Nine & a Half Weeks (12 page)

Years of intermittent faking behind me. The power to fake ecstasy, the stingy, pathetic control it provides, pantpantpant, ah, darling. “Dynamite in bed,” whispers a man to his best friend as I’m about to enter the living room, only a few years ago. I never once came with that man, not in ten months of tireless gyrations, yet he was happy with my responses. Watching him above me as I panted while he came, his eyes squinted shut, red face far above me, I’m in control. No more. This one has taken me on, taken me in, taken me over, he can have it all, how welcome he is to me.

Beyond all limits is the title of a porn flick on Broadway and Forty-fourth. Beyond-all-limits, what a lovely sound, he’s promised we’ll see it. “We’ll go to lots of movies,” he says, “once we ride this out, this-phase we’re in.” He’s right. One needs to ride out a phase such as this one. Vision’s too blurred, dangerously drunk driving on steep, narrow, winding roads, using them as if the New York State Thruway, going 110, oblivious to drunkenness and speed limits. He’s moving me, edging me, step by careful step-nothing drunken about it-there goes one limit, another one, limits falling by the wayside. I’m afloat. After three days, I’ve gone beyond my limits. For two months now, I’ve been out of control. Long ago I’ve lost count of how often I’ve come, how often I’ve said, please, don’t, please, ah, don’t. I beg every night, lovely to beg. “Please what,” he says in a low voice and makes me come again, my voice far away, not my voice at all. I plead every night, ugly rasping from my throat, my stomach liquid, warm syrup thighs, out of control.

Listen holy-Virgin-Mary, I’m like you now; there’s no need for my control, he’s doing it all, he’ll do it until he kills me. Can’t, won’t kill me, though, we’re both too selfish for that. So many ways to edge on further, a lifetime full. Thick welts and a stifled scream for the first time, I’ve been with him only nine weeks and we’ve long moved beyond stifled screams. The things people do before they need to be killed must be legion. A trickle of blood for the first time-legion. And the reminder: if you do kill me, you’ll have to find someone else and is it easy to find women like me?

THAT NIGHT A trickle of blood stained his sheets. He ran a finger through it, tasted it, then smeared the last drops across my mouth and watched the blood dry on my lips while stroking the sweat-wet hair above my forehead. “You really do crave this,” he said. “You’re as obsessed with it as 1 am. Sometimes during the day 1 get the most persistent hard-on, imagining how far we’ll go.” He slowly rubbed at the crusty flakes around my mouth with his thumb. “Other times I’m frightened. …” He laughed. “Hey, there’s some pie left over from dinner. Let’s eat it and go to bed, it’s two o’clock, you’re impossible in the morning when you don’t get enough sleep.”

Next day, after breakfast and while brushing my teeth, I began to cry. He called, “Ready?” and, “Let’s go, sweetheart, it’s twenty of.” A few minutes later he came into the bathroom and set his briefcase down on the toilet seat. He took the toothbrush out of my hand and dried my face, and said, “You have a meeting at nine-thirty, remember?” and, “What on earth is the matter?” He kissed me on both cheeks, looped my handbag over my shoulder, picked up his briefcase, and took my hand. He locked the apartment door while I cried and we walked to the subway while I cried and at one point he said, “Do you have your sunglasses with you?” He took them from the outside pocket of my handbag himself and stuck them onto my nose, fumbling with one of the side bars, unable to find my right ear.

When we got off the subway I was still crying. 1 cried up the first set of stairs and then up the second set. Within a few yards of the exit turnstiles he threw up his hands and pivoted me toward the other side of the platform and downstairs again and into the subway and up the elevator and into the living room, where he half-pushed me onto the sofa and shouted, “Will you please talk to me,” and, “What the hell is going on?”

I didn’t know what was going on. All I knew was 1 couldn’t stop crying. When I was still crying at six o’clock he took me to a hospital; I was given sedation and after a while the crying stopped. The next day I began a period of treatment that lasted some months.

1 never saw him again.

When my skin had gone back to its even tone I slept with another man and discovered, my hands lying awkwardly on the sheet at either side of me, that I had forgotten what to do with them. I’m responsible and an adult again, full time. What remains is that my sensation thermostat has been thrown out of whack: it’s been years and sometimes I wonder whether my body will ever again register above lukewarm.

Scanned and proofed by DogBoy.