After The Fall

by Sarah Goodwin

  “Welcome to the black parade,” Nate muttered, taking a seat by a desk that had two bags of crisps and a bottle of supermarket’s own cola on it.

  “Connor, right?” said a voice behind me. A rosy cheeked doughy loaf of a woman in blue overalls smiled at me. She could only be the NHS specialist. “Good, now we can get started.”

  “Fucking finally,” muttered Stick insect.

  “Gregory,” the NHS woman warned.

  “Sorry Sal.”

  Margery picked a Co-Op bag up from by her feet, which were lost in a pair of mauve Crocs. “I brought donuts.”

  “Halle-fucking-lujah.”

  “Gregory.”

  “Sorry Sal.”

  I took a seat next to Nate, who waved me over, and I accepted a donut when the bag was passed around. Margery had clearly tried to scrape off the yellow ‘reduced’ sticker with her fingernails. The donuts were good either way.

  “Now,” Sal-the-NHS-biddy said, “let’s say hello to our new member, Connor.”

  “Hello Connor,” chorused four bored voices.

  “Connor has just come out of hospital, and like the rest of you, he has retrograde amnesia.”

  “What happened to you?” Nate asked.

  “Nathan, that’s not very nice to ask,” Sal chided, like we were children, not adults. It pissed me off, and that relived me. It was nice to know that I could still get angry.

  “It’s OK. I was in an accident, which I don’t remember. Apparently the bridge I was on collapsed, and my car fell into the river. Then the bridge fell on top of me.”

  There was a short silence.

  “Ace,” Nate said.

  “Fucking awesome,” Gregory agreed.

  I felt slightly proud, though I wasn’t sure why. “How did you lose your memories?”

  “I really think we should focus more on...” started Sal, but no one paid any attention.

  “Nearly drowned swimming in the sea out by the Isle of Wight, hit my head on a rock. Nasty scar,” Gregory showed me the long white line that cut through the all over buzz cut on his head.

  “I was in a coma,” Margery said, “medically induced after I was attacked by muggers,” she placed a hand on her stomach, “they stabbed me eighteen times.”

  I felt sick, how could anyone do that? The depth of my disgust surprised me. Like it was the first time I’d experienced such a feeling.

  “Cora’s got an interesting story,” Nate told me, “she tried to top herself.”

  “No I didn’t,” the teenager snapped, her green eyes blazing out from under her collection of ponytails. I could see a network of shiny pale scars on her dark arms. She saw me looking and gave me a death glare.

  “Can everyone please settle down?” asked Sal, “it’s high time we got on with some therapy, so, how are everyone’s journals going?”

  “Mine’s great,” Nate said, “props my kitchen counter up like a good’un.”

  I couldn’t help smirking, and Sal gave me a look as if to say, ‘great, another timewaster’.

  “You’re supposed to be writing in it Nathan,” she turned to me to explain, “everyone keeps a journal, writing down their thoughts, getting to know themselves and hopefully developing a reflective attitude, making them receptive to memories.”

  “I wish I’d kept a diary,” Margery said sadly, “then I could just read back and find out who I was.”

  “Who we were, is not necessarily who we are,” Sal said, “you are all real people, and the fact that you don’t remember who you used to be, does not mean that you are any less people than you were before.”

  “That’s nice. You should put that on a card,” Nate muttered.

  Again, I grinned. “Or a pillow.”

  “One of those little ones with cats or pot plants stitched on ‘em,” he agreed.

  When Sal turned away to focus on Cora and her journal, he produced a miniature bottle of Jack Daniels and poured it into his cup of cola. He dug another one out of his pocket, “You want?”

  I poured it into the sickly drink and knocked it back.

  “Least you know you can handle a drink,” Nate observed.

  We talked some more about the journals, about which only Cora seemed enthusiastic. Sal gave me a ‘starter journal’ a handful of printed pages stapled together, each little blank box preceded by a question about my daily activities or habits. Joy.

  Then we got started on everyone’s weekly progress report. I wish I was joking. But no, we went round the circle and I got a quick look into my future. It wasn’t pleasant.

  “Margery, how about we start with you?” Sal said.

  “I haven’t done anything,” Margery said evasively.

  “Oh, surely not. There must be something, even a small thing, like, how’s your family tree going?” Sal addressed me, “some people find putting together a family tree a good way of reconnecting with themselves and their families.”

  I looked her square in the eye. “My parents are dead.”

  Sal blanched and turned quickly to Gregory, without waiting for Margery’s answer. “How’s your job search working out?”

  “Still unemployed, still down the fucking jobcentre every two weeks,” Gregory said, “like anyone wants to hire someone with half a brain anyway.”

  “Well, you know that’s not true,” Sal said, clearly hanging onto her optimistic attitude by the tips of her acrylics.

  “Whatever,” Gregory muttered.

  “Nathan?” Sal asked.

  “I got myself a flat,” Nate told her, “couldn’t stay at the B&B forever.” Catching my nonplussed expression he elaborated. “That’s where the hospital stuck me, when I was discharged. Got no family to claim me, see?”

  “See, that’s a very positive step,” Sal beamed.

  We clapped like idiot seals.

  “It’s over a kebab shop,” Nate said baldly, “stinks like week-old fucking donner, and the bathroom’s the pits, brown stains all over the bath. They reckon the old bloke who had it was dead a fortnight in that bath before someone found him.”

  That little story brought the meeting to a crashing halt. I never got to hear Cora’s announcement for that week, but I couldn’t bring myself to feel guilty about disrupting things by giving Nate an audience to play to. It had been the longest hour of my life, and, aside from the donut, it hadn’t done me any good.

  Nate nudged me as we were stacking our chairs up. “Fancy a proper drink?”

  Surprisingly, I did. I really didn’t want to go back home anyway, which amounted to the same thing. I nodded and Nate steered me out of the classroom and down the hall after the others.

  “There’s a pub round the corner, but I’m skint...we could go back to mine, I’ve a bottle or two of something knocking about.”

  “I haven’t any money on me,” I admitted.

  Nate eyed me shrewdly. “Mine it is then.”

  We walked down the creaking hallway and out into the darkened car park. A dull amber streetlight burnt just across the street, and over their toxic halos the stars were like crumbs on a carpet. The air was damp and cold.

  “Nice night,” I said, my breath a pale ghost in front of my face.

  Nate pushed me up against the scarred brickwork and kissed me.

  Chapter Two

  I balled my fists in his hoody, pushing him away.

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  “Hey, calm down,” Nate said, holding his hands up, “simple mistake.”

  “Mistake? You snog many strangers?” Shock made my hands freeze, the inside of my mouth, and my face, was flaming.

  “You’re not a stranger, you just told me, you’re Connor,” Nate said, with a sideways grin. “Jesus, forgive me for making a move on a guy who said he’d come back to mine for a ‘drink’.”

  “I did want a drink.”

  “Great, so do I. Let’s go.”

  “No, I can’t go back with you now.”

  Nate looked genuinely baffled. “Why? I’m not going to try
it on again.”

  “Why did you try it on in the first place?”

  He shrugged. “I like the look of you, you’re cool, thought I’d chance it.”

  “But I’m not gay.”

  He laughed. “How do you know?”

  That made me uneasy. I stuck my hands in my pockets and backed away. I didn’t want this...complication, to land on me. I didn’t want to go home and wonder, not only what I was going to do about the wife I didn’t remember, but what I would do if it turned out Nate was picking up on something, off, about me.

  “Hey, hey.” Nate grabbed my shoulder, not hard, but enough to make me stop in my tracks. “Don’t be like that. Come and have a drink with me, eh? Nice, friendly, nothing below the waist.”

  He was smiling, and it was infectious. “As long as you were kidding about the old man in the bath.”

  “I’m not asking you take a bath,” Nate pointed out, “but, as it happens, I was pulling Sal’s leg. No dead men in my bathroom.”

  “Glad to hear it.”

  “It is over a kebab shop though.”

  “I’ll hold my breath.”

  Nate’s flat turned out to be quite nice, and not grotty at all. It didn’t even smell like old kebabs, at least, not strongly. There was a little hallway, a living room/bedroom and a neat little kitchen where he poured us glasses of supermarket whisky and opened bags of Twiglets.

  In the living room we sat down on a velveteen sofa and Nate flicked on the TV, putting a late night American crime drama on. Neither of us were really watching it.

  “You don’t have to bother with that journal shit you know,” Nate said, “you don’t have to do anything really. Just...get on.”

  “That’s what I’ve been doing.”

  “And?”

  “And it’s driving me mental, having nothing to do all day, nothing but think about everything I don’t know.”

  “So come out with me, I’ve got nothing to do all day.”

  “You don’t work?”

  “Nah. I’m on the dole, this place is all housing benefit. You got a job?”

  “I’m a lifeguard.”

  Nate looked at him, and then his face cracked into a grin. “Mate, you’re supposed to be making it hard for me to jump you. Now you’re telling me you work at the pool, wearing like...little shorts and a tight uniform shirt? Fuck, that’s hot.”

  We were on our third drink, counting the one we’d had at the school, and the brief walk in the fresh air had me feeling drunker than I was. I suppose that’s why I took the remark as it appeared, and didn’t start worrying about it.

  “Do you know what you used to do?” I asked.

  “No idea but even if I did it’d be gone for shit now.”

  “Why?”

  “Whatever happened to me, however I lost my memory? The accident or whatever, well, it buggered up my spine, can’t lift anything heavier than that,” he pointed at the TV set. “No use to anyone as a cleaner or a builder...or anything really.”

  “Sorry.”

  “It’s not like you kicked my head in with your steel toecaps is it?”

  “Is that what happened to you?”

  He shrugged. “Could be. Look at that guy, you can tell he’s the murderer, he’s got shifty little eyes. You think they hire actors who look shifty, just for this kind of thing?”

  “Maybe.”

  He got us both another drink, and soon we were leaning together on the sofa, the soft, worn fabric of his jumper warm on my arm. Nate rolled a cigarette, took a drag, and passed it over to me.

  “How do you know you’re gay then?” I asked, handing the thin roll-up back.

  “Just do,” he shrugged, “I was just...walking around, eying up blokes, not paying much attention to the ladies, and I thought – you know what, I just might be gay.”

  “That simple?”

  “’course. Some things are just that simple. They’re tattooed all over your DNA, they’re inside your head. Shit like...what job you did, what your fifth birthday was like, that doesn’t fucking matter, does it? As long as you know, inside, what you are, and what you want? You know who you are.”

  Privately, I disagreed. I would very much like to know what my fifth birthday was like. Or what any of my birthdays had been like. What happened at my wedding, and whether I’d liked school, or hated every minute. Those things mattered to me. At least that was one thing I knew about myself.

  “Like this,” Nate said, leaning over and, with the hand that wasn’t holding the end of his cigarette, he touched my face. His thumb ran over my lips, and he looked into my eyes, through a curtain of smoke, and a fog of whisky. “If you like this...what does it matter, whether you liked West Ham or swiss roll or...fucking, hydrangeas. If you like this...do this.”

  Then he kissed me again, though he’d promised he wouldn’t. His mouth was warm this time, not wind chilled, and he tasted like booze, smoke, and salt. The difference was, this time I let it happen. I kissed him back, and opened my mouth, and let him push me onto the sofa, and climb on top of me.

  Nate’s breathing was heavy as his body settled on mine, he tossed his fag end onto the table and the tip of his nose brushed my cheek.

  “Fucking, hot,” he said, and kissed me again, hands cupping my face eagerly, then snaking down, pressing into my body, under my clothes so his rough fingers could feel my skin. I arched up off of the sofa, letting him touch me all over, I felt good, drunk, but also...wanted. Feeling Nate touch me greedily and kiss me like he was hungry for the taste of my skin. It reminded me that I was a person, and that I could be with other people. Be normal.

  Nate sucked a bruise to the surface of my neck, marking my neck like a teenager. “Stop thinking,” he told me.”

  “Sorry.”

  “And stop, fucking apologising.”

  I put my arms around him, and pushed my hands up under his shirt, then he took one of them and pushed it down the back of his jeans, wriggling until he had my fingers under his briefs, a handful of bare arse to squeeze. Our kisses were sloppy, filthy, as Nate nipped my lips, licked into my mouth, tangled his tongue with mine and all the time he was grinding down on me, our bodies rubbing together.

  I couldn’t remember any other kiss. Nate became my first kiss, my first grope, and, then he worked a hand between us and pulled down the fly on my jeans, fanning open the stiff denim and pushing down my underwear, working the same trick on himself, only backwards, awkwardly, until our cocks were naked against each other, and I could almost taste blood my heart was beating so fast. When he pressed against me, moved against me, he became my first lover.

  Our hips jerked in a heavy kind of rhythm, our legs trapped in rumpled jeans, our connected skin on fire, and still we kissed, until I didn’t know if I was breathing, or if Nate was breathing for me. Nate got a hand under my thigh, down the back of my jeans, squeezing my arse, rubbing, fingers hot on my damp skin. Orgasm punched the inside of my body, fighting to get loose, and when it did, it almost knocked me out. I rocked against Nate, helpless, feeling the wetness spatter and gather on my own skin, and then fresh heat as his joined it. He groaned into my mouth and panted onto my skin.

  We both lay there on the sofa, jeans around our shins, come slowly sticking us together. His hair tickled my face, and the TV, the only source of light in the room, played a blue glow over Nate’s bare arse.

  I felt more at peace than I had in days.

  For about fifty seconds.

  Through the warmth of whisky and sex came a cold, insinuating breeze. What the fuck was I doing? Fucking around with a stranger, a strange man, when I had a wife at home waiting for me. When I had a whole life, a life that I had been building for thirty-two years, one that I wanted, or had wanted, until I forgot who I was or why I was living that life.

  I’d find out, I’d want it again. How could I throw that away? Thirty-two years of time, up in smoke.

  Answer – I couldn’t.

  Wouldn’t.

  I started to move restlessly,
and Nate took the hint, climbing off of me and sitting on the arm of the sofa to wipe himself off with a handful of tissues and pull his jeans up.

  I sat up, took some tissue for myself, and then got my clothes in order, standing up and looking towards the door.

  “Going then?” Nate guessed.

  “I’m married,” I blurted.

  Nate looked at me, not shocked, or even worried, just looked, like I was a TV actor and he was trying to work out if I was important, or just an extra.

  Then he said, “how do you know you want to be?”

  I bolted. Suddenly chilled, drunk and tired, I just darted for the door, tripped down the slippery metal steps to the street, and ran all the way home.

  Chapter Three

  When I got home it was well after four in the morning, and the whole street was silent and deserted, the sky still deathly dark. I let myself into the house, and even Mick was too fast asleep to come and greet me. With impatient, uncooperative hands I pulled off my clothes and dumped them in the wash bin in the kitchen. In my underwear I went into the living room, laid down on the sofa and pulled my duvet over me.

  I willed sleep to come, but it was as if Nate had slipped me something in that kiss. A kind of drug that had me awake and restless even though I thought I’d die if I didn’t get some sleep. My heart would not slow its rapid beat, and my mind sped along with it.

  As much as I wanted to shut that night out of my mind, I couldn’t. Fucking, well, almost fucking, Nathan had become the only thing I knew about myself. The only major event in my five day long ‘new life’ that cast any kind of light on who I was. And who I was, was an adulterer, apparently. A gay adulterer.

  Was I? Maybe it was just because Nate had been nice to me, a good friend, and in the few hours I’d known him, he’d made me feel like a normal bloke. Made me grateful. I’d wanted to feel close to him, to feel close to someone. Maybe it could just as easily have been Margery or Gregory, or even Cora.

  I wasn’t convincing myself. Nate had been the one to approach me, yes, but I’d gone home with him, knowing exactly what he wanted. Because I’d wanted it too.