by Rudd, Matt
Sunday 1 January
No one, not her, not me, says anything about my lack of performance, which means it must be a serious problem. Really need a drink but mustn’t fail at that too.
Monday 2 January
Still no one’s said anything about Mr Floppy. Soon it will be time to have sex again, with this unresolved. Can’t believe this is clashing with the alcohol ban.
Tuesday 3 January
We’re on the sofa watching Bond and a Gardener’s World winter special (I get fifteen minutes, she gets fifteen minutes. How’s that, by the way, for marital harmony?) when I decide the sooner, the better on the sex front. After all, it’s exactly the same as getting straight back in the saddle after a fall. Assuming, of course, that neither you nor the horse has broken a neck.
I wait until it’s Bond (no point making a move when they’re digging up parsnips). Then I put my hand, which is schoolboy clammy, on her knee like we’re on a grubby first date at the cinema. Unlike most of my first dates, she seems unperturbed, so I go in for a kiss. Our teeth bang, which hasn’t happened in years. I retreat.
I stretch my arms up, then down, and snare her with one of them—another textbook adolescent manoeuvre. I pull her towards me, start nibbling her ear, she moves to swat me away and I go in for another kiss. Better this time. I resist the urge to ice-cream-cone her mouth out with my untrained tongue because I am not actually a teenager. We kiss gently, then more vigorously, and just as I’m going to go for second base, BANG, Isabel’s naked, writhing parents pop into my head again.
I stop kissing Isabel and look back at the television to find Sean Connery just millimetres from laser-gun castration.
Wednesday 4 January
Andy is in love in Guiana and can’t make himself available for an emergency pint until next Wednesday. Not that we can have a pint anyway.
Johnson is the next best bet so we meet for lime sodas in a wine bar. He has his own problems. The pot-belly’s pot-belly has grown half a centimetre since he stopped drinking four days ago. He’s thinking of starting to drink again.
My problem, he thinks, is that I’m thinking too much. It’s better to keep it simple: every time I start overanalysing during sex, I must simply chase the thought away. It’s the same principle as counting sheep.
If that doesn’t work, then I must use the Sex Gears.
‘Tell me about the Sex Gears, oh Grand Master,’ I say, nursing my fruitless pint of fruit cordial.
‘Okay, it’s like what Sting does, only simpler and without the need for a Moroccan yoga tent. If you want to go faster, think of a beautiful woman you are in no way related to. If you want to go slower, think of your mother-in-law. Since we have already established that the latter has quite an extreme effect, this should be considered reverse. And you never put a car into reverse when you’re driving.’
‘You’re quite pleased with this, aren’t you?’
‘Mine are as follows: first, Maureen Lipman; second (or neutral), the wife; third, Michelle Pfeiffer in Lethal Weapon IV; fourth, Pamela Anderson; I don’t need a fifth.’
‘You really are a disgusting human being.’
‘My reverse is Ann Widdecombe.’
Thursday 5 January
I have spent the last two days not thinking about anything. Every time the idea of sex comes into my head (which, as has been well documented, is every thirty-four seconds), I count sheep. Which is taking Johnson’s first theory far too literally but it seems to work.
Isabel has still said nothing about the New Year debacle followed by the billowing sex-free tundra that has followed. I can only assume it is not a problem. Or that she is confiding in Alex.
When Isabel and I both get back from work early, I decide to give sex another chance. Even as I suggest it—as matter-of-factly as possible—I can feel those disturbing images trying to push themselves into view. I count sheep but the sheep start having a Polish accent and saying ‘darlink’ at the end of every sentence.
I have no choice but to try the gears. Starting in third (Isabel, because there’s no way she’s second), I reach for fourth (Cameron Diaz in Mask) and all is well so I drop it back into third, and it’s just like the old days, but then I slip the clutch and find myself grinding into reverse. Panic sets in, I go back to Cameron, still struggling, but I haven’t got a fifth. Didn’t think I’d need one. And suddenly, there it is: fifth. Saskia. The Destroyer of Relationships.
In the postcoital aftermath, Isabel says simply, ‘Is everything all right? You seemed…distracted.’ And I say simply, ‘Yes, everything is all right.’
Friday 6 January
Johnson is shaking his head gravely by the water cooler.
He says he blames himself. He should have warned me that imagining other women while in bed with one’s own wife is a big step, and not one to be taken lightly. And it is crucial, absolutely crucial, not to have any gears that are real people. Pamela Anderson is not a real person. Saskia is.
What was I thinking? Well, I wasn’t thinking, that was the whole bloody point. And now I’ve imagined my terrifying ex at exactly the wrong moment and does this mean I find Saskia more attractive than my own beautiful wife?
Johnson says it’s just a rogue gear. He slipped into Ann Widdecombe at exactly the wrong moment once: it took him weeks to recover from the terrible ecstasy.
I spend the rest of the day with a migraine that I can only assume is some sort of guilty reaction to the fact that I committed mental adultery.
Saturday 7 January
Still have a headache. Deserve it.
Another text from Saskia. Delete.
Monday 9 January
Apparently, it’s the toxins washing themselves out of my system. Andy has a headache in Guiana and Johnson is out of action in Islington. His beer belly is expanding at the rate of one centimetre every four days despite the total lack of beer. It seems sensible, for our health and sanity, to give up giving up alcohol. I explain all this to Isabel, who is entirely unsupportive. She tells me that a week from now, I will feel out of this world, like a million dollars, smashing.
Then she says she’s going for a drink with Alex so she might be home a bit late.
Tuesday 10 January
After the joys of December, the miseries of January. We aren’t arguing like we did when we were newly married. Then, we’d have a good burst of unreasonableness followed by honeymoon-ish resolution. Now, it’s low-level bickering, caused entirely, I think, by the continuing problem of Alex.
THREE EXAMPLES OF LOW-LEVEL BICKERING IN ONE DAY
‘Where’s the ibuprofen, darling?’
‘I don’t know. Where did you last have it?’
‘If I knew that, I wouldn’t be asking, would I?’
‘You should put things back when you’ve used them.’
‘I do.’
‘You don’t.’
‘I do.’
‘So why can’t you find the ibuprofen, then?’
‘So how was the drink?’
‘Don’t start.’
‘I wasn’t. I was simply asking how the drink with the guy who touched your breasts was. You know, the one who’s glad we’re through our marital difficulties.’
‘He said he never said that. He said he just asked how married life was treating us.’
‘He didn’t.’
‘He said he did.’
‘He didn’t.’
‘Lentils are pretty tasteless, aren’t they?’
‘You just have rubbish taste buds. You can’t appreciate subtle flavours.’
‘I can.’
‘Why do you add salt to everything, then?’
‘Because I am slowly poisoning myself to death so I don’t have to eat lentils.’
‘Good.’
‘Good.’
‘Good.’
Wednesday 11 January
The tweedy heart-attack man and the scarfed hairspray woman sit next to each other on the train and it’s like watching a World Championship elbowing contest. From my own bit
ter experience, I know that neither are the giving-in sort and by London Bridge it has erupted into full-scale childishness. The woman knocks the man’s umbrella into the aisle. He retaliates by shredding her Woman’s Own. She punches a hole straight through his Telegraph. He pulls off her scarf. She punches him.
The rest of the carriage refuse to get involved—we are united in our sense of pleasure—and I am in a good mood all the way to my anger-management class.
‘Have you any further thoughts on our discussion last month?’ I ask before the woman with the neat bob can set her own agenda.
‘Which discussion would that be, Mr Walker?’
‘The one about whether or not anger is justified as a response to our broken-down society. And please feel free to call me William.’
‘We’re not here to find reasons to justify anger, Mr Walker. We’re here because you have a problem managing it.’
‘Yes, but he has a point though, doesn’t he?’ suggests the cyclist, who seems to be back after escaping the last two classes. ‘I mean, if everything is so much more irritating than it used to be, surely the rational response is to become irritated by it?’
‘No, Mr Schofield,’ interjects the woman, her bob twitching ever so slightly. ‘Irritation is simply an emotional response. It is subjective, not objective. It is therefore not a question of it being rational or not.’
‘But, Ms Prestwick,’ I say. ‘Or may I call you Harriet? I don’t understand what you mean. If a train leaves earlier than it’s supposed to, if a man in the countryside shouts at you for no reason, if a neighbour kidnaps your wife and a thirteen-year-old achieves more in six months than you have done in your whole career, surely you are entitled to be angry? If only to release tension?’
‘No, please call me Ms Prestwick and yes, I see your point, but anger is a negative response.’
‘Well, Harriet,’ says the cyclist.
‘Ms Prestwick,’ corrects Harriet.
‘Well, Ms Prestwick, I threw my bicycle through the windscreen of a car that had cut me up on a roundabout and I felt a lot better afterwards.’
‘Yes, but that was illegal.’
‘So was cutting me up on the roundabout.’
‘Yes, but two wrongs don’t make a right.’
‘But two negatives do make a positive, Harriet,’ I conclude.
‘STOP CALLING ME HARRIET.’
I have won the battle, but with three more months of meetings to go, the war still hangs in the balance.
Saturday 14 January
Literally no energy. Can hardly be bothered to get out of bed. Isabel and I have yet another fight about pairing socks. Even though she told me she’d bought the days-of-the-week ones in order for me to mis-pair to my heart’s content, that relaxation of rules did not extend to putting them in the sock drawer unpaired. I explain that if I spend just ten minutes a week pairing or mis-pairing socks, that’s 520 minutes a year, which is two weeks of my next forty years of married bliss. They are my socks, it is my sock drawer, leave me alone.
She says they keep getting muddled with her socks.
I say I’m tired.
She says, ‘Just have a bloody drink then.’
So I call Johnson to see if he’s cracked yet. He hasn’t but says his wife is about to leave him so it’s not all bad.
Tuesday 17 January
Texts from Saskia still haven’t stopped. She now seems to have got through her angry phase and is entering an everything’s-perfectly-all-right one.
Yesterday’s text: ‘drnks, mine, tonite, W. Wld b gr8 2 ctch up x.’
Today’s text: ‘soz u missed drnks. dinner?’
Tomorrow’s text: ‘soz u missed dinner. Rabbit boiled to perfection. Brkfst?’
I risk the first text for weeks. No complicated explanation for silence, just: ‘Can’t meet. Super-biz. All best.’
No response. At last, she’s got the picture.
Thursday 19 January
She hasn’t got the picture. ‘Thnks for txt. Sounds good. Look frwrd to it.’
Friday 20 January
Twenty pairs of black socks arrive at my office with a note from Saskia: ‘A solution to your marital problems. Xxx’
‘Saskia, it’s William. Who told you?’
‘Hello, William. Who told me what, darling?’
‘About the socks?’
‘Oh, that. Did you like them?’
‘Um, well, yes, that’s not the point. Have you been speaking to Johnson?’
‘No.’
‘Or Andy?’
‘No.’
‘Well, how did you know?’
‘Know what?’
‘About the socks?’
‘Oh, I can’t reveal my sources, darling. Now, about dinner.’
‘I told you I’m busy.’
And I hang up, wishing it was an old slammable phone, not an unsatisfying press-the-red-button mobile, then throw all the socks in the bin.
‘Throwing them away?’ asks the IT geek who is walking past clutching a bag of microchips.
‘Take them,’ I reply, and he does.
I decide not to mention Saskia’s socks to Isabel even though the leak almost certainly came from her side.
Saturday 21 January
Isabel’s Christmas present (or part thereof ): theatre plus champagne dinner. A whole bottle, as it turns out, but of course I can’t drink so Isabel quaffs the lot, preparing her well for a three-hour Ibsen shocker at the Almeida. My legs don’t fit in the seat so while I weigh up the cons of deep-vein thrombosis with the pros of hanging my feet over the shoulders of the tetchy person in the row below me, Isabel has a refreshing nap. We both refocus on the play in the last twenty minutes, thanks to a couple of unexpected gunshots. Several characters I have previously been annoyed by proceed to commit suicide and a woman in a heavy skirt says something lengthy and repetitious about a seagull.
We retire to our village, me feeling like a philistine for not getting the seagull analogy, Isabel babbling on about how Ibsen is overrated anyway.
Waiting for us on our doorstep is what can only be described as a crucifix made of chicken bones with a sort of Jesus-figure fashioned from dried chicken skin. Primrose has struck again.
As I open the door to find the phone book to call the police, Isabel takes the law into her own hands, throwing the dead chicken sculpture over the fence like she’s Fatima Whitbread in the Seoul Olympics, then walking through the door and slamming it confidently behind her. I point out that this is just as ridiculous as the play. She points out that she needs to sleep, and promptly passes out on the sofa.
Sunday 22 January
The policeman is tapping his foot impatiently when I finally open the door at 7.30 a.m. the next morning. He says he is investigating reports of assault and vandalism. I say I have no idea what he is talking about, so he says I threw dead animals at our neighbour last night. I say I certainly did not and even if I did, it would only be a domestic. And he says no it wouldn’t and I say well you know what I mean.
‘Now look here, son,’ he says, which no one has said to me for at least two decades. ‘We don’t take kindly to troublemakers round here. First, you slander an upstanding member of the community, then you nearly run someone down on a footpath while cycling illegally and now you attack people with dead chickens.’
‘Do you have any independent witnesses?’
‘I’ll be keeping my eye on you from now on.’
‘Good day to you, officer.’
I have a hangover even though I didn’t drink anything. Isabel, diametrically, is fine. And she seems unperturbed by the fact that I now have a reputation as a troublemaker in the village even though it was she who threw the chicken crucifix at Primrose.
Andy calls to ask if I still need an emergency lime cordial and I explain that things have deteriorated significantly since then, but that the main issue has been resolved. Which is true. I am sexually competent again, although mentally adulterous.
I suggest that we shoul
d start drinking again: we have, after all, proved a point and cleaned out our systems. Andy says he plans never to drink again…his new girlfriend works for an NGO in Guiana dealing with the problems of alcoholism in the native communities. He has seen first-hand the effects of drink and he has decided to say no.
I decide to give it another couple of days. And find a new best friend.
Monday 23 January
Still hungover from all that lack of alcohol. Three weeks now. Where’s the bit where I feel great? I am actually woken this morning not by the cock a-crowing or the sheep a-baaing or the neighbour a-knitting-chicken-skin, but by the sound of my own irregular heartbeat. My whole central nervous system is shutting down.
Wednesday 25 January
Anastasia has sent early copies of her new New York Times section to poor little us at L&T. I’m surprised she found time, what with the number of pages she has to edit in the world’s greatest newspaper. And the number of articles she’s managed to write herself. Everyone loves the section, even though it looks like pretentious nonsense to me. Even the IT geek can’t hold back his enthusiasm.
‘I thought you’d prefer Computer Mart Monthly,’ I snap bitterly as he joins a syrupy conversation about how stunningly uncompromised the section’s production values are.
‘Oh, because I’m the IT geek, you think I can’t appreciate high culture?’
‘Well, I wouldn’t say it was high—’
‘Just because I spend all day telling idiots like you how to switch on a computer?’