“You’ve seen these before, I’m sure. A ‘muscle relaxer’ from the 1880s, marketed primarily to men. Until it emerged that doctors were using it on female patients to cure hysteria. In other words, the first vibrator.”
Lilly chuckled, but she was distracted by an object in the center of the room: a square padded table that sprouted a black rubber ball about the size of an apple near the center. Lilly put her hand on the ball. It felt cool and smooth to the touch.
“This thing was supposed to be for treating pelvic disorders in women. From a medical standpoint, it was… medieval. From another point of view, something else entirely. When women figured out their own home uses for a table like this, doctors warned that they should be supervised so as not to… overstimulate. The engine that vibrated the ball was steam-powered.”
Across the room, mounted on the far wall, was something that looked like a saddle.
“Obesity. Gout. And again, hysteria. But that’s not why women used them.” She smiled.
Ropes hung from the ceiling, silently coiled like beautiful thick snakes. On a small raised stage sat a crossbeam equipped with a set of leather wrist cuffs, and a second set of cuffs, for the ankles, spread far apart at the base. Lilly felt dizzy. Her mouth filled with spit.
“What’s this?” Lilly gestured toward an elaborate machine near the door.
“A spanking machine.” She released a low chuckle. “So you stood here, at one end, bent over this leather ledge, right? And when you turned the machine on, a great THWAP from behind!” The older woman demonstrated the action and they laughed at the force of the metal arm and paddle that shot up from the other end of the device.
On the wall, all manner of cock and cunt chastity cages, hanging like decorations.
But inside their shared laughter, their growing lust and intimacy, another object caught Lilly’s eye: a shallow wooden box the size of a body, with thin metal bars across the top of it, something between a coffin and an ornate cage. Inside it, at the bottom, a blood-red velvet cushion. The metal bars seemed to have openings at chest level, at crotch level, at mouth level. Lilly could not stop staring.
“Ahhhh, I see what’s caught your eye. That’s a holding pen,” the woman said.
“It looks like a coffin,” Lilly said. An array of devices — toys, wands, spurs — was arranged on the box like a crown. As Lilly stood near the box, she felt the flesh in her body ache: Her arms. Her legs. The cleft between her hips and legs. Something in her life ached. That feeling, again, of something both improbable and unsettlingly familiar.
“Would you like to try it?” the woman said, opening the lid.
Would she like to try stepping into her own dream? Into a space that has haunted her body as long as her body’s memory? Would she like to find out, at last, what happens next?
Her body suddenly broke into a heated sweat. Is it possible to reenter your own past, your own dreams and grief and loss and trauma, if someone else is there to guide you through every moment of your experience? Was it possible that she could reach her own deepest pain through pleasure?
“Do you think a person can… confront their own pain?” she asked.
“Yes,” the older woman said, gently opening the box. “Pleasure and pain are a great deal bigger than the story we’ve been told. Like their own epoch.”
Lilly shed her clothes quickly, her clitoris already erect, her desire uncovered — a desire not separate from guilt and fear and negation, but plunging straight into the mouth of it.
As the older woman closed the lid, she said, “Are you sure?”
Lilly nodded yes, but her steady eyes were the word for it.
“My name is Aurora. If you feel unsafe at any moment, say water.”
Lexicon
On the seventh day inside Aurora’s apartment, Lilly rolls her tongue around an apple between Aurora’s legs. Laughter. She can smell and taste the salt wet. Lilly bites into the apple, hard enough to hold it in her mouth, lifts her head, spits it to the floor, bites again into the pulp of Aurora with an ungodly hunger. Breathing. Kissing. Sucking. Tonguing.
Lilly’s fingers inside, one-two-three-four-five — a sea creature entering a water cave until a rhythmic thrusting emerges from Aurora’s hips a flip Aurora topping Lilly’s back Lilly biting down into feathers Aurora eating Lilly’s ass spreading her legs tendriling with her arm octopus up to cunt the other mouth of her has it been hours and hours or days and nights and days sun washes the room through the ceiling-to-floor curtains the color of alabaster the walls midnight blue the carpet bloodred sun washes the room night wave washes the room time moves between bodies the sheets wet smeared tangled necks legs a longing eating into a longing a life eating into a death the bloodbeat of it.
Days.
Nights.
From under a pillow Aurora pulls a coil of rope the colors of a corn snake Lilly the model on her belly anticipation lodged like the touch of dreams between each vertebrae Aurora the rigger pulling Lilly’s arms behind her Aurora binding her hands tender gentle torque not then tender gentle torque a gasp please if there is a god or a universe let this time of binding pass slowly or let this language between bodies break time then on to ankles the knots are practiced the knots are loving the knots are tightening with any move Lilly makes Lilly wants to move the torque the gasp of it
Aurora stands
Lilly waits
A kind of death this waiting
Aurora standing
—
Aurora pulls Lilly’s body up and up hoisting her lifting her off the bed into suspension Seiu Ito painted his pregnant wife hanging from ropes whispered into Lilly’s ear the art of it the wet of it the torque of it the ropes taut between Lilly’s knees dividing the lips of her labia up her belly crisscrossing her back arched her legs bent her arms bound behind her a kind of thick hard corset rope stitched across her back the little bulges of arm bitable the woman hanging from the ceiling carabiners glinting rope the color of corn snake caught bird arched swallow strained neck eronawa a whisper semenawa a whisper or a dare Lilly screaming yes except silent the language their bodies the language the tug of the ropes on skin their language eye to eye no one sees the girl enter the room with an object no one sees the girl leave there is just this language of desire this is only Lilly’s suspended body there is only Aurora tonguing her limb by limb then nothing and into the nothing the everything suspended
Apple
Tongue
Aurora
Cunt
Axolotl
Hips
Thrust
Days
Water
Sun
Moon
Cave
Brother
Torch
Umbilical
Ehnita
Father
History
Red
Indigo
Rope
Whale
Wail
Waves
Sapnuoti
Uu
Ohne: ka
Suck
Blood