Heaven knows what made me do it. I had been out with a friend, drinking more than I should have, and I was missing my husband terribly. Perhaps the knowledge that he was away from home had made me horny, craving the one thing I knew I couldn’t have. But none of these things fully explain my actions that night.
It happened during the summer of 2011 and the conference season. At that time of year, academics like my husband and me take advantage of our minimal teaching load to flit from campus to campus under the pretext of exchanging knowledge. That summer, Chris presented at symposia almost weekly to share his Ph.D. research, so with Bristol and Birmingham done, he had travelled to Newcastle that particular week, leaving me at home. Maybe the distance made me miss him more, but even if it did, sending him a dirty photograph was wildly out of character, and I still don’t know what compelled me to do it.
And it was a very dirty photograph. For some reason, I decided against a tasteful nude, something titillating but fundamentally innocent within a happy marriage. Instead, it was one of me propped up on cushions, legs spread, with one hand cupping my breast and the other between my legs. My tongue was even licking my lips in a display of over-the-top lasciviousness.
With my new smartphone propped up on books and being unused to taking ‘selfies’, as they later became known, it took several attempts to get the photograph right. However, at no point did I think better of the idea. When I had the picture, I sent it almost immediately. Attached was the message, “Missing you. XXX”
I know; it’s no big deal. Most couples have sent each other racy photographs at least once. But we aren’t like most couples, or at least we weren’t back then.
In the first few months of our relationship, even the idea of sex overwhelmed me, and having reached my late twenties still a virgin, I came to my first sexual experience with considerable baggage. Apart from what I had learned at my all-girls school, in science lessons and the schoolyard, my sex education was virtually zero. Sex wasn’t discussed in my home, and if a steamy scene came on television, my mother would immediately switch channels, telling me the programme was ‘unsuitable’ for me to watch. So with nobody to talk to about my sexual feelings and needs, or the ways I discovered to explore and express them, I found myself stuck between curiosity, guilt, and anxiety. And these feelings didn’t go away; instead, they became even more profound the longer they went unchecked.
At eighteen years of age, wishing to see the world, I travelled extensively as a professional dancer with a company based in London. We performed classical Indian dance in Canada, South Africa, Australia, the US, and India; countries where the company had established a good reputation on previous tours. But, on our journeys, the performers were always ruthlessly chaperoned by flint-faced ‘aunties’, who were less concerned with the emotional and sexual development of their charges than they were with replacing a dancer who found herself pregnant. So contact with men was restricted to male dancers within the group, and even then, only in professional contexts.
With no positive male interaction, men became objects of fascination and novelty to me. However, any means of expressing desire or lust were quashed by the unhealthy and repressive environment in which I lived and worked. To all intents and purposes, I was sexless until I walked on stage each night. Only then did the medium of dance allow me to explore my sexuality in its raw, emergent form.
For those few minutes daily, I retook possession of my nascent womanhood, expressing my suppressed sexual desire through Odissi’s complex, structured choreography. Some dances were overtly erotic, others less so, but my performances always celebrated the female mind, body, and spirit in all their intricate beauty. It temporarily made me whole, and the audiences loved it.
For years, that was enough, and besides, by being abroad for long spells, I escaped the pressure to marry that my sisters endured. Of course, my mum would occasionally talk about finding me a husband when I came home, but out of sight was out of mind, which suited me. I didn’t miss what I didn’t know; men barely crossed my mind, and getting married hadn’t even reached the bottom of my priority list, much less the top.
My mindset only changed when my friends started to marry and have children. I began to envy their settled lives and the joy they seemed to find with a husband and family. Of course, my dancing career wouldn’t last forever, and I understood that my single status would become untenable once the touring stopped. But I felt woefully ill-equipped to deal with any attention from the opposite sex, much less build and sustain a happy, meaningful relationship. Nonetheless, with every wedding I attended, or newborn child I held in my arms, my wish to have a normal, comfortable, married lifestyle became increasingly profound.
Eventually, a vast gulf developed between my real life and my life as I wished it to be. I needed a change, so I quit touring aged twenty-three, much to the chagrin of the dance company. And, with my mother’s health declining, I moved back home to look after her, combining my caring duties with studying Dance and Drama at a university in London.
After starting my degree, my outlook on life slowly altered. Forming new friendships with people of both sexes and many cultures was eye-opening, exciting, and sometimes frightening. At first, I wasn’t sure I could cope as the barriers between me and men suddenly came down. Studying and socialising with guys for the first time, I felt like I had been thrust headlong into a maelstrom of bawdy humour and raging hormones, with rules of engagement I didn’t understand. I tried to learn how to behave around men from my girlfriends, and soon I began to socialise near-normally. However, when guys occasionally asked me out on dates, I used my mother’s illness as an excuse not to go, anxious about where the evening might lead.
So although my mind was slowly beginning to open, my legs remained firmly closed. I tried to stay safe within the orbit of my female friends, and any thoughts I might have had of exploring my sexuality ended the same way they always had; my curiosity led to guilt, and my guilt to anxiety.
After university, I taught Drama and Dance at a High School, but that didn’t give me the satisfaction I gained from professional dancing. It wasn’t applause or acclaim I needed; instead, it was the preparation and anxiety beforehand, all channelled into a few minutes of intense concentration and effort. I needed the adrenaline rush of being in the public gaze, knowing that the line between success and failure was paper thin. And I needed to express myself sexually in a way I understood and was comfortable with, subtly, discreetly, and in front of an audience.
Then, within a year, two things changed, altering my life beyond all recognition. The first was my mother’s death, and the second was meeting my husband.
When Mum died, I found being alone in the empty house difficult, so I began a part-time Master’s degree in Creative Arts in Education. I attended lectures two evenings a week, studying with other people who worked in schools, universities, and the creative arts sector.
My future husband, Chris, wasn’t one of the lead lecturers on the module, but he was a Senior Lecturer within the faculty and oversaw the programme. Occasionally, he would guest-present lectures or cover if a lecturer was absent, but he didn’t deal with our group on a day-to-day basis.
Chris was tall, athletic, and spoke with a Northern Irish accent. I guessed he must be in his mid-thirties, as he was completely bald, having shaved off what remained of his hair, but a neatly trimmed beard revealed that his hair would once have been copper in colour. His ears were misshapen from playing rugby, but nevertheless, I thought Chris was unconventionally handsome. His eyes were kind, and they wrinkled when he smiled.
One evening in June, shortly before the summer recess, our lecturers introduced a module assessment to be completed over the summer. We had to present how then-emerging technologies, such as digital cameras and the Internet, could support us in our professional roles. I decided to demonstrate how video analysis could enhance student self-assessment in dance. I planned to do a short dance routine for my peers before critiquing it using slowed-down video footage. There would also be an interactive element whereby the other students could try simple Indian dance moves before reviewing their work on video, as I had done.
When the presentation evening arrived in October, Chris joined the other lecturers to moderate the assessments. The other students were amused when they arrived to see me in full costume, make-up, and jewellery, from the tahia on my head to the bells around my ankles. But apart from being colourful, my presentation was also fun, informative, and solidly underpinned by theory. So when the assessment results arrived, I was delighted that the lecturers had awarded me a Distinction.
A week or two later, I was surprised to receive an email from Chris. He asked if we could chat after the next evening session, as he said he had a proposal he thought might interest me.
Chris sidled into the room towards the end of the lecture. After we had been dismissed, he said hello, and suggested we go to the Student Union bar to discuss his idea. Immediately, I felt tense, imagining what my mother would have said if she knew I was going into a bar alone with a man I barely knew. But the security staff were locking up the faculty building, and I had little choice but to go and hear what Chris had to say.
Having bought us both a drink, Chris introduced his proposal.
“Nisha, would you mind giving me a brief précis of your career to date? I’m very interested in your background, particularly your teaching experience.”
I explained that I had always taken classes for younger dance students, had spent five years as a professional dancer, and had progressed to school teaching after university. I saw Chris’s face light up when he learned I was a qualified teacher.
“You may not be aware, Nisha,” he began, “...but the university increasingly attracts students from ethnic minorities - people like you. We are working hard to diversify the content of our programmes to reflect this, but finding talented staff with the skills to teach performance-based undergraduate modules is difficult. Would you be interested in finding out more if I said we might have an opportunity for you? I’ll get more details on what we can offer, but I think it might initially involve teaching across different programmes. Then, once your Masters is conferred, you can teach at postgraduate level too, if you like.”
I was astonished! I was still in my late twenties, and the idea of teaching at a university, while exciting, was something I had never thought would ever be open to someone like me. And working for a man like Chris was appealing too. Unlike my High School’s rude, abrasive, and demanding senior staff, he was calm, sensitive, and consensual in his dealings with staff and students.
When Chris formalised the job offer, I jumped at the opportunity. I gave the school notice and started at the Faculty of Creative Arts after Christmas. It took some adjustment, but I quickly became familiar with the different programmes I taught, and any pressure from the job was nothing compared to the stress of working in a High School.
The university environment was both challenging and nurturing, as was my new boss. As I grappled with my new role, Chris proved to be an approachable, supportive, and demanding team leader. His door was always open if I needed advice, and I relied heavily on his experience in the early days. Although his background was quite different, with photography his creative medium, he could easily apply his skills and knowledge to my very different context, and he was an enormous help to me.
Chris’s unequivocal support, and the liberal university environment, gave me the confidence to express myself in ways I had never imagined possible. Although I always remained professional in my conduct and relationships, teaching adults somehow gave me a similar sexual thrill to dancing. Of course, I expected the hormonal energy between the young students to be high, but I hadn’t expected to experience similar feelings as their teacher.
Although never taking it too far, I began dressing in a much sexier way than I ever had before, and I enjoyed the furtive glances at my breasts or bottom from students of both sexes. As my hemlines rose, my necklines dropped, and I was fascinated by the response my ever-so-risque dress sense often elicited. Occasionally, fellow lecturers would relate light-hearted conversations they had overheard, where my students had dubbed me a ‘LILF’ - a lecturer they would like to fuck - which, when the term was explained to me, was affirming, flattering, and empowering. For the first time, I began to think of myself as a sexual being in my own right. I may still have been a virgin and had never even dated a guy, but my confidence, self-esteem, and contentedness grew.
And it wasn’t only at work that the change in my outlook manifested itself. Masturbation had always been something I had guiltily enjoyed, but until then, I had done it infrequently. I had usually only touched myself after watching a sexy film or while reading an erotic scene in a book, but suddenly, I needed to do it much more frequently, sometimes more than once a day.
I realised it was no longer erotic fiction that made me wet and horny but my own thoughts, feelings, and fantasies. Upon returning home from university, touching myself would often be the first thing I did as I attempted to release the pent-up frustration generated by the sexually charged atmosphere at work. And it was always Chris who was the subject of my reveries.
But my contentment couldn’t last, or so it seemed. Towards the end of my second year working at the university, Chris announced that he was leaving; another university had offered him a Reader’s position, giving him more time to focus on academic research and progression toward his ultimate goal of a professorship.
It was then that I realised how much of my new-found happiness depended on Chris’s stabilising presence in my life. Of course, I looked up to him professionally - as an incredible teacher and academic, he was everything I aspired to be - but more significantly, he was the first man I had ever felt I could genuinely trust. Having grown up without a father, the approval and support of the other influential men in my life - my dance directors - had always been conditional on what I could give them in return. But Chris was different; he appreciated me as a person with complex feelings, not just someone to deliver course content. My anxiety returned as I contemplated a future without him.
On the day Chris left, at the end of the Summer Term, the staff took him out to a restaurant, and I made sure I sat next to him, which didn’t go unnoticed by my colleagues. What had long been evident to them was something I had never admitted to myself; I was in love but didn’t know how to process the emotions, much less express them. The thought of losing Chris had made me clingy and needy, and although I didn’t realise it then, I had telegraphed my feelings for him to everyone in the department, Chris included.
After dinner, some colleagues decided to take Chris to a pub for drinks and suggested I come along. Tired after a demanding semester and with a long bus journey home, I needed persuading; I wasn’t in a celebratory mood and wanted to be alone with my thoughts. But they were insistent, so I reluctantly joined them at the pub.
Towards the end of the evening, only four of us remained. One of my colleagues suggested we all have a final drink but returned from the bar with only two glasses of wine, one for Chris and one for me. He and the other colleague hurriedly put on their jackets and, having wished Chris well in his new job, departed the pub, leaving us alone.
Initially, being alone in a social situation with a man made me uncomfortable and anxious, even though the man concerned was Chris. But we just chatted about our holiday plans, and Chris told me about a new photography exhibition featuring his work. So when he invited me to join him at the gallery the following day for the exhibition’s launch, I didn’t think twice about accepting, considering it nothing more than an extension of our professional relationship.
My first few dates with Chris were veiled in middle-class cultural curiosity, and it took me a while before I realised they were dates at all. A museum visit followed the trip to the gallery, and then we attended a lecture from a contemporary artist at the Royal Academy. All the time, I was sure Chris wanted nothing more than my companionship since we were both on our own. He never declared any romantic intent and, save for a hand on my back when escorting me through a door, didn’t make physical contact or imply ours was anything other than a platonic friendship. I was comfortable with the idea of such a relationship and enjoyed his company enormously.
But that all changed the night we went to the cinema.
I had told Chris I wanted to see The Day After Tomorrow, and he suggested we go together. Perhaps I was subconsciously steering us towards a proper, romantic date, but I think that would be to credit me with more romantic guile than I then had at my disposal. In my mind, there was still a disconnect between the happy married life I knew I wanted and the steady relationship that would lead me there, and if things were to change, I would need a road map to guide the way toward my happiness.
Little did I realise that Chris was about to give me one.
After two hours of us both frigidly concentrating on the cinema screen, we decided to spend what remained of the evening in a bar. We took a table in a quiet part of the pub and had just ordered drinks when Chris reached across the table and took my hands in his.
“I hope you don’t think me too forward,” he said as my palms quickly became clammy, and my heart raced. “But I’ve wanted to do this for a very long time. Is it okay to hold your hand, Nisha?”
My first instinct was to look around to check nobody I knew was watching. I don’t know if I expected to see one of my mum’s friends, or one of the fearsome ‘aunties’ I had dreaded as a young woman, looking over disapprovingly or choking on their mango juice at my brazenness. But I immediately became self-conscious and embarrassed, even though nobody in the pub had paid Chris’s gesture the slightest bit of attention.
Chris must have anticipated my reaction because he remained calm, reassuring, and soothing as he gently stroked my fingers with his thumb. Even at that early stage, he seemed to understand that I struggled with intimacy and must have realised that my hang-ups were deeply entrenched. He gave me a half-smile and a look that said, “Well, then?”
“Yes,” I heard myself say.
“Good, because over the past year, I’ve grown to think of you as more of a friend than a colleague,” Chris continued. “Although I had to be ‘The Boss’ in the office, now that I no longer work at the university, I hope we can be proper friends, or perhaps, in time, even more than friends?”
It’s embarrassing to think about now, but after the shock wore off, I started crying. I can only imagine what Chris must have thought as he listened to me unload a stream of consciousness about how I had grown to care so much for him and feared losing him from my life, all delivered through streams of tears and snot. I found myself gripping tightly onto his hand, even as he moved from his seat to sit beside me and hold me, the first time anyone had hugged me for years.
As we left the pub, my emotions swung from the familiar guilt and anxiety to something altogether different. For the first time, I experienced the peculiar warmth of being uniquely special to someone, and although a small part of me still believed it was wrong and wicked to be alone with a man, the warmth spreading through my body was intoxicating and lovely. I wanted to see how far the feelings led me.
When he dropped me home, I thanked Chris for a lovely evening, and he moved to kiss me. I deflected his first attempt, going cheek-to-cheek instead, but he was persistent. With the rain teeming down and held in the arms of a handsome, intelligent man, I felt like the heroine in a Bollywood movie as Chris scooped me up and enveloped me in a long, slow, lingering kiss.
**********
With Chris and me officially in a relationship, the spectre of sex quickly reared its head. Of course, Chris said nothing about it at first, not wishing to put me under pressure he knew I couldn’t cope with, but I knew that soon it would become the elephant in the room, and I would need to be prepared for the conversation when it happened.
But I wasn’t even sure what my position on sex was and didn’t know how to proceed if and when the opportunity arose. My upbringing had told me sex was somehow shameful and wrong, although it could occasionally be tolerated within a marriage. However, when talking with friends at university much later, I discovered that most people had a much more liberal view of sex and that it was a thing to be enjoyed rather than avoided. Although I wanted the freedom that came with my friends’ more enlightened outlook, the feelings of shame and guilt seemed hard-wired into me, and the thought of actually having sex for the first time filled me with dread.
My sexual experience had been restricted to self-pleasure and my mildly exhibitionist tendencies when dancing or teaching. But neither equipped me for the act itself; feeling sexy inside was one thing, but being sexy for someone else was another thing entirely.
However, the conversation about sex never came. Weeks went by, and although we went out several times each week, Chris never suggested we spend the night together afterward. Sometimes I asked him to come in for a drink after he walked me home, but even if he said yes and we kissed on the sofa, he never attempted to take things further, always respecting my boundaries.
Eventually, though, once I became comfortable with being in a relationship, I gradually became more receptive to the idea of sex. Chris was a very tactile lover, always holding my hand when we were out and cuddling me if we were at home watching a film. With his arms around me, I felt secure and happy, and when he kissed me, I was frequently shocked at how wet I became. I knew I could trust Chris, and as I increasingly drew on his love, support, and care, I found my barriers tumbling, and I wanted nothing more than to give myself to him completely.
Often, immediately after he went home, I would masturbate while thinking of him and berate myself for being so frightened about taking the next step. I understood that sex would move our relationship to a new level of intimacy and that, in time, it would be something I would enjoy. But although I knew sex with Chris was inevitable and desirable, I couldn’t muster the courage to move things forward.
Ultimately, it was my friend Hannah’s wedding that broke the deadlock. I had received the invitation months before, requesting the company of ‘Nisha plus one’, and had long since replied that I would be coming alone. So, having already booked my room at the venue, and with the wedding only a fortnight away, I didn’t think to contact Hannah to see if I could still bring a partner; it was much too late.
But the grapevine was buzzing, and I soon received a call from Hannah. She told me she had heard about my new man and would love Chris to come to the wedding, but she would need to give the final numbers to the hotel the following day.
When we met later, I put the idea to Chris.
“Two weeks’ time, you say? In Gloucestershire? Of course, I’ll come,” he replied, as I knew he would.
“But we need to talk about accommodation. I’ve booked a room, and...”
It was on the tip of my tongue.
“Don’t worry. I’ll find somewhere nearby,” Chris replied cheerily.
“No, listen, Chris. I don’t want that. I want us to... share a room. One room. Together. As a couple.”
It was out there at last, and Chris immediately understood the implications of what I had said.
“But if you’d rather have your own room, I don’t mind,” I said, backtracking. “You can book somewhere else if you like, and...”
Chris put a finger to my lips. “Of course, I want to. It’s what I want more than anything in the world,” he said reassuringly. “I’m honoured that you want me to, and I’m glad you feel ready to... suggest it.”
By kicking the can a further two weeks down the road, I thought I would have time to get my head around the idea of having sex for real. I figured that once it was no longer a hypothetical notion and a date had been set, I would have no choice but to come to terms with the prospect or risk looking foolish and maybe even losing Chris.
In the following two weeks, I had much to think about. Should I wax or trim? What protection should I use? Will I be on my period? What underwear should I buy? What if it’s too painful? I knew I was hugely overthinking it.