This Is All (38 page)

‘I’ll never remember all these.’

‘I’ll write them down for you. And that’s enough to be going on with. Now,’ she said, removing the coffee cups and carrying them away with the stapled pages, ‘are you any good with computers?’

‘Passable.’

‘Passable enough to scan some pictures for the school mag and read them into the text with frames round and that kind of thing?’

‘I think so.’

‘Good, because I’m hopeless at it.’

‘No you’re not.’

‘I’m not?’

‘No. You’re bored with it and don’t want the bother. You’d rather someone did it for you.’

‘You think it’s only an excuse?’

‘Yes.’

She laughed and blushed, which gave me a rush of love and boldness.

I said, ‘If we told you we were hopeless at something basic, you’d give us the evil eye.’

‘The evil eye?’

‘Sorry! You don’t tell us off or anything, just give us a look that could wither steel from a hundred metres.’

‘That bad?’

‘Most of us would prefer a thorough telling off any day.’

We both laughed.

I said, ‘I’ll show you, shall I? I mean, how to scan and embed.’

‘Why not? I ought to face up to it. Susan Biggs did all the computer work on the mag for the last three years, but she left last term.’

We hunched together side-by-side in front of the screen and spent an hour going through the process. It needn’t have taken so long, but we spun it out just for the pleasure. I could

I think masturbation is good because it helps you find out about your body. I mean, you can talk about sexual matters as long as you like but that’s not the same as experiencing them. When you masturbate you find out from the fantasies you experience what gives you pleasure before you have to tell the boy or girl you love what you like to do and what you like him/her to do to you. This has helped me a lot with Will. I can’t think about what I
might
like while we are having sex. I’m not
thinking
then at all because I’m feeling too much to think about what’s happening. I can only think about it afterwards. Masturbation can be a kind of ‘afterwards thinking’, when you remember what you did that gave you the most pleasure and imagine what you would like next time. It’s all very well having sex explained, as in our sex education lessons, but I think every human body is different and we all like different things. I know there are theories about what feels nice and what doesn’t but sometimes the strangest things can ‘do the trick’ (see below). If I hadn’t masturbated before I had my first sex with Will, and even since then too, I wouldn’t have known about my particular preferences or about my sexual anatomy.

Also, it seems that boys are very hot on girls having orgasms because it boosts their ego, which sometimes puts pressure on you and you can’t have one. But in masturbation, there is no pressure to succeed in this matter so you can just give up if you want to and that’s fine, no one’s put out. Will used to be quite anxious and upset if he hadn’t ‘given you an org’, as he put it. But I’ve educated him in this, explaining that it’s not at all essential to me that I come, and that what matters much more is our foreplay and everything we do before he comes. He is much more relaxed about this now, with the result that I have an ‘org’ more often.

One of the greatest benefits of masturbation is that it relieves tension. Sometimes when I’m upset, my head feels like it’s going to explode. As it does also when I’ve been

feel the warmth and the roundness of her arm against mine. I liked giving her instructions and correcting her when she went wrong. I liked her irritation with herself when she couldn’t get something right or remember a detail I’d shown her already, and I liked her way of apologising for her irritation by putting a placatory hand on mine and saying, ‘Sorry, Cordelia, I’m being stupid,’ and liked reassuring her, ‘No, you’re not, everyone makes that mistake.’

‘I don’t mind other people making it,’ she replied once, ‘but not myself.’

‘Aren’t you allowed to make mistakes?’

‘Certainly not!’ She chuckled. ‘Haven’t you noticed? I require nothing less than perfection of myself, first time.’

‘Lordy!’ I said. ‘Aren’t you being a bit hard on yourself?’

‘A personal hang-up, I’m afraid. Let’s go on.’

I liked most that she was trusting me with her vulnerability and that she thought me worthy of her trust. Which made me want to give her more and do more for her and to trust her with myself.

I was nervous too, though, and did wonder why she was allowing me into her life – her private life, and her inner life. Had she designs on me? The corrosion of gossip gnawed at my mind. It wasn’t only the chavs who wondered whether she was lesbian. An attractive woman living on her own with a private life which she guarded carefully. Not to mention a sternness of character some said was definitely butch. And no one had ever seen her with a man, but she’d been seen with a woman going into a restaurant and another time into a cinema. So? Obvious, innit, said the chavs. What if she made a move on me? I’d be disappointed, painfully let down, crushingly distressed. But why? Not because I minded if she was lesbian; that in itself didn’t bother me at all. Izumi and I had talked about it and ourselves; we’d even conducted what we told each other were ‘only experiments’ to find out

studying too hard. Then, masturbation relaxes me. I always feel better afterwards. It is a good form of self-help therapy. This is especially so just before my period, when I suppose my hormones are very busy. In my opinion, one of the bullet points in our booklet at school about how to survive exams should read: Masturbation is good for the flow of creative energy.

When I first discovered about masturbation I’d never heard of it and didn’t know anything about it. To do something you’ve never heard of has a special kind of beauty because it’s your body showing its intelligence without your mind interfering. I’ll never forget my first time. I was lying in the sun one day when I was thirteen. The sun was warm on my back in a calming way that made me sleepy. I began to feel a lovely sensation between my legs and my hand just went to my vagina and began moving on it. I didn’t know what I was doing but the sensation was so pleasant that I didn’t stop. Quite soon this fantastic opening and swelling and bursting happened. I don’t remember anything after that. I suppose I must have fallen asleep. I would never ever say that I’d done an evil or bad thing. At school recently, in a production of
Macbeth
, the prettiest girls in Year 12 were chosen to play the three witches because Mr Hotshot Drama said that evil often appears in the disguise of beauty. Well, all I can say is that the first time I masturbated and most of the times I’ve done it since have often been beautiful and have never ever been evil. I think evil is a force that mixes things up and confuses everything so you can’t properly distinguish one thing from another, and it destroys whatever it invades. But after masturbating, things have always been clearer to me and it has never destroyed anything. Just the opposite.

Since that first time I’ve masturbated many times, but I’ve never planned it. I’ve done it when it felt right and when my body called out for it. Sometimes it’s easy and quick and at

if we were like that, and decided we weren’t, though we liked the ‘experiments’ enough to try them again ‘just to make sure’ from time to time. But, I said to myself as Ms M. combined pictures and text while I watched to make sure she got it right, sexual love was not what I wanted from her, not what I
needed
from her, not
why
I needed her. But what
did
I want, I asked myself, what did I need, and why? Why did I want to be part of her private life? Why did the thought of it thrill me? I knew I did want that. And I wanted our knowing each other to be as hidden, as secret from school life, as she kept the rest of her private life. There was something in the secrecy that mattered to me as well as the knowing.

But … still … I doubted myself. There was her warm arm and her friendly hand now and then touching mine and her face close to mine as we worked, which I welcomed and wanted. How did that tune with my feelings?

What was her meaning for me? And, I thought as we reached the end of the program, what was my meaning for her? I wished I knew. And wouldn’t feel comfortable – wouldn’t feel secure with her – until I did. But it wasn’t something you can ask. ‘Please, Ms Martin, what do I
mean
to you?’ But if I could ask, and she replied, ‘You’re one of my pupils, that’s all. I’m only doing my job,’ would that be as bad as if she said, ‘To be honest, I fancy you’? No, it wouldn’t. But I would feel … What? … Humiliated? Rejected? Belittled? Angry? All of those.

Whatever was going on between us, I couldn’t fathom it – and something
was
going on. I’d felt it like charged ions fizzing silently between us from the moment I entered the room. (Was that why she sneezed?) And I felt irresistibly drawn to find out what
it
was. I could sense the determination to find out coming over me as we played our duet on the computer keyboard. And I said to myself, ‘I want this, whatever
it
is, and I’m going to hold onto
it
, whatever it

other times, when I’m tired for example, it takes longer and then it can be too much effort and I give up. I don’t do it that much these days because I have Will. (Masturbation is something I do sometimes when I feel lonely.) But when I do, I don’t always think of him. This isn’t because I don’t love him. It’s because when this act is performed you automatically discover something about yourself. This is part of it. Perhaps it’s part of why it’s necessary. (And I do believe that almost everybody does it, whether they admit it or not, which means it’s part of being human.)

While masturbating, I have the weirdest fantasies sometimes, which I would never have thought of before I started. Sometimes I’m shocked by the things that come into my mind and excite me – like, for example, certain older men, and I do mean
older
men, who turn me on amazingly – and by how saying rude words aloud to myself can have a powerful effect – there are two or three words which, if I repeat them six or seven times when I’m in the right mood, give me an org immediately.

In my head I now have a repertoire of images and scenes that excite me, a kind of library of arousal. I’ve told Will about them because we tell each other everything. I’m not ashamed because I consider the human brain to be a really
weird
organ, and I think it’s important for us to know all about it and how it works and what it does. If we don’t share the most weird and secret workings of our minds with those we can trust how will we ever learn and understand all there is to know and understand about what it means to be a human being? Nor does our discussion of masturbation interfere with the way Will and I make love. It actually helps. To me our love-making is sacred. And so is discovering everything about my mind.

These are the reasons why I think masturbation is good.

takes.’ ‘Good or bad?’ I asked myself. ‘I’ll cling to the good and fight the bad,’ myself replied.

What a strange thing to feel, I thought, what a strange thing to decide, what a strange way to think! I’d never felt anything or decided anything or thought like that before. And was so excited, an uncontrollable shiver passed through my body from head to foot, and then another.

‘Enough for today,’ said Ms M., getting up from her seat, as if referring to my thoughts rather than the computer. ‘You’ve been a big help, thanks.’

‘I could do some more another day, if you’d like.’

‘Good, yes, I’ll let you know.’

We parted at her car.

That evening I joined Dad and Doris for supper. We tried to behave as if nothing had happened. And like people do at such times, we talked a little bit too loudly, laughed at Dad’s jokes a little bit too heartily, didn’t look at each other unless we had to, didn’t touch each other, were that bit too eager to help with the food and laying the table.

I knew this couldn’t go on. I’d have to say something.
CALM,
I thought,
calm!
But what to say? There seemed not to be a thought in my head.

But when we sat down, the food in front of us, that sudden silence fell when people are lost for words and tired of pretending.

Say something, I thought.
Anything
. Just say
something
. (How can you know what you think till you hear what you say?)

‘Dad?’

‘Yes, love?’

‘I mean – Doris?’

‘Yes, Cordy – Cordelia.’

‘Look …’

‘Yes?’ they said in unison, and let out in unison the hyena laugh of people who are tense.

1
Granddad always had a hankering ‘to go to sea’ as a sailor on a merchant ship and liked to use sailorish expressions. For example, he always used to say, ‘It’s on the deck,’ when he meant something was on the floor, and would say that a room was shipshape when he’d tidied up. He was always reading books about famous seamen. His favourite was Captain Cook, who he regarded as the greatest seaman of all time. But he also had a special liking for Joshua Slocum, who was the first man to sail alone around the world and wrote a very good book about it, which Granddad read many times, wishing, I think, that he could have been Captain S.

Does everyone have an alternative life they wish they could have lived? My aunt Doris wanted to be an actress. Dad wanted to be a man of leisure with servants to look after him.

2
Since writing the above I’ve noticed for the first time that Ms F-T is quoting the statement that a poem should not mean but be. When I mentioned this to Ms M. she said, I wondered how long it would take you. The quotation is from a poem by Archibald MacLeish, 1892–1982.

My requirements of a lover

1. He must be in charge while I am really without him knowing it.

2. He must make me laugh.

3. My heart must beat faster as soon as I see him, whatever mood I am in and whatever mood he is in.