'Wedding Night' – Five Minute Freewrite

This is my response to today’s freewrite challenge by @mariannewest. Today’s prompt word is “wood”. For some reason, this word immediately made me think of an old, battered, time-weathered chest of drawers. To my mind, this chest of drawers had a "family heirloom" feeling about it. That got me thinking about how the object could have been passed from generation to generation within one family – outliving many of its members over the years – and how its story could, perhaps, have begun around two hundred years ago, with a new couple who were just beginning their life together.

That made me imagine the couple's very first day as newlyweds, and then their very first night together ... which led me to some NSFW material (fair warning, in case you don't want to read that). I wanted to try and convey the sweetness of their first encounter: how there was genuine love there – in spite of the anxiety they both felt during an era when there was no such thing as sex education or porn (which is a major source of sex education for many young people nowadays, let's face it) or any resources at all which could have told them what to expect. I don't feel as though I quite captured the essence of what I wanted to say in the story below, but I did what I could, given that the limit was five minutes.

Wedding Night

Set in a rural community during the nineteenth century

The bride has no idea what to do as she sits on the bed, waiting for her new husband to finish bringing the firewood inside. Their wedding celebration had been wonderful … but now she is recalling the way the older women pulled her to one side and lectured her about certain expectations that her new husband would have tonight: how he would undoubtedly expect her to be naked at some point. She is naked now, but has pulled a thick blanket around herself so that she cannot be seen.

As her husband enters the room – with that gentle smile she loves so much, and the stray lock of hair that always ends up curving over his forehead, no matter how many times he tries to comb it back – she smiles back at him, but cannot help feeling sick with anxiety. He frowns slightly: confused by the sight of her grasping the blanket so tightly around her shoulders.

‘Have you undressed, Sylvie?’

‘I thought – I thought I should undress, before…’ – her insides curl up with the embarrassment of it all – ‘what may happen tonight … but … I shouldn’t have done it, I apologise…’

Her cheeks are crimson. She has never been so embarrassed in her life.

‘I think there should be more light in this room,’ she blurts out quickly, bustling over to the enormous wooden chest of drawers in the corner: a newly made gift from her husband’s father.

‘Sylvie –’

‘I cannot find the lamp,’ she snaps. ‘What did you do with it, Jean?’

She makes a big show out of looking for candles, paraffin oil, rummaging through the contents of the desk with a vengeance, when they both know – she can feel his sense of understanding – that the real reason she is delaying is because she is incredibly nervous.

The thought of seeing him naked, and the idea of him seeing her naked, has left her terrified. She has always been used to people lamenting her thinness, scolding her, telling her that she should be more well-rounded, more pleasing to the eye. What if her scrawny form displeases him? What if he is disgusted by her? What if he wants nothing to do with her? She does not know how she could live with the embarrassment.

And she is terrified, too, by the older women's descriptions of the sexual act. What if she hates it? What if it causes her pain? What if –

’Sylvie, please turn around.’

‘One moment, Jean,’ she replies quietly, findng the lamp oil and lamp at long last.

‘Sylvie –’

‘I just want to make sure everything looks neat,’ she mutters, randomly straightening various objects on the desk.

‘Sylvie. Please.’

Sylvie closes the drawers and takes a deep breath, then, finally, turns around to face him. He is sitting up in bed, but the covers are draped over his stomach, so all she can see of him is his chest. She wants to move towards him, but she is still very nervous. She stands by the table, irresolute, with the blanket still pulled tightly around herself.

‘Sylvie, come to me. Please.’

She sits down beside him and tentatively allows her eyes to roam over his chest.

She turns her attention to his chest hairs first, gently tracing one hand over them (with the other hand, she continues to cling to the blanket) and allowing herself to get used to their texture, their warmth, and the sensation of his bare skin beneath her fingers. His eyes are deep, reflecting the lamp light across the room, and filled with longing. She reaches up and strokes his loose lock of hair – the lock that is inexpressibly precious to her – and slowly pushes it back to kiss his forehead.

‘Sylvie, may I…’ he begins, then trails off – his voice catching – and clears his throat. ‘May I see you?’

She gazes at him for a few moments, her heart pounding, before finally allowing the blanket to fall from her shoulders.

As his eyes roam over her body, she begins to feel more embarrassed than ever. However, she resists the urge to cover herself up again. He is her husband. She loves him more than she can ever hope to express. She knows that this is something she wants to get used to: she must come to know that it is alright to be admired by him. She does want to be admired by him –and loved by him, as terrifying as the prospect might be to her right now.

He moves his own blanket away, looking somewhat nervous. When Marlene sees what is beneath it, she can only stare at him, wide-eyed, for a moment.

‘Oh! So … that is what happens when a man is…’

‘Yes.’

‘I – I was not expecting…’

‘What were you expecting?’

‘Je ne sais pas,’ she admits. I don’t know. ‘I … I am just afraid.’

He stares at her for a few moments, then puts his arms around her. She buries her head into his shoulder, and they breathe in unison for a while.

Little by little, his breathing becomes more rapid, more shallow. He gently lifts her face to meet his, holds onher tightly, and begins to kiss her with a profound, urgent passion that she has never felt from him before. She is soon swept up in it, kissing him back and pressing herself against him. His hands roam all over her body. She is shocked by the new sensations coursing through her. Never has she known anything remotely like this before – never has she known that her body was capable of feeling this way.

She fleetingly remembers the older women’s rants, and cannot help smiling to herself. Their dire strictures against the dangers of the marital bed have turned out to be woefully inaccurate.

Chest of drawers image sourced from Antiques World.