Yearning (11 page)

‘Don’t worry, my darling,’ she whispered to him, ‘You’re too beautiful to be wasted on these vultures. You deserve a grand introduction to the arts of love.’ She took his face between her palms, silky hands with tenderness in their touch. She was so close Solomon could feel the smoky heat of her breath.

‘My beautiful son. You’re destined to be magnificent lover of women. Let no one tell you any different.’ Solomon nodded in confusion and fervently hoped he would not disappoint her.

*

When Solomon’s time came, he couldn’t bring himself to tell his mother his first sexual experience was not grand, nor was it in the hands of a woman. It wasn’t long after the exchange with Bettina and Richard that Richard began to follow him everywhere. No matter how Solomon tried to avoid the man with the too-tight trousers, crooked teeth and black cravat, somehow he always ended up next to him.

It happened twice before he learnt how to stay out of Richard’s reach. Ashamed and confused, Solomon told no one. He never trusted a grown man again. The encounter evoked a strange hollowness in his belly, one he never really understood but stayed with him always.

Later, as a young man, Solomon was sometimes overcome by the smell of cheap aftershave. It would just appear, inexplicably, in his nostrils and flood him with nausea. Swamped with repulsion he pushed back hard on memories of Richard, but they’d become rooted in his mind somehow. The handful of horrible and vivid moments kept returning to him. His skin jangling. The sharp jab of a belt-buckle against his young belly. Forceful, careless hands that had held him hard against his will.

The prickle of chin stubble and stale whisky breath and wet tongue in his ear. Heaving and jolting. Unnatural pain. Fear dragging at his chest. Cold lime tiles.
A desperate man’s tears falling against his cheeks and a tension in his jaw that made his teeth ache.

He would shake his head in these moments, scattering the fragments of memory like dust. He tried to force them away by rubbing his forehead, but the images persisted and whenever Solomon thought of Richard’s cruel insistent pawing, queasiness took him to the depths of his bowels.

As a teenager he discovered masturbation and found it provided quick relief for the sexual tension that built reluctantly in his bones. Determined to forget, he bulldozed his history with new sexual experiences. As he grew into an adult he was grateful for the solar system of females that began to orbit around him, vying for his attention. They gravitated towards his good looks and he held them in the palm of his hand, manipulating them with flattery and implied promise. Solomon found seduction to be a reliable anaesthetic.

Solomon lost his virginity proper to a woman before he could grow a beard. He met Angela at the local sports club, where he chased tennis balls, rented racquets, swept paths and cleared dining tables during the holidays. Although she was almost twenty years older, he always enjoyed the spectacle of her warming up in front of him. She made sure he could see up her skirt as she bent over to stretch her long legs. He appreciated the sheer panties she wore, through which he could clearly see the dark shadow of her sex. He felt his penis stiffen the moment she appeared courtside, glancing at him flirtatiously as she leaned over her knees to reveal her pert bottom. He hoped she’d invite him out, perhaps even offer him a head job, a pleasure he’d long aspired to.

Angela played tennis at the club twice a week. She was rough and stank of new money. Carelessness extended out from her like a vapour. She spent and smoked defiantly. That she wanted him was clear. She asked him to the end of season party, plied him with beer and dope, then tangled with him outside on the grass behind the avenue of roses. Sitting astride his hips she rode him hard and he came with her in spite of the pain of being badgered into the hard ground.

When the party was over she took her young lover back to her bed where she indulged him in a blow job. In the morning she swallowed a pink pill with a swig of vodka and slapped his buttocks until he rode her again – ‘One for the road,’ she said.

When she’d had enough of him she threw him out her front door calling after him, ‘Come back and see me tomorrow night, darling. I’ll teach you some new tricks.’ As a parting gesture she lifted her skirt and blew him a kiss. Delighted with himself, Solomon walked home with his skin quivering for more.

When he came back the next night he intended to make love to her, but he was too quick. He felt inadequate and knew she was unsatisfied, but she smiled at him reassuringly and said it was okay. He knew full well it wasn’t. Disappointed, he promised himself that next time would be different.

A week later he made sure he emptied himself an hour before he saw her. He couldn’t bear the humiliation of coming before her a second time. He wanted to be a man for her; he wanted to prove that he could satisfy this woman of the world. This time she was gentler.
She encouraged him to taste her first, talked him through what felt good. He lay over her, delving inside her, watching in wonder as she skilfully brought herself to orgasm. Swollen with pride he waded joyfully in the achievement.

Whenever they said goodbye he tasted bitterness in her kiss and sensed that he was somehow being used. He was aware of a loathing in her, felt her sucking the life out of him. Out of desperation for a fuck he created an illusion: A bored woman who didn’t give a toss about him became a sensual mystery. He forced himself to be drawn to her, in spite of his misgivings.

In truth, Solomon was afraid of Angela. He was budding and new, still young, and he knew she was taking that from him. He was trading it for a quick, regular fuck and the insensible release of a head job. Yet he sensed it wasn’t worth it. He guessed he’d regret passing his innocence to this worn-out rag of a woman. But he couldn’t resist her. And in the end he could blame her. It was always going to be her fault for taking advantage of his youth. Each time he walked away from her door he swore he’d never treat his future lovers this way.

Sex with Angela became a hot, urgent purging of desire. Without real feeling to sooth him he fell apart from her, desperate to separate from her as quickly as possible. When it ended neither really cared. Her carelessness was making him hate himself. They parted with vague promises of friendship, false words that neither of them believed or meant. The affair lasted only two months.

In the weeks that followed Solomon became more and more irritated by the experience. A deeper question began
to take root in him. There must be something more, something meaningful, something satisfying to be had in this realm of sexuality.

He began to read about the art of attracting and sexually satisfying women. Not limiting himself to textbooks on sex, he explored all aspects of mastering and releasing the secrets of women’s bodies and minds. He studied the psychology of relationships, read Masters and Johnson and examined the esoteric practices of Tantra, the
Kama Sutra
and Taoism.

Through meditation and masturbation he developed control over his own body and mind. By the time he was in his final year of teacher’s college he was well-versed in the subtleties of lovemaking and found college campus in the 1960s a fertile feeding ground for willing partners. Attentive, sensitive and charismatic, he was never alone. Students, lecturers, single, attached – none of it mattered to him. Neither monogamous nor selective, his liaisons with women were intensely passionate and notoriously short-lived. He gained a reputation. Women loved him and men hated him, an arrangement he knew would make his mother proud.

As the apple tree among the trees of the wood, so is my beloved among the sons. I sat down under his shadow with great delight, and his fruit was sweet to my taste.

The Song of Solomon

Grateful for her parents’ preoccupation with TV, she snatched her evening meal from the kitchen table and tried to sneak upstairs to the peace of her bedroom. The sound of her feet on the steps roused her mother.

‘You’ve been a while,’ her mother called from the lounge room. ‘How did it go? Did Mr Andrews help?’

Heart pounding, she stopped and took in a breath. ‘Yeah. He’s really good at explaining stuff.’ She bit her lip, hoping she sounded convincing. ‘He’s a great teacher.’ She clung to the banister, careful to keep her back to the lounge room. She felt sure if her mother could see her face she would know. ‘I’ll have to see him again once I’m finished.’

‘I don’t want you bothering him every five minutes.’

She felt her skin prickle with cold. ‘But Mum, I need help. He doesn’t mind. Really.’

‘You can’t keep pestering him just because he lives next door.’

‘I won’t.’ This may not be as easy as she’d first hoped. ‘He doesn’t mind. He tutors other kids all the time.’

‘Tutoring is different. Mr Andrews’ home isn’t a drop-in centre.’

Tutoring? A little thrill ran up her spine. What better excuse could there be? ‘What about tutoring then? Can I?’

Her mother was silent for a moment. ‘All right. I’ll talk to him this week. But no promises.’

She ran upstairs and slammed her bedroom door behind her. She turned the radio on before throwing herself on her bed and wrapping her arms around her shoulders. She gazed at the ceiling, breathless. Did it really happen? Had he just made love to her?
Really
? She could barely believe it. All this time he had loved her and he’d been keeping it to himself. All this time while she was watching him he’d known, he’d been waiting for her to come to him. God, it was amazing. Her nerve endings buzzed as she recalled his kiss, his hands, the pleasurable ache deep down where he had been inside her.

She smoothed her hands over her skin. It was like a living thing, still humid and moist and seething from first sex. Happiness somersaulted through her. She tried to eat but couldn’t. She tried to dance but her knees were wobbly and weak. So this is love, she thought, for real. She went over and over it again in her mind, poking at her lukewarm meal. How he had touched her. How it had felt. So much better than she’d ever imagined.

She dropped the plate to the floor, her meal barely touched. Lying down again she smoothed her hands over her thighs and pushed her palms into her pubic bone, remembering the weight of his body pressing down on her. It made her wet again just thinking about it.

After brushing her teeth she crawled under her covers and tried to sleep but her eyes wouldn’t close. She stared and stared at the ceiling, wondering what it all meant. Was he her boyfriend now? Could he be? But he was her teacher. Her parents would never understand. The school would never understand. Her classmates would laugh. It was so exciting, but so hopeless.

She listened to the sounds of her parents getting ready for bed. Murmurs and gentle thuds of closing drawers, the tap running in the bathroom, her father’s throaty gargling. She couldn’t imagine them ever being in love like this. Her beautiful but cold mother, her preoccupied, rough-edged father – the idea of them being passionate with each other was weird. They seemed so ordinary.

‘Plain as bedsheets,’ she said aloud. ‘But not me. I’ve found someone amazing to love me.’

She wondered if she should tell Amanda, but would Amanda be able to keep it to herself? Would Amanda even believe her? She tried to imagine her friend’s face. She didn’t want to spoil it, this wonderful happiness turning her inside out. No, she had to keep it secret. A perfect, delicate secret all of her own. As the wind wrestled with the trees outside her window, she lay in the grey lace of that secret and rolled in it, over and over, round and round until she was all wrapped up in it, pretty and staring, like a Kewpie doll on a stick at the local agricultural show.

*

Solomon lay in the backwash of his sheets with her passionate cries still ringing in his ears. Tony Joe White spun on the turntable while guilt spun in his chest. He lit a joint and languished in drowsy satisfaction, sensation radiating to the tips of his nerve endings.

His groin tightened with her dried juices. It was barely believable she’d allowed him to fuck her, that he’d finally succumbed to her. She was scarcely a woman, only just sixteen, still all angles and downy hairs. She’d certainly taken him by surprise. Usually the women he invited into his bed were at his beckon, under his control. In the last few hours he’d given in to a strange but exhilarating experience: surrendering to someone else. This young, young girl, a virgin in body and mind, had won him with nothing but words.

Drawing deeply on the joint, he hummed an
om
and relaxed his body. For the first time in longer than he could remember he felt settled. Sex usually left him vaguely discontented. A feeling, a longing, usually lingered after his lovers had left him. But this time he felt satisfied in a different, nameless way.

He traced his fingers across the dry salt trails on his cheeks. The fact that he’d cried was unexpected. He’d been moved by her, something he’d not experienced before. It was strange that it had happened with her, of all people. He reassured himself it was probably just a one-off thing, a by-product of her intense letters. In his opinion tears, especially his tears, had no place in sex. But remembering the sound of her as they came together, he had to admit the pleasure of her had been more than purely carnal.

So what now?

He laughed at himself. Who was he kidding? What now? Nothing now. If there was something special to be had between them, he’d had it. There’d be no more. She was sixteen, his next-door neighbour – his
student
, for God’s sake. It was already dangerous and he couldn’t let it happen again. Shit. She was just a kid. He had no business with her.

But God, it had been so good, so incredibly good. He’d felt so able to give in to her. After all those sexy words she’d been pouring into his letterbox, it’d been such a relief to finally take her, to give her what she’d been asking for.

He stopped for a moment to listen to a guitar riff, his fingers playing across his belly. He’d probably been a bit careless. But she’d come to him. She’d been asking for it, over and over again. It was there in her letters. Anyone would understand that. He’d done nothing. He hadn’t seduced her or enticed her or encouraged her. If it weren’t for the bloodstain on his sheets, he could almost fool himself into thinking she wasn’t as innocent as she seemed. But the truth of it was there, in the rose-red patch beneath the shadow of his knee, and it defied him to rationalise it away.