Praise (26 page)

She said, ‘I can't believe this.'

‘Neither can I.'

‘I feel terrible. I used you, Gordon.'

‘Rachel, I
want
you to use me.'

She was quiet for a while. ‘I've had dreams, y'know, about what it would be like to sleep with you. After all these years.'

‘Where they good or bad dreams?'

‘I don't know. I don't feel the same as you do. I'm not in love with you. You seem to think I'm some sort of perfect person. I'm not.'

‘I know. I don't know what it is. But I know it isn't the same for you. It's okay.'

‘I can't do anything for you. I mean, sexually.'

‘I know. It doesn't matter.'

‘Yes it does.'

‘Okay, maybe it does, but not at the moment. Did you enjoy it, Rachel? I mean, if you didn't, you should tell me, and I won't do it again.'

‘I enjoyed it. I don't fake things, if that's what you mean.'

‘I suppose I do.'

‘Don't worry, then.'

We dozed. Later we woke up and started again. This time it didn't work so well. She moved and made noises and pressed, but there was no conclusion. I lifted my mouth away. I used my fingers, tried to move one deeper in. Her cunt closed up. I stopped.

I lay down. I was erect. I had been, off and on, for the last couple of hours. My shorts were wet.

We dozed again. Rachel rolled away from me. I curled up against her back. She tensed. Moved away. Dawn came around and we were both awake. I was staring at her shoulder blades. It was a long, straight, narrow back. She turned over and looked at me.

‘I think I should go.'

‘Wait a while. I'll be sober enough to drive you home in a few hours.'

‘No. I should go now. This is all wrong.'

‘Why?'

‘It just is.' She was up now, dressing. I watched her.

I said, ‘I'm sorry. I didn't mean to force anything.'

‘Don't apologise. I wanted you to do it. That's why I feel so bad now. It was manipulation.'

‘I don't care.'

‘I do.'

She finished dressing.

I said, ‘Could I come round tonight?'

‘Gordon, this can't happen again.'

‘How will you get home?'

‘I'll walk. I need a walk.'

And she went.

I lay there for a long time, not knowing what to feel. Her smell was still in the room, on my fingers. Finally I masturbated, thinking about her, about the way she'd come. Then I came. Then I slept.

I spent the day in the flat. I kept smelling my fingers. I told myself it was obscene, ridiculous, unfair to Rachel. She'd been nice to me the last few weeks, treated me gently when I needed it most. The last thing she deserved was for me to be fixating on the smell of her vagina.

But it was a smell that wouldn't go away. I made sandwiches, ate them, I drank some wine, smoked cigarettes — and it was still there. Between asthma and hayfever and smoking, my sense of smell wasn't even that good. I was hallucinating. My mind was doing dangerous things with what had happened.

I'd seen Rachel at a costume party once. She'd dressed up as Joan of Arc, and even though her body was all wrong for it, somehow she had looked right.

I thought about that, looking at my fingers.

Rachel called about nine that night.

‘How're you feeling?' she said.

‘Not too bad. How about you?'

‘Terrible. I have to explain things, Gordon.'

‘Well ...'

‘I'm sorry I rushed out this morning. I was confused, I needed to be alone.'

‘It's okay. How do you feel about it now?'

‘I don't know.'

‘I don't want to pressure you, Rachel. I enjoyed it. I'd love to do it again. But not if it's going to drive you crazy.'

‘I don't know, I just don't know. Maybe I
should
try things with you. We've been spending so much time together anyway. I've enjoyed it. And the rest of it, I mean emotionally, and in bed too, might come after a while.'

‘Yes, it might.'

‘I'll have to think about it.'

‘Okay. I'm certainly prepared to wait.'

We talked a little more, then hung up.

I poured myself a glass of wine. So I was still in with a chance. At what I didn't know — but it didn't matter. Anything would do.

I poured myself a glass of wine and dialled Cynthia. We talked for half an hour. It went well.

I didn't mention Rachel.

It wasn't until the end of the week that I saw Rachel again. We went to a party, then back to her place. There was a cask of wine in the fridge. We poured glasses. We sat on the couch and watched the late night music videos for a while. We were holding hands. She had long, beautiful hands.

‘I've been thinking, Gordon,' she said.

‘And?'

‘And I think we could try it for a while.'

‘Good.'

‘I'm not promising anything ...'

I thought about kissing her. It was the right time, but I preferred to let moments like that pass. We didn't move. We held hands.

We leaned back on the couch, her head was on my shoulder. I ran my hand through her hair, kissed it. She turned up her head ... and there it was, we were kissing. I was kissing Rachel for a
second night
. Life was full of the impossible.

We got up and went into her bedroom. We lay on the bed. I undressed her slowly. I unbuttoned her shirt, took it off. I kissed her breasts through her bra. She had told me once that she was the first girl in her class to develop breasts. She was ten and a half, it was two years before I fell in love with her. I unhooked the bra, took it off.

She started tugging at my shirt.

I took it off, I took everything off. I was erect and the tip of my penis was wet. I kept it away from her vagina. I moved in with my mouth. I worked and sweated. My tongue ached, cramped. I persevered and finally it all seemed to work.

‘You're very patient,' she said, afterwards.

‘It does get to the tongue after a while.'

‘I know. I have the same problem with my finger.'

Rachel?

Masturbating?

She was right. I didn't know her or understand anything about her at all. I still thought of her as some kind of virgin saint. It was a mistake. Of course she thought about sex, of course she masturbated, of course she drank, swore, procrastinated, fucked up her life like anyone else.

But it was strange. There was something in her that seemed to reject all those things. She lacked a certain sympathy for people who let their lives get out of control. She didn't like Cynthia because Cynthia was crass and lazy and a slave to her own cunt. Rachel didn't appreciate just how sex and self-indulgence could completely take over. Even I understood that. Sex appalled me, disappointed me, depressed me, but I knew it had
power
over me, all the same. Only heroin seemed capable of engrossing me more, and heroin was sex anyway. But the urge to fuck was the one thing for which I could pardon anyone, anytime, for anything.

Maybe that's what I was after with Rachel. Maybe I needed to prove to myself that she wasn't any different from the rest of us. To prove that her cunt could over-ride her reason. I wanted to see what lay under all that self control.

Other men had been there. Driven her there.

It was my turn.

We started up again. At one stage I was on my stomach and Rachel was astride my hips, massaging my back. It didn't feel right, not for me, not for her. Her hands didn't suck up my flesh the way mine sucked up hers. My body was just a body — a large, round, ungainly body at that. She went for thin, bony men. And there wasn't enough love between us to surpass the physical. I rolled her off me, sought out her cunt again with my fingers.

Then I was astride her. My fingers were rolling around her clitoris. She was stretched out below me, moving and breathing and building up. I took her hand and moved it down. I placed her index finger on her clitoris, placed my own finger on top of that, then moved them both, up and down, side to side. Her finger took over. I lifted mine away. I watched her do it to herself. Her finger moved quicker and in a different pattern to the way I'd been doing it. She spread her legs. She worked at it. She was coming while I looked on. I couldn't stand it any more. I dived back down, applied my tongue, finished it off. Then I started up again, very softly.

I could've stayed there, implanted to her vagina, for hours. I wanted
this
to be Rachel. It didn't matter if it was the whole truth about her, or any of the truth. I could believe it. I chose to believe it. This
was
her. My mouth was wrapped around the straw that led to her soul.

I took my mouth away.

We looked at each other.

‘Lie on your back,' she said.

I lay back. She crouched over me. I was alarmed. I hadn't been expecting this. Her hands moved around. Finally they found my prick. It was lubricating, wet. She rolled her palm over the tip, moved her fingers down the shaft. I was close to panicking. RACHEL WAS TOUCHING MY PENIS! The sensations were very light, she wasn't using any pressure, but her hands were
there
. They were long and cool and excruciating. Then she moved down my chest.

I lay quite still. I didn't know what to do. Her hand was still moving. Up, down. Her head dropped. She kissed the insides of my thighs. Then she moved upwards. Her face hovered over my erection. I could feel her breath. I was terrified. What was I going to do? The Virgin Saint was going to suck my prick. It was conceptually incomprehensible. It wasn't part of the plan. It was wrong. God, I couldn't come in her
mouth
...

Her lips still hovered, just a few inches above. They were open. They were ready. She was watching her hand as it moved.

She looked up at me.

‘I'm sorry,' she said, ‘I can't help thinking.'

‘Yes?'

‘About the warts.'

‘Oh.'

Her hand stopped.

She took it away.

Later that night I tried it with my fingers again, just in case. She was wet. She seemed to like it as long as my fingers only moved around the rim. I coaxed a finger in, rolled it around gently, pulled it back, pushed it forward, very slow, very rhythmic. She moved with it, but I couldn't tell in exactly what sense. I concentrated, put all my mixed up longings into that finger. After a minute or two, I said, ‘Is this hurting?'

She sighed.

‘It doesn't hurt, but it doesn't feel right either.'

I withdrew the finger. ‘I'm sorry.'

‘No, it's okay.'

Next morning I woke to hayfever and asthma. Hayfever was a fairly constant problem with me. Cynthia wasn't the only one with allergies. In my case, antihistamines usually helped. I was on about eight or ten milligrams of antihistamines a day at that stage. I was allergic to all the things I liked — nicotine, alcohol, dope, dust, wool, cheese, tomatoes, Chinese food ...

I didn't have any antihistamines with me. I got up, gasping and sniffling and clutching my sinuses. I went and sat in the bathtub. I ran the shower over my head. This cure took a lot longer, but it often worked.

I sat there until the hot water ran out. Then I lay in front of the television and put a handkerchief over my nose and mouth — that sometimes helped too. Some time later, towards noon, Rachel came out wrapped in a towel. She said good morning and looked at me.

‘You look sick.'

‘It's only hayfever. It'll go away.'

She was concerned. ‘When you were asleep last night, I listened to your chest, it sounded
terrible
.'

‘I know. I shouldn't smoke.'

She went off and showered. Then she came back and went into her bedroom. Her bedroom door was right next to the television. She left it open. I watched. She took off the towel, stood naked looking about the room for clothes.

‘What're you doing today?' she asked me.

‘Nothing.'

‘Any ideas for breakfast?'

‘Anything to eat here?'

‘Nope.'

She found a bra, put it on. Then some panties. Then she came and stood in the door. There's a deli in Paddington ...'

I looked at her. I was all fucked up. It was like I was looking at the Mother of God in her underwear.

I blew my nose.

She got dressed.

My car was outside her place. We got in, drove to the deli and bought ourselves breakfast. It wasn't very good. There was nothing to say. We knew everything about each other ... we'd grown up together, known each other half our lives. The only things we didn't know about each other were sexual. And in the early, hungover, post-sex afternoon, what was there to say even about that?

After lunch I dropped her home again.

All I had in mind for the afternoon was a beer or two and the Saturday afternoon game of Rugby League — and Rachel didn't follow the football. Not many women I knew did. Maybe it was too obvious for them. A symbol of male preoccupations. Violence, strength, pointless skill, war.

Cynthia liked the League. She didn't follow any particular team, but there were some she hated. Some of the Sydney teams. Canterbury. Balmain. I felt largely the same way. Brisbane was my home, after all.

Balmain were playing that afternoon. I watched the game. Balmain lost in an upset result to a bottom of the ladder side. I called up Cynthia.

‘Did you
see
that?'

‘See what?'

‘The game! Balmain went down!'

‘So?'

‘What's wrong?'

‘How's Rachel?'

‘She's okay, why?'

‘I
know
about it, Gordon, you
fucked
her. You couldn't even wait a month after I'd gone.'

‘Cynthia ... I was going to tell you.'

‘She's ugly, Gordon, she's ugly!'

‘It's not like that, we aren't having sex, we're just in the same bed ...'