Acts of Desperation

by Megan Nolan

  I don’t think you deserve it. Don’t think you deserve me.

  I think your little pantomime of friendship and desire is weak and pallid.

  He kept on kissing my neck, tenderly stroking my body. I kept myself turned stiffly away. My eyes were wide open and staring blankly ahead.

  ‘Why not?’ he said again, and as I turned towards him I saw he was grinning at me. He was actually grinning, sheepish and happy. He kept touching me and eventually I did what I had to do to stop him from wanting to have sex with me, which was to have sex with him.

  I made loud low noises which only an idiot would mistake for noises of animalistic pleasure. I focused on making these noises, which were letting out some of the hatred and revulsion inside me. As he went faster and started to hurt me I leaned backwards and scratched his thighs as hard as I could.

  Again, an idiot might mistake this for a sign of abandonment, enjoyment. His little whimpers disgusted me.

  I looked at the ceiling, willing him to finish, hot frustrated tears gathering in my eyes. I moved my body up and down faster and faster, begging him in my head to finish, finish, finish. When he did I rolled away from him and thought to myself never again never again never again.

  I give so much pleasure to so many people. Why can’t I get some pleasure for myself?

  I thought, not for the first time, that wheedling of the sort he had employed should be forbidden in men. It was already so near to impossible to say no to a man, so difficult to accept the possibility of being hurt or disliked or shouted at. It takes so much out of you to make yourself say no when you have been taught to say yes, to be accommodating, to make men happy.

  Once you’ve said no, a man wheedling feels unbearable. Even if he does it politely, or gently, it overrides the clearly expressed intention. It says: Your choice does not really matter. What I desire matters, and I don’t want to feel bad for forcing you into it. So perhaps you ought to reconsider?

  Wheedling is cowardly, and violent. When you change someone’s no to yes by wheedling, you have stolen from them what does not belong to you.

  It was the last thing I wanted to do, and I did it.

  I sat up beside him in bed, looking at my thighs. As usual my body looked different to me after somebody had fucked it, more coherent than before. He put his arm around me and chattered about his job, his bands, telling stories, staff gossip. He was easier to listen to now, less grating. I was able to laugh along without it hurting too much.

  3

  When I sleep with men I don’t like, men who irritate or scare or disgust me, because it is easier to do so, I make myself as bad as they are. I drag myself down to their level by allowing them to have what they want.

  Having sex with them degrades me, my reluctance and eventual capitulation degrade me. Once I have been degraded I am really no better than they are. The men themselves are rendered more bearable to me.

  I hate them less afterwards, because I’ve made myself as pathetic as they are.

  4

  I woke early on Sunday morning and went to the balcony to check my emails and smoke. It was a beautiful day. The very beginning of the cold was coming in amidst the sunshine and clear sky.

  Athens had already given me this gift: I appreciated every day that I existed there. It made me more happy to be alive than not. The idea of not living was absurd. You would be mad to not live as long as you can in Greece.

  I’d like to swim today, I thought.

  When Mark woke up I hustled him out of the apartment quick as I could so we wouldn’t miss the warmer part of the afternoon. The nearest beach was an hour away and I made sure to check he had brought a book before we left.

  We sat in companionable silence on the tram journey, I felt sorry for him that I hated him so much.

  As I undressed on the beach he told me he couldn’t really swim very well; he was fine to a certain point but didn’t like to go in very far.

  ‘Fine, that’s OK, don’t worry,’ I said brusquely, not caring what he was or wasn’t able to do.

  I walked and then swam into the cold ocean, turned on my back and looked at the sky, stretched out my limbs a bit below the surface before going too far.

  I was happy, as I always am in the sea, the only place I have ever found where my body feels natural and mine and being used according to its intent. I am weightless but not insubstantial. I am always sure of what my body should be doing there. I feel seal-like, the fat I normally hate becomes sleek and normal in water, my inelegant body can be strong there.

  Mark waded in, gasping and wincing at the cold. He grinned at me, teeth chattering, edging his way towards me. It took him a minute to work himself up to submersion. Then he paddled towards me and grabbed me by the waist, manoeuvring my body to try to have my legs wrapped around his torso. I submitted to the pose for a few moments and let him kiss me, then bent backwards and kicked away.

  After I got a little further out I glanced back at him.

  Seeing him there, squirming in the tide, unsure and uncomfortable, I understood fully that certain weaknesses in others are intolerable – at least they are when you don’t love them.

  I remembered how Ciaran would want me to do certain things that I couldn’t or was not willing to, physical things like cycling or running. I would decline and apologise for my shortcomings, shortcomings that were as certainly and definitively me as my own face was.

  You don’t mind, do you? I would say, an ironic pout, trying to be playful, acknowledging my own limitations; I fully expected him to love me in spite of them.

  Of course I don’t mind, he would say, and I would mostly believe him. But there was always a hint of the unsaid in these conversations, a harsh word he didn’t let out, a bit of distaste.

  I understood it, looking at Mark. Someone who needs you, even just a little – who needs you to like or love them – seeing their weakness is disturbing and repellent. It’s ugly but it’s true.

  It isn’t fair, but there it is. When you love a person these things are nothing, or even lovable in and of themselves. But when you don’t love a person, they niggle at you. The person’s humanity is revealed too soon, before you can come to forgive it with love.

  I knew then that Ciaran had not loved me. At least he didn’t love me in a right way, a way that had to do with who I was.

  It didn’t make it good, what I had done to him, what we had done to each other. But it made it OK. It made it something I could live with.

  I swam as far out as I could without stopping to breathe, and then came up, far from shore, so far I could not see the expression on anyone’s face, so far that I could not be kept track of. I was happy he couldn’t follow me, and kept going. I swam until I was exhausted, my arms and legs getting so jellied that I struggled to return, the hotels and umbrellas and people all blurring happily.

  When I got back to the shore, Mark was sitting up on the towel, reading a book, ill-concealed annoyance on his face.

  ‘I couldn’t see you any more… I was worried,’ he said.

  I collapsed down into the sand, stretching myself into it and wriggling around, letting it get into all the awkward parts of myself.

  ‘That’s OK,’ I said to him. ‘There’s no need.’

  5

  He left then, taking the keys to the apartment.

  Near me two elderly twin brothers were sunbathing and moving in sync on their towels to tan evenly. They stood up together and faced the last bit of afternoon light with their eyes closed and holding hands, not speaking.

  It made me happy, how funny and touching they were, and how comfortable with one another.

  It made me happy too to look around me at the hot dog stand and at my beer set down in the sand, and my sour Greek cigarettes, and the books I had bought earlier that week from a woman’s porch.

  It made me so happy that soon I was crying at the luck I’d had in getting here, how lucky I was to be on my own at last, even when it hurt.

  There were things happening inside m
e which there were no words for, or too many words – things that were so simple that they seemed infantile to even think of but which I hadn’t been able to think of for so long. Things like the creamy orange sky which was making my heart feel split and open and free as it had when I was a teenager.

  I remembered how much I had once loved to learn things. I could see myself back in the library in Waterford surrounded by reference books and encyclopedias, where I would sit all day, learning things because I wanted to know them, not to tell them to anybody else or to become someone different than I really was.

  I thought of Mark’s annoyed face and his worry for me when he could no longer keep track of me snaking off into the ocean, where I floated on my back and enjoyed the smell of my perfume coming off the water.

  I thought of all the worry I had solicited in one way or another from Ciaran and from other men, with the food and the cutting and the crying and the sex, the whole great presentation of my rage and hurt, anger like a performance, anger at everything they’d done to me or hadn’t bothered doing to me.

  I thought how full my life and my head had been for ever with these things, with the desperation to be loved by a man, with the idea that a man’s adoration or need to fuck me would make all the bad parts of myself be quiet for ever.

  I’d thought that a man’s love would make me so full up I’d never need to drink or eat or cut or do anything at all to my body ever again. I’d thought they’d take it over for me.

  But now here I was, right inside it, with nobody to say what happened next.

  What would I think about, now that I wasn’t thinking about love or sex? That would be the next thing, trying to figure out what to fill up all that space with.

  But that was all right. That would follow.

  Acknowledgments

  To my remarkable, brilliant and beloved agent and friend Harriet Moore: I wouldn’t have written this book without you and will forever be grateful for your unflagging faith in this awkward, changeable work in all its various forms. You are so loved and so admired by me and many others.

  I am very grateful for the incredible guidance and unswerving vision given to me so generously and kindly by Jonathan Cape, especially Michal Shavit and Ana Fletcher, and at Little Brown from the inimitable Jean Garnett.

  Thank you to the friends who supported me while I wrote this book, whether through lent fifty quids, roast dinners or just the relief of their entertainment and company. Thanks to my beloved Taddyheads: Stan Cross, Francisco Garcia, Josh Baines and Charles Olafare, to my Pink IPA gals Lolly Adefope, Heather McIntosh and Thea Everett for chatting to me all day every day and making me crease constantly. To Crispin Best, Mat Riviere and Rachel Benson for being such good friends when I first arrived to London and forever more: I love you all and treasure each time we’re together.

  Thanks to everyone who provided me with short term house and cat sitting opportunities where I got chunks of writing done in often very delightful surroundings, especially Tommy and Kate Farrell and Sophie Jung.

  Thank you to Jesse Darling for being a brief but excellent and formative London housemate and providing a much needed idea of what a positive rather than sacrificial domesticity might be like.

  Joseph Noonan Ganley, Fiona Byrne, Chris Timms, Frank Wasser and Alice Rekab for hospitality and invitations when I first arrived to London and baked potatoes and Christmas parties in Camberwell, and willingness to discuss work when it was in embryonic embarrassing stages.

  Lovely Linda Stupart and Tom, I admire both of you kind, brilliant people so much and am inspired by your love for each other. Let’s go back to Ischia.

  Thanks to Roy Claire Potter my favourite chain-smoking, chain-everything pal and one of the best writers and artists I’ve ever come across.

  Thanks to my former housemate and wonderful friend Isadora Epstein for our years in Dublin laughing and discussing and for all your support when I was there and since I left- you’re the absolute tops lady. Thanks to Oisin Murphy Hall and Liz Ni Mhairtin for the years of friendship, for putting me up when I’m back in Dublin and for making me laugh like nobody else can. Thanks to my dear friend Fiona Hallinan for thirteen years of friendship, fish, swims – you are a wonder. To Shane Morrissey, my most cherished bully.

  To Sean Goucher, forever my favourite former colleague. Thank you to my fantastic brothers Gavan and Luke Flinter for your support and love and the always entertaining and often whiskey-soaked Christmastime rumbles.

  To Simon Childs: thank you for your easy and generous love which made the writing of this opposite kind of love much more bearable. You will always be close to my heart and I hope we will know each other for the rest of our lives.

  To my best friend Doireann Larkin: I love you so much and can’t say how forever grateful I will be for all your help when I came to London – giving me Oyster cards and dinners in Tupperware and wine when I was hard up, and all the silly never ending nights on your couch telling each other the same stories as we have been for fifteen years and enjoying them just as much as ever.

  Thank you to my wonderful step parents, Ger Kenny and Trudi Hartley.

  Most of all thank you to my parents Jim Nolan and Sue Larkin for sticking by me while I blew my life into bits over and over and while I put it back together again. Without your patience, love and encouragement I wouldn’t have made it out the other side. Thank you so much, I love you so much.

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  About the Author

  Megan Nolan lives in London and was born in Waterford, Ireland. Her essays, fiction, and reviews have been published in the New York Times, the White Review, the Sunday Times, the Village Voice, The Guardian, and in the literary anthology Winter Papers. Nolan writes a fortnightly column for the New Statesman. This is her first novel.