White Bodies(31)
But you couldn’t succeed because I adore him. I love that I can’t boss him around like I’m the queen of Sheba. So many of my exes have been obedient sycophants. I say sit—they sit. I say fetch—they fetch. But, from the start, Felix was different. He set the rules and I went along with them: he told me to wear my Oscar de la Renta dress, I wore it; he said he didn’t like my scent, I chucked it in the bin. You couldn’t stand that behavior, could you? It made you feel powerless and excluded. Then, darling sister, exclusion turned you paranoid and fueled the Controlling Men obsession that screwed up your mind.
I can see you there now, in your bedroom, reading this, and screaming, But I was right! You’re dead, Tilda! Well, it’s a whole lot more complicated than that, in ways beyond your imagination. It’s hard to explain to you, because we are such different people, but let me try.
Think about this—you’ve spent your whole life trying to figure out how you belong. You want to put roots down deep into the earth, like a tree does, seeking water and nutrients—sustenance. I’m the opposite, I want to fly like a bird, escape, and move on. I feel exhilarated when something is new and dangerous. I love risk. See where I’m going with this? That’s what Felix gives me—endless risk. With other men I have a sense of their limits, but not with him—what goes on behind those gray eyes is unknowable. I’d find myself just gazing at him, wondering whether he’ll be my destroyer, or my savior. At the minute, I’m believing that he’s most likely my savior. But—in case I’m wrong—I’m setting down in writing how my death came about. What you do with the information is up to you.
The first time he became violent was just a month or so after I met him. That night we were at a screening of Rebecca in a little private cinema in Soho, and as the film began I was practically orgasmic with fear—it was so important to me that he like my performance, and I already knew that his standards were fucking high. He gripped my hand tightly throughout the film, and every few scenes, he told me that I was gorgeous or sexy or beautiful. . . . At first I was grateful and turned on, but after a while I noticed that his compliments were all about my appearance, not about my skill. So I fished for something deeper, asking, “Did you like the beach scene?” or “Do you think that final confrontation with Max worked; did it have emotional integrity?” He’d do something affectionate like pull my hair away from my face or pretend bite my fingers and come up with platitudes like, “The camera adores you,” or “That scene was yours.” Never anything specific about the hard graft of acting, and I sensed a cold undertone to his words.
Then, as the lights came up, a couple of young beardy hipsters came over to me and started telling me how wonderful my performance had been and this strange thing happened—Felix appeared to be enjoying the situation, saying, “Yes, she’s amazing . . . I’m so proud of her.” But I could tell that, beneath the surface, he was angry. It was something about the tension in his body, and the way he was on autopilot with his oh-so-perfectly charming manner.
When we got back to my flat, he was moody, refusing to say what was wrong. Then he grabbed me and, without speaking, pushed me onto the bed and fucked me, forcing me into impossible excruciating positions, gripping my arms so hard that the pain was almost unbearable. Afterwards he fell asleep straightaway while I lay awake stunned, trying to work out what had happened. I suppose that in a way I felt violated, but I also felt ecstatic, truly alive. And don’t tell yourself it was rape, Callie, because it wasn’t. I did not say no. I did not try to push him away. I made my consent obvious. The fact was that I felt closer to Felix than ever because of the realization that, like me, he’s compelled to experience the extremes in life. In the days afterwards, I would look at the bruises he had made on my arms and cherish them, like they were emblems of our passion, badges of honor. I was sad when, after a few days, they went away.
About three weeks later Felix and I were having dinner at Le Caprice, and one of his colleagues happened to be dining there, an older guy called Julio who came over and asked to be introduced to me. I liked him straightaway—he had this big crinkled face. Thick white hair; and he was tanned, like he spent half his life sitting on a terrace in Barcelona sipping fine wines. I laughed at his stories. Some of them were at Felix’s expense, though in a benign way. In a fabulous undulant, almost camp Spanish accent he called Felix’s work desk “his Bauhaus residence” and said he viewed “good taste as a moral imperative.” Felix chuckled, and I laughed too. When we parted, Felix man-thumped Julio on the arm in the friendliest way. But, underneath, he was seething, and when we were back at Clerkenwell he was white with anger, stomping around, furious about Julio’s jokes. It was “that prick—pathetic has-been—he won’t last long at the firm.” Then he began to attack me. How dare I flirt with Julio? Couldn’t I see that I was an embarrassment to myself? I protested: “I was being friendly.” I told him he was ridiculous, and I started to walk away. But Felix grabbed a glass vase, a heavy purple thing, and hurled it at me. Or perhaps he was aiming beside my head to give me a fright. Anyhow, it missed me and crashed into a mirror, which shattered, and the vase was all over the floor of his kitchen, a thousand tiny fragments.
He acted like nothing much had happened, ordering me out of the room “while I clean up this mess.” His voice was aloof and weary; he seemed disgusted at me—and this is strange—but as I went into the sitting room I was thinking that I was at fault, that I must have behaved badly with Julio, and I felt pleased that Felix cared so much. I liked the idea that his feelings for me were so strong that they’d forced him to lose control and smash something. The damage wasn’t terrible, only a cracked mirror and a broken vase. I went back into the room, took him by his shaking hand and led him to the bed. He grabbed my arms, bruised me, hit me, fucked me. But I didn’t think less of him Callie—I loved him more.