An exciting new direction from
acclaimed novelist Monique Roffey
Monique Roffey on The Tryst
When you publish a book, it’s always a mixed bag of feelings for every writer, I guess: elation, a sense of meaning and purpose, guided to the right spot, ‘publication’. But, also, there is trepidation, and concern, a ‘will this baby fly?’, ‘will it get any attention?’ Will it be ignored, sink without a trace? Let alone, will it get near a serious prize list. But today, having just sent the final, final, final edits of The Tryst, to my very plucky publisher, Dodo Ink, I feel something so pure and so utterly without reserve or concern. I feel something almost shamanic, something inner and secure, something certain and from within, a sense of completion over a long time, and a sense of elation, a “Yes! You did it.” And it will be good.
*****
London, midsummer night. Jane and
Bill meet the mysterious Lilah in a bar. She entrances the couple with
half-true, mixed up tales about her life. At closing time, Jane makes an
impulsive decision to invite Lilah back to their home. But Jane has made a
catastrophic error of judgement, for Lilah is a skilled and ruthless predator,
the likes of which few encounter in a lifetime. Isolated and cursed, Jane and
Bill are forced to fight for each other, and, in doing so, discover their
covert desires.
Part psychological thriller, part
contemporary magical realism, The Tryst revisits the tale of Adam’s first wife,
Lilith, to examine the secrets of an everyday marriage.
“What makes The Tryst an
unexploded virus isn’t just the quality and brightness of Roffey’s writing on
sex, even as it uncovers inner glades between flesh and fantasy where sex
resides – but the taunting clarity of why those glades stay covered. A
throbbing homewrecker of a tale, too late to call Fifty Shades of Red.”
DBC Pierre, Booker Prize winner,
2003
Available from:
Amazon UK: http://amzn.to/2syHhPE
Amazon US: https://www.amazon.com/Tryst-Monique-Roffey-ebook/dp/B072BX51PV/
Amazon UK: http://amzn.to/2syHhPE
Amazon US: https://www.amazon.com/Tryst-Monique-Roffey-ebook/dp/B072BX51PV/
*****
Excerpt:
Before lunch we had sex again on the kitchen floor. Quickly, this time,
me riding him. Oh, I like to be on top, to be the domina, the one who hostesses the show, who stages all the stunts
with human males. I am the party thrower, the orgy mistress. I gave him a good
fuck, massaging his cock with the muscles of my cunt, and the energy of him
rose upwards through me and lit me up. This Bill was made to fit me and I was
made to fit him; somehow I’d stumbled across him, this Adam. At first glance he
was just a primary model: Husband, Father, the Average White English Male. Homme Vanille. Marks and Spencer Man.
Nothing remarkable. Nicely castrated by the middle class feminists, cured of
any alpha tendencies. He had been trained not to be dominant. Isn’t that what
feminism has done, it has laughed the alpha males out of town. Masculinity is in crisis, say the clever
ones these days. Feminism equalised women in the workplace and put men in the
shed, where I found Bill. The male alpha doms went underground, thousands of
them, to Internet fetish sites and their private dungeons and the like. There,
many of my sistren operate, daemon-killers like me. Professional Dommes.
Strangulators, ball kickers. Experts in humiliation, bestiality, fucking men up
the ass with their strap-ons. Torturing testicles till they turn blue. We
Lilatha exist in the shadows, in the twilight; we are around if you look for
us. Many men do, those who like to submit. And they keep quiet when they find
us. Few imps, like me, stalk the pavements in full view. That’s my kink, to
fuck The Innocents, men like Bill. I like to dominate Mr Everyday.
And yet, as I had happily
discovered, Bill had secret charms and abilities after all. My assessment had
been wrong. I rode Bill hard, forging a twinned ecstasy between us. We groaned
and writhed, both of us dying afterwards. I laughed with glee, at how Bill
gasped for breath. “You’re lovely,” he gasped. I licked my fingers, tasting his
bitter-salt cum. “So are you,” I winked. “Feed me now, I’m starving.”
Lunch was delicious and
replenishing. We fell on fruit and gooey chocolate cake and ice cream and
opened a bottle of red wine. I put on one of his vinyl jazz records and danced
around naked. I’ll stay one more hour, I
told myself. One more hour, just one. Janey-Wife has gone, this house is mine
and we still want to fuck. I am not yet sated. Greedy thing I was, greedy
for his cock. Bill couldn’t keep his eyes off me, he was entangled – miserably
unsure of himself. Distant and yet high on that fuck-chemical of serotonin. It
was coursing through him. It was like watching a new drug addict and any minute
I might have to catch him from slumping to the floor. He was lust-drunk. But I
wasn’t. I’d provoked this altered state in men many times before; I had left
many husbands in this condition. Usually I fled well before this point. But I was
still enjoying myself, still very much the sprite.
I danced naked for a
while. Human men love to watch women dance in the nude and very few modern
human women do. It is a dead art, relegated to the dim caverns and glossy
tables of the lap dancing club. Burlesque
strip-joints. Once, it was an art of the courtly harem and the well-paid
hetaera; once it was part of Bohemia, of a social stratum of free thinkers and
free lovers. Men have danced naked too, for women and other men. There is a
long tradition of the Lust Arts. I find this an omission on the part of modern
womankind as naked dancing puts men in a state of awe and gratitude. The Wife
won’t do it, never did. Oh, human women divide their nature. Mother. Wife.
Whore. They do not integrate. Good girls and bad. Few celebrate that they are
both. So there I was rubbing myself and licking my lips, caressing my breasts,
my hips, sliding my hand down between my legs. It was an act, a naked tease.
This was one of my many carnival tricks. I have worked in burlesque clubs,
learnt the art of grinding and wriggling, stripping off stockings, gloves.
Doing what American strippers call ‘ass work’, removing strings of pearls from
my pussy. I have a strong muscular vagina, able to pulse and milk my men. But I
do not possess the agility of hookers in the bars and lap dancing clubs of the
Orient. I cannot shoot ping-pong balls across the room. I surprised Bill with
three small but succulent beetroot I had found in the fridge, already peeled
and boiled. I dripped the purple ink over my quim, inserting them one by one,
dancing them up and in. He laughed out loud and clapped for me and I took a
bow. He knelt for me and ate as I released each soft warm beet into his mouth.
More, he whispered.
And I complied, oh, with
cucumbers and carrots and the like. Bill was rock hard throughout. I loved his
cock, thick and uncircumcised. The tip glistened. At one point, I knelt in
front of Bill and took his balls into my mouth and swirled them round. He
trusted me more with his jewels this time. He poured wine over my face and I
drank and sucked and his cock was huge and solid and he stroked himself and
dripped cum over my face, rubbed it into my hair. Then he was sitting on a
counter top, his jeans unbuckled, his thighs bare, his cock like a tower. Me on
tiptoe, with my mouth all over him, my head bobbing, all the while kneading his
scrotum and his hand reaching down, stroking me, catching the drips. Then, his
body juddered, as if Aphrodite herself was stroking the kundalini up from his
genitals and up his back. His cum flew in hot spurts, white and pearly,
splattering his stomach, the fruit bowl, everywhere. And I came too, my cum
cascaded like a torrent to the floor, not a cupful, as usual, but a warm wave
fell from that secret reservoir. Like I had urinated, except it was translucent
and salt-sweet to taste. And with this release, I began to feel altered. I shouldn’t be here; I should have left.
Bill reached down and cupped the small of my back as I shuddered. My orgasm
swamped us both. I looked up at Bill and saw his eyes glittering. Oh Christ, he whispered. I could see
that he had recognised me. I was Wife No 1. My cover was blown. It was then I
whispered my real name to him in my language and he nodded.
Praise for The Tryst
“The Tryst is a sly, feral, witty, offbeat erotic novella that unsettles the reader, even as it arouses. There are sex scenes of breath-taking audacity. What would any of us do if an irresistible sex daemon broke and entered our domestic lives, leaving havoc in her amoral wake?”
Rowan Pelling, editor, The Amorist
“I’ve read The Tryst and was enormously entertained and impressed. It’s wild and witching, at once contemporary and atavistic, with an anarchic
sexual energy running through it and a startling frankness, not only about sex, but about love and relationships, gender and power ... a daring write and consuming read.” Bidisha, writer and broadcaster
“While The Tryst offers magic and sensuality aplenty, it lays bare the violence that heteronormative couples will do to ‘others’ to keep the home system stoked. It can be read as a fable about intimacy and erotic power. Disturbingly, it can also be read as a fable about the socially established vs. the disposable.”
Vahni Capildeo, poet, Forward Prize winner
“The Tryst summons your inner whore and demands she be honoured.”
Empress Stah, cabaret theatre performer
“A Midsummer’s Night Dream meets erotic thriller in this captivating romp through the senses. ... Monique Roffey perfectly captures the inner worlds of both the un-fucked housewife and the archetypal slut in this wonderful tale exploring the power of sexuality, erotic magnetism and the changing face of human relationships.”
Seani Love, Sex Worker of the Year, 2015
“Monique Roffey’s The Tryst successfully straddles mythology and erotica to create a journey towards pleasure.”
Suzanne Portnoy, author of The Butcher, The Baker, The Candlestick Maker
“Sexy, lyrical and unashamed, The Tryst is a powerful slice of modern erotica which blends sexual magick with today’s hectic world of male-female relationships.”
Vina Jackson, author of Eighty Days Yellow
“Sexy as hell. A cross between the work of Angela Carter and Anaïs Nin, The Tryst weaves the urban and the modern with dark myth. Roffey is a risk taking and masterful storyteller,” J Malloy, author of The Story of X
*****
BIOGRAPHY
Monique Roffey is an award-winning
Trinidadian-born writer. Her novels have been translated into five languages
and short-listed for major awards including the Orange Prize, Costa Fiction
Award, Encore Award, Orion Award and the OCM Bocas Award for Caribbean
Literature. In 2013, Archipelago won the OCM BOCAS Award for Caribbean
Literature. Her memoir, With the Kisses of his Mouth, was published in
2011. She is a Lecturer on the MFA in the Novel at Manchester Metropolitan
University. She divides her time between the East end of London and Port of
Spain, Trinidad.
social
media:
Twitter @moniqueroffey13 and
@DodoInk
Instagram: Monique Roffey
FB @moniqueroffeyauthor
*****
About Dodo Ink
Dodo Ink is an independent
publishing company based in the UK. Founded by author Sam Mills (The
Quiddity of Will Self, Corsair, 2012), digital publishing and marketing
specialist Alex Spears, and reviewer Thom Cuell, Dodo Ink publish original fiction
with a focus on risk-taking, imaginative novels. We are looking for books which
don’t fall into easy marketing categories and don’t compromise their
intelligence or style to fit in with trends. We are passionate readers, and we
believe that there are many more who share our appetite for bold, original and
‘difficult’ fiction. We want to provide a home for great writing which isn’t
being picked up by the mainstream.
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