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| photograph by les roberts |
A one act play with no dialogue.
Scene: A stall at a busy city flea market.
The
moment she saw him, felt his eyes on her and looked up at him, she
wanted to reach out for her husband. It was like that moment when a
great jetliner first roars and rushes down the runway for takeoff.
Exhilarating and frightening and right on the very brink of feeling out
of control.
That
was the moment when she would always grasp her husband’s hand and
squeeze it, drawing from him that predictable answering squeeze. He
always smiled then, a condescending kind of smile, as if to say it’s all
right dear it’s all perfectly normal but I will squeeze your silly
little hand anyway. If he only knew that she just needed something
deadly dull to hold on to, not for any kind of comfort but to keep her
from audibly gasping out her carnal excitement at the dangerous but
irresistible thrill of that wild overlapping rush of noise and speed and
mad vibration. It was the only part of the whole flying experience
that she liked, anticipated with quickened breaths and secretly curled
toes.
And
now here it was again, in the steady gaze of this strange man with his
brown gypsy skin and his white teeth and his long dark hair still damp
and dragged back and tied behind with a scrap of scarlet cloth. Her
toes curled and her breathing shifted. But there was no dull hand to
squeeze this time.
He
moved his own hand across his body, slowly and theatrically like a
stage illusionist, two fingers slowly unfurling, eyes holding her still,
pinning her from across his display of beautiful hand‐made leather
belts. Her own fingers stiffened. Oh please somebody hold my hand
now. Anybody. Anybody perfectly normal. But there was nobody. Only
this dark man, and he was as far from perfectly normal as could be,
further than she had ever been and she knew it.
His
extended fingers reached down to a portable stereo on an upturned
wooden crate, trailed lazily across the row of black buttons on top.
Paused, his pupils widened a fraction like some predator creature that
knows the decisive moment, and the fingers stabbed down. Click.
[faint sounds of conversation.
An odd rushing noise.
A voice suddenly exclaiming something unintelligible.]
His eyes narrowed. Just wait, wait, wait, they directed her.
[12 seconds …
Drums began, quickly swelled and grew.
A rhythm, a primitive repetition.]
His
head nodded fractionally in time with it, seeming to transfer the
rhythm to her through this terrifyingly frank eye contact. She knew
this music; Tusk by Fleetwood Mac. A strange, twisting,
formless, voodoo thing that rises and falls and writhes and won’t stay
still. She felt her stomach muscles and the muscles of her thighs begin
to shift slightly and she realised that it was happening in time to the
drums. Her eyes widened, why are you doing this, there are other
people all around, where are you taking me?
[29 seconds …
the bizarre lyrics begin, over the pulse of the drums:
“Why don’t you ask him if he’s going to stay?
Why don’t you ask him if he’s going away?”]
Oh
God, her husband. This man knew! About the jetliner takeoffs and
about all the rest of it too. He knew! How could he know?
His
other hand slowly swept back the edge of the curtain screening the
small space at the back of his stall. His office? A standing‐room‐only
office. He nodded, just the smallest movement, but she felt as if he
had flung back a long cape and bowed to her.
[50 seconds …
“Why don’t you tell me what’s going on?
Why don’t you tell me who’s on the phone?”]
She
went to him. All in one breath she followed herself past the table
with the belts, past his arm holding the curtain, and stepped to the
side of the small space against the back of his tent. He watched her
all the way, never loosing her from the hold of his eyes, as if his gaze
were some kind of insulating blanket, enfolding her and holding her in
isolation. His body remained still but his eyes moved with her, and
when that movement was all used up,
his head turned at the same
pace. Then he turned, stepping inside the tiny secret space in one easy
movement, the curtain falling closed behind him. The drums, the
rhythm, seemed to grow as he looked steadily at her and she felt her
fingers curl at the armrests of an imaginary seat.
[1 minute 10 seconds …
A bass line began in the music,
a throbbing, teasing, fluttering thing, tugging at her,
adding another layer of engagement,
discarding another layer of resistance.]
She
lifted forward to him, yet didn’t physically move, as if her internal
organs were determined to escape the restraint of her skin. The runway
rushed past her, the vibrations became alarming, and she hung for a
delicious instant at the edge of a heart‐stopping balance between flying
and crashing.
[1 minute 22 seconds ...
“Why don’t you ask him what’s going on?
Why don’t you ask him who’s the latest on his throne?”]
How
did this man know? Why did he ask her questions that terrified and
thrilled her like this? She did not want these questions asked, let
alone answered.
[1 minute 37 seconds …
“Don’t Say That You Love Me!”]
Out
of nowhere, this whispered shout. Don’t say that you love me! Of
course not. She could not love this man; a stranger she would never see
again. And yet he said that to her, or his music had: Don’t say that
you love me! And she knew that she did. Impossible, absurd, but in
that moment she did love him.
Her
lips parted, a sharp inwards breath that made her tremble with the
shock of it. His hand brushed her thigh, his wrist lifting the folds of
her layered skirt. Then his fingers were on her skin, soft and
shockingly high on her leg and she felt his touch radiate up into her,
into her core. Her toes curled inside her shoes and she involuntarily
contracted, knowing that his nearby fingers must sense the movement within her.
[1 minute 48 seconds …
“Just Tell Me That You Want Me!”]
Her
breath now gushed back out over her teeth, her eyes wide and
desperate. Oh God I do, I want you! I do! Forgive me, please forgive
me, I do!
He
smiled. He heard! She hadn’t spoken it (had she?) and yet he heard
her. He nodded slowly, giving his permission, releasing her from all
her fears and restraints. His fingers moved on her and he touched her,
touched her warmth and moistness through the thin cotton. Everything
surged and the mad shuddering rush suddenly ceased. The wheels left the
ground and lifted, everything lifted into amazing flight.
Her
chest rose with the first full breath she had taken for nearly two
minutes, and his fingers drew her upwards to her toes. She hung there, a
ballerina relevé, and then slowly, nearly reluctantly, her body
subsided onto his hand. His fingers moved, found her and split her
easily, and she eased herself down onto him.
[1 minute 56 seconds …
“Tusk!”]
She
was impaled, pinned like a butterfly to a board. Her eyes closed and
her head slumped forward, chin to her chest, shoulders dropped, her
spine slightly hunched back and then arched hard forward, driving this
thrill deeper.
[1 minute 59 seconds …
“Just Say That You Want Me!”]
She
hung there, a doll, a marionette in his sway. She felt, heard him move
and opened her eyes, looked at him. He had used his free hand to loose
the scarlet cloth and now his hair fell long and wild and dark onto his
shoulders. She felt a great shock surge through her, knowing that this
was the most deeply erotic and intimate act she had ever seen, ever
experienced. As if he had ripped open his chest and showed her his
beating heart. She responded immediately with a chaos of savage
contractions and tremors.
[2 minutes 11 seconds …
The drums suddenly lost their insistent rhythm and
descended into an unrestrained, formless urgency.]
She
felt this new disconnected sound match her own internal decent into
chaos. She could not catch herself; her body abandoned itself to this
madness, to this arrhythmic fluttering feeling. Her eyelids closed and
flickered half open again, and she saw only impressions of a world she
had left; glimpses of his dark, swaying hair; his shoulder bare and wet
where her desperately sucking mouth had pushed his shirt back to bite
into him, marking his flesh.
She
was aware that he had not come with her; she was in this place alone.
He was the conductor and also her instrument, but she, and only she, was
the music.
[2 minutes 22 seconds …
The lost rhythm abruptly clicked back into place and reformed itself.]
She
matched herself again to the resurrected rhythms and returned to him.
Now she moved against his hand in repeating waves, like sets of breakers
in the sea, arriving seven at a time. He held, patient and attentive,
as each successive set of her movements abated and was replaced by a
lesser set. And in this way, by way of these diminishing circles of
passion, she gradually regained herself. She became aware of the music
again, rather than just the rhythm. She heard for the first time brass
instruments playing a triumphant fanfare, some musical salute to her
journey and return, and she felt the familiar relief as the jetliner
regained the earth with a gentle jolt, aligned itself square with the
runway with a small sideways slew, and began to slow to a more bearable
pace.
His
hand moved away as she accepted her own full weight again, and she
looked up at him. He held her eyes, his own eyes crinkling at the
corners as he smiled for her, and then his fingers lifted and found his
own mouth as he first tasted her and then toasted her with a small
gesture as he lifted his moist fingers from his lips to in front of his
eyes. His free hand reached back and drew the curtain aside.
A woman looking at the leather belts glanced up briefly and then away again, disinterested.
[3 minutes 35 seconds …
the music had repeated and faded with her, or she with it,
but now it was gone into nothingness.]
She
walked out past the curtain, past the display of belts, past the
disinterested woman and into the passing throng of shoppers. And she
never looked back. For she feared that if she did, he would be gone.
Or even worse, that he might not be gone.
