Will Travel

Rachel Kendall

His hand smells of hospital soap. A synthetic sterility to mask the stink of germs, diseases, bodily expulsions. I would prefer the scent of sweat or grime to this but I am not one to choose. That is half the pleasure, being forced to accept what one is given, under the limited circumstances. It is his left hand and my mouth is right about where his knuckles pale as he grips the metal rail in front of me. The larger percentage of him is immediately behind me. I can feel the shape and weight of a male body pressed against my buttocks and I know it is his. His corporeality is a series of imprints in the hollow of my back, my legs, my shoulders. The tiny hairs on his fingers that I want to graze with my lips. I squeeze my thighs together as he pushes against me, a slew of bodies cramming onto the carriage. I find myself stoppered. My breath held, my cheeks warm. I know, any moment… I am intent on my subtlety. If anyone were to notice me, were even to watch for a few seconds, they would think me too hot, a little faint from the heat, a little saddened maybe, lost in daydreams perhaps. I bite my lip, and then I breathe. Sharp. Sweet. Breaths. Through my nose. His fingers, so close to my face I can feel the heat coming off them and the sweat from his body now overpowering the sterility, now reaching towards me. There. Oh the sweetest feeling as I grip the rail myself and look at his hand, the sickle-moon scar on the middle finger on which I could just suck. Now. But that would be to end the thing, to finalise the moment, and there is nothing more disappointing than a climax.

I am well-practised in this. Not that I chose to unravel my days in this way. Things just happened, as they do, and one day I found the obtuse reasoning behind my need for travel. I have been on the London tube, round in loops on the Tokyo Yamanote Line and the inner and outer circle of the Glasgow subway. I have been transported from A to B on buses and trains around France. And yes, I have travelled by plane and by boat. For years I thought I had this instinct for flight. Or escape. Never feeling quite happy in one town, or even staying in one building for too long. I was fired from one job for not turning up because I was strolling around a city miles away. I have walked out on others because I could no longer stand the thought of staring at a monitor, standing behind a counter or sitting in a classroom surrounded by tiny people cross-legged on the floor. I am a teacher by profession. I have taught. And I have realised it just leaves me with a feeling of emptiness.

It was a few years after I moved to Paris that it occurred to me. That my movements were developing a pattern of their own. I started to use the metro more than any other form of transport, and then I was becoming more selective over which trains to use. Forget any that go above ground. My trips to St. Ouen soon stopped, though I had enjoyed the dense smells and textures of the flea market there. I needed to stay beneath the town. The darkest dark and the illuminated yellow, the smothering heat and shallow breaths. I took to travelling in circles around the city centre, charmed by this tubular city beneath the other, larger one above. I realised it wasn't my destination that was important. For a while I thought perhaps it was the stations themselves. The jostling, noisy crowds like cattle, the late-comers running down the escalators, the spiral staircase at Abesses with its painted walls, the chrome interior of Arts et Métiers, the stalls, the woman who brought her keyboard with her to Châtelet everyday and sang along out of tune, the rhythm of the drums, the shouts and yells, even the excitement of an occasional purse-snatch or suicide.

We slow to a stop, the sound of the doors, the push of the crowd to get off, the squeeze of the next body of people. He is still behind me, his hand still wrapped around the pole. He is tight next to me. And he has an erection. It presses into me. And then curves around me. It is not his penis after all. It is his hand. It is flat-palmed on my arse, against my skirt. I am as still as I can be. I am sweating. I feel it on the back of my neck and between my breasts. His hand moves slowly around me and then presses into the cleft between my buttocks, and rests there. My belly twinges and rocks. I am a series of electric currents that meet between my legs. He is in my most personal place. The satin fabric of my skirt, the cotton of my underwear the only things between my skin and his. His fingers begin to caress me. The tip of his finger is rubbing against my arsehole. I think I might pass out with wanting him. I feel such a desire to stand with my feet further apart, to invite him in. Yet even if I had the nerve I am totally trapped against the edge of a seat and the people around me. I want to lick his hand, but this isn't the way it should happen. After all these years, I am used to no sexual contact at all.

Timing is essential. A too-empty train will mean seats for all. No pushing or shoving, no physical contact, just a polite reserve of empty space. Weekends and between the hours of ten and four mid-week are no good. These are full of women hell-bent on shopping to death and tourists just hell-bent. Too absent minded to notice me, they are thinking only of their next excursion. Often, all too often, a homeless person will wander on. They will stand at the front of the carriage and wax philosophical about their situation, their hunger, their children, their inability to find work. Then they will traipse down the aisle with their hands held out. Sometimes, those unwilling or unable to speak will slip a piece of paper onto the knee of each passenger, their speech written instead of spoken, and then make their way back up the carriage, collecting the scraps and, if they are lucky, some loose change. The locals look at them with distaste or tell them to fuck off. Only the tourists are willing to hand out their money. Sometimes a 'musician' will get on to the train. Like me they spend all day in transit. Hopping from one train to another, knowing how to beat the system, how to avoid paying. They make a racket and are the worst for emptying any train carriage. They come on at certain times. I've learned how to avoid them.

Today I will embark at Madeleine. I had planned to go right on to Porte de la Chapelle, through Pigalle, but the daring of this fellow traveller has me feeling queasy. I am in a spin. I push my way through the crowds like a foetus squeezing its way through bloody folds of skin, onto the platform, into the station. I know all these lines, all these stations, like the creases in my own grubby and metallic-scented hand, which is sweating now as I find myself on the street. Usually I will get home, throw my bags onto the floor and pace for a moment, levelling myself, before lying face down on my bed and fingering the itch between my legs. All that built up energy finally released in one, maybe two orgasms that leave me shuddering and peaceful.

Paris is never quiet. There are always people on the streets, no matter what the time. Unlike other cities it breathes life into its inhabitants rather than the other way round, it colours them, changes them to suit itself, moulds them like a surrogate mother. And at any given moment it can neglect them. Crime is plentiful and homelessness rife, but I have never felt afraid. Just a little overwhelmed at the openness. Despite the way the buildings nudge each other and close in onto the streets, it always seems like a universe away from the insurrectional hustle of the metro.

The metro. The users. There is my pleasure, my forbidden fruit. Sometimes, I barely have to touch them. To be so close as to feel the hair on my arm touch the fabric on the sleeve of that man or woman sitting beside me can cause such a force of feeling it shocked me at first. A hand on a knee so close to my own can create a life in me I hadn't known existed before. Though the act itself is far from sexual, I am filled with desire to fill myself, to fuck, and knowing I am going through these motions in secret only drives me further to the brink.

It happens when I am merely footsteps away from my front door. I know, instinctively, that the hand on my mouth will have a sickle-moon scar on its middle finger. I know the other around my waist has already touched me, just minutes before. I try to make a noise but the muffled yelp dies away. I thrash about but he is stronger and he pulls me backwards, my feet almost leaving the floor. My heart thuds heavily like a train pounding the track. My legs tremble uncontrollably. A space between two buildings, a dark corridor like something from a dream. My only thought is of murder. Those hands, broad hands, thick fingers with wide flat nails. Those hands I feel I know already. They've become a murderer's tools. They will close around my throat, or beat me to a bloody pulp. They will cut off my oxygen or break my limbs, they will tether me and then peel back my layers. They are all over me, three or four or five hands, tugging at my clothes, pushing me against brick. Pressing, nudging, feeling, groping, imprinting, invading, penetrating. His mouth is wet, banging against mine. He is smudging me, spreading me thin, his knees pushing apart my legs, all the better to find a hole to bury himself in. His eyes are dark and lifeless. The knife blade flashes once in the glow of a street lamp before I feel the tip of it prick at my throat. He says nothing. He knows I won't scream. I am falling inside him. He lifts my skirt and bruises my thighs, feeling his way, seeing with his fingertips. And when they find me slick, when he pushes them inside and I catch my breath, his eyes flash momentarily. And then he punches me and I fall to the floor unconscious.

It is still dark when I wake. It's a heavy dark, comforting like a blanket, hiding me as I lie on cobblestone, sprawled in torn clothes, underwear missing and blood pooled beneath me. I hurt in every place. My jaw feels thick, my left eye is jammed shut and my hands feel like the fingernails have been ripped out, broken off, splintered. I don't dare look. I lift myself to vertical and shrink to child-size. I don't know the name of this street. I have been left here, somewhere new. But everywhere leads to the centre in paris. All lines are umbilical. Just as below ground you can always find your way back so, too, do the streets of the city always take you to the beginning. Past the debris of smashed glass and the burnt out shell of a car, I make my secret way home and nurse my wounds.

Transference, I think, as I look at myself reflected in the passengers' faces. Am I so different from the rest of them? I see a girl of 10 or 11, sitting like a whore. She's a pre-slut, a nymph. She breaks her gaze for no one, just sits with one arm stretched out along the back of the seat while her mother, opposite, yacks on her phone. Behind her, the man's face is lined with creases, sharp, painful, yet tender lines around his eyes and mouth. He chews the stub of an unlit cigar and his yellow fingers curl around a paperback. The suited man with the laptop, the old woman with crooked, arthritic hands, the straggle-haired girl with the drooling dog. When they catch my gaze, they look away quickly, unnerved, perhaps, by the purple bruise on my face. It's my mark, it's the touch of something, by someone, who stole time, and pain and consciousness. But who left me with so much in return. I look at everyone who gets on, everyone who pushes against me. I push back, I angle myself, bend my knee, roll my hips, slide my body into their spaces, the palms of their hands. I take and take and take and fill myself on them, drink their effluence. And still I wait, as the train takes me beyond the dark, in circles, will travel, if only to see him once more.


© Rachel Kendall 2008

image Rachel Kendall is editor of Sein und Werden and has been published in a number of magazines and anthologies including Nemonymous, Connections, Thieves Jargon, 3:AM, Straight from the Fridge, Cherry Bleeds, Darkness Rising 5 and others. She lives in Manchester, UK, with a man and a mannequin and a small collection of late animals. You can read an interview with her on Dogmatika here.