Material Girl

by Louise Kean

  ‘Yes, I promise I’m not lying. And no, I’m not having an affair. Do you think it wasn’t painful enough the first time? I wouldn’t put myself through that again.’ He smiles at me like I’m simple, but doesn’t make eye contact.

  ‘Then why do you never want to have sex with me?’ I shout as my voice breaks.

  ‘Scarlet, I am too fucking tired, all right? If you got home at a sensible hour it might make a difference. But it’s nearly three o’clock in the morning! And I’ve been smoking, and I just don’t feel like it!’

  ‘But you never feel like it! Never! It’s been months!’

  ‘You’re never here when I do feel like it!’

  ‘What if I try, Ben, if I promise I’ll try and get home earlier … would that make a difference?’ I sound like a needy schoolgirl, desperate to please her teacher. As I say the words I hate myself even more.

  ‘Then we’ll see,’ he says, and nods his head. What does that mean?

  I wait for him to come and give me a hug, but I could wait all night, he just stands in the doorway and looks away. So I throw the last of my pride down the sink after the last of my Alpen and walk towards him, and try and shuffle under one of his arms for a hug. He relents stiffly and rubs my back three times, up down up down up down, with all the affection of a windscreen wiper.

  I look up to kiss him and he squeezes his eyes shut and pecks me squashily on the lips.

  ‘Open your eyes,’ I say.

  He opens them, and pecks me on the forehead.

  ‘I’m scared we don’t try hard enough, Ben. I’m scared we’re falling apart.’

  ‘I need the loo,’ he says, and goes to the bathroom.

  Ben is snoring by the time I’ve swiped off my make-up, but I can’t sleep. My eyes refuse to stay closed. I look over at him. He is firmly on his side of the bed, with his back to me. I know his back better than any other part of his body. I know every mole, every hair. I know the contours of his shoulders and the nape of his neck. I know exactly when his hair is getting too long because it sits just over the freckle at the top of his spine. But when I close my eyes I can’t picture his face at all.

  I get up, pull the bedroom door closed behind me and wander back into the kitchen to run myself a glass of water. It’s that time of the night when all you can hear is electricity: the soundtrack of the washing machine, dishwasher and central heating hums around me. I retrieve the Standard from my bag and toss it onto the table. I gulp down my water. The post lies half-opened next to the paper. I pick up the letter from the clinic, which looks well-thumbed around the edges by Ben. I watch my fingers tremble as I tear it open.

  Dear Miss White,

  Following your visit to this clinic on 2nd September, as agreed we are writing to inform you of the results of the tests you had taken.

  You were tested for:

  • Chlamydia

  • Gonorrhoea

  • Trichomonas Vaginalis

  • Candida (Thrush)

  Blood Tests

  • Syphilis

  • HIV antibody test

  And all of these tests were negative (showed no infection).

  A negative HIV result means that you have not been infected with the virus that causes AIDS. However, if you have been at risk of exposure to this virus within the last three months you will need to repeat your HIV test to be certain of your status.

  You still need to consider ways to protect yourself from HIV and other sexually transmitted infections. I would like to make an appointment for you to come back to the clinic and see one of our Health Advisors or counsellors as soon as possible, to discuss the nature of your test, and the situation surrounding it. Please call this number to make an appointment at your earliest convenience.

  Your negative HIV result does not automatically mean that current or ex-partners are also negative. Only an HIV test will determine their status.

  Thank you for choosing to use our service.

  Yours sincerely,

  V. O’Brien

  Clinic Nurse

  I let the letter fall onto the kitchen table. I know why they want to talk to me.

  When I first went for my tests they told me about the HIV delay and I chose to postpone, until that three-month period had passed. They made a record of it. The nurse asked why I hadn’t used protection, and I said that my boyfriend had already been tested, as had I, and that I was on the pill. Then she asked why I hadn’t used protection with the other man that I had just told her I’d had sex with in the previous week, and I didn’t have an answer. Well, I did, but she didn’t seem convinced. ‘I was really trashed’ didn’t seem to cut it. So now they want to talk to me about the fact that I am a thirty-one-year-old woman who still thinks it’s okay to have unprotected sex with strangers when drunk.

  I down the last of my water, and slam the glass onto the kitchen table, trying to catch my breath.

  I’ve been called in for slut counselling.

  Scene V: Violence

  Tuesday. Ben woke me up this morning, hovering over me and gently shaking my left shoulder. For a moment I wasn’t sure what was happening, and I smiled with amazed surprise. Then I realised that he was fully dressed and about to go to work.

  ‘What is it?’ I asked, confused and shielding my eyes from the daylight streaming in through the shoddy bedroom curtains that my mum ran up one Sunday evening in front of Heartbeat after two glasses of wine and her homemade steak and ale pie, hold the steak.

  ‘Stop leaving your make-up on the toilet cistern,’ he said.

  ‘Why?’ I asked, rubbing my eyes.

  ‘Because it’s annoying. I’ll see you later.’ And then he left.

  I stand in front of the bathroom mirror, naked but for a pair of big blue knickers with Mickey Mouse on the front and a pink lace trim, that I think are ironic, and check for lumps. I raise my arm in the air, the way that they show you at the doctor’s, and work my way around my left breast. I prod and poke in a circular motion, searching for something bad lurking creepily under my skin that’s desperately trying to stay hidden or risk being sliced out. I am startled by my reflection as I watch myself feeling up my own boobs, like some twisted homemade porn flick: watch in awe as busty Scarlet, 34–28–34, checks for filthy cancerous lumps!

  I don’t look the way that I think I do. You walk about the world, thinking you look okay, functioning, getting a fair share of whistles, but standing in front of myself like this it’s easy to identify exactly what I need. It’s a long list: my hair coloured, my hair restyled, my eyebrows plucked – maybe threaded, maybe waxed – a facial, my first hit of Botox, a pore treatment, my teeth straightened and whitened, or maybe veneers, my one black filling replaced by a white one, a boob lift, a tummy tuck, liposuction on the top inside of my thighs, a manicure, a pedicure, a leg wax, an arm wax, a bikini wax, laser hair removal for my armpits, my eyes lasered, all-over exfoliation, a cellulite treatment for my bottom, a mud wrap, an inch-loss treatment, a colonic, a course of yoga, a personal trainer, cleanser, toner, day moisturiser, night moisturiser, eye cream, a deep cleansing mask, a blackhead mask, an anti-ageing mask, and a spray tan. In some countries they need shoes, water, lunch, and a roof.

  I think it was in the 1950s that poverty got redefined; I remember reading it in the Standard. That’s the decade when most things seemed to happen, after the war but before the hippies: sex studies conducted and social-policy initiatives implemented, while women baked and Elvis simmered on a low heat, poised to boil. They said that there was absolute poverty – the people who didn’t have the shoes and the lunch and the roof, but then there was cultural poverty too: that you could be poor, or you could be really poor. Really poor were the ones without water; but you were deemed to be culturally poor, in the UK at least, if you didn’t have a washing machine, or an inside toilet. And they said that these days, if you don’t have a TV, not through crazy nature-loving Guardian-reading choice, but because you can’t afford one, then you are culturally poor.

  I have a
roof, and shoes, and lunch, and water. But I need my eyebrows threaded and my teeth whitened, and my breasts lifted. It seems to me that there’s a new definition of cultural poverty in town, and this time it’s serious! It’s cultural poverty for girls, circa 2006. You know it’s true because you feel it too. And I forgot: I need a pair of jeans that cost at least one hundred and twenty pounds, because at some point that became acceptable too. Of course, if I find a lump today that might all change, but I don’t, so my list remains intact.

  I slide my feet along the ground and into the kitchen for Alpen. I catch my breath when I see what Ben has done. Next to the microwave he has framed a picture from our holiday. At the beginning of the summer we went to Barcelona for five days. I lay by the pool, he did a tour of the Nou Camp, and at night we ate seafood, drank sangria, and tried to have conversation. I’d ask him questions but he’d rarely reply. He used to find my tangents fun – If you could be any Muppet Show character, which one would you be? If you could be any sportsman in history, who would it be? Stuff like that. But in Barcelona his answers were lazy and ill-conceived. He said he’d be Kermit, but he didn’t know why, and he said he’d be John Barnes, because he just would. Every meal was over in an hour, and we were in bed by eleven. Sometimes I’d stay downstairs in the hotel bar and drink until he was asleep. Sometimes he’d drink and I’d sleep. We had sex one morning, but of course I faked it. It was utterly uncomfortable, we barely kissed and we couldn’t even look each other in the eye. Ben came long before I’d even got going, so I gasped a few times and said ‘great’.

  It’s a photo of me in an alleyway in a short white sundress and gold flip-flops. I’m looking back over my shoulder because he had just shouted ‘Scar’ and I’d turned around.

  I grab my mobile and call him.

  ‘It’s me,’ I tell him as he answers.

  ‘Yep?’ he says.

  ‘I’m calling to say thank you for framing that photo: I’ve just seen it in the kitchen. That’s so lovely of you!’

  ‘My pleasure,’ he says, and I can hear the smile in his voice. ‘You see, I can do nice things, Scar, you just have to give me the chance.’

  ‘I know, I know. I’m sorry. Where did you buy the frame?’

  ‘I got it free with those new wineglasses from the supermarket, so I thought I’d stick something in it. It’s all right, isn’t it?’

  ‘Oh. Couldn’t you find one of us together?’ I ask.

  ‘I didn’t really look, that one was at the top, but change it if you want, the photos are in the drawer.’

  ‘Oh,’ I say again. I picture air whizzing out of my ears and nose cartoon-style as I deflate.

  ‘It is a nice photo of you though, Scar.’

  ‘Thanks – I mean, it’s lovely that you did it.’

  ‘Well, remember this the next time you start having a go at me!’ he says, then puts his hand over the receiver and adds, ‘I’ll be with you in one moment, sir.’

  ‘I know. I will,’ I reply, but there is a lump in my throat.

  This is the extent of it. The picture on the top of the pile stuffed into a free frame and shoved by the microwave, and I’m grateful.

  ‘I’m working, Scarlet, I have to go,’ he says.

  ‘Okay, bye,’ I reply, and hang up.

  I tend to remember one line from most of the arguments that Ben and I have. I never remember what I say immediately afterwards but then have dizzying scared moments of horror a couple of days later as I recall how vicious I became and what nastiness I spat at him to hurt him back. I know I’ve said, more than once, ‘Everybody thinks you’re batting out of your league, Ben, everybody thinks I’m too good for you!’ He has never retaliated to that.

  I know I am only goading him but I wonder if he knows it too. Still, I hate myself for saying those things. Why should he love me if I’ll say things that deliberately hurt him? But then it’s a self-perpetuating problem. If Ben told me that he loved me I wouldn’t say those things, or try and provoke such a response. I wonder if he knows that too.

  I catch a ten thirty Central Line into town, and flick through HEAT on the tube. Short-mega-rich is shagging tall-mega-skinny-mega-pale, even though she has only been married to tall-strangely-white-toothed Jewish comedian for three months. Brunette-tattooed-vixen is sleeping with crazy-grey-haired-Oscar-winning-method-actor, even though he has been married for five years to gorgeous-hair-girl-next-door-funny-lady. It’s like I said: infidelity begets infidelity. When a star sleeps with another star, somebody else soaks it up as this week’s gossip and is unfaithful with one of the bar staff in his or her local pub. We are all so scared that we are missing out, and nobody has the answer.

  It’s the same with soap operas. If you look at any given soap-opera square or street or farm they are all at it like rabid rampant rabbits, and it gives people ideas. A boss seduces a factory worker between seven thirty and eight on a Wednesday night on ITV, and the same thing happens the following week in Chelmsford. All it takes is the germ of the idea. Infidelity begets infidelity. If Monogamy was once our religion, we’re a secular society now! It’s a fact of life, and I seem to be the last one to have cottoned on. Today, everybody cheats. Should I encase my heart in bubble-wrap now, and allow nobody any closer than a cheap pop on a few of my bubbles? Or just give up completely? Meanwhile, back in Soho, I cheat constantly with a kiss or worse, but think nothing of it. I’m emotionally drained so it doesn’t matter. It’s just a release, a cold comfort, nothing more, it doesn’t count. Of course, if I find out that Ben is doing the same I’ll cry and shake for days and throw him out on the street. What’s happened to the world that I thought I’d grow up to drive a car in, get married in, buy a house and have kids in? I turned away briefly at eighteen perhaps, and when I turned back it was gone, replaced by this shambles of irony and confusion. It’s certainly not where I thought I left it. There’s nothing white in my world. My swans are all grey, my snow is tinged with yellow. A mist has fallen.

  I turn the page in my magazine. There’s a feature where they scrawl a ring around everybody’s imperfections. It’s called Circle of Shame or something like that, and I think it’s supposed to make me feel better but it only makes me feel worse. All that is wrong with one bottle-blonde-and-tan today is her ‘strangely’ long third toe. That doesn’t seem too bad to me. Let’s see some honest-to-God crows’ feet, shall we? Or some bona-fide stretch marks? Maybe, if that were the case, I’d end up feeling terrible for that poor star strung up as an example of ‘real’ – you see, they aren’t perfect! I can’t say for sure. I know that it’s my fault too. If anybody is to blame it’s me. I paint over the lines. I’m Make-up.

  I can understand why people miss the good old days, where marriage was for life and you lived next door to the same family for fifty years, watching your kids and their kids’ kids grow up. Was that all made up too? Do I only think of them as the ‘good old days’ because I’ve seen some old films of the war, where neighbours ran from house to house swapping sugar and hiding under tables when the bombs came? Our lives seem peculiarly temporary now, where once, not so long ago, they were permanent. I’d give up email for fidelity. Except if I leave Ben and have to try online dating. I’ll need to do that first.

  I get off the tube at Tottenham Court Road and wander up past the cable of electrical stores that flank the road north, with their special offers on equipment that leave me cold. I am sure that most of these machines are either DVD players or digital cameras but they look crazy and alien and impossible to operate. If I leave Ben. I won’t even think it loudly. It’s only a whisper in my head.

  I notice that this is mostly a male street. Tottenham Court Road is for men, who fly past me at varying speeds, which makes me think: there are so many people in the world, buzzing around me, streaming past me, hundreds and thousands and millions of men. Wouldn’t it just be absolute and utter bad luck if I couldn’t find one to love me? If love does really exist, after all …

  I twitch at the clinic reception and wait
for somebody to see me. I could have just phoned but I thought it might make a better impression if I presented myself in person, in a nice outfit. I want to appear willing to address my problems, have my slut counselling session, move on, and never come back.

  ‘Hello,’ says the man behind the counter. He’s a flabby slim and receding, in a cheap checked supermarket shirt that is so thin I can see his nipples, and rimless glasses that contribute to the nothing of his face. At least some rims might have given him some colour. His knuckles are flaky, patches of skin, wafer-thin like ham, point in different directions from the back of his hands. I won’t be shaking hello.

  ‘Hello,’ I say, and smile, with my hands clasped behind my back like an old-fashioned bobby on the beat. If I was being really authentic I’d say ‘’ello, ’ello, ’ello’, bend my knees, then hit him over the head with a truncheon because he looks a bit gay.

  ‘I received a letter that said I should make an appointment to see somebody here?’ I grab it out of my bag and chuck it at him more violently than I’d intended. ‘And as I was in the area I thought I may as well pop in to make the appointment. You know: show willing!’

  The guy throws me a quizzical look and glances at the letter. His eyes dart up and give me the quick once-over before he finishes reading. An appointment book lies open in front of him, full of bad handwriting in red and black ink. I wonder if the colour coding is coincidence, or if it means something. Red for rude health, black for brink of death.

  ‘Somebody could see you now actually,’ he says and smiles. His front teeth are stained and pointy like chunks of Toblerone.

  I feel like I’ve just stepped into one of those traps in the forest that Robin Hood perfected, where your foot gets caught in a rope loop and you are flipped upside down into the air. I want to cover my head with a pair of oversized boxing gloves and back out of the swing doors before anybody gets a good shot in.