by AnonYMous
How fortunate we’d consider ourselves to be that our child was not infected with some horrible disease or other.
My future wife’s phone number burned away at my thigh and in the inside of a drawer and a few other places I couldn’t remember. I'd taken the precaution of writing it down and placing it in a few different places in case I lost it. I'm no fool. I had to resist the temptation to call her. A lot.
Physical cravings.
I was in a bad way. I mean I hadn't even looked at a girl for five years and now it was all over me. I didn't even know what it was. I'd never really had those feelings before. I wince now to look back on it, but I really was in love. Or infatuated. My eyes got heavy when I thought of her, they dilated just thinking about her.
The ads for the camp turned out pretty good and one even went on to win an award. All the kids we featured have since died.
Don’t quite know what to do with that.
But there you go. It's easy for me to be totally honest here because the possibility of anyone ever publishing this is so remote. At least I'll benefit from it as a form of therapy. Did I feel love or obsession? I still don’t know. Somehow, the thought of her, or even the thought of calling her, got me through those Minnesotan nights.
So I called her and we chatted, about advertising mostly, and therefore about me. I thought she was interested. Maybe she was. At least, that would have made it a bit more enjoyable for her. I can't help thinking that she must have treated this part of the whole thing like a prostitute treats the talking bit before the sex. You have to listen to some of their shit before they feel comfortable enough to get a hard-on, and they have to get the hard-on or they won't have the sex that you need them to have with you in order for you to get paid. This is what I thought was going on. She listened to me, I know she listened to me. There I go again. The male ego. Like the guy who believes the hooker comes when she seems to. I want to believe she listened to me and liked me and, yes, even loved me a little bit. Even now I seem to want to believe that. Crazy, huh? I used to say, crazy, eh? But now it's huh.
America.
In Minnesota, I'd been in a terrible state of mind for almost two years and felt I deserved something good to happen. Having been in New York now for over a year, I can see how innocent and silly I must have sounded to a twenty-seven-year-old hungry-as-fuck photographer determined to crack the New York scene. Fair enough. Her fascination must have been of the morbid variety, mine wasn’t much more developed.
I wanted her to help me out. Out of St Lacroix. I wanted her to be my pathfinder in New York. I wanted her. I wanted a lot.
I had my reasons and I suppose she had hers. To her, I must have seemed like a big wet-fat-bald overpaid Culchie, a name reserved for anyone from outside the Dublin area.
Ripe for harvest.
Aisling would have seen a lot of my type in her travels as a photographer's assistant. Shoots in Miami - the light, darling - were commonplace for photographers from cloudy New York. Lots of hotel rooms and bars and long shoots. Lots of art directors like me with lots of money and wives and kids and mortgages. I hope I stuck out because all I had of these was the mortgage.
She must have thought I was married, though, or hoped it. You see, I couldn't help thinking she was gathering information on me for some later use. Perhaps she wanted to blackmail me against the wife she imagined me to have. Well, why else would I be living in a three-bedroom Victorian house? The reason for the blackmail? To get big juicy commissions from the ad agency. It'd be worth a lot to her as a fledgling photographer to get a job or two from such a renowned company.
I thought, what the hell, she's very pretty, I'm lonely, I'm also in need of a courage booster. I wouldn't have had the balls to do the next bit if I hadn't had a tasty chick egging me on. I gave her the power to pull me out of there.
I started calling the personnel department, inquiring about how to resign. As if I didn't know. I wanted them to know I was serious. I was past caring. In reality, it was a crazy move. They must have been sure I was in love, and let's face it, I was. I made a point of asking if what we discussed was confidential, knowing they'd have to inform the group head in a situation like this. So I was able to threaten resignation without having to resign. Graham, my boss, knew what I wanted him to know. That I was serious.
It didn't take long before he asked me in passing whether I'd sold my house. I'll never forget the expression on his face. God help me, but I enjoyed it. And again, believe me, I got my version of this happening to me later, but this was my moment. The best way I can describe his pale face is to say that it rippled. From below his chin and upwards to his hairline, one solitary ripple. Like milk. He was that pale. It took a couple of beats for its significance to register in him and then in me. I didn't think it would matter that much to him, one way or the other. But seemingly, it did. He really must have thought he had me for another couple of years. If I'd succumbed to the Swedish women, he probably would have.
The next day, he called me in to say that I was to fly to New York to help out at the office for a few weeks. I didn't know that I wouldn't be coming back but I hoped it. I'd be able to see my Aisling. I didn't care about the job. Fuck the job, I was sick of advertising and everyone in it. All I wanted was a few weeks paid-up in a nice hotel in New York City with my love.
Back at Fort Fuck-up, my nickname for the house, I’d speak to her. I’d imagine she was sitting in a chair in front of me. I’d look lovingly at the middle distance just above the chair as if into her blue eyes and cock my head, impressed. Nodding courteously, I’d lean forward and agree almost reluctantly with what she had to say. She was so intelligent that even I had to concede a point.
And then I would laugh happily. Because I was happy. I was conducting a love affair. The perfect love affair with no interruptions from anyone else. I saw a cartoon that had a picture of Narcissus staring at his own reflection in a pond. His girlfriend asks him a question, “Narcissus is there someone else?”
If they fired me at the end of my New York sojourn, fine, at least I'd have a few memorable moments. I had tried to organize trips to New York before, but they'd all fallen through. Each time, desperately trying to hide the disappointment in my voice as I told Aisling I couldn't make it after all.
I'd kick myself as I felt any hope of our relationship slip. It was killing me. Then I'd call on Saturday morning around 10:30am and she wouldn't be there. The one-hour difference made it even more worrying, 9:30am in New York. Jesus, my mind would have a fun with that, I can tell you.
Not there?
Obviously, on her way home from some guy's flat or maybe even still there fucking him. Why not, she got into bed with me the first night we went out? But that was different, that was love. That was with me. I'd call and offer to turn up there one weekend. This she would deflect gracefully, saying it was nicer if I didn't have to pay myself. Better to wait for a business trip. She was right, of course, but I was gagging for some sex. I could see also that she was ambitious. Not afraid to talk about her work.
This scared me a little because it meant she was only interested in me because of my position as Senior Art Director. I hated the word “senior,” made me sound old. To her, I must have seemed old as fuck. I consoled myself that I didn't look much more than thirty-two. She played along with that. What pretty-just-turned-twenty-seven-year-old wouldn't? She was having an exhibition, she said one night. I was so glad she was involving me in her life enough to tell me this detail that I offered to help. I tried to impress her with my talents as a media manipulator but she wasn't impressed.
Disappointed more like.
I wanted to cheapen the whole thing by putting a St Patrick's Day spin on it.
Now I can see how that must have made her more comfortable about what she was going to do. Isn't it funny how, after deciding we don't like someone, we can find reasons to support our decision and equally, the other way around. That's what I think was happening. As I went further in, I had already decided I liked, nay loved, her a
nd progressively began gathering and threading together a daisy chain of little observations and nuances that tied her tenderly to me.
Concurrently, she was compiling her own list.
Of grievances.
I remember silences after I'd say something. A silence in which you let the now silent speaker stew. Like a spotlight on what's been said. Like repeating something in a cold, dispassionate voice. And in those rests she took from me, she refueled her fervor to complete what she must have already begun.
Here's what I know about her.
Twenty-seven years old. Aisling McCarthy. Photographic assistant. Worked as a producer in a big clunky ad agency in Dublin in the early 1990s. Her boyfriend at the time got her the job. Left Dublin after winning a Green Card in the lottery. Told me that she had to leave Dublin in a hurry. Worked in New Orleans for about a year. Had worked in Dublin’s Clarence Hotel (owned by U2) as a hostess. I try not to define hostess unless
I'm feeling particularly unkind.
She loves Kilkenny, my hometown, and her uncle, Mr Tom Bannister, an associate of mine who was highly recommended by my father, now dead.
Her mother is from Kilkenny. Fairly patriotic towards Ireland, but not in an unattractive Fenian sort of way. When I knew her, she worked as Peter Freeman’s assistant, big-shot photographer very big-shot photographer, probably one of the best in New York and, therefore, the world. She was sharing an apartment in New York's Nolita with an architect friend called Shawn, and a "precious stones" buyer for Macy's called Maurette. Her home in Ireland is in Killiney. Very fucking posh, believe me. Her brother works for The Strategist Magazine in London. Her sister is married to some hotel guy in Florida. And she looks very, very young.
She's been mistaken for sixteen.
Spent time with nuns as a kid, at least that is what she told me. There was a
nun with whom she was quite close. Oh, yeah? Her grandaunt, I think. Also, her grandmother died during the time I knew her. Her work includes double-exposures. That's where one image appears to be laid over another. Two-faced? She's been in France and worked as an au pair.
All this data retained after one short evening and no more than four phone calls. She could never accuse me of not listening. If anything I listened too much. I was trying to soak her up into me. I could have written a book about her.
Whoops.
She went on holidays once with her brother to Mexico. She said she was disgusted by the way the Mexicans looked at her. Blonde and blue-eyed, in those leather-faced raven-haired surroundings. A lot of computer learning was required in her new job. She encouraged me to set up my own agency in Dublin. She liked to drink pints of Guinness. She got help with her work from Peter Freeman. He even came in on the weekends a few times to help her. I was jealous when I heard this.
A few months back, her mother visited her in New York for a week. I only found out this last bit because I spoke in passing to Tom Bannister while dealing with some financial transactions.
That's about it. Apart, of course, from the rest of what I'm going to tell you. I will say this. I'm surprising myself here because I'm normally more cautious. If there was a way that I could torture and kill her without going to prison, I would. Or I feel like I could. Don't worry, I don't daydream about how or what I'd do. I just feel capable of doing her harm. I won't, though. These pages are the nearest I will ever get to evening up the effects of that evening in March. But let's not jump ahead here, shall we? I've been thin with rage for almost six months. To cause that kind of lividness in someone takes a certain amount of talent and, I'd like to think, intelligence. Love, hate, what's the difference?
One night on the phone, she told me she had a publishing deal. That's interesting,
I said. What kind and how did she manage to wrangle that? I was always interested in avenues that could lead out of advertising. She said she had some friend studying publishing in Harvard. I tried not to gulp. These were rich motherfuckers we were dealing with here. I forgot, of course, that I was making serious bucks by then. I've never felt rich. Just silly. Especially in that house. The book would consist of photo-essays, she said. Portraits. She already had some done. But she had a couple of years to complete them.
I was immediately jealous. I'd love to be doing something pure. Something that didn't need to sell something.
“Maybe you'll be in it.” she said.
This was left open. I didn't know if I should be flattered but I was.We arranged to meet in Dublin while we were both home in Ireland over Christmas. I called from St Lacroix and booked a nice room in the Shelbourne Hotel in Dublin. St Lacroix was fucking freezing as I jumped gratefully into a cab on Hennepin Avenue, exhaled loudly and told the cab driver in an American accent to take me to the airport. It was a forty-five minute drive, and no I did not want to converse.The flight was long too. Eight and a half hours. Actually it was more because of Northsouth Airlines.
The worst airline in the world.
Delays were standard. I only ever brought carry-on luggage because otherwise they’d end up being delivered two days later to wherever you were. People were always shouting at their staff and their staff obviously accustomed to being shouted at wore professional masks of indifference. They were the only airline out of Minnesota so there wasn't a lot we could do…except shout.
I expected to be very tired before I met my loved one in Dublin. I built in a
few hours to allow me some sleep in the Shelbourne before waking to find a message
under my door.
There on Shelbourne Hotel stationery was one of those Please Call, WYWO things with ticked boxes. AISLING in beautiful handwriting headed the ensemble of Victorian typography that seemed so exotic to me now after a year and a half in the history-free environment from which I had just been delivered.
I had an hour or so to kill before calling her at 7pm as requested, by the ticked box. I needed some condoms and began to panic because I couldn't remember if Ireland was still medieval in that department. There was a time, not too long ago when you couldn't buy them. They had to be prescribed.
I went for a walk. I turned right out of the Shelbourne's beautiful front door and headed towards Grafton Street. I had to hold back the tears. I don't think I can capture what it felt like to walk amongst all those beautiful young faces. It was as if someone was going to shout, “Not him. No. Everyone else is allowed walk through here and to laugh and be easy-going and dress well but not him. He shouldn't even be here.”
It was so lovely. I don't even know if it was Grafton Street. It was pedestrian only, the day before Christmas Eve. I'll never forget the moment. I even found a Boots chemist, which made me feel like I was in London. Dublin had changed so much and so had I.
I was sadder.
But after buying a twelve-pack of condoms (hey, some of them might break) I cheered up somewhat. I walked back to the hotel, feeling like someone who'd just got out of prison. I called her home number from my room and got her dad. Jesus, I wasn't expecting that. So I just said I'd call back later or something, he didn't sound too happy. At seven o'clock, she called and said we should meet at the corner of Grafton Street at that big glass shopping centre thing. I knew it, and trying to remain calm, I agreed to see her there in fifteen minutes. Fifteen minutes? I strolled there and waited for her across the road. She was a little late. But very beautiful. I had to keep checking to convince myself that she really was as lovely as she seemed. She, I thought, was doing the same thing with me, but I realize now that she must have been checking how moon-faced I looked. How easily taken I was.
We had something to eat in Temple Bar and it was there in the restaurant that the first photo was taken. I didn't really even notice it, but I saw something in her eyes after she clicked the little disposable camera button. She said it probably wouldn't even come out in the dimly lit restaurant. I had asked her if she carried a camera around. She said she did, but that I'd laugh if I saw it. I said I wouldn't. She said I would. So I said, okay I would. She took out a
disposable camera (the kind you see at newsagents) and tilting it off the tabletop so that it pointed upwards under my chin, she clicked the shutter. I remember I was looking at her when she took it. Looking directly into her big, blue, innocent eyes…click. I immediately felt robbed.
She'd got my moon face.
My idiotic stare had been sucked off my face, replaced by an expression of distrust. Only for a moment. My first instinct had been right. I knew that a shot taken like that impromptu, no waiting, taken by a professional, wasn't meant to be flattering.
She had water with the meal and later we ended up in a snug in the Temple Bar where she drank Bacardis and Coke for the rest of the evening, as I downed about five bottles of Bally-fucking-gown water. She must have been out of her mind by the time we returned to the hotel. I was pleased about how I handled that. I said,
“It's a pity you can't come back to the hotel.”
“Why, are there rules? Can't you have people back?” she asked.
“No, I just assumed you wouldn't be able to come back, what with your
parents and…”
“Oh no. I'd like to come back.”
Ding ding. Full steam ahead. Mind those icebergs. We strolled back to the hotel,
her clasping my stumpy hand in her long fingers. The evening was beautiful, and the trees along Stephen's Green were yellowed by the streetlights against the navy sky. We didn't say much. She'd been kissing me. Non-stop. There was one time when her big eyes dilated and then shrunk to little pinheads. That freaked me out a little. I didn't know if she was on something or not. In the room, we got down to business in what I now see as a fairly matter of fact manner. We used MTV as lighting.
It was great. I loved it. She was very beautiful. Very. I suppose I wouldn't even be writing this if she hadn't been. It wasn’t every day a guy had the chance for unrushed sex with the Virgin Mary, when she was sixteen. She had a great angular back. I had hair on mine. I couldn't stop giggling. Actually, there were even moments when I laughed out loud. She got a bit annoyed by this. I couldn't stop, though. It felt so good. When I feel good