A World in Us Page 6

  “Look, Louisa, you and I love each other. But we couldn’t have carried on the way we were. Right now you are enjoying rediscovering parts of yourself that you didn’t experience with me. And I am doing the same thing. The fact that this is causing you pain is understandable, given your need to be perfect all the time. But remember I love you as you are, without you having to like Joni Mitchell or Monty Python.”

  “But I do like Monty Python,” I said in a small voice.

  “And I’m glad that I helped you discover it,” he said, putting his arm around me, “and now we can discover a whole lot more with Morten and Elena.”

  “I feel like I’m losing you,” I sobbed.

  He hugged me close, “You’re not losing me, just as I am not losing you. You are sharing me, but it doesn’t mean you have any less of me. I still love you just as much — in fact, even more because you can let me explore my own character with someone else.”

  Part of the thrill of new relationships was exploring common and contrasting facets of each other’s personalities. Parts that might have remained hidden if it weren’t for the other person. But the fission and friction of personalities that happened at the beginning, even with Gilles and me, had gradually tapered off to a melding of comfortable and loving trust — in itself beautiful and absolutely worthy of attainment. But now we were four very different people trying to keep the harmony that we had already achieved within our original couples, and we were re-exposing those parts of ourselves that had previously caused friction. Polyamory was sparking evolution and revolution, whereas monogamy had allowed us to settle around a comfortable median of stagnancy.

  If there was one thing Gilles and I weren’t any longer, it was stagnant.

  I had joined the gym, and this in itself was a landmark. I lost three kilos in the first week. My terror at being compared to a model overrode my aversion to moving my arse.

  “My wife tried everything,” Gilles remarked dryly, “apart from eating less and exercising. Then she got a new boyfriend!”

  Fortunately he benefited too, which soon stopped him poking fun at me.

  In the second week we started to speak on the phone. I called Morten every lunchtime when he was out power walking. Clearly, he was also trying to get in shape.

  “We’ll meet for a drink and a chat. No expectations,” he said.

  By that point we’d invented new terms for each other. Acro­nyms were all we ever heard in our respective businesses. He was a programmer; I was a financial analyst. At work we talked in code most of the time and were constantly pissed off that our managers invented so many obscure acronyms. So he became my PVB. I was his PVG. It stood for poly-virtual-boyfriend and poly-virtual-girlfriend. It stood for our hope for a future together and our ridicule of a conformity we newly despised.

  7

  Our relationship might have been virtual, but it seemed we were already in love. And if falling in love is indeed a wash of oxytocin flooding our systems, then there was no question we had it in abundance. Our acronyms, as geeky as they were, signalled that we had both, over the course of two weeks, changed the course of our lives.

  And yet we were terrified. We hadn’t met. We hadn’t even seen each other.

  But then in the third week we did. On the webcam I’d bought earlier that day.

  “But you’re beautiful,” he breathed out after we had spent five whole minutes gazing at each other in silence. I couldn’t speak. So I wrote in the chat window.

  “So are you…”

  I touched the screen where his lips were and longed to kiss them. He had blue eyes paler than mine. They were the same colour as light reflecting off the ocean. Fire and ice.

  We gazed some more. I took in the curve of his jaw and the confidence in his stare. His smile was uneven. Sexy. I felt my groin jump in a way I hadn’t felt before and yet recognised it instinctively as the madness of lust. My brain knew it, and my body ached from it. I felt wanton. Reborn. And desperate to feel his body pressed against mine. Physical attraction had been relatively unimportant in my world. But now it was the only thing that existed. I had thought I was fallen-in-love ten minutes ago. But now I was falling more. And more. And more. He leaned in closer and kissed the camera.

  “I don’t know how you got such a negative perception of yourself,” he said. “You got me so scared. You told me you were like a big fat Italian mama. And here I was falling in love with someone I didn’t know whether I would be physically attracted to.”

  I finally spoke. I said, “I was fat, but I lost six kilos in the last two weeks.”

  “Stand up and do a twirl,” he said.

  I stood up and turned around so quickly that the webcam didn’t catch it.

  “Again, more slowly please.”

  I turned again so that the webcam caught two frames.

  “I feel like a goldfish!” I said.

  “I don’t want you to feel like a goldfish. It’s just that I can’t get enough of you. When I’m not emailing you, I’m thinking about you. When I’m not talking to you, I still hear your voice. I can only see part of your face on this damn camera and there is no zoom-out button.” He stabbed the keyboard with his finger.

  I knew exactly how he was feeling. I wanted to cup his chin, feel his breath on my neck, trace the lifeline on his palm. Spend hours exploring his body, see him shiver at my touch. Hold him in my hands and devour him.

  I was obsessed with someone I didn’t know. Someone I’d never met. And someone who was turning me on eight hundred miles away. More than my husband in the next room did. It was earth-shattering. Mind-blowing. Amazing but also horrifying. But no matter how horrified I was at the person I’d become, I couldn’t stop it. This was what I wanted. Me without the structure of society. Without the rigours of religion. Without the criticisms of my parents and in blatant disregard to my so-called decent upbringing. Which then sailed clean out of the window.

  “Tonight’s game is called ‘five articles of clothing,’” I said, frightened at my own daring. Because five articles was not much between me and total debauchery.

  “So what are the rules?” asked Morten, intrigued.

  “There are no rules. But if you know me well enough you might be able to persuade me to take them off. The jumper’s dead easy. The trousers: not so easy, but fairly easy ’cause you can’t see them under the table. The top: pretty difficult. The bra: very difficult.”

  “And the jackpot?” said Morten, holding his breath.

  “Almost impossible,” I said.

  “How do I get your jumper off, then?” Morten wondered aloud.

  “Talk to me,” I said. “Make me laugh. I’m a sucker for compliments.”

  And so the game started. The jumper was off after fifteen minutes.

  “I love your smile,” he said.

  “Well, you’re the one who brings it to my face,” I replied, laughing.

  “So it’s my creation,” he said. “That doesn’t make me feel quite like God. But it does make me feel very good. Do you want to see how good?” He stood up and ever so slowly unbuckled his trousers. Then sat down as I almost screamed in frustration.

  “You’ll get more…if I get more!” he said, grinning. I ripped off my top in haste and consoled myself that my bra, well, it was like a bikini, right?

  The game progressed. My trousers came off with particular emphasis on my bottom. I was trembling. Evening had fallen and the sky was dark. The only light was from my computer screen, and it felt like I was channelled through it, suspended with him in cyberspace. I had two pieces of clothing left.

  Then he said, “You’re so bloody beautiful. I love your legs. I love your eyes. I love talking to you. And I hate this distance between us.”

  “It doesn’t feel that far right now,” I said. My nose inches away from the screen.

  “Forget the distance,” he said. “You’re part of
my world. And I can’t imagine it without you.”

  “Nor me.”

  “Hey, I just realised. I have only one piece of clothing left and you have two. Surely that’s not fair.”

  “OK. How about my necklace?” I said.

  “No fair!” he said. “You named the pieces of clothing in the beginning, and that wasn’t one of them. Sorry, darling. It’s time for your bra to go.”

  Seconds ticked by and he said, “What are you waiting for?”

  “My courage,” I said. “It seems to have deserted me.”

  “I’m waiting,” he said. “I’ve got all night. All night. AAAAALLLL night.” Then he typed…

  “Bye bye, little bra.”

  The cursor blinked. And then the message window went crazy as he pressed copy and paste again and again:

  “Bye bye, little bra.”

  “Bye bye, little bra.”

  “Bye bye, little bra.”

  “Bye bye, little bra.”

  “Bye bye, little bra.”

  “Bye bye, little bra.”

  And, almost fainting, I took it off. He didn’t speak for a while. So long I started to get nervous. Then he breathed out and said, “Wow. You’re amazing. Phenomenal.”

  “So are you. But I can’t do any more. That’s far enough.”

  “It’s OK. Are you OK? Are you freaking out?”

  “No,” I said. “But bloody hell, I’m turned on.”

  “If anyone says what we did is not beautiful, don’t believe them,” he said.

  “I wasn’t planning on telling anyone!” I said. “Apart from Gilles.”

  “I meant the devil on your shoulder,” he said. “Let’s just take it slow.”

  It was time for bed. We were both exhausted, frustrated but exhilarated.

  “The more time that passes,” he typed, “the more barriers tumble. The odds were really not in our favour. But we click so well emotionally and mentally. And judging from what I can see on this crappy webcam, your body is just as gorgeous as your mind. Now all that’s left is to meet in person.”

  “But no expectations…” I typed back from my now fully dressed and repressed cage.

  “No expectations.”

  8

  Getting ready to meet someone you’ve already been going out with for four weeks is terribly weird. Getting ready with your husband, who also happens to be meeting his girlfriend, wife of your boyfriend, is just plain nuts.

  We bought a bottle of wine and drank it. We went to the supermarket and stocked up on entrées we thought would give the best impression. Dips. Obviously with no garlic. Breadsticks encrusted with sea salt and rosemary. Tiny useless rice crackers that could balance barely a sliver of feta cheese.

  When we’d finished two hours early, all there was to do was wait. Our palms slippery and our gazes locked into one another, alternately stressed and incredulous. In the end we had sex. Urgent screwing was the only thing we could do to relieve the tension. It helped and we laughed, even though it destroyed our carefully styled hair, which had taken us an hour apiece.

  Later that evening, four human beings, all of them cour­age­ous enough to question the belief that marriage between two people is the only natural and moral state, met in Paris late at night. Four highly volatile and unconventional people who had risked rejection and criticism by challenging the concept of monogamy convened on the steps of a small hotel. They knew each other without having seen each other. They were intimate without having touched each other. And two of them had fallen in love without knowing each other in person.

  Impossible but true.

  Morten took one look at me cringing by the steps and bounded over to my side in a single leap. He was more boyish than I had thought. And just as when I had met my husband, I could already see what our children would look like. He gave me a hug and said, “Virtual no more!”

  “Hello,” I said shyly, and then said nothing else until we had made our way to the bar next door, hand-picked for its lack of popularity. We’d shared so much, and yet he was a stranger.

  Gilles’s face had been inscrutable as I hugged Morten. After all, a hug was nothing in the grand scheme of things. I regularly hugged many of my friends, male and female. But this hug was symbolic. It was not a gesture as an end in itself. It was the possible beginning of something much greater. Elena smiled prettily and gave me a hug as well before turning to Gilles and kissing him on both cheeks. She was dressed in a London-funky style, and as she took off her jacket, her aura spread to fill the bar. I felt like I was in the presence of someone. Or, rather, “Someone” — with a capital “S.”

  Seeing him in the context of his marriage, Morten became a different person. He and Elena peppered the conversation a lot with “we.” “That time we did such and such… When we went to this party…When we made this discovery...”

  It made Gilles and me a “we” too. Two couples sitting opposite one another, discussing their lives and their adventures with no hint of the car crash of emotions that each newly formed couple had experienced over the last four weeks. Fresh doubts rushed over me. I was back in “monogamy land,” the four of us sitting sedately in a bar. We looked normal. But far from making me feel secure, I felt isolated. Had everything that had gone on in the past four weeks just been a dream?

  Elena started ordering food and drinks. Even at that late hour she ordered with the supreme knowledge of someone who was used to being obeyed. She also spoke in Spanish. Since she knew only a little French, she preferred to communicate in her native language, assuming that as they were both Latin based, they would be similar enough to one another to get her understood. And she was right.

  I, on the other hand, was flabbergasted. I had thought that I would be ordering for all of us, especially since that was the way it worked between Gilles and me. One pillar of my confidence crumbled. I was no longer in charge. I was not the hostess. I was a foreigner in a new land. When she had finished ordering, she turned to me, put her head on one side compassionately and said, “So how many men have you slept with? Morten tells me it’s a lot.”

  And just like that a second pillar crumbled. I took a hefty swig of my vodka tonic.

  “He’s right,” I replied hesitantly, feeling very unfamiliar in this country of brutal honesty with someone I had never met. “But the reason there are a lot is because I was searching for love. Clearly, without finding it. It was a very self-destructive time. And it’s probably why I have difficulty talking openly about it.”

  I was very proud that I had managed to say even that. Gilles took my hand under the table. He of all people knew how ashamed I was of my self-destructive past. How I had been exploited time and again by ex-boyfriends for sex. How, far from enjoying it, I had become disgusted with myself. At least until Gilles had arrived.

  “Oh no, honey, I didn’t realise that you didn’t enjoy it. That’s terrible,” Elena said and pressed my shoulder sympathetically. I wished she’d stop talking about it. “You poor baby. Don’t worry, I used to be totally hung up and repressed too. Morten helped me out. He’s a great psychoanalyst.”

  Now I was repressed. Whether I knew it already was not the point.

  “There’s a difference between repressed and preferences though,” said Morten.

  I relaxed the minutest smidgen possible. Which obviously wasn’t a lot.

  Morten added, “If you don’t enjoy everything Gilles does, that’s OK.” He took my other hand. Was it my imagination, or did the barman look slightly askance? Suddenly I felt wicked, elated and daring.

  Elena was different. Bold. Thrilling. And we were too.

  It was bewildering, the speed with which my emotions changed. From giddy joy, to desperate insecurity, and back again in three seconds. My feelings were mirrored in Gilles’s face. He looked at my hand being held by another man and laughed like a schoolboy. His nose wrinkled, and
he got three dimples on both sides of his mouth. Elena started laughing, her eyes shining. We were all holding hands around the table. Morten said to me, “Do you want to come outside for a cigarette?”

  But it’s not just a cigarette, is it? I thought. I was about to take the plunge. I was about to leave my established marriage and start a not-so-illicit affair with a stranger.

  In one of our hundred emails from the past three weeks, Morten and I had revealed our naughty sides: party smoking was a shared pleasure. Elena didn’t smoke and neither did Gilles. In fact, they both detested it with a passion. It was nasty. Forbidden. Dangerous. And, they said, very smelly. But it represented our first opportunity to be alone. I hadn’t smoked in four months, but if there was one thing that would make me do so, it was this chance. The first kiss.

  You can take your clothes off in front of a webcam. You can whisper sweet nothings into a phone. You can even write passionate declarations over email. But nothing, nothing compares to the possibility of touching your lips to someone else’s to confirm the fact that you are starting a relationship with someone other than your husband.

  For an instant, I wanted to run. Cry, and say this had all been a terrible mistake. And yet as I looked into the eyes that I’d fallen for, I knew that it was already too late. I was like Neo from The Matrix, tumbling down the rabbit hole. I had to find out just how deep it went. So I picked up my jacket with trembling hands and followed him outside.

  The deal had been that he couldn’t touch me before I touched him. But I didn’t even need the excuse of the cigarette to slide my hands around his waist. Taking control meant a quicker resolution to my nerves. The sooner we kissed, the sooner I would know. Wasn’t that the telltale sign of true love? He looked down at me and smiled the same smile I had seen over the webcam for the past week.

  He said, “I guess it’s OK then if I put my arms around you?”

  I smiled back. And said nothing. Which meant yes. I looked into his eyes and he leant down. Slowly. Slowly. Beats passed and the anticipation grew until I couldn’t hold back anymore. The kiss, when it came, tingled. It was tentative and teasing. It flirted coyly, lips, teeth and tongue, where Gilles’s kiss was normally deep and passionate. Two ways of kissing. With new love and old love.