Al's Well

by Dark, Gregory

  I feel as nervous now as I did then. Well, not quite, but getting close. Going to our room, I was so nervous. I mean, sooooooo nervous. That I wouldn’t come up to scratch, I suppose. Pass muster. As a lover. That my body somehow wouldn’t hack it. That the ‘love handles’ would be seen merely as middle-aged spread. Most of all, that my … let’s call it ‘JT’ … that my ‘JT’ would refuse to renounce its premature retirement and that it would, as it were, let the side down.

  Driving to our rendezvous my mouth was like sandpaper. I was, I think, shaking from nerves.

  I hated meeting you like that. Hated it. It didn’t feel like a tryst, not Abelard meeting Eloise, more like Bonnie and Clyde (as, I think, I said at the time) about to pull off a heist. Or two spies, more like, meeting to swap state secrets.

  You were wearing … Do you know, it’s awful, but I really can’t remember what it was you were wearing. You looked stunning, that I do remember. Ravishing. Ravishable, more accurately. Indeed, ravageable.

  We kissed.

  I was very uptight, that too I remember. Very sprung-loaded. I’m not sure you have that expression in the colonies (kidding, Trove, only kidding … As you would say, ‘Jeez, Trove, lighten up!’), but it means excitable, ‘agitato’. And then the bloody traffic jam. It was predictable, I know. Even inevitable. But I needed it like the proverbial moose needs the proverbial hat-stand. (It’s not proverbial at all, but clichéd. We’ll just gloss over that!) All that small talk. All those “and how are you?”s; all those “Jesus, it’s hot today!”s and “and how was your week?”s. My week was awful.

  My week had passed in a haze of wondering when the hell Saturday would ever arrive –if it ever would. Of walking around not knowing what I was doing, why I was doing it, even where the hell I was. And then there I was: the Saturday had arrived and I desperately wanted the moment to last forever. But I also wanted the sex to be over and for it to have been great and for me not to have disgraced myself and for you still to like me as a friend and now also to like me as a lover and for us to be embarked on a magical, mystical sexual tour and about ten tons more of other wants. And instead of being able to tell you that, I was replying to: “And what have you been up to?” with ripostes of such pith and profundity as: “Oh,this and that.” “This and that”?! I ask you: “this and that”!

  All of which while my heart was going pitter-patter like tropical rain on tin roofs – which I would like to tell you was in celebration of my love for you, but which had (in reality, I fear) much more to do with my up-and-coming performance. Or, more accurately, the performance I hoped would be both ‘up-’ ‘-and-’ subsequently (but not too soon) ‘-coming’.

  +++

  “We’d booked a hotel. Well, he had. Well, when I say, ‘he had’ that was only after about ten zillion phone calls. Twenty or so a day. You know, to decide, I mean. Finally to ‘do it’ … finally, I guess, that we had to.

  “More even than the Sunday – the Sunday, I’m talking about, when we met to discuss whether we’d have our affair or not –, when the big day came, which was a Saturday, I was scared. Shit, I was so scared. Do you know what I mean? I mean, out of my mind terrified. Oh, not of him. Not in that kind of way. But of me. Scared that he wouldn’t, finally, find me attractive.

  “He’d been attentive, of course. More than attentive. He’d said all the right things. You know, those stupid, girly things. Things which as a committed feminist I shouldn’t need to hear, shouldn’t want to goddamn hear. But which – shit – when I heard him say them, it made me realise how much I’d missed them being said. How much I’d missed anyone saying them. … Al saying them.

  “Jesus, I don’t blame him, Al. Compliments, they’re a bit like kissing, aren’t they? I mean, six months into a relationship, you stop kissing, don’t you? I mean, it’s still lovely when you do, but you don’t. Not too much. Why is that? And why do we stop paying each other compliments? And is there a link? Between the fall off in kissing and that in compliments?

  “On our way to the hotel, we’d kissed in the car. I wasn’t too impressed, to tell you the truth. His kissing technique was all a bit measured. I’d had one other English lover, but he’d just been a hood. There’d been no finesse to him, no delicacy … no subtlety. I’m not saying that to criticise him. God, no. If anything, the other way round. I’d wanted a pump-action shotgun – in virtually all senses of the word – and, sure enough, that’s what I got. No complaints. And no regrets.

  “I’m like Piaf, I have none. About virtually anything.

  “Mike was different, though. Mike wasn’t a thug, for one thing. He liked to think of himself, I think, as a man of taste, a bon viveur but one with a conscience, as a cosmopolitan glorying in local differences, as a citizen of the world completely at peace in his backyard. And in some senses, he was all of those things. Particularly cosmopolitan. But in others he was almost quintessentially British. – Isn’t that a great word: ‘quintessentially’? – No, English. Quintessentially English, I meant to say. He wore an invisible bowler-hat, Mike, carried an invisible umbrella, strapped on invisible cricket … what do they call them? … pads. That’s it: pads. And that, because he was Mike, was both one of his charms and one of his big non-charms.

  “He was very gallant, very … there’s no other word for it … gentlemanly: He’d open doors for you, all that number, help you on and off with jackets. The first time he held my chair for me as I sat, I wondered – truly I did – what the hell he was doing. I was just so unused to it.

  “But the downside was that stiff upper lip. He wouldn’t let you in, Mike. Oh, eventually I think I probably penetrated as far as anyone else – bravely went where no woman had been before. Not, I think, that that was too far. But, at the beginning, he’d open a chink, a sliver, then immediately pull down the shutters again. Me, I’m an open book. What you see is what you get.

  “Kissing a stiff upper lip is also quite a challenge. Lips, especially when you’re kissing, they’re supposed to be such malleable things, a plasticine which moulds into the perfect inversion of your own lips. His were of reinforced concrete. That’s what it felt like.

  “It didn’t augur well.”

  +++

  Lunch was torture. I was trying so hard to be laid back and casual. Of course, the harder I tried the more unlaid back I became, the less casual. I think, if I remember correctly, at one point I even started to stammer. Do you know, I’m blushing even as I write this? I certainly remember blustering through sentences, getting the order mixed up of all the words I wanted to say.

  What am I talking about? What I wanted to say was, “What on earth are we doing having lunch when we could be in bed?” I wanted to know why you still had your clothes on. I wanted to say, what I had said already, that this was a seriously big mistake and that you’d regret it. And I wanted to say, please don’t ever let me be without you – ever – for as long as we both shall live. What I didn’t want to say was that the omelette was pretty good or that the waiter was doing his best or that the table-cloths had known better days or any of that other stuff. (I’ve used that expression before, I think. Sorry.)

  I remember I wanted to be alone with you. And I really didn’t. Because being alone I’d have to … you know. And what if I couldn’t and because I couldn’t there was nothing else to talk about? And if I couldn’t and there was nothing else to talk about, what in the name of Christ were we going to do with ourselves all weekend?

  The drive to the hotel was interminable. Far longer than the drive I later had to Paris. I cannot tell you a single detail about the countryside. I presume we passed trees and fields, the odd cow. But such recollection as I have is no more than a blur, a hazy impression, no more. A Monet fog at his most bleary seen with hungover eyes.

  I do remember scrunching on the gravel of the drive.

  I do remember wondering whether or not I should kiss you. Whether or not, I mean, it was the appropriate thing to do in the circumstances, to kiss you. I mean, what was that about? Wh
ether or not I ‘should,’ whether it was ‘appropriate!’

  Now it seems like a lifetime away. No, it has elements – akin to Woody Allen about to be lynched by the Ku Klux Klan – of the wrong life flashing before my eyes. Do you know, I don’t even know whether you like Woody Allen. How can I love you as much as I do without knowing whether or not you like Woody Allen? How about Tom Lehrer?

  +++

  “Well, there was one thing for sure: There’d be no-one who’d discover us at this place. Isolated? Any more isolated it’d have been an iceberg somewheres off the coast of … What’s it called? The island where they finally sent Napoleon to? Not Elba, the one ten zillion miles from nowhere? …

  “Santa Helena, that’s it. Santa Helena.

  “But it was really lovely. Almost too lovely, in fact. Within a hair’s breadth, I’d say, of being prissy, of being … I don’t know … cucumber sandwiches and those frilly doily things under rubber plants, you know. Chintzy more than prissy. No, chintzy as well as prissy. Not quite, but close.

  “It was a converted farm-house. A lot of the original beams were there, some of the stonework. And where they had restored, they’d done it well. A bit ‘Homes and Gardens’ but with some care not to spoil the original feel of the place, its original flavour. It was the perfect place for a sexy weekend. I’d think about ninety-five percent of its custom comes from just that. Stone floors, wooden stairs.

  “Mike was trying to look, I think, like we were an ‘item’ – which is also what he would have called it – an established couple. Why?

  “I was already excited. I’d spent the whole frigging week in a state of some … ‘blah-di-blah’, let’s call it. Even just the sound of his voice had gotten all … well, had gotten all my blah-di-blah, … well, dahdi-dahing. Just the mention of his goddamn name! Isn’t that pathetic? But the whole naughtiness of the thing, the whole deal that we weren’t an established couple – an item – that was just adding to my general ... blah-di-blah. I could see Mike was getting embarrassed. And I tried to mollify that embarrassment by going along with the charade. But there was too a naughty girl element in my whole enjoyment of the thing. You know, Jane Fonda at the Plaza in ‘Barefoot In The Park’ pretending to stuffed-shirt Redford that she’s a hooker. She’s now selling cosmetics. Can you believe that? Like an Avon lady. Worse. Not nearly so dignified. Not nearly so distinguished. It’s just so sad. Where was I? Hotel. Right, the hotel ...

  “I tried to effuse over the hotel, tried to divert my extreme la-la-la into appreciation of my environs. Know what I mean? Oh, I wasn’t kidding myself. I wasn’t trying to kid myself. I was way past that. But it was a way I could fool myself I was fooling the hotel staff. You know Gregory Corso’s poem? ‘Marriage’, I think it’s called. There a couplet in there somewhere about Niagara Falls, about the desk clerk ‘knowing’ of the honeymooners that they’d all be doing ‘the same thing tonight’ … something like that.

  “It had that feel to it. It wasn’t even that I minded them knowing. I mean, what else would we be doing, for Christ’s sake? I mean, wouldn’t it have been a lot sadder, a lot more wasteful, if we hadn’t have been using their place for sex? I mean, isn’t that a bit like being chauffeur-driven in a sports’ car?

  “I could have blah-di-blahed him on the stairs.

  “The porter opened the door …”

  +++

  I was watching your bottom wiggle along that corridor. Remember that corridor? I remember paintings. What of? I have no idea. I remember wondering what that bottom looked like naked.

  I remember, I think the phrase is, ‘a stirring in my loins’. Stirring? There was a seismic quake in my loins. About a hundred and sixty-four on the Prickter scale, ten thousand degrees Fuckenheit.

  The porter opened the door. Another small corridor. Which gave onto the room. Dominated by that huge iron bed. Remember it? And with the sunken bath in the bedroom? And you gave a little squeal, both of appreciation and of pleasure? I’ll never forget that little squeal. It was enormously endearing. And you turned to me. And your face was just one gigantic smile. Somehow, that smile, it exemplified joy. It radiated joy. But it radiated too appreciation and gratitude and … oh God, I don’t know, so many good things.

  This sounds awfully immodest, but I do try to do nice things for people. It’s so rare that those gifts or the effort they represent are even recognised, let alone acknowledged. The greatest gift you can give anyone is the appreciative, and graceful, receipt of their gift. And I was so grateful to you for your gratitude. That was the first (but by no means the last) time you tendered me such a gift. And I think, if it is possible to be that precise about such moments or to chronicle them, it was at that moment that I started to fall in love with you – in love love with you.

  I remember telling you, when this affair was first mooted, that I wouldn’t be able just to have sex with you, that I would end up falling in love with you. Well, you know by now how right I was. I’d expected that moment to come when we’d become comfortable with each other. Instead, it was then. When I was as uncomfortable as I ever had been in my life.

  +++

  “What do the Brits say: ‘Bowled over’? That’s what I was, I was bowled over. That’s the same ‘bowl’, I presume, that goes into the making of ‘bowler’ hats.

  “The room just exuded sex. I mean, there was this bed … It was huge. It was the room. And there were these pillows. Big pillows, you know what I mean? Huge ones, filled with soft, soft down. Pillows that are just great for … well, you know, for those moments when pillows like that are just great.

  “And there was this bath, this sunken bath. And that was right in the middle of the room. I mean, there was no screen, no curtains. If you wanted a bath, is what I’m saying, you had it in full view of your partner. More likely, with your partner.

  “This room wasn’t for people on business trips, nor for couples exhausted from a day’s bicycling. This room wasn’t even interested in you sleeping in it. This was a room where you made love, where you fucked, screwed, shagged, bonked yourself stupid. It was a room where you committed acts of lewdness or gross indecency, where you covered each other in crème fraiche. It was a room for dildoes and whips and French maid’s outfits. It was a room where anything went and which expected of you that you would give yourself to anything. It was a room which expected you to retire to it early but which, if you then zonked out, would have sulked for days in disappointment.

  “And Mike was being so English, so proper. Putting the cases on the case rack, tipping the porter. All that crap. ‘Get rid of him, Mike. Get rid of him now. Touch me. For God’s sake, Mike, for Christ’s sake, touch me, grab me, frigging well po-ssess me.’

  “I didn’t care how the tv worked, or the DVD, where the goddamn minibar was. I wanted to be hurled onto the bed. Blah-di-blahed frigging senseless.

  “After three ice ages, the porter finally grovelled out the door.

  “Here goes, I thought.

  “Wrong …”

  +++

  And when the porter went – do you remember that? All I wanted to do was to pounce, tear the clothes from your back (and front!). But that wasn’t the ‘right’ thing to do, was it? I mean, we both knew why we were there, but a certain amount of wooing, wasn’t it, was still necessary? A courtship of sorts, I suppose I’m talking about: however token or peremptory.

  Did I ask you whether you wanted to unpack? I rather think I did. Real Don Juan stuff, no? God, how embarrassing!

  +++

  “I was sitting on the side of the bed, I remember. My skirt was riding up. I just let it. There was a good deal of thigh exposed. You know those arrows they have on autoroutes to tell you to change lanes? Well, there was one of those planted on those thighs pointing straight at my blah-di-blah. And a neon light flashing from my forehead. Jeez, what more did the guy want?

  “He didn’t walk to the bed, he kind of waddled. Sort of like a slightly drunk duck. Or John Wayne with haemorrhoids. He stood by me (Mike, I
mean, not John Wayne). You know, for a minute there I thought he was just going to unzip, expect me to blah-di-blah him there and then. I felt like such a tramp, such a sleaze. No, such a hooker.

  “And then I thrilled to feel like a hooker. I wanted him to blah-diblah me as he would a hooker. That was the object, after all, of the exercise. Well, wasn’t it?

  “Except that then, just as suddenly, I wanted to feel clean. I didn’t want to feel like a sleaze or a tramp or a hooker. I wanted to feel like a woman. Like a fairy-tale princess, even. God, isn’t this all so lame?! Whatever must you think of me?

  “I wanted to feel wanted is what it was. No, I wanted to feel wanted. Me. Not me the owner, the harbinger of a yadi-yada, not even of more than one, but me. Trove. Petrova. And I didn’t want to be blah-diblahed any more. I wanted to be made love to, cooed over. I wanted a sex that was long and languid … yes, and loving. I wanted … It was, I realised, that the whole of my body ached for the whole of his. Oh, it wasn’t love, that wasn’t it. But it was a yearning for fusion – that’s another Mike word, but it’s the right one. I wanted us to be us. One us. That fusion.

  “If he had’ve just exposed himself, expected me just to … you know … blah-di-blah …. Oh, you know … that would have been the end of it. There and then, I mean. I mean, I might well have gone through with it. Who knows? I might even have enjoyed it. There is a part of me, see, still quite attracted by the gutter. By the emotional gutter, if not the physical one. My self-esteem sometimes is so low, there is an appeal to feeling myself unclean. It’s safe, I suppose. I mean, there’s nowhere further to fall, is there?