‘I’m sorry,’ she replies quietly. ‘That wasn’t fair. Truthfully, I don’t know how she’d label you.’
‘How would you define me?’ I keep emotion out of my tone and my body very still. Tension—fight—whatever this is, seems to drain from her immediately.
‘How would you define us?’ This is dangerous territory.
‘I don’t think there’s a label big enough to define that.’
‘This therapist. This is someone you’re seeing currently?’
‘No. Before. At home.’ She inhales, air expanding her lungs until they could accept no more. When she exhaled, it’s all words. ‘I have issues with intimacy and control. I expect she’d say I’ve gone from one extreme to another this time.’
‘Meaning what?’
‘I never commit, and I like to hold the relationship strings. Do what I want, unlike now. Although you do kinda do what I want you to,’ she adds sheepishly, trying not to smile.
‘Not quite true. I do to you what I want.’ This is ridiculous; the chicken and the egg argument. ‘You’re a little uncomfortable in your own skin, I know. I’ve no issue warming it up for you.’
‘I’ve spent my whole adult life trying to maintain some sense of control. According to the good doctor, it’s to take back what was lost during my childhood. To recover what my father took from me.’ Beside her, my body becomes taut. ‘No, not like that,’ she adds quickly. ‘My dad is a control freak. Obsessive, overbearing, with rules like the military. One of God’s fucking soldiers!’ She doesn’t often swear and looks on the verge of tears again. ‘He’s controlled my mom and his family our whole lives; what to wear, what to study, how to conduct ourselves. The opposite to how you are with Hal. His dirty feet, the puddle of milk and cereal.’
‘When you first met him?’ When he’d brought himself over to meet Daddy’s play date? Or rather, when Belle sent him.
‘Never in my whole life have I been anything but pristine. Except when I’m with you, when you fuck me messily.’
It’s like even the words are difficult for her. I begin to wonder if a little homemade aversion therapy might help, restraining an inappropriate smile at the thoughts of Louise splodging.Jelly and ice cream. Cake and cream.
‘I never got to make mud pies or be covered in paint,’ she continues. ‘As a teenager, I swapped out wild, awkward, and funny for worried and sedate. I got out of that house as soon as I could, and now I’m the living, breathing mockery of my suffering. He belittled me to control me. You demean me because I want you to. I’m sick; can’t you see?’
Underplaying her reactions, I stretch out my limbs like an overindulged cat. ‘If the hair shirt fits . . .’
‘I knew you wouldn’t understand.’
‘So tell me.’
‘My father. He... he’s a religious man. He found out. About me. From Brad.’
‘Brad?’ The boyfriend I teased her about? ‘I’m not sure I understand.’
‘Brad dumped me,’ she says on a cry. ‘He said I was broken. Disgusting. That I’d never be right.’
‘But you’ve had therapy—you said he was your first boyfriend? While feeling blindsided, I also feel something is off.
‘No, you’re right,’ she says, swiping her hand under her eyes. ‘But that’s only half of it. He told my father and he—he sent me to camp—to pray the gay away I didn’t have.’
‘A what?’
‘A camp, you know, like a church camp or summer camp? Only this wasn’t just for homosexual kids. No, this one was for all kinds of sinners and sexual deviants. All those needing to be led back to “God’s path”. There was no path leading to God in that forest.’
I’ve heard of such things. Of course, I have. But truly, they seem like something off TV, and unprepared, I have no idea what to say.
‘What did they do to you?’
‘Nothing too horrendous,’ she admits, her eyes falling to the bed. ‘Pray. Sing. Trust exercises. How to repent. But I wasn’t their usual type of sinner; I didn’t meet their remit. I was too much of a freak for even them.’
‘Darling, you’re not sounding very sane. This is the first I’m hearing of this. You’ve loved what we’ve experienced together. You’re an adult, and what happened was misguided and disgusting and wrong, but—’
Louise springs from the bed angrily, bending to retrieve her discarded jeans. ‘I knew you wouldn’t understand,’ she growls at the floor, yanking the fabric up her legs.
My movements are as swift as hers, my hands landing on her hips. I pull her into me, my mouth at her ear. ‘There’s no correlation here. No need for further therapy as far as I can see. Liking a bit of kink doesn’t make you sick. What you are is a double masochist. You want me to demean you so you can beat yourself up about it later. You want me to hurt you while I love you, so you can hate yourself a little more.’
