Lazy

Not checked this side of the blog for a while. Am surprised at how lax one can be. Posts with stories not uploaded (and now I can't find the relevant memory sticks, computer discs and I certainly won't be retyping from draft printouts stored in some box in some prvious home), stories not properly edited... What a mess. The one called 'Twelve', it has no purpose, no end, and it comes across as biography and it's not, it's fiction. At some point it was meant to be a collection. Not for print but for me. There was one I really liked, not finished of course and I can't even recall the tille right now, shocking, but it had a 'Snows of Kilimajaro' kind of feel. But someone said it reminded them of Stephen King's 'Misery', so I let it lie. Darn, what was it called. There were so many good titles and a brief ouline. No work done.

And there's a whole 30,000 words of a novel missing, 'Trail'(appropriately missing on the aforementioned discs). And the helpful and comic guide to the '100 Things You Really Should Have Learnt By Now' - which reached thing # 23 and fizzled out.

Clearly am still waiting for my calling and it's not that of a writer. Can't even punctuate properly at best of times and absolutely hate re-drafting. But have never been very good at hiding at home and just writing, as evidenced by 'the out and about' blog side. Sigh... I'll be dead before...

The goodbye letters - Caius

The boys don't write them, so I write them for them. At least I get to think some effort went into the sad, unavoidable parting...

Lisa, I love you so much for your warmth, for the enraptured attention you give me, for the way your eyes smile at me when you see me walking into a room in my nice coat and my even nicer suit, which I know you love the feel of. For the stories you tell me, which are not that interesting but fill the time nicely, for the way you can also shut up and just be. For the fact that you never find me boring or less than a man you admire despite the fact that I know I am not all that, none of us thinks we are all that, but you make me feel I am. You believe I’m strong and I’d protect you and look after you and bring you all you need. I love you for giving me space and not giving me stress. I love you for the way in which you can’t help touching me and flirting with me, enticing me always with some new fantasy. For how you’re creative in the way you move, the way you act even though you don’t create much literature as you should. For the fact that you’re ready to support me, to feed me, lend me money if I would ask. For the emails you send me back or the texts with encouragement. For trying to open up the world, for wanting to be good, for wanting to do right. For being silly and vulnerable and always trying to cover it up and pretending nothing hurts you that much anymore, for being the worst imitation of a cynic there is. For the way you give yourself to me and struggle to leave me be. For not asking anything of me, from me. For all the things you’re dying to tell me, involve me with, share and which I sometime ask you about or give you a chance to tell me and though I tell you can unburden, rest on my shoulder, you never do it because you don’t believe you have a right to ask as I always make sure I don’t tell you I love you, just that I care for you and will always try to be your friend but I know that’s not possible, like all the others we will fall out, your love you say is unconditional is not. It never is. I watch your face, expectantly looking into my pale green eyes which are tired in the morning and not seeing, and I see you wanting to ask, wanting to hear those words and not daring, not having the courage to cause your own pain or a pain that’s deeper than the one you try to keep at bay with your lightness. I love your touch, I love the way you cup my balls as you masturbate or suck me, how you run your fingertips and nails gently over the skin. How when you look up from my cock to my face your face is happy, your face is thankful. How when I reach down and tug at your panties and finally insert my fingers I always find you willing, always wet for me, always wanting me. I love the way you offer me your back, how you let me know when I nudge your pussy in the morning that you want nothing else than my cock fucking you without any fantasy, any drama, any fireworks, you just want me, the cock that’s an extension of me. And you kiss me and after I’ve come you leave me alone but you can’t resist embracing me, kissing me, ruffling my unruly hair gently. I love that you want to eat me, taste me and anything that comes from me. I love that you don’t push the fantasies but you tease them out of me and I surrender to you knowing I’m safe in your hands as you make Caius or Isabel come into our bed. I have not given you any names, another way in which I let you know that you cannot form any deep attachment to me and yet you do. I love the things I always find in my pockets after I leave you. The cards, the chocolates, the many other little surprises you’ve had pleasure in choosing for me. I love you Lisa, I don’t know why I still long for something I had and lost and maintain this distance from you. I can’t explain it. It’s become a habit and I still tell you I don’t want to be hurt again. But I will be because that’s how we all live, hurt gives way to joy and back to hurt and back to joy. Perhaps I don’t trust that you wouldn’t hurt me after all. I cannot know how true to me you would be. But I love you Lisa, I love that you spend time wanting to make me comfortable, excited, inspired. I love that you accept me. That you reach for my hand as we walk together down the street and draw me closer. That you like some of my music though I don’t like most of yours. That you want to dance even when you’re not moving. That I can go and see movies with someone else and you don’t follow me around my Soho haunts. I love that you want to be a homemaker and wear your high heels at the same time. That you’re sophisticated, but your tastes are simple. That you try to not let roots sink too far down into the earth. That you keep hoping to hear words of poetry and song. That you love surprises and promises. That you like houses and travels and you brush away the contradictions. That you slightly look down on people who don’t earn money every day and you slightly worship assholes who just trade cash in the City. I love that this doesn’t make you as they are. I love that you worry you’ve not inspired any film ideas in me or me any story ones in you. I love your skin that always smells like mine, I love your smoothness, your suppleness, your style, the way you put your clothes together. I love your hands that are always moving, your small back and the hips I draw towards me as I push into you. I love that you want to take photos of us, of me, where you want to see me like those actors in b/w, ten feet tall on a screen. I love that you have friends who love you and are there for you, that your colleagues admire you, that you never throw your toys out of the pram. I love that you tell me a lot, but I know you keep your secrets well hidden. I love the way you keep digging away to find our more about me when there’s nothing to find perhaps, but I keep you guessing. I love the way that the morning after you wear your pink top and unsexy slacks or walk around in men’s underpants and a t-shirt and you scrape your hair back in a ponytail and look like you’ve always looked when you’re not trying, when you’re just being you, small and full of energy, whisking me eggs for breakfast. I love that I know you fear hearing me say I’ve started seeing somebody else. I love that I will not be too upset when we part and you’ll try to hide your tears, trying to be all noble and above it, when silence or words will mean the same or nothing at all. I love that you want to climb trees, ride horses and walk all the way along a railway track that crosses an American state and when that ends you’ll head towards the mountains, crossing fields of high wheat bending in the breeze and you think I would go with you. I love that there are no cracks on you though you’ve been broken hearted. I love that you’d be clapping so hard if I won anything and would be ecstatic when I mention you in my thank you speech. I love you for just letting me think I only care for you when it’s not called care, it’s love. I love you for waiting for me to write this and slip it in your handbag for you to read every morning on your way to work. I love you Lisa.

If I was a good girl, would I write such wicked stories? - A prologue

As I run out crying from the building in Soho Square, my vision is blurred, my movements jerky and I collide with a body much taller and broader than mine. In the force of the crash I flop backwards to the floor. It’s like hitting a lamp post running. That has also happened once before and the bump in the middle of my forehead gave me an interesting alien look for a few days.
The man says ‘Jesus’ and kneels down to help me up. At least - I think vaguely - this time i have not scattered around me the copious contents of my bag. That has also happened, and not just once. The pitiful stares of men, the understanding stares of women though even my girlfriends alwasy remark ‘but what have you got in that bag?’. I tell them it’s the flight scenario with me, always ready for those 48 hours when the world ends and you are stuck in an elevator. If those people had something to read and write with and eat, they wouldn’t talk so much rubbish. No, this time I came out to impress, with a small Gucci leather teeny bag that’s still worn bandolier style across my chest.
As he pulls me up i see who he is and I go ‘Oh no, not now!’
He gives me a quizzical look. I hurriedly try to explain, ‘It’s not what you think, it really isn’t.’
‘You can tell what I am thinking? he says smiling which i don’t think is that fair as I am genuinely distressed here, though it’s not raining so my clothes are clean and my hair is not frizzy.
‘You are thinking that it’s about some men trouble. That I just got served divorce papers and found out at the same time that my husband has already taken the children out of the country.’ I trail off.
‘So it’s not that then’.
‘No, it’s just that i think my short story collection is not going to get any good reviews.’ And here i burst into tears again, damn the fact that they come easy to me. I resume ‘And without good reviews, who’s going to bother reading it? It’s not like the publishers are spending much money marketing it, it’s small fry for them, I didn’t start with a newspaper column or anything, there’s no tv series.’
‘It’s not the end of the world’ he says.
‘Yes it is, yes it is’ I say, tremendously annoyed that my voice probablys sounds as it does in my head, that of a ten year old on a strop. ‘It’s not like it’s for you’ I continue ‘You do a film that’s a flop, but people forgive you because you did thers that are good (brain already searching files, which good ones? the one with the bus in LA, that was cool), but this is my first book and it’s just I’m not going to recover if it takes a battering.’
‘Why would it, is it that bad?’
‘No, but it’s got this mixture of light and superficial and then self obsessed and withering and reviewers won’t get the irony, the metafitction of it, the Houellebeq without the theories and written by a woman who’s not French, and you can’t draw their attention to this or it’s like calling them stupid and they hate that. You are not supposed to ever be more clever than your critics.’
‘Have you got it on you?’ he asks, ignoring all my clever stuff about ‘the theory of it’.
‘Yes of course’. It’s a bit crushed but I made it fit in the teeny bag, so I pull it out.
‘Then why don’t we go to a bar nearby and I can read some of it now and tell you what i think. If you want my opinion’ he says with a trace of humility that I really appreciate.
‘Sure, but there’s no role in it for you, I must tell you now, as you are probably 40 but you look younger and you’re far to attractive to be from these parts.’
‘No problem’ he says evenly, not picking up on my flattery offering.

I am perfectly made up that he’s not suggested we go to one of his clubs like I am sure he’s a member of Soho House and the like. There to be honest nobody would notice us because they are trained not to. We are actually walking in Soho and end up sitting with the hoi polloi in Greek street. I hope no gay guy dares to interrupt our little tete a tete, he’s one of the ones they claim for their species after all (like Tom, Richard, Brad etc., despite the wives and kids and if you ask for hard evidence they say they know their on set dresser and he swears by it but I’ve never seen the photos).
But it’s fine really, he’s not wearing some long black leather coat after all and the sunglasses are different. He’s probably closer to the look he had in that surf film, his first? Not sure, really he was not in my canon. Anyway, nobody I know walks by that I can impress with my new friend.
He sits intently reading the opening pages and drinking mineral water. He chuckles - good sign.
‘How much time have you got?’ I ask.
‘About half an hour’ he says glancing at his watch.
‘Then you should skip and read some of the others. Here, try this one’ I say reaching to turn the pages making sure our hands don’t brush against each other. ‘It’s different in tone to the one you just looked at.’
He starts to read and after a few minutes raises an eyebrow ‘Mmh, yes, but you are still angry!’
‘No, not me’ I correct ‘the character. It’s like when you are in a movie, you don’t automatically assume the story is based on the scriptwriter’s life ... not if it’s an adaptation anyway, but if the scriptwriter is Charlie Kauffman, then, er , you do.’
‘Great guy, I’d like to work with him someday’ he says with a sudden note of real enthusiasm in his voice.
‘I think that would be great’ I say, stopping just in time before the following, sarky stuff escapes my lips, ‘Would be interesting to see what type of performance that would force you to give, for a change.’
After fifteen more nail biting (mine - his are perfectly square and neat) minutes, he shuts the book and says ‘I like it. Can I take it with me? I can show it to a few people.’
‘Er, yes, thank you for that, but you know, it’s already published, it’s in the shops in two weeks.’
‘Yes, but I mean, one of the stories could be developed into a quirky movie, like some 21st century comedy of manners.’
‘Sure, thank you again.’ I say, wincing imperceptibly at the word ‘quirky’, which i am most definitely not. It’s other people that are far too ... far too well adjusted, It’s all surface anyway, I am sure, scratch a little deeper and you would come away with tremendous stories.
We shake hands, exchange numbers even. And I manage all this resisting the temptation of asking for an autograph. I only have three, alll from writers, and only one of them is really well known.

I watch him walk away in that way they have to make themselves not noticeable. That was good I reflect, and best of all we got by avoiding using his name which I’m never sure how to pronounce: Kyanu’, Keenoo. I sit back, puzzled. Shame it was not Johnny Depp I think. Now, he’s my favourite, that ‘I don’t care look’ he always slips in and he’s got a better rep frankly.

See? Am i ever satisfied? Not even in my fantasies. Though it’s not that far fetched as it happens. I have a friend whose friend is a good friend of Keanu, and i know this person too, only a bit peripherally, she lives in LA and she thinks he’s a great guy. So it’s only one degree of separation and it could really happen as I told it here.

Filthy Plaything & Pussy Parfaite

to be added

Twelve

My name is Laura and I am 12.
As I sit outside my parents house playing with Bella’s three puppies, Bubi, Bobo and Bina - the only ones I have been allowed to save from the litter that my father drowned less than a month ago - the things about my life that I don’t know yet are many. For example that the grain and green fields on either side of the family home will give way to large villas owned respectively by the Minto’s, the Franceschi’s and the Cavallin’s. All the streets will be paved eventually and my mother will be happy that the few cars going past won’t spray veils of dust that she removes every day with soft resignation from her gleaming furniture. That the giant walnut tree opposite will be cut down to make room for yet another house – the Barin’s younger son - before I’ll have achieved my goal of climbing it. I can’t do this now as I sit here in my matching red and white stripey vest and shorts, because I am a girly girl with soft blonde dawn on my legs, not a tomboy like my younger sister Monica, whose red wavy hair is always cut short. The other kids call her Gian Burrasca, after a ginger haired wild boy in a comic strip. She hates it and throws stones at them. Nobody can yet prove to her that this colour makes her unique. Unique is bad when you’re 8 and she desperately wants to be blonde like her idol Bjorn Borg. I instead like Mark Spitz, the Olympic swimmer and our posters fight for space on the walls of the bedroom we share.

But after I’ll have been to the Himalayas in my 39th year, I’ll know that I could have climbed the tree easily and gone all the way to the top branches. I got stronger that Autumn, more sporty, and suddenly I wanted to climb trees and mountains, raft down rivers and ride a yak by the horns across a barren plateau on top of the world.

I would have started my tree climb at dusk, avoided dinner and ‘them’ shouting after me. I am sure there would have been something I wanted ‘them’ to pay for. The crimes committed against children’s freedom of choice are a bundle, everything starts with “No, you can’t” and the only retribution available is to scare your parents to death. I’d have remained there to watch my family looking for me below and gazed at the stars for as long as possible. The stars are another thing that I don’t know yet will become less and less visible. They will practically become invisible through the haze of small industry emissions pouring into the air of this productive section of Italy’s North Eastern territory.

Other things I don’t know yet are that the older son of the doctors Brunelli’s (she cardiac, he gyno) who’ll rape me when I am 14, will die in a road crossing accident when he is 37. And that the same thing will happen, although not on the same day, to the only daughter of the Riello’s industrialist family whose imposing pile sat diagonally across our road. She died at 17 and I remember my mother saying many times “What use is all their money now, they are broken, shattered”. And she hugged me. After Sara died the house and the garden remained unaltered for years and we never saw anyone visit. But her mum took to having the hairdresser come to her at home to avoid seeing reflecting back at her in the mirrors the pity in the eyes of the other shampoo and set women.

Sara crossed the road by the notorious traffic lights on the road from Padua to Bassano intersecting with the new ring-road joining Vicenza with Treviso. This junction is a mere 200 yards from our houses and so her parents probably heard the sound of metal crashing – it was a summer evening, all windows would have been open –and the sirens getting to the accident. The motorist who killed her is not from these parts, which is a blessing as it’s a small town and we’d have pointed at him for years in church or at the shops. Everyone local knows about the traffic lights and takes care when approaching, which is why it’s strange that Sara died that way. She knew, should have known. Perhaps she had been watching the traffic for a while before she decided to step out. She was alone. The newspaper said the motorist suddenly saw her in front of him. I was older than her and not in her class, but I think she was bullied because she was that double combination that’s lethal at school: she was shy and she was ugly. I remember thinking that all the money in the world wouldn’t make me want to swap places with her (and that’s before she was dead).

As for Roberto, I don’t know why he crossed the road, though there was a large furniture showroom near the junction by then, but I wanted to go and thank the driver who mowed him down, a lorry driver from Vicenza whose face looked defiant in the newspaper photo. He wouldn’t have known that for years I’d waited for my time to do the same thing. But I was scared that someone may have read the look on my face and my intentions and I may now be writing from prison. They’d have told me that two wrongs don’t make a right. I know that, but sometimes two wrongs give you back peace.

Right now it’s nearly 4 o/clock and I’ve done my homework after lunch and I’m waiting to go play with Cristina, who will become a surgeon and Roberto’s wife. I will see Cristina for years to come, she was my friend when we were little and they never moved away after they married. We play school or shops and force our little sisters to be students or housewives. Still, she and I fight every time over who gets to teach or sell. We agree there should be more students and housewives, but neither of us wants to take orders. When we play grocery store we collect the smallest size vegetables and fruit we can find in our parents’ orchards. We get told off for stripping the plants of un-ripened produce, but we love to trade our tiny tomatoes and finger sized zucchini. We learn to count money this way.

Cristina and Roberto live in the same house where it happened. I never went to that room again until she asked me in after their first baby was born. I see they have shifted things around since his mother died and so the room is now a sitting room. At least the bed is gone. I wondered for years if he’d kept it and who slept in it, a single bed with pale lemon coloured sheets. If he sometimes relived the scene and if he enjoyed the memory even more. After all, when I was 14 and he 22 it was over pretty fast. (decide later if to expand the scene here, how /what time it was, describe him )

Sure I liked him, he went to university and lent me some of his rock records, but that time I’d only gone in to get the cold drink he offered in the summer heat. If I’d had more clothes on for him to struggle through perhaps he wouldn’t have got away with it, someone may have come back, though both his parents were at work, or my mother may have shouted for me to come in, or one of his kid brothers may have burst in looking for the cat to torment. But I was wearing next to nothing, a short denim mini, a top with no bra underneath. I knew even back then they’d have said it was my fault somehow. And the librarian would have confirmed I was reading adult books since I was 11 and had no business sticking my nose into Erica Jong, Germaine Greer or the semi-hidden Henry Millers.

Other things I don’t know at 12 are that making hay would disappear and so will most farmers. There is no hay and even where there is, they gather it not by hand, mowing it down with a sickle, but with big machines. The hay stacks don’t stay where they are gathered and they are not conically shaped like funny teepees we kids can hide around and inside of and get all scratchy whilst the adults drink nearby sat on chairs they’ve dragged out of their kitchens. The new hay gets rolled up and inserted in that blue tarpaulin that you also see on TV when they show refugee camps anywhere in the world. I will wonder who invented it and why is it always just blue -perhaps to give the illusion of a sunny sky? I am curious now, but by the time I am older I will constantly hang on to facts and information that is irrelevant to my life. The rolls of hay get stacked up by a crane and get left outside. Nobody has stables and haylofts any more. It’s houses and more houses, increasingly larger but with smaller gardens as the land gets parcelled up and no one plays outside any more. None of the houses are more than 3 storeys high to comply with a town decree that states no building should be taller than the medieval city walls. The decree also gives the choice of colours for the outer walls. “Next they’ll tell us what car we are allowed to drive down our street” says my father.

(other things I don’t know are that) The irrigation canals that I used to walk in, feeling the cold water splashing against my legs and the soft mud at the bottom of my sandals and spooking myself with fear of eels (irrational, they only inhabit lagoons) and frogs (rational, but they don’t bite, I know because I’ve collected spawn and watched them grow), are now hidden under the remaining fields. The water can’t be heard as it runs inside cement pipes. Neither will you hear cows or smell pigs. But then we kept away from the farms down the dirt tracks and the stench of manure, though that is only strong in October when they cover the fields to keep them warm for winter. On this day when I let the three puppies chew my fingers with their sharp little teeth, all other animals are asleep inside their stables, too parched to move.

Later on in the evening after dinner, I will help my sister catch fireflies and we’ll keep them trapped I an upside glass on our bedside tables. By morning we’ll toss out the dried up black corpses. Neither of us thinks this is particularly cruel, there are so many, a few won’t be missed. We simply like the greeny/blue evanescent light of the insects’ wings and fall asleep watching their frenzied dance that slows progressively down. Anyway, it’s not like what Dante does to lizards, hanging them by their tails to a washing line and torching them from below to see how they wriggle. Until Roberto’s attack Dante is the most evil boy I know. His mother doesn’t freak out that much when mine complains that he tied me and Monica to a pole and made us watch his gruesome rituals. We think that’s because his family lived in Venezuela for a many years and they treat animals differently there perhaps. I will be 33 when I eventually visit that country and no, they don’t burn lizards for fun, not even in the Amazon.

Contessa

Clive met Liliana in the autumn. That October and November they went everywhere together and London belonged to them. He liked Liliana because she was exotic, petite, feminine, stylish in her well-matched outfits, and intellectually clever and bright. She never let him call her Lily though. ‘I am not a flower, certainly not one that’s white, sort of cheap and standard at weddings and funerals now.’ She liked him because he was very English, tall, strong, stylish in his well-matched outfits, and intellectually clever and bright.

He impressed her with his ambition and hard work ethic. She impressed him with her flair. At his 37th birthday drinks in December he hoped she hadn’t noticed only three of his friends turned up (the other four were acquaintances). One was an ex girlfriend, but he didn’t tell Liliana that. One was an architect Liliana had slept with a few years before, though Clive was never to know it.
They went out several times and he always paid her taxi fare back. One evening she gave him a lift to his flat in Islington and said: ‘Am I going to come up for coffee then or what?’ And with that she did. He was afraid she might not like it, as it was much smaller than it looked from the Georgian façade outside. It was decorated in a 70’s theme throughout. Each room had splashes of colour: yellow in the study, bright green in the living room, blue in the bathroom and red in the bedroom. Liliana said ‘You would so get on with my mother who thinks my kitchen should be peach and gives me items accordingly - tea towels, place holders, crockery - I thank her and take them to the charity shops as I like white, just white.’ A few weeks after they first slept together, he took her suggestion and swapped the red linen in the bedroom for white Egyptian cotton.

That New Year’s Eve Clive was on his way to a trendy party - a few friends had joined up and splashed out on a suite at the Hempel Hotel, bringing a few bottles of champagne each. He wasn’t sure if he would meet someone at this party; he thought not as most people were couples, so, to reassure himself he called Liliana who was skiing in Austria. He told her: ‘Seeing as I am glad I met you and have totally enjoyed our time together so far, I wanted to tell you I would like to see even more of you in the coming year.’ He paused. ‘Would you like to be my girlfriend?’
Liliana, on seeing Clive’s name on the display of her mobile phone, had disentangled herself from the arms of her skiing instructor, Anton (a repeat performance from the previous season) and shushed him. The TV was showing Jaws, which was an odd choice of NYE programming, even for Austrians. They hadn’t gone out because frankly what was the point? Anton was so healthy he only drank fruit teas! On hearing Clive’s slightly old fashioned words Liliana said a breathy ‘Yes, oh yes’ and a few more words to ensure he would not fall prey to temptation at his party. She had already climaxed and didn’t have further sex with Anton after this, so technically, she reasoned, she hadn’t been unfaithful and exclusivity hadn’t been previously discussed.

At the airport on her return Clive nearly missed her at arrivals. She was excited to see him and they sat drinking Vecchia Romagna brandy on the journey into Liverpool Street station. He didn’t want to miss her face when she opened the door to her home. ‘Oh my god’ she exclaimed, when she saw the assorted flowers he had scattered on the stairs and the trail ended with a quilt of red rose petals on her bed. He had also bought her that month’s Vogue in all its foreign editions (Liliana spoke several languages). They had a splendid afternoon chatting and having sex the way he liked it, soft and gentle.

He called her his Contessa. She was charmed that some of his circle upon meeting her seemed to know her by that name. ‘Look’ she sometimes pointed out, ‘I appreciate the flattery behind it, but my father is working class. Clive may love this little delusion, but please know that I am not ashamed of my humbler origins! Besides, to my previous boyfriend I was a Princess,’ she giggled.

All was well but there were little tensions. Liliana didn’t seem to remember Clive hated scaly and bony fish; one time she cooked him trout and another time she cooked sardines. He was upset that she had forgotten his preferences. Also she couldn’t hold back on the spices he disliked. ‘But darling’ she said ‘what will you do when we go to Rajasthan?’ Clive didn’t have the heart to tell her that the dust of India was never going to stick to his clothes. That was definitely not his kind of country.

At Easter he took Liliana to meet his parents in Bristol. ‘You know’, she said, as he resolutely refused to break the speed limit on the motorway, ‘I don’t mind this car, gets you from A to B, but if you really want to impress clients and charge higher fees, driving an H reg Peugeot 205 is not going to do it.’ Noticing his expression had clouded she quickly added ‘It doesn’t have to be a shit hot new car, but how about an old Merc? I see you with that, we can go halves on getting one if you like. Oh, and sorry for swearing, I know it’s not ladylike.’
On arrival at the grand house in the crescent Liliana was ecstatic. As she took in the intense population of objects in all the rooms: the shawls draped on the banister, the hats displayed on the walls, the numerous collections of china sets, the antique mementoes and variety of fabrics, she squealed sidling up to him when his parents were in the kitchen. ‘Oh my god, now I know why your flat is so minimalist and you don’t like spending time at mine, it’s like your former home! Your mother is a kindred soul and you hate us both probably.’
Clive didn’t reply, but he thought ‘Yes, maybe my mother with her love of amateur dramatics and the starving minorities of the third world and you with the India obsession and your ethnic music and your Third World Development studies are similar people. And my mother was a sharp dresser in her youth too.’

Liliana liked to bathe; Clive liked showers because he said ‘Sitting in a bath is like sitting in your own dirty water’.
‘But, darling’ she answered, ‘never mind that neither of us is a construction labourer and we wash everyday. Sure if I washed my hair and shaved my legs at the same time the water may be a bit scummy, but I don’t do that. It would be so nice to have a bath together…and play about.’ Clive said his limbs were too long to fit in and he really didn’t like baths. Once on walking in on her he saw the water was yellowish and was horrified that she had peed in it. ‘It happens to everyone!’ she’d said, and made a point of fetching the Mr Muscle and a J-cloth.

Clive also resented that she would notice that his Gucci shoes needed re-heeling or that she took his coats to the drycleaners and mothballed one he hardly ever wore.
‘I didn’t ask you to do that’ he said. Liliana replied ‘I may be a Contessa, but as you don’t provide any maids I might as well deal with these things for you’. She further offered to wear a maid’s outfit and pretend to have used brown polish for his black shoes so that Clive, if he felt like being the Count, could punish her, but ‘outfits’ did not turn him on.

In the expensive shops he loved, they looked and touched suits and coats, but always found a reason not to buy anything. It was clear to Liliana that Clive could afford the ties, perfumes and the shoes, but not really the briefcases or the suits that cost close to a grand. Though she’d heard him say to friends that he did really well with his marketing consultancy, she’d seen the bank statements he kept under the bed. She wasn’t prying, they were loose on the floor and she was looking for space to store winter clothes.

They had their first real argument on holiday in Majorca. Clive had booked four nights at an all inclusive holiday resort. Liliana asked him to change it to two nights ‘Because we might not like it and this way we can go somewhere else and explore’. He complied, but when they got there he loved it and went to Reception to reinstate to four nights but it was now full. They went wandering round the sea front to find something else but nothing pleased him and they couldn’t afford the five star hotels. They chose a place that, according to Liliana, looked like something out on one of the old Hollywood boulevards. It was a three star and she liked the fact it had a seventies faded feel and bougainvillaea in the garden.
‘Look here we have a real sea view,’ she said, ‘Only mass tourists don’t stray from the swimming pools in the compounds, and we can go eat at the harbour, it’s bound to be more picturesque than the buffet.’ But to Clive The Rivarosa felt sad, it was empty apart for them and a few other couples, and it had no pool and no giant dining room laden with abundant foods. On the third day Liliana said ‘Look we both have credit cards, let’s go to the five star, what the heck.’ But Clive refused. Liliana made fun of him ‘You are sulking like a little boy, come on, what does it matter, we are on holiday and we are together, what more do you need?’

This was after they had had a mini break in Naples, where Liliana had arranged to stay with old friends of hers. They put them up in a room with twin beds. Liliana thought it was funny and wanted to pretend they were teenage lovers hiding in the bedroom to study maths together with the parents in the living room. Clive booked them into a hotel from the next night. On a shopping spree that afternoon, egged on by Liliana, he bought a pair of leather trousers and some funky sunglasses. That night they had fun with Liliana pretending she was a chambermaid and Clive was Michael Hutchence, on a lost weekend still in town on his own after INXS had gone on to the next date of their tour. But neither was comfortable with the fake script that they’d improvised and had to agree acting is harder than you think. Liliana added, ‘Now do you believe that I never had a one night stand with a rock star?’

Back in London the leather trousers seemed stupid and he never wore them again. ‘Keep them’, Liliana said, ‘You never know when you may want to try a fetish club or pretend to be gay at Halloween, I could get you a diamond stud earring, like Beckham!’ Clive thought ‘Hell will freeze over first,’ but didn’t say anything. He didn’t want to encourage her. Like that time she’d asked ‘Can we, like, watch a porn video?’ Clive was astounded ‘That’s not real, it’s so fake, how can you…?’
She looked at him puzzled, ‘Yes I know it’s not real, you’d have to be a sad person to be that deluded as to think that’s how people relate to each other. And frankly you don’t see the edits, when the girls have to stop because they are gagging. I hate the propagation of that myth - that you can go on and on, but…ok can we just have some dirty sex, you know, you throw me around a bit, maybe change positions? Or just talk dirty to me? Sometimes? One time?’
He acquiesced, but the ensuing result was not hand in glove, more like elbow in neck, knee in groin and Clive couldn’t come up with any words. Liliana said ‘Say anything, say… “diesel”. So long as you repeat it in a low voice and get a rhythm it will turn me on.’ But “diesel” was not the right word and he couldn’t use any other that she suggested.

For her birthday Clive gave Liliana a delicate bracelet, a pair of pink satin marabou feather mules and a photo biography of Jacqueline Kennedy, a woman whose style he greatly admired, together with that of Audrey Hepburn. Liliana commented ‘Ah Jackie O, so pristine, so well turned out. Shame old Jack K liked his other women to be more like Marilyn. If he weren’t a President he’d have made a great gangster. Hey, let’s pretend you are Jack and I am Marilyn and you just found me kissing your brother in law, so you can get angry?’

When he left her in September Clive thought it was because Liliana wasn’t his Contessa after all and he couldn’t be a number of people for her: ski instructor, rock star, a haughty count, a merchant banker, a scriptwriter, a baker, a gangster. He didn’t feel guilty letting her continue her search.

Johnny & Lula

Johnny & Lula

An intake of breath later I gasp, ‘Don't know when I last hoovered the carpet on the stairs . . . but I should do it very soon.’
‘What are you talking about?’ says Jeremy, taking his jacket off and letting it drop, a thud as his mobile phone hits the red-varnished floorboards.
‘Didn't you notice I was a bit unresponsive when you were fucking me from behind? I had to keep my mouth shut so I wouldn't choke on the dust balls. You had my face pushed right into the steps. They are filthy.’
He laughs heartily. ‘Sorry, sweetheart, I had no idea.’
I give him a mock duh look. ‘You didn't notice I didn't grab you much? Like when you stuck your dick in my mouth I didn't use my hand? I took my chewing gum out but I couldn't think of where to put it. I was trying to reach the wall but you didn't let me – bit gross I know.’
His face creases into a wider smile. ‘Ingrid, remind me to book an appointment next time you want a surprise fuck, so you can sort all these little things out.’
‘Oh gosh no, it's not like that, but I heard this story recently. Friend of mine's boyfriend got chewing gum tangled into his pubic hair. I tell you it wasn’t pleasant.’
‘She had it in her mouth? Trashy girl . . .’
‘No, I mean she did, but it got lost in the bed and he woke up thinking, “Christ, what's this?”’
‘Oh come on,’ says Jeremy, smoothing down his shirt.
‘No, it's true, they were both crying with laughter when they told me, and you know the best part? They weren't even together that long when it happened. I think it's a good sign. That relationship will last, I tell you.’
‘God, some of your friends are mad.’
‘They’re not mad, and she’s a lawyer!’ I say, on the defensive.
I throw my coat on the nearest chair and as I turn to open the fridge he grabs me by the hips and pulls me to him.
‘Hey, wait, can't we open a bottle of wine first?’
‘No, I want you over here,’ he says, playfully twisting one of my arms behind my back.
He positions me in front of the large mirror in the living room, pulls my skirt up and in one smooth movement hooks his hand inside my tights and knickers. In two yanks they are down around my ankles. I don’t think this is a very attractive look, so I reach down and remove them completely.
‘I should have worn hold ups. Sorry I had no time, but managed at least to change into a short skirt. Do you like it?’
Running his hand over the fabric he says, ‘Yes, I do, especially the feel of it. What is it?’
‘Satin I believe. You should have seen me with the teenagers in Top Shop where I bought it. Felt a bit of a fraud and thought the music was too loud. Me!’
Jeremy’s not listening. Swiftly hitching me up on his hips he slides me over his hard cock. I let out a quick scream and he freezes for a second.
‘Am I hurting you?’ he asks, concerned.
‘No, no, but the curtains are open.’
‘Oh leave them,’ he says, resuming his pushing. I know he can’t keep this position up for long, but I appreciate he’s trying and it’s so pretty to watch.
‘No, no, it's bad enough I nearly died when the light went off in the hall earlier. What would we have done if the neighbours had come in then?’
‘Nothing, we'd have heard them turning keys in the door and stuff first.’
‘You might have. I wouldn’t. I was trying not to eat dust, remember? It's bad enough you grabbed me in the car earlier.’
‘You shouldn't bend like that to get the shopping.’
‘Back door doesn't open, and you put the stuff on the back seat,’ I say feebly.
‘Anyway, it's quiet around here,’ he replies.
‘Agreed, but it's only seven o'clock. There's people coming back from work.’
‘Oh, Ingrid, stop it now.’ He pulls out and dropping me on my knees thrusts his cock in my mouth again. I register that it tastes clean, a mixture of me, with just a faint hint of that body lotion he uses after the gym.

We catch each other both looking sideways at our reflections. I know he's thinking 'movies' – after all, I tell him often enough that he's nearly as big as that super-porn hero I like, the Italian one, Rocco. I am vain, too, but I think other movies, box office stuff. The light is dim and in this halfway position I sort of look like that woman in Star Wars, not the first one, the latest one, what's her name? Natalie Portman. I think of her as French but the name is not entirely. Jeremy looks good too. My mouth is sliding effortlessly up and down on his cock. His hair is still brown here, not grey like on his head and the forest on his chest. He has a hint of a tan, but maybe again it's the light. He didn’t go with us to Formentera this year. I can still remember the argument we had and the kids got very upset. I felt like some sad divorcee and of course none of my single friends wanted to come with us – wouldn’t have been much fun going to bed early and being all responsible. Mirelle likes her cocktails, so does Hannah, though now that she’s pregnant perhaps not; Maxine was busy working. Oh never mind. He didn’t come with us and we managed, end of story.

Jeremy lifts me up and turns me to face the table. Just as well I haven't set it yet as I’m soon holding the edges while he keeps fucking me. This is a good height for both of us. We are not going to come, not now I don’t think. We are just finding out that our bodies are the same as the last time, that it feels good this way or that way. I try to kiss him – I always do – but he's not in that mood. I am not sure he ever was. I think of a much younger lover I had once. We used to kiss all the time. Maybe you don't kiss so much when you are older or just not so in love perhaps.
After a few last harder thrusts he pulls out. I move away. My heels gets caught in the cracks between the floorboards. ‘Damn this floor. It drives me nuts.’
‘Take your shoes off then. I know you don’t like being short, but it’s fine by me.’
‘No, it rather ruins the outfit. Wait, I'll go find different ones and some hold-up stockings. Feel naked without them.’ I return from the bedroom with an even higher, but less spiky pair.
I reach for the bags from Marks & Spencer and start opening packets and getting pans out of cupboards, but Jeremy says he's got us a surprise starter. And it is: paté de foie gras. In his excitement he's forgotten I don't eat meat. In my excitement I say I'll have some. Why the hell not? I was never a veggie for the sake of the animals, and if I were, this would be really the wrong sort of meat to eat. I allow myself a little, just in case a stomach upset by long-forgotten protein ends up ruining our evening. The wine he's brought to go with it has the consistency of an intoxicating liqueur. I wonder if I'll ever stop associating anything French with his ex-girlfriend. It was long ago, but moments later as if on cue he says, ‘I’ve been talking to my dad and really, you know that spare cash I saved? Well, it can’t buy much here – in fact, nothing in London and nothing much in Devon. I was thinking of Northern France. What do you think?’
‘Don’t know, Jez, I think if you are planning to drive it’s still a long way there and back, depends how often you’ll do it.’
‘Every couple of weeks, if I get the contract I want,’ he says, savouring his baguette.
I am not sure I like France at all – Italy suits me better – but he does. I hold back criticizing his plan; it could take months to find the property and sort out the admin, so I beam him a smile and ask, 'Can we have dogs there?’
‘Sure, why not? We can bring them back and forth now,’ he answers in his best indulgent voice.
'But they'll be confused by the language and where do we keep them here? This flat’s too small.’
‘Let's start with just one dog. OK?'
‘Fine, but we’ll have to fight the kids for who gets to name him. If we are not careful we’ll end up with something out of a Pokemon sticker pack.’
I turn away to get my starter. It’s come out well too: Thai prawns on a bed of noodles, just a little as there's tuna steaks and vegetables and dessert – all easy. Dessert is one of my favourites, couldn't be simpler: slices of panettone dipped in brandy. Jeremy doesn't do coffee, which is an inconceivable flaw. Maybe that’s why the French girl left him. I could have some, but it feels wrong. I could definitely do with a cigarette though, but those are totally out of bounds. He hates smokers, says watching his mother slowly die of emphysema was agony for him. I am not sure that has anything to do with me making an effort to give up; it's more likely those ads about prematurely ageing skin speak to me more strongly.
I see Jeremy looking at some of the Christmas presents still unopened under the tree, and that reminds me: ‘Lula wants to go climbing with you. “Real mountains” – she said it again yesterday. You have to take her. You promised.’
‘I mean to. I want her to get a taste for it but it needs planning. It has to be somewhere safe, and it's too cold now. Shall I call them? What time is it?’
‘No, my mum will be putting them to bed shortly. Best not to get them excited again. Johnny was a bit fractious anyway – he’s still dragging that flu with him.’

We feed each other some more panettone on the sofa and there's a movie on. We watch it for a while. It's near the end, but it’s boring and I want to switch off but Jeremy says, 'Wait, there's more.'
'When did you see this?' I ask, absent-mindedly picking up some of Johnny’s Playstation2 discs from the floor.
'When it came out,’ he replies.
I do the maths quickly. 'Not with me you didn't,' I say, turning sharply to face him.
'I was probably away working in Northampton then,’ comes the measured reply.
Changing the subject I add, ‘You must really help me to get Johnny understand he can’t just leave his stuff wherever it suits him. It turns into chaos in here and you know he listens to you.’
‘I will talk to him,’ says Jeremy, not really paying attention, ‘but you have to cut him some slack. His school reports are rather good aren’t they?’
‘Yes, they are, but even Lula picks up after him and I don’t want her to. She’s got years of that to come when she grows up, believe me.’

When the movie ends I get up to get some more wine and say, ‘Hey, I found some footage of me in a mini-kilt, just like in one of your fantasies. Wanna watch?’
He sits straighter on the sofa and takes a sip from his glass. He looks a bit unsure, and I can read his thoughts so clearly: 'Who filmed you then?' But he’s too cool for that and he controls it.
‘Sure, show me,’ he says, and lies back.
I press Play. I lined it up earlier, and we see these two children in matching red tartan skirts. They are gathering snowballs on a pavement by some black iron gates. The colours are saturated bright; it was a sunny day.
‘Which one are you?’ asks Jeremy, smiling as my little trick is revealed.
‘I'm the one on the left, in the little white boots. How cute are they? The other one is my cousin Susan.’
‘How old were you there?’
I nestle on his lap and kiss his neck. ‘Two and a half, nearly three. My mum is not pregnant with my sister here yet – must have been the following year.’ She's nice, my mum. I take in the stylish sixties coat casually on her shoulders, fox on the collar with a silver brooch, and her black hair, lacquered high. The images fizz out to static.
‘Such a pity there was no money to shoot hours of Super 8, only a few minutes here and there,’ I remark.
‘Super 8 films only came in rolls of a few minutes each,’ Jeremy says.
‘They did? You know everything, darling.’ I've lost interest already and am pulling at his belt. ‘Take it off,’ I say.
‘No, you take it off for me, then maybe if you are good . . .’
‘Oh,’ I say, a touch too quickly, ‘you'll go down on me? You haven't done that yet. You seem a bit cock centred tonight.’
I pull his jeans down and now comes the awkward moment – you never get over it. What to do when they are blocking his movements, halfway down his thighs, his knees? But he moves away and takes his shoes and socks off like you don’t even notice, and the jeans come off pretty fast. He's great Jez, he never fears losing his erection for one second. Not even after a bottle of wine on his own. All is done so fast. I imagine him arriving in the operating theatre and just thrusting his hands into the sleeves of the gown, which a nurse is holding ready for him. Someone will put the mask on him, hand him the gloves. Like dressers do for actors. He fucks me for a while then pulls out and kneels on the floor and starts to lick me, very slowly. I forgot how good he is. When he does it, I get the full edit. I make sure he's got a cushion under his knees. I want this to last as long as possible but I am too excited and he knows it. He moves his tongue faster then slows down and faster again and I come clutching his shoulders and burying his face into me. As I go limp he lifts me and carries me to the bedroom. I like this part; my weight is easy on him. Though I am aware it's not a great distance to go, I know he'd carry me to safety if our home was washed away in a flood. He’d walk for miles. I like holding on to him, breathing in the creases of his neck. He throws me on the bed and I reach to turn the small fairy lights on. In this light you can't see I haven’t had time to tidy up in here. Not that it makes any difference to him.
Turning around I knock a pile of books from under the window and they scatter around.
'You've got too many books in here,' he says.
'I know, mean to read them but who's got the time? Shall I read you a story now?' I ask teasingly, picking up a hefty novel.
‘No, I have brought back a little something, a toy,’ he says.
‘Oh yeah,’ I answer, eyes I am sure glimmering with anticipation, ‘what is it?’
He goes into the living room and comes back with his hands behind his back. I can't see what it is, but I want to be helpful. ‘Shall I get a blindfold?’
‘Yes, but first I want you to wear this,’ he says handing me a . . . ‘A hospital gown?’ I screech. ‘Honey, this rather defeats all my efforts with the “turning on” underwear, but whatever does it for you, does it for me – I think. Can I keep my stockings on and my heels?’
‘No, I want you to take everything off.’
I do, and put on the soft cotton robe with the silly fastening at the back, and then the blindfold. Thank god this one doesn’t have an airline logo on it, but it’s white so it goes with the theme. I lie back and can't stop squeezing my legs together as I feel the excitement building up in my womb. His hands pull my knees apart gently and I barely feel he's inserted something and it's not his hot cock. The hospital gown rather gave it away I think and it's one of those gynaecological gizmos, the ones that seemed so frightening when you first went for your swabs as a teenager. Now it's not such a scary thing; the cold metal feels fantastic as it cools the temperature in my body. I want to touch it and hold it, but I hear the noise it makes when it gets screwed into place. I can only guess Jez is looking at me, deep inside me, as he's not touching me, just saying ‘Very nice’ in a hypnotized sort of rhythm.
‘Is everything OK with my womb, doctor?’ I ask in my best tremulous voice.
‘Yes,’ he replies, ‘you’ve done a great job with the shaving.’
‘Mmm yes, I knew you’d appreciate it.’ I hear the noise of his hand rubbing himself. I instantly want to participate, but in this game tonight I don't necessarily make the rules, though my co-operation is required soon after. As he frees me from the implement he loses the faraway look and says, ‘You know I wouldn’t ever think of this when I am with patients, don’t you?’
‘I know, honey, and thank god you are not a gynaecologist. And I’d ask for a woman anyway. But it can be very erotic. We know it, you know it.’
I consider for a moment whether this is bizarre. It is not the most bizarre thing I can think of. You use what you know. If Jez was a barber he’d give me the most erotic haircut ever. If he was an accountant he’d make me write figures very precisely in a big ledger, murmuring numbers in my ears as I sit on his knees and concentrate. We’d be wearing suits of course and he would spank me if I added up wrong. But he’s not a fetishist and never requests anything kinky and there are no obscenities either. Now there’s a word . . . I wish there was some kind of evolution in the language available to us for all this: throbbing, pulsing, rubbing, pumping, cock, cunt – it’s all so basic. I specifically hate ‘juicy’.
He strokes the back of my neck and I feel like a sort of Bambi going doe-eyed and sleepy, but he’s not ready for that. He moves his hand to the front and gently presses on my windpipe. There’s an exercise that feels like this in yoga class: you compress the thyroid and when you let go, your blood courses faster around your veins and you get a small rush. He knows I get off on my throat being constricted, but is ever so careful and never presses that hard. We fuck again like this till I come as the usual ‘Oh gods’ try to make their way out of my mouth. Then it’s his turn, and then he's lost to me. I lie next to him and watch him regain his breath. I twine my legs with his and rest. A few moments later he moves over and holds me in a tight embrace, his heart still beating fast. He kisses my hair, my head, my neck. I burrow further into his chest and squeeze his shoulders, my palms flat on his blades. I wish I could press him into my body as one and for him to say ‘I love you’ but he doesn’t. So I don’t say it either. We fall asleep instantly.

I shift and wake up. I am very thirsty and slowly and awkwardly reach on the floor to find the bottle of water. I sense Jeremy’s not asleep because he's not snoring. He speaks first, quietly.
‘Are you awake?’ he asks.
‘Yes.’
‘Wide awake?’
‘Think so,’ I reply.
‘You know why, don’t you?’ he says, turning to me and gently tugging at my hair.
‘Aw, but that was such a tiny line and it was hours ago,’ I say, regretting how it was me who suggested it.
‘Yes, but we’re not used to it anymore,’ he chuckles in the dark.
‘Either that or it’s gone off, I’ve kept it such a long time. Do drugs go off?’
‘Not really. It was in the fridge wasn’t it?’
‘Yes, do you think that’s off limits enough for the children? It’s in one of my eye drops packets.’
‘Oh no, that won’t do, Ingy. You better put it somewhere more difficult to reach.’
‘OK. Talk to me, I am definitely awake now,’ I say, hearing weariness creep into my voice. He tells me about this book he's nearly finished reading, the third part of His Dark Materials. I don’t know how he manages such long novels. Then again, it’s hardly a taxing one and anyway, I no longer think he’s fucking nurses every time he’s on call. You’ve got to get bored of it after twenty-odd years, not counting medical school, I reason to myself.
‘There's a drama version on at the National Theatre. Got great reviews – want me to get tickets?' I ask.
‘Not sure what my schedule is and the new guy at Médecins Sans Frontières wants me to go to Iran – there’s a lot of follow-up work to do on the earthquake.’
I tense. ‘Oh, Jeremy, no, the kids won't like it at all. They never get used to it, and neither do I. We haven't discussed this properly – you can't just keep making all the decisions without us.’
‘Ingy come on, you know I want to. It's just been too long since I've been in that situation. I have to keep my skills up.’
‘For what? So that next time you can go even further away? I know, I know, but it's just . . . For a start I inherit the swimming pool run, the ballet school run and – everything really. We need to organize this properly. We can't just rely on Alisha all the time – it gets to be very expensive.’
‘We’ll talk about it. I won’t have to go till next week. And I hope my phone will work there – I'll call every night, I'll send pictures. They won't miss me that much and it's good for them to know what goes on in the world.’
‘They won't care. What do death and destruction mean to a five- and a nine-year-old? They just want their daddy, here.’ I can sense this is going nowhere at this time. I haven’t got the energy and I always lose, so I add in my sternest pleading voice, ‘You make sure you find a satellite link and you call. Every day, OK?’
I make to turn away from him, but his hand slides under my belly and he starts playing with me. The rhythm is wrong and I am a bit dry and too tired. I know I won't come now so I just lie there. I hear the noise of his other hand on his cock and I lift my head.
'Darling, surely you don't want more? You're just so greedy, there's no way you have more sperm now.'
'I know, but I like falling asleep doing this, you know that.'
An image of him as a child tugging at his penis for comfort pops into my head and I feel very protective.

At six thirty I wake up again without the alarm. He likes the radio but I won’t have it – if something wrong comes on like that bore, Dido, I end up having a bad day. Jez is breathing deeply now. I get up to have a cup of coffee in peace. I look in the bathroom mirror and Princess Leia is staring back, only it's the Carrie Fisher version this time – worse, as she is now, a near pensioner. Where did these lines come from? I have a quick bath and go back and get under the covers again. My breath must feel cool on his cock as he stirs and immediately pushes his hips up. I go up and down for a while as the taste of toothpaste gradually disappears from my mouth, then I stop.
'Come on, Jeremy, it's seven o' clock and if you want to be at your meeting at eight we've got to go. Like, now. And I‘ve got a bunch of Asian bankers flying in this morning. I can’t be late.’
I start pulling clothes out of the wardrobe. He's looking at me and I wonder how sexy he’ll find me now with my office uniform of black trousers and jacket and sensible shirt. There’s no time for fancy hosiery, but I grab some lacy underwear. He slaps my ass as he stands behind me one last time, limp cock nestling tightly on my bum cheeks. I turn around and scold him. 'Don’t you dare – black shows up everything.'

You never see teenagers at this time of the morning so we make a passable impression. Inside the train carriage Jez stands too close to me and occasionally leans down to kiss me. I feel slightly embarrassed, so I push him away, though I am pleased. It takes a few hours for his tenderness to surface after sex, but it always does.
He gets off first. I carry on to the City.

When I arrive home in the evening all is still and dark. I hesitate over the first flight of stairs and feel my chest tightening. Something black in the corner gives me a fright. I lean and pick up the glove. 'That's where you went then,’ I say to no one. Inside, I survey the debris of the night before. It's a mess, though I remembered to soak the pans and thanks to M&S there aren’t really that many, though the congealing fat from the paté jar floating in the sink gives me a sudden squeeze in my guts. I forgot we drank brandy too, but I find the small glasses in the bedroom. There are clothes everywhere. For a while I hold on to Jez’s Gap shirt, the collar so clean still. Lula helped me pick it for him. I hear her little voice in the shop saying ‘blue like Daddy’s eyes’. I find the gown – ‘Property of St Thomas’ Hospital’ says the tag – and then the implement, I forget what it’s called. I wash it in very hot water in the sink. I’ve never held one in my hands before. It looks like a bird’s head and it’s heavy. Not sure where to put it – it belongs to the cutlery drawer in a sense, but I end up sticking it in a shoe box. I must tidy up properly before Alisha comes tomorrow. I put a CD on, old Brian Eno for comfort. Then I run a bath and soak. It's only when I am in it that I remember I didn’t pick up matches for the candles. I hate the light in this bathroom. We have to change it, and the noisy extractor fan too. I think about where Jez is now. Not sure if I want to wash my hair, wanting to hang on to his smell for as long as possible. He's texted a couple of times during the day, nothing serious, just the usual banter: ‘Next time, young lady, prepare to feel my firm hands on your ass. You should tremble.’ I replied with some other standard script: ‘Oh, I am so wet right now, sir.’ Wet doesn’t really do it justice, I think. The weather is wet, the clothes out of the washing machine are wet. My cunt is something else, but I am lost for words.

He won't be back tonight. I hope there's no pile up on the M25, no train crashes, no real carnage. He's the senior consultant there. They only wake him up for the unmanageable stuff and I can’t bear to think of him with his hands deep inside someone’s ribcage. My uncle was a fishmonger and my auntie said that had to be worse. At least Jez never carries any smell back from the theatre. Once I asked him: 'If I turned up in casualty with a massive wound or as a train crash victim, would you operate yourself? Would you trust your hand to be steady if it was me?’
'Yes, I think I could handle it,' he replied.
'But what if it was one of the kids?' I challenged him, thrusting my face close to his.
He hesitated then. 'What's with the morbid questions? No, I don't think I could, not with them, I’d go to pieces.’

Shit! The kids. I forgot about picking up Johnny and Lula. Then again Mum hasn't rung to say ‘Come and get them off my hands, they are tearing the house down as usual and your dad’s had enough already.’
Granted, I am a bad mother, I think as I turn the hot water tap back on, but it's OK to forget the kids really. Because, you see, they don't actually exist. I made them up one time and Jeremy went along with it. He’s got his fantasies and I’ve got mine. To tell the truth, we are not married either. Oh come on, you'd picked up on that hadn't you? There was something that didn't quite ring true. For a start you don't really have sex like that on a weekday with your husband, do you? Or maybe you do? If so, I don’t want to know, as this is what I tell myself to make sense of Jeremy’s absence: that it’s more fun this way and that we like it like this. But ask me again next week, when he’s gone.
I lean out of the bath and pick up Lula’s favourite doll from the floor. She’s blond and curly haired, like I was when I was little.

Cigarettes & Yoga

Cigarettes & Yoga

They think they can turn the clock back, Michael thought as he stood calm and poised and ready for the session. He saw the room full of men and women, mostly women, psyching themselves up for the tough 90 minutes ahead. They think that if they exercise like mad now, maybe they can do without the cosmetic surgery later and stave off decay. To be honest, he reflected, yoga teachers do look good, there’s no denying it. Their bodies are taut and lean, but they don’t look younger or maybe they do, by a few years perhaps, but not considerably and besides it’s of no use to anyone. His mind wandered back to the old guys he saw running towards him in the park in the mornings. He could barely mask his disdain as they crossed on the Heath. So what that they are well preserved and don’t have much of a paunch, are tanned and their balding grey hair is well trimmed. Maybe they are 60, but look 55. So what? What they want to look, and be, is 35 at the most, and that’s just one illusion too far, it simply can’t be achieved. So what that Cliff Richard has dark hair, good teeth and doesn’t look 70? What’s that meant to make him? More attractive? To whom exactly? It’s not just about attraction of course, Michael knew that: it’s about being healthy and living longer. But for what? To go mountain biking in Peru’. And why? Because they didn’t get it together to do so in their 20s or 30s, or even 40s? Or they couldn’t afford it then, or hadn’t read about it in the Sunday papers supplements. Was that meant now to be some kind of competition to their grand kids? Grandpa went to Macchu Picchu. So what?

Quickly Michael’s thoughts reverted to a more familiar leit-motif. ‘I’d like to see my dick slide in and out of a black girl’s c unt, see that contrast between the rare-steak pink of the inside of her vulva and the surrounding area. That would definitely be my set up in the “Unlimited-length porn video in the sky” he thought, with various nationalities and sizes, if not ages, just to see what feels best instantly. To go against the stereotype of what I think I like. Michael liked porn, because the best thing about it was that those women don’t talk. There’s no ‘what did you do today, what are you going to do tomorrow and what will you be doing next week? And can I please come with’. None of that, just ‘Mmh’ and ‘Yeah baby’; he hardly registered the cheesy music.

In the studio he got variety for sure, though this was considered athletic yoga for hard nuts, none of that breathing and relaxing stuff, and so the composition of the class had a few too many men for his liking. Michael took in the large room, with the bright lights shining inside the panels on the ceiling, giving the illusion of constant daytime. Few people brought their own mat, so it didn’t stink, in a different colour from the standard and now very thin blue rubber. That was considered a bit too show off-y and girlie. None of the guys bothered and somehow putting up with stinking old mats added to the atmosphere of boot camp. “I love the smell of stale sweat in the morning” he said to himself to adjust to it every time he stepped in. Same for the towels probably, very few people opted to get two, using the one they’d drenched earlier in class for their shower, thus saving £1.

For most people the Monday and Tuesday evening classes were to be avoided. They were too crowded as human beings tended to stack their best intentions at beginnings; like you wouldn’t believe the chaos of bodies joining at New Year. Instead on a Sunday morning you’d have found only a dozen of real enthusiasts or singletons with no one to bring them coffee and croissants in bed and dashing out of the house to start filling their day. But it wasn’t the discomfort of so many kinds of sweat mingling in the stuffy room, the inability to see yourself in the mirrors, the constant readjustments so as not to swing your arms in someone else’s face that bothered him, more like the horror of the changing rooms, with only four shower heads and little space to cope with dozens and dozens of bodies. The dampness offered no chance to cool down at all after you towelled dry, your trousers refusing to climb up your still steaming and moist legs as you tried to get out as fast as possible. Hell in winter with people’s many extra layers of clothing to cope with. But right now, during Summer, it wasn’t so bad.

He had to admit the best classes really were the early morning ones at 6.45, when the white studio appeared almost new, welcoming you in all its vastness, the heat generators having not turned it quite into a sauna yet. The theory was that stretching in extreme heat made you stretch further and become more flexible faster - irresistible enticement to the fast food yoga generation. And you could space your mats and feel you were almost having one to one tuition. But for Michael that defeated the point. Some people were like those tourists in the beer ads, pathologically attached to their specific sunbathing spots. If they could have paid more to have a plaque with “Here comes xxx every other day, don’t step on my space” they would have done so, but Michael was never going to take a position in the coveted first row. He didn’t need the mirrors to adjust his positions, instinctively knowing when his body was out of alignment. That would have deprived him of the main reason why he came here on a Monday at 7pm, that of finding himself with his nose and eye-line at mere few inches from some woman’s delicious and soon to be dripping in sweat crotch. If he was horny he worked harder, simple as that. That was surely why the instructor kept telling the mob, there must be 80 people there at least, not to fidget or turn and to only concentrate on their own practice. Otherwise the men would be letting their eyes wander, like his did, to someone’s crack outline. Michael could testify that it was possible to get a hard on even in that heat and sweating so profusely.

At the 7pm class space was so tight that you didn’t even get to turn your mat when it came to triangle and the other two positions associated with that short sequence. So Michael had the added bonus of staring at two extra cunts on his left and on his right for a few minutes. As he bent down his nose would be practically brushing the tush in front. He loved that, unless it was a woman on her period as he had a super sensitive sense of smell, but women generally skipped a class at that time of the month, as the heat made them feel close to exploding. He never worried about who was behind him. Hopefully it would be one of those guys who never get an erection and turn up wearing bathing trunks, which left little to the imagination. He’d noticed some of these guys’ dicks in repose seemed not too noticeable and wondered which man didn’t mind looking ‘small’. Maybe someone who was truly a yogi, though he’d heard those all shagged like mad. That’s what had brought down Bagwan, that and the Rolls Royces in Oregon and now Sai Baba was in odour of molesting some his followers too. But these were your regular preaching gurus, not yoga gods he reflected.

Of course the correct male attire was those loose surfer trunks he wore. It was bad enough according to his ladies friends that all guys wore no t-shirts and frankly some people sprayed you with a profusion of sweat drops when they turned too fast. There was one man with longish hair who was practically a sprinkler. Michael was used to male sweat as he played squash and football, but the ladies found it so gross. Many bellies and love handles could also have been best hidden and indeed the women tried, at the beginning, to come with long leggings or tracksuit bottoms as they were that much more self-conscious, but these were so uncomfortable in the heat they abandoned them soon enough. In Michael’s ideal world there should be segregated classes where fit and toned bodies should have to wear bikinis, but this was no lifeguard show on the beach in Malibu. The most they used was bikini tops. He still found the variety of women’s shorts was bewildering though; especially on the ones who only wore a leotard and no knickers underneath so you could see the outline of their labia and sometimes actual flesh. Or wore shorts with a thong underneath, same results really. The older they were, the more you got to see: gravity was merciless. And far from him to point this out. None of the staff had thought of highlighting what constituted suitable clothing on a note on the wall like they had done with “Please, please, PLEASE, wash your feet and take care of your calluses, blisters and other off putting growths before you enter the class”.

The ass panorama was surely enhanced by the popularity of Brazilian waxes (for the un-initiated, only a tiny central strip is left and cropped very short) now enthusiastically embraced by most women, but, he suspected, welcomed as a true gift by those whose hair had started turning grey ‘down there’. “You can’t die your pussy hair and the first time you find some white strand in your bush is a shocking day for all, trust me”. This according to Janice’s latest secret she had revealed to him. She was his regular friend here and she looked great, happy that her thighs were finally skinnier, but he could have told her that only had a little to do with exercise, the rest was shrinking ovaries, fat starting to drain away from hips and abdomen after you turn 40 as no longer needed to cushion a baby. He smiled at her, positioned a few spaces away in the same row. She was a fun woman and it was her who’d got him here in the first place and who kept him up to date with gossip in the female changing room. Save from some titbit about some piercings or really bushy women, she’d told him about, not that interesting actually. Their conversation seemed to revolve around experienced students encouraging new ones to stick with it “It gets easier and bearable after a half dozen classes, you’ll see, drink plenty of water, don’t give up”. New guys, he’d noticed, never sought that sort of reassurance. They looked dazed and spaced out, beetroot red from the effort, but would never admit it was hard.


This did not affect him, by coming regularly for over two years and working hard at it, he’d developed a superbly toned body and was aware of the glances thrown in his direction as he walked in, though the vast, bluish tattoo on his arm and shoulder probably had something to do with it. That’s why he didn’t use the gym at work and wore long sleeves in Summer, assumptions would be made. He’d be too tempted to say he’d been a soldier of fortune before finding his path as an English professor and whilst he enjoyed rumours as much as the next person, he’d rather they’d be about someone else. Also as sometimes the tutor made a point of greeting him by name. Of course the best thing and easiest way to start a conversation with him, as he was obviously a pro, would have been to ask him advice on some position once the class had ended and he’d cooled down, but there were unwritten rules and why should he risks sleeping (yes in his modus operandi things went swiftly from speaking to sleeping with, if he wanted) with some woman here who he’d then have to see and ignore on a regular basis. It had only happened twice in the early days when he hadn’t fully thought it out. Anna had thrown in the towel and stopped coming first. She probably went to one of the other branches now, though she lived near this one and probably hated him for depriving her of her convenience. And with Linda, the teacher, well they had got over it after a few frosty classes. Hard to do frosty in a 90 degree heated room but Linda had managed to infuse her voice with ice when she walked around and came close to him.

The voice of the teacher was important of course, as it was the only sound to follow. No music was allowed and some teachers had better rhythms than others. Some stuck resolutely to their sitting position on the podium, hypnotically speaking into their head mikes, while some preferred to walk around, occasionally adjusting some limb, making an effort to remember beginners’ names and offering special encouragement “Newcomers, make sure you come back tomorrow, so your muscles stay stretched”. As if! The next three days for beginners would be a “I can barely move” stage. All teachers had absorbed the script and stuck to it faithfully: “Raise on your pointed toes, your tippy toes”, a silly children’s line like the one about “wiggle your bum like you were Marilyn Monroe”. They all used it mechanically, having learnt the speech at the expensive teacher-training in California. Now that would be a whole vista of new cunts, Michael fantasised. Eventually he would like to go on yoga holidays where he would change scene and antropomorphy: Reykiavik, LA, Tokyo… Without going too far he would still fantasise about having sex with one of the women who came to class. One at random within the small multi-national group he preferred: the Pole with her gymnast figure and milky - but in better condition - skin than the Brits, the Italian with the tiny, tiny waist, she only had to work harder on her chubbish legs, the Caribbean with her strong thighs and sticking out bum he would love to put a drink on.

As a playful game he could have got “her” to strike a pose like camel – on her knees bending far back to grab her own ankles, chest pushed forwards and upwards. And got down to tonguing her and see how long she could keep her hands firmly on her heels in her backward bend. Or rabbit, the opposite pose to camel, bending forward and arching her ass up. The possibilities were endless. They didn’t do ‘downward dog’ (speaks for itself) in this school of yoga, but he could have inserted that in his fantasy. Inserting being the operative word. Ass rising towards him, inserting his cock. Oh god, it was getting too much and he was feeling excitement mounting up. When that happened he would sit down on his mat and sit a pose out for a few moments, drinking his bottled water. You were encouraged to never leave the room, just skip a section if you weren’t feeling up to it. It was hard to look around discreetly at this point, but he had perfected a gaze that seemed to just not settle on anyone in particular. Not much time to spot someone new-ish that he could position himself behind next time. New women were great, awkward in their movements for a good many sessions, having to exaggerate every pose. And he could hear them breathing hard, but you only had one chance. Moving mat later was not the done thing, though in the general confusion people walked in it was ok in the first few minutes of disarray. But the floor space filled up too fast.


He ‘d nearly mentioned his regular thrills once to the nerdy guy at work who seemed so starved of pussy, but then decided against letting him into his playground. He’d told his brother who gave him a look of distaste and said he would stick to his gym routine. But he’d expected that from Sean, who was the kind of guy who couldn’t even talk during it. Michael had gleaned this information from a woman he took from him once. They’d flirted over Xmas and by New Year it was obvious she needed more action than Sean could offer. Gads, you’d think he was adopted.

The standing poses went by fast and then they were on the mats, doing ‘wind relieving pose’ and the real work supposedly, “massaging the internal organs” went the speech. Not much of a chance to show off in this sequence though he was exceptional at cobra. The teacher briefly opened a door and a window and the temperature lowered for a few heavenly seconds. The heaters were pumping out hot air irrespectively and relentlessly, but if you had learnt the trick about not wiping away your sweat with a towel, it acted as it was meant to in cooling you down. After the 26th and final pose was over Michael lay on his mat for a while, he didn’t mind getting to the showers last if it meant he could risk a quick wank in peace. Though he wished they moved posters of the founder teacher, MrBikram himself, away from his line of vision. The man seemed gnarled, had a seriously disapproving look on his face, though it could have been pain given how his body was twisted in the photos. When he finished, he tossed his towel on the overflowing laundry basket and switched his phone back on before he got dressed.

Afterwards Michael sat on one of the benches in the courtyard in the rapidly darkening sky light and had a freshly squeezed juice from the café. He nodded at a few acquaintances like John and Mara, the hippy couple, unlocking their bikes from the rail. Many people brought their partners hoping they would shape up fast and not be left behind in the ‘New Me’ stakes. Man, that was a double-edged idea if ever there was one, he thought. He sat and watched a few women go by, they took much longer to file past from their changing room after washing their hair and drying it, and lavishing cream on their bodies, all glowing from the effort. Now in their civvies most looked miles better than earlier, everyone wearing what best enhanced them. No cheating with padded bras, or make up in the studio. Well nearly most of them looked better he thought, but some were beyond redeeming features. He took a deep breath, only the fresh air outside and the scent of rosemary from the potted plants compensated for 90 minutes of inhaling other people’s toxins being released through their pores, as they kept being reminded time after time.

On the way out via the shop with its selection of books, tapes and skimpy exercise outfits, he stopped to chat briefly with the guys at reception. They were much younger than him, but looked up to “Hey, Michael, man!” and always invited him to a flow of clubs and parties. He went sometimes and thanked them by often providing the nasal lubrication. They never said no, probably snug in the delusion that drinks and drugs could be sweated out like a cold. Though it was true, yoga people never got colds. Fact.

As soon as he got out into the grimy West London street and started walking to his Audi parked nearby, he sparked a cigarette. Yes, great abs, shame about the lungs - he knew - “But no-one will get to see those till I keel over” he said aloud to ward off the inevitable.

Dangerbelle

to be added

Milk

To be added

West End Hearts

to be added

Comfortably Numb

to be added

Bodhi

to be added

Sciara

I’m distractedly watching a holiday programme. They are talking about Cuba, which is on my long list of places I’d like to visit. But I almost feel like I’ve been there already as the images are always the same: the 50’s American cars, the cigar factories, the giant images of Fidel and Che, the architecture bleached by the sun. They’ll probably tell me that a doctor there earns in a month what a road-sweeper earns here in a day.
A little later the programme moves to Italy and they show panoramic views of Etna. I start to pay attention as I went there some Septembers ago. They are showing exactly what I did: the cable car station closed since one of the last eruptions that caused the roads below to change course, the tourists boarding the lunar like vans that take them at a reasonably fast speed to the top of that enormous expansion of black and grey rock and ashes. There is even the very same gloomy sky I found that time, with gale force wind and fast moving smoke escaping from god knows where as it didn’t necessarily seem to come from the crater. Bending down to fissures in the ground, the rocks - here the colour of embers - released constant warmth; standing up the wind whipped me around to remind me that I was at 3000m and made it almost impossible to steady my arms to take a photo. But I must have read a travel guide as had come prepared, wearing chilly climate clothing incredibly unusual in Sicily.

But the travel team don’t show what I did later that day. The driver of the coach who took me there from Catania, and me, fucking at base camp. I don’t remember a great attraction or his name now, just his jet black hair and a degree of boredom. There was a long stretch of time ahead before the afternoon departure back to the city and nothing to do after we ate and walked around for a while, just more black ‘sand’ and rocks. No one had been enterprising enough to add a games room, a pool table, a cinema space showing footage from previous eruptions or other spectacular ones from around the world. There were only tacky souvenir shops offering no variety in ugly tat. I took home just fragments of the floor tiles of a restaurant swept away in the last eruption. Hardly Pompeii relics, but I liked the vivid glazed blue colour.

Fucking is too strong a term perhaps. We tried, but the rocks and slabs around us were too sharp and rough through our clothes. They grazed his knees and scratched my spine. And he wasn’t used to the situation: doing it standing up, fast, and with the voices of nearby tourists sounding so close. We were not on the moon as I tried to imagine. He had a girlfriend, he’d told me earlier, so maybe she came into his head because the directness and ardour of his initial words abated quickly. We gave up and he ended up telling me that theirs was a love very much opposed by her family who didn’t think he was good enough for their university educated daughter. He was ‘only’ a driver. I thought about the plot of a million ‘young love’ movies and recited him the few verses of Shakespeare I knew from Romeo and Juliet. Then I got back onto the stationary coach and sat and read a book till it was time to go. When he got on to drive, he couldn’t look at me. When we got off I said no to the offer of a drink in the evening.

Later the TV programme moves to the Stromboli volcano, considerably smaller than Etna, but much more disturbing for its absolute domination over the tiny island it occupies. I went there a distant August ago with Mark. There were no vans in Stromboli, or cars for that matter, not even electricity in the streets. The climb to the top took from dusk till midnight. Walking towards something we could barely see silhouetted against the moonless sky, we were forewarned by the insufferable smell of sulphur, which became overwhelming as we approached the summit. We arrived drenched in sweat that quickly seemed to ice over our skins and we were shocked to see there were no barriers: anyone who wished for a spectacular death could have run to the mouth of the crater and jumped in. We edged forward and circled it cautiously, disappointed by the lack of activity. The TV programme shows what I didn’t see then, but imagined: intense colours, flames exploding skywards and incandescent lava rushing toward the sea and illuminating the dark village below. We wanted to spend the night up there but it wasn’t possible without a permit and the guide wouldn’t let our little group linger. I picked up fragments of perfectly rounded rock reduced to black pellets and filled my pockets. We started to come down on the opposite flank from the one we had climbed, running ever faster on the ashes left by old sciaras, the local name for lava flows. It was an exhilarating run in the lunar landscape, like the opening scenes of Man Who Fell to Earth. All at a breakneck speed we weren’t used to, finding it impossible to halt, like skiing toward the mercury coloured Mediterranean in the distance. Stones, rocks and pebbles, displaced by our feet, were flying over the heads of those running in front of us, all screaming in total abandon like you do on rollercoaster rides. Nobody got hurt, but I destroyed a pair of favourite sneakers, the sole literally came off in my hands as soon as we reached the tall and dry, sometimes charred, vegetation at the bottom. This scratched our sooty legs and arms and left us disappointed that we couldn’t just jump in the cool sea. tantalizingly close, to finish our ‘race’. Panting, and with trembling muscles, we looked at our watches and it had only taken less than an hour to cover our descent from 900m. Sitting on basaltic rock benches in the deserted square in the main village half an hour later, we made plans to eventually go climb volcanoes further away, in Malaysia, Indonesia, Java, Hawaii. We reeled off a list of names, mostly we made them up on the spot.

I don’t remember if Mark and I fucked that night. Maybe yes, maybe not. It was one of our first holidays together, so technically yes, but perhaps we were too tired to move or even shower. I can still picture the house in which we lived for a few days, but not the actual bedroom. I only remember it was on the ground floor opening onto an orchard, not quite out of The Leopard, at a short distance from the villa where Ingrid Bergman and Roberto Rossellini lived during the filming of Stromboli whist simultaneously starring in one of the most famous post war scandals. There was a commemorative plaque there and the very few tourists about took photos. I remember the film well, it was so memorable: the ritual of the slaughter of the tuna clubbed to death in shallow waters - that made me flinch even shot in black and white; the heroine who doesn’t speak Italian and doesn’t understand anything of the life of the fisherman husband she met in a prisoner of war camp and married hastily; her drab existence trapped in an inhospitable rock miles from civilisation, full of old widows and topped by a menacing, rumbling volcano. Mark and I realised we loved it there because we could leave, if only to get to a more immediate death defying experience: dodging the traffic on the streets of Naples, ten hours away by ferry.

The programme ends and I get up to search for a photo I know I have somewhere. It takes me a while to find it in an old box. It’s showing Mark reading ‘Under the Volcano’ by Malcolm Lowry… under the volcano in fact. We thought we were so clever, maybe we really did believe we were the first tourists to bring that sad, interminable book on holiday on Stromboli… or Mexico. Later we acted out being the drunken characters and talked in posh voices. We, who know how to do irony with literature. There, a verb in the present tense has escaped into my reverie. I don’t know why, since Mark has been dead fifteen years. Sometimes I imagine his lungs, too quickly devoured by cancer, as porous, pitted and crumbling as the slate grey, solidified lava.
He’s ash of a different kind now. I’m still fire.

Foil

‘Do you know what I’d really like to do now?’
Gina looked up when Craig spoke. They’d both been reading magazines. It was the first time in three weeks she’d seen him reading a magazine, and very intently at that. Strange, as it was a woman’s magazine that Sasha had given her on the beach. She’d not bought any on this trip, only books. Only a few seconds earlier she’d thought, and not for the first time that evening, how odd it was to be at different ends of the bed, not speaking, almost intently engaged in an exclusion exercise.
‘What?’
‘I'd like to go and get some more heroin.’
Not what she’d expected him to say at all. She was rather hoping for something simple, like ‘I’d like to get on the bike, go to Chicken Corner and get some chips and salsa’. Or, even better ‘I’d like to lick your sweat off you’, like he’d announced a couple of nights back before diving into her.
She wanted to say ‘Why? Why do you need that shit. I thought you had been cleaning up. Aren’t we fine as we are? ‘
Instead, she simply said ‘Where do you have to go and get it from?’
‘The other side of the island, about ten minutes further up from the harbour.’
‘Oh, that will take you an hour or so then.’
This came out rather matter of fact, as she’d hoped. Hoped that her worry would not transpire. It must be around 9 o’clock. Pitch dark. The track was treacherous, winding and steep. Charming by day, from every crest of a hill you looked out on the bluest sea below, but at night it was a grey snake coiling through cliffs. Very likely he’d never have considered going there if she’d simply suggested, ‘Do you fancy going to the harbour for a drink tonight?’
Gina was also worried about the other risk. The one most inherent to buying drugs: getting caught. And the fact that he’d been drinking beer and vodka since sunset. She’d helped on that front, but it was the odd sip, she never had a bottle to call her own. He would be easy for the police to spot and stop for a check - they were always looking for a quota of westerners to show that they were doing their job. Oh well, let’s not think about the worst and let’s stop being mother, she was not responsible for his life after all.
‘You sure you don’t’ mind baby?’ he asked.
‘No it’s fine, just don’t hang around there when you got it, come straight back’.
Such big lies said so simply, so easily. Sure I mind the man I fell in love with to have revealed himself as someone who needs drugs to move his life along, someone who prefers drugs to my company, to me basically. She could have said it, as he was still looking at her, like a little naughty boy expecting unquestionable complicity and approval. But she didn’t.
‘Go on then, I don’t mind, you go.’
It would be nice after all to have the room to herself, to not feel the awkwardness of being ill at ease together. Only a short time ago it wasn’t like this. Only three weeks ago when she’d returned from Laos to hook up with him for the second time since they met, this room was a sanctuary, filled with easy chat, laughter and comfortable silences. Then she’d left him to go and travel in Vietnam and Cambodia.
Carpa, the adorable puppy they'd rescued from the poison meted out to all strays on the island, stirred on the floor. Awake now that ‘daddy’ was going out, maybe he’ll go to Chicken Corner and get her some treat, like most nights.
Craig’s face lit up as he played with the dog, teased her, pulled her this way and that, while he searched for another packet of cigarettes.
He bent down all lovey-dovey to kiss her while he rifled through clothes to find his money. Gina wondered how long he’d been thinking of going to buy the stuff before he came out with it.
‘How much are you getting? Please don’t get much.’
‘Well I have to get half a gram’s worth, the guy won’t sell me less than that. I thought you wanted to try some baby.’
Oh god, she’d said that the night of the full moon party, 48 hours ago, when she was high on her first smidgen of acid. After saying a resolute ‘no’ to drugs for years and years, this had seemed the right situation to try everything. She’d felt safe with him. He was an occasional user, with a job he loved and responsibilities awaiting him back home. She was the one drifting for a few months, her break from years of working. So this was not the time to say ‘But seeing how ill you’d been when I got here, how thin you’ve become, how distant, it’s hardly a great advertisement……for trying heroin.’
A short answer was required, she opted for ‘Yes, but you know me, I’ve never done it, so just a little bit will be enough…’
‘Sure baby, I’ll look after you.’ He replied lighting the umpteenth Marlboro.
It was kind of heart warming to see him so excited, like a kid going to get ice cream. In his blue faded shorts, the ever present flip flops that had damaged his foot arches, cigarette dangling from his mouth. Eyes shining under the floppy black hair. His tanned chest gleaming in the soft light cast by the weak bulb.
‘Take a shirt, you’ll be cold on the bike.’
‘No, I’m alright.’
She couldn’t resist a ‘ Be careful’ though, always thinking like a mother somehow.
She remembered how in the beginning he was being very careful with his money, she’d thought he was a bit tight even. Now he wasn’t any more. Maybe a large invoice had been paid back home and hedonism had taken over. Besides, there really wasn’t anything else to do there but drink to while away the time. He wasn’t interested in trips to other sides of the island, to see caves or waterfalls or to go diving.
‘No Carpa, you stay here, stay inside with me. He’ll be back soon.’ She said to the puppy wagging her tail by the door.
She heard the sound of the red Honda revving up outside. Craig saying goodbye to the guesthouse workers, always winding down under the tree outside. In a few short hours they’d be up again to get breakfast ready. Then he was gone.
Gina had an hour to kill. Best not to worry and definitely not to look at the watch. Best not to think he had a way with falling off his bike. Like that time in Chiang Mai when he'd split his forehead open and wouldn't let her play nurse much with her virgin first aid kit. She wanted to use those high tech butterfly stitches, he wanted the scar instead. He liked it and perhaps would later tell a more interesting story about it.
She couldn’t’ read any more now. Was all over the place, couldn’t sleep. Nowhere to go. Wished for a phone. She would phone a friend now if she could, but what would sh says? ‘Hi, we are in paradise but for him something is missing. Will it always be missing?’ So she talked to Carpa instead ‘How ever did we end up giving you such an ugly name? We started off with Harpo and Groucho , then Carpo perhaps, till we found out you were a girl! I’ll look for a pink bow in the market tomorrow. That will make you pretty.’
Then she got up and looked around the small room. Looked at his bag, then inside it and found his notebook. The one he was writing in the morning they met in Bangkok a couple of months back. She had been waiting for a taxi to take her to the train station. He was the only other person awake at dawn in the grey light of the garden. So good looking and unexpected that she’d stared at him till he smiled quizzically. She remembered how he’d spoken first and his voice seemed to belong to the pillow next to her in bed. Now she looked at the blank pages. How disappointing , he hadn’t written anything at all since then. When they met he'd told her he was always up really early 'to write'. Well it was 6am when he’d said this and he was indeed writing. That's what attracted her to speak to him in the first place. He'd just arrived from Canada for a break from the merciless snow. She'd left London three months earlier, intent on missing a European winter in its entirety. So far so good, she'd forgotten what a cold day felt like. And what a cold heart feels like too.
Right now she remembered that in the time they'd spent together since, neither of them had got up early, ever and she'd never seen him write. The notebook was in a state, covers falling off, corners all warped. It’d been around for weeks, unused. He hadn’t written anything since the notes of longing he’d made for his birth mother. He’d recently found her, but she had not agreed to meet up with him yet. He’d read them to her when they hooked up again a few days later. She’d felt fortunate never to have had to search for that love too. Oh yes, a few pages on she found a paragraph written after she’d left him the first time. By then they were in the hills in Northern Thailand.
‘You go on ahead, I’ll find you later at the swimming pool.’ She’d told him handing him the pool bag. He’d noticed that only his stuff was packed in it and had murmured softly ‘Don’t be long’. He lingered whilst they both fought back tears and then set off on his bike. He told her later that when he got to the pool, he’d not even swam, he’d taken a valium, fallen asleep in the sun and woken up at sunset, knowing she wouldn’t be there. He had marked her absence by taking more pills to get through to the next day. By the time he’d got on the bus to head south to the beach, she was already in Laos, in a hurry not to get hurt by love again. She’d left a note. ‘I know your birth mother abandoned you once and you had no explanation for 30 years, so you may be a bit sensitive when people disappear and this is to tell you why I am going.’
Gina bet his first thought on reading it had probably been ‘How f……..considerate of you, how dare you compare this to being given up for adoption?’
‘She’s gone, she’s gone, she’s gone’ he had written. Then he described her as supercilious and talking in clichés. She thought she must look that word up. Should really know the meaning. Probably did. It was disparaging anyway. Oh but he went on to say ‘I love you I love you I love you Principessa’. What a relief, he was using her little nickname. A wave of tenderness wrapped her up briefly, all that had been written weeks ago now. A couple more blank pages later and there was a list of names. Girls names. Must be lovers/girlfriends. Typical of men to make lists. She read aloud ‘Janine, Martha, Susanna.’ She recognized a few he’d talked to her about. Quickly scanned it to find her own name. Afraid there’d be others after hers. After all, she’d left him alone for three weeks on that beach full of the most temptingly attractive travellers in Asia. Her eyes blurred, oh my god, there was a name after hers. It was Sasha’s name. That’s not so bad, she knew they’d had a thing.Besides, there was an arrow pointing Sasha’s name to the previous page. Yes it happened a while ago, as he said, though she was already with her boyfriend Tony by then. Craig had said it was after a night out and they’d both taken stuff and got home and well, she’d asked if she could give him a blow. Gina had laughed, laughed a lot. ‘Really? Sasha asked you? Oh man, do you really expect me to believe that? Next you’ll tell me that she practically begged to suck you off. It’s ok, that was then, I don’t care about your past’. She remembered he’d never really asked her much about hers. She was relieved about it then, now it seemed a sign he didn’t much care to get to know her. There was nothing to do then, she kind of wanted to memorise some more of those names, that old habit, research, but though that was something a younger Gina would have definitely done a few years back, not now. Nothing to do then, but lie on the bed and wait. Actually straighten it out a bit, tidy up. He was always tidier than she was. All his belongings were mostly in his rucksack. Hers were spread all over. Well, she had more stuff. She vigorously swept the sand off the floor. The bells on her oriental bracelets were jingling wildly. Craig loved her musical bracelets, said he could always tell when she was ‘coming.’
The mosquitoes were lying low. The fan was on constantly, mostly to cover any sounds coming from the road outside. She wondered if anybody walking past on the path could hear the voices and noises inside? They certainly could, but after a while you didn’t think about how exposed you were, in your little hut on stilts, two windows, one door, a hammock on the porch. At home she could never live in a shoebox. But a shoebox by the sea was heavenly somehow. She almost went outside to stand next to one of the surrounding huts to hear any talk going on inside but didn’t. She waited some more. After a while she heard the sound of the motorbike coming back and parking. Carpa yapped happily. ‘daddy’ was back. Craig came in beaming both his ‘women’ a smile.
‘Mission accomplished?’
‘Yeah, got it here’ he said patting his pocket.
She wondered if he’d had a toke already to check it when he bought it. It was 11 o’ clock by now, shouldn’t have taken that long to get there and back.
Now he was excitedly busying himself putting the rest of his money back into his usual hiding place behind a roof beam. Then he sat cross legged on the bed, leaning on the wooden edge at the bottom of the bed and went straight into separating a small quantity of heroin on the cover of the magazine. Helpfully Gina said ‘Bad place to leave that honey, do you know how easy it is to knock it over from there?’
‘It’s the only straight surface in the room…… I’m not getting on the floor to do it.’ He replied.
She actually thought of doing that, knocking it over. To see his reaction and if he’d really hate her for it. But it wasn’t the last little bit, so he’d probably have just gone ‘Fuck fuck fuck baby, be careful!’ And hopefully not miserably scramble to try and salvage it from the wooden floor, full of gaps, you could see straight into the ground below. He hid the rest in a tiny parcel, behind another beam. Gina had no idea of quantities. How much is how much, how much do you need. No idea. The lines looked like lines of coke. A couple of those would be just the start of an evening for most of her friends back in London.
'Are you taking this shit so you can avoid dealing with me, so you can shut me out?'
That’s what she really wanted to ask but in fact thought that no, that was needlessly self-persecuting. It’s the whole world that addicts don’t want to deal with, not just you, masochist moron. Glad she cleared that one out, catching her paranoia and swiftly chucking it out of the window.
Craig did a line. Intent, a crisp new 500 baht note rolled up.
‘What’s the difference between snorting it and smoking it?’ Gina, forever inquisitive, couldn't give up asking questions, ever.
‘It hits you faster when you smoke it.’
‘So why are you snorting it then?’
‘We’ll do both, start slowly, make it last longer. Here, your turn. Be careful. Don’t blow on it.’
‘Gaaads, leave it out, I am not that clumsy.’ She said taking the note from his hands.
She did her line. New drug, new wait. You never know how long before it has any effect and even when it does, you are not quite sure when that started. Plus, some times there is no effect. She remembered that time in Holland, twenty years earlier, with Lou and the band. They were all doing coke and she tried it too. Had no effect at all and she’d not tried if for years after, telling proudly anybody who offered any ‘It doesn’t do anything to me, don’t’ need it.’
‘How you feeling baby?’ With a cheeky smile, he leaned over to kiss her.
‘Fine, not much though…’ Gina hadn’t even noticed she’d slumped further into the mattress, on the pillows laid under the window. She was looking outside, at the fronds of the trees stirring in the breeze. The rains had started, there was wind every night. It meant fewer mosquitoes feasting on her lovely brown body. She could hardly move, but she could still think ‘Why is he over there? Why isn’t he close to me? What’s he doing now?’
From behind the tapes, sunglasses, alarm clock, bottles and candles on the shelf at the top of the bed, he reached to get the aluminium foil from inside a cigarette packet. The other day he’d told her off for throwing some foil away.
‘Baby if it’s not in the bin outside, it means I haven' t thrown it away. Ok baby? Don’t tidy up please.’
‘Ok, sorry honey.’ She ‘d replied like a kid on mummy’s ‘bad days’.
That had been strange, being told off. Like for setting the wet beer bottle on the blue sarong he was lying on at the beach. He’d also been very particular about keeping it absolutely straight and taut and brushing off any stray sand getting on it. Every time she turned or wiggled on hers, of course she got some sand on his.
‘Sorry honey’. ‘Oops sorry honey.’ ‘Oh shit honey, didn’t mean to do that.’ She’d apologised.
‘Baby, you know, when I am cleaning up I get very finicky.’
Gina had noticed the ‘when’, suggesting a cyclical regularity to the… well, what else to call it… habit. She’d stifled the instant put down that came to her lips ‘No I don’t know honey, never went out with someone cleaning up before.’ She had settled for ‘Mm, yes that tidy Virgo side of yours gets extreme honey.’
It was a relief to make jokes about star signs, most guys hate all talk of star signs, professing ignorance followed by contempt. It was best to make a joke of it and not dwell on how they'd both mostly lied on the one sarong only, his, last time she was here. So yes, if he was going to take heroin again he was going to become fastidious about things like that. What else had she read about it?
Craig was now putting some heroin on the foil, sitting on the floor using the bed as a table. He took a lighter to it and told her when to inhale. He wanted her to go first so he could guide her. It wasn’t easy, you had just seconds to get it right and not waste it.
‘That’s my boy, he looks after me.’ she thought.
She remembered the opium in Chiang Mai. Finding it had been totally accidental. They’d gone biking in the hills and found a village, they were just walking around, looking at the same-same souvenirs and the beautiful valley stretching below. Colourful gorgeous children had stared at them till they were approached by an ancient looking man. He invited them into his hut and offered what any tourist who wasn’t buying girls or boys was getting. Craig smoked it to check it.
‘Do you want some baby?’ Craig had asked her then.
‘No thanks, don’t know how to use that pipe thing’.
She asked the old man and his wife permission to take some photos inside the messy shack. She took one of the corner, with the fire going and the black pots and pans, but didn’t have the guts to shoot the corner with the bedding. Everything looked extremely bare. The wizened man had then been in a hurry to get them out after Craig bought some. No chance of romantic lying on velvet cushions and pretending to be Thomas de Quincey then. With hindsight, maybe Craig was precisely looking for drugs, that’s why they’d ‘stumbled’ on the village. That would have been – oh - a couple of days into knowing each other. Seamless. Made it look like it was just part of the holiday ‘fun’, not something he wanted at all. More like ‘We are in Northern Thailand, so we must try opium. That’s what they have around here.’
Unbelievable. There’s a death penalty in the country and they were just playing with it. Gina had it in her bra on the ride back. They had waved and smiled at the guards on the entrance of the national park. All Thais looked friendly, even the ones with machine guns.
Now she was ready to inhale.
‘Careful baby, careful, the foil burns easily and then it stinks.’ He cautioned.
It seemed a faster hit, or maybe just adding to the first one it seemed faster. She felt her body go limp instantly. Her head was there. Sharp? Not sure. A smile on her face, a very wide smile. She watched him preparing his hit, all excited anticipation. . Yeah, this was all fun. Nothing sordid here, nothing like the movies where people are always poor, miserable, ugly and the rooms always squalid. Craig gave her a big adoring smile.
‘I’ve never seen anyone as together as you on drugs, are you sure all this is new to you?’
‘It’s because I have no dark side, so there’s nothing weird gonna come out of me.’
‘Yeah, I can see that, you look so lovely, so chilled’. He said as he went over to the corner where his bag was.
‘What are you looking for?’
‘My camera.’ Came his reply.
She wanted to say ‘No don’t’ , but her voice was slow in passing her lips. As .he took a picture of her, she felt spread like honey stuck to the bed. That’s how she felt, glued to it.
Eventually she managed to move her arms to reach for hers and take a picture of him lighting another hit.
‘We’re even now, we've both got evidence of misbehaviour' and she giggled.
‘Do you want another one baby?’
‘Mmh not now, maybe later.’
More than anything she wanted to reach for the tape recorder. ‘In the interest of self-indulgent documentation of my life, I want to remember what shit we’ll talk about, I know I won’t remember otherwise’. Like she didn’t remember all the things they’d said on acid at the full moon party, when she’d been ‘talking’ to the Disney cartoon characters that were endlessly appearing in front of her and Craig was being ‘followed’ by a sinister agent called Frank. She was sure they had said meaningful stuff that now was lost. Then again it had seemed the storm that night had raged on for hours, but later they’d found out it had been over in twenty minutes. Gina knew he objected to this little mania of hers so she left it on the shelf, playing music through the tiny speakers, the same music they’d heard for weeks, no new tapes to buy on the market stalls or nothing new that didn’t sound wobbly and stretched.
He came over and laid next to her. No energy to touch each other, no energy and no will.
'This shit is good' he said.
Gina barely nodded ‘Yes.’
'Want some more vodka baby?' he asked clinking glasses.
'No, otherwise I won't know which effect is which.'
God, her brain was till hers, typical Gina matter of factness, nothing blurred yet. Like she was doing some research. Another thought hit her hard. 'There will be no more love and no more sex though, what a shame.’ She’d read/heard enough about heroin to know it dulls your libido to zero. A touch of paranoia came back. That’s why he did this, to avoid being close to her. She tried to chuck it away again with ‘addicts don’t want to be close to anybody…it's not just you…and his mum gave him up, that’s why he needs the stuff.’
Instead, she was surprised to hear herself say 'This shit is good!’
He nodded in agreement, stretched by her side.
She didn't have any strength to take her clothes off, but she knew he did, he must be able to function on this shit, he was used to it. She was about to ask him to pull her shirt off her, but suddenly there was no need to take off anything, it was enough to just lie there feeling the air from the ventilator skim her skin. Not asleep. Listening to the music, paying attention to the lyrics. After a while they became unbearable. They talked about love, all of them, it seemed, even the instrumental tracks. She couldn't listen to them. A simple thought was crushing her and it was beyond paranoia. The love that lived here for so few gorgeous days and nights had been burnt in a small square of silver paper. There was still some left, it would still be here for a little longer till she fell asleep. Tomorrow it would most certainly be gone. She didn’t want to fall asleep now.
‘Do you mind turning the music off?’ she asked.
‘Sure baby.’ He replied, a few inches from her face but sounding as far as the next monsoon.
Once again she reflected that her mind was still quite sharply. She noticed this drug did not open her mind, it did not delude her into thinking exceptional thoughts, perceptive thoughts. It didn't make her taller or stronger or bigger. It just nullified everything. She considered what kind of loser wants to take something that blasts you into nothingness, into feeling nothing. 'This is not the drug for me. ' was the refrain going round her head. But when he said 'Are you ok baby?' she answered 'It's sooo niiiccccce.’
'Do you need anything?'
'No, I'm ok, Time has stopped.'
Then she was surprised to think a silent 'Leave me alone now.’
She looked at Carpa, long asleep on the bed, nestled between their legs as she always was, with her tiny head resting on her paws. Gina felt she didn’t know Craig’s thoughts, fears, hopes, ambitions and desires anymore than she couldn't know the puppy's thoughts. Worse, she couldn’t know even her own thoughts, didn't know where they were, where to find them inside the cotton wool in her skull. She didn't know anything. And it was nice. Like being alive, but dead at the same time. Now she thought 'I want to switch the light off, just leave the candles burning,' but some other part of her brain instantly replaced this with 'It doesn't matter.’
Craig was lying by her side, eyes closed, a satisfied grin on his handsome face. His breathing was even and his skin felt warm next to hers. He seemed floating serene in the silence, as far away as Ko Tao, the next island across that incredibly welcoming sea. Gina had suggested a few times going to check it out but then had stopped asking. Now there was no time left. In three days they would spend seven hours on a ferry ride, the first leg of a long journey heading back to different land masses . Perhaps people were always just like these will-sapping islands, perhaps heroin had nothing to do with it. Gina thought she was telling Craig all this, like they always talked into the night, but realised that no words had come out of her mouth. It was fixed in a blissful smile and she closed her eyes to gently drift away too. Weightlessly ebbing and flowing like the night-time tide.