Sometimes we do it in the car. One of those American liberation army jeeps.
‘It’s like flying low in a helicopter,’ he says, ‘but you can look around you, over the roofs of the other cars, at the level of the lamp posts. No one can see you. They don’t think to look up at you, even though you’re flying low, only a little bit above them.’
Then he gives me instructions. He says if I want no man to be able to resist me, even the man I eventually fall in love with, if I want to become a swan, in other words, I have to be a whore in bed instead of immediately blurting out the story of my life, and above all I have to learn that there’s all sorts of crap in the world and I have to be able to endure the greatest number of things possible. That’s why he wants me to undress – slowly, like a professional – while he’s driving. That’s why he whips me, or gets me to kneel down and give him head and then the next day he makes a point of meeting me and not even saying hello, or he won’t contact me for ages. I also have to be able to endure psychological torture.
In addition he says that I absolutely must tie back my hair and lose weight, and if at our next meeting I still have hair falling in my eyes and haven’t lost at least one kilo – and he’ll be able to tell from how plump my cheeks and arse are – he’ll send me away without screwing me, or he’ll kick me around or he’ll show me what one hundred strokes of the brush really means.
But nor should I become soft, I have to learn to give him orders. When we part company he often gives me the instruments of torture we’ve used – a leather band, or a Japanese chopstick, or the flat hairbrush, or the whore’s clothes he’s brought along to get me out of my pinafore dresses. I’m happy and don’t want chocolates, or rings, or stuffed toys. Nothing but this. I lose weight and I always keep my hair tidy and I hide my disguises in the bottom of my drawer, wrapping them in paper so that they retain his smell.
One day, after making love, he gave me a kiss on the forehead. He stayed like that, without taking his lips away, holding my head tightly in his hands. In silence. And we felt moved.
We’d each taken a hundred lashes without batting an eyelid and now we were crying.
Once I slipped over because if we ever go out it’s always pitch black. I hurt my ankle slightly, but really it was nothing. He carried me on his shoulders for the whole of the walk up the hill, immersed in the perfumed darkness, to the sound of crickets.
I kept saying, ‘It’s nothing. It’s nothing. You’ll break your back.’
But he didn’t want to know until we’d reached the car. Then he placed me delicately on the seat, as though I was made of crystal.
That was the only kiss. I’ve never received any kisses on the mouth, or hugs, and when I try to kiss or hug him he pulls away at once and says our affair isn’t about that sort of thing. That’s only for boring, slobbering types.
Whereas I’d really like kisses on the mouth, they’d give me much more satisfaction than on my feet and shoes, which he practically worships.