Four Letter Word

by Joshua Knelman

  After a while we sat down and Maryam started talking to you in low rapid tones, beseeching you to go home. I didn’t care what happened any more, but I knew there was nowhere we could be alone: that hole of a nightclub was a dead end. Amman, I said, squeezing your hand. We’ll see each other in Amman. There were tears in your eyes. I want you, you said. I swear I’ll die if I don’t have you. Yet finally you agreed to leave. Though it was very late, you could still patch things up with your aunt. She wouldn’t tell your parents. We’d see each other in two days’ time.

  The next morning, bleary-eyed, I met Mansour and Hussein in the lobby. They were sullen and uncommunicative, which suited me fine. They didn’t ask how I’d spent my evening and I didn’t volunteer any information. We drove for hours through the desert, then walked round a dusty crusader castle, a bleak place, the site of a siege and a massacre. Mr Mansour pointed out architectural features. I nodded and grunted, unable even to simulate interest: my head was too full of you, Aisha. I was disturbed, jumbled up. I didn’t think I’d done anything wrong, but at the same time nothing felt quite right. Eventually Mansour asked if I was ill. We drove back to Amman, arriving after dark. I checked into my hotel, a mausoleum of marble and cut glass, ate a room-service dinner and fell into a fitful sleep, unable to get comfortable, irritated by the rattle of the fridge and the asthmatic hum of the air conditioning.

  The next afternoon you and Maryam picked me up in an enormous boat-like Mercedes. You were the worst driver I’d ever seen, changing lanes without warning, tail-gating other cars, oblivious to what was going on around you. Once you almost killed us, swerving on to an exit ramp at the very last moment, narrowly missing a crash barrier. I’ve always been a bad passenger, and by the time we reached our destination, a hilltop viewpoint where we could watch the sunset, my nerves were in shreds. Once again, Maryam sat apart and smoked, while we groped one another in the back seat. I felt self-conscious, and asked you whether you didn’t think it was awkward for your friend. She understands, you said. She doesn’t mind. Then we drove back into the city to go to a bar. When you said I had to hide under a blanket, I laughed. We’re getting close to my family’s house, you told me. People know this car. If anyone sees us, they’ll tell my father. At first I didn’t believe you, but your expression was deadly serious, so I swapped places with Maryam and lay down on the back seat, covered with a tartan travel rug. You swerved your way through the busy shopping streets. Whenever you braked sharply, which was often, I was thrown into the footwell. This is insane, I thought. This is the dumbest thing I’ve ever done.

  I felt as if I were in an altered state of consciousness. I knew what reality looked like, the reality in which I got out of the car and walked away. But we arrived at the bar and you put the palm of my hand against your breast and soon we were going through the same routine, kissing and groping in a back booth until once again my brain was so fogged up with sex that I forgot everything else but your body. And so, inevitably, I ended up sneaking you and Maryam into my hotel room. Maryam stoically watched TV with the sound turned up high, while you and I undressed one another on the bed. As you wriggled out of your dress she abruptly stood up and told us she’d wait in the lobby. Sorry, I said. Come back in fifteen minutes, you told her. Then, at last, it was just the two of us. I slid off your underwear and marvelled at what I’d just uncovered, the dark nipples and the little mat of pubic hair, framed in bikini-shaped triangles of milk-white skin. You were beautiful, Aisha. Mesmerising. I certainly didn’t take you for granted. Please understand that, if nothing else. I felt like the luckiest man in the world. But there was a bad atmosphere in that room, a cloud of guilt and tension hanging over our caresses.

  Things started to fall apart when I mentioned condoms. I had some in my washbag and went to get them. When I came back I found you hunched up on the bed, clutching a pillow and staring at me suspiciously. Why do you carry such things? you asked. You must expect to pick up girls when you travel. I shrugged and you called me a seducer, using that odd, old-fashioned word. A seducer with many girls. I promised that wasn’t the case, which was true enough, but I knew as I spoke that disaster was looming. Maybe, I said, we shouldn’t do this. I don’t want to hurt you. I think we should just get dressed. But you shook your head and wagged your finger like a schoolmistress ticking off a naughty class. You hadn’t finished with me. The interrogation went on. How many other girls had I had? I said it didn’t matter, not so many. Did I love you? I said I’d only just met you, so, no, I couldn’t say I loved you. You appeared to consider this for a minute, then lay down and opened your legs. OK, you said. Fuck me.

  That was too clinical for my taste, Aisha. Too cold. I told you to put your clothes on. You refused and pulled me down on top of you. You clawed and bit my neck like a cat and I felt alarmed and my head was aching but your skin was soft and your legs were wrapped round my hips and you were sopping wet so of course that was it, because I’d been imagining nothing else since I met you, but I kept thinking that any minute Maryam would knock on the door, or Mansour or the people from the front desk, and I worried you might have lied about your old boyfriend, that you might be a virgin, and when I came it was intense and far too soon and all my worst fears were realised as you started to cry, swearing at me, calling me a pig, a bastard. Your old boyfriend had been gentle and kind. He took his time. He was respectful, unlike me. I made you feel dirty. All I could say was sorry, and I said it again and again. We struggled into our clothes and sat dejectedly beside one another. That was how Maryam found us. Her face too was streaked with tears. Five times, she said. Five different men had approached her and asked her price as she sat in the lobby. She couldn’t stand the place another moment. She wanted to go home. So did I.

  I walked you down to your car and gave you my phone number in London and you pecked me on the cheek and got in and Maryam drove you away. Early the next morning I flew out. I hadn’t slept. I’d spent the night going over everything that had happened, trying to work out when I should have stopped, at what point I should have pushed you away. I was appalled at myself. I’d really thought I was inured to the sexual guilt all around me. I considered myself innocent. But perhaps I wasn’t. Perhaps I was everything I appeared to be. Exploiter. Abuser of your body, destroyer of your family honour. Perhaps I was the kind of pig you should have been protected from by your father, your brother, the waiter at the restaurant, by my driver and my tour guide and the concierge at the hotel. It suddenly occurred to me that you might report me to the police, tell them I’d raped you. I wondered how I’d explain myself, what treatment I could expect. When the plane took off I almost wept with relief, until the stewardess came round with hot towels and soft drinks.

  Then I got home and put you from my mind. I buried you deep, Aisha, deep as I could, until my phone rang and a voice asked, accusingly, do you know who this is? In that moment it was all too much. I couldn’t bear to go back into that midden of guilt and shame and I put the receiver down to make it go away. I’m so sorry, Aisha. You didn’t deserve that. You weren’t ready, even though you said you were. I hope you escaped – from Jordan and from me. I hope so with all my heart. I didn’t mean to hurt you. It’s just you were so beautiful. Forgive me, Aisha. Write back and let me know you’re all right. It would mean a lot, even after all these years.

  ANONYMOUS

  Hi Fi and Tobe,

  I know, I know this must be weird getting a letter from me as I’ve not returned your emails or calls since I got back. Sorry about that and the handwriting (Eek). Must be a decade since I’ve even tried to write something by hand – other than signing cheques – hope you can make out my scrawls! I’ve been attempting to email you but every time I start I end up deleting bits and starting again and it all comes out like an ‘I’m fine’ newsletter thing and the truth is I’m not fine. I don’t know how I feel. Just very confused and finding it hard to eat and sleep. Don’t worry Fi, it’s not the old eating thing coming back.

  Where do I start? It’
s late on Friday night and I’m sitting in our flat and Mike’s just moved all of his stuff out today (I hadn’t realised how little I’d actually bought over the years, couldn’t believe that the TV and stereo and all of ‘our CDs’ turned out to be his.) Anyway, I’m drinking our Duty-Free ouzo thinking about you both on our beautiful holiday and it’s given me the guts to get this letter done. I’m just going to keep twittering on and get it all said and not even read it back, then stick it in the envelope and drop it in the postbox before bed (if I can still walk straight!). Don’t worry about me. I’m actually very happy, quite ecstatic in fact. Maybe it’s the ouzo.

  The fact is I can’t stop thinking about you. Both of you and our little chalet in Naxos. You were so kind and loving to me in those two weeks. To hell with Mike as you said, Fi. He was a coward and a bully over the abortion. In fact I think the last year he’s just spent trying to be nice to me so he could leave without seeming like a total cunt. Which he is, I see that now.

  But first the news LOL! (Isn’t it funny how we use email talk even in letters.) So Mike’s said he’s going to reimburse me for his half of the chalet rent and car hire – gee thanks! The last week has been an awful round of predictable excuses about why he stood me up at the airport and his fear of commitment and how he thought the holiday seemed almost like a marriage proposal – the two-couples-together-thing seemed so middle class and middle aged, he said (so him), and since time was pushing on he was worried (again) about the baby question (because you’d both been talking about it and trying so hard to have a child) and he really wasn’t ready, he said. He’s done now what I sensed he would for the last year. Run off to ‘be alone and think things over’. I just know that he’s got a bit on-the-side but to be honest, it’s like you said, Tobe – Mike will never be ready. And you were right, Fi. I have to move on, because I am worth more.

  Anyway, I don’t want to talk about Mike. And I don’t think what I’m feeling right now is some kind of rebound trauma because I’m just so damned fucking happy. I was crying today thinking about us on the beach, playing in the water together like kids. All these images coming back to me. Even when Mike was lifting out his last box I was thinking about that night we walked miles as the sun went down … The skinny-dipping.

  Those little things in the water, the sparkly thingies, what did you call them, Tobe?

  I’m sorry, this is as unexpected to me as it must be to you. It’s taken me two weeks to admit that this is the situation and to scrape together enough courage to try to do this. So the ouzo! To hell with it all as you say, Fi – ‘Another round!’

  Sorry, I should have said before. I want you to read this letter together, even if one of you gets it first. I want you to read it together, in bed. I want you to cuddle up with the letter between you (like a kind of me) like we did on that first night when I was crying.

  Algae – that’s what they’re called! Yeah? Swimming so far out, treading water, and the stars in the sky and the flashing algae in the water, splashing each other with sparkles. And you both kissing, and Fi, you reaching to hold my hand under the water as you guys were circling tongues. Anyway, that was what I was thinking of when Mike was waiting at the door for his guilt-free goodbye. He said ‘See you around, then.’ And I really didn’t give a shit because I was thinking about us in the water and how he never kissed me like that and how he’s scared of going any deeper than paddling.

  Anyway, this feels great. I’m not even reading back what I’ve written. Do you think this is maybe the problem with technology these days? That everything we write and do and think and feel can be saved and edited and deleted. Anyway (isn’t it funny how that word seems the only way to start a sentence?). Anyway, maybe I’m drunk. Must be, because I’m laughing and crying. Weird, for days now it’s been these flashbacks. At work and with Mike and his boxes and I get these flashes of you both.

  That time we went to the farmers’ market, all those old sun-ripened faces, you said Tobe, and Fi, you took my hand and then, Tobe, you took my other. And we were walking around, hand in hand, pigged out on goat’s cheese and olives and the locals were staring and we didn’t give a damn. Like being kids again. Naughty kids. Did you feel that too?

  You both said so many times, ‘We understand, you’re going through a hard time, but just know that we love you.’

  And Fi, that night when Tobe went out for more retsina and you confessed you’d both been going through a hard time recently too, with all the pregnancy tests and the blame and seeing the pain I was going through had brought you and Tobe closer cos sex had become this thing, almost medical, for you both.

  I’m sorry but I have to say it. You must have known I heard you in the night. Fi, the beautiful noises you make. Sorry, maybe you thought I was asleep. But the walls were so thin – Tobe, you said that. And Tobe, you groan like a bull. And that look you both gave me the next morning, every morning (because you guys really went at it, every damn night!). The way you were so tactile with each other in front of me in the kitchen. You fondled each other at the breakfast bar. Tobe, you were kissing Fi’s breasts as I tried to pour the muesli. Remember?

  Oops! Have I gone too far? I’ve never been good at boundaries as you know, Fi. Mike did all that for me.

  These flashes, like they’re trying to tell me something.

  It must be the ouzo, this philosophical me. Fi, you always said I should put my ‘great mind’ to better use. OK, what I’m thinking now is that the problem is, was, still is – it’s all about couples and that’s what the problem is. You know, couples are together, what? Maybe three, four years then it gets suffocating, so then it’s talk of babies or maybe a pet (like Sharon and Susan and Sooty). What I mean is when it’s one-on-one then maybe people try to turn each other into each other and it becomes this battle to see who wins. And dogs and cats and kids are maybe good because they stop couples from tearing each other apart. Fi, it was you that gave me this idea. Was it Sartre? Maybe you just said it to make me feel better about Mike, but it has played on my thoughts. Who fucking said that couples were the ideal model anyway – who? The Church?

  And my parents were about to divorce but then my granny came to live with us and suddenly they were both caring for her and they started getting along. And Shaz and Suse were about to split up until they got Sooty and they even joke about how a cat saved their relationship. You know that line of theirs: ‘So good to have pussy again.’

  No, but I was, and you must have known, every night listening to your creaking bed and your voices and your breath, trying to time it so when I came my gasps would be drowned by yours. You must have known.

  I’m beating about the bush. (Hey Fi, remember those lesbians we met at that Anti-Iraq War demo with a hand-painted placard that read ‘Lick Bush’, or was it ‘Fuck Bush’?)

  I should calm down on the ouzo, methinks. God, I miss you both. And the sun and the sand and the sky.

  But these flashbacks. Tobe, you gave me that back massage and Fi, you were there in the bedroom and you must have seen as Tobe straddled my back. You must have seen. And Tobe you must have known, that night we ate lobster, that Fi was stroking my thigh as she played footsy with you. You must have because you started touching my other thigh and you both held hands and kissed me on either cheek.

  Were you both playing with me? Maybe you were just trying to be nice to me because of Mike.

  I can’t help thinking about all the things you each said to me separately. Fi, about our drunken fumblings in college and you thought that maybe that barely explored side of yourself would come back to haunt you and maybe wreck your marriage if you never managed to have a child. And Tobe, how you were worried, about if you could stay with one woman all your life if there wasn’t another life in your life, how the more it came down to mortgages and retirement plans, without the hope of a child, you felt your eye wander. And Fi, how you said that my name was like a full stop in your life and you’d never really got over me.

  I’m sorry. Maybe you think I’m jus
t trying to cause conflict. No. No. Please. All I’m trying to do is tell you both what you each told me separately. I hope you’re reading this in bed together. I hope you’re holding each other as you read it, and Fi, that Tobe’s hand is over your shoulder and reaching down to stroke your nipples, your sensitive nipples (mine are dead to the world, as you know) as you both take turns reading.

  I didn’t plan this. Sorry. Tear this up and tomorrow forget about it. Fine, do that. In fact, yes. Do that before you read another line. This message will self-destruct in one minute! Maybe I’ve already destroyed what we have. (Fi, you always told me that I had too much love and that it turned to hate when it wasn’t reciprocated.)

  I’m sorry. I don’t even know what this means or how we could go about doing what has been plaguing my thoughts every day. To be together. How can we? Can we?

  All I know is I love you. Am in love with you. Both of you. Mad drunken ouzo fuelled love for you both. Fi, please tell Tobe of that night in college, of Vodka Specials, the night before you left. How we kissed and kissed as we touched ourselves, each alone, how we came together then sucked and kissed each other’s fingers, how we slept so well that night after three years of aching confusion as room-mates, and how we never spoke of it again and wrote it off as drunkenness. Tobe please tell Fi, truthfully, how you felt when you gave me that massage … your hand moving up my thigh as we ate lobster, of how your eyes looked into mine every time you touched Fi, those eyes that told me she’d told you of that one night she and I spent together.