I kind of felt like the sting would never pass on this one.
And yet, even I couldn’t perjure myself to that point. To saying that I was okay. Nope, that would be next level.
Instead I just sort of raised my eyebrows like that was a response. A question mark maybe. And put my hands on my hips. Like this assertive stance would somehow allow me to reclaim an aching fragment of my manhood. The manhood that had leaked out of me on the ride back from Paddington to Enmore. Sprayed out of me in fact.
Spray painting the streets the same colour as my innards.
“Where did you stay last night?” he continued, watching me carefully, like I was a specimen under intense investigation.
Hmmm ... now this would be a tough one.
I didn’t think I would be able to say her name. Try, Benji. Try. I opened my mouth again and wrapped it around that initial sound, “Fran ...”
But it didn’t come out. Again, I remained, mouth frozen to the spot.
Maybe I would never be able to say her name again.
“Francesca Moore’s place?” Harry asked. Let’s be clear – Harry and I had no relationship. We were just flatmates. There was a large gap between us that just couldn’t be filled. Mostly because we couldn’t communicate to each other. And that was fine. It made things easier, I guess. But clearly, I had spoken to him enough for him to have gathered who Francesca Moore was.
Clearly.
I felt the strangest sensation. Like I was in some sort of pantomime with Harry. Like he was interpreting my reactions and gestures into communication.
This was extra. Absolutely extra.
“What happened? Did you two get it on?” Harry’s face was deadpan, indiscernible. It was obvious that he, like Francesca Moore, also didn’t give one shit about our going nowhere relationship.
I twisted my head to the side, considering how I should respond to this. A simple yes would suffice, or even just a nod of the head. But I couldn’t bring myself to do either.
Maybe I was having a stroke. Was that possible? It was a completely plausible reason for my sudden mutism.
“Did she make you take some selfies for Instagram?” he fished. Somehow we were back to her Instagram account ... seemed like a common narrative. Leo and Harry both appeared to converge on this point.
And nope, she hadn’t.
I had this sick desperate feeling just then too. Like I was itching to see if she had loaded any images onto her grid last night, or even any stories. What were they? Were they of her and Hamish at the party? I could feel the distraction creeping over me in a thick wave ... I wanted to know.
But I needed to stop.
I needed to stop this whole fucking thing with Francesca Moore.
I needed to get the whole fucking thing out of my head.
Like a lobotomy.
A complete erasure of her long dark hair, her uneven eyes, her breathy tone, her smudged face, her concave stomach, and her long legs. An expurgation of her smell. Vanilla and fake tan ... and her taste, bubblegum and cheap wine. If I closed my eyes, I could conjure the taste right now ...
I had to suppress it.
I had to cut off the blood supply to the whole thing. Tourniquet it. And like a tumour, starved of its life source, it might just die.
Wither up, and drop off.
I needed to stop thinking about Francesca Moore.
As I marched off towards my bedroom now, I could hear Harry moaning in the background. Something about me being melodramatic. Being soft. Yeah, whatever. I was soft. Like it wasn’t in the least a revelation.
I closed the door behind him, his Backstreet Boys t-shirt and retro Xbox Sunday. I couldn’t deal with it.
Instead I reached into the pocket of my jeans and fished out her fake eyelashes. They were still clumped together like tiny caterpillars. I smelt them, like some deranged, filthy lunatic, smelling an old pair of panties ... like it was the last rush of adrenaline I would ever get from Francesca Moore. I promised myself that was the case, as I headed over to the window, wedged it open, and dropped them out.
I watched them as they fluttered down, ever so gently onto the grey, dirty pavement below.
There was a poetry to their downwards motion, and to their unsubtle demise.
I closed the window, and lay down on the bed.
I should probably shower. I could smell the vomit, and sweat on my skin. But I couldn’t be bothered. My mind momentarily flashed back to the idea of our entwined microbiome. The idea that had captured me so completely that very morning. Now ... it seemed ... it seemed like it just didn’t matter. Whether her matter sat thickly on my skin ... she was somewhere else altogether, likely with him, again.
She’d never had any intention of coming my way.
The only thing she’d wanted was to mess everything up.
And she had. Including me.
Maybe that’s what people like that did. They eased into a space, and then created a whole hurricane, of wind, and rain, and dust ... and then they just left. And everything was just left arranged mid-air, afraid to settle.
I peeled my phone out of my jean pocket. Did I dare?
Could I be trusted?
I glanced down at the screen. One last fix.
There were no new messages.
Standard.
How could things in life move so quickly? I went from being the closest I could be to her, to the furthest apart in a couple of hours. How did that even happen?
I tossed my phone down onto the ground and closed my eyes.
I waited for sleep to claim me.
The thing about sleep was – you just got to disconnect from it all. It was like the plug just got pulled out and everything about you just disappeared. Into that darkness. I welcomed it.
“You just zone out sometimes,” I heard her little laugh. Quickly lit, and also snuffed out.
Followed by:
“You know, you’re so pretty.”
I ran a hand over my pretty face.
I needed to stop with that. Subconscious, or conscious. The moment had come to kill Francesca Moore’s ghost ...
Fuck, it was all so fucked up.
My eyes slowly pulsated open. Heavy eyelids. Laced with torpor. The curtains were pulled shut, and the room was fortified by darkness, but still I could tell it was the afternoon. Maybe even late afternoon by now.
Ugh. Sunday. I hated Sundays. Sundays were incredibly melancholy. Even more melancholy than the rest of the week, but I couldn’t figure out why.
I didn’t want to be Francesca Moore on Sundays. Scratch that. I didn’t want to be Francesca Moore any day. But on Sunday the feeling was particularly oppressive.
Offensive almost. Decidedly gruesome.
I sniffed the air. I could smell him still. Benji. A mixture of soap, deodorant and sweat. He had been here the night before ... fuck, that had been a mistake ... and then I’d kicked him out in the morning when Hamish had turned up. Whacked.
Then I’d kicked Hamish out, and gone back to bed.
I couldn’t deal with the drama. It was too much.
That smell was an invasion. That’s what boys did – they invaded things and they colonised them. They left their marks everywhere. That’s why I didn’t want to play into their drama. They wanted me to declare my love for them – all in different ways. Hamish, Leo, Benji. They wanted me to cut out my heart and pin it to their sleeve. So, they could treat it decorously. Another conquest.
Hamish wanted me to listen to his haphazard, catastrophic life and forgive him all his deviations. Leo wanted me, likewise, to hang onto his every word, and be his ride or die – always. Benji ... Benji wanted so much more. He didn’t just want to be understood and consoled, he wanted everything about me – he wanted me completely.
I’d watched my mother be consumed by men – and I didn’t want any part of it. Besides there were other things consuming me at this very point in time. Literally.
I tried to filter his smell out. I replaced it with the other fragr
ances in my room and in my mind. Vanilla and that slight tang of damp in the background which was virtually impossible to get rid of. Way back in the distance was the smell of oil paint and turps, but it was so quiet and indistinct, it was almost gone. The memory of a smell.
Someone once told me that people with eating disorders wore vanilla as a fragrance, because they were obsessed with food. So fixated that they wanted to spend every waking minute reeking of it. I wasn’t sure if it was true, but it seemed possible.
Food.
The word stormed my mind. A hostile takeover, like it did every morning, when I woke up. I imagined the letters swimming around in my head. The F would be doing backstroke, because it was an aggressive letter, like the stroke, all straight lines. The O’s would be doing breaststroke, all lovely and rounded, caressing the entrails of my mind gently, and the D ... butterfly, power and poetry all at the same time.
There they were, whirling about at the fastest of paces, making the inside of my mind choppy.
And getting nowhere, just knocking against the walls repulsively.
I sat up in bed abruptly. Propping myself up with two thin arms. A lock of dark hair flopping across my forehead. Food. Yeah, always on the brain. I felt hungry. I always felt hungry. There was no way of ignoring it. Instantly my mind skipped over the potential meals. Cereal. I imagined the muesli clusters in the pantry that Leo had on extremely special occasions. With milk and maybe even yoghurt. I hurdled that menu potential, and headed on to toast, with butter and jam. How decadent. Or even French toast ... unimaginable. Or eggs ... fried, scrambled, poached ... how could eggs ever be made in the wrong way?
My stomach literally hurt.
I had to stop thinking about food. All those dishes had way too many calories. Way too many calories. Calories galore.
What could I actually afford to eat? I could drink a black coffee and vape.
Black coffee and vape.
Black coffee and vape.
Black coffee and vape.
I repeated the words over and over in my mind and hoped they would become a mantra. Hoped they would take over the food dialogue that played on repeat all day.
But then a second later it was back. The muesli clusters invading my thoughts.
I lay back and put the pillow over my head for a couple of seconds, hoping to stifle the thoughts. But there they were, bashing about.
I tossed the pillow aside and made a disgruntled sound. Instead, I resolved to find my phone, maybe that would distract me, even for the shortest while. I fumbled around in the darkness, and finally my hand happened upon it on the nightstand.
There were a couple of missed calls and messages.
Hamish.
I sighed. He had been ridiculous today, more ridiculous than usual. We weren’t together. Not even close. We just served each other’s purposes. I just didn’t get where he got off pretending he owned me. Like he was here to protect me.
It wasn’t about sex. People didn’t get that. They always thought sex was involved. Like it was the crux of all problems – like it was most definitely a penis or vagina issue. It wasn’t. Hamish and I had no sexual connection whatsoever. But we were connected ... we saw each other, clearly. We understood each other. We were both kind of cold, and we were on a specific trajectory that nobody else understood. Our infatuations weren’t of the human variety.
And so I capitulated to him – because we were looped together, in space and time, lassoed by similar mindsets and unfeeling hearts. I stroked his ego and played along, and made him feel like it was all okay. Like he belonged to me and I belonged to him. Like he could direct me, or pass judgment on my decisions.
He was so messed up. Our relationship was so messed up.
I pressed his number now and called him in return, but the call went straight to voice mail.
He wouldn’t be asleep. I knew that much. He was always too wired to sleep. He probably slept well once a week. The insomnia gave him a strange frantic quality. He’d probably lost his phone or left it somewhere.
He was okay. Yeah, I tried to convince myself. Hamish Chiel was the type of person that was always okay, no matter what.
I crawled out of bed – achy. My body felt tired. Like I could skulk straight back into bed and go back to sleep for another ten hours. God, that would be nice. It would mean I didn’t have to deal with another ten or so hours of food panic ... or those strange seedy pangs, that I wasn’t enough. That I would never make it. No matter what I did.
No matter how little food I ate.
I reached for my vape in the top drawer of the bedside table. Next to a packet of cigarettes. There was some gruesome picture of someone with mouth cancer on the front. It literally had no impact whatsoever. I had no clue who ran all these campaigns and how they came up with these ideas. They were utterly inadequate. Pathetic.
Like I cared about mouth cancer.
What I cared about was being thin, and being someone ... of course, the two things were intrinsically linked. In my mind.
I shuffled around the bed frame to the curtains and pulled them open. It was grey outside. Thick, opaque storm clouds covered the skyline. Great. The weather kind of matched my mood.
I opened the two doors that led out onto the tiny balcony, and slipped outside.
I paid an extra $50 in rent for singular access to that balcony, and it was worth it. Other than my bed, it was the other place in the house where I spent the majority of my time.
It wasn’t carefully fashioned. Like most of my things.
At some point I had thrown a tiny Afghani rug on the ground that my mum had given me a while back. I knew it would get wet and damaged from the elements, but it was also a good remedy from the splinters. The old wooden floorboards on that balcony had killer splinters, and I was sick of getting them jammed in my feet and trying to fish them out with eyebrow tweezers.
I’d shoved an old outdoor chair out there. I’d found it on the street a while back, in one of those “throw out your old stuff” days which were so common in Sydney. Of course, when you lived at the juncture of Paddington and Woollahra the old stuff was usually new, designer label stuff.
The chair was a white, woven thing with a wooden frame, and it sat particularly low.
I liked that, because I could easily sit there on that chair on the balcony and not be spied by a single person. Not my creepy neighbour with the acid blonde dyed hair, jail-tattoos and trophy wife. Or the AFL player who lived on our street – his strawberry blonde hair was always messed up. Or Maddison Priestly, wandering back from the markets on a Saturday afternoon carrying a baguette, and a bouquet of sunflowers wrapped in brown butchers paper.
What an aesthetic.
Not even.
And yeah, I knew her surname. The girl Benji had hooked up with at the party. I knew her whole name. But it was hardly worth uttering, was it? She was a ghost.
I could sit here, slumped low, with vape in hand, observing that merry band of miscreants go about their day completely and utterly unobserved.
Just a single band of smoke rising high into the heavens. The only signal to alert anyone of my presence.
I stood up now and glanced over the balcony at the street below. A couple in active wear, carrying their coffees strode past, confident, sharing the minutiae of their lives. An older woman, and a whippet, tottered along, ever so slowly, like they had settled into slow motion. One day they would slow down so far, they would just be a freeze frame.
If I peered at a hard-left angle I could see the Sydney Tower silhouetted amongst those thick clouds.
One, two, three. I counted the seconds observing it. And then I sat down.
I took a drag from my vape.
Smoking or vaping seemed like the right thing to do when seated on this balcony. Like if I’d been in some sort of romcom, or documentary, about a sort-of artist girl with an eating disorder living in the city, that’s what she would be doing.
She would be wearing her pyjamas bottoms and a crop top on a S
unday – approximate time 2.20pm – seated on a low chair, on a balcony in an inner-city suburb, smoking. She would have unwashed paint on her hands.
Did romcoms feature girls with eating disorders?
I didn’t think so. Too complicated. And sad. Romcoms were for chubby but beautiful girls, or, just beautiful girls (with no eating issues).
Not for people like me.
I rolled my eyes at no one in particular.
So pedestrian.
The word made me think of Benji, which instantly annoyed me. I didn’t want to think of him. It had all been a careless mistake – and even that frustrated me. I wasn’t the careless one. He was. Pedestrian and careless. And yet when I was with him, I found myself being exactly that. Pedestrian and careless.
I didn’t care to integrate either of those character traits into my personality. Not now. Not ever. There were already too many of them to keep track.
Sleeping with him had been both of those things. Pedestrian and careless.
It kind of did make for the offbeat plot of some awful romcom. Strange, quirky and intelligent girl with eating disorder, meets perfectly tanned, blonde, pretty-boy. They soon discover that they have something in common. More than something in common, they have a curious star-crossed quality. And then the pretty-boy sweeps the anorexic girl off her feet (literally and figuratively) and they live happily ever after. She would gain weight. He wouldn’t care ... and of course, they would spend the rest of their lives painting and writing, and probably reading and doing crossword puzzles in bed on Sundays.
They would never be lonely ever again.
Maybe romcoms were made for ano’s?
See? Romcoms were pedestrian. Predictable. Definitely careless. And so infinitely boring.
And above all other things they were wrong.
You see, I didn’t want to gain weight. That’s why I starved myself. People assumed that people with eating disorders were trying to remedy their predicament. Maybe some of them were. I was not. Being close to someone like him, he whose name shall go un-uttered, meant that I had to change that. I would need to admit that something was wrong, I would need to set a plan in place to alter things – to make things right.
The Overthinkers Page 9