edge

‘She’s everywhere,’ said Jason uneasily.

‘Definitely,’ said Angela. ‘I really appreciate being with a man who understands that.’

She skipped around him laughing and waving the edges of her skirt.

* * *

Jerome had been darting through the garden with a pair of nail scissors and a torch, collecting flowers to garland himself for his beloved. He wore a bedraggled crown of Mexican daisies, a mayoral sash of Californian poppies, a couple of lupin bracelets and a snapdragon behind his ear. Like a heavily medicated King Lear, too serene to notice his own madness, he wandered naked through the baths, holding in each hand a fistful of petals to strew on the sulphurous waters in which he expected to find Sabine.

Instead, to his surprise, he found her lying naked on a padded white massage table next to a strange man. They were whispering conspiratorially.

Jerome was cool. He had lived through the sixties; he had an open relationship with Sabine; he knew that she had an issue with him that evening, and he owned his part in it.

‘What the fuck are you doing?’ he asked.

Sabine turned round slowly and looked at Jerome.

‘Oh, my God,’ she said, bursting into uncontrollable giggles, ‘you look so funny.’

‘I asked you what you were doing,’ said Jerome, letting the petals fall from his hands.

‘Having a great time,’ said Sabine. ‘This is Paul. Paul, meet Jerome. He’s not in a very good mood,’ she whispered to Paul.

‘I can’t believe you’re doing this,’ wailed Jerome.

‘Doing what?’ asked Sabine.

‘Lying here naked with another man on the night of our Tantric seminar.’

‘I sense I oughta leave at this point,’ said Paul.

‘Oh, don’t go,’ moaned Sabine. ‘We were having such fun.’

‘I take back my love,’ screeched Jerome, suddenly losing his temper and tearing off his lupin bracelets. ‘I take back my devotion.’ He threw his sash of yellow poppies to the ground. ‘I take back my passion,’ he concluded.

‘And why don’t you take that stupid crown off as well?’ said Sabine, flicking the Mexican daisies off his head. ‘You make a lousy King.’

‘You’re acting out your abuse issues,’ said Jerome coldly.

‘Don’t try that, you fucking man,’ said Sabine, pushing him on to the neighbouring massage table.

‘I sense that you have some personal issues to clarify at this point,’ said Paul. ‘I’m really going to leave now.’

‘Great,’ said Jerome. ‘Take a hike.’

‘For your information she told me she was alone,’ said Paul, pointing a finger at Jerome’s nose.

‘You said that?’ said Jerome.

‘I thought maybe the three of us could have some fun together,’ lisped Sabine, looking down coyly.

‘Oh, I get it,’ said Jerome, with a relief verging on glee. ‘Poly’s here tonight, isn’t she?’

‘Yes,’ said Sabine girlishly. ‘Poly wants more than one.’

‘Jerome knows what Poly wants.’

‘Yes,’ said Sabine, picking up the daisy crown and placing it back carefully on Jerome’s head. ‘Jerome is Poly’s hero. Jerome is King.’

Paul hesitated. Sabine was the most attractive woman he had met in years. On the other hand, there was a question mark over her mental health.

‘You’re a very lucky man,’ said Jerome, putting an arm around Paul’s shoulder. ‘This beautiful woman, this quintessence of erotic … I tell you, man, she’s hot.’ Jerome punched him in the shoulder a little too hard. ‘This vision of loveliness has chosen to share her shakti with you this evening.’

He looked deep into Paul’s blue eyes, his face paralysed with friendliness.

* * *

Crystal sat on the bed, cross-legged and naked, her brown hair falling in spirals down to her breasts. The darker curls of her pubic hair were half hidden by her heels.

Nervous in his underpants, Peter stood at the end of the bed, at once seduced and reproached by her physical ease. The atmosphere of giddy spaciousness that had surrounded her in the Dzogchen workshop radiated even more strongly from her nakedness. She wasn’t going to tell him to relax because she was so relaxed herself that she was immune to his nervousness.

How could he offer her his pale body with its tufts of wiry black hair? Was it bad manners not to be naked as well? Would it be better to have an erection, or should he be content with what he had learned to call a soft-on? His waist was not narrow enough, his cock was not big enough, his throat was too dry, his …

‘Hi,’ said Crystal.

‘Hi,’ said Peter.

Peter crawled across the bed and sat opposite Crystal.

‘You look as nervous as a virgin,’ said Crystal.

‘I’m trying to relax,’ Peter defended himself.

‘Why? It might be fun to be a virgin.’

‘The only time I tried I was confused and incompetent.’

‘Let’s get it right this time,’ said Crystal, placing a hand on Peter’s chest.

He felt his shoulders sink a couple of inches. She reached out with her other hand and cupped it under his balls. John had spoken about these funny hand positions which ‘ran the energy’ from one chakra to the other.

‘Is this a mudra?’ gulped Peter.

‘Yes,’ said Crystal. ‘Do you like it?’

‘Oh, yeah,’ said Peter. ‘Only I feel like crying.’

Crystal smiled at him.

He felt a warm current flowing upwards between Crystal’s hands. She was definitely running the energy and now the energy was running him.

He smiled back at her.

‘You’re so lovely,’ he said.

* * *

Whereas Jason was well capable of getting depressed about his career, he had absolutely no worries about his body. His compliments to women were adjuncts to his self-congratulation as a lover. ‘You’re not bad yourself,’ he would say, or ‘It’s nice to be appreciated.’ He knew his wizzer was above average, and he offered women his genital confidence with the breezy conviction that it might blow their circuits if he were to offer them anything more. He certainly felt no need to give a woman his attention while he was making love to her. If she was lucky enough to be getting his pelvic thrust, his mind was free to stalk through the masturbatory routines which had drained him since adolescence. His sexual formation, like that of almost all his friends, had taken place among inaccurate rumours, dirty mags, clumsy gropings and hopeless hopes. Nothing had made him question the mental habits which grew from this thin soil.

Of course it was easier to pay attention when you got some new flesh, especially a dishy, turned-on, tuned-in girl like Angela. For a while his experience could map over his desire for conquest, novelty and accident. There was still a subtle gap. The contours of longing might be perfectly traced by his lived experience, but the tracing paper still intervened. Jason wouldn’t even have noticed this gap if it hadn’t been for something Angela had said the night before. It had really got on his wick at the time.

‘You don’t have to leave to experience pleasure, the pleasure is right here,’ she had said, and she had given him a little squeeze with her vaginal muscles.

Normally he would have found it dead sexy, but he was too pissed off. The truth was that he had been fantasizing. Not about anything gross like another woman, Angela would have to wait a few weeks for that, but about another version of themselves. He was a famous rock star, of course, and she was an adoring groupie. They were in his vast hotel suite, and she was overwhelmed that he had chosen her out of all the groupies and was having the most unforgettable experience of her life. And then she’d said, ‘You don’t have to leave to experience pleasure…’

Crash. That had really brought him down. He’d played all hurt and innocent, and he really was all hurt and innocent because he wouldn’t have noticed the fantasy if she hadn’t said that.