by Anna Roberts
"Are you going to make love to me now, Mr. Neigh?" I whimper.
He shakes his head. "I don't make love," he rasps. "I clop - hard."
And then we do it right there on the pink carpet. It's all-consuming, transcendent and resolutely soft-core. It's also over in about ten minutes, including the time it took him to unhook my bra. My Inner Goddess has stopped snoring and is peering out from under one side of her sleep mask.
Congratulations. You're a woman now. Brace yourself for a lifetime of similar disappointment.
She glares at me and goes back to sleep. Just as well. She wasn't much help.
There's a pony right next to my head - a yellow and pink one. Crispian looks at it and giggles. "Cover your eyes, Fluttershy," he says, turning it to face the wall. "You'll make them jealous," he tells me. "They're spoilt little ponies - until you came along they had nothing but my full attention."
"I see," I murmur, although I don't. Oh, how I would love to have his full attention.
"Come and have some more wine," he says, getting up off the carpet and fastening up his pants. Oh my God - I can't believe I just did that with a man. I never really thought much about how I would lose my virginity, but I didn't think it would be like this. Nobody expects their first time to come with an audience of My Little Pony toys.
I climb back into my jeans and follow him into the kitchen. "I thought you were gay," I mutter, still stunned by what just happened.
"That's a common misconception," he says, taking a large bowl from the kitchen cupboard. "And perhaps understandable, given my love for everything pink and adorable, but no - I'm all man. And a little bit of pony."
He fills the bowl with off-brand Cheetos and pushes it towards me. "You hungry?"
I take a handful. "I don't understand," I say.
He sighs. "Ugh. I knew this would happen," he sighs, sitting down opposite me at the kitchen island. "People are so judgemental."
"I'm not.”
"No, but you are. I can see it your eyes. It happens with everyone. Just when I think I have a shot at happiness they find out about the ponies and the relentless tide of hate begins again."
Oh God. I've upset him. I reach out towards him but he shakes his head.
"What's wrong with the world today, Hanna? Why have we become so rigid in our gender roles and expectations that a grown man can't enjoy the innocence and sweetness of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic? We buy our sons sports equipment and teach them stoicism, a stoicism that eats away at them from the inside out until they no longer know the relief of tears, or the simple joy of laughter - the laughter that ponies can bring. Why do we judge a man when he says he likes things that are pink and pretty and covered in sparkles?"
I shake my head. "I don't know, Crispian," I exclaim. I think it's the first time I've ever called him by his first name. "But I understand - I do. People judge me because I'm mousy and clumsy and because I love classic British novels more than I love make-up and shoes and all the other things young women are supposed to like."
He takes my proffered hand. "Yes," he whispers. "I knew it, Hanna. I knew it right away. You felt it too, didn't you? We have a connection."
I nod frantically and squeeze his hand. When I look down I see that the off-brand cheetos have stained my fingers - I wear little orange crescents under my nails, just like his.
"Serendipity," I whisper.
Chapter Eight
My Other Mom’s A Crack Whore
After that we do it in his bed, this time with Rarity for an audience. Rarity is the white unicorn with the purple hair. Crispian says she likes to watch. He has a theory that she might be kind of kinky, because she has a British accent.
"Brits are kinky bitches," he says. "I think it's all that boarding school - they get into experimental lesbianism and discipline."
"You might have a point," I mutter. "I know a British woman, and she's a lesbian."
"Your professor?"
I nod.
"You won't have to worry about her anymore, baby," he says, stretching triumphantly on the cheeto dusted sheets. He won't take his underpants off though. Not sure what's up with that. He just pokes it through the hole when we...you know. That. Oh my.
"I know," I sigh, sadly. "I'm a college dropout."
"You?" he says. "What are you talking about? You're no dropout. You're the class valedictorian. Speaking of which, you'd better write a speech."
Immediately I realise what he's done. I leap out of the bed and search for my clothes.
"Hanna..."
"No!" He said he wouldn't do this. I asked him not to do this. (At least, I think I did, or at least heavily implied that I didn't want him to do it. Did I?) "You said you wouldn't - it wouldn't be right!"
He jumps out of bed after me and grabs me around the waist. I fight him for a moment but it's no use - he's a man. The only man who's ever been interested in me. I have to take what I can get.
"Hanna, listen to me," he says. "There was a mistake. It turns out Professor Jarrett was an illegal."
"Huh?"
"She was an illegal alien."
"Oh my God. She's some kind of space lesbian?"
He frowns. "No. Like a Mexican. An illegal immigrant - yeah, I know. It's weird because she's white. But listen to me, Hanna - she only got married so she could get a green card. She's a leech, a parasite. She's part of the cancer that is killing America."
"They won't send her back?" I gasp. I feel sorry for her now. This country must have felt like heaven for her, this country where she could marry who she chose to marry (subject to state law) and choose from a variety of affordable (and not so affordable) health care plans. And now she's going to be thrown back into the slums of England, where they'll probably make her sweep chimneys until her lungs are black.
"Yeah, she's already in the process of being deported," he says. "It's a shame, because they just don't have the mental health facilities back where she comes from."
"Mental health facilities?"
"Oh yeah. She's insane. Did I mention that? That was why she failed you. She went nuts about six months ago when she realised you weren't a muff diver and would never return her love. Seriously though - you should stop wearing those Birkenstocks and grow your fingernails. When you take into account all the denim and flannel you wear you're giving a lot of single ladies the wrong idea. Mixed signals, you know."
"Wait..." I say, struggling to process what's being said. What's a muff diver? Is that some kind of deep sea fisherman? "What has my taste in sandals got to do with anything? Do you mean to tell me that Professor Jarrett was in love with me?"
"Head over heels, baby. But love soon turned to obsession and then to hate."
I stare at him. Everything makes sense now. "Oh my God," I say. "You mean she failed me..."
"...out of spite," he concludes. "And not because your papers were the inane, ill-presented ramblings of an empty-headed solipsist with kleptomaniac tendencies."
I sit down heavily on the end of the bed. "Wow," I say, and again. "Wow. So I didn't fail at all?"
"No, you didn't fail," he says. "You won, Hanna. You graduated top of your class."
Holy crap. I don't know what to say. "Holy crap," I say. "Oh holy crap." All my blood feels like it's run to my feet - my head is white and empty and floaty, like a wedding balloon.
"What's the matter?" asks Crispian. "Aren't you happy? You're valedictorian."
I can't breathe. He empties out the rest of the cheese snacks into a bowl and hands me the bag. "Breathe into this," he commands. He's so controlling. "You're having a panic attack, Hanna. Breathe in the air in the bag - that's it. And breathe out slowly through your nose. Again...that's a good girl..."
Slowly I begin to feel better. My head floats back onto my shoulders. My lungs are thick with off-brand Cheeto dust, but they're working. I'll be fine. I'll be absolutely fine if I don't think about it.
Ha. Yeah. Good luck with that.
Oh God. It's her again. When did she wake up
?
Sometime around the time when you started hyperventilating. It's not easy being a poorly characterised figment of someone's unconscious, especially when that someone is having a panic attack. Gets awfully noisy in there.
- Well, go back to sleep. This isn't the time.
Nuh uh. This is exactly the time, Princess. This is positively Shakespearean. I'm a manifestation of your guilt.
- Guilt?
Guilt. You know how this goes - or at least you would, if you'd paid attention in class. I rumble around your head tormenting you until you're prowling the battlements in your sleep.
- But I didn't do anything.
No, but on some level you had to know that Captain Clop here was going to use his considerable influence and huge fortune to get you your degree. You didn't tell him not to do it, did you?
- But he didn't.
Sure he didn't. And now your English Lit professor is being deported. Doesn't that sound suspicious to you?
- No.
Liar. If it's not suspicious then why are you shaking like a shitting dog and breathing into an off-brand Cheetos bag?
- Duh. Because if I'm valedictorian then you know what that means, right?
Um…you’re a lousy little cheat with no morals and an endless capacity for self-delusion?
- It means, Einstein, that I'm going to have to make a speech. I can't make a speech. I'm shy! I'm mousy! I'm incredibly clumsy!
My Inner Goddess sighs and shakes her head. She peers over her glasses at me in one of the cute little roleplays she should have been performing if she was doing this correctly...
...What? Prance around without saying a word and treat the reader to an endless, undiluted dose of you? I don't think so.
- It's my story! It's about me! This is about my journey of sexual discovery - not yours. I'm getting a little bit sick of you coming in here and talking down to me when you should be shaking pom-poms and or dancing round a Mexican hat every time Crispian makes sex eyes at me, okay?
I can’t dance.
- I don't care. Do as you're told.
She sighs again. Okay, she says. Let's get this straight. You want me to stop talking?
- God yes.
And instead you want me to convey your inner monologue - such as it is - through the medium of some kind of amusing, interpretive dance?
- Yes please.
With props?
- If you wouldn't mind.
No, I think I can manage that.
- Right. Thank you.
I wait for a 'You're welcome' or some other sarcastic rejoinder, but my Inner Goddess has gone quiet. Crispian is rubbing my back in a way that's beginning to be annoying, but at least I can breathe again. I'll be fine as long as I don't think about the speech. Oh my God. I'll have to make a speech. How can I make a speech? Even my speaking voice is unsuited for speech - I mutter and murmur and whisper whenever I should speak clearly. I'll stare at my shoes and flush pinker than the pony room and then some - and that's even if I manage to get up to the podium without falling flat on my face. I'm so uncoordinated. Before this amazing, transformative night I was just a clumsy, uncoordinated girl and now I'm a clumsy, uncoordinated woman. Okay, so I have a well-trimmed bikini line and perfectly smooth heels but I don't feel any different - I don't feel any more confident before. In fact I feel rather more terrified than before. Oh crap, why I am so insecure? Why am I so timid? Why am I so big-eyed and sensitive and straight-up vulnerable?
And why is my Inner Goddess not giving me shit about being self-absorbed?
Her absence halts my inner monologue. And then I see her.
She is wearing white make up, with black eyebrows drawn very high on her face. She wears tight black pants, a tight striped jersey and a black beret.
- I hate mimes.
She smiles, pulls a smug face and taps her breast, then her head. I don't speak mime but I can hazard a guess at what she's saying.
She says I know.
*
I wake up in unfamiliar surroundings - again. Hmm. Making rather a habit of this. Last night I woke up from a strange symbolic dream (The usual. Grey hats. White ponies. Huge phallic vegetables) to the sound of sketching. I wrapped Crispian's Hawaiian shirt around me and went to look for him.
I found him behind the drawing board, absorbed, intense and so freaking hot oh my god.
I'm going to draw you now, he said, and turned over the leaf of paper. Take off my shirt.
So I did. Holy crap - I was like, totally naked. I couldn't believe what was happening to me. At school I'd been voted Girl Most Likely To Be Found Eaten By A Dozen Cats In Front Of A DVD Of Titanic, but I never imagined that one day an artist might want to draw me like one of his French girls.
Maybe he didn't. Maybe I was dreaming.
He's still asleep and I really don't want to hit up my Inner Goddess for advice after the unpleasantness last night, so I put his shirt back on and retrace my steps. The papers lie flat on his drawing board. There's a sort of flap on top of them, holding them smooth, and when I look I see that the flap is more of a lid, padlocked to the bottom part of the board.
Hmm. Maybe...just maybe if I knew how to undo that lock I could see how he saw me. Maybe then I really would hold the key to his heart...
Oh great. Marceline Marceau has woken up from her bitchy sleep and is now rolling around on the floor clutching her stomach and making vomit faces. That's all I need.
I ignore her and go on into the kitchen. I think I'll cook him breakfast - he'll like that. I'm a super cook, which is odd considering I can barely walk in a straight line and am prohibited from entering hardware stores; yet somehow as soon as I get into a kitchen I'm supremely confident and perfectly safe to be trusted around gas, fire, radiation, electricity, crushing implements, blenders, mincers, cleavers and very sharp knives.
He comes out of the bedroom as I'm frying bacon. "You can cook?" he gasps, looking at me like I'm special, precious.
Bitch-mime rolls her eyes. I hate her so much.
"I like cooking," I say. "It soothes me."
It doesn't soothe him. He's on edge as soon as I pick up a knife and start cutting tomatoes.
"Hanna, don't cut yourself."
"I won't, I promise. Don't worry about me."
"Yeah, sure. It's just that those worktops are new and blood is a fucker to get off Italian marble."
I laugh. Who said he had no sense of humour? "How do you like your eggs?" I ask.
"Unfertilized," he says, and laughs loudly for about five minutes. “Unfertilized,” he repeats, punching me lightly on the upper arm. “You like that one? Huh?”
I nod. At that moment the door buzzer goes. "Oh, what the fuck," moans Christian, into the intercom. "Yeah, alright Mom. Come on up."
Mom? Holy crap – I’m wearing nothing but a loud shirt and a frown. I stare at him, beater in hand, dripping raw scrambled egg all over his kitchen floor. "Your mother?" I gasp.
"No - my father. I call him Mom."
I blink at him for a moment.
“Joke,” he says, and laughs. “Another sick burn from the Neighster.”
Before I can even think about finding my clothes, Crispian buzzes his mother into the apartment. She looks good considering she must be at least forty. Her fingernails are immaculate and her hair, bobbed to her well-padded shoulders, is blonde. Oh crap.
I drop the egg-beater.
“Whoops,” says Crispian, as I bend to pick it up. He slaps my ass. “Best put on some panties, toots – I don’t think my Mother would appreciate the view.”
I straighten up and pull the shirt down over my thighs, my cheeks (both sets) glowing. “Oh yeah,” I say. “I guess you’ve seen enough of those, right?”
Mrs. Neigh frowns. Her forehead doesn’t move much.
“You’re a lady doctor, right?” I babble. “I mean, a doctor of ladies...um...so you probably see a lot of...um...”
“Vaginas,” says Crispian, helpfully.
“My husband is a fert
ility specialist,” says Mrs. Neigh, holding out a hand. “I’m a psychiatrist.”
Double crap. Blondes don’t like me, and I don’t like psychiatrists. They lie. They tell you that if you take the medicine the voices will go away.
My Inner Goddess stifles a malicious giggle and makes a zipping gesture across her white painted lips. Okay, maybe voices aren’t so bad after all – if the alternative is mimes.
“Claudia Trescothick-Neigh,” she says. “And you must be...?”
“Hanna. Hanna Squeal.”
“Oh dear. I am sorry. Where on earth did you find her, Cris?”
“She kind of faceplanted in the lobby of my building,” he says. “Then I found her working in this toystore nearby and coincidentally – totally by accident – ran into her while she was throwing up on a Mexican in a parking lot.”
Claudia’s mouth is a thin, cold line. She shakes her head. “You’re stalking her, in other words?” She turns to me. “Is he stalking you? I can’t apologise enough. I can recommend a wonderful attorney if you need a restraini...”
I shake my head. “I don’t need a restraining order,” I say. “I understand him perfectly.”
Crispian’s mother sits down at the breakfast bar and fishes last night’s wine out of the melted ice bucket. “Well, good for you,” she sneers, examining the label. “Personally I’ve always found him baffling...Crispian, did you really chill a twenty year old Bordeaux?”
“I think it’s better cold,” he sniffs. My heart breaks in that instant, seeing him as a vulnerable little boy, desperate for his mother’s approval. I smooth the shirt down over my thighs and draw closer to him.
“Well, you’ve always been peculiar,” she says. “What with the obsessive streak and the strange fascinations. Prone to eczma too – oh, that reminds me – any progress on that pilonidal cyst?”
“Mo-ther...” says Crispian. “Do you have to?”
“Have to what? Care about you? Pay attention to you? Yes, I think it’s somewhere in my job description as your mother. Somewhere between diaper changes and putting up the seed capital for your dot com nonsense.”