Brian Stableford - Young Blood

Brian Stapleford Young Blood

Copyright1992 by Brian Stableford

PrimaryPhase:
Impuissance

I let it happen.I wanted it to happen.

I could say thatI was under some kind of magic spell, or that I was mesmerised, thatI couldn't help myself, but Dr Gray would call that fudging.According to Dr Grayand he's rightwords like magicspell and mesmerised aren't proper explanationsat all; they're just empty concepts, lame excuses for not looking anyfurther for real explanations.

I let ithappen, even though I was afraid. I wanted it to happen. I wantedhim, more than anything on Earth ... I mean, more thananything else on Earth.

I wanted him,and Maldureve took me. He drew me a little way into his own world,which overlaps with ours but isn't really ours. He came out of theshadows and acquired flesh. He needed blood, and the blood he wantedmost was mine, and I gave it to him. Knowing that it was impossible,knowing that he was impossible, I gave him my blood to drink.I can't really explain it. I have no excuse, if an excuse is what Ineed. I wanted it to happen, desperately. I needed it to happen. Whyan ordinary person like me should need something like that, I don'tknow, but I did.

Maybe it wouldhave been more appropriate, in a way, if we had done it out of doors,while dark shadows lay upon the world like a great blanket ofmystery. Perhaps I should have laid myself down in that softleaf-litter which carpeted the ground beneath the gnarled trees inthe Marquis of Membury's Garden: the exotic, foreign trees whichdidn't really belong there. Perhaps we should have made love in theheart of the moon-shadow cast by one of the gabled attics of WombwellHouse.

If he'd beenhungrier, more desperate, I suppose it might have been like that. ButMaldureve was very patienteven more patient than Gil. He was agentleman, very scrupulous about touching, pressuring. I suppose hehad to be, when he was only shadow and hadn't yet found substance,but even when he'd put on flesh, he didn't pressure me. He knew thatI would give him what he wantedwhat he neededin my owntime, and he wanted to wait, for my sake. He lived with his hungeruntil I was ready to appease it.

We did it, inthe end, in a very ordinary place, which seemed to me to be a millionmiles away from the shadowy world from which he'd come, but wasn't.The borderlands are everywhere. By that time, he could tolerate dulldaylight. Even the glare of the electric lights wouldn't have hurt ordissolved him, but we steered clear of those anyhow.

It was in myroom in Brennan Hall, which wasn't even in the old part of thecampus, although it was on the edge opposite to the science blocks.We used the same bed on which I'd sweated and wriggled and shuffledand shoved with Gil withoutas yetgoing all the way. Thelight was off, but the curtains were half-open. There was a yellowsodium light just outside, and although the bulb was below the levelof the sill, and had a hood on it to reflect its light downwards, itstill leaked a muted fiery glow into the room. So we weren't exactlydoing it in the dark; once my eyes had adjusted to the dimness, Icould see the contours of his face.

I went into it,you see, with my eyes open. I knew exactly what I was doing. I wasn'thypnotised.

It was verydifferent from what I had expected sex to be like, and from what sexeventually turned out to be like. It seems slightly absurd to saythat, given that it wasn't sex at all, and there was no reason tothink that it should be in any way similarbut it wassimilar, in some ways. It wasn't sex, but it felt sexy. In fact,although Dr Gray might consider it an incoherent thing to say, itfelt much sexier than sex. Perhaps what I really mean is thatMaldureve made me feel all the things that sex is supposed to makeyou feel, whereas being screwed by Gil, when I finally let him do it,didn't. Being screwed by Gil, even though we were civilised andgentle about it, felt much more like what I'd imagined Sharon musthave felt, being screwed up against the back garden wall by somescrawny sixteen-year-old goth. She'd told me that it wasn't so bad,but she'd also confessed that she was high on ecstasy, so I knew thatshe probably hadn't a clue what it really had been like.

I'd never takenecstasy or anything else. I valued my clarity of mind too much.

There was noreal need for us to be naked, but we were. We both wanted to be. Itmust have been like sex for Maldureve too, although he didn't getexcited in any recognizable way. He didn't have an erection. Hedidn't do anything with that at allbut he caressed mewith his silky hands, lightly, affectionately. He touched my breasts,my shoulders, my back, my thighs, but he didn't touch me between mylegs. It wasn't actual sex, but it was unbelievably sensuous.

His body was assilky as his hands: smooth, flawless, beautifully shaped. It wasn'tsoft, but its hardness wasn't coarse, like Gil's. Maldureve's bodywas like a work of art: something patiently carved out of somestrange, exotic substance; like wood, but not wood; like marble, butnot marble. He was massive, but he didn't seem oppressive. Somehow,he supported most of his own weight, the way Gil tried to butcouldn't ever quite sustain, even when we were only messing about. Ididn't feel uncomfortable under Maldurevepinned down, yes;imprisoned, yes; but not trapped. It was like being tied up with ropeso gentle and so velvety that the restraint was sheer delight.

I kissed him alot, mostly around the neck and the shoulders. I think he liked beingkissed on the neck best of all. I think that meant more tohim. He kissed me, too. Eyes, mouth, neck, breastsnothinglower down. His kisses were very gentle, but not weak. He didn't tryto force his tongue into my mouth, but there was nothing damp andfeeble about his kissing. They were strong kisses, insistent in theirway.

I got very hot,I burned ... long before he actually did anything ... anythingthat could be thought of as a climax, as it ... I was swimmingin supernatural heat, in fervour, in tides of pleasure, the way Inever had done in damp and distant dreams, or when I brought myselfoff. Long before we got to the actual point of it all, I felt that Iwas in another world, and that it was a better world, where it feltbetter simply to be ... the kind of world we ought to be inall the time.

I don't mean toimply that I wasn't frightened. I was. But the feareven thethought of my blood being letwas just part of it. I thought itwould hurt more than it actually did, but the thought of being hurtwas just part of it, another dimension of excitement. The fear waspart of the thrill, as it always had been with Maldureve. That wasMaldureve's magic, if he had any magic at all: the ability totransmute fear into something welcome, something sexy.

I had never feltlike that before, but once I'd had a taste of it, I didn't ever wantto go back. I felt that I was only just waking up from a lifelongsleep.

When you thinkabout it, there's no real reason why ordinary, everyday consciousnessshould be as dull, as empty, as desolate, as near to beingnothingness as it is. We might be permanently high on our ownendorphins, if only natural selection had made a better job ofshaping our minds; but we're not, and that's why we have to gosearching for sensation, even in the most absurd places: in pills andpowders, mushrooms and weeds; in the further reaches of theimagination; in relationships; in sex.

Maybe sex doesdeliver, for some. Maybe Jackie Collins really can scale thoseheights of ecstasy she writes about. Maybe Barbara Cartland reallycan get blown away simply by being in love. Maybe I could havefollowed that route, if only I had found the right man (not Gil), butI don't think so. I certainly don't think that Maldureve was simplythe right man: my Lord Byron, my Rhett Butler. He got me to where Iwanted to be not because he was handsome, charming or overpowering,or because I was in love with him, and certainly not byvirtue of the awesome power of his utterly uninterested phallus. Iwas hot and high long before he did