PART III: Stains
At some point she decided to abandon her project, asking me to come with her into Vicky’s bedroom, just the two of us. One thing I should mention about Vicky was that she was extremely finicky about stains and she had even told me once that she had been diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder. Funnily enough, my job at the time involved conducting research on OCD. One patient I had seen could not enter a room and turn on an appliance without having to repeatedly flick the switch on and off for an agonisingly long period of time. Another patient had been hospitalised for two years due to an intense fear of ingesting food. He was essentially afraid that if he swallowed something, the action could not then be undone; eventually, this patient had to be fed through a nasogastric tube, until later down the track when they just decided to stick a tube straight into his stomach and feed him that way.
All of this was to say that I felt genuine empathy for Vicky, and so, when she specified that under absolutely no circumstances whatsoever could I leave any marks at all on her bed, I said to her in the most firm and assured manner, ‘Look Vicky, I swear to God I won’t leave any marks.’
And, you know what, after that night I now know that sometimes in life, no matter how much you mean it at the time, it doesn’t matter.
After making our sacred pact, Vicky exited the room and left the two of us laying there on the bed. We started trying on Vicky’s clothes. I deliberately kept choosing clothes that would show off my body or somehow make me less clothed than I needed to be. As she changed from one outfit to another, I caught glimpses of her naked body. One of my internal voices seemed to scream something at me, like a defiant brat screams at a benevolent parent. I began to grow afraid that I would suddenly lose all control and just end up taking what I desired by force.
‘Look, just leave it alone, OK?’ a voice in my head said.
‘You’re beautiful, you know,’ a voice in the room said. I noticed it was my voice.
She didn’t reply.
At that moment, a certain image flashed through my mind. This image was of another guy I had known, who, from what I could remember, had been taken by a girl into her room during a party. She had wanted this guy (and I assume he’d wanted her), but somehow not only did they not end up doing anything, but he also ended up parading himself around in her clothes in front of her.
I suddenly didn’t want to play silly dress-ups anymore. I lay down on the bed again. This time she sat on the floor. Time passed slowly.
At some point, we both started thinking about leaving. I got up off the bed and as I went to put my hand on the window ledge to support myself, I accidently swiped at a full glass of Coca-Cola, which went flying through the air, all over the bed and down the side of the curtain.
‘Jesus-Christ-goddamn-it!’ I cried out.
She looked over at me. I stared back with an expression of total disbelief.
‘Alright, look, we seriously have to get out of here right now before Vicky finds out,’ I stated with a sense of immediate urgency.
I tried to make the stains a little less visible, although this didn’t seem to work. She picked up her jacket and we left the bedroom. The others were dancing in the living room. I gave Vicky a hug, shook the hands of the two others, and then she and I stepped into the night.