Everything I've written for quite
a while is in first person present tense—the narrator describing what happens
at the time they experience it. I think this manner of storytelling suits
erotica. My aim is to make each sentence, each paragraph, an individual sensual
moment. The only time I use past tense is in flashbacks.
This morning I wrote the first draft of a
flashback I didn't plan. All I meant to do was go back a few pages in the
manuscript of Live Wild, the third
story in my Glass Room Adventures
series, and add a line or two about the heroine removing the diamond ring she'd
worn pierced to her labia since her fiancé dumped her. The point of the scene
is to show some progress in the mending of her shattered heart. The setting is
a yacht on a sparkling sea. Here's what I wrote:
Every day I
went to the gym while Charlie took the first of his afternoon naps. Without
ever touching me in a sexual way, the trainer prodded me to new levels of
flexibility and endurance.
This
routine had been going on for several weeks when one day after my workout I
went to the engine room. The boat's mechanic, a small man who I guessed to be
of Southeast Asian descent, dropped a wrench when he saw me. I was sweating
enough to make my hair stick to my neck, and dressed in only the running bra,
shorts, and shoes.
I asked,
"Can you lend me a tool to cut through metal?"
He showed
me a saw with a short, thin blade. The sharp teeth didn't look like something I
wanted between my legs. I said, "It's to cut a ring."
He opened
the drawer of a metal cabinet, didn't find what he wanted, and opened another.
Behind him in the small, warm room were two big red hunks of metal. I asked,
"Is that the engine?"
"Engines,"
he said. "There's two."
The engines
gave off a soft humming noise and a faint gas station smell. I'd lived on the
Adventuress for weeks without giving a thought to who and what made it go.
The man was
holding out a tool shaped like a small pair of pliers, with red plastic
covering the curved metal handles. He'd been watching me study the engines. He
smiled and asked, "Want to know how they work?"
I said,
"Sure." I half listened while he talked about gauges, valves, pumps,
pistons, and shafts. He was careful to keep a distance and didn't look at me,
but his arms made jerky movements as he pointed out the features of the engine
room. I thought, He wants what they all want—me dropping my pants and grabbing
my ankles.
He glanced
at me and saw I was done listening. I raised the tool he'd given me, grinned,
and said, "I'll bring this back later."
He said,
"Careful. They're sharp."
Charlie was
still napping when I entered the master suite. I went into the bathroom,
squeezed the handles of the tool a few times to get a feel for how the pincers
moved, and snipped off my labia ring.
The diamond
looked small, on the bathroom tile. I put it behind my toothbrush. Charlie was
awake when I came from the shower. We did some business, me naked beside him on
the bed with the computer on my lap. When he began to tire, I put aside the
computer and guided his hand over my body. He managed a few weak squeezes of my
tits and a rub of my cunt before he leaned his head on my shoulder and went to
sleep. I tucked him in, dressed for my usual solitary afternoon cocktail hour,
and took the tool back to the engine room. The mechanic wasn’t there. I left the
tool on his clean workbench. Before I left, I put my hand on one of the engines
and felt the throb of the power within.
Under the
awning of the salon deck with the bright sky bending to the watery horizon all around
and the sharp white prow of the Adventuress cutting through low rolling waves,
I held the broken ring in my palm and remembered the night I accepted it.
Stephan
reserved our favorite table at our favorite restaurant and ordered a bottle
from further up the wine list than usual. While we waited on our roast duck for
two, he told me in the most tender words why he loved me, how he was captured
by my face, my mind, my every movement. Everything was so easy between us, the
way we talked while we finished the dinner and shared our crème brûlée, the anticipation he couldn’t keep out of his eyes as he poured the last of the wine. I knew what was coming. My body
tightened with excitement. He set the velvet box on the table.
I said yes.
Stephan opened the box and put the diamond ring on my finger.
After he ran off with my office assistant, I
went to a raunchy tattoo shop and paid a shaggy old biker dude to pierce my
labia and put the ring in it. When I tried to pay, he waved off the money and
said, Thanks hon. Gettin' to do it was pay enough.
With these
memories filling my head, I tossed the ring at the sea. My throw wasn't strong
enough. The ring landed on the deck below. I walked down, picked it up, and
dropped it overboard.
Any boat is
a small place, even a three-hundred-foot yacht with only two passengers, one of
whom is bedridden. Crew and staff were watching. I knew they'd report to
Charlie. His eyes held extra kindness when I settled beside him after dinner.
We ate separately, because he didn't like me to watch the nurse feed him.
I turned on
the television and started a tape of a glass room session at Seattle Young, our
usual evening entertainment. All Charlie asked was, "Nice day?"
I said, "Perfect."
After
twenty minutes of the video, he was as ready as he was going to get. The nurse
came in to undress Charlie and help me tie my wrists to my ankles. She covered
us, turned out the lights, and left. The bonds limited my range of motion as
much as his physical deterioration limited his. I contorted myself to carefully
fuck his decrepit body.
Curled
beside him, drifting to sleep, I thought, Fuck you, Stephan. The words were
without their usual heat. I hadn't stopped hating my ex-fiancé, but I stopped
living for my hate.
