Authors: Alice Severin
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I locked the door to the bathroom. I wanted quiet, to drown out the hatefulness of her words, and I ran the water. I was horrified at the idea of washing off him, his everything, but I needed to soak. I was one big ache. When I got in, the mixture of relief and stinging sensation was disturbing. My body. What had happened? I calmed down in the hot water. It was all good. All good.
I lay in the bath, playing idly with the bubbles, smoothing over the bruises and soreness. I could still hear banging in the kitchen, distantly. I didn’t want to fight with Alice, but her casual meanness had removed my sympathy for her, for what had happened. Usually, I would have helped her, not now. And I was glad I didn’t have to do it. I added some more hot water, and watched my skin color up with the temperature. Soaking up the water like a sponge. Soaking up all his energy, no wonder I had felt confused. And all my insecurities. Too much thinking. I swirled the water around with my hands, practicing the deep breathing that I’d been told would make me feel more grounded. I wondered how often I’d have to use it in the future.
The future. Whatever it would be. Completely unknown, you could hardly believe it would happen. But it did. Images swept through my mind. His leather pants. His face, dripping water, his hair slick and black, his body wet and hard. I felt my pulse racing and the ache start up again. But this time I had contracted to leave it alone.
Before, I only wanted to feel his hands tracing torturous lines across and down and over my weak and willing flesh. But it wasn’t just a preference any more. Now it was a command. Don’t touch yourself. All my orgasms, all my sexuality I had willingly agreed were dormant until he brought them to life. No, that wasn’t it exactly. It didn’t take a lot to remind myself of the sexual madness he brought me. But anything else would be betrayal. I’d agreed. I wanted to follow his rules. They weren’t hurting me, I didn’t feel diminished. In fact, I felt desired. His desire. I could still see his face, the first time he came inside me. Yes, there was the emotional attachment. But maybe this desire was intense because of the intelligence behind it, that preferences were acknowledged, secrets revealed. It was a game, and I was learning to play. The space between “won’t” and “can’t” was being confused. Yet the “I can’t” part was as much my will as his. Strange.
I drained the tub, and wrapped a towel around me and walked out to my room. I called out “good night.” There was no point in making more of it. Cowardice, or self-protection? I didn’t feel like examining the point.
I curled up in bed and pulled the covers over me. The phone lay on the small white and blue table next to me. It was quiet. I realized suddenly that I had also signed up to never turn off the phone. I had to be on call. Me, who guarded my privacy and my space like a hurt animal, had just given it all over to a certain dark-haired man. I lay back and closed my eyes. What had I done? We’d had one night, one brief morning. Some people had that all the time with strangers they knew nothing about, and went on the next day like they’d done nothing more important than drinking a few beers. As much as I used to wish I was more like that, I wasn’t. So what was going on? I heard my stomach grumbling, and remembered eating. Tomorrow. I took a deep breath and tried to feel comfortable in my cocoon, but it felt cold all of sudden. Lonely.
Finally I fell asleep, but I woke up in the middle of the night with a dream voice in my head, intoning, nodding intently that I should copy down the words. I reached for my notebook, which was always next to the bed, and scrawled down what it said in the dark. I knew from experience even turning the light on could chase away what seemed so vivid; it could make any vision, any phrase, suddenly other-worldly and distant and invisible. I wrote, checked the phone—nothing—then fell back on the pillows.
I woke a few hours later, the sky lightening dimly through the window. Another city end of winter day. I stretched, and remembered the writing, but not what I had written. I pulled out the pad. There it was, scrawled and confusing:
The future is metaphorical thinking.
Like describing a sound with a taste, or an emotional state with a color or sensation. This is where we are heading.
Strange, I thought. As the sensations from the bruises and soreness resurfaced, I wondered about describing them that way. What would my bruise taste like? Beyond the saltiness of blood, or sweat, or any of the literal descriptions. Fire, I decided, fire, like the coal in a grate, metallic and hard, dusty, scraping a trace on my hands, my thighs.
And his kisses? His mouth, large and swollen, elegant, sweet? Ah, I was obsessed. I was. I couldn’t stop thinking about him. Where had I gone? Or was I there, more there than I’d ever been? His lips. Elegant, fine, like the graceful sweep of silver candelabra, formed and polished, yet heavy. A Venus with an axe. Dionysus with a whip. Literally. My skin grew hot again. He reminded me of the Caravaggio painting from the late 1500s. That sullen, dark eyed invitation to pleasure, one nipple the centerpiece of his half-clad body, his face a question waiting for an answer. The Maenads, the women who would leave all behind, and follow him, drunk, sky clad, trailing animal skins and ivy vines. Unrecognizable. A cult of secrecy and power. Death to those to tried to view their revels. I lost myself in a dream of dusty hills and sweet wine, searing heat and soothing rituals on the cool rocks, a temple in nature to desire and the incomprehensible.
I must have dozed off, because I woke with a start to the phone buzzing wildly next to me. I grabbed it without thinking and mumbled hello, sitting up with a start, noticing it was light out now.
“Hey Lily, it’s Dave here. How are you?”
Dave, my editor at the magazine. The Editor. I hadn’t expected a direct call from him. This could be either really good, or really bad. I held my breath and tried to think positively. “Dave, good, great to hear from you.” I grabbed some water, and focused on waking up. “Did you see the piece? What did you think?” Why not just dive in? Why not?
He sounded cheerful. “Yeah, that’s why I’m calling.” Pause.
My heart stopped. I waited.
“I wanted to call you personally. It’s just brilliant—and his manager—James, you’ve met him? He’s a bit, what could I say, prickly, right? Even he likes it. He’s passed it on to Tristan. And we’re looking into syndication, not the rock mags, but overseas newspapers, magazines. I’ve sent it over to Huff Post in the UK, I know the arts editor pretty well. They won’t run it, because we have it, but they are going to do a link to it.”
“My god, wow. Holy shit. I mean, that’s great.” I was speechless. This was the big time, knocking on the door. Me? Incredible. I needed to say something more professional. “Overseas rights?”
“Of course we’ll discuss it. You’ll bring a lot of credibility to the magazine—amazing how these things happen. And you know the buzz around this release?”
“Yeah, I was at the party on Friday. Could add something about that to the article?”
He paused for a moment. “You were there? It was great, wasn’t it? No, I think the piece is perfect as it is. There’s a certain wistful quality to the ending that makes it very personal, as though the reader was really connected to the artist, and then it’s broken. Like leaving a great concert. No, it’s good.”
I shivered a bit when he said that. I wondered if the truth got out, if it would change his perception. From illusion, carefully wrought, to truth.
He was still speaking. I needed to focus, fuck, my career at stake. I willed my brain to work. “Sorry, I didn’t catch that.”
“We want you to go to London and write up the secret gig over there. There’s always been…”
I interrupted him. “London? You’re kidding. When?”
He laughed, a short bark. “Look, like I was saying. There’s always been a huge buzz about him over in Europe—they aren’t as distracted by the good looks, maybe. Who knows? Anyway, he’s flying out in two weeks, gig possibly at the Barfly, although it’s—probably will be moved to Dingwalls. Do you know them?”
Now it was my turn to laugh. A series of images, this time of me, standing in a crowd, waiting in line, pushing my way to the front… “I do. Used to go both places a lot, in fact. Happy memories.”
“Great, you can put that in too. Personal approach. Well, call it as you see it. I couldn’t get you on the flight going out with him. Manager I think threw a wrench into that.”
My heart stopped. Did that mean he was flying over with someone else? Oh god, did he know it was me coming over to record the show?
“Does he know I’m going over to write the piece?” My voice sounded tentative, even to me. God. Lie lie lie. Sound stronger, not like some love sick fan girl. Woman.
“It’s a bit odd, actually. James, you know, this manager person, said yes to it all first without checking with him. I caught the tail end of the shouting, and it wasn’t pretty, considering I was on the phone.”
“Odd.” I didn’t really know what to say. Had he read the piece? Were we not supposed to interact anymore on a professional level? What game was his manager playing? But Dave was talking again.
“He’s a hardass, your musical hero, you know. You should have heard him.”
My blushing was thankfully, invisible on the phone. I was desperate to know what he had heard him say, but I didn’t want to alert him by seeming overly interested.
“Musical hero? What makes you say that?”
“It’s in your piece—are you awake yet? Stop kidding around. Come on, I need you conscious for this. He’s reading it now; anyway, you’re due to fly out next Thursday evening, pending his final approval. Ok? Putting you up at No. 5 Maddox Street—very organic and central. And private. In case you need to bring your hero back for some questioning.” He chuckled to himself.
Musical hero? Did I say that? God, I’d better reread it. Private? Life and art were mixing, obviously. I would deny everything. I blustered. “Right. Sure. When are you getting the final approval?”
“Depends how fast he reads.” Dave laughed.
“So you think he’ll say yes?” I was asking a question he couldn’t have the answer to, because he wouldn’t know the reasons anyone would say no. But I couldn’t help myself.
“Yeah, I think he was reminding James who’s in charge. I’ll let you know as soon as.”
I let out a long breath I’d been holding in, and tried to keep the light mood going. “So, Business class?”
“I think we can do that.”
“Excellent, I want to get used to the high life.” I was smiling. Professionally. I hoped he could tell the difference over the phone.
“Ok, Lily, I’ll let you know when we hear from him. But start packing.”
“You got it boss. What do you want from London?”
“Oh, you’ll get a list. No worries there. Consider it my fee.”
I hung up, feeling more and more like I’d slipped through the looking glass. I mean, I’d had some good press before, a small book tour. I wasn’t a complete newb. But this. This could be big. I stared at my phone. And now he was reading the article. I almost felt more exposed. It seemed he was going to pass judgment on everything about me.
I wondered if we would be flying back to the States together.
London. Again.
I lay back on the pillows. I hadn’t even gotten up, but everything had altered yet again. So I was going back. London. The Big Smoke. Expensive. Tribal. The banker’s paradise. The Queen, and her vast estates. Postcode wars, where kids were drawn into battles over turf that ended up with casualties. The march of centuries of architecture slowing down beside the new towers of metal and glass. Bitchy women and the distant men who loved them. A million people coming to the closest thing Europe had as a frontier of opportunity. A hard place, with a lot of fighting and ugliness and deceit. Yet it could be mystical, with illusion and darkness and light shifting past you to reveal anything, everything you could imagine. I wondered if the streets would look any different, and what it would be like to be there, again, after everything that had happened in between.
I closed my eyes and thought back. It was only a few years, but it felt like a lifetime ago when I had lived there. Seven years of putting up with the high prices and the tiny flats and general discomfort, until I moved to New York, and found it was all pretty much the same, except without the poetry. I wasn’t sorry, not now. I hadn’t found what I was looking for over there, partly, I reflected, because I didn’t know what I wanted.
London and I had gone through a really low patch, where it felt like I wasn’t going to find anything I wanted, anywhere, ever. It had been a pretty dark time. I looked out the window, and listened to the New York traffic for a few minutes, thinking back. The whole experience was a little like a wound that hadn’t really healed. When I had moved here, I tiptoed around what was broken. I had stuck to a routine, and that had helped me get over the memories of panic, working on what I could fix. Trying not to anesthetize the rest, trying to avoid cowardice. And all the struggling had paid off. The amazing irony of it though. Going back to see Tristan perform somewhere I’d gone to work off a lot of my nervous energy. I had some good times there, even if they had been a little weird.
The Barfly was a dive in Camden, where most of the up and coming bands found themselves at one point. Coldplay, Elbow, Muse, The Strokes…all went on to fame and fortune, in different ways and for different reasons. But once they’d all been just trying, hoping. And Tristan’s first band had played there—I wondered if he found it ironic, or if he’d chosen the place on purpose to remind people of the history, the long standing devotion. Like he had said, he needed the control. So unlikely he wasn’t aware of the links. This trip of course was all orchestrated. Lying there, in bed, it seemed easy to fit it all into the story to be written. But what about me and my old life? Where was all that going to fit in? And did it have anything to do with where I found myself now? I pulled up the covers, and drifted into my past.
It seemed a long time ago, once upon a time. I used to go to the Barfly on my own, none of my friends really being into indie music. Being alone in a place where everyone was at least in a couple, if not a whole group, was bizarre, but I got used to it. My desires never seemed to be in sync with anyone else’s, so I was alone. A lot. But my weird anxious shyness used to work for me, and people would come up and talk, maybe just to see what the hell I was about. I didn’t know what they saw, or what they wanted, but we talked, we drank, I walked home alone.
Just like now, I didn’t really do the one night thing. I didn’t get all soft and swoony at the shouted endearments, hot beer breath in my ears, it just made me laugh. I was always looking at them, challenge in my eyes, I think, silently laughing. They never said the line I was waiting for, never stood up to me. Yeah, I wanted to be touched. But I’d forgotten, somewhere along the struggle and the ups and downs, how to give in, how to be welcoming. Maybe I didn’t really want to be. So I waited, for a moment that never came, and so did they. And then there were the walks home alone, in the dark, in the rain. The silence at 3am, listening to the night, was more poetically satisfying than the sickly vague hopeful looks on the skinny legged indie boys, who seemed to find me curious, like a lab project. But I wasn’t laughing now, was I? Would all this be easier, if I had been easier, way back then? Impossible to tell.
