I Am Curious (Thirty)

April 19

It is like going to college. A tutorial course in sexual technique. He has been teaching me the most extraordinary things. Oriental accomplishments, bits of business I never believed people actually did.

Like things from those murky books by Burton. The long ago Richard Burton, not Elizabeth’s mad Welshman. I read those books over the years, and there were certain things therein to inspire one in fantasies and other things to add a soupçon of curry powder to one’s married life (I’d like two soupçons of curry powder, s’il vous plait, and a partridge in a pear tree.)

But I always thought Burton was a big put-on. Sir Richard is sending us up, I thought. The dear boy’s having us all on. People can’t really dangle from the chandeliers and bugger one another while drinking glasses of spiced tea and masturbating pet dogs with their toes.

Well, we haven’t done precisely that, but I couldn’t swear that it’s not on tomorrow’s agenda. Already there are things I never dreamed I was capable of. There are ways of controlling one’s responses, of developing muscular control and physical agility. According to Eric, it is all a matter of discovering oneself, of making the acquaintance of one’s body.

All of this sounds desperately clinical, does it not? Like a class in karate or something. And at times it does seem quite cold and austere, and would be literally ridiculous but for the particular personality of this man and its effect upon me. I suspect that, were I not so completely his property whenever I am in his presence, there are moments when I would laugh. But the impulse never even occurs to me at the time.

And there are enough times when the passion is real enough and the classroom turns back into a bedroom like Cinderella’s coach at midnight. (Why did I put it that way, Doctor? Not at all like Cinderella’s coach at midnight, I don’t properly think. Verrrry interesting.)

He can set me on fire with a touch, a kiss, a glance. And when we fuck it is a shaking, shattering experience. Always. There does not seem to be such a thing as a casual take-it-or-leave-it fuck with Eric. Always starbursts, always mountain peaks, always the usual purple metaphors apply.

There’s often some pain, but I don’t seem to mind it at all these days. In fact—

Oh, well. Yesterday there was no pain, and I missed it.

It bothers me to write this.