All I know is her flesh, the tone of her voice and her scent, her fingers wiser than mine. They don’t hesitate. Her cunt is a tight veil. I draw it across my face, my lips, over the skin of my body until she is welded to my belly. I want to fill every hole, her ass, her cunt, her ear, her mouth. To fuck you and the strangeness inside you. Her breasts fill my hands, they are flesh at the end of a tight wet canal. We are riding the waves, and the ceiling drips song.
When I fuck you I am fucking your husband. I shut my eyes and it is his hands grasping the baton. The jerking stick, my cock, your music. Your moaning under our breath. This is what I feel.
WHAT THE HUSBAND IS THINKING
Something’s missing in the string section. Come in, come in, you bastards. The third and fourth. They’re not even looking at their scores. I’ll tap the music stand. What are they staring at? Ahh at last, a note. Thank you, gentlemen…slowly, slowly, gently, gently, think about a tiny silver sea lapping between your toes, drawing up over the ankles, not too fast…washing up like waves of electricity over the knees.
HER
He’s lifting me up onto the broad windowsill, the hot air of the auditorium warms my buttocks. He parts my lips and buries his mouth, finding my clit, playing me with his tongue. I moan. My body trembles under his fingers. Just the tip, just the tip, then as I grow he takes all of me and sucks…It is as if he is inside all of me, as if my pleasure is his.
THE SILENT YOUNG MAN
The smell of her, the taste of her…the flesh quivers, a tiny penis, she is close to coming. I am pulling her to her feet, I’m wrapping her legs around my hips. I press her against the wall and cut into her like a hot knife through butter.
THE HUSBAND
Up over the waist, bring in drums, that’s it! That’s it! Nail the rhythm into the guts, into the very core of being! Faster! Faster! Faster! And cut! Now the death, now the silence rushing in.
HER
Ahhhhhh!
THE SILENT YOUNG MAN
Ahhhhhh!
THE HUSBAND
Screams pierce the silence between crescendo and applause. I swing around, furious. A couple lie satiated, half naked, hanging out of the window of the listening room.
It is an image from my worst nightmare. It is not real. Her long red hair cascading down the wall. The older members of the orchestra start to cough, to avert their eyes. The younger members grin openly. It is a phantasm. The young man pulls himself out of my wife and smiles slowly. He takes a bow.
The whole auditorium is shaking with laughter.
There is no applause.
LOOKING FOR STRANGE
THE LOVER
All that is visible is the radio alarm clock sitting on a table by the side of the bed. Its faint glow also illuminates the bed’s white quilted spread, which I have drawn up as far as my nose. It smells of her. And me. I lie there, feeling the tension ooze out of my feet, the muscles at the back of my neck, my stomach. We finished making love only ten minutes ago. But I like to lie here, alone in her flat after she’s gone to work. It gives me time to explore.
I swing my legs out of the bed. A thick rug of some foreign material lies in the middle of cool polished floorboards. When I sink my toes into it, the carpet releases an exotic fragrance. She once told me that nomads used to play chess on it. And here it is, marooned in a Tasmanian suburb.
There is a dresser against the wall, a heavy antique piece with brass claws for feet, clutching, alive. The dresser is strewn with tiny pots of cosmetics, necklaces glittering dimly in the dark, an abandoned velvet sash, a hairbrush that smells of old hair spray, perfume and the darker scent of olive skin and thick black hair. I hover for a moment, but it is not makeup that I want: I want to see through her skin, just for a moment.
I move to the dresses swinging off a metal clothes rack—some scarlet, some beaded for the evening, some still wrapped in plastic and smelling acidic from the dry cleaners, others slightly sweaty, telling of some clandestine night in a dance club and their eventual fate, thrown to the floor of some strange bedroom.
I choose a summer frock. I draw it over my head. My penis, still damp from her, sticks slightly against the silk as I pull the fabric down over my body. The dress is tight around the shoulders and only just covers my nakedness. I don’t want to look in the mirror. I’m not a cross-dresser. I just want this moment—of being her, of feeling vulnerable in that pliant body. My hands trail up to the empty pockets where her breasts would sit.
Outside the traffic is a distant roar, outside it’s a Saturday night. People mill on the pavements in search of escape, a meal, an encounter that takes them out of their skin, out of their marriages, out of their lives. I lie down and fall asleep.
THE BOYFRIEND
Dee. That’s what he calls himself. Dee. I like it, it conjures up a certain masculinity I find irresistible. Nothing queeny about this guy—that’s what first attracted me to him. He appeared straight, as if his sexuality was a secondary issue in his life. As if he was comfortable with it, and didn’t have to flaunt it all over the clubs. He’s tall, with a really good body. One of those smooth chests you can just rub your chin down, and a wash-board stomach. Not a gym bunny, oh no, this body was built for heavy manual labor. A body that has purpose, that always turns me on. Real muscles, not like those pumped up fluffy numbers. And his cock—you know, a heavy circumcised number with a decent-sized knob at the end. And low-slung balls; I like holding the weight of them in my hand.
It wasn’t love. I’d given up on that one! No, it was definitely lust. Uncomplicated, animal and entirely satisfying. Love was the last thing I needed, especially after the previous debacle. Put me in a room and I’m bound to zoom in on the nearest psychopath. I’m in love with trouble. Shrink tells me it’s my comfort zone. But Dee wasn’t trouble. He was just lovely. Some people are, you know, uncomplicated.