The Story: Love, Loss and the Lives of Women: 100 Great Short Stories

by Victoria Hislop

  I was a beautiful boy, or so they said. If I stood in my school clothes in front of the mirror I did not see anything special. My haircut was awful, my ears stuck out like telephone receivers, my eyes, while blue, seemed to disappear entirely when I smiled. And yet when I stood in front of the same mirror naked, I danced at the sight of myself, incredibly and inexcusably male.

  I had no desire to be beautiful or good. Somehow, I suspect because it did not come naturally, I longed to be bad. I wanted to misbehave, to prove to myself that I could stand the sudden loss of my family’s affection. I wanted to do terrible, horrible things and then be excused simply because I was a boy and that’s what boys do, especially boys without fathers. I had the secret desire to frighten others. But I was forever a pink-skinned child, with straight blond hair, new khaki pants, white socks, and brown shoes.

  My only true fear was of men. Having grown up without fathers, brothers, or uncles, men were completely unfamiliar to me, their naked selves only accidentally seen in bathhouses or public restrooms. They lived behind extra long zippers, hidden, like something in a freak show you’d pay to see once and only once. Their ungraceful parts hung deeply down, buried in a weave of hair that wound itself denser as it got closer as if to protect the world from the sight of such a monster. As I grew older, I taught myself to enjoy what was frightening.

  I never wore underwear. Inside my jeans, it lay naked, rubbing the blue denim white. I went out in the evenings to roam among men, to display myself, to parade, to hunt. I was what everyone wanted, white, clean, forever a boy. They wanted to ruin me as a kind of revenge. It was part of my image to look unavailable but the truth was anyone could have me. I liked ugly men. Grab your partner and do-si-do. Change partners. I kissed a million of them. I opened myself to them and them to me. I walked down the street nearly naked with it in the lead. It was pure love in the sense of loving oneself and loving the sensation.

  I was alive, incredibly, joyously. Even in the grocery store or the laundromat, every time someone’s eyes passed over me, holding me for a second, I felt a boost that sent me forward and made me capable of doing anything. Every hour held a sensuous moment, a romantic possibility. Each person who looked at me and smiled, cared for me. To be treasured by those who weren’t related, to whom I meant nothing, was the highest form of a compliment.

  Men, whose faces I didn’t recognize, bent down to kiss me as I sat eating lunch in sidewalk cafes. I kissed them back and whispered, It was good seeing you. And when my lunch dates asked who that was, I simply smiled.

  I felt celebrated. Every dream was a possibility. It was as though I would never be afraid again. I remember being happy.

  I look down on it and begin to weep. I do not understand what has happened or why. I am sickened by myself, and yet cannot stand the sensation of being so revolted. It is me, I tell myself. It is me, as though familiarity should be a comfort.

  I remember when the men I met were truly strangers; our private parts went off in search of each other like dogs on a leash sniffing each other while the owners look away. I remember still, after that, meeting a man, and looking at him, looking at him days and months in a row and each time loving him.

  I feel like I should wear rubber gloves for fear of touching myself or someone else. I have never felt so dangerous. I am weeping and it frightens me.

  A friend told me about a group of men who make each other feel better, more hopeful, good about their bodies.

  I picture a room full of men, sitting on folding chairs. They begin as any sort of meeting that welcomes strangers; they go around the room, first names only. They talk a little bit, and then finally, as though the talking is the obligatory introductory prayer, the warning of what is to follow, the cue to begin the incantation, they slowly take off their clothing, sweaters and shoes first. They silently stand up, and drop their pants to the floor. The sight of a circle of naked men and folding chairs is exciting. Those who can, rise to the occasion and fire their poison jets into the air. It is wonderful. A great relief. They are saying something. They are angry. Men shuffle around in a circle doing it until they collapse. I imagine that one time someone died at a meeting. He came and he died. When he fell, the group used it as inspiration. They did it again, over him, and it was all so much better then.

  I can no longer love. I cannot possess myself as I did before. I can never again possess it, as it possessed me.

  I am in my apartment screaming at nothing. This is the most horrible thing that ever happened, I am furious. I deserve better than this. I am a good boy. Truly I am. I am sorry. I am so sorry.

  I look down on it and it seems to look up at me. I want it to apologize for wanting the world, literally. I have the strongest desire to punish it, to whack it until it screams, beat it until it is bloody and runs off to hide, shaking in a corner, but I can’t. I cannot turn my back so quickly, and besides it is already lying there pale and weak, as if it is dead.

  I see sick men, friends that have shriveled into strangers, unwelcome in hospitals and at home. They can’t think or breathe, and still as they go rattling towards death, it never loses an ounce, it lies fattened, untouched in the darkness between their legs. It is strikingly an ornament, a reminder of the past.

  Should I ask for a divorce? A separation from myself on the grounds that this part of me that is more male than I alone could ever be has betrayed me. We no longer have anything in common except profound depression and disbelief. I have lost my best friend, my playmate from childhood, myself. I have lost what I loved most deeply. I wish to be compensated.

  I let a napkin from the table fall across it, and then quickly whisk it away, Voilà, like I am doing a magic trick. I look down upon my lap as if expecting to see a bunch of flowers or a white rabbit in its place.

  I remember the first man who unzipped my pants while I stood motionless, eyes turned down. I allowed myself to peek, to see it in his hand.

  “It is a beautiful thing,” he said, lifting it like a treasure and touching it gently.

  I kick off my jeans and run from room to room. I look out onto the city that once seemed so big and has now shrunken so that it is no more than a garden surrounding my apartment. I stand naked in the window, my hands flat against the glass. My reflection is clear. There is no escaping myself. My lips press against the window. I am a beautiful boy. I feel the familiar warmth that rises when I am being taken in. In the apartment directly across from mine I see a man watching me, his hand upon himself. He seems wonderful through the glass, someone I could be with forever. He smiles. I slide the window open and lean towards the air. I am no longer safe, I step up onto the sill and spring forward into the night.

  The First Time

  Marina Warner

  Marina Warner (b. 1946) is a British writer of fiction, criticism and history. Her works include novels and short stories as well as studies of art, myths, symbols and fairytales. Her 1988 novel, The Lost Father, was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and she won the 2012 National Book Critics Circle Award for her non-fiction work, Stranger Magic. Warner was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1984 and she was awarded a CBE in 2008.

  The serpent had decided to diversify; the market economy demanded ir. Jeans, soft drinks, bicycles and sunglasses had learned to present themselves in subtly different guises; so could he.

  He took a training course in nutrition. In his first job (for he showed talent), he was issued with an instantly printed label identifying him as ‘Lola – Trainee Customer Service Assistant’, and he wangled himself a pitch on the Tropical Fruit stand in the Tropical Fruit promotion that was taking place in order to add a little cheer to the London winter.

  To attract the customers’ attention, the serpent now known as Lola was togged up in tropical splendour and he put on his deepest and brownest syrupy voice to match. There were OAPS with plastic shopping bags on wheels and hair in their noses; they tasted the little cubes of fragrant juicy this and that which Lola had cut up and flagged wit
h their proper name and country of origin, but one said he would think about it, dear, and another made a face and said the stringy bits were too stringy. Lola wasn’t sure the game was worth the candle in their case. She was after brighter prizes. The serpent in her liked fresh material; he hoped for a challenge. (Though pity, it would turn out after all, wasn’t unknown to him.)

  Then Lola spotted a candidate: a likely lass, a young one made just as she fancied, quite ready for pleasure, pleasure of every sort, a hard green bright slip of a girl, barely planted but taking root, and so she held out in her direction a nifty transparent plastic cup like a nurse’s for measuring out dosages in hospital, with one of the tasty morsels toothpicked and labelled inside it, and urged her to eat. (She was speaking aloud in the new soft brown demerara voice, but under her breath she was cooing and hissing in another voice altogether which she hoped her young shopper would listen to, secretly. This was a trick the serpent had perfected over centuries of practice.)

  ‘Come here, my little girly, I have just the thing for a cold day, bring some sunshine back into your life.

  (I know what it’s like, it’s written all over you. He fucked you to death three days ago – oh, is it a whole week? – and you haven’t heard from him since. Your face is pale, your brow is wan and you can’t understand what you did wrong. Well, you can tell me all about it)

  ‘There’s nothing Lola your Trainee Customer Service Assistant can’t provide. It’s Tropical Fruit week – just move over this way – we have passion fruit and pawpaw (that’s papaya by another name) and prickly pear and pitahaya and guava and tamarillo and phylaris and grenadilla. Not to mention passion fruit. Each one has been flown here from the lands of milk and honey where they grow naturally, as in the original garden of paradise, and they’re full of just that milk and honey, I’m telling you, you can hear the palm trees bending in the breeze on the beach and the surf breaking in creamy froth on the sand and they reach the parts other things don’t reach

  (the tingly bits, the melting bits and rushes-to-the head and the rushes to places elsewhere than the head – well I shan’t go on, but your troubles are at an end if you just come a little bit closer, so I can pick up the signals in your dear little fluttering heart, my sweet, and whisper in your ear)

  ‘As I say, it’s Tropical Fruit week and this is the Tropical Fruit stand! With a dozen different varieties of fruit from all over the world, many new, exciting and delicious flavours for you to sample, and

  (let me add this under my breath so only you can hear – they all have different powers they can work wonders in all kinds of different ways – they’re guaranteed to fix up your little problems before you can snap your fingers and say What the hell, and what the hell, I know all about that, I know the hell you’re in, believe me.

  And I also know – I do – how to stop it hurting, my dear little one)

  ‘I should know, because I’m fresh from the Healthy Eating consultancy course in our company headquarters in Stanton St James, Gloucestershire. We were given an intensive fortnight of nutritional experience, and so there’s nothing I can’t tell you now about fruit—’

  And the serpent, to his great joy, saw that the young girl was getting interested and coming closer, with her shopping list crumpled under one hand on the bar of the supermarket trolley and the other twiddling a strand of her hair near her chin, as she drew near to look at Lola’s spread of little plastic cups with pieces of fruit in each one, so close that Lola could hear her thinking,

  i was all clenched up cos i was scared it’s not everyday i do it you know in fact i don’t do it very often though looking at me you might think so and i like to make out i’m a one cos otherwise you look a bit of a wimp don’t you i mean everyone else is doing it, aren’t they? and my mother said keep smiling the men don’t like scenes they don’t like glooms if you want to drive a man away just keep that down at the mouth look on your face and the wind’ll change men don’t like a woman all down in the dumps who’d want to spend a minute with you it’d be like passing the time of day with a ghoul

  And Lola took charge of the situation, it was her job to bring a little sunshine back into winter; pleasure was her speciality. So she began,

  ‘Take mango for instance, now the instructions say, “Make sure the rind is rosy-yellow and slightly yielding to the touch – green mangoes are inedible.” Just like it says there, on the label, a mango, when it’s properly ripe and ready, is full and juicy and its sweetness runs all over your hands and gives off this deep rich scent—’

  (I don’t have to go on, do I? A good man is going to know that and if he don’t know it, he’s no good and you can drop him, my sweet, and find another one who understands these things. The first point you must get into your little head, sweetheart, is that if you were clenched up like you said it wasn’t anybody’s fault but his –)

  i tried to be lighthearted and cheerful while it was going on but it kept getting to me all the same and making me sad, sex does that to you it lifts you up but it doesn’t last it drops you down again from a great height and now i can’t concentrate on anything cos i keep seeing him doing things to me and me doing them back i was trying to keep a brave face on it but i know i was disappointing not passionate like he knows it from other girls it wasn’t new to him like it was to me he knows that i could sense it but i don’t like the neighbours to hear anything cos when they’re at it and i hear and mum is out and i’m alone it makes me feel funny

  Lola carries on, talking over the girl’s thoughts, which are coming across to her loud and clear. ‘Take this guava for instance,’ she tells her. ‘It’s in perfect condition. Sometimes when you pierce one of these fruits, they’re not quite ripe yet. You have to wait for the ones that aren’t ready, you can’t rush them. But the ones that are overripe, gone soft and spongy, you have to throw those away…’

  (don’t you worry any more, my little girly, you’ll be fine. You’re just lacking confidence, that’s all it is, and you wanted to please him, when really you should just think how much pleasure there’s in it for you. Never forget that, it’s the first rule. My sweet little girly, you’re a perfect little girly and he’s a fool if I know men – and I do – forget him and find another one who’ll appreciate you)

  it’s a bit shocking, really, i didn’t expect such a mess, both of us leaking this and that, i did melt at first, stickiness afterwards he seemed to like it, he held on to me tight, he asked me if i cared for him and i said i did; and his heart was thumping and it seemed like a promise it was a promise, it must have been some kind of a promise… but then nothing not another sight of him not a word what did I do wrong what can i do now

  (when he comes back and he will you know he’ll be round with his tongue hanging out you must be ready so come closer still – you are a sweet and tender pretty little girl, aren’t you, yum yum, no wonder he liked you he’s probably just frightened of coming back because your hold on him’s too strong believe me, I know. You’re at just that dangerous age, and your hair smells good, vanilla and grass and peach and a trace of sweat, that’s good, very good –)

  The young girl’s head was very near Lola now, as she bent over the little measuring cups with their pink and yellow and crimson offerings, sniffing at this one and that one, daring, daring to taste one.

  ‘Peaches don’t count as Tropical but they have restorative powers too, I’m telling you, and now we can grow them all the year round, that’s the wonder of modern agronomy – agronomy – the science of growing foods

  (anyhow, darling, just any one of these Tropical Fruits will give him what he wants from you and then you’ll have him in the palm of your hand. Try slipping him a fat cactus fruit, with the spines cut off, mind – or if you’re ambitious, try pawpaw – papaya by another name as I was saying and it’s no accident that this is papa-fare, ha ha. It’s a fruit for daddy’s girls, firm and slippery, yes!)

  ‘and its juice makes an excellent meat tenderiser if you want to add it to a marinade or you can j
ust open it and eat it all, yes, seeds and all – Or there’s tamarillo here, it’s full of rich pulp under the tight shiny skin and the flavour’s sweet and sour when it’s ripe, and has many culinary uses, in desserts as well as savoury dishes… Eat it when the skin’s turned a deep red, and the fruit’s firm but yielding to gentle pressure…’

  (that’s right, you start giggling, you’ll be fine even if it’s all over with him there’ll soon be another one – I’m telling you, live for passion there’s nothing better and that’s the second rule and all men and women are fools who don’t grasp it)

  it began like that he said, Trust me, and then you open up first your mouth and his mouth and then, well… sometimes i envy men, they know what other women are like, i wonder if i’m like the other ones, he must have had lots he felt like he knew what he was doing, i was a bit scared, he’s older than me just two years but it makes a difference and he’s got a reputation at school that’s what made me interested in the first place so i bit down on my fears, other girls do it all the time i must get on with mum’s shopping it might give that assistant ideas, my hanging around here maybe i should try one of her fruits she looks silly standing there in that tropical outfit with the headcloth and the fruit earrings dangling and the bangles over her surgical gloves she’s using a little sharp knife with these funny knobbly and lumpy fruits she’s egging on to Customers, the OAPs with their shopping bags on wheels and their nose hair sprouting, so now it’s my turn and i point to one of the little plastic cups with the fruit inside on a toothpick and she’s saying to me,

  ‘Go on try, you’re under no obligation to purchase – I don’t even have the fruits here on my stand, you have to go to the fruit and veg. section and choose your own. We’re here to educate the public, to raise the standards of nutrition and health in the households of this country, especially where there are children and young people, growing up