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Alexis Hall

Alexis Hall

Genrequeer Writer of Kissing Books

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You are here: Home / Blog / writing / here is a thing that i think you might like

here is a thing that i think you might like

December 27, 2016 by Alexis Hall 29 Comments

Having ducked out of the end of year blog post already I was vaguely thinking about putting together some light hearted blog content to see us into 2017—which I semi-started with yesterday’s Mystic Messenger post. I also thought maybe I could review Star Wars Rebellion or possibly do yet another post about Eldritch Horror because I’ve got totally obsessed with it lately.

Then George Michael died. Then Carrie Fisher died.

Fuck you, fuck you 2016. Seriously fuck right off.

At times like this, I weirdly missing working in an ice-cream shop. Because, no matter how bad things get, giving someone an ice-cream (or a sorbet if they’re lactose intolerant) always makes them feel better. I don’t sell ice-cream anymore, but I do write stories.

So I wrote a story. And I hope some people will like it.

It’s probably not as good as an ice-cream but what it is?

The story in question is called Wintergreen. It’s a short piece of gender-ambiguous asexual teakink. At some point I’ll try to tidy it up, get it properly edited, make it look pretty, and put it a more helpful format than blog post. But, for now, here we go:

Wintergreen

 To Eli, who will probably never make tea in the microwave again

Surely a pretty woman never looks prettier than when making tea.

— M.E. Braddon, Lady Audley’s Secret

            Frost has gathered in crisp fractals in the corners of the kitchen window panes. The cold scratches as listlessly as a half-slumbering cat. But I’m warm, always on the edge of too warm, in my cage of satin and bone.

I take the kettle from the stove—you would not countenance electric—and shake the last few drops of water into the sink. They break like glass.

My heels mark the journey to the fridge. Each step is its own clean, careful click. I know better than to hurry or to stumble. You will be listening.

Grace was the first thing you taught me. I have never known anything as merciless as your patience.

I pour water from the filter into the kettle. Then return the filter to the fridge, the kettle to the stove.

Always use fresh water. Never re-boil the same water twice. Tea is like you, my dear, you said, drawing the ribbon tight around my throat. It needs oxygen.

The balls of my feet are hot with agony. Once, I would have shuffled and wriggled, trying to ease the ache. But you hate fidgeting— a vulgar habit—and, besides, it never helps. Stillness is the companion of suffering. Peace the heart of pain.

Taking down one of your teapots, I pour a little hot water into it and swirl it gently. The porcelain wakes beneath my hands, its newfound heat a beating heart.

I didn’t do this once. I’m still not entirely sure why. But I think, perhaps, I wanted to be sure you’d notice.

Of course, you did.

And I’d never felt such happiness: a lark’s flight of exultation. I was yours from that moment. More completely than I’ve ever been anything.

We warm the pot¸ you told me later, as your cane traced bared flesh, because tea leaves are sensitive. They must be coaxed. Not shocked.

You welcome Darjeeling on winter afternoons, second flush particularly. That deep warm wine-wood taste you said was muscatel. If you cared for kissing, I imagine this how your mouth would taste. And, like all the teas you’ve taught me, I would know you blindfold.

I add a scattering of leaves to the pot. They look like nothing: twists of blackish-red and yellow-brown. These days, I can judge how much by eye alone but you used to make me measure it to the gram.

The water is close to boiling now. I can tell from the steam and the way the bubbles gather beneath the lid. And there’s a thermometer if I need it.

You value precision as much as grace. I feel it in every mark you give me. From the stripes of your cane to the edge of your blade. And the deep grooves your corsets leave across my skin.

Clumsiness, you believe, is inelegance of the body. As carelessness is inelegance of mind.

I take the kettle from the heat and pour the water smoothly over the leaves. You have shown me how to cherish each part of this process, this ritual as refined and exquisite as you, but this, in particular, is a moment I love: the quiet alchemy of brewing.

And you, of course, have wrought your own transformation in me.

Three minutes and thirty-five seconds is your preferred steeping period for second flush Darjeeling. I close my eyes and count in time with each constricted breath.

The clothes you choose are your hands on me. Beauty is the instrument of your bondage. And I have never felt more lovely than when my back aches and my feet burn and the sweat slips silent and unseen down silk-wrapped skin.

Never put the tea on the teapot while the tea is brewing.

It will trap heat¸ you told me, and prevent oxygen reaching the leaves. You used dark red candles that night, and the wax ran as riotously as fresh blood.

At three minutes, I take down another teapot. Unlike Wilde, you have nothing to fear from your blue china. Though, of course, it’s very beautiful: so fine, it’s almost transparent, with a pattern of languorously coiling leaves and flowers. Sometimes, when the shadows fall just right, I half-expect those heavy-petalled blooms to stir and shake their heads, and prowl away like lions through the dusk.

With a little left-over water from the kettle, I warm the pot. My hands are trembling a little and I force them to stillness.

You appreciate fear, savour it even, but only when it’s pure—a gift of your own creation. Not this grotesque, unravelled thing made of all my failures.

There was another teapot that I dropped one day.

You found me on the floor, sobbing among the shards. Nothing smashes quite like china, so musically and so utterly. Something fragile turned suddenly savage—all those pieces, broken butterflies with knife-edged wings. It was my own fault. All my fault.

I’d been distracted. I used to be a lot in those days, when you were just a client with particular tastes and I was—

Different.

When I believed I was invincible. Before you showed me what a hollow thing I had made of myself. That to be unhurt is not to be free.

I’d cut my palms open, trying to gather up the remains of your teapot. Nothing serious, but enough to leave rusty smears across the ivory silk of the dress you’d chosen. Impossible that you would have overlooked it, but you said nothing at all.

You just carefully cleared up the mess I’d made, wrapping the jagged pieces in newspaper. Beautiful, as ever, to watch you work: the care in your fingers, the economy of every gesture.

There is no part of you, from the deep lines that bracket your mouth to the grey in your hair, that is not lovely to me. But your hands … I worship your hands and what they do to me. Their steadiness on the handles of your knives. Their strength as they tighten the laces on my corsets. Even the familiarity with which they hold a cane.

Of course, there are things they don’t do. They’ll never touch my cock or press inside my body. But sex I can get anywhere.

You are you. And only with you can I feel…

Well. We haven’t named it. I think you would find the word too debased for its implications. And I don’t need it either.

For those who know how to recognise it, your generosity is endless.

You cleaned my cuts with Germolene, the discontinued stuff that came in a yellow tin, and was as pink as the skin beneath a freshly picked scar. Even though nobody had ever tended to my scrapes and bruises before, the medicinal minty smell of the ointment was almost overwhelmingly familiar. I recognised it after a moment or two. Wintergreen: the scent of a childhood I’d never had.

Once my hands were neatly wrapped in gauze, you took me in your arms and held me. You let me cry for a long time.

Sometimes I think they were all the tears I’d never shed.

And, despite being in all other matters exacting to the point of tyranny, you never punished me for the teapot.

It was a few weeks before I thought to Google it, but I tracked it down easily enough. You had bought it at auction at Christies. Irreplaceable. Not that I could have afforded to anyway.

I strain the tea into what is now your favourite teapot.

You never leave tea to stew once it has been brewed, you told me, as I shuddered, wracked by pain and shipwrecked on the shores of pleasure, knowing you had the power and the will to keep me like that for hours. And you did.

Darjeeling should never be drunk with milk or sugar—some people like a few drops of lemon, but you don’t—so it doesn’t take me long to prepare a tray: just the pot, two cups and matching saucers, the little silver teaspoons.

The first time I served you tea, I did it so badly, so half-heartedly that the memory makes me blush. Resenting the suffocation of satin, the press and dig of bone and steel, I thought the tea was the prelude rather than the point.

But, as ever, you were patient with me. Those plain-coloured eyes of yours were warm. You smiled.

Then you said, “The eighth century poet Lu Yu believed that tea is best drunk from a porcelain cup beside a lily pond and in the company of a desirable lady. I think we can dispense with the lily pond since I am fortune enough to have two of the others today.”

I didn’t believe you then.

But, now, it is time to join you.

There are those who like me to crawl. Some will watch me, some will tie me, others whip me. You just wait for me.

And yet there nothing more difficult than this: to glide upon aching feet, bound in silk and sweat and suffering, half-breathless, bearing a tray that must not shake or rattle or spill a single drop of liquid. Beautiful to your design.

It’s close enough to impossible that I often fail. I gasp, I slip, I wobble, I make the spoons shiver in their saucers or show some other flicker of discomfort.

But I know you enjoy this too. Or will later, as you minister your corrections with an irrevocability that is its own brand of tenderness.

There are, however, days when—through luck, or grace, or skill—I achieve perfection. A fleeting thing, I know, and most likely an illusory one because it is only within the world you build for me.

But it feels so very real.

And for a moment it’s all true: I am everything you see in me. There is no pain that matters, but I am neither broken nor invincible.

I am wintergreen.

Filed Under: writing Tagged With: my books, wintergreen

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Eli says

    December 27, 2016 at 7:55 pm

    This is much better than ice cream. <3 <3 <3

    Reply
    • Alexis Hall says

      December 27, 2016 at 8:02 pm

      I think it depends on the ice-cream 😉

      Reply
  2. Pam/Peejakers says

    December 27, 2016 at 8:01 pm

    Oh my god! That’s beautiful <3 <3 <3

    And definitely better than ice cream 🙂

    Reply
    • Alexis Hall says

      December 27, 2016 at 8:03 pm

      Thank you <3

      Reply
  3. EmmaT says

    December 27, 2016 at 8:14 pm

    Beautiful, as always.

    Reply
  4. Ellie says

    December 27, 2016 at 8:24 pm

    Thank you for giving us so much beauty <3

    Reply
  5. Lennan Adams says

    December 27, 2016 at 8:49 pm

    Thank you so much, Alexis. This is soooo much better than ice cream, just amazing. Gorgeous. The absolute best.
    You’ve been such a light in my life this year. Thanks for being so wonderful in every way.

    Reply
  6. Sylvia Reads says

    December 27, 2016 at 8:52 pm

    Very touching, thank you.

    Reply
  7. Sophie says

    December 27, 2016 at 9:05 pm

    2016 has been positively lethal. Let’s hope 2017 treats the world better.
    And this story is gorgeous and sad and hopeful and tormented and lovely. Thank you for writing it.

    If you want something else to distract yourself with–might I suggest the Hamilton: An American Musical soundtrack?

    Reply
  8. Sheryl Beesley says

    December 27, 2016 at 9:11 pm

    That was beautiful 🙂

    Reply
  9. you know exactly who this is says

    December 27, 2016 at 9:17 pm

    Thought about this yesterday while I was making tea. So thanks for that.

    Reply
  10. Maarja says

    December 27, 2016 at 9:45 pm

    Thank you for the lovely gift!
    Only 4 days left of 2016…

    Reply
  11. Deva says

    December 27, 2016 at 9:50 pm

    Thank you for writing and sharing this loveliness.
    I didn’t realize that everyone didn’t use the microwave to heat water for tea.

    Reply
  12. Robyn says

    December 27, 2016 at 10:31 pm

    Beautiful in an otherwise ugly and tragic year. Thank you for this. ❤

    Reply
  13. christine armstrong says

    December 27, 2016 at 10:48 pm

    Beautiful – I will take much more care when making tea your words are infinitely more satisfying then ice cream

    Reply
  14. Regina says

    December 28, 2016 at 12:27 am

    So beautiful Alexis. Thank you

    Reply
  15. Patricia Lambert says

    December 28, 2016 at 12:53 am

    Thank you for this.

    Reply
  16. Gwen says

    December 28, 2016 at 1:54 am

    My friend Lin: asexual teakink?
    Me: Yes, that’s what it says.
    L: What does that mean?
    Me: I’m not sure yet, but I bet it involves the making of tea in some kind of fabulous, meticulous way.
    Lin: I want to be his friend.
    Me: I know, me too. I am, virtually.
    Lin: But I want to be in real life. I want to go to his house and have him make me tea.
    Me: You hate hot beverages. I ask you at least three times every time when you come over if you want hot tea, and you have never once in 16 years said yes.
    Lin: I know.
    Me: Chopped liver. I’m chopped liver.
    Lin: Yes.
    There are some very hard truths in this world, and I’m very sorry to have to tell you this one. I won’t have tea with you, but I want to have tea with Alexis.
    Me: Chopped liver.
    Lin: Yes.

    Reply
  17. Rachel G. says

    December 28, 2016 at 1:59 am

    Sitting here with a loving cat on my lap, and a cup of soothing tea at my side, I savor the poetic beauty of your words. I am re-reading snippets, repeating phrases, marveling at your skill.

    Unable to write with your elegance or grace, I can only thank you for sharing your talent. Your writing gift brings joy, love, and light into this world. Please know that your gift is appreciated and admired. Thank you.

    Reply
    • Pam/Peejakers says

      January 5, 2017 at 3:18 pm

      Oh, I love this Rachel: “Your writing gift brings joy, love, and light into this world. Please know that your gift is appreciated and admired.”

      How true, and how beautifully, perfectly said!<3 *wishes I'd said that*

      Reply
      • Rachel says

        January 6, 2017 at 5:31 pm

        Pam,
        You are the sweetest!! Such a joy to share some mutual love/gushing over Alexis Hall 😉 !! XOXO

        Reply
        • Pam/Peejakers says

          January 8, 2017 at 2:19 am

          Aww, thanks!And yes! *hugs*

          Reply
  18. Araminta says

    December 28, 2016 at 2:21 am

    This is so intriguing! (and I remember Germolene in the yellow tin – the smell will always remind me of scraped knees and fabric plasters) <3

    Reply
  19. Paige says

    December 28, 2016 at 3:57 am

    Thank you Alexis, I did like it – very much! Shortly I’m going to read it again, while eating ice cream!

    Reply
  20. B. says

    December 28, 2016 at 5:36 am

    As lovely in its entirety as the marks must be. Thank you, thank you, Alexis.

    Reply
  21. Lotta says

    December 28, 2016 at 8:03 am

    Thank you <3

    As horrid as this year has been, at least we still have ice cream and your gorgeous writing. And now my tea making and drinking habits feel very inadequate. It's good I don't have any darjeeling at home, as I would invariably drink it with milk. This is why I don't have green tea anymore. Builders, all the way.

    Reply
  22. susana says

    December 28, 2016 at 8:19 am

    I think I shall look at my tea time with different eyes from now on…

    Reply
  23. Ariana says

    December 28, 2016 at 6:41 pm

    This made me tingle. And wonder. And think. And go “holy f***”
    Definitely better than ice cream, which does the first (oh yes!), but has not achieved no 2, 3 and 4 yet!
    Words can be so blooming amazing. And expressions and imagery like
    “merciless patience”, “broken butterflies with knife-edged wings” or “an irrevocability that is its own brand of tenderness” just make my heart go faster. (I’m funny that way, *g*)
    Brilliant. Can’t imagine it any better than it is already!

    Reply
  24. Rose L. says

    January 4, 2017 at 4:15 am

    This gets so many of my kinks it’s not even funny. But I won’t clog your comment section with my many paeans to the proper making of tea, and the wonders of certain teapots 🙂

    (When I first heard that people make tea in the microwave, I thought it was a joke).

    Reply

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