Razor

She came walking into my room, her steps long and slow. I hadn't really thought about it before, but she moved in a decisive, strong, capable way. There were no uncertainties, she seemed to know exactly where she was going and what she was doing, every step of the way. I couldn't help taking a second and a third look at her, because I realized she had somehow managed to slip under my radar every single time we'd met before. She had hidden a very interesting, and yes still arguably a very scary, personality behind an extremely bland surface.

She wore a pair of jeans and a wide black t-shirt with long sleeves. She was dressed just as she always was, except for the fact that her t-shirt didn't have a text printed on it. Her clothes were all overly large, preventing any deeper knowledge about her body shape. She seemed pretty fit, and I wondered if her choice of clothes were a significant sign of something, or if she just dressed for comfort.

I continued looking at her as she settled down in her chair. Her face was unusually pale, she had dark circles around her eyes and she didn't wear her hair up as she usually did. She seemed tired and tense, her hands in her pockets, her shoulders pushed high. She didn't look up at me as she usually did, but kept her eyes lowered, and I could almost feel the way she was building protective walls, distancing herself from me.

"Good afternoon Mary" I said, keeping my voice low and calm.

I felt my pulse speed up as I waited for her response. I saw her take a deep breath, pull her hands out of her pockets, close her eyes shortly before she turned her eyes to meet mine. Her eyes were still the same deep forest green color as always, but the absence of glittering laughter in them made cold shivers run down my back.

"Good afternoon William" she answered softly, the corners of her mouth turning up slightly, not quite a smile, but almost.

I didn't really know where to start, or how to get her to start talking, it was yet another strange feeling, I was seldom this lost for words. I was still trying to find a good starting point when I heard her laugh softly.

"Uncomfortable silences isn't really my thing," she said with a small smile on her face "nervous silences especially, they trigger all sorts of physical reactions inside of me, most of them not very good ones. I suppose there's a chance we'll find the reasons behind that as well as few other, shall we call them 'quirks', if we dig deep enough..."

I looked at her and nodded, deciding against using any of the few sentences of encouragement that were sitting on the tip of my tongue. I had a feeling that she'd see through all of my usual wordings, as being just that, standard phrases for standard situations. A short moment of silence had her speaking again, to my great relief.

"I wanted to find a way, my own way, to tell you my story. And a few days ago I thought of a way that seemed... fitting, considering the way my mind works and what inspires me more than anything..." she started, before continuing "music in almost any shape or form."

I had realized that a few of the texts she used to wear on her t-shirts were lyrics from famous and not so very famous musicians and I had written every single one of them down in my notebook, thinking that they might mean something special to her, but I hadn't been able to figure out in what way they were significant, and they hadn't really been able to tell me anything about her. Perhaps I needed to go through my notes once more...? My thoughts were interrupted by her continued words.

"And except for some of the worst mass produced pop music, I would say that the musicians of today are what the great philosophers of the past was for the then so called modern world, but even more potent, the beats and sound of the music reaching our souls and the lyrics triggering our minds, our thoughts..."

I nodded, there was a truth to what she was saying. There was a really good reason why music was such a large part of almost every religion, why singing to your children was so important and why there was an ever growing number of therapists using drums or music to help people. Music was the great connector, a natural bridge between cultures and people, timeless, ageless and in its purest form both artless and equal.

"And I've decided to tell you my story helped by those present day philosophers, to borrow their words and their music, hopefully making it possible for me to tell you things I decided long ago to never tell a living soul..." she added softly "In four weeks I will give you eight songs, and some words in between. Okay?"

I nodded and clasped my hands tightly, to prevent them from reaching for a pen and paper. I had decided to stop writing around her, mostly because the whole idea of her seeing my thoughts was still scaring me, sending me into a state of mild anxiousness, probably very like what she experienced in moments of nervous silence. I looked up at her expectantly and waited for her to start singing or talking or... anything.

"I suppose I should start from the beginning, being born, growing up, living life and so on?" she said, her voice calm but a bit distant "And even if 'the childhood years' wasn't one of the first things that therapists try to make people talk about on a regular basis, I very much like the idea of doing things in a chronological order, so I will start where it all began, and try to tell you as much as I can about my small family and the years we spent together."

I nodded once more, realizing that she'd made a silent head-nodder out of me; "the tongue-tied therapist of the year" was perhaps the next price to go on my imaginary wall of achievements. I took a deep breath and nodded once more, deciding to go with the flow, to follow her where she needed to go, and to stop beating myself up because I couldn't find the right things to say at the right time. She seemed uniquely capable of moving forward without my help and I decided to only step in if she grew silent, and only if my mind could provide slightly better, non-standardized responses to what she was saying.

"I grew up in this city, in a pretty regular middle-class family. My father was a high-achieving workaholic and my mother was a religious stay-at-home-mom, who cared as much about people's opinions and doing good deeds as she did for me and my big brother, Mike. I'm still not sure if she tried to teach us to be good people, or if we were supposed to learn how to make people believe we were good people, but nevertheless, our lives were surrounded by a lot of mustn't do this, absolutely cannot do that and speeches about burning in hell for the small sins that are a quite natural part of growing up and exploring life."

I kept my head still, but in my mind I could feel myself nodding once more. I remembered my father preaching many similar things, trying to push his religious beliefs on me and my sister, and the way I had just silently accepted everything he said whereas my sister had fought hard to be allowed to think for herself. But those were bad memories, memories that had no place right there and right then.

"My father was, or at least very nearly was, a closet drunkard, always needing just a few shots of whiskey to reach a state of calm when he came home from work late in the evenings. It's still strikes me as one of those strange, illogical things, my mother preaching about the sins of drinking, smoking, fornicating, and my father hitting the bottle just as soon as he got home, my mother saying nothing to him about his 'inappropriate behavior'. Sometimes I wonder how hard she had to bite her tongue on those days when my father had just a few glasses more than he usually did, when she had to help him as he took decidedly staggering, swaying steps upstairs a few hours later."

She took a sip from the glass of water I had placed on the table beside her, then she looked up at me and gave me a grateful smile and a nod. She turned her eyes away from me and looked at the books in the bookshelf behind me, her eyes probably seeing nothing, as she seemed completely focused on her story, the information she wanted to give me and the thoughts she wanted to process and maybe communicate to me as well.

"So there I was, in a family with a religious mother and a sometimes-drunk, most-of-the-time-absent father, and my all too perfect brother, the shining light in our family. I suppose it isn't very unusual, still, that men are considered better and worth more than women, but I hope it isn't as bad in most families as it was in mine. My mother was just a necessary evil, almost more like an unpaid servant than someone of true value, someone to be counted on, someone to love. And me, a small, skinny child with my strange hair- and eye-color, was worth even less. It took me years to figure out that it was all because of our gender, the we -- as born into the weaker sex -- were not equal in the eyes of my father. I suppose my mother might have carried around a lot of repressed anger, and that the reason why she was so hard on me was to be able to release some of that pressure. As I grew up, she began focusing almost all of her energy on trying to teach me how to be a righteous person, or as I said, at least an image of respectability. Needless to say, I tried very hard to avoid my mother's attention, but that was difficult, to say the least."

She coughed once and took another sip of the water before she continued.

"When I became a woman, I was pretty young, 11 years old. And I thought I was dying, because I didn't know what was happening, I didn't know it was just another natural step towards womanhood, like the breasts I was told to hide and so on. When I went to my mother, crying, telling her I thought I was sick, because I was bleeding she just pulled me into the bathroom, showed me where she kept 'the things' and left me to figure out the rest on my own. And of course I figured things out, but with every shushed word when I needed answers to my questions, I was taught that 'female matters' was something to be ashamed of..."

She paused and looked at me, and she seemed to hesitate shortly before she continued.

"... you've got two daughters. Well, I know because I'm good at finding things out, you shouldn't be surprised. They're eleven years old, aren't they? Tell them about their bodies, that it's all natural, that they don't have to be afraid, that they're not sinful, please!"

I sat in silence, annoyed that she had taken yet another step inside my safety boundaries, the fierce protectiveness I felt every time something threatened my personal life and my daughters sending me through a small cloud of anger, until what she was trying to tell me settled somewhere close to my heart. Of course I would talk to my daughters, I'd be a really unnatural father if I didn't. As unnatural a father as her mother had evidently been. My anger ran out of steam as I thought about her struggle, going from child to a young woman without the support and wisdom of a caring parent.

"A year or two later I found out, on my own, the pleasures that could be found in caressing and touching my own body. I think it's safe to say that almost everyone does find out, sooner or later. I hid in my room or locked myself up in the bathroom and gave myself climax after climax, until I was one day confronted by my mother. She had found underwear that was showing distinct signs of wear and tear in one specific spot. And she wasn't stupid, she told me, she knew what I'd been doing. Pleasuring yourself was one of the biggest sins, I was unclean, I was unworthy..."

She stopped speaking, her words choking in the end of her last sentence. I looked at her and saw her sitting like a tight bundle of nerves on the chair, her hair hiding her facial features, but I could still tell that she was fighting to keep her distance, to keep her calm. She kept swallowing over and over, and it felt like her silent sorrow sucked the light and warmth out of the room. I kept still, almost not daring to breathe as she fought her silent fight against the feelings I knew she'd have to let out at some point, at the same time knowing I wasn't going to suggest that she process them right now. There would be plenty of time after the four weeks she had forced me to agree on, to go through what she'd told me and to help her come to terms with her memories, her feelings and her strong reactions.

After a long moment of silence, she kept talking, her voice a bit rougher but surprisingly calm.

"Of course, being told to never ever touch myself ever again didn't stop me from enjoying my body, very silently and secretly. But with every orgasm I knew I was just piling up offence after offence against god, living a life in sin..."

And then, surprise of surprises, she started singing.

"Mother, forgive me, I tried not to do it Turned over a new leaf, then tore right through it Whatever you taught me, I didn't believe it Mother, you fought me, 'cause I didn't care And I still don't understand

So I look back upon my life Forever with a sense of shame I've always been the one to blame For everything I long to do No matter when or where or who Has one thing in common, too

It's a, it's a, it's a, it's a sin It's a sin..."

I sat absolutely stunned after her slow and soft but strong interpretation of the old Pet Shop Boys song. Her voice rang absolutely clear, and every tone made something vibrate inside of me. Her words about young, innocent pleasure and sinful behavior had already shaken something loose inside of me, that the heavy sadness of her song thoroughly dislodged.

She wasn't looking at me, but down at her own hands, as if she didn't want to see my reactions, for once not studying, not analyzing, just sitting there holding herself tightly, her shoulders tense, her long strawberry blonde hair still partly covering her face. Those few seconds of complete stillness I saw everything clearly, I saw the sad child in the strong woman, I saw her fears and her doubt. Then I heard her sigh and saw her straighten out and turn her face my way. Her green eyes met mine and it felt as if she saw straight into my mind, straight into my heart when she started speaking softly.

"Don't feel sorry for me, what's in the past is in the past. And I figure that someone who once thought about becoming a priest, who very nearly became one, should have thought a whole lot about the concept of sinful behavior. And in the end it turned out that my mother was at least partly right about my sinful old self..."

She sat back, silent for a few seconds, before she continued, her voice a bit stronger.

"... but when you talk to your daughters, if you haven't already, tell them that it's not sinful to love your own body, tell them that it's something beautiful and wonderful, tell them it's ok, will you? Don't make them think they're devils..."

She took a deep breath and looked down at her hands once more after looking at me and seeing my reaction to her words about my daughters. After those first few initial shocks when she let me know just how much she knew about me, I wasn't really upset that she knew I had kids or that she wanted to tell me to treat them right. The worried and upset feeling in my stomach was because she made me realize I had to talk to my girl's about things like this, with no female support, no loving wife to turn to... in just a few sentences she had made me feel absolutely and totally inadequate. I did not feel up to the task of telling my daughters about the natural beauty of the female body and the pleasures that could be had. There had to be a way to not have to do that, books that could be bought, female friends that could be bribed, just something...

Her low, raspy laughter made me look up at a surprisingly gentle smile. I was beginning to doubt her inability to read me without a pen and paper. Her bright eyes seemed to see far too much, even without the help of my nervous hands. Her smile disappeared and she bit her lower lip, another surprising sign of hesitation on a woman where brutal honesty seemed like the most natural way of communicating.

"Why do you tell people that your wife is dead?" she asked in an almost-whisper, scanning my face as she let that heavy shoe drop.

I didn't say anything, my surprise at her question only slightly bigger than my anger. No one knew that my wife was alive, and that was the way I wanted it. I hadn't ever said "my wife is dead" to anyone, and even though I knew that my silent acknowledgement of what people believed was almost as bad as lying, trying to explain the real reason behind my single-parent status would just be too complicated, too upsetting, too difficult.

"I'm sorry," she said "sometimes I really don't know when to shut up, especially when something puzzles me, when something doesn't follow the pattern, when the information pieces that I collect don't match what I see and sense about a person. I had the distinct feeling that you pride yourself at being truthful, but I do thoroughly support those tiny white lies, you really need them sometimes, to protect the ones you love."

Her words calmed me quicker than I'd thought possible, and I started thinking that too many tiny white lies would make for an awfully large sea of untruthfulness. I only had one big thing I tried to keep hidden, so at least my slope wasn't a slippery as most other people's. My path to righteousness was perhaps not completely straight, but at least I hadn't fallen off the stairway completely.

"I promised you two songs, so I better tell you the rest of it..." she continued after another silent moment.

"As I said, my father only cared for my brother. There was a never spoken, but very much shown, disdain for women, and the only purpose of a woman was to be at the beck and call of the man. I just didn't get it, because I somehow grew up believing in every person's equal value and equal rights. I'm still surprised that I kept that naivety going all those years. Instead of accepting the beliefs of the rest of my family, I tried my very best to get my father's attention, to show him that I was as good as, in some ways even better, than my brother. I wanted, no, I needed my father's attention and appreciation. I worked hard in school, excelled at almost everything, from an early age. I taught myself to read just before my fifth birthday. Math, science, languages, I sucked up everything, every day I learnt something new was - and still is - a good day. I was good at sports, arts, music, everything..."

She stopped talking and laughed softly whilst shaking her head.

"Well I was good at everything except writing stories, I just wasn't good at describing things as poetic and vividly vibrant as you're supposed to be able to, I just don't think those sorts of things are all that interesting. And also, I kept forgetting and misplacing words, not often enough for any of my teacher's to realize that I have a mild form of dyslexia, but often enough to be classed as a 'she just won't try hard enough'-person. And yeah, I still can't make sense of the lose-or-loose-words, for some reason which is which just won't stick in my mind... I suppose it's the same reason as the rest of it though, if it's not interesting enough, it just doesn't matter to me. Somehow that always annoys people with more than a moderate amount of 'for the love of god, just get it right' sentiments in them. Needless to say, I'm never going to be a very famous writer, I will just stick with being a very unfamous reader."

She coughed once more and fell silent for a few seconds.

"But being good at everything just wasn't good enough. I was still just a girl. And trying to show one parent that I existed, that I counted made the other parent react, because 'excelling' and 'seeking attention' was also a sin..."

She looked at me again, and I held my breath and dreaded what was to come.