This Simple Bone
I.
He doesn’t want to keep me; he only wants me for a while. He told me this from the outset; my ways are too foreign for him. He needs a totally compliant woman, who will observe the rules of haraam, not ever interfere in his life. My mouth is too quick, he says, and I want to know too much. He finds me amusing. He likes teaching me French and Arabic. But he doesn’t want to live with my approaches and my ways.
He tells me this as he reads me Arabic poetry and French verse, as he shows me my name in a beautiful script. Says he would like to tattoo my name in Raq’aa calligraphy across my breast, across my lower back. Wants to press the nib of the pen into my skin and write my name in his flowing hand.
— Here, he whispers. — Ici! And here, too.
And he licks at my shoulder, my knee, the sharp bone on the outside of my wrist.
— What a silly place to want to write a name: winching from his teeth, writhing from his tongue.
— No. Look! Look at the simple loveliness of this bone. I will take its memory with me. This bone!
He sucks at the bone in my wrist and the skin jangles.
— I will write your name here, too, he says as he slips that tongue into me.
I don’t argue. I can feel his tongue making all the elegant loops and curls of his poetry on me, in me, around me, and I shudder and cry out.
— I will write your name until you can see it and write it for yourself, he says as his tongue writes yet another letter around my nipple, up my neck, over my chin and along my lips. I can taste myself when he slips it into my mouth. It makes me feral.
— Say my name. Say it.
His mouth is hard on me and his words harder, but I won’t say his name. I won’t say it. If I keep my voice closed I can create of myself anything I wish. I can create of this, this thing with Sam what I wish. I won’t say his name. His mouth. His mouth.
It makes me feral, and, like a savage thing, I crave it but I don’t want to keep him. I don’t feel any love for him. I don’t feel much at all. But I do like his poetry and his big hands. I do like his elegant tongue. He touches me till I do want to scream and it wouldn’t matter, in that moment, if it were Sam’s name I was screaming. It wouldn’t matter because when he touches me I do. I want to scream. His tongue, loosened by wine and French verbs, slides on me over and over and I want to scream. But I swallow my own tongue against the invasion of his. And this has become his mission. To loosen my tongue. To make me give name, to give voice to all the broken things, all the stillborn things. To cry like a calf at the moon.
Sam releases me from myself. He does things to me. I know it can’t last and I don’t care. I don’t want it to; I only want to be wild and lost for a while. Forget things.
II.
In his voice of stones, Sam tells me about Lebanon, and it is the most beautiful sounding word in the world.
Lebanon.
He tells me of snow-covered mountains and a sea so exquisite it bends you in two to look at it. He tells me about his mother. And the red wood of the stock of his rifle. Smooth and caressed by his thick fingers. He talks about the necessity of killing as if I could understand.
As if I could understand. And in between talk of pain and killing he tells me I am beautiful.
The taut sinew in my neck makes him swell. His finger outlines my top lip; making me quiver, he slips it into my mouth and says that I will be his for a little spell, a short moment in our history. Sam smells of things electrical and dangerous. I know that he is right. I will be his for a little while and the thought is enough to hold me in place, enough to distract me from myself.
III.
As I drive through the gaudy gates to his property, I can see all the lights are off. I am not concerned—I know by now that Sam likes to play with me. There is a moon high already so I can see his dark car in the open garage. One of the back doors of his car is open. I know he must be home for he called me this afternoon and said —Onze. Se soir. That was all. No greeting, no sweet things. Eleven. Tonight. He must be home. I park and get out.
As I walk to the front door there is a small movement near me and arms go around me, harness my own to my sides. I feel fear rise like bile; then I hear that gravel in my ear.
— Se taire, Coco, ne rien dire! Be quiet, darling, don’t say a word! Nothing will harm you if you are quiet. — Ssh! Sssh! Hold your tongue, ma belle salope.
He calls me his beautiful cunt and I like it. It fits. It makes no pretensions about what we are up to. What we are doing. He calls me his beautiful cunt as I feel the slide of silk over my eyes and all the moonlight is cut off. Tonight he has no need for making me talk.
Sam holds me with one arm as he tightens the blindfold. This is so Sam. Playing with me. Taking me halfway to paralysed. All the way to fear. Through my disorientation I feel his mouth on mine. Hungry and hard he kisses me, his tongue stopping my whimpers. Sam does this to me. Then he pushes me against the wall and I think he is going to fuck me. Instead I feel my arms being pulled roughly together and he binds my hands; right
over that sharp little bone Sam binds my hands. Tightly. Gently. Tightly. I whimper and again he whispers Ssh! Ssh! This is one of his games. He knows I need the fear.
Sam picks me up and under my belly I can feel his shoulder move, tension, release. I can’t see where he is taking me but suddenly he bends and, roughly, almost throws me down, and I hear a door slam shut. I feel the coolth of leather against my cheek. I can smell the leather of the seats of Sam’s BMW. I smell Africa’s dust in the leather. I smell my own fear. And exhilaration. It’s a smell I know of old. I smell my fear and my exultation, and I am as I have always been. Behind my bound eyes I see faces. I see faces and things and I hear Sam open his driver’s door and the sush as he slides into the seat. The door closes, a tight snap of sound and the engine roars and then I can’t see a thing anymore
Sam drives fast. His dark BMW slides through the night, his big hands caressing the steering wheel, the gears. He sings a French love song, his voice gravel and smoke as he drives fast. I can smell leather and dust and Sam’s own scent. It is spicy, foreign, exhilarating, overwhelming. Sam doesn’t say a word to me; he just sings his love songs. I don’t say a word. I just listen and I just wait.
My hands begin to ache but I lie there, blind. He drives and when he stops I find that rapid escalation of terror and anticipation in me almost too much to bear as I hear the engine cut and rumble down to die. Slowly, quietly, Sam opens his door. I hear it shut. I hear mine open. Sam’s big hands on my calf.
I feel my skin under his hands begin to shake. To ache. Sam’s hands in the dark slip my sandals from my feet, caress the naked arches of my feet, then slide up over my aching calf to my knees where he catches me and pulls me, still in the dark, towards him. Again he lifts me and again I whimper, fear and anticipation. Sam is like magic and I know it can’t last.
This time he doesn’t even tell me to be quiet. He lifts me and walks and again I feel the tension and release of his shoulder under my belly. I am slung over his shoulder like a bag of bones. Like a side of meat. I can smell we are no longer in the city. Only dust out here. Dust and silence and a faint scent of tar or of fuel. It’s almost indiscernible, but, blind, I smell it. Dust and leaves and I feel the cold of cement against my skin as he lays me, on my back, on a small surface.
The cold, hard edge of it presses into my neck. My hands are still tied. There is such silence, only broken by my ragged breathing as I try to orientate myself. I feel Sam’s hands on my thighs.
On my breasts. He undoes the buttons on my shirt and the rush of night onto my uncovered skin as he peels it back is exquisite. Involuntarily I moan, excited. This is Sam. And it can’t last.
He unclasps the buckle on my belt, undoes my jeans, and slowly he drags them down, over my thighs, my knees, my calves with their aching skin, my feet. My skin jumps as air hits it, and my wrists ache. Sam’s big hands push my legs open. He splays me on this cold cement surface, and I can see nothing. I try to anticipate his movements but I can’t. It’s so dark and he is so quiet. I have my breath caught between my teeth with my tongue as I feel his breath on the cotton of my knickers. Warm. Warm. Hot as he licks at me through the fabric. Oh god! His tongue slides and wets me, or I wet it. Through my knickers he sucks and kisses and licks at my cunt. Blindly I roll my head right back, as far as it will go, hurting myself on the edge. I try to keep still. Forever.
He is writing on me again, tracing curls and flourishes through cotton onto my exhilarated skin. It is one of the most incredible feelings I have ever had, blind and wet as I am under Sam’s hands and Sam’s tongue. I wish he would never stop, I wish he would spell my name out for me forever.
Sam takes the edge of my knickers in his teeth, I can feel the tug, the digging into my skin as the sides tauten and the snap and then his mouth is gone. In its place his solid, thick cock as he forces it into me, wet and anticipating. Sam doesn’t make a sound; he just fucks me. It’s as if he isn’t Sam, isn’t a man, is only that cock. Only that cock in me. He fucks me there on that cement table in the middle of god knows where. And I?
I give myself to it. That slamming, shunting fucking. I give myself to it. Lose myself. From the past, from the present. I am lost further with every thrust. His fingers on my nipples then his hot mouth as he sucks and nips and makes me want to weep. There is no gentleness in his fucking. Sam is like magic. He knows I need this loss.
He has no mercy.
And I ask for none as he shoves his cruel cock into me without pretence and without promise.
The skin on my back rubs raw on the cement, and I don’t care. There is a point on the small of my back that bleeds; I can feel the rawness, the blood, the wounded skin. Sam pushes my legs wider apart, I feel the joints at my hips protest and he drives into me, breathing a little harder now. It can’t last. It can’t last.
But I don’t care. I am aware of three things only: my skin in night air, my frantically beating heart, his unyielding cock stabbing me. He pushes in deep. He spears me on a shaft of pain that is pleasure, pleasure that is pain, and what feels like hours pass before he drags himself,
very slowly, thickly, out of me. In his place, a gaping hole into which the night rushes, cool and cooling. I can feel tears at the back of my throat.
Don’t stop, don’t stop, don’t stop, don’t.
I don’t say this. I can’t speak. I am pleading with him in silence.
In silence, too, Sam puts his hands under my hips, my shoulder. He turns me roughly, my chin bumps against the cement, my arms twist helplessly beneath my breasts, my belly. Sam’s hands drag me closer, they lift my one leg, tight around my thigh, lift it to rest my knee on the table. I lean heavily onto my chin, onto my breasts as he lifts my other leg; forcing me to kneel, vulnerable, open, balanced on my knees and my chin on that table. Sam holds my hips, he holds my hips and I feel his cock press at my cunt. With a push that sends me forward, tearing my chin on the cement, he plunges into me. Deep enough to force his way out through my heart, Sam fucks me till I am nothing but my pummelled cunt. Over and over and over that monstrous cock digs at me, over and over and over. His hands move to my shoulders, holding on to them he pulls my face off the cement, holds me suspended on his hands and his cock. I try to put my hands out under me, but they are so numb I cannot feel them. Sam holds me and he fucks me.
I cannot move. I cannot move. All movement, all momentum comes from the motion of Sam, merciless, relentless. His hand moves to my hair. I feel his fingers grip right against the skin on my head and he curls his hand into my hair, holds me there. He yanks my head back, stretching my throat, holds me and moves faster in me. I feel his free hand slide round my face, slipping his thumb into my mouth. He puts his thumb into my mouth; he makes a bit, a bridle of his hand. Pulls my head back till it feels as if my neck will snap. How long this goes on for, I cannot tell. I can’t tell time, pinned as I am on Sam’s cock, haltered as I am by his big hands. I can’t see and I can barely breathe. I can make no movement in free will. Sam spears me. He has me captive on the end of his rigid cock, helpless under his bridling thumb.
No free will. The inside of my knees hurt from rubbing and scraping on the cement of the table. My chin burns. The small of my back feels wet with blood, and my cunt is wet with my own frantic, frightened, frightening fucking. Sam rips into me so fast I cannot tell one push from a pull and I am completely helpless. Completely lost, trapped, held, hurting, coming, coming, coming. Suddenly, furious with it, I come. I wail. One by one my tendered cries are given to those naked heavens. I come and I wail his name, forgetting all about the Secret Police, forgetting to swallow my voice I finally wail his name, all his names. Including bastard and prick. And as he pushes home, impales me, I think I hear him whispering ma belle salope, jouir, ma belle, jouir, belle belle salope. I come and I wail in the back of my stretched, tight throat.
I come wildly, exhaustively, endlessly and as I do there is a rushing, roaring, hot sound going passed us. A rude, excited blast from a passing truck. My body is battered, my cunt weeping as Sam fucks me brutally on that cement table and, in the night, the truckers go by, honking their horns. Sam pins himself into my heart and, rushing, roaring, hot, pours himself into me.
Without a word he slips out of me, that dripping slip, and then there is nothing. I can’t even feel him near me. I am left, half kneeling, half fallen, my cunt spread to the night and the wind and the road. Slowly I lower myself onto a hip, roll onto my bleeding back. My arms rest on my chest as on a corpse. My legs, boneless, hang over the edge of the table, my toes in the dust. There is nothing but Africa and dust and night around me. Cement warm with my blood and semen hot down my thigh. On my back, my legs splayed, fucked until I weep and call his name at last. Fucked on a roadside picnic table. In the dark. With the truckers honking by. In the middle of nowhere. In the heart of Africa.
I have no idea how long I lie there, the semen cooling, growing cold on my skin. Blood beginning to scab under my back, my breasts bare and cold. Cold as marble under that African sky. My hands ache. My legs ache. My cunt aches. No Sam. No sound. Only Africa sighing. I swear I can hear her sighing out there in the night. Only it might be the sound of the world turning, instead. It might be the sound of the world turning.
My skin is cold and I start shivering. Beneath the silk over my eyes, there are faces, there are unwanted things. My hands are deadened, now. I won’t call to Sam, though. I won’t call to him. I won’t call him Sam or Saddam or any other name now. I won’t. I merely wait, cold and aching, thighs wide and utterly exhilarated or terrified, on that cement picnic table in the middle of anywhere.
At the edge of eternity, I hear the click of a lighter, smell the butane and the burn of ash.
I turn my head to the sound. In my mind I can see him, leaning against his dark BMW, one leg over the other, one big hand in a pocket of his expensive jeans, the other slowly lifting a cigarette to his beautiful Lebanese mouth. His eyes a strange green between their black lashes as he leans against his car and looks at me, laid out, spread-eagled, sacrificial. I won’t move. I am so cold now I can’t move, but I won’t make any sign of it. My back hurts and my breasts feel bruised. I wait. It can’t last.
I listen to the world turning.
Sam is like magic. He knows I need it. He knows I seek it out. He is happy to give it to me, in abundance, and I am happy, gleeful, to take it from him and give it back again. It can’t last and I don’t care. It will end. I am too dangerous with Sam. I am a loose cannon, savage and aching and furious. Sam sits in his car, smoking, no words for me. He will wait until the end of tomorrow for me to make my own way from the table, to the ground, to his car.
When I finally drop my aching body into the seat of Sam’s car, he flicks his cigarette out of the window and leans over to take my bloodless hands in his. Tenderly he unties them. His lips are so soft on that sharp bone on the outside of my purpled wrist.
He kisses me. Not as a lover. Not as my tormentor. As a father. Or a priest. I am naked, wounded, as we drive back to his vast house in silence.
He strokes and caresses that wheel with those hands that were moments, hours ago holding me down, staining me with bruises. Dark stains left behind on my lily-white skin by Sam’s hands. When we get to his house, he comes around to my side of the car and he picks me up. He holds me against his chest. Cradles me. He holds me through the rest of the night in his huge bed.
He holds me and he tells me my name in Arabic, says he wants to tattoo it across my breasts, between the bruises across the small of my wounded, bleeding back.
Copyright © 2007 by Bunduki. All rights reserved.
I am a 43-year-old South African who got married to an incredible man almost two years ago – we decided to get married on the spur of the moment and planned the wedding in ten days as he was leaving for the bush of Tanzanai in East Africa three days after the wedding date. He is a professional hunter and spends a lot of his time out in the wilds of Tanzania; his nickname, given to him by his tracker, is Chui (pronounced Chew-y), which is the Swahili for ‘Leopard.’ Bunduki is also Swahili and means ‘Rifle’ or ‘Shooting Stick.’ I joined him in Tanzania about five months later, with my two teenaged girls, and we have lived there ever since, right in the shadow of Mount Kilimajaro. I occupy myself with putting out a monthly lifestyle magazine and writing. I am working on a novel and write poetry in between (or paint! Life-sized nudes) I have submitted poetry to several sites on the ‘Net and have won a few small awards and have had a few mentions. This competition is the first of its kind that I have entered.
“This Simple Bone” is based on fact – although it has been twisted and turned a bit. The character Sam is an amalgamation of two men I knew – one of whom was, in fact, a dangerous Lebanese man. I wrote it initially as a chapter for my novel and it will stand as such should I ever be brave enough to try to have it published!
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