Читать книгу Slow Provocation - Pam Stavropoulos - Страница 9

3

I took some time out a while back, and I guess it started around then. I would have been about twenty, midway through my uni course. But after going overseas, I just couldn’t get back to it. I mean, where was the incentive? My world had expanded. And my old life was narrow in comparison.

The words of my new counselling client rain like ocean spray. There is none of the usual nervousness of a first session. He makes me feel a bit dizzy. At one point my fingers curl around the arm of the chair, in an instinctive attempt to reorient myself.

After the trip my studies seemed so … uncompelling. How could I just go back to it all as if nothing had happened? I was changing. In a process of transition. I didn’t have a `problem’ as such. And I don’t have one now. There’s more to life than a degree and a mortgage. I’d seen the Sistine Chapel! Angels in the architecture! Those really were the days of miracle and wonder, and I want to hold on to them. You know what I mean, don’t you?

Being a verbal person too, I am comfortable with language, and lots of it. The strong and silent has never appealed, either in love or life generally (to the extent that the two are separable). But this is something else again.

Memory of advice from my training days leaps to the rescue. Don’t be seduced by content. Focus on the recurrent themes, the mode of delivery. On what the profusion of words may be distracting from.

Is he an ageing flower child (how old is he anyway?) unable to pick up where his travels left off? Does the `trip’ refer to more than visits to tourist sites? Had he ODd to the point where he literally couldn’t come back? It seems highly possible.

The Paul Simon references charm me. They take me back to places from which I haven’t fully extricated myself either. Wasn’t there a time (not so long ago and after a zigzagged path) when I had been in a similar space? Decidedly ambivalent about getting any kind of job, much less entry to a profession? Once I would have at least wanted to reach for the stars. Now my more modest goal is to have a workable relationship with the everyday (which sometimes seems a more challenging project). And to assist others in that regard if possible.

Sensing my hesitation, he resumes his monologue. Attempts at complicity punctuate the almost unbroken flow of his words.

`I’ve had relationships. I’ve fathered a child! And I provide for her too. In my way. But I don’t see that paying off a mortgage in the suburbs is a good example to set. Do you? I mean, where’s the joy - the spontaneity? Her mother helps her with her homework. Does it take two people to do that? I have other things to offer’.

Yes, I bet you do. And that they’re not things that relate to daily demands.

A Peter Pan figure? An ageing narcissist?

The empathy and degree of identification I have been feeling begin to dissolve. The hat of single parent is one I wear as well; I am starting to identify with his ex-partner (how about `I don’t find this stuff amusing anymore?’) We all have to grow up sometime. Though as I know from my own case, it takes longer for some of us than for others.

The people I see in my job are often monosyllabic in first sessions. It’s not easy to talk about your problems with a stranger.

That’s probably why I am caught off guard this time. Or at least part of the reason, when there are always any number of them.

His name is Aaron. Our fifty minutes are up before either of us realise it. It’s only when he remarks he wants a cigarette that I glance at the clock on the desk and see that we’ve gone over by ten minutes.

You’re slipping babe. That doesn’t usually happen. And the reasons for that have more to do with other things I need to think about than with what’s going on – or isn’t – in this room. I propose another appointment. And somewhat to my surprise, he readily agrees.

The director of the counselling program I studied frequently said `we are profoundly irrational creatures’. To which you don’t need to be a Freudian to agree. Notwithstanding my former career, the limits of reason have long been clear to me. Another recurring insight is that you’re likely not drawn to becoming a therapist unless you’ve been wounded in some way yourself.

`The wounded healer’ is a cliché. One that part of me still wants to take issue with in that it seems to imply a process of something being done to. Isn’t pain part of the deal in which we’re enmeshed? The deal we didn’t contract to, but need to honour nonetheless? Life and other catastrophes. But it involves good things as well.

______________________________________

My son is one of them. Person that is, not thing. And it’s now time to return home. Jack will be pre-dinner petulant. And Sophie will be keen to get home herself.

`Mum!’

Uttered with the full force of his four years, Jack’s energy literally assails. While it energises me as well, I also try to brace beforehand.

`I lost my car at the park before lunch and it was still there when we went back!’

The toy is brandished like a talisman. A split second later he leaps into my arms.

Sophies emerges from the lounge room, her smile preoccupied.

`A quick drink before you go home?’

She often stays on for a chat while I start dinner. I like her as much as Jack does, so am happy for her to linger. Sophie has a stormy relationship with her partner, Nick, and may want to talk about it. Not that I feel I can really help. I try to resist the thought that there are times when I feel that applies to my client work as well.

`And when we got home Brett was waiting for me. I wanted to go to his place, but Sophie said he could come here. So we played here until he broke my fire engine – ‘

Tears sparkle in Jack’s eyes before disappearing as quickly.

`But that’s OK because he didn’t do it on purpose. I might need a new fire engine though, Mum. Maybe next time we go to Target’.

From my client to my son, today’s flow seems uninterrupted. Maybe I look a bit glazed. Because Sophie inveigles him back to the lounge room (where he’ll stay for five minutes if we’re lucky) while I splash some wine into glasses. The heat is intense. I can feel the sweat prickling my armpits as I wipe the bench I’ve stained (like mother, like son).

`He’s been really good today, though’.

Sophie has joined me in the kitchen before I’ve realized it. So certain am I that she wants to talk about her partner that it takes me a moment to register that it’s Jack she’s referring to. My Jack, my feisty four-year-old.

`Wish I could say the same of my bigger boy’.

She laughs wryly. Now it is Nick we’re talking about. And I start to shift gear.

`What is it with you two? It must be part of his appeal’.

I’m not usually as direct. Or at least I don’t think I am. But she doesn’t skip a beat. Her laughter is less guarded this time.

`Well, that’s part of it’.

Nick’s dark attractiveness is apparent to all.

`So what’s up?’

My words are light. But I have a glimmer of foreboding as I say them. Maybe `dark’ is apposite in ways that are less obvious. Sophie always seems to be on the verge of a disclosure that never quite comes. Perhaps tonight it will. Maybe she’ll tell me in as many words what for some indefinable reason I’ve begun to suspect. Intimation of which makes me regret my flippant query of a moment before.

That his hands hit as well as caress her. That the occasionally cloudy expression in his eyes betrays inner demons that clamour for expiation on another. On an intimate other; on the woman he professes and perhaps believes himself to love.

A space hovers in the air, waiting to be filled. I’ve had to learn not to answer my own questions. Not to jump in. Especially when I feel, as I do now, that I may have transgressed.

`Oh –

She picks up her wine glass and drinks from it deliberately.

`The usual’.

I open the cupboard and find a box of crackers. Pour some into a bowl and push them towards her.

`The usual…’

I try to keep my tone light, neutral. Receptive but not intrusive.

What’s `the usual?’ The minor and medium tiffs of love, or the physical and emotional distortions of it? And in the absence of the visible bruises on which the answer to that question should not depend, how would one recognise the difference? There are encounters in my own sexual history that I would be unconfident to categorise.

`Yeah, the usual. The same old thing’.

Said equally lightly and neutrally, as of something inconsequential. Which perhaps, after all, it is.

Why should intimations necessarily be reliable? But then, in light of the minefields we all have to negotiate, on what else can we rely?

The moment lost or lapsed. Or something. We finish our drinks. We talk about Jack (who, given the sounds emanating from the lounge room, is playing a single-handed game of cowboys and Indians). And then Sophie is gone until next time, while I make a stir-fry and think how opaque we can be to each other even as we also give ourselves away.

______________________________________

`Take off your clothes and lie on the bed’.

His tone brooks no opposition. After the aphrodisiac of intense conversation with him she is disinclined to offer any. Or perhaps unable would be more accurate (after years of obfuscation, wasn’t clarity what she was after? That and other things).

Even so, she is taken aback by the assurance and brevity of his request (no, instruction). It is the unexpectedness of the contrast which adds an extra frisson to her excitement. That and the intimations of mastery.

`Every woman loves a fascist’. That stark but also ambiguous line (though Plath’s end wasn’t reassuring). She is deftly blindfolded and spreadeagled. Hears the zip of a bag. And his measured approaching tread which brings her to the edge of orgasm within seconds. She had been tied up before, but not as skilfully. By the time he is finished – and he doesn’t hurry – she could scream with the desire that is coursing through her. He runs his fingers around her exposed sex in an exploratory, rather than eager, way (or is the relaxed pace part of his pleasure?)

God, how long before he enters? So much for the stereotype of male speed.

`Mark –‘

`What?’

His tone is playful now, bantering.

`Get inside me for Chrissake!’

`I can’t hear you’.

`Come inside me!’

She feels the wall of his body as he covers her length. And thinks – who was it said `what more covering does a woman need than a man?’

`Tell me you want me’.

Right into her ear. She can imbibe his desire now. As far gone as she is, she knows it matches her own.

`I want you already’.

`Can’t hear you’.

This must be costing him. She can feel his swollen sac on her thigh like an injunction.

`I want you’.

Tears of frustration are in her eyes. They mirror the flow from her sex.

`Say please’.

`Please!’

`You’re sure you’re ready? I wouldn’t want to –‘

What? What wouldn’t he want to do, when he has already done so much?

His voice is thick with passion. She can barely summon her own.

`Fuck me! Fuck you! Please!’

A soft chuckle, a hand at her head untying the blindfold. A startled meeting of eyes as it falls away. And seconds of synchronised desire before he finally plunges into her and everything dissolves.

And the mouth to mouth! Jesus. How different might her life have been if she’d had this experience at twenty instead of in her midthirties? (But then, would she have appreciated it? To everything there is a season). Later (much later) he is almost clinical as they clean up. But that is exciting as well. He wants to get back to discussion of his half-completed manuscript (did he ever finish it?) She had had to plead an early appointment to escape into the stupor that was claiming her.

He returned several times. Until the relationship died what seemed to both of them a natural death. Strangely, she didn’t miss him. It was as if the experience was so strong it had become internalised to the point where she could call on it at will in recollection. And also, to a significant degree, in physical sensation. I should be so lucky. Her desire for him, by contrast, had not been as unqualified.

What to do with that one in the realm of retrospect? And how far should experience be interrogated? She tells her clients it is necessary, but is less insistent in relation to her own. Which seems, though doesn’t feel, hypocritical. Rather part of the complications of self-appraisal which had always fascinated her. He had given her a little porcelain fish; she still has it on her bookshelf.

______________________________________

Late to the labyrinthine pleasures of sexual connection, after that particular experience she’d made up for lost time. Or tried to. There had been a brief period of hyperactivity which was the mirror opposite of the caution of her earlier years. She marvelled that physicality had not always been a high priority. But in the prior period of trying to establish a career (the one she had recently `thrown away’) such had indeed been the case.

Sex had long seemed an indulgence. Like some kind of reward to be earned, rather than a life-force and necessity. In her abstemious days, a fling would have signified superficiality (and being so long with a serious boyfriend was a disincentive as well). She can laugh now, albeit ruefully, at how much she’d had to learn. Addressing the mysteries of subjectivity — and especially the myriad workings of defences — belated training to be a therapist had been an avenue to fast-tracking her education. In combination with her own practical forays, it had yielded knowledge of a kind academia had never afforded.

There were many robust lovers, who, whatever their offerings, tended to merge in her memory. And then there was Leigh, who had been very different. Who, in the emotional stakes, had left a stronger imprint. So strong, in fact, that she had embarked on an immediate fling in the aftermath of their break-up. Which was a fling that had been significant for a different reason, in that it had yielded Jack. Neither she nor his father had been keen to pursue contact. So apart from the regular maintenance payments (which were indeed regular; she had chosen well in that regard) their further dealings were minimal.

Amazing that vibrant, rapacious life could emanate from virtually random encounters! No wonder, she thinks in her more pensive moments, that our emotions struggle to keep up. It had been on the strength of such strangeness that she’d abandoned her long coveted academic position, retrained as a therapist, and become more attuned to the subterranean things she had tended to pass over before.

`Mum!’

`What?’

A guilty start. Present physically but emotionally away. They’ve had a nice dinner together. But her spirit is straying again; straining to break away.

`I need to go to the toilet!’

`You’ve only just gone to the toilet Jack. Are you sure?’

`Sure’.

He is long toilet trained. But still likes her in the bathroom with him when they are at home. He also likes to engage in the odd false alarm, just to keep her on her toes. All so clever at getting our needs met.

One day I guess I’ll miss this. But I sure as hell don’t miss it now.

And one day maybe I’ll write about the impossibility of negotiating a little being through childhood when you’re still wrestling with the legacy of your own.

`Jack! There’s nothing!’

An upward flash of the eyes, a satisfied smile.

`Mum! It’s a white wee!’