C has not visited since our last encounter. instead she has taken to spending most of her day in her allotment. the weather has turned and there is little for her to do other than stare at the sea, or up at my writing room window. she is there so frequently that i have almost ceased to notice her. she will visit again, or she will not, the choice is entirely hers.
this morning i found a note had been pushed under the front door. it was not signed, though there seems little doubt that C had delivered it. the handwriting was small and passingly neat.
'i am a stranger,' it read. just that.
i have some idea that it was the author's intention to inform me that they had come to recognise that they were, in some way, a stranger to themselves. that, at least, is my interpretation. many years i was told much the same thing by my very first 'pupil'.
though we had been friends since childhood, one day she had come to me -
'as a stranger,' she had said.
My old friend had been married for several years and i rarely saw her. in some ways, after all the years that had passed, she was a stranger.. of sorts. perhaps it was that that made it easier for her to tell me about her life.
she told me that she was both very happily, and, incredibly unhappily married. her husband was an honest and gentle man and she said that she loved him, on some levels, very deeply. but, she added, she could not bear him to touch her.
'he makes sex.. unbearable,' she confessed, a little reluctantly.
'he's so... passive... so... careful. so ready to please, and so... easily... shocked.'
my friend spoke quietly, as though she feared her husband might overhear her.
'a year ago.. tired of... gentleness i asked him to tug my hair and cum on my face. he did it. but, afterwards, he.. apologised, and said that he felt ashamed. he said that he was sorry he had treated me like a whore....'
my old friend, half in the shadows, sighed.
'it was the first time i'd ever been truly aroused with him, and he apologised.... I'd hoped that it might open us up to new.. possibilities. instead i can't bring myself to be honest with him any more. so i smile and make all the sweet noises as i pretend to cum, and he looks so happy.... so content.. that i'm actually beginning to hate him....'
'so you came to me?'
she didn't look at me - just bit her lip and crossed her ankles tight under the upright chair.
'there are things in my head,' she said, and she told me of one or two. there was, for instance, a man who looked a little like me, who would visit her on quiet afternoon and force her to do... such terrible things. things that he somehow knew were in already in her head. things she would not do, or even wish for, when she was in her right mind. but this.. stranger.. would force her to act out.
she was looking at me then - as she whispered.
'sometimes,' she had said. 'he forces his cock so far down my throat i think i'll never breath again. sometimes he spanks my cunt until i don't know pain from pleasure any more. sometimes.. sometimes he makes me squat in the corner with a crop in my arse. makes me squat so long i actually piss myself.. and then he punishes me for that too.... sometimes....'
and so, after a while, my old friend became my first real pupil. she learned so much about what was in her head that she was never truly a stranger again. not to herself at least.
outside i note that C still watches my window. i doubt she can be certain that i am at my desk.
so we wait... both of us.
still.. strangers.
