thigh. His penis grew even harder. He pulled my hair until I cried as he masturbated on my tear‐ and vomit‐covered face. The bathroom was shared with the next bedroom. When I stepped into the hall, a young Indian doctor left the room opposite. He
55
glanced up and froze, shocked. The young man must have been able to hear us carrying on, though perhaps not the detail of it, as he seemed puzzled at the vomit on my chin and shirt. I lifted my hand in a small wave.
'So, which one of you is the physician?' he asked awkwardly.
'I am,' I lied, and walked past him to the toilet. The doctor's jaw plummeted.
W was as mystified by the attraction as I was. 'What do you think when I'm hitting you?' he asked one afternoon. We were sitting on a bench in Regents Park, watching the geese and swans. Every few minutes, satisfied no one was coming down the paths, he'd hit me again.
'Nothing,' I said. There was only the moment when his hand would stop stroking my cheek and I knew the smack was coming; the first hard impact of his palm against the side of my face; the eye‐wetting sting of pain; the warm glow of heat there afterwards. It was perhaps the only time when there was nothing else in my head. It hurt, but the pain was neutral: there was no hate or disgust behind it. It was pure and exhilarating, like any other physical experience. Like the moment of orgasm when you forget yourself, your partner, the world.
'Do you get angry with me?'
'No.'
W visited my house only once. He whipped me through a shirt, then topless, stopping only when I started to bleed. In the shower at the top of the stairs he covered me in piss, then forced my face down in the puddle as he beat the back of my thighs. After he spent his load on my face he held a mirror up. 'You are such a picture,' he sighed.
Eyes stinging with come, I half‐opened my lids to see a red‐cheeked girl squatting in a white‐tiled bath. And he was right. It looked good.
Not in a cover‐of‐ Glamour way, mind. I smiled broadly.
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Once on holiday in Scotland I furtively sent W letters. 'Ate a packed lunch and contemplated the dimensions of your hands,' read the first, tentative one. Later: 'Next time you see me, don't forget to bring a torch and those ropes.'
And the last, written a day after I stood out in the cold night air while the midges chewed me alive and W outlined in detail exactly what he wanted to do to me: 'After you told me how you would beat and defile me, I came back inside dripping wet.' Yes, I was still in love with someone else, but that was a model‐gorgeous, gentle lad, who would never even hear me on the toilet, much less contemplate painting my face with his faeces.
The relationship felt too tightly wound to survive, destined for a break‐up, a spell in prison or, worst of all possible worlds, a suburban marriage with occasional light S&M. W couldn't bear the thought either, and one night we engineered, on the flimsiest excuse, the demise of our affair. And I ‐ polite yet firm, like a woman in film noir ‐
smacked him.
'You've been wanting to do that since we met,' he said.
That never stopped me wanting him. Two weeks later I sent a note:
'There are still marks on my left breast from your fingernails. I miss you.'
vendredi, le 12 decembre
Phone call from the Boy last night. At last. It consisted of the usual moaning and gnashing of teeth, both in a sexual way and at our fate of being star‐crossed lovers with the A23 betwixt us.
Towards the end of the conversation, things turned prosaic. 'My dad's going to be in London a couple of nights this week.'
'Why's that?'
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'Retraining courses for work,' the Boy said. 'I know he's dreading it.
He hates London. I mean, what is there to do when you're stuck in the city by yourself and don't know anyone?'
One thing came to mind immediately. Dear god, I hope he doesn't call an escort. 'Oh, I'm sure he'll be fine. Your dad's a smashing chap, someone's bound to take him out on the town one
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