Quiver (4 page)

Early one morning when the streets were still desolate, with only the party-goers gliding past the pimps, the homeless and the desperate, while a flock of cockatoos shrieked above like a thousand rancorous drag queens flapping their way over Kings Cross, Humphrey was stopped by a traveler when returning home from a lover. The man asked for the way to Central Station. Humphrey obliged and began to trace a map in the dust of the pavement. Suddenly he noticed the man staring strangely at his face. Humphrey, who was used to being stared at, continued on regardless. Eventually, the man excused himself
and rushed away. Humphrey, bemused, walked on and in that hazy, muddled morning state soon forgot the man’s fear.

Back at home he started dressing and was about to leave when he checked to see if he needed to shave. Shocked, he noticed a huge smear of dried blood across his mouth and cheek. For a moment he tried to remember whether he had cut himself, until he realized that it was the menstrual blood of the woman he had just left. The man’s staring face suddenly made sense.

I loved that story, and imagined all sorts of romantic notions of Humphrey brazenly wearing that stain as a mark of woman. The imprint of woman on a man who loved women.

At work, in the middle of a slide show illustrating the merits of irrigation, the scent of Humphrey would miraculously drift across the room, carried along by the smell of mown grass blowing in from an open window. I would find myself faltering in front of a group of cynical wheat farmers as the lines of irrigation on the slide dissolved into the line of black hairs running up from erect cock to navel. I felt as if I was in the grip of some crazed sexual alchemist. The more I had him, the more I wanted him. My visits to his apartment became a nightly occurrence. Sometimes he would already be asleep, half-drunk, murmuring no, no, as I took him into my mouth, slowly winning him over with my tongue. At other times it would be me falling onto his disheveled bed with the red dust of the soil still in my hair. He would work over my body in the same way he drew shape out of a stone.

My fascination with his past moved from the objective to the subjective. I could no longer listen to stories of sexual duplicity and deceit without identifying with the female victim. For the first time in my life I felt as if I understood the phrase “you
have undone me.” Humphrey had achieved it very simply, without words, without psychology. I had made the fatal mistake of believing in his touch, as if the intelligence of his hands, our orgasms, the way he penetrated me, had affected him as much as it had affected me. Perhaps this is the catch cry of the egoist: I love, therefore I must be loved. Perhaps it is the Achilles’ heel of my gender.

I became possessive. As we all know, the way to retain a wolf’s interest is to feign complete indifference, to keep for oneself a kernel of dignity, of independence. I’ve always had a policy of placing myself and my autonomy first. That way I had survived all the sudden departures, deaths, deceits and emotional ambiguities. Until Humphrey.

Like all conquest junkies, Humphrey had begun to detect the stale smell of victory. Soon he stopped returning my calls. Sometimes I’d arrive at his apartment sweating in panic, having imagined all sorts of scenarios as I walked from my place to his. I’d bang on the door, knowing that his light was on, but he’d just sit in silence, refusing to answer my knocking. Furious, I would ring for hours from a nearby telephone booth, as the street-cleaning van crawled along the empty streets. He was cutting me out of his life, neatly, like a piece of marble falling away from a fault line. Humphrey’s sense of time and place was finite. Women belonged to certain periods of history that, once experienced and consumed, were then obsolete.

At first I refused to believe that our intimacies meant nothing to him. My ego wouldn’t allow it; my instinct couldn’t rationalize it. Then a terrible anger set in. I felt as if I had been poisoned. I wanted to put him through as much pain as I was going through. I wanted revenge.

*       *       *

I first met Elsa at a cocktail bar situated above a gay pub on the corner of Taylor Square, one of those Sydney locations that ran the whole gamut of sexuality in the course of a Friday night. The parties started at five with happy hour, when the half-price drinks attracted the heterosexual office workers in their short-sleeved shirts and shoulder pads, to be replaced by the local gay community two hours later. Many of the lesbians were only distinguishable by the nipples poking up beneath pristine white T-shirts, their cropped hair reflecting the style of their male counterparts. It was the beginning of the era of lipstick dykes, when the audacious anti-beauty stance of the older separatists was slowly being replaced by a whole generation of highly fashionable gay women celebrating the blatant sexuality of their scarlet-painted mouths.

I was marooned there, waiting for Humphrey to turn up. Happy hour came and went, and gradually the tables were replaced by boys and their men, girls and their women. I found myself staring into my vodka, trying to adopt an exterior of nonchalance, while my heterosexuality flashed like neon over my head: straight, straight, straight.

It was then that Elsa walked in. She had the kind of grace that turned heads, as if you had caught the flight of some tropical bird in your peripheral vision. She was tall, with black hair that fell to her shoulders, high cheekbones, heavy eyebrows and green eyes a shade I’d never seen before. It was as if she had no iris. Her large breasts swung free under a loose T-shirt of thin white silk, below which a pair of leather jodhpurs cut angularly across her hips. She made her way past the tables and pinched the bottom of the transvestite waitress before throwing herself down in the chair next to me.

“Don’t get paranoid,” she said, “I know you’re straight.”

I felt Elsa looking at me, her eyes surreptitiously sliding down my body, leaning forward, finding reasons to touch my thigh or brush her naked arm against mine, her musk settling over me like a hypnotic mist. I knew she wanted me. More than that, Elsa was the type of woman who was used to getting what she wanted. To be desired by those who are themselves highly desirable is in itself an aphrodisiac. I found myself wondering how easy it would be to reach across and slip a hand under the thin silk, to feel the weight of her breast cupped in my hand, to bite suddenly into that luscious flesh.

By the time Humphrey arrived we were drunk, and firm allies. Humphrey noticed her immediately, assessing her youth, her body, her beauty in one glance. Faking indifference, he could hardly look her in the eye, but I knew that glimmer, that glint as he glanced surreptitiously across at her. I watched as he licked his lips, measuring his silences carefully, projecting that fatal broodiness. He performed for Elsa, while Elsa performed for me. It was perfect.

Obsession is an interesting thing: to be the object of obsession is empowering; to be obsessive is totally disempowering. Later that night, Elsa phoned me and made a date for coffee. After she rang, Humphrey phoned me asking for her number. A plan began to form in my mind. Elsa was like that, one of those rare moments of beautiful synchronicity that left me contemplating my atheism.

One day, Elsa invited me over to her apartment, an elegant unit overlooking Woolloomooloo Bay. There were three erotic Chinese prints on the wall. The first was of an older, Buddha-like man sitting behind a beautiful young girl, plump, with childlike features. He had her legs spread far apart, as if offering
her up to the world. Her reddened sex was detailed in tiny brush strokes, the lips curling like a budding peony. Both had innocent smiles of intense pleasure.

The second was of the same couple, only in this print the man had curved his body over her; he was still smiling, with two spots of red in his cheeks. She had taken his penis into her mouth, while he was delicately inserting his tongue into her. He looked as if he was consuming a rare delicacy. As I stared, I was convinced that I could detect a trembling in her plump, parted thighs as if she was on the brink of orgasm.

“I’m a collector of erotica,” Elsa smiled. “Straight or gay, doesn’t affect the value of the prints. I’ve made quite a bit of money this way, buying up and selling again. I sell to anyone: galleries, private collectors, concert halls—.”

She handed me a drink, settling down on the couch. “So tell me, how long has Humphrey been your lover?”

I smiled slowly. If Elsa wasn’t going to have me, she was determined to have me vicariously. She wanted to know how we made love, how often and in what positions. It was as if she was trying to develop a palette of what I found sexually stimulating. So I told her about the time we went to the country.

We’d been swimming down at the ocean that day with a group of friends. I remember being sandwiched against Humphrey in the car on the trip back. The heat of the sun was beating in through the car window, the warmth of my burnt skin prickling under my T-shirt. The sensation of his thigh against mine and the secrecy of our love affair excited me greatly, but he deliberately withheld himself as he sat beside me in silence. Suddenly, he told the driver to stop and let us out right there, in the middle of the bush. The car screeched to a halt. Our friends were used to Humphrey’s eccentricity.
Smiling but without comment they drove off, leaving us standing by the side of the road. Anticipation made my heart into a drum.

“Walk,” Humphrey’s tone was different, commanding. I had never heard him sound so aggressive. It excited me, yet I was almost afraid. I started to walk in front of him through the bushes. I could feel his eyes touching me, slipping their way into my sex. Everywhere around me seemed to reflect my hunger, my wetness for him. The wattle’s faint but sticky scent, the hovering bees probing the blooms, the constant droning of the insects—all seemed to stream back into my body, ripening it. I stumbled and half turned.

“Don’t look at me.” His voice jerked me back to reality. We arrived at a small clearing. A large water tower shot up through the trees, the silver tank catching the light of the sun.

“Up against the tower,” Humphrey ordered. I obeyed him and leaned against the corrugated surface.

He came up behind me, and roughly parted my thighs with his knee, forcing me to spread my legs. He pulled down my jeans, and sank to the grass. Parting me I could feel the soft wetness of his tongue as he probed me gently, his nails sinking into my cheeks. The contrast between the gentleness of his tongue and the sharpness of his nails was intense. He stood and slipped his cock between my legs, rubbing the shaft across my clit then drawing it up against my asshole. He reached around and slipped a finger into my cunt, then touched my clit. Suddenly he thrust into me. I thought he would split me. My face was pushed up against the hot tin, the size of him filling me, as he plunged over and over. We came together, loudly, as above us a kookaburra burst into hysterical laughter.

“A little pain mixed in with the pleasure is always a good thing.” Elsa grinned, dipping her finger into her vodka and sucking it reflectively.

Humphrey had started to follow Elsa through the streets in his old white van. Her phone would ring in the middle of the night; he’d listen to her voice, just for a second, before hanging up. She knew it was him from the splattering inhalation of breath, and she was sure he was masturbating. She told me, with a certain mixture of pity and repulsion, that he had been seen standing for hours in the bookstore she worked in, just looking through the magazines.

Elsa watched me carefully for a reaction. I knew she was searching for a sign that I was still deeply involved. I kept my face and voice completely neutral, although inwardly the very mention of Humphrey’s name sent shock waves through my body, my heart pounding to the point of nausea. The more she rejected him, the more he wanted her. For a man who’d had every woman he’d ever desired, rejection was proving to be the greatest thrill of all.

By this time, although I knew I had lost him completely, I couldn’t exorcise his scent. I would masturbate and be left with the smell of him on my fingers. I couldn’t look at other men. I began to hate him, and my desire for revenge became overwhelming.

Elsa decided to commission Humphrey, and insisted that I act as a go-between. She had given him free range of material and medium but wanted the subject to be herself. Humphrey’s face lit up in anticipation. He was almost salivating. It was a pathetic sight.

*       *       *

We meet outside his studio, a large Victorian warehouse. Humphrey occupies the top floor, which he has converted into an open white space. White silk hangs over the bay windows, giving a radiance to the light that shines through them. He has defined the studio as a sacred place.

Elsa presses the buzzer. Humphrey’s voice sounds tentative over the intercom—I have never heard him sound so uncertain. I start to feel a little more powerful. As we go up in the lift, Elsa hugs me and tells me to relax.

But Humphrey’s face falls when he sees me standing behind Elsa. He leads us into the main part of the studio. A canvas is set up on an easel, and an old bed swathed in sheets stands in the center of the room.

“I want something that represents physical decay. Death and the maiden—know what I mean, Elsa?” He turns to her, avoiding my eyes completely. Elsa smiles slowly, like a sphinx.

“I know exactly what you mean.” She picks up a piece of white chalk and draws a large circle around the easel and his palette.

“Stand in there.”

“What?”

“I choose the conditions and I want you to stand in there.”

Humphrey steps inside the circle.

“You’re not allowed to step outside, understand?” He nods slowly and picks up his paintbrush. Elsa leads me over to the bed.

“Take your clothes off.” I begin to move toward the bathroom, but she grabs my arm. Hard.

“Here. Take your clothes off here.” She undoes the top button of my shirt and sits on the bed to watch. I begin to strip. At first shyly, but, feeling the other two watching me, I begin
to take on the persona of a performer, unbuttoning my shirt slowly, then the skirt and finally throwing off my tights. I stop at my bra and underpants. Elsa stubs out her cigarette.