Promiscuous Unbound

by Bex Brian

  But beneath the quiet, I was giddy. There sitting across from Ralph and me was one of the boys I had met at the resort hotel. I felt mischievous as I surreptitiously watched him try to cover up his confusion by being overly solicitous to his sour little girlfriend, who was upset by the sight of a pig, bound for market, hog-tied and squealing in a basket.

  Ralph noticed nothing of my agitation as he sat reading a book, one arm slung over the back of my chair, his hand resting lightly on my neck. We had no plan. Ralph had a wife in London, and my giddiness over watching my resort-lover threatened to turn into near hysteria even at the mere mention of her name. I’d wait for it, wanting him to spit on the ground every time he did. But her name was never on his lips. The night before we left Roatan I dreamt of Ralph. We were standing on the beach, and I was trying to rip him limb from limb, but try as I might I was unable to hurt him. In the morning I wondered where Mary was.

  By early afternoon an announcement came over the loudspeaker that the plane still hadn’t left the mainland. A spontaneous party broke out at the news. Some California surfer types rolled out from underneath their sun hats. They went hooting and hollering down the runway, throwing off their clothes to dive into the roiling ocean. They returned very thirsty, the saltwater drying in streaks down their bodies, and so they roused a sleeping old woman and sent her off to buy beer.

  Good cold beer, served in a plastic bag with a straw. I bought one, remembering that if you sip booze through a straw you get much higher. As I turned, grasping my bag tightly against the frothing beer, my resort-lover came up behind me, lightly brushed my breast, a kind of fond farewell. What a great touch, that last secret touch. I went back to Ralph and had to lean forward and bury my head in my hands to hide my momentary delight.

  The memory had long faded by the time we were banking over the Yucatán on a scheduled stop at Cancún. Out my oval window I could see the preposterous strip of hotels, seaward-leaning, with a million miles of flat jungle at their backs. The artifice, the sun glint, struck me full force. I turned to Ralph, new beer in hand now, sloshing up and over onto his lap, and told him that I wanted to end our affair the minute we landed in New York. How stupid uttering the ultimate threat before there was any history to give it weight. The plane took off again and I, a whimpering fool, clung to him and begged him never, ever to leave me.

  I ended up following him to London, of course. My ancestral home and my inheritance, Latvia be damned. There, perched atop Highgate, the former family manse had now been chopped into seven flats, the only remaining Yellow claim to it: four rooms and a very large attic whose floor space seemed to far outstrip anything below. It was there that I found a reasonable antidote to love’s folly: work, important work. More papers, more notes, more clues to the life I had set out to document, my own father’s.

  A clerk’s visor firmly on my head, I shooed Ralph away. Too busy, far too busy pulling from wooden cabinets reams of nonsense, reams of shit, reams of reams. My spirits didn’t flag until every piece of paper my father had ever typed, written, jotted, or laid a cup of tea down on was strewn across the floor. Good work. Kept my mind importantly elsewhere. Not a space left in which to walk.

  But my blizzard of paper soon inspired the weather gods. They visited upon London a frenzied series of snowstorms. I gave up only then. Couldn’t compete. I left my paper dunes and went in search of Ralph. We walked through Regent’s Park, me showing him what a northern girl I was at heart, shaking the snow-heavy tree boughs just as he passed under. On the boating pond, the ducks slipped and slided and crash-landed. I told him that even Canada geese couldn’t land on ice. He told me that penguins slip and fall all the time; some even knock themselves out. No rules had been laid down about our future, but I was still expected to be handy. Ralph wanted me by him all the time without his having to pay much attention to me. His sidekick. My days were to be spent now—or wasted; I could never decide—sitting in his Soho editing room: smoked-filled, rank with sweat, the acidy smell of celluloid tangy against the too-soft images of Roatán endlessly scrolling by on the Steenbeck, me sitting quietly in the corner, usually, if the truth be known, scrolling in my mind through my own secret memories of Roatán.

  There was no expectation of reality about the days and then the attendant shock when things began to seem all too real. The snow didn’t melt. London ceased to be London. Everyone was cold. One day a woman opposite me on the train placed one lone glove on the top of her head as if that would help against bone chill. And Ralph, meanwhile, remained in his loveless marriage. Cold sandwiches shared with his wife gave way to hot bowls of soup, while I ate alone in the pub across the way. Every once in a while I’d tell myself something had to give.

  And then it did. As January became February, the winter darkness that had cloaked with a midnight hush our afternoon fucks high up in my father’s flat had begun to fade. And with light came ambition. After weeks of treading on my father’s notes—Ralph’s feet as finicky as cats’ paws, shaking off the bits of paper that stuck to him as he walked to the bathroom to douse the scent of me—there came the day he peeled one sheet off and started to read. Somehow, my blizzard of nonsense made perfect sense to him.

  “Aren’t we a little like the Leakeys. Fathers, husbands, daughters all geniuses at the same thing.”

  “Except you’re someone else’s husband.”

  “Listen, Vivienne . . .”

  Before I could listen, I decided I needed a drink. I walked through to the kitchen and stood, whiskey bottle in hand, at the window, letting the very cold tiles chill my whole body. I felt a little dizzy, a touch of vertigo. The voice from the other room delivered fragments of my future stolen from my past. Plans, plans, now lots of plans. “Highway robbery,” I should have called out, but I held my tongue. Sure it would be all new, brand new, that stodgy, preachy way my father had of revealing animals blown away.

  “I’m going to be a detective.”

  We passed the whiskey bottle back and forth in front of the blue glow of the bedroom’s fireplace. It spat and hissed and let out burps. “If the gas fire keeps this up,” I thought, “neither Ralph nor I will get to be anything at all.” Follow his line of thinking, I was told. First an elephant, then a poacher. Don’t stop. It’s only the beginning. The remembering elephants mourn as their fallen comrade’s tusks are hauled off to the other side of the world to be ground into potions of love.

  “Been done to death,” I said. “Although, I do like the part about the old men mixing up elephant aphrodisiacs so they can fuck their mistresses.”

  “I didn’t say anything about mistresses.”

  “You should have. Isn’t that who men want to please? Wife, work—what’s that compared to seducing a young thing?”

  “That only lasts for a moment,” Ralph said, dismissively.

  My heart stopped cold. Nothing I could say. He was late as is. Off to take wife Mary to the movies.

  I lay in our tangled sheets until the evening turned headlong into night, and hurt into anger. Then I rolled over and phoned Alastair and asked him to meet me.

  “Call him,” the words exploding in my ear against the Soho gay bar’s techno-din. Hard to be old and gay and have to keep it up, but Alastair did his best. A tablet of ecstasy was melting on his tongue. He wanted to get through this helping-me part before his sound advice turned mushy. “Who cares if you wake the prick up. Or his dreadful wife for that matter.”

  “Do you like any woman?”

  “I like you.”

  “I’m your godchild. Besides, I don’t think it’s me you like. It’s how I remind you of my father.”

  Alastair lowered his eyes. My father, the one that got away.

  “Let’s deal with one unhappy lover at a time, shall we?”

  “I’m not unhappy. I’m surprised, that’s all. I’m beginning to suspect that he might be a cruel man.”

  “All men are cruel. Women drive them to it.”

  “I hate fatuous statements like that.”


  “I’m drunk. And I’m old. And with you standing here there is very little chance any of these men, most of whom look like they could use an old hand, paying the least bit of attention to me.”

  “How do you think I feel?”

  “Well, then call him. Find out if the fucker meant what he said, or even remembers for that matter. We men tend not to live in the echo chamber of a mere utterance.”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  “OK. Dwell, dwell away.”

  “I’ll drink to that.”

  “No. You phone. I’ll get the next round.”

  I stepped out onto Greek Street and stood for a moment, pleased with the sharp, cold February winds. The nearest booth was on the far side of Charing Cross Road. I had left without my coat but couldn’t be bothered to go back. I walked, arms loose, body relaxed (a trick I learned in Siberia: never tense against the cold), aware only of the pleasant but weirdly distant sensation of my extremities starting to freeze. By the time I reached the phone booth, I could barely feel my fingers dialing Ralph’s home number. Mary answered.

  “He’s not here,” she said.

  “Didn’t you go to the movies?”

  “He got home too late.”

  I stood there weaving slightly, knocked about by a piss smell stronger even than the cold. I could hear Mary waiting at the other end of the phone, sighing repeatedly. Then it occurred to me.

  “He’s left you, hasn’t he?” I practically shouted.

  “No,” she said very slowly, as if scolding a child. “I’ve left him.” Then she hung up.

  I’ve never been so filled with hatred for a woman in my life. I tried twice—fumbling with my phone card, the numbers blurring before my drunken eyes—to call her back. In the end I resorted to repeatedly banging the receiver down, aware all the while of the passing crowds giving me weary looks.

  Funny, I can taste it still, that tear-soaked salty rage. But I can’t explain it. Yes I can. Dignity was hers. I had already begged.

  Alastair was circling some plump youth when I got back to the bar and was in no mood for my agitation. So I asked his new friend if he knew of any men who’d fancy a blow job, one that didn’t smack of a dog licking himself. There were. There always are. The rest of the night is too sordid even for my own bed-bound memory. Come the morning, stumbling out into the pre-dawn light on a narrow industrial street behind the half-built Tate Modern, my backside raw and burning—old habits die hard, I guess—I felt something akin to regret, even shame. I tried to shake it off. Why should I give a shit. But in the early-commute bustle of Waterloo, my emotions overcame me and I started to cry. Had I my passport I might well have hopped on the Chunnel train and left London forever. Slumped against a pillar, I waited for the feeling to pass. It did. Or maybe I had grown to accept it. Either way, by the time I’d ridden the Northern line up to Archway Station I knew that Ralph and I would marry, and that there was nothing I could do about it.

  I had expected him to be huddled in my doorway when I returned, possibly crying, wan, spent, grateful, and, above all, in desperate need of me. But he wasn’t there. I was supposed to meet him at the editing room in a couple of hours. But I wasn’t going to go chasing after him. I was confused about what to do. The apartment seemed a ridiculous place to be, but I couldn’t think where else to go.

  I made myself a cup of coffee and sat down at the kitchen table. I did want to be true to the moment, to feel . . . what? Responsible? Slowly, I stirred my coffee. At times I sighed, a real model of the contemplative man. But a truer sensation kept nudging its way in, a lower abdomen flutter that accompanies newly minted images of remembered sex. The deft hands of those two gay guys had left their imprint. Remembered thrusts, tastes, groans, grunts, and releases kept jostling for my attention. Before my coffee had even cooled, I gave up the hope of feeling what I believed I was supposed to feel and decided against meeting Ralph at the editing room and took a bath instead.

  I lay in the tub, my big toe stuck up the faucet. The water didn’t feel good; it wasn’t hot enough. He would call first, I decided, and then at the end of the day he would call round. The thought of that made me spring from my tepid tub.

  My plan was to barricade the doors. Let him beg to come in. I was aware, as I pulled the dresser in front of the door, of the false nature of this drama, but it didn’t stop me. In a blatant show of exhausted confusion, I even lay down and tried to fall asleep against my teetering rampart.

  The bell rang about nine. My well-rehearsed “What do you want?” sounded just right. On the other side of the door I heard Ralph say, “What?”

  “What do you want?” I shouted. “I’ve barricaded myself in here.”

  I waited. Nothing. I pushed myself awkwardly in between the legs of a coffee table stacked on top of the dresser so I could press my ear to the door. Looking from behind, I’m sure, like a woman sticking her head in the oven, I strained to hear his movements. Nothing. How long I stayed like that I don’t remember, but my neck was stiff for weeks after. There was no doubt: Ralph had left without a word.

  Is there any deeper silence than the silence of embarrassment? My shoulders hunched, I stood, mouth agape, staring at my barricade. Ralph hadn’t played the game at all. Not for a second. Who to blame then for my sorry display? Who to blame? Not a problem. It was the ploys, the tricks, the schemes all acted out before me over the years for my dad’s benefit. I saw the lot of them: production assistants, sound girls, minders, the rare real professional—a zoologist or an archaeologist—all of them reduced to staging pregnancy scares, fainting fits, suicide threats, or feigned interest in other crew members. Luke, his soundman, used to claim he would never have gotten laid if he hadn’t been pressed into service to make my father jealous. My father loved it, of course. Indulgent, kind, but, in the end, completely unmovable. To my memory, there wasn’t one who made it to a second shoot. Except Lydia Lester, the Miss Moneypenny of loyality.

  I bit my hand in frustration and rage, startled to find that a torrent of real emotion and fear had swept over me. I would kill myself if I had lost Ralph. I lay down on the bed, woozy, and promptly fell asleep. The first time I woke it was dark. Fair enough, I thought, and let myself roll back into a leaden slumber. The ringing phone entered my dream first, its clattering making my heart race breathlessly as I swam into conciousness and answered it. Sunlight streamed through the window. I had slept from day into night into day. The receiver felt impossibly heavy, and I knocked it painfully against my brow as I brought it to my ear. It was Ralph. Long distance.

  “I’m in Nairobi,” he said. “I got the early flight out after your foolishness. I want you to join me. We’ll take a trip up north. You can swim in the oily waters of Lake Turkana.”

  “Alright.”

  “Good, I’ll wait for you at the Belvedere.”

  Two thoughts struck me as I hung up. One: I had already swum in Lake Turkana, probably took my first dip while Ralph was entertaining himself hunting for grubs in his mother’s garden. Two: look who is playing games now.

  I cannot see. I never could. Seeing is a knack, an art form really, that I have been denied. There were the rare times—under the guidance of my father, if he held my hand, or ofttimes my head—when the tangle of a bush would give up its opacity and reveal a near metropolis of wildlife living their balanced lives within a bower of greenness and protective thorns. The sky also had to be viewed under his direction. As I’d stand flush up against him, his head resting on mine, the wide-open expanse would narrow between the aperture of his closing cupped hands and there, pitted seamlessly against the blue, I would finally spot a high-flown squabble of hunting birds, playing itself out in balletic hilarity.

  Even after my father had turned his attention to something else, I would try to hold the focus, only to watch helplessly as second by second my view into another world closed. It was the same when he tried to teach me math. The various steps of a given problem made such appealing sense as he carried this and factored that
, but again, the minute his tutoring ended, so did my understanding.

  This blindness, I wondered as I sat huddled in my plane seat high over the desert expanse of the Sudan—the sensation like being over the ocean: no lights, no spidery splashes of cities to give comfort—what will this blindness prevent me from seeing in the future?

  There I was, a woman supposedly in love, who not twenty-four hours earlier had been buggered by two fags in a loft in Bankside, flying now to a place I had always found forbidding, chaotic, and full of far too many memories. Flying there, on top of all that, with the unshakable feeling that I was somehow going to meet my father rather than Ralph.

  We landed through an early-morning haze of heat. The airport terminal was stifling. I believe I’m allergic to African heat. It flays my skin, fills me with the unnerving feeling that my blood flow has switched directions, and with it all that matters, all my matter, seems to flow away from my heart, leaving me breathless and skitterish. My hands shook as I handed over my passport. By the time I got outside I was close to tears as a mob of porters, taxi drivers, and tour guides swept down upon me, a woman obviously alone. The onslaught jostled me right to the door of a waiting bus, and I prayed as I boarded that it was heading for the city and not some distant game reserve or other.

  As I moved down the aisle I caught the eye of a middle-aged woman. She scooted her ample bottom over so I could share her seat and not attract the attention of the tour guide. The bus barreled along, speed being the best deterrent against sun-razzled bandits. I felt through my own overheated emotions the tourist’s dull disappointment with the flat access road, barren and ugly, and, halfway to the city, the depressing shock of a grassless, tire-scarred, mini–game park, dotted with a few dusty creatures.

  To the uninitiated it would be impossible not to fear that all of one’s high-priced African adventures would have this same shopworn feel. The woman beside me, smelling of good perfume and stale sweat, clicked her tongue and started to fan herself with her newspaper. I began to cry. She didn’t seem surprised. In fact, she had a hankie clasped in her fist, which she prompty handed over.