Sometimes, Wren thought her name was the only interesting thing about her— and it was nothing to do with her. Her given name was Lauren, and she’d been Lauren all her life, until she’d met Jack, in her first year at University. She’d been shy, and so was he, but they’d noticed each other and, slowly, they’d become an item. She didn’t know if she loved him, but he’d been kind, and they’d cautiously figured out that they could have decent sex together, which was a relief for both of them.
Jack had christened her Wren, and she loved that. Sometimes she thought that was what she liked best about him, that he had done that for her— although to him it seemed no more than a joke.
But Wren she was, from that moment on.
They were not really all that compatible, but he was happy to have a girlfriend, and she to have a boyfriend, and neither of them was upset by the things the other liked, so he would go to parties with her and dance, even though he didn’t like pop music, and she was fine with him playing prog rock loud at home (they had moved in together once she was in second year— his parents were well off, and he had a nice apartment).
He was two years older than her, but he stayed on to do a Masters, so when it was time for her to do a postgrad teaching qualification, he had been head-hunted by a bank, and started putting his maths to use making money for them in ways she never wanted to know about, even though he went on and on about it. But he bought a nicer apartment, quite soon, a spatious duplex, and approved of her doing teaching, so all was well.
The bank changed him. He started going to bars with his colleagues, and coming home drunk. He also developed some loud-mouth views that were— well— not anything she could go along with. Jack and his friends seemed to think that because they earned so much more money than other people, that they were better people, when in fact, from the few times she had been taken along to work events by Jack, she’d discovered that they were actually worse than most people, by quite a wide margin.
But Jack was still Jack, and she was used to him, and he hadn’t really changed underneath— she could see; he was still a shy nerd; just being carried along by excitement about being a lot richer than his old friends, and by the mostly male, super ambitious and over-confident people he worked with, most of whom were less educated than him, a few years older and even richer. He was just trying to fit in, she realised.
Trent was an anomaly in their lives. Trent had been Jack’s best friend since they were 12— they’d been at different schools, but near neighbours, and neither had been very social, so they had become a team. They were both super smart at school, only Jack was at the posh school and Trent was at the sinkhole. Jack got to university; Trent had not even tried.
But despite going different ways, they had kept up the friendship, mainly through irregular late night drinking sessions.
Trent was almost the opposite of Jack in every way apart from his intelligence— and even there, their subjects diverged. Jack was mathematics and computers and logic and money; Trent was history and psychology and evolution and politics and thinking. Trent liked lots of things, and knew everything. Jack liked only a few things and could do things with them, like make money, even though he knew surprisingly little about the world, and was not at all wise.
Trent was taciturn, Jack was a gabbler, Jack was a bullshitter, trying all sorts of ideas out in public, waiting to see which one might stick; Trent never said anything he didn’t mean; Jack could be a bit of a pleaser, wanting people to like him, Trent was almost the opposite, often saying something awkward and irrefutable which stopped a promising conversation dead.
Once, at a party, Jack had pissed someone off, and there had been a silly fight, which Jack had started and then almost immediately lost. Trent had stepped in, and simply stood between the two guys and Jack so they started hitting him instead, just letting them, apparently uncaring, until they stopped, confused. Then the larger one had stepped forward again, and very deliberately punched Trent in the face, hard— she’d heard a crack— and Trent had turned into a whirling dervish, not really fighting, but simply flailing wildly. It had lasted about ten seconds and the big guy had gone down, heavily.
Wren was ambivalent about Trent. At first she had disliked him, politely, making herself scarce when he was going to be around. Then after the fight, she had been genuinely frightened of him, thinking he must be some sort of unstable psycho.
Later, after Jack had pestered her, she had joined in with a few of their evenings, though resolutely refusing to ‘get shit-faced’, which was their rule. And during those evenings, she come more to pity Trent than dislike him. He was odd, weirdly misshapen— physically and emotionally. He was tall, long limbed, with knobbly joints, large ears, a giant nose, a lantern jaw, thick, dark lips and thick black eyebrows, hair like wire that grew in every direction, cropped harshly— he did it himself, badly. His clothes never really fitted and he did all kinds of jobs.
Sometimes he was gone for months. He had tried the army for a bit, but was kicked out. His dancing, when she’d seen it once, was weird, all arms and legs flailing, like a marionette gone mad. He did have girlfriends, often strikingly beautiful or incredibly characterful— nothing like Wren’s classic English Rose prettiness— but they never lasted. She asked him about it once, and he’d said— I can’t be bothered to be nice to them.
Which explained that.
Trent couldn’t be bothered to be nice to many people it seemed, although he had, always, been nice to Wren, even when she had been frosty and rude. He brought little gifts for the house— never personal for her, but they were for her, she knew. And he washed up, and cleared away the detritus of the drinking sessions before she got up. He remembered her birthday, and her friend’s names.
She had wondered why, but never made sense of it; in the end, it was just the way things were.
That was when she had begun to feel sorry for him. She had tried to mother him a bit, when he stayed over, but he’d just laughed at her and made his own breakfast, and hers and Jack’s too, better than she could have, then showed her how he darned his own socks;
“I’m my own mum…” he said; “… always have been”.
And so he had become part of the furniture, really— reliably unreliable, a feature of Jack that made him not irredeemably boring.
Then Trent had got a weird job, on the outskirts of the town they lived in— Jack commuted in to the city, Wren studied in the town, and Trent worked in the abattoir, slaughtering cattle. This made no sense, because he was a vegan, and practically an animal liberationist— she seen him go to lengths to avoid hurting inconsequential creatures— spiders and moths even.
“There’s no job that isn’t compromised,” he’d said, as drunk as he ever got.
Jack would get falling down drunk, Trent drank more than Jack, but never seemed far gone— he got slower and more sure, and had once had to crawl up the stairs to the spare room, but he never seemed to suffer much the morning afterward, and had never vomited or broken things, as Jack regularly did.
“Working there keeps me honest. All of us live as we do, here, on the basis of massive cruelty, all round the world. We don’t see it, and so you, Wren, can disapprove of Jack’s loudmouth mates by telling yourself you’re doing nice work, good work, helping children, when in fact you’re just helping the next generation take it all for granted that they can have a decent living while people in other countries slave in mines.”
“But I can never forget.”
There had been a long silence after that, until Jack had started up an old argument with Trent about time travel, and they’d gone off into some long conversation about science fiction and Wren had gone to bed, suddenly disliking Trent again.
Now that Trent was living in the same town (in a dreadful one room hovel, Jack said— Wren promised herself never to go there), they saw him more often— at least every couple of weeks. Jack was drinking more often, now, so could keep up, and not make such an ass of himself. Wren couldn’t always find some reason to go out, and so ended up sitting with them— she still hardly drank, and would give up on them soon after ten, but gradually, there were some subjects which they could all talk about, and Wren found herself warming to Trent again. He was her ally against Jack’s new and stupid politics, although things never got out of hand, because only Trent was serious about the subject, and he knew they weren’t, so he never let anything get to him.
But then Jack had started spouting utter crap about how men were naturally dominant and that the natural order was for men to be the breadwinners and women to stay at home and keep house, and everything had gone wrong with women’s lib and shit like that, and Wren did care about that, even though she didn’t really have the arguments.
So when Jack and Trent had been drinking for about an hour, and Jack started in on some study which ‘proved’ that men ought to be sexually dominant, that all it took was for a man to dominate a woman forcibly a couple of times for her natural submissiveness to take hold of her, Wren couldn’t resist. She got the iPad out and looked up the article, and started to read bits of it out, ruthlessly lampooning the weakness of the argument, the appeals to ‘facts’ which were not much better than internet memes, the bogus graphs— it was all nonsense, and she began to demand that Jack, as a math and science guy, a self proclaimed reasoning person, a rationalist, a man guided by what was actually, provably real, and other such silly slogans she had long since ceased to argue with, but now threw in his face— to demand that he back down. And when he wouldn’t she had appealed to the silent Trent for backup, exasperated.
It wasn’t serious, but it was, at the same time— the first time that Wren had got heated in any of their sessions— it felt heightened— Wren was unsure if she’d done something wrong— should she get involved with their ritual? These two who were such bad matches must share something deeper— she should not risk breaking it over some nonsense of Jack’s work buddies.
The silence was a little awkward.
Trent was not saying anything, though he was looking at her quite directly, in a way he rarely did, his face unreadable, his eyes mild, expressionless. Jack was spluttering and blustering, and Wren was, she realised, all het up, cheeks bright red, pulse racing, feeling sweaty and jittery.
The gap stretched on, and became ugly. Jack and Wren did occasionally row, and occasionally it got nasty, and they had had the odd week of barely speaking, but this was rare, hadn’t happened for over a year, and they’d never rowed in front of anyone else.
“Say something”, Wren finally managed.
And Jack, drunker than she’d realised, or more wound-up— she couldn’t tell— had said;
“OK then, an experiment. Me and a couple of the guys from work will dominate you, Wren, for a weekend, slap you around, fuck you any way we like. We’ll do it three times; three weekends. Then we’ll see. See if you like it. If you want it to carry on. Then we’ll have proof, eh?”
It was said in a high pitched, desperate, whiny voice, and she knew it was the beer and vodka talking, but it was unforgivable, and he knew it was, too, judging from the look on his face.
She looked at Trent, who was still looking at her in the same way, as if nothing had happened— except that there was something in his eyes now; they were a little wider, the pupils dilated; but he clearly wasn’t saying anything.
“Take that back, Jack. Apologise!”
Wren’s voice was flat. The awful words, the awful implications, were running around inside her head. It was impossible, impossible, that her Jack had said such a thing!
Jack was looking stupid, trying to look resolute, and failing, only managing mulish.
“That’s science, Wrenny; that’s science.”
And she’d gone to bed, and wedged the door shut from the inside.
She’d found it very hard to sleep that night, found herself trying to overhear what they were saying, once the talking started up again (she was slightly mollified by the fact that the silence had extended for a while after she’d left). She couldn’t hear, though, and eventually drifted off. She was woken by the sound of the front door shutting, and realised she’d slept much later than usual— Trent must have just left.
Jack had appeared in the early afternoon, clearly crippled by a worse than usual hangover. He’d apologised as soon as he saw her; grovelled. She’d ignored him. She considered leaving him in the week after that, still not speaking to him or acknowledging him beyond the bare minimum. He kept having flowers delivered and she kept binning them.
But the next weekend, she’d found herelf still there, and Jack had done something he hadn’t done for years— written her a song, played on his ukelele, about how stupid he’d been, and he’d cried afterward, and a thaw had set in.
But something was broken, and she knew it. She couldn’t get Jack’s awful words out of her head. And not just the words, but the implications of them. It was wrong. He’d poisoned things. It would have to end, was her thought, but it filled her with fear and then rage and then sadness. How COULD HE? Jack was stupid, yes, but not usually that stupid, not so stupid that he would actually do something that was unforgivable.
And then, one evening, when Jack was out, Trent appeared. She was startled— had settled in for a night of mindless TV and a glass of Prosecco when the door bell rang, was completely shocked to see Trent. He never made social calls.
When she asked what he wanted, he said, very simply, “You have to do it. It’s the only way.”
And Wren almost said “What do you mean?”, before she understood, and then she went mad.
She felt herself boiling up inside, and realised that she had been suppressing all sorts for weeks, things that could not be suppressed, pushing them down, deep down into a box with a lid that kept things under control, mostly. But now Trent— TRENT! had banged on the lid, and the lid had come off. She went for him, silently, hit him as hard as she could, and then again and again, until he had stepped in and held her, forcing her to be still, as gently as possible. She’d struggled a bit, then stilled herself, then in a strained voice asked him to let her go, which he had. She looked at him then— what was he here for? It occurred to her, for the first time, that he might want her, and everything in the world wobbled, badly, as the weirdness of this idea rebounded through her. But he had stepped away, had sat down, looking anything but loverlike; in fact he was laughing at her, and not kindly.
She stood, waiting to see if she could get angry again;
“If you’re going to say offensive things, and laugh at me, Trent, then I’d be grateful if you’d fuck off.”
Wren rarely swore.
He’d stopped laughing;
“No offence intended. But yes, you are funny. The both of you. Ridiculous. And you’ll fuck up a thing you’ve both worked for if you don’t get serious about it.”
“So, you’re here to save our relationship?”
He had the grace to grin.
“Well, that’s your business, but yes, I’d like to help, if I can, seeing as Jack’s my oldest friend, and you’re my only female friend, and I know you’ve made each other comfortable, if not riotously happy.”
“Comfortable is pretty good.”
“Except that you’ve lost it. Since that stupid fucking evening, when Jack was such a jackass, and you acted like such a bitch, you’re so scratchy around each other it’s painful. I can hardly stand to be with the both of you; and when I’ve got either of you alone, all you can do is kvetch about the other one.”
Wren went quiet. It was fine to call Jack a jackass, but where did Trent get off, calling her a bitch!
On the other hand, there was very rarely any point arguing with Trent about anything, she had found. He had an uncanny way of showing her that he was right, that she’d known all along he was right, and that she’d only been arguing with him to give herself the pleasure of being beaten by him.
Often, even knowing this, she would argue anyway, but honestly, she was so worn down by Jack’s fucking stupidity, that she just wanted to go straight to the end part, where she felt good that Trent had beaten her.
“So… So I’m a bitch?”
She was genuinely asking him.
“No, you’re not a bitch. That’s not what I said; you behaved like a bitch. He said something dumb, he behaved like a jackass, and you beat him down— fair enough. But then you carried on grinding him into the dust. That’s being a bitch— especially when it’s the man you married, and who you theoretically love.”
She was silent; felt herself flushing, a little. It really was nice; reassuring, comforting even, to be schooled by Trent.
There was a long silence, then, as she worked her way back to what he had said;
You have to do it. It’s the only way.
She felt herself really coloring, then, as she realised, all over again, what he had actually meant, and that he was actually serious.
And then even more so, when she discovered that she couldn’t fight Trent on this one either. That he was probably right.
That he was looking at her, knowing he was right, knowing what he had told her she must do, and that she was accepting that he was right.
So, he was looking at her, knowing that she agreed with him.
She had to tell Jack to arrange for her to be gang-fucked, slapped around, humiliated by Jack and his mates, over three weekends, if she wanted to save her marriage.
All to prove a point which didn’t need proving.
It got more and more embarrassing, standing there, her whole body horrified by the idea of it, her mind though, strangely filled more with the fact that Trent knew she was going to do this thing, than with the fact that she was going to do it.
She couldn’t look at him; it got worse and worse, his eyes on her; not that she was angry with him, not that she even minded his eyes on her. It was the strangest feeling; almost like the feeling of losing an argument to him; just about ten times stronger. About ten times weirder.
And then suddenly it resolved itself, and she knew, and she turned toward him, stumbled into him, put her arms around him, mumbling, utterly confused by her own conviction;
“It’s you. Trent, it’s you I love. Jesus, how did I never see it? Please, Trent, take me away. Now. Take me home. Jesus I want you to fuck me. I’ve always wanted you to fuck me. And you’ve wanted me! Why? Why havent you taken me? You could have; I see it now; so many times, you could have taken me. Why? You knew, all this time, and you didn’t tell me, you bastard. But I don’t care. I know now, and I’m yours. So, let’s go, take me home, take me home and fuck me.”
He stood there, though, like a tree, unresponsive; except that she felt his cock, stiffening in his pants, felt how big it was, and trembled with it.
Then he took her shoulders and pushed her away, made her look at him;
“Listen to me; I could never take you from Jack. I could not do that to him. That’s why you have to do this. It’s true, it’s the one chance to save your marriage. But also, it’s the one chance that I could take you. Because of something. Something huge.”
“Although Jack is wrong, wrong about women in general, he’s not wrong about something. He’s not wrong about me. The reason I can’t keep girlfriends, Wrenny, is that I am a man who needs to dominate a girl. And not just by crushing their silly arguments,"— he looked up and grinned at her, then, and her heart had done funny things; but he had continued, and by the time he’d finished, it wasn’t a funny feeling, but a cold iron fist which had her heart— “not like that, but physically; by slapping them around, and fucking them when they don’t want to be fucked, and by humiliating them, making them come when they don’t want to come, making them put out for strangers; by keeping them naked and in their place, doing slavey work.”
“It’s not the way I want to be; it doesn’t fit who I am in the rest of my life. But there is no way around it; I’ve had to learn that.”
“And you, Wrenny; you’re the girl I want to do that to most.”
He was watching her, she knew, but she had turned to stone, and couldn’t lift her head, even though she was desperate to know what was in his eyes.
The silence was agony and also, wonderful. Trent had sort of declared his love for her, but wrapped in barbed-wire. She was filled with wild emotion that had no name, that could not— not ever— be permitted expression. She wanted the moment to go on forever, and she could not bear to live with the feelings an instant longer. But it was not her call.
She could only wait. Wait for Trent. Wait for the man who knew everything.
“Which was why it was so weird when Jack went off on that stupid rant. The silly prat couldn’t dominate a pot of yoghurt.”
“So here we are. With the only way through. You have to call Jack’s bluff. I don’t think he’ll do it, but I think he won’t be able to help himself from bragging about it to his banker chums, and they’ll make him do it— I’m very sure they will like the idea of fucking you, Wrenny— most men would like that— even though you don’t see it.”
“So then you’ll find out, and I’ll find out.”
“Whether you really love Jack. And whether you get off on being treated like a slut.”
“And then, one way or another, I’ll have my answer, and you’ll have yours.”
“And if you turn out to hate Jack, and if you turn out to like being abused, then I’ll have won the jackpot, and you’ll be my whore, under my thumb forever.”
“Alternatively, if you end up realising you love Jack, and both you and he realise you don’t like abusive sex, then you can live happily ever after, and I’ll fuck off for good, and leave you to it.”
“It can go some other ways too, but none of them have happy endings as far as I can see. As I said, the two of you really messed up, and now things have to change, for better or worse.”
They stared at each for what felt like a hour, then, both silent, still, weirdly expressionless, until Trent abruptly turned and left, and she let him go.
She stood like a stone pillar for another eternity, before sinking to her knees for the tears to take her.
