And as she tells me about the painting, I start to think, all this time, Marcus’s sexuality has been a mystery to me but I never ever questioned his orientation, never even considered.
‘Is Marcus gay, or bi?’ I blurt out.
‘Oh, no,’ Anna says, ‘I don’t think so. He’s just really, really strange.’
‘It sure sounds like it,’ I reply. A home with no furniture, no food, but books and papers and erotic art. It sounds as if Marcus finds comfort in austerity. As if his brain is so busy that he doesn’t have time to take care of his body. And that’s fine with me. Because I would want to be fucked by his brain.
Anna says that whenever they meet, which is twice a month, Marcus has everything planned, every detail, and it has to be carried out to the letter, like a ritual. And the same thing occurs between them on every single occasion. She is told to arrive at a specified time.
‘I can’t be late,’ she says. ‘Not one minute, not even thirty seconds. I’m always right on time for his private sessions. And I have my own key to the apartment, so I let myself in.’
Now I understand why she’s always late to Marcus’ class.
Just to fuck with him.
‘Marcus is already in place when I arrive,’ she continues. ‘In the back room. In the closet. With the door closed. And he’s so silent, so still, that you wouldn’t even know he’s there, that there’s anybody else in the room. The curtains are closed and the lights are off. It’s dark, but still just light enough to see.’
She says the closet has two holes in one of the doors, like two knots of wood fell out of it. One small. One larger. One at head height, the other lower down.
‘Marcus swears it was like that when he bought it,’ says Anna. ‘But I don’t believe him.’
When Anna arrives, she’s meant to be wearing the uniform that Marcus has told her to wear. The same clothes every time.
How does he make you dress, I say.
‘Guess,’ she says.
This is a game we like to play, Anna and I.
‘Like a nurse?’ I say.
‘Nope,’ she says.
‘Like a schoolgirl?’
‘Uh-uh.’ She shakes her head.
‘A whore?’
‘Not even close,’ she says.
‘OK, you have to tell me.’
‘Like his mother.’ She giggles.
I just look at her in surprise, and Anna can’t wait to reveal more and tells me that she has to wear a loose flowery sack dress, flat-heeled dress shoes, flesh stockings and really, really large underwear that looks and feels like a chastity belt made of polyester. She dresses like Marcus’ mother, in clothes that used to belong to her. Clothes that Marcus’ mom owned since the fifties, wore up until her death, but still look perfect and new, as if they’d come off the rack the day before.
‘Is this getting freaky enough for you? Too much?’ she asks, smiling.
‘Getting there… ’ I say. Because now Marcus is sounding less like Jason Bourne, which is a good thing. He’s sounding less the way I imagine Jason Bourne would fuck. With the lights off and his socks on. In the missionary position. Like a real man.
And he’s sounding more like Norman Bates, which is even better, because I’ve had a huge, huge crush on Anthony Perkins since the very first time I saw Psycho and fell head-over-heels in love with his clean-cut, buttoned-up preppy look. It seems Marcus is completely in thrall to his mommy fixation, just like Norman Bates or Charles Foster Kane.
‘So let’s recap,’ I say to Anna. ‘You’re in the room, dressed like a prim fifties housewife from an episode of The Twilight Zone, and Marcus is in the closet with the doors closed and his eye pressed to one of the holes, watching you.’
‘Right,’ she says. ‘And I do exactly what he’s asked me to do. I turn my back to him and I start to undress, taking off each item of clothing in the order and way that he’s asked me to.’
‘Exactly the same way every time?’ I ask.
‘It has to be,’ says Anna, ‘Choreographed to the second. I feel like an air stewardess demonstrating safety procedures. And I’ve done it so many times now that I’ve made it my own, adding my own little flourishes, things I think he’d like.’
Anna’s not shy with the details and as she talks I can see it all happening in my head.
First she takes off the sack dress, which she unbuttons at the back, slips off her shoulders, one by one, and lets fall to the floor, stepping out of it, and looking over her shoulder and down at her feet as she does so to make sure the dress doesn’t catch on the shoes. Then she unhooks the bra, hiking it up her chest so her breasts fall out to their natural position, bouncing a little as they do. And she hunches her shoulders forward so the straps drop off them.