I roll off the platform and stand, resisting the urge to brush myself off. I wander over, baring my teeth; I’m not sure what else to do with my facial expressions. I circle the chair, waiting for an idea to come.
He looks up from under his eyelashes. ‘Anyway, it’s nice to meet you,’ he says, extending a hand to shake.
I slap it away. ‘Shut up.’
‘I guess I’ll just get ready then.’ He bends down to untie his shoelaces.
As I watch him slide his feet out of his shoes, I make a hazy plan to sit on him like Tanya sat on Steven. I lift my leg over his lap in a forty-five degree can-can kick, before landing face to face in a straddle. I sit for a moment, angling my head to avoid the stale breadiness of his breath.
‘Easy does it,’ he says.
I imagine Tanya in the other room munching on salted nuts while watching me on the security footage. Are they recording this? I signed a lot of forms without reading them.
I grind my pelvis into his lap and arch my back while focusing vaguely on the polished handle of the door. I absently pinch his earlobes while thinking there really should be a list stuck to the wall in each room. The orientation didn’t give me a repertoire to draw from. There is a level of expectation flowing out of Carl, which I’m trying to manage as the seconds tick by incredibly slowly.
As if on cue, I feel blood gush out of my vagina and stop briefly at the crotch of the leotard before steadily seeping through. I accidentally clench in response and a large glob of it begins to sink into the fabric of his pants. Holy shit. I am losing it. I forgot to change the tampon I put in last night. What no one tells you about grief is that your memory is completely short-circuited, and life becomes just a series of surprising incidents. I should write a book about this. I should tell people how far you travel from the self after grief hoists you out of it.
I need to get the tampon out or I could go into toxic shock. I pull the crotch of the leotard to one side and tear the stocking until there is enough room for me to push a finger inside myself, finding the edge of the spongy tampon. I tug on the string and it falls out, the colour of dark grapes. It swings between us, and I fling it into the corner of the room. I can’t backpedal from here, so, just like Steven, I lean into the theatre of it all and push my fingers inside myself, coating them in more inky blood. I hold my hand up to Carl’s face and we both study it. Carl pulls away from me, but I lift my finger to his face and paint a moustache on his upper lip. I paint tears falling down the sides of his cheeks. He squeezes his eyes shut as I coat my finger again and paint over his eyebrows, one up and one down. On the tip of his nose, I leave an inky red dot. Like a sad menstrual clown, he continues to sit forlornly in front of me. I wipe my finger clean across the top of my thigh, and it dries into an itchy streak through the fishnet. I want more than anything to wipe it off.
‘The blood might be a bit much,’ he says.
I cup his chin and look into his eyes. ‘I’m the boss.’
‘Right,’ he says. ‘Sorry.’
I motion to the vinyl-covered massage table in the room.
‘Lie down face first.’
Carl springs over to the table and arranges himself on top of the bed.
I hop up onto the table and straddle his back. He emits a faint wheeze.
‘Move,’ I yell at the back of his head. ‘You’re my horse.’
I knock on his skull with my fist, and he begins to rock his body forward and back.
‘Faster!’ I scream, as his sweaty torso makes sucking sounds on the bench below. I thump up and down, actively riding his sacrum until my thighs start to burn. I drop my weight heavily onto him as he continues to rock. Oh my good god, it hits me: I have become the man on the horse. I am at one with my earlier visualisation; I have embodied the scenario at last.
‘Pony is getting tired,’ Carl puffs despairingly.
‘Onward!’
I bounce heartily, swinging an invisible sword through the air above me, and let the voices of one thousand men on horses roar out my mouth: ‘Ai, Ai, Ai, Ai, Ai!’
All the rocking has made me need to piss, and I check that there’s a drain in the room before letting the stream of urine fall across his back. The strong-smelling liquid rolls off his body in rusty streaks and I gaze at it in wonder, because I really don’t remember drinking that much water.
Carl lets out a sharp cry.
‘Do you consent to this?’ I ask, checking in with him, remaining present.
‘Not really … I mean …’ He sighs. ‘It’s okay.’
I look to the ceiling for new inspiration. How long has it been? Fifteen minutes? It would be rude to ask him the time already. What to do next? What to transition into?
‘Lie on your back and grab hold of your knees,’ I say, improvising.
Carl slides off the table and lowers himself to the floor via a series of considered movements which I suspect indicate knee problems. He kneels while holding on to the chair, then swivels while stabilising himself with two hands on the floor, before dropping into a sitting position with his legs loosely crossed. He rolls onto his side, stretches his legs out, until he is finally flat on his back.
I stand off to the side, wondering how to hog-tie
