Thrill Seeker (6 page)

Kinky? No, Den’s calling card was beyond kinky. Again, I wondered if I ought to fess up to Liam so he could keep an eye out for me. No need, I reassured myself. I was safe. Den had removed his profile from FancyFree so there was a good chance he’d stopped already. And if he hadn’t stopped, well, that was fine too. I could handle myself. I was smart enough not to get embroiled in something seriously risky.

‘So how are we doing?’ Paul asked as we neared the end of our first drink.

I smiled, stifling a sigh as I fiddled with the stem of my glass, thinking, stay or go?

I often find it useful to narrow my choices down to two. Live or die? Live or live a lie? My instinct said this wasn’t going to work. Say goodbye, go home. But another voice, that of my devil’s advocate who lodges in my psyche in a room marked ‘desperate’, started telling me I was too damn picky. Dating was meant to be fun, an experiment to see if I could combine kink with friendship. This wasn’t a quest to find Baxter Logan the Second so why keep rejecting guys who were less than ideal? Lighten up, make some compromises, Natalie.

‘Another drink while you think about it?’ suggested Paul.

I met his gaze. His brows were tipped high, his smile wide. Too puppyish, too eager. Not my type at all. I shook my head. ‘Sorry. I need to go. It’s been nice meeting you but … sorry. I think it’s best we call it a day. We aren’t … I don’t think …’ I shrugged, hating this part. ‘I don’t think I’m your type. We’re not compatible.’

Paul nodded, lips tight, eyes downcast. Eventually, he said, ‘Well, thanks for being honest.’

I knocked back the remainder of my wine. ‘No worries. Any time.’ In a hurry, I gathered my belongings and left the pub, thinking what a dumb thing to have said. Any time? What did that mean in the context?

Outside, Old Town was quiet, and my footsteps echoed in the dreary sterility of a Monday evening. Sometimes, if I’m in a masochistic mood, I go running in Old Town although I pay for it later with aching calf muscles. The seafront is my preferred spot. Most days after work, I jog down the narrow, sloping streets then, when I hit the expanse of Sea Road, I turn up the volume on my iPod and pound along the prom, inhaling sea-salt air and letting the horizon suck away the stresses of the day. On the way back, I often cheat, taking the funicular up to the cliff top, just a few streets from home.

That evening, because I’d wanted to spend time tarting myself up, I hadn’t gone for my run. Almost without thinking, after leaving the pub in a mopey mood, I found myself heading downslope rather than in the direction of home, hungering to see the sea. Paul wasn’t going to rescue me from the clutches of Den by becoming another Baxter. Nothing had changed.

The traffic was sparse on the seafront with the funfair to the west a pale imitation of its weekend, high-summer dazzle. By the pedalo lake, the plastic swans faced the blue-grey night with vicious beaks and haughty stares. I crossed to the main beach, casting a glance eastwards to the abandoned fishing beach. Sometimes, I want to revisit places I associate with Baxter and overwrite old memories with new. But mostly, I don’t want to lose the memories because they’re all I have. Stupid to want to keep the lie as if it were truth.

I crunched towards the frothing grey surf, the hillocky bands of shingle slipping beneath my feet. When I was in
the middle of the empty beach, I dropped to the ground and sprawled on my back, gazing up at pinpricks of stars emerging in the ink-wash sky. I was safe there, surrounded by space. Probably safer than being at home. More relaxing too, given how my house no longer seemed wholly mine. On the beach, no one could hide and jump out or approach without me hearing them. No one knew I was here.

Above me, a gull soared past, its underside as white as a ghost. The waves crashed on the shore, their regularity lulling me towards peace. I felt so tiny and alone, a speck on the coast of a country in the world. A good place to take stock and mull over whether to pursue online dating or take a break for a while. The constant disappointments weren’t doing much for my morale.

As if to prove my solitude wrong, my phone honked. I lay in silence, trying not to think about Baxter and love, until curiosity got the better of me. A message from Paul:
It was nice to meet you. I thought we had a lot in common so if you change your mind, let me know. Good night. xx

With a sigh, I returned my phone to my bag. No, that man was not part of my Northern Lights.

Tears stung my eyes. I wasn’t sure how much more I could take of my hopes being raised and dashed. The stars above me swam in a blur. I recalled Alistair Fitch’s blue music studio, a mural of Van Gogh’s
Starry Night
swirling on one wall. I smiled to recall how artistic I used to think that room was and how cool Alistair Fitch. In reality, he was an ordinary piano tutor working from a gussied-up suburban dining room. I remembered how his Venetian window blinds obscured the daylight, cocooning him in a weird, other space, away from the everyday. Potted palms and ferns were dotted high and low amid the clutter of pianos, keyboards and stacks
of sheet music, giving the studio the gloomy, oppressive air of a Victorian parlour.

Those royal blue walls used to make me feel I was trapped inside a box of night and eerie dreams. One wall featured the Van Gogh mural, its wonky church rising like black flames, the heavens made of splodgy brushstrokes, while the other walls were scattered with yellow stars spinning like crazy suns.

Trapped with Alistair Fitch, just as he would have wanted it. I was nineteen, I’d had boyfriends and some sex; I didn’t think I was naïve. My father’s diagnosis meant I’d stayed living with my parents while my friends left town for adventures at university. I got a brain-achingly dull job in a shoe shop and started piano lessons to give myself a focus and a goal. I liked the discipline of practising and the weekly tuition. Alistair Fitch was cute too, steel-rimmed glasses, short blond spikes, but in his mid-thirties so too old and sophisticated for me.

Or so I thought. I was sitting at the baby grand, struggling with the legato in a piece from Brahms. Alistair approached me from one side and gently closed the lid over my hopeless hands. My heart pumped. This wasn’t right. Somehow, I knew Alistair wanted me to keep my fingers on the keys so I was motionless, the polished rosewood jaw resting on my wrists. ‘
Legato
,’ he said. ‘It means “tied together”. You’re lifting your fingers too soon, Natalie. The notes need to flow, no silences between.’

I giggled. He made me nervous and the lid on my hands was silly.

‘It’s not a joke,’ he said. ‘You need to practise more. You’ve got to suffer for your art. Blood, sweat and tears.’

I sniggered again, my defensiveness kicking in. This wasn’t my art; this was grade-two piano class I was paying for
with shoe-shop wages. As an implicit challenge to Alistair’s pompousness, I began playing
Chopsticks
, fingers crawling awkwardly, the shiny lid bouncing to the terrible tune. The lyrics ran through my mind. ‘Oh, will you wash your father’s shirt …’

Alistair let me play for a few moments. I was laughing inside, recalling his declaration at my first lesson: ‘We don’t play
Chopsticks
in my classes.’

Calmly, Alistair lifted the lid. He took both my hands in his and raised them high above the keyboard. ‘Did you do that on purpose?’ he asked.

Woah, this was new. My blood pounded, my cheeks colouring fast. What was he doing? We were shifting into illicit, unfamiliar terrain, I knew that much, but I said nothing, anxious not to make a fool of myself by appearing ignorant of some unknown seduction protocol.

‘Are you trying to rile me?’ he prompted.

I giggled again. ‘Might be,’ I said like a belligerent adolescent.

He jerked my arms higher and my world started to slide. There, that tug on my limbs, the sharpness in his voice, the attitude. Such minor details and yet the combination caused an almighty great commotion in my groin and heart. Did he like me? Was suburbia’s answer to Jools Holland hitting on me? And why did that tug and tone have such an impact?

‘Anyone would think you wanted me to punish you,’ Alistair continued.

Punish. Oh God, what a word. What a delicious, horrible, compelling word. I’d never known it to have such a charge. My senses span, heat thumped between my thighs. In the corner of my eye, the crazy Van Gogh suns twirled on the wall.

‘Do you want that?’ He released my hands and I let them drop to my lap. My hair was short then and his cool hand touched the back of my neck, thumb and fingers spanning its width. I stared at the black and white keys before me, my pulse refusing to steady itself.

‘Well, do you?’

I gave a tiny, breathless giggle. What were you meant to do when a man said that? Was he being silly or was he getting the same rush from this as I was? Punish. Hurt. Need. Lust. How did these mismatched things fit together? I raised my upturned palms as if for a schoolroom reprimand. ‘If you want,’ I said.

‘Naughty girl,’ he replied, his tone warmer and gentler. He walked away, returning with a wooden ruler. I stayed facing the piano, hands out, and Alistair stood by my side. He landed a light, cheeky tap first on one palm then on the other.

I laughed. ‘That was pathetic.’

He hit my palms again, harder, each time letting the ruler rest on my hand. The ruler listed all the kings and queens of England. William I, William II, Henry I. He kept hitting me, making my palms pink, the ruler bouncing faster and higher. I soon stopped laughing. My hands stung and at the juncture of my thighs, I was a flood.

‘Stand up,’ said Alistair, the crisp, bossy note back in his voice. My legs were jelly as I moved away from the piano, my face burning with shame at my secret arousal. Alistair stooped and smacked the ruler against my bare calf muscles. I yelped, jerking my legs, kneeing the air.

What we were doing? This was wrong, we should stop.

‘Bend over,’ said Alistair.

I hugged my arms to my chest. ‘What do you mean?’ I said, although I knew exactly what he meant.

‘Tip forwards. Hands on your knees.’

‘Why? What are you going to do?’

Alistair hit his own palm with the ruler. ‘I’m going to spank you on the B-T-M,’ he said, his manner unusually jolly.

And I let him because I wanted it. Then, when he told me to bend over the piano stool, I was on my knees with barely a word of complaint. I held still, listening, waiting, blood thundering in my veins. I was so needful of something bad and unexplored, there was no saying where I might have drawn the line in that starry, blue studio. But it was Alistair giving the orders and re-setting our boundaries. Part of me said this was seriously warped but a louder voice said if Alistair thought it was acceptable, then it must be. I would go along with his suggestions.

Carefully, he lifted my skirt. I could hardly breathe. Oh my God, Alistair Fitch was looking at my knickers and I didn’t even know which ones I was wearing. Piano class
so
nothing special. I could never tell anyone about this, ever. My heart drummed against the stool’s leather upholstery and my head boomed, on the verge of a headache. With the same slow precision, Alistair hooked his fingers into my knickers then slid them down to the creases of my bent knees. Oh God, oh no, this couldn’t be happening. Alistair Fitch was looking at my bare bum.

An eternity passed. My breath ran so fast I was close to panting. Could he see my cooch? My pubes? Oh fuckity fuck. He was around thirty-five years old. He must have had loads of women, seen loads of bodies. This was probably normal for him, while for me this was so thrilling I was in danger of fainting with arousal.

Then still using the ruler, he hit me. A stripe of pain bit into my buttocks.

‘Ouch!’

‘Don’t say “ouch”. Say “one”.’

‘One. Ow!’

‘How many?’

‘Two.’

‘Good girl. We’re going for twelve per buttock. So hold still, brace yourself.’

The little thwacks detonated in the silence, my flesh warming to make each strike worse than the last. The final few of each dozen stung sharply. I knew my rear was glowing and that Alistair was looking at it.

He rubbed the sore patches. ‘There,’ he said. I could hear his quick breath as if he’d significantly exerted himself.

Between my thighs I was a throbbing mass of sensation, my body hollowed out with need. I was loose and open, craving penetration and half-scared of my own raging appetite. I ached for relief but instead, Alistair told me to straighten my clothes and try the
legato
again. I obeyed.

I wish I could say I played like a dream but my hands were trembling, my concentration shot, and my fumblings probably had Brahms spinning in his grave. But it didn’t matter because I felt transformed, as if I’d tasted a new life of dangerous excitements and there was no returning. Even as I was screwing up the notes, I was telling myself I needed to practise till I was perfect so Alistair would approve.

And I did practise, and my playing did improve. But every week from then on, Alistair would punish me for some minor keyboard error, exactly as I wanted him too. During those weeks, he never touched me
there
, nor did he ever suggest I touch him, and he always used the ruler, never his hand. We rarely spoke about what we were doing, as if acknowledging our actions might bring us to our senses. And all the while,
although I longed for our sessions and obsessed over Alistair, I was consumed with guilt for enjoying how he treated me. I thought I was a weirdo. I felt so desperately alone in my desires.

Years later, I would look back and realise Alistair took advantage of my emotional vulnerability and naivety. He knew my friends had left town and my father was starting to die. After a couple of warped months, I quit the lessons. My longings left me too troubled and confused. Later, I was able to recognise that part of what I felt was simply due to the self-loathing women are often made to feel for indulging in pleasures of the flesh, be they derived from food or sex. But in addition to that, our tacitly agreed refusal to discuss the spankings left me believing these desires were immoral and sick. Ours was a secret so shameful and appalling we couldn’t even confront the reality ourselves.