69

To take a break from critical analyses, I thought I would upload a short story I wrote about a year ago. It was long-listed for the annual Fish Competition in Ireland. If you want to apply my narrative theory to it, you can certainly try.

[Note: I have edited it slightly. It probably should be edited more. The style is odd: it's as though a Victorian writer had turned his attention to a brothel. Perhaps that's part of it's charm?}

                                                                        69

            The spark seemed to have gone out of the Jane’s and Clare’s love life and, despite their best efforts, they couldn’t seem to rekindle the flame of old. The two of them had tried to spice things up in a number of different ways – strap-on dildos, marijuana, role-playing games in which Clare played a female cop arresting a recalcitrant traffic offender; they had experimented with sex in public places (a brief, unsatisfactory romp on a beach near Leigh that had been interrupted by a gaggle of Japanese tourists); they had tried moving the TV to the bedroom and watching lesbian porn to get them in the mood. Nothing seemed to work and the couple despaired of ever regaining the passion they had felt at the beginning of their relationship.

            One evening, they were sitting on the couch watching Game of Thrones when Jane decided to propose an idea that she had been mulling over for a little while. The irony hadn’t escaped her. There they were, creatures of habit, sitting watching TV together like an old married couple when once they would have been out attending gigs by punk-rocker friends or screwing on the kitchen table. Monotony, Jane reflected morbidly, was ever the price of monogamy.

            “I’ve been thinking,” said Jane carefully, “perhaps we could make sex more interesting by getting a third party involved.”

            “Briony might be interested, I suppose.”

            “I wasn’t thinking of another woman. I thought we could arrange to involve a man.”

            Clare took a moment to digest this novel suggestion.

            “Who were you thinking of?”

            “Aldous.”

            Jane had known Aldous since University, having had an adjacent room to his in the same hall of residence. Back then, he had been notorious for the number of clubs to which he belonged: not only to both the Young Greens and the Hiking Club but also to the Dungeons and Dragons Club and the Mediaeval Society. For a time, he had been both president and sole member of the Klingon Language and Culture Appreciation Society, a club that only ever attracted one other recruit. It was characteristic of Aldous that he took the failure of this club in his stride and reacted to its collapse by immediately joining two new ones. Aldous now had a respectable job, managing the website for an online store, but he still retained a strong enthusiasm for all things Geek, collecting Lord of the Rings memorabilia and first edition Sandman comics as a hobby. After graduation, Jane had remained in contact with Aldous, catching up with him irregularly for lunch. Aldous was then, and still was now, slightly chubby and freckled with unruly red hair and pale blue eyes.

            “Well, if it’s going to be anyone, it might as well be Aldous,” said Clare.

            In fact, Clare took a little longer to come around completely to Jane’s suggestion than this suggests but, at last, she agreed that the idea might be worth pursuing and they decided to pitch the suggestion to Aldous over dinner. The two of them took Aldous out to an Indonesian restaurant where they ordered Burbur Manado and Beef Rendang. Aldous had just recently returned from the San Diego Comic-Con and chattered about it cheerfully for a solid half-hour. He was still sunburnt from the Californian sun. For three days, he had wandered blissfully around the convention centre, dressed as Boba Fett, playing newly released computer games and bartering for old comics at the various stalls. The highlight of the trip had been an encounter with Patrick Stewart sitting behind an autograph desk, and the signed photo he had given Aldous with the inscription, “Make it so!”.  The experience had been virtually life changing.

            “Captain Picard patted me on the arm! I’ll remember that touch for the rest of my life!”

            Eventually, Jane came to the point.

            “Aldous,” she said, “we have a proposition and, we know it comes a bit out of the blue, but we wondered if, maybe, perhaps, you might be interested in a ménage a trois.”

            “What’s that?” asked Aldous blithely. “Some kind of Indonesian dessert?”

            “It’s a threesome,” said Clare. “Jane is asking if you want to have a threesome. With us two.”

            “A threesome?” repeated Aldous, astonished. “With you two? Uhh…”

            Trying to cover for his momentary loss of composure, Aldous reached for his wine glass, upset it and spilled red wine across the table. A moment of commotion followed while they soaked up the spill with their napkins. Clare and Jane returned to the proposal. Unable to know what else to say, Aldous told them “I’ll have to think about it,” and returned home from that dinner in a state of stunned bewilderment.

            The next day, Aldous mentioned the proposal to a friend of his from the company.

            “I have a couple of lesbian friends who want me to have a threesome with them,” he said.

            “Are you going to do it?”

            “I don’t know. I’ve been trying to imagine the logistics of sex with two women at once and I don’t see how in the world it can possibly work.”

            Aldous was on his lunch-break and he and his colleague were walking to a nearby café to grab something to eat.

            “You have to do it. Do you know how many guys would kill for the chance to sleep with two women at once? If you do it, you’ll be a hero in the eyes of men everywhere. You’ll be a God. It’s a male fantasy to sleep with two women at once.”

            “There’s a bit of a difference between fantasy and reality, I think,” said Aldous uncertainly.

            “Don’t do it for yourself,” said David firmly. “Do it for every other red-blooded male in the world.”

            Bearing in mind David’s encouragement, Aldous phoned Jane and they arranged for him to come over on Friday. When he arrived, Jane poured them all glasses of Chardonnay. Jane wanted them to get down to it straight away but Aldous, who was subject to panic attacks from time to time, didn’t want to venture into the unknown without a map. What he wanted was step-by-step instructions on how to comport himself, preferably with diagrams. The three of them sat down in the kitchen to discuss the evening’s arrangements. Of the two women, Clare was more of the butch dyke: she kept her hair cut short and wore baggy men’s jeans and a belt adorned with an insignia of crossed lightning bolts. She had, Aldous couldn’t help noticing as if for the first time, quite big breasts; he found the mixed signals she communicated in terms of gender exciting and disturbing in equal measure. Jane was more of a femme dyke and was wearing a low cut red dress and pink lipstick.

            “So how do we do it?” Aldous enquired nervously. “Do you two start first and then I get involved part way through? Or do you just want me around for the first part?” Aldous experienced a moment of dizziness. He felt like Napoleon consulting with his generals about the best way to invade Russia.

            Jane frowned. “Why don’t we just get into it and see what develops naturally?”

            The three of them retired to the bedroom and Jane and Clare lay down on the bed where they started kissing and making out. Aldous stood in the doorway awaiting a prompt. After a couple of minutes, Jane cast him a significant glance. Taking this as his cue, Aldous dropped his trousers around his ankles, tried to take a step towards them, tripped and fell, smacking his head on the bedside table on the way down.

            Jane leant over the bed.

            “Are you alright down there?”

            “I’m bleeding all over the carpet.”

            Clare went to the bathroom and hurried back with bandages and tissues to staunch the bleeding but it soon became apparent that Aldous’s injuries required the ministrations of people more professional. They drove him to hospital. In this way, Aldous’s first foray into the wild world of group sex concluded in a trip to A & E and six stitches.

            A week later, they made another attempt. The three decided to have dinner together before embarking on the main event. Aldous came over at seven. Jane worked in the Women’s Bookshop and the house was full of books – Virginia Woolf, Iris Murdoch, A.M. Homes, even, oddly enough, a book by Aldous’s namesake Huxley (specifically, “The Doors of Perception”). Aldous had a nosey through the bookshelves before sitting down to eat. For her part, Clare worked for Corrections as a security guard at a Women’s Facility and kept her uniform slung over a chair in the kitchen. Over dinner, they this time deliberately steered clear of talking about the evening’s intentions, instead making light chat about politics and movies. Clare had cooked Pasta Carbonara and Aldous complimented her on it.

            After dinner, the three of them decamped to the living room and sat together on the couch. Aldous, fortified by white wine and a Valium, made the bold move of putting his arm around Jane’s shoulders. Clare, who was sitting on the other side of Jane, also put her arm around Jane’s shoulders. Aldous removed his arm and instead laid his hand on Jane’s thigh. Clare also removed her arm and laid her hand on Jane’s other thigh. Jane put her arms around both of them.

            “Isn’t this fun?” she said gaily,

            Aldous tipped Jane’s head towards his and kissed her on the cheek. Not to be out-maneuvered Clare reached over, took Jane’s chin, turned Jane’s face towards hers and kissed her on the lips. Aldous put his hand up Jane’s dress and felt her left breast. Clare reached into her dress and put her hand on Jane’ other breast. It occurred to Aldous that he should try to shake things up, vary things a little. He reached past Jane to fondle Clare’s breasts instead. Clare stiffened.

            “What the hell are you doing?” she asked quietly, her voice icy.

            Aldous quickly withdrew his hand.

            “Uuuh…”

            Clare sprang to her feet.

            “If I wanted you to grope me, I’d have asked!”

            “Sorry,” said Aldous, feeling simultaneously both guilty and put-upon. “But I’m not sure what I’m supposed to be doing here. What my role is, I mean. Aren’t we supposed to be having a ménage a trois? Doesn’t that mean we should all be messing around with each other?”

            “Well – yes – but…” stammered Clare. She felt rattled and defensive.

            “Aldous has a point, Clare,” said Jane. “The whole purpose of the exercise is to let go off our inhibitions.”

            Clare felt that the other two were ganging up on her.

            “I don’t have anything to let go of! I’m not inhibited!”

            “If you don’t want Aldous to touch you, we can work around that,” said Jane, trying to be reassuring “If you have issues with it, that is.”

            “I don’t have issues with anything!” said Clare. “I’m completely fine! I tell you what – if I give Aldous a blow-job, will that prove that I’m not inhibited?”

            “Well, yes, maybe…” said Jane startled.

            Having made up her mind, Clare immediately set to work turning intention into actualiity. She knelt in front of Aldous and unbuttoned his fly. Aldous felt a growing sense of alarm.

            “You know you don’t have to do this if you don’t want to,” he told her rapidly.

            “Of course I want to. I’ve always meant to give a man a blow-job do at least once in my life. This is my idea of the perfect evening in..”

            Clare liberated Aldous’s member from his pants and took it in her mouth. Within moments she was bobbing her head up and down, only occasionally surfacing long enough to make remarks like, “This is great fun” and “I’m enjoying myself immensely”. Aldous felt weirdly disassociated from the situation. It was as though not he, but someone else, was receiving a blow-job. The part in Clare’s hair had become oddly hypnotic. Given the circumstances, it was a miracle that he could get it up at all but it seemed as though his penis had a brain of its own.

            “This is the trippiest thing that has ever happened to me,” he said.

            Jane smiled. Things were going well. Reaching over, she tousled Aldous’s hair and, leaning down, kissed Clare on the cheek. Clare abruptly disengaged and stood up.

            “I can’t deal with this,” she cried out, stepping back and tripping over the coffee table. There was a crash. Clare yelled and grasped her leg.

            In this way, their second foray into the wild world of group sex also concluded with a trip to hospital although, this time, it was Clare not Aldous who required medical attention.

            A week later, Clare and Jane were sitting on the sofa watching True Blood. Clare was sitting with her foot raised up on a stool: she had sprained her ankle. Jane was sipping a glass of Reisling. In the commercial break, Jane decided to bring up the subject of Aldous once more.

            “I think we should have another go involving Aldous in our love life again,” she said.

            “Do you really want to?” asked Clare reluctantly. “He hasn’t worked out very well so far. I think we should consider the whole thing a failed experiment”

            “We’ll just give it one more attempt. If it doesn’t work out this time, we’ll abandon the whole idea.”

            Jane invited Aldous over again and, this time, things went much better. In fact, things went so well that Jane started inviting Aldous over a couple of times a week and he became a regular fixture in their lives. The three of them would have dinner together and then decamp to the bedroom to perform indecent acts on each other. Over the next month, the trio experimented with deviant sex in a number of different settings and in a variety of different positions – daisy-chains, top-and-tails, sandwich arrangements with Jane as the filling, imaginative variations of doggy-style. It was all very depraved. They spelled out the letters of the Cyrillic alphabet on the bed. True, Clare didn’t particularly like penetrative intercourse but the other two found ingenious ways to navigate around this peccadillo. All in all, the three of them decided to rate the arrangement a success.

              A side effect of his newfound intimacy with the couple was that Aldous felt comfortable enough to call around spontaneously. Regular sex had vastly bolstered his confidence and his panic attacks had reduced in both severity and frequency. One Sunday, he showed up at the door of their villa unannounced and, finding the door unlocked, let himself in. Jane was vacuuming the house. Aldous asked her where Clare was.

            “She’s visiting her brother in Howick.”

            “What are you doing? Up to anything much?”

            “Not much. Why do you ask?”

            “How about we go grab some lunch somewhere? Something ethnic. If you’re not doing anything else that is.”

            They drove to Dominion Road and went to a Chinese restaurant. Aldous ordered won-tons and Jane spicy noodles. The restaurant was full of authentic Chinese, a sure sign of quality. Over cups of green tea, the two of them reminisced about the period after they had first met, that first year in University, ten years ago – about their mutual friends, about the parties that they had attended, about the stunts they had pulled. Sometimes Aldous lost his train of thought gazing at her. Without her make-up, Jane was pale, her blond hair washed out, but was still very pretty in a fragile kind of way. Divested of her makeup, she seemed almost like an ordinary girl, no different from any other. Aldous couldn’t help but reflect on how much he had liked her when they had first met ­– he might have even been in love with her a little back then during that first year but, after she had first told him she was gay, he had quietly shuffled her into the ‘just friends’ compartment of his mind. It seemed a little unfair, somehow.

              “You know,” he said, “there have actually been a couple of queer superheroes down the years. There was this one comic book character called Northstar who came out in the early nineties. I read about it the other day.”

            “Gay comic book characters!” said Jane. “It’s the end of Western Civilization.”

            “Exactly. That’s what I think too. It’s all part of the liberal campaign to brainwash the minds of children with homosexual propaganda. Exhibit A: Sponge Bob Square-Pants. Exhibit B: Tinky-Winky –“

            “Bert and Ernie,” said Jane laughing.

            “Yeah… Hey did you hear?” said Aldous, changing the subject slightly. “They want to make Preacher into a TV series. I don’t see how in the world they can possibly do it.”

            After they had finished eating, they set off back towards the car. On the way they passed an indoor rock climbing facility, the Clip’n’Climb. Aldous paused.

            “Why don’t we go in and have a climb?”

            “I’ve never done it before. I don’t think I’d know how.”

            “It’s easy enough to learn. Come on – you said yourself you’ve got no plans for the day. Why not us give it a go?”

            They went inside and paid admission in the foyer. The foyer opened onto a large room which contained a number of brightly coloured vertical surfaces, walls, in blue and pink and purple, adorned with plastic handholds and other structures to be used for purchase or as obstacles to be navigated around. Children were flying about in all directions. Presumably, there was a birthday party in progress. All through the space, pre-adolescent boys and girls were skipping about, whooping and laughing, spreadeagled limpet-like on the walls or descending gently, like parachutists, on ropes to the floor. Activity and commotion surrounded them on all sides. Aldous led Jane over to one of the walls. An attendant approached to help with the harness but Aldous shooed him away.

            “I can do it,” he said.

            Aldous helped Jane put on the harness, explaining as he did so how the various clasps worked and how the whole thing was totally safe.

            “You’ve obviously done this a couple of times before,” she said.

            “I’m actually a member of the Auckland Indoor Rock Climbing Association.”

            “Of course, you are.”

            They approached one of the walls and Aldous attached her to the safety rope. Jane grabbed onto the plastic grips and hoisted herself off the floor. She reached for the next grip and, stretching out her foot, found another clamp. Aldous remained on the ground below her, partly to offer encouragement and partly for the clandestine reason that it gave him the opportunity to look up her skirt. After a minute or so, Jane had ascended some three or four metres. A little breathless, she called out to Aldous below. “Thank you for suggesting this! I would never have thought of it myself.”

            “What do you and Clare do for fun?” Aldous called back. “You’ve never told me.”

            “Well… we go to the art gallery sometimes.”

            Jane continued climbing. After a while she fell into the rhythm of it. Stretch for the next handhold, pause, lift a foot to the next hold and then rest again. Occasionally she would pause and look around, astonished by the altitude she had reached. The milling children seemed very far below. Then she would turn back to the wall and resume her ascent. Suddenly there were no more holds above her. She had reached the top of the climbing wall, some twenty metres up.

            “What do I do now?” she shouted down to Aldous.

            “Just let go!”

            “I don’t think I can. I’m too scared!”

            “You’ll be fine. You’ll just drop gently to the ground!”

            Jane hesitated. She would remember this moment later, the evening she told Clare that she wanted to break up with her in order to be with Aldous instead, and would cling to it while she endured Clare’s reaction, a storm of tears and unending terrible desperate entreaties to stay. But at this moment that scene was still a month away. Jane let go. She thought she would plummet to the floor but the rope supported her, gently, as she parachuted down. The sensation was exhilarating. It felt as though she was flying.