I didn't tell Eva about Abby. I never did. Should I have? I've often wondered that. Part of me says no. That part of me tells me that I'd already caused enough damage to her through my confession about Dani. And, while my confession about Abby would have relieved my conscience, it would have been more than was fair to expect Eva to take. I tell myself that, bad as what I did with Abby was, I could halt the damage of destruction by sheltering Eva from it.
On the other hand, by not telling her about Abby, I was subconsciously reinforcing a flawed notion that I could do whatever I liked. I had just gotten away with having my cake and eating it, and worse still, I had developed a craving for it. Cheating on Eva with other women quickly became a habit for me... one which I was unwilling to break.
Let me explain; I had a nature- a natural self. That natural self was made up of desires, lusts, passions. The strongest desire that these components of my natural self had at the time was that they wanted casual sex with women- many women, many different types of women... and they wanted it all the time. They sought it in every moment, and took it at every single opportunity that it was offered. And I convinced myself that it was my responsibility, in the name of "living life to the fullest", to actively seek opportunities to satisfy those desires.
My sexual lusts and passions, those which came so naturally to me, came first, and that was all I focused on. You could call this collection of desires, lusts and passions part of my "human nature". They were based on primitive instincts left over from various stages in our evolution- namely, in this case, to reproduce. They were selfish in nature- based on the unconscious ideal that MY genes must be passed on, and that the best way to guarantee healthy offspring that would grow up into adulthood was to impregnate as many women as possible. It should be remembered that my conscious mind had no ambitions of knocking anyone up, and certainly not of being a father to 10 kids from 10 different women. Nevertheless, there it was. My motivation for doing most things- from working out, to buying certain clothes, to having my hair cut and pruned regularly- was a single one: getting laid. Sex was all that I really spent any time thinking about. It consumed my mind. Then, it controlled my words, and finally it directed my actions. My relentless quest for sleeping with women lead me to act extremely selfishly.
And selfishness is an ugly and traumatic emotion. It's not the same as hatred- I didn't hate Eva. In fact, I cared greatly about Eva- I really did. But at that time, around the age of 22, satisfying my lusts overrode any and all feelings of empathy and affection that I had for her. My DESIRES came first. And, in a battle between the two -my natural impulses and her trust in me- the former always won.
Was this her fault? Not at all. She hadn't been cold towards me- she was always an attentive and affectionate girlfriend. There wasn't a problem with her. There was, however a serious complex within ME, and Eva was the undeserving victim.
The first time (after Abby) that I got away with it was pretty easy. Back then, Eva didn't suspect anything, mainly because I was still cautious about my antics. It was in about July of that year...
The second time was more complicated. I was in the club, grinding some girl in a silk, pea-green cocktail dress. She wasn't even really my type- although I like short-hair on girls who know how to wear it right, I didn't feel like this one was able to pull it off... Still, nothing was going to stop my drunk-self from getting some pleasure that night.
It was a risky move, I remember. We were in the same club where Eva and I had first met up, 10 months before. She was in town, as well- I think she said she wanted a quiet night in, she'd said, before her usual warnings towards me about not drinking too much, which came before my predictable annoyed outburst at the accusation...
As the girl ground and shifted against me, blissfully unaware that I had a girlfriend in a house just a few kilometres away, she suddenly turned round to face me, and immediately started kissing me. I remember wondering how I would react if I were to open my eyes and see Eva standing there in the crowd around us, her shocked and infuriated (but mostly, hurt and agonised) face staring back at me. Would she hit me? Would she hit me with a bottle? Would she storm out? Would this girl I was kissing right now hit me? Would she hit me with a bottle? Would I run after Eva? Would I try to hide, make her have doubts that it was even me she'd seen, and then deny it the next day? So much paranoia, guilt and fear for my little brain, sedated and numbed by the alcohol it was swimming in to handle... I decided it was best just not to open my eyes.
Before I could react to it, the girl was kissing my neck with a notable sucking technique. I couldn't work out if she was aware of what she was doing or not- whether she was "marking her territory", or felt that this was the next natural progression of things. But by the time I realised what was happening, it was too late. In alarm, I pulled away from her sharply, and reached up with both hands to touch the areas of my neck where her lips had been, seconds before. She stood there, a little shocked at my reaction, and observed me as the music raged, bodies pushed us around from all sides, and the colourful lights made us look like we were all inside a giant, gyrating kaleidoscope...
She didn't understand. She didn't understand why I dashed off into the crowd, away from her. She didn't understand why, when she followed me to the cloakroom, where I was standing agitatedly in the stationary queue, waiting to collect my coat to face the frozen air outside, I barely spoke to her. She didn't understand why, as we stood in the narrow and dark corridor with pedestrian traffic entering and leaving the club, just before I left, I kissed her once on the lips, and when she tried to pull me in closer to make me stay, I forced myself away from her. Further away from her I darted, through the crowd of young, noisy revellers bustling in from the cold outside, removing jackets with drunken laughs and jokes. She just saw my back and the back of my head, and in a few seconds just the back of my hair was visible... and then none of me was visible. I'd left the club...
"Oh, no...", I whispered to myself, as I inspected the red-lined with purple marks on my neck. It was about 20 minutes later, and I was back in my house, stood with the bathroom door wide open, still wearing my jacket because of the cold air that seemed to surround me from all angles at night in that city. This night seemed colder than usual, as the alcohol began to wear off, and I could feel the beginning of shivers creeping through my jaw...
3 marks, at least. Undeniable signs of infidelity. As I stood there, the headache of my oncoming hangover already settling in for a few hours of torment over my body, I tried to make my brain list ways in which I could hide, or maybe even explain, those reproachable signs of my cheating nature.
"Turtleneck?", I asked myself...
"For HOW LONG? A whole week...? It's going to take about that long for those love bites to fade...", I responded...
"Scarf?"
"I'll have to take it off eventually, though...", I lamented...
"Could you say that EVA gave you them?"
"That..." I pondered to myself... "...is just TOO bold. No- she'd never go for that...", I concluded...
As I stood in my bedroom the following evening, wearing my scarf under the only long-collared jumper I owned, watching Eva apply her lipstick in my bedroom mirror, I tried to rehearse my explanation that it had been HER who had given me the love bites on my neck as convincingly as possible. My hangover was still prominent, and I really didn't feel like going out that night. But it was one of the city's many festivals; one which would inevitably involve copious amounts of street-purchased and drunk alcohol early on, marching bands and parades of some sort, fireworks probably... all in the freezing cold air. As I contemplated it, it felt like the whole world had teamed up to attack me in my weak, hungover state...
"OK...", said Eva suddenly, waking me out of my distracted state, "I'm ready", she said, turning around from the mirror, placing her hands on her hips playfully, and smiling with her freshly painted pink lips. She looked beautiful- young and vibrant, always happy. I laughed to myself, smiled, and said "You look pretty", in an unusual moment of genuine honesty with her.
"Thanks!", she beamed to herself, as she walked towards me, and kissed me. She giggled to herself as we held our lips together, knowing that the freshly applied lipstick was being transferred to my lips. She pulled her lips away from mine suddenly, and erupted in an explosion of uncontrollable laughter at the sight of me, still slightly bleary eyes from a whole day being hungover, with her pink lipstick smeared and padded on my lips.
"NOW you look pretty, little monkey!", she jested, using her nickname for me, and she covered her mouth in a vain attempt to try to suppress her laughs...
Over her laughter, I wiped my lips with the back of my hand, and observed the bright pink stain that had been smudged across it. I was surprised at the ferocity with which the colour blared from my skin, and the shock at how much had been padded onto my lips by her kiss jumped onto my face. Eva erupted with giggling and laughing again at my surprised look...
"Hey! You want some more...?", she said cooly, still trying to suppress her laughs, as she moved forwards with exaggerated puckered lips to kiss me again. As she came forwards I approached her, smiling to myself, taking joy in the fact that of the two of us, only I knew what I was about to do. As soon as we were only a foot apart, I dropped in an instant to an almost crouched position. It was so quick and unexpected that by the time Eva realised what was happening, and let out a "NNOO...!!!" in between her bouts of laughter, my arms were already firmly around the backs of her legs, behind her knees, and my right shoulder securely tucked into her pelvis. I straightened my legs carefully, until eventually I was stood fully straight, and Eva was slung forwards completely over my right shoulder, her heels in front of me, and her head behind me, laughing...
"Here we GGOOO!!!", I delighted in saying, laughing, as I slowly and then more quickly span around. She whooped and laughed in delight, shouting "SSTTOOPP...!", whenever she could fit any words in between her laughs. I carefully calculated how many spins I could do before I was in danger of getting dizzy and falling over, and as that number approached, I slowed down and, crouching down, placed her feet flat on the floor again. Standing up slowly, her laughs and giggles became more controlled, I held on to her knees, then her thighs, then her hips, then around her abdomen, and pulled her in close, making sure to kiss her face and leave some of the lipstick she'd recently transferred to me on there, before embracing her tightly, still panting a little, and listening to her giggles become less and less frequent and more faded, emanating from her face buried in my chest..."You ready?" I said down to her in our embrace, smiling, aware of the fact that, as long as we were in the warmth of the bedroom, there was a chance that she'd get me to take off my scarf. It's at times like these that I'm convinced that we humans give off subtle, almost unrecognisable signals that others can pick up on, because the next words out of her mouth were exactly what I'd somehow known and dreaded she was going to say.
"Yeah... but I don't think you need that scarf..."
She reached up and tried to take it off from around my neck, and my lack of a controlled reaction startled her. My hand went up way too fast, and my face must have shown a suspicious amount of concern, as I said with a forced smile:
"Yeah I do! It's cold tonight..."...
I thought that looking straight into her eyes would convince her of my genuineness... but I saw her smile fade and then vanish from her face, only to be replaced by two slightly closed eyes that were focusing suspiciously on me...
She waited a second to see what I would say, and what I would do, her hand poised mid-air in the vicinity of my neck. I did and said nothing but look back at her, and that wasn't enough to pacify her scepticism...
"Why don't you want to take off the scarf...?", she asked calmly, trying to curb the fear and anger that was accumulating within her...
There was no way I could get out of taking off the scarf then, in front of her. I felt a single bead of sweat emerge from nowhere, and trickle down my spine at the knowledge that the marks from the previous night would not have faded- and certainly not enough to be hidden from Eva's already suspicious stare. In panic, I hoped vainly that the only way to survive this would be to call her bluff.
"I can take off the scarf...", I said, reaching up reluctantly and tugging at it slowly... "... but I'll be cold tonight if I don't wear it...". Optimistically, I thought that that afterthought would be enough to persuade her to let me off removing the scarf right there and then. But as she didn't respond, she didn't move an inch, but just stared back at me with growing suspicion and hatred, I sensed that that was becoming less and less likely. As the scarf left my neck and I lowered my hand, still holding it, I prayed for a miracle.
Actually, what I prayed for was that the whole incident with the girl in the club that previous night had been a dream, and that my obsessive observation of the love-bites throughout that day had been a part of that on-going nightmare. A symptom of too much alcohol, perhaps. A new way that my body was reacting to hangovers, maybe. A walking, waking nightmare- real in how it felt, but ultimately a figment of my imagination. In a nut shell, as I stood there awkwardly with my scarf in my hand, wondering how innocent I was managing to look, I was hoping that I had imagined it all...
"Oh my God...", said Eva, under her breath, more to herself than to me, and then I knew, with glum recognition, that I hadn't imagined it.
-
She didn't cry. Eva very rarely cried in my presence. I can only remember her doing so once in our entire on-off two year relationship, despite the amount of pain I caused her. But on that occasion, when she saw the marks on my neck, she didn't cry.
"What's that on your neck?", she asked sharply, her tone reflecting that she was already fully aware of the terrible answer.
Lamely, I reached up and touched my neck, as if completely ignorant to what she was talking about. "Where...?", I asked, feigning innocence. As I looked back at her with a questioning look on my face, I noticed slight pools of tears build up on each of Eva's lower eyelids. She bit her lip in frustration, and blinked the pools back, composing herself before responding. Her voice quivering, she said quietly, almost as a whisper...
"...On your neck. Who gave you those?"
-
Less than 5 minutes later, as Eva stormed away from me through the orange illuminated streets crammed with drunken groups of street partiers, I tried to keep up. The temperature had dropped as it was accustomed to in that season, and I could feel the biting cold air all around me making my ears ache as I struggled to keep directly behind her. As she expertly manoeuvred herself through huddled groups of drinkers, laughing in loud bursts and singing incoherent songs out of tune at the tops of their voices, I remembered that her reaction was justified, and no more than I deserved. My hands stuffed in my jeans pockets, I pushed my way hurriedly through a group of rowdy drinkers who had appeared out of nowhere between Eva and me..."Excuse me...", I muttered irritably, as I used my elbows and my shoulders to force myself on as straight a path through them as possible. Eva had just dodged them, skipping out ahead of them just as the whole group surged forwards like some sort of mobile forest to block my path. Within that band of smiling, drinking, shouting, joking, pushing, jostling, pranking, smoking young men and women, I was half scared that, in their drunken state, one of the more outgoing men would grab me around the shoulders and force me to have a drunk with them. I heard the songs they were singing all around me- ahead, behind another song, and either side an indistinguishable mixture of the two- and I concluded that I must have been in the very centre of their circle. Suddenly angry at how large a barrier they had subconsciously caused me, with one last push, I vehemently forced myself out of the circle, between two of the less-rowdy party goers that made up that particular group...
"HEY...!", one of them shouted at my back in protest as she was moved slightly by my side. Seeing as I didn't look back, I can only guess that she shot me a look of daggers, before deciding to forget it and enjoy the antics of the circle she was part of...
The noise of their drunken jeers, songs, whooping and laughter drained away behind me as the circle of student-types slowly but boisterously moved away, and I searched for Eva. I couldn't see her in the 3-4 huddled masses of wrapped up woollen-jumper-and-hat wearing locals, in varying stages of drunkenness in the small plaza in front of me. The plaza was filled with people from across the spectrum of drunkenness- all the way from slightly tipsy and rowdy, full of bravado, to passed out unconscious, sprawled flat on the ancient, cold hard paving stones...
Eva had gone- relieved herself temporarily of the pain of having me as her boyfriend. And as I stood there, glumly, with every sip from their giant beer bottles causing the crowd around me to shout to each other louder, and with more allegro... I wondered if there would ever come a day when she would relieve herself of me for good...
---
She was the most beautiful, perfect thing I had ever seen in my life, my captor. She was young- in her early 20's, I'd say at a guess. Her eyes were slightly oval shaped, and almost closed entirely when she smiled. Her high cheek muscles pushed them into 2 small slits, as she showed her perfect, straight, equally sized ice-white teeth, framed by full, delicious looking lips. Her skin was a golden-brown, and looked like it could tan into a milky-coffee flavour easily enough. Her long, chestnut hair was immaculate- perfectly cared for with expert levels of attention. This meant it swayed and flowed silkily at the slightest move of her head...
Her long, delicate neck led the eyes down to her well-formed breasts, which she knew how to keep perfectly plumped up above her red and black corset. Her waist curved inwards, and her hips, in her tight white jeans, pronounced themselves outwards again. The shape of her long, youthful, toned legs could be seen under her jeans.
I didn't say a single word. I couldn't. I was in too much shock at how someone, anyone in the world could look SO perfect. It didn't seem possible. It didn't seem right. She stood there, about 2 metres in front of me, her distinctly feminine hands resting on her hips, watching me take her in... She was smiling seductively, slightly proudly, and with a hint of real cruelty as I stood in my chains, gasping a little for air, trying to hold back the urge to pull against the chains, to see if I could break them, and take a rush forwards to be closer to her...
She suddenly started walking forwards, her hips swaying intentionally, more than they naturally should have, and I held my breath as she came and stopped just a few centimeters out of my reach in front of me. She didn't take those hazel eyes from mine, but despite their beauty, I couldn't help catching glimpses of the other treats her body offered. Those full, juicy red-painted lips. Her creamy neck. The waft of cool vanilla that soothed my nostrils at her presence. All come together to leave me speechless, unable to think properly, at that moment.
I stood, trying to breath steadily in my chains, still trying to wake up properly, still unable to truly understand what I was witnessing. She wasn't shy, or timid. Why would she have been? I was trapped by her. Helpless, under her control entirely. She knew that. She relished in that, and her luscious red lips formed another brief and ruthless smile to herself, spurred on by the distress she knew I was experiencing at that moment. She knew I lusted after her. She was only too aware that my unsatisfied desire to be with her, to touch her, to kiss her, to have her touch and kiss me back... was agonizingly painful for me.
She stepped forwards one more step, cautiously, but still unafraid. In one movement, she pushed her hips into my groin, and her breasts into my chest, and her lips onto mine. With her eyes closed, her left hand reached round to the small of my back, and she pulled my hips in closer to hers. At the same time, her right hand slowly reached up and felt my left cheek as we kissed, and then clasped the back of my head as she pushed her tongue into my mouth, and I reciprocated...
I was shell-shocked, not least by what was happening to me, but also by who my captor had revealed herself to be. It had been a mistake of mine to assume that my captor had been a deformed, monstrous sight to behold. All those years, I had only ever seen my captor hidden, concealed deep underneath layers of material- shapeless, faceless, formless- and that had lead me to the conclusion that I was, mercifully, being spared the horror of witnessing his face. But now, as she stood with her eyes closed in pleasure at kissing me, at assuring herself that I was already obsessed with her, I was having to restructure what I had accepted as truth.
As we kissed, I reviewed the facts in my head...
She was stunningly beautiful. She was physically perfect in my eyes, and my instant attraction to her surpassed any and all such cases that I'd experienced previously. And yet, underneath, she was cruel. She was malicious. She was both uncaring and actively malevolent towards me...
At that instant when I remembered this, I felt her lips stop, as she quickly removed them from mine, her right hand was clasping my chin. Her right thumb was gripping my left cheek, and the other four fingers were firmly against my right cheek. She looked into my eyes with those perfectly hazel eyes, and bit the right side of her lip enticingly.
I was lost for words. There was too much going on to make sense of it all...
"I...", I stuttered, my face still clasped from both sides in her right hand... but stopped myself from speaking at the moment that I became aware of how important what she thought of me WAS. It shocked me, that realisation. "Where did THAT come from?", I questioned myself.
Previously, before she had exposed her form to me, I had merely feared my captor. I had altered my speech and my actions towards her because I didn't want her to do me damage- to hit me, to put another chain on me, to torture me in any way. And because of this, I had dreaded the sound of those vicious keys working the lock which preceded her imminent entrance into my cell...
But as she stood in front of me, her soft and yet firm hand clenching my chin... I felt a turnaround in my feelings towards my captor. I could sense a strain within me, longing for her to stay...
She must have read that internal u-turn in my emotions in my wide eyes, staring back at her from above her hand clasping my cheeks, because at that very instant, she spoke, interrupting my thoughts.
"You really ARE all mine, aren't you?", she asked, rhetorically. Her real voice was dulcet, light, and musical. She had hidden it well from me, all these years, just like she had expertly hidden her face and her body. Her character, though, had been on full display throughout- evident in the frequent torture sessions as well as in the obvious glee she took in tormenting me. With her physical form covered, her soul had been all I had known about her- and I knew that it was one which took pleasure in my suffering.
As I stared back into those hazel eyes, though, my attraction to her pushed what I knew about her character to the back of my mind. Her eyes took on a tone of grateful recognition, as she nodded to herself, confirming slowly that I was under her spell.
I knew what I wanted to ask her. But I didn't, not in that moment. I should have done. After all, back then, there was still strength in me. Back then, my resistance to the lust I felt for her still had influence on me. Had I known right then how many long, PAIN-FILLED years it would be before I would feel such power over my own desires for that woman again, then I would have savoured my own ability to resist her ways, one last time, for one more minute. I would have held it like a son who was moving away, and who I secretly feared I would never see again.
She quite violently and abruptly let go of my chin, and spun round. I watched her saunter away from me, her voluptuous hips perfectly displayed in her well-fitted white jeans... taunting me. She crouched down for half a second to retrieve the crumpled-up gown from the floor. As she stood up again, she looked over her shoulder, smiling, and caught me watching her go.
"See you soon!", she called back playfully, as she continued towards the door. Her sensuous figure was slowly being consumed by the shadows that absorbed everything that ventured to that side of the cell...
"When...?", I called out feebly into the darkness. I surprised myself at that, and cursed myself for giving in to her so easily. As if to confirm that I'd been stupid to call out after her, I could have sworn I heard her chuckle sweetly to herself as she crossed the room. Her shape was hidden in the blackness in front of me now. She didn't respond, and to my despair, I heard the jangling of those keys...
I wanted her to stay. I wanted her to be with me...
The door that I couldn't see through the darkness creaked open, and I forced myself to shout:
"WHEN...?!"
But my question went unanswered, as the door slammed shut, the keys jingled on the other side of it, and I heard the predictable sound of my captors footsteps leaving me alone, inside my cell.
