supplicium post mortem

I wrote a little bit in the past about the first scene between Casey and RP, which was the first time I ever got whacked. It was during his first trip here in the summer of 1995, and we played it as a follow up to Mark’s first scene with TL (the first time she whacked him, or anyone). The scenario was that Mark and Casey had been seen sneaking out-of-bounds into the chapel balcony (at College, where TL and RP were co-housemasters and where Casey had just arrived as a new Fifth Former from America). A bit of wrought-iron gate had snapped off in the process. Mark had been caned. Casey was offered 4 strokes of the cane or 200 lines. I think her exact words were: “I don’t want to do the lines.”

M’s first visit lasted four days. On the last day we drove out of town and went on a hike in the woods. Afterwards, I remember being in my kitchen, him shaving at my kitchen sink, the smell of his shaving foam, and this overwhelming desire to be back in that relationship between Casey and Mr. Prior. I secretly got my hands on M’s pack of Marlboroughs, and as he was shaving, I went through to the study.

Picture my apartment as it was then: a four room railroad-style flat with no doors between the rooms, kitchen at the back, study at the front. It was August. Casey sat down in the “kid” chair, which was tucked out of the sightline from the kitchen. She lit a cigarette and pseudo-smoked it, ashing into a candle on the bookshelf. There was a box fan blowing a cross-breeze, and she took care to blow well into the fan so that the smoke would be visible, even if she wasn’t.

It seemed to go on a long time, this mouthing of cigarette smoke, the noise of the fan. And then suddenly, there he was: Mr. Prior.

“Morgan!”

She jumped six feet in the air, it seemed, having heard nothing, seen nothing. Stubbed out the cigarette. Stood up. He was gob-smacked by what he was seeing. How was it that this girl, this American girl, new to College just a few days hence, had decided to use his study, of all places, to smoke a cigarette? I don’t recall the dialogue, but it was brief. She was instructed to change into her uniform (she was wearing blue cotton shorts, sneakers, t-shirt) and report back in ten minutes.

In the dressing room, I put on her newly cobbled-together uniform. He had brought me a patch for my blazer. I’d found the blazer, grey flannel trousers, and Casey’s school shoes at the sadly now-defunct Domsey’s Warehouse. The patch had finally been stitched onto the blazer. I dressed, she dressed, trembling. We paced in the hallway. Scared. Frustrated. Confused.

On top of all this was another thread that had emerged in their earlier scene, and this was about Casey’s father. Carl Morgan was in military intelligence and was stationed somewhere dangerous, hence her being shipped off to College (parents divorced). But, she assured Mr. Prior, he was coming to visit her for half-term. He had told her so. In fact, she wasn’t going to be staying at College very long. She was pretty sure she’d be going home soon. Her dad had said so. This is what she thought about in the corridor waiting for the ten minutes to be up.

When she approached the study, RP was seated at the desk [my desk!]. He noted with grim approval her finally-arranged blazer, but got straight to his flabbergasted outrage.

“I just beat you yesterday!” he complained. What on earth could she possibly have been thinking?

“I wasn’t really smoking,” she said.

He almost did not know what to make of this. She explained that she’d only been stage smoking.

“Where did you get the cigarettes?” he asked.

Oops. Thou shalt not peach. “I’d rather not say, sir.”

RP was a Public School man and a gentleman and was prepared to accept this, for the moment. But he wanted to know why on earth she did it. It simply made no sense to him. “Were you trying to get yourself beaten?” he asked.

“No!” She struggled to explain, even to herself. “I just wanted… to be in here.” She dried up.

A silence full of so very much. And then somehow, through some genius of his, or grace, he seemed to get it, even though she didn’t. Even though I didn’t.

This time there was no choice of lines. It would be eight strokes. I can’t remember the technicalities of it, why eight, what they were apportioned for, but he told her to meet him in the Houseroom.

And so in the Houseroom [kitchen] she waited, sick and shaking before the Houseroom table. Pretty soon he came through, carrying the cane. Imagine, a man walking into my kitchen carrying a cane as if he knew what to do with it. He took off his jacket and instructed her to do the same. He took her jacket from her hands and told her to bend over the table. When she was in position, he pulled the tail of her shirt out of her gray school trousers [as previously discussed, purely for theatrical value!].

And it began.

She saw right away that he’d been going easy the first time. This hurt a good deal more, on top of the (first ever) four the day before. She was getting twice as many. He was hitting harder. I think she yelped.

Afterwards, when told to stand up, she gave the customary thank you. They shook hands. He met her eye and said, “Well stuck, Morgan.” It was sincere. There was that palpable but restrained love and care. My chest was melting like lava. I wanted more than anything to say there, with him, in that.

A little later there was a short scene in which he said good-bye to her. Mr. Prior had to take a short leave from College to sort out a personal situation. Miss Lincoln would be in charge. But, he told Casey, he would be keeping a particular eye on her. Again, the lava melting bones. Like heartburn in all your cells at once.

And one more thing, he told her. He had managed to reach her father on the telephone.

“When’s he going to get here?” she interupted, suddenly happy, hopeful, plunging entirely into that blind confidence in a rock-solid good thing.

“I’m afraid he isn’t able to come,” Mr. Prior said gently.

Imagine a tidal wave, searing, crushing, destroying.

“What do you mean?” said a small voice.

“He was sorry not to be able to talk with you himself,” Mr. Prior told her. “And he is very sorry he can’t come visit you as he said. He will see you at Christmas, though.”

Her lip was trembling. She blinked back tears.

“Oh. Right.”

“So,” RP continued, “it looks as though you’ll have to put up with us for a while longer.” She nodded, trying not to let the tears show. He put his hand on her shoulder. “Casey,” he said calling her by her Christian name for the first time, “I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine,” she whispered. “It’s no big deal.”

When the scene was over, she went away and sobbed.

Writing about this now, especially having read other people’s scene accounts, I can see how odd it must look. The tgi gives focus to the scenes, but it isn’t really the center, or even the most powerful force. The most powerful force, perhaps, is Casey’s heart. How it longs to be with Mr. Prior in his study, somehow. How lascerated it is by her real dad, who loves her very much but cannot help but let her down. How much of a cataclysm the whole visit turns out to be, how much she loves him (M, Mark, Mr. Prior) by any name, as she has never loved anyone or conceived of loving.

He had to get on a plane later that night. I collapsed in bed and passed out from the ordeal of his visit, from overstimulation, from a kind of grief. He promised to come again, soon, October. Ten thousand years away.

But then came, as so often with him, a lucky strike extra, a gift of grace. At eight AM, my phone rang. I dragged myself from unconsciousness to answer it. His flight had been teched. He was still here. He wasn’t leaving until that evening. We had a whole extra day.

I am so grateful I never knew—then or even the morning before he died—what was coming. I knew, then, that we needed the extra day. What I didn’t know was how much we needed it. How very much.

She first saw him on the stoop on her way out of the party. The streets were narrow, deserted, like London. The party had been tedious.

“Oh,” he said.

“Are you going up?” she asked.

He stood, flustered, grinding out a cigarette with his dress shoe. “I don’t think so.”

Her head spun, possibly from a sinus infection, possibly because he looked like a young Daniel Day-Lewis and sounded like a Public School boy once removed. “Can’t say I blame you.” She met his eye with uncharacteristic nerve and then stepped off the stoop into the blowing snow.

“You look like a schoolgirl,” he said with a slight smile. “Are you sure you’re old enough to be knocking about on your own?”

She didn’t move, but shoved her hands deep into her pockets. “Quite sure.” The wind cut through her tights and made her wish she was wearing trousers. “What’s your name?”

He turned up his collar and joined her in the street. “James. James Mercer.”

“That was the name of my third grade teacher.”

“Oh, yes?” He came alongside her and began to walk. “How old’s that, then?”

“Eight.”

He buttoned the top of his coat. “You haven’t changed much, then.”

She glowered at the cobblestones. “Do you make a habit of chatting up girls in foreign cities and calling them immature?”

“Who says this is a foreign city?”

“Do you live here?”

He suppressed a smile. “Do you?”

She surveyed the empty street. “Listen,” she said, “it was great meeting you, James, but this is my train.” She gestured with her head to the red ball a block away.

“Closed, I wager.”

She inhaled and nodded: “Goodnight.” And strode quickly away from him.

“Wait. Please?”

She did not befriend strange men. She didn’t befriend strangers period. But his voice hit her chest somewhere like memory, as if she had known it, or would know it. She turned, but kept her distance. The snow swirled around him under the streetlamp.

“I’m an idiot,” he said. “Give me another chance.”

“Why?”

“You know why.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Please.”

Her eyes stung, suddenly. She wasn’t feeling well. She belonged in bed, alone.

He craned his neck to see behind her. “Let me buy you a cup of coffee.”

“It’s too late for coffee.”

“Chocolate, then.” He nodded at some florescent light down the block. Her stomach growled. Her chin was going numb in the cold. She shrugged and then strode towards the coffee shop. He caught her up at the door, held it for her, and before she could unwrap herself, he’d ordered two hot chocolates and was hanging up her coat. She threw herself into a booth and placed her bag firmly beside her. He slipped into the seat across.

“Now,” he said, his voice more chocolaty than any chocolate possible, “what’s this all about?” His irises were green with flecks of brown in them. Her throat ached. Her eyes started streaming.

“That wasn’t my teacher’s name,” she sobbed.

He put his hands on the table, palms up, and smiled. “It isn’t mine, either.”

It’s a thrill to have so many great writers joining in this first week. A big welcome to all of them. Check out their pieces!

• Haron
• Emma Jane
• Scarlett
• Nettagyrl

Today I received an email from Chris Baty, Daddy of NaNoWriMo. Maybe you received one, too. Here is how it began:

I ran into your 2009 NaNoWriMo novel yesterday, and it said that you two are currently “taking a break.” I offered my condolences and mentioned that I’d probably be seeing you today. It quickly scribbled out a note for me to give you. The note seemed kind of personal, so I didn’t read it. Here it is!

“Hi! Come back to me. I’ll be better this time, I promise!”

Maybe Chris sent this email to every one of the 166,700 participants, or perhaps he limited it to the 32,000 ish “winners”. Whatever. He’s trying to encourage people to finish what they began. My book and I are indeed currently “taking a break” for the holidays, but it’s like the kind of break M and I used to have to take in the first year, when he was still living in Englandland. Anyone who’s ever carried on a long distance love affair will know what this feels like. Time is always your enemy. It’s forever and ever before you see each other again, and then when you’re together, time evaporates. Even after he had moved here and moved in with me, I would still feel traumatized when he had to travel, even for a short time like a week. On some level, I think, I couldn’t accept that I really had him–and since that sounds as though I considered him a possession, let me rephrase: I couldn’t entirely accept that something this good, someone this good, far and away the best thing that had ever happened in my life–that it was for real, and wasn’t going to be taken away like other good things. That I could rely upon it.

As I’ve written before, we got married after being together six years, and we were married for seven years before he died. I think it was really only towards the end of that, in the last couple of years of marriage, that I began to treat him–us–as a real, permanent, true, reliable thing. The rooms inside me that reserved themselves, reluctant to surrender to the good thing lest it disappear, even they gave in. When he died, I found I didn’t have anything reserved anymore. All of me was with him. We had become us.

I am thankful that I haven’t become the kind of person who is afraid to give in like that again. I want to. I need to. I was more myself then, more truly me than I’ve been before or since.

long winter, long path

We are knee deep in winter. I thought last winter was the longest winter of my life, but now, here is another one, no less cold, no less long. The thought of my book sending me a little note saying, Please come back, I’ll be better this time–it makes me cry because I love that book, and I haven’t left it, I would never leave it, and it doesn’t need to try to be better for me, because I love it in all its messiness, and it’s up to me to clear the beds around it so it can come up and grow right.

But if there was someone to take a note to that other shore for me, I would write the same thing to him: Please come back to me. I’ll be better this time. I promise. I won’t fight for so long. I won’t fight at all. I won’t work so hard at stupid things. And did you know, yesterday when I had the Host in my mouth, all I could think and feel was you, your tongue on my tongue, you inside me, and it felt like you were there somehow in that melting, wine-tinged substance in my mouth. If you would come back I would kiss you all the time. I would make love to you all the time. I want to touch your eyelids, your cock, your hands, your bottom, every bit of you, even where your hair is thinning and where the skin is red from your wrist watch. I’ve learned a lot, since you’ve been gone. I’m smarter now. I can do more things. I take up more of the bed, but I’ll move over again. Your son has got so tall.

Please come back. I’ll be better this time. I promise. I promise.

He watched her whirl about the apartment, in what he called her Tasmanian Devil state. There were so many things to do she couldn’t draw breath to count them, and there he sat on the bed, stripped down to boxer briefs, flicking channels between the baseball and Househunting Wales: Denbighshire.

“Come to bed,” he said gently, settling further into the pillows. She declined in a bugger-off tone and strode to the kitchen to initiate another task. The crockery on top of the fridge needed putting away. She dragged chair across tiles and climbed up with the ugly plate their neighbor had given them for their wedding.

Then, the chair was skidding out from under her and crashing to the floor, shattering the plate and slamming her knee against the counter. And he was there, lifting her from the scene of the accident and pointing to the dressing room: “Go.”

Tears threatening, she did as he said. After sweeping up the shards, he waited for her, then led her to bed. He resumed his spot and pulled her by the wrist to sit between his legs, her head against his chest like a pillow, his arms wrapped around her from behind, muscles like the statue of Youthful Hercules she’d seen at the museum, his lips brushing against her ear, her cheek, her neck, watching the sheep in Wales, running his fingers through her hair until everything wrong was right again and she could call off the archers, put down the stick, surrender.

Read the other folks writing this week:

• Marie
• Rafi

Here is a story from the archives, as a Lol Day prize. On many levels it is cringe-inducing for me, but I think, towards the end, it gets at the huge force that had me and M in its grips. Keep in mind we had been corresponding for just about three weeks when I wrote it. I had no idea I was in love with him, or he with me; and I don’t think I was able to see it even after writing this story. Now, our fates appear glaringly obvious to me, as if writing can tell us things we can’t see with our minds.

I wrote Vice as revenge for the first story Mark wrote me, The Benefit of the Doubt here. Also mentioned is Mark’s story The Fishing Trip, discussed here. Dixon and Tremlett are his friends in The Fishing Trip, Mr. “Big Tim” Harrison is Housemaster in question, and Dr. Malcolm Headmaster.

This is yet another story written before I had ever experienced the cane or any RL play. Trivia: it appears that this is where I acquire my middle name, ha ha!

Vice

© Casey Morgan 1995

1.

MI6 was getting good. After months of failure, they’d finally begun to crack the Finnish anonymous remailer and thus zero in on some chief offenders in their own green and pleasant. A stray pervo in Birmingham, a hoard of terrorists in London, some Wilde imitators at Oxford. But even Morley, who headed the investigation, was surprised to unearth a user at the School. He was familiar with the place. And he knew the master in charge of its computer systems. So, rather than file the appropriate reports, he got on the train and paid a personal visit, in hopes of resolving the situation on the qt.

Mr. Harrison–housemaster and English scholar–was a man of many talents. After his former student had left him, he went directly to the Media Centre. In no time he had traced the account in question: Mark Hastings. Well, who else would it be? So it was that after Vth form English, Big Tim loped across the playing fields to Dr. Malcolm’s house.

“I might have know it.”

“It would seem he’s quite an accomplished documentarian,” Tim added. “I took the liberty of photocopying one or two examples.”

He dropped on the desk something called ‘The Fishing Trip.’

“And this particularly vulgar waste of good paper…”

‘The Benefit of the Doubt’ fell beside its sibling. The remainder had been tucked away in Mr. Harrison’s very secure filing cabinets.

“I suppose he must be summoned, formal interview and the rest of it.” Dr. Malcolm sounded weary. Ever since booking his summer holiday to Tangier, this all too human headmaster had been having difficulty concentrating. In particular, he was fed up with Mark Hastings and was running out of resources to meet him creatively.

“Ever since Hastings came here, he’s done nothing, it seems, but try to get himself beaten.” Tim looked at his friend obliquely.

“Hmm.” Dr. Malcolm stuffed his pipe between his teeth and bit hard. “Perhaps he hasn’t received a sufficiently strong dose.”

“Hmm.” Irony and understatement seethed on the carpet between them, though to an eavesdropper, the words would have fallen flat. These two men understood one another perfectly.

“I believe,” Dr. Malcolm murmured at last, “I know just the thing. Something to ensure he won’t be rushing back for more.”

read the rest of the story here

He slept like a rock or a man that’s dead, it seemed. Her stomach clenched, a passing fancy, and she stretched her arm across to see that he was still breathing. His chest did, in fact, move. He wasn’t to die yet, though when he did, he would look the same as that twilight on their bed.

The Pervy Hour had past. He lay naked, the duvet twisted at his feet. She still wore a shirt. The room cold now, she pulled the covers over them, as much against the air as against her own eyes. What had seemed a part of them now felt incongruous, like Adam and Eve felt towards each other after eating the knowledge.

Was it part of their fallen inheritance that she should always feel naked after? She had no Puritan admonition against making love with her husband, but always, after – either quickly or some time later – a self-consciousness would come over her, turning their acts into something faintly repellent. Before the arrival of the observing mind, the relentless panopticon, she could love him with her body, as she had promised at the altar; but, that Eden always fled, like a fawn, before the cold gaze of reason.

He jerked awake with a sharp intake of breath and turned to her, resting his head on her chest, curling a knee across her, his arm encircling her as if to keep her from rising, then or ever. Life had been long, so long for both of them, before they finally found each other.

“You were late,” he would tease, “as usual.”

They had been together before, in the distant past. “Last time,” he said, “I think I was the girl.” Or was the last time when they had both been boys? It was hard to remember precisely. Once, visiting the chapel of his Public School, she had been possessed of an eerie familiarity, as if she were recalling long ago, before her childhood, as if the memory resided just behind her eyeballs, if only she could see it there.

Later, once he actually was dead, she would discover that Anglican belief did not include reincarnation as such. “What do you make of it, then?” she would ask her theologian curate. “We both thought we remembered the same thing.”

The theologian would touch his index fingers to his lips and look at the ceiling, silent for a spell. “I think,” he would reply, “that it was a kind of spiritual gift, a blanket of Grace, perhaps.”

The blanket of Grace was large enough to cover the two of them that twilight, to extend the unspeaking respite. Holding him and being held by him was like being able finally to breathe, like stepping down into fresh, thick air after a lifetime at altitude. They exchanged no words, but the way he held her fingers said more than conversation. They were thinking the same thoughts, the same thought, as it sometimes seemed they would dream the same dream, not separately in their own heads, but tandem, one mind.

Twilight gave way to evening. Soon the dog would need dinner. Soon the phone would ring, and the traffic would resume outside the window. Soon they would resume ordinary living, side by side. For this moment, though, his arm still around her, his heart still pumping against her side, his cheek warm on her chest, duvet covering them, for this moment they lingered, ignorant of everything except each other. She breathed, sinking against him, no words, no self-regarding. The quiet was part of the meaning, part of the mind.

Come read the other folks writing this week:

• Rafi – yay!
• Tom - yay!

I dreamed Mark and Casey were curled up together under a sheet (like Cathy & Heathcliff) and someone was saying how they were made for each other.  Save me!

Later, M and I were in another country (Argentina?) and had been there for a long visit. The plane was going soon, very soon. We’d been apart for a while, but M was back and we were trying to get all our gear together. I took a last glance through the closet and found all his clothes there, most of them drying on the clothes horse. I pulled them out bunch by bunch and handed them to him, hoping he could fit them in his bag. I kept finding bits I hadn’t packed (chocolate, a frozen but un-refrigerated piece of meat, large, like a bag of firewood). My bag was small, like an overnight bag. I had to get my boots on. The tickets were buried in my bag… The stress of it all.

These dreams say the obvious: I miss Marky, and we were made for each other. I wasn’t packed or prepared for his death – our death. Neither of us was ready. His clothes are still in the closet. In the dream we were meant to go together on this trip, this return home, even though we’d been apart for a while at first. Traveling together was the plan.

Recently, driving upstate, I remembered the last time I drove that route – the weekend before he died.  He used to drive the car – our car – my car. Then I was remembering the month I spent with him in Englandland, before he moved to Gotham. Like the time we went to the movies in Staines and RP bought Casey a child price ticket. All that time there was pain – pain of uncertainty, pain of separation, pain of change – but all of it was within this enormous sea of love and good things and hope for life, of comfort at having found him of… – I don’t even know how to explain how life and the living of it changed just knowing he was in the world and that he loved me back. In some way it made anything seem possible.