I think it happened during M’s second visit to Gotham, about six weeks after his first. There was a lot of tgi during the trip, a lot of scenes, a lot of exploring what it was like to inhabit all these characters. The scenario was Mark and Casey were at “College,” a standard issue English Public School, in RP’s House with TL as the assistant housemaster. Casey was being provocative about so many things, and one I think was the issue of bedtime. I remember TL advising RP that if Casey (who at this time was 15ish and in the 5th form – ha, what a joke!) was going to behave like a ten-year-old and not go to bed when she ought, then perhaps he should treat her that way. RP replied that she was definitely going to have a spanking for the bedtime issue, but he was more unsure about other matters with her. They discussed it more. And underneath the role of TL, I was burning all over my skin because I was so very ambivalent about that type of punishment. My line had thus far been – I only do English school discipline because it’s so unlike my own experience, and anything like my own experience is a turn-off. But here was RP announcing that an otk slippering was a perfectly natural matter of course that he was accustomed to taking when occasion demanded.
So, fast-forward, Casey got the slippering (across pyjamas), followed by a few strokes of the dorm cane unprotected (also the first time she received anything unprotected, which powerfully pushed against my/her excessive American modesty. When I was growing up, just having anyone see your underpants was enough to make you die of shame. cf. M’s English schoolboy upbringing where communal nudity was the norm, and his attitude that if anyone wanted to see his willy, it was a nice one and they could see all they wanted. Ha ha.) Long story short, this scene freaked Casey out so much that she decided to run away from College. She packed a knapsack. She was going to the airport. She was going to buy a plane ticket to Bolivia (where she’d visited once). She was escaping.
Scenes over, M and I go to sleep. In the middle of the night, though, Casey wakes up and sneaks out of the house. It was mild (for October) and wet out, that kind of warm, misty rain. The avenue outside the door was devoid of traffic, quiet, lit by yellow lamps. Casey – exhilarated – sprinted down the street, free!
Here’s where the extraordinary strangeness of playing kicks in, as anyone who’s really played will understand. At the corner: Casey out, another character in. Someone puts a quarter in the payphone (1995, ha ha), and dials a number which looks like my home number, but which is the number for College. It rings and rings, and for a while I wonder if he’ll answer it. Eventually, he picks up my ringing phone. Someone on my end asks for Mr. Prior and announces herself as Officer something. She’s found a runaway from his school, she thinks. He can come collect her at the station. Er…where is that, exactly, he asks? The officer gives helpful directions (go to x street, turn right, turn left at y street, one block up on the left). They ring off.
casey's rock (in daytime obv)
Casey, dejected, captured, makes her way to the appointed meeting point, perches on a large rock, and buries her head in her arms. Such despair. Such loneliness. Such longing.
And before too long, the footsteps of Church’s shoes are heard on the sidewalks of Gotham, and RP in his tweed jacket is walking towards her. He puts his hands in his pockets, stands near, and tells her gently to come on. She comes. They walk side by side, not touching, back to College in the mild, misting rain.
Inside, he tells her to change back into her pyjamas. She almost protests – I’m not staying! – but she doesn’t. He brings her a glass of water in the blue glass and sits next to her at the table. They talk, and she cries and cries.
What was it about that scene that made her cry so much? It was a few hours after her first otk experience, which deep down was what she needed and craved, even if she felt compelled to fight it to the point of trying to run away. Then there was the fact that RP was passing this test she’d unconsciously set for him. He’d come for her – out in the rain in the middle of the night, three blocks away to the big rock outside the “police station” [public library]. M was passing a test, too. He’d picked up a ringing telephone in a strange house in the middle of the night and answered the call to a scene – out in the rain in a foreign town, any time, anywhere, anyhow. No flinching, no hesitation, no limits on what he was prepared to play with me when summoned. And RP was handling Casey right, gently but firmly. There was no question of whacking her then, but neither was he backing away from what he’d done. I can’t really remember what he said or what she said, but I remember a lot of tears across the kitchen table, and on some level it was an admission of how much RP meant to her – and M to me. It was one episode in a long line of givings-in to that huge, drowning love.
- You won’t ever call me Sunshine, or anything barfy like that, will you?
