‘Noble.’
‘She won’t talk to me,’ he said, and looked genuinely hurt. ‘I can’t stop feeling bad about it. She’s crazy, but I want to help her.’
I said, ‘Can I level with you?’
‘I insist.’
‘I detest the whole I’m such a bad guy spiel. It’s all about keeping “You” – the man – as the all-powerful, controlling pivot of the universe.’
‘But I feel so guilty! Can you understand that?’
He annoyed me, then, and I almost went, Naaah. You know what? Naaaah. See ya. But I sat. And I stayed. And I said: ‘You’ve got to watch guilt. It’s a tricksy one. Too often it’s just narcissism incognito.’
Why did I stay? To educate him? That’s what Kelly said: If you have a relationship with a white man you are basically running a correctional facility every fucking day, mate. But Kelly had been single longer than my mother.
Art looked at me more sadly than he knew. ‘But I worry about her …’ he said. ‘Eliza,’ he said. ‘That’s her name.’
Eliza. I know what she looks like, the particulars of her CV (downloaded as a PDF then shamefacedly deleted) (oh god would she be able to tell??). It’s funny how close you get to someone’s ex via the internet and the sexual hangover. I knew from the way Art and I had sex, at the start, the things Eliza liked. Before we made our own impressions on each other the impressions of the past were there, like muscle memory. The tweaked nipples (SO not my bag); the I really want to fuck yous. There is something meaningful, some kind of growth, in that historical cross-pollination. He had her name tattooed across his heart. I never asked him to remove it, but it was like she was there, every time he was naked. His body said her name. She was an echo in the room. A tracer on the light of our love.
Back to Egypt.
I said: ‘Have you considered the small possibility that Eliza is actually fine, and you might be using the whole “guilty” thing as a way of continuing to feel powerful?’
He said nothing to that.
‘You terrible cad,’ I went on. ‘You rotter, you rogue. Leaving a poor helpless woman all alone in this krewl werld. And no, no, don’t tell me, you’ve done it hundreds of times before, haven’t you? There’s a frothy wake of broken hearts behind you, trailing around the globe, isn’t there?’ His mouth was half open and he was shocked, shocked-laughing. He pushed his fingertip into my shoulder, but I wasn’t deterred. I was on a fucking roll. ‘Go visit a prison, or even better, a bank,’ I said. ‘Then you’ll meet some truly bad men. You’re just some middle-class pusskin who’s watched too many box sets.’
He looked at me like he wanted to kill me. Then his face changed. He said: ‘I see you, hipster.’ He smiled sweetly. ‘I see you, with your piecemeal personality and your dietary restrictions and your General Pinochet T-shirt.’
‘Do you think you are upset by these things because you secretly want them for yourself?’
‘I see it all for what it is. I would guess you’ve never been loved as much as you thought you deserved. I think if you really wanted to change the world you’d find a way to stop being so furious and so quaint.’
I tried to think of Oscar Wilde. Of Aristophanes. To be insulted by you is to be garlanded with lilies. I tapped my cigarette on the sandstone floor and looked back at him. ‘Well well. Don’t we have all the undainty revelations.’
He was a gun, I was counterfeit. The expectation up until that point might have been that we’d sleep together that night (we didn’t), but with those two admonitions, we fucked each other good. I don’t think we had ever felt our sex as much as we did in that moment.
Well, maybe one other time.
He smiled sweetly again. ‘Do you think there’s one person for every person?’
I shook my head. ‘No. I have never thought that.’
‘I’m scared of not meeting the right person.’
‘I’m scared that not meeting the right person, over and over, might be the point for me.’
He nodded grimly. ‘Same time tomorrow?’
And that’s how it went. We drank mint tea and smoked together every night in the garden after dinner. ‘Hey, movie star,’ he’d say, when he saw me. I cringed at that. I ensured my cringing was visible. Still, I sat there, waiting for him, Movie Star Me.
On the last day, we swapped email addresses.
He emailed me as we travelled in separate cars to Cairo.
INBOX
Subject: YOU
ARE SOMETHING ELSE.
That was it.
I have to admit, it excited me. The boldness. The way he used the subject bar as part of the message. The lot. I read it and I thought – Okayyyyy, maybe we have something here. I had never been emailed like that. It was like seeing my own brain pinned wriggling to the page. Delightful! And moreover: undeniable.
I didn’t reply. (Hahah. Mine to kill. Mine to kill.) I stared at the email. I sat back in my chair. I watched two pale yellow butterflies twirl around each other. Are you dancing? Are you asking? I’m asking. I’m dancing. I clicked my phone off and then clicked it back to life and stared at the email again. I wanted the feeling to last forever.
I messaged Kelly:
What do you make of this then?
I was milking it, I know. But I felt like I deserved a bit of milking after such a drought. And there had been a drought, certainly on the sexual-banter front. I’d been having a lot of sex, but not so many sexy verbal high jinks.
Kelly replied:
Sounds like an alpha male. Good luck
GOOGLE SEARCH
‘how to attract an alpha male’
‘how to seduce an alpha male’
‘is it possible to be truly loved by an alpha male when you are an alpha female’
‘alpha males throughout history’
I SAID
You are very sweet.
Cool. AF.
I’d waited until I knew his flight had left (he was off to Paris, an hour earlier). I was careful to use a full stop as he had done, and I realised I respected people far more when they punctuated properly. They were to be taken more seriously. He replied, from the air (imagine that!).
You have blown me away. All the way to Paris.
I didn’t reply. I boarded my flight. I drank a Grey Goose and Fever Tree tonic and felt thoroughly international.
When I landed, I had three more emails.
I just got back to my hotel room and expected you to be in my bed but you weren’t.
And:
I was standing on the Metro on the way home and thinking about how people are just bunches of cells, radiating off into smells and sounds.
And:
That thing you said to me about guilt really struck a chord. You are the wisest person I have met in forever.
Kelly said:
Jesus Christ. He talks in hyperbole – sure sign of a narcissist
Wait a minute, I talk in hyperbole!
Wellllll
I LOVE narcissists. They’re so … covetable
As soon as you reciprocate he’ll go quiet, trust me
But it was too late. I was coveting. I thought hard about his ‘smells and sounds’ remark. I tried for irreverent. And when you ‘try’ for irreverent …
I sent:
We are all just filthy little beasts underneath
Immediately after I’d pressed Send, I started to worry. We’d known each other all of five minutes. It felt too early to get away with the suggestion that I was unhygienic. We were still trying to impress each other with our arthouse knowledge, and here I was basically saying I stank like shit.
Argh!
He didn’t reply for a few minutes. He had gone off me. It was a despicable thing to write. And me, supposedly, a professional writer! What must he think of me? Oh god oh god. What if he thought I had some kind of bestial fetish? It was too much. I didn’t know what to do. I was panicking, panicking. It strikes me now how rapidly I changed. From cautious and in control to anxious wreck. How? Why?
He’d got to me, this one. Aggggggggggraaaahhhhhhhgggggggggg. It’s almost as though there’s not room for romance in modern life, what with feminism, work, social commitments and anxiety.
Kelly wouldn’t help.
You could ask me how my day is going or how Sonny’s first sleepover went
I misread her irritation as envy.
It’s romantic! I protested. But she wouldn’t have that, even.
It’s not romance. It’s mania
Well you have basically stalked people, so
That was ONE TIME, I was at a festival and I was high, so it doesn’t count
Forgive me for just wanting some basic reassurance from a pal
Manic
Romantic
Romantic mania. You are in ROMANIA mate
Look, don’t shoot the messenger. Of The Truth
*Hermes has joined the chat*
Then Art sent back:
You’re adorable.
X
Adorable! Moi!
I sent Kelly:
All fine! He replied!
And I dashed off, to Art:
Well, if you say so, squire!
X
He didn’t reply to that.
Kelly sent:
Sweet
Whatever, Kelly.
Round I went again, on my spiral … Squire! Just the thought of the word made me feel nauseated. I hoped he didn’t think I was someone who was into reenactment societies, although he HAD said in Egypt that he liked antiquing, I reassured myself, so maybe he liked old-fashioned language, too … There was so much to ponder. So much to google. But there’s only so much you can glean from someone’s cousin’s Facebook page. If I could have found more on the Dark Web, I would have gone there. I would have gone anywhere. Even a Wetherspoons.
Looking at it critically, retrospectively, I was laying some kind of claim, I suppose. I thought I was adoring, but I was actually … well, invading. I was storming into his past and present desires. I’d never taken someone like that. I don’t know what came over me. Some kind of pioneering urge. Obsession seeks possession. Just ask my mother.
A whole day later, I sent a simple:
How’s it hanging?
X
Friendly! Breezy! Brief!
It was just a lovely friendly email from one lovely new friend to another.
And then …
He didn’t reply.
And then …
I started to worry that he would think I was referring to his penis. I was freshly distraught. How could I expect to be a creature of mystique whilst referring to someone’s penis as ‘it’? Oh god, that he might think that!
Then:
I’ve just bought a cocktail cabinet that’s too big for my flat. Mid-century modern. It means you have to come round for cocktails, Foxface.
My fingers were typing before my brain could even scream NO WAIT A MINUTE WHY THIS DETERMINATION TO PUT YOURSELF BACK INTO TORTUROUS PAIN, WHY NOT SAVOUR THE SWEET ABSENCE OF FEELING—
I can’t wait to see your cock
Tail cabinet
Oops sent too soon!
Well, I thought it was funny.
Everything.
In me.
Tensed.
Then, the blessed relief of a chime, a name, an I-see-you.
Hahahahahahahahahahhahaaaaa
I went all hot and happy inside.
Then he wrote:
I am going to destroy you.
You try keeping your pants intact when things hit that height. I replied:
Promises, promises.
No kisses. Just pure raw come-and-get-it. Oh yeah, mufux. The cracks. The verbal ping-pong. You’d never heard anything like it! They were publishable, our email exchanges. They were sublime.
But all that effort. The waiting, the trying, the wanting, the joining-the-dots in between. The pretty pictures out of something and nothing. My brain was – is – too good at spotting patterns. It’s not a million miles away from a certain kind of madness.
I tried to stay in control. I even sent him an email to Kelly accidentally on purpose one time.
Can we meet a bit later tonight? I have to file next week’s column early because of Christmas break XX
I wanted him to know I had an exciting work life.
Then I sent: Whoops sorry, not for you!
My stage management, my timing, was seamless – or so I thought.
He sent back: I figured. Good luck with the column x x
Years later, he told me he’d seen through it. That it was ‘a bit exposition-y’. That it was ‘the kind of thing he’d have done, years ago’. I was furious. I was fucked. It was acid. It was tragic. Because I know, deep down, beyond where it hurts, that I will never have that kind of frisson with anyone, ever again. It was like kissing a mirror – when the mirror starts kissing back. It is an invitation to drown.
For now, back to the salad days. The proses. The roses.
THE PATATAS BRAVAS
On our second date we went to a tapas place in Victoria Park. We sat outside and drank too-sharp cherry-red wine out of beakers. We discovered we were both trying to eat less meat, and were both scared of wasps. It was too romantic. I told him I was buying a house. He sat back in his chair and whistled. He said I’d done good, that he should probably buy a house, that his career wouldn’t last forever. I came from nothing, like you. I said: ‘My mother has money.’ I used her like a doubloon in my pocket, then. ‘She matched me for the deposit. We went fifty-fifty.’
‘Nice.’
‘She’s done very well, doing what she does.’
‘What does she do?’
‘You and your trishula will soon find out.’
He’d been taking photos of birds and butterflies. I remember those pictures, hung in his tiny flat, and later, in my house. The stained glass of a butterfly’s wing. The hard black crescents of swifts. He photographed bower-birds and the extravagant nests they made to attract a mate. The males collected coloured objects – usually blue – like magpies did, and made little gardens, bowers, to lure in a female. I suppose what surprised me the most was that I found them beautiful, and Art found them beautiful. So humans shared an aesthetic with birds. How odd, for two species to share an idea of beauty. I said as much.
‘Are you luring me into your fancy new bower, with these jewels?’ he said. I sat back. ‘Oh, you have a mean face when you turn your smile off! For a pretty girl. Are you going to look at me like that for much longer? Wow. I feel like taking a picture so you can see for yourself!’
‘I’m not trying to lure you anywhere,’ I said, insulted. ‘You can do what you like. I have no desire to mate or marry. I am a busy woman with plans. It is not in my nature to surrender.’
(Baby me, oh baby me. I want to fly back in time and tell you you’re wrong and hug you and tell you everything’s not going to be okay.)
When I went to the loo he emailed me:
What if I adore you?
I sat on the loo and typed back:
What, then?
What if I do, though?
Well, this IS a conundrum …
Someone knocked. I hitched up my pants.
‘Are we … categorised, then?’ Art said, when I was back at the table.
‘Is this’, I said, ‘a hoary little question about exclusivity?’
He laughed at that. He told me I could call the shots. Ha! I laughed, then. I was a 28-year-old woman. I was taking the shot-calling for granted. I looked at him in a way that told him so. I revealed … an amused scowl.
‘What are you going to do about them, then?’
‘Who?’
‘The other three? Your three amigos. The curly-haired one in particular needs to go.’
Ah, so he’d looked and found them. He had made deductions. Course he had.
‘Is this an ultimatum? I don’t respond well to ultimatums, I should warn you.’
‘I wouldn’t dare.’
‘I am completely honest with all of y
ou. I have everything I need. If you want to come along for the ride, be my guest, but I’m driving.’
‘And what about the teatimes?’
‘What about the teatimes?’
‘Are they not lonely? The endings of the days? Do you not long for that nightly family feeling? Decompressing at the dining table.’
I couldn’t answer for a long time. He’d hit a nerve all right. He was wily, this one.
‘There are other ways of getting that.’
‘You might not need the other ways forever.’
You know what it is? The light does it. Every time. You’ll buy anything – a house, a situation, a feeling – if the light is right. That night, the light was right.
‘Just know I’ll do everything in my own time.’
‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Of course. But – in the interests of transparency …’
‘In the interests of transparency, I suggest you take off your shirt and your trousers.’
Ha! What a sailor. I was epic. Randy Crawford’s ‘Almaz’ comes to mind. It’s strange how a lot of people hear that as a tragic song.
KELLY HAD SAID
You’re like a deranged Victorian
I just want my missives to be as good as they can be! Help me be the best me I can be, friend
These are EMAILS, not missives. Wake up and smell the technology. Also why aren’t you texting each other? Email is a bizarre choice of medium
It’s romantic. It’s the closest we’ve got to letters
Apart from actual … letters
Too slow
I think the slowness would do you good
There’s a lot to be said for spontaneity
No there isn’t. Spontaneity ruins lives
At least in the olde days they understood the true power of the written word
That was all they had! It was fucking years between dances! They might be dead before they saw each other again! It’s not like that now. You’re going to Nando’s next week so chill the fuck out
I AM CHILLED, I EMBODY CHILLED
I’m going to ask you this once, just once: what are you scared of? It’s like I’ve never seen this side of you. Where has it come from?
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