Sweet Agony by Charlotte Stein Page A

for this, and now that it’s here we can have so much fun. There is so much I want to do and say and explore, now that he is at last eager to try.
    But I am glad I keep all of it inside.
    It would have been mortifying to have said ‘Thank you,’ I think.
    Only to turn and find him reading his paper as if nothing had happened.

Chapter Eight
    I consider broaching the topic with him. Maybe slipping some references to sado-masochism into everyday conversation, instead of simply agreeing that Thomas Hardy was an insufferable bore of the highest order. Or I could ask him what he thinks of Anaïs Nin, and see how far things go. If I get lucky he might read a little to me – though that is kind of the problem. I have to be lucky. I still need to approach with caution and move stealthily, as if one wrong step will dislodge everything.
    I can never be specific, though Lord knows I would love to be. Again and again I want to ask him if the thing that happened really happened. It just seems so staggering to me, considering how he now behaves. He never brings it up. He seems to suffer no ill-effects because of it. He could have poked a lollipop at my mouth for all the shame it seems have elicited.
    Instead of fucking me in the arse with a cane he’d just finished thrashing me with.
    In fact, the only evidence that any of it happened at all is the sting I sometimes get when I walk. Or when I shower. Or when I stroke my bare backside while frigging myself into oblivion. Seriously, I’ve never masturbated so much in my life. I never really could, before I came here. Everything had to be furtive, usually in the back of some Ford owned by a boy I vaguely liked. Doing it at home was out of the question, with my brothers always crowding around. I barely had a bedroom, and there was no lock on the bathroom door.

    There was no door, full stop. Even pissing was a frantic do-it-before-anyone-sees-you affair, so the slow realisation that I can and want to here is something new. I am set free, in more ways than one. If I want I can fuck myself night and day, and when I do I dream of a dozen things he could do to me. I imagine him using a belt, to make welts I can feel with my fingers. Great thick red ones that spark through to the centre of my body when I stroke them, so hot to the touch I feel burned when I pull away.
    But that is not the best fantasy. No, the best fantasy is always about all the things I know he will never do. The touching he can never give me and the kissing I know he will never want. All the filthy things that are forbidden to me, made flesh in my feverish head. Some nights I go so far it leaves even me breathless, and in the morning I’m always just a little embarrassed. If he knew , I think.
    If he knew that last night I imagined him sticking his cock in almost every hole I have, just like he described. Most likely he would be appalled. He certainly seems like he would be, whenever I see him now. His comments are always so careful, and he stays even further away from me than before. He won’t even go down the hall when I’m coming in the opposite direction, as though the very thought of our hands brushing is too much. Too tempting, I think.
    Then I try to strike that thought from the record.
    He’s probably just disgusted. He thinks he’s filthy or I’m filthy or both of us are filthy for ever going that far. And even if he doesn’t, his behaviour so closely resembles indifference I could almost believe it was. At the very least I struggle to tell for sure.
    Until I catch him looking.
    And not just once, either. Oh, no, no, no he does it a lot, whenever he thinks I’m concentrating on something else. The first time almost seems like a fluke. I point to a section of bookcase and ask if he wants me to organise his fanciest books by colour rather than alphabetically. It will probably look nicer, I say, then turn a fraction faster then I intended and see his eyes dart away. Could have been the books, I tell