“Thanks,” she said.
“It could have been worse,” he replied.
“No, you’re right. I appreciate that. Better a pearl necklace than the money shot,” she said.
He laughed out loud and lay down beside her on the hard linoleum floor. He noticed she was not trying to wipe herself off.
“You’re the best time I’ve ever had,” he said.
“That’s from
Romancing the Stone
,” she said.
“It’s still true,” he said. “And you’ve almost got me persuaded that on some level, some level deep inside, you’re enjoying this, too.”
“Maybe I am,” she conceded. “On some level.” She smiled to herself.
“I wouldn’t trade this experience for anything,” he said, stretching.
“Wait til it’s over before you say that.”
“I’m beginning to think it never will be over. Maybe you’re right. And you’ll never give in. And I’ll never stop. And that will mean that I win. Because we’ll be doing exactly what I want to be doing.”
“Don’t you think you’ll get bored of me, if we’re always doing exactly what you want to be doing, and I’m happy to be doing it?”
“Nope,” he said. “Because I’m like you. I don’t believe something just because it’s what I want to believe. And I know that this is definitely not what you want to be doing. However good an actress you are. And however much I enjoy your performance.”
“It’s a Mexican standoff.”
“Are you just lying there,” he asked, after they were quiet for a few minutes, “imagining what you’ll do to me when you get the chance?”
“No,” she said. “That’s a temptation I can’t give in to. I can’t let myself dwell on what a loathsome reptile you are, with apologies to all actual reptiles. You see? To do what I’m doing, I have to practically persuade myself that I’m enjoying it and that I want to do it. That’s the secret to great acting. Being, inside and out. So right now, for all intents and purposes, I
am
enjoying this.”
“Really.”
“As Jane Austen says, ‘where other powers of entertainment are wanting, the true philosopher will derive benefit from such as are given.’”
“When does she say that?”
“
Pride and Prejudice
.”
He reached over and pulled her on top of him. He began to kiss her on the mouth, pushed her face away for a moment, gave her a look, and began again. She got the message and kissed him back, again, as if he was exactly the man she had always dreamed of kissing.
She was a good actress, but she wasn’t perfect. He heard her stifle a sigh as she felt his penis begin to harden yet again against her.
“Do you go without sex entirely between rapes?” she couldn’t help asking.
He stopped kissing her for a moment.
“Well, that’s a very personal question.”
She looked surprised.
“Gotcha,” he said. “It is, though, actually. Probably over the line, into my private life, which I have already explained is none of your concern. But, what the hell. I jerk off a lot. As I explained to you, I don’t get hired to do very many rapes. They’re rare. I don’t rape for my own pleasure. You’d think I would, I know. But that’s an unnecessary risk. I don’t like pros; I resent paying for it. So, you’ll be happy to learn, I’m not very sexually satisfied most of the time. But then, that probably makes me even better at what I do. And it ensures that I make the most of it when the opportunity arises. Like now. Oh, yeah. Sit on me now,” he added urgently, with a sudden change in tone. “Up and down.” He moaned. “I’m a killer and a rapist, and you’re fucking me and enjoying it,” he said. “Doesn’t that feel good, baby?”
She had her eyes closed and her upper teeth were clamped down on her lower lip.
She threw her head back and said, “Where else and to who else could I ever admit that it feels so fucking fantastic!”
He grabbed her by the hips and pushed her up and down, up and down, faster and faster on his cock. They both were breathing too rapidly for long-term health. At last he came, and with that, he threw her down beside him and climbed on top of her.
He breathed heavily onto her flushed and sweat-covered face. “You think you’ll wear me out,” he hissed, not asking a question. “You think you’ll eventually satisfy me, and reach the end of this. But everything you do makes me want you more, deeper, impossibly more. I think I’m reaching a point I’ve never hit before. Like perpetual motion. Or nirvana. I’ll never stop.”
She gave him a look he couldn’t read. But all she said was, “Don’t. Stop.”
“Sit on my face right now,” he ordered. “I’ll make you come until you can’t come anymore. And then I’ll fuck you again.”
“Yes, sir,” she breathed and climbed aboard. He looked up, and drank up, and was, as far as he was concerned, in heaven. His prisoner was gazing down at him, with a look on her face that could pass as either great pain or great pleasure. He wasn’t sure what the difference was anymore.
When she was younger, she believed, like all of her friends, that there was something especially awful about the possibility of being raped. One thought about it, feared it more than other violent acts. Sure, she didn’t like walking down dark alleys, but it wasn’t that she was terrified of being mugged. It was always assumed that a girl would be raped, and that would be the awful part. It was so self-evident, you didn’t even ask yourself why exactly. Though it was never actually explained what made it the
most
awful thing that could happen.
It was always rape, always, the threat everywhere, everywhere that men were, in every look that men gave, in every moment that you didn’t pay attention. It was always there: they could do
that
to you. And you didn’t have any say in the matter. Like there was this unique vulnerability that only women had. And maybe there was.
But what if you looked at it a different way, purely physically? Say a couple was attacked. The attackers would rape the woman and beat the shit out of the man. Who was worse off? She wondered if men who were shot or stabbed or beaten or women who were shot or stabbed or beaten had their lives changed the way it seemed women who were raped did? Were there any studies on that? Was it really worse?
What gives rape that special frisson? What is the thing that makes it so different from anything else that can be done to a person? Was it the violence mixed with the threat or the intrusion into the most private part of a woman, the part that’s supposed to be for pleasure? Is it the shock? It can’t be the surprise when it’s what every woman is warned about all her life. Or is it because she’s warned about it all her life? Is it the failure? The inability to protect what every woman is charged all her life with protecting, the thing that is simultaneously hers and her family’s, her tribe’s, her country’s – not hers?
It’s all trauma, after all, being raped, or shot, or stabbed, or beaten. Why is rape considered the most traumatic, the most affecting (except perhaps by those who were stabbed or shot or beaten up)? It’s every bit as horrible, but is it more horrible? She wondered who would feel worse, someone who had been raped with the threat of force but minimal physical harm, or someone who was beaten to the point of hospitalization – both by a stranger and with no warning. Would the rape victim be considered worse off? Would she consider herself worse off? Would the beating victim think, well, at least I wasn’t raped? Didn’t that mean that rape was worse because everyone decided it was worse? And if you decided that it wasn’t?
Well, obviously, it was different. But why so much worse? Someone could break your arms and legs, and you wouldn’t feel guilty, but if you were raped, somehow that changed you in a different way. Left you damaged in a different way. She wasn’t trying to dismiss the reality of it. But she couldn’t help wondering if there was a way around that, a way to undermine or mitigate the special punch that the act of rape packed.
Oh, right, how could she have missed it? Blame it on her current state of distraction. Of course, it had to go back to the very beginning, ancient times, maybe cavemen. Basic sociobiology, right? If an outlander raped a woman and impregnated her, her tribe would be wasting resources on another tribe’s genes. And so it went, down through the ages, long past the time when that kind of thing really mattered – except where there are still tribes and you can’t control pregnancy. Yet women are still left with the dregs of that primal imperative. Drenched in it, in fact, from the time they’re little girls on. Even though it no longer makes sense.
Did this massive, inescapable edifice of shame just emerge out of that simple biological purpose, or was there something else, something else that made it so unlike any other kind of attack?
She couldn’t help thinking about this, because she could only assume that there was something terribly wrong with her, given her reaction, her behavior. She knew part of the problem was that women thought of themselves as damaged goods after a rape. But she already
was
damaged goods. She had already been metaphorically eviscerated on a level so deep it was just shy of physical. Something vital had been cut out of her, her child. There was nothing about someone inserting a small piece of flesh inside her that could rival that on the pain scale.
It had to be different for everyone. Rape was horrible, but not every woman could consider it the most horrible thing that could happen. There were so many things that could happen that were potentially even worse.
Or maybe there needed to be a new paradigm. Her paradigm. I’ve been fucked up the ass by Fate. What do you think
you
can do to me with your little, fucking penis?
“What’s this book?” he asked, picking one up from the bookshelf across from her bed.
“Funny you’d pick that one,” she said.
“Why?”
“What made you pick it up?” she countered.
“It’s called
Exquisite Corpse
,’” he said.
“You like that.”
“Of course. Sounds like just the book for me.”
“Maybe it is,” she said.
He leaned back against the wall gazing at her. He had drilled a hole into one of the beams in the ceiling and attached a heavy-duty hook. Using the rope and the hook, he had strung her up by her cuffed and now rope-bound hands so that her toes just grazed the mattress beneath her. He looked forward to watching her act like this wasn’t happening. “Tell me a story, Mommy.”
“Now that’s creepy,” she couldn’t help saying.
He grinned.
“It’s about two vicious and horrifying serial killers,” she said. “I read it a long time ago, but I remember that.”
“They work together?”
“No. Not at first. They don’t even know each other at first. Eventually, they do encounter one another, and it, at first, becomes a question of, will they kill each other?”
“So, a
battle royale
,” he said.
“No,” she corrected him. “Because almost immediately, they
recognize
each other.”
“They knew each other?”
“No. They recognize each other, deep down. They know, that each one is a killer. And they fall in love.”
“Two men? Homosexuals?” he laughed. “How perverted!”
“Yes. Of course. Not like you.” She tried to stretch or wiggle a bit; he heard her joints crack. She stopped trying to move, but her body swayed a little before she hung still again. “Anyway, that’s the least of it. But for me, this is where the story falls apart.”
Still leaning back, he looked at her. “Now the real torture would be if I didn’t ask you why.” He smiled at his own joke. She didn’t.
“That’s ok,” she said. “I’m content to speculate about it myself.”
“Ok. Why?”
“Because you don’t just
happen
to be a serial killer. If you are one, then you’ve undergone some kind of the worst deprivation or torment anyone ever experiences. Right? I’m not talking regular murderers here. I’m talking serial killers, the most twisted of them all. Supposedly,” she added, pointedly glancing at him and then up at her arms. Her hands were beginning to turn a little purple. He smiled back beatifically. “Ok, and primarily, the underlying torment has to do with the lack of love, right?”