Traveller Wedding

by Graham Jones

10

  If my story drew to a close at that point nobody would be the wiser and my fianc? would certainly be a lot happier. Unfortunately, I am not in a position to uphold the tradition of us traveller girls bein sweet and virginal and innocent. It would be lyin not only to you, the reader, but to all my sisters in the community. By forever portrayin ourselves as 'one men women', we contribute to the myth that we are dirty under any other circumstances.

  Six years after Michael disappeared I met a guy called Niall.

  I remember the day, the place clearly - it was in a room I did not particularly like.

  A room that was used for a million different things and one that, like every other communal area in the buildin, had a security camera up in the corner.

  Not that the camera could see everything. I knew from studyin the screen in the office hatch whenever takin my pills that it could pivot to encompass either the door or the far wall, but not both. On Sundays, before the local Alcoholics Anonymous crowd visited, it was simply draped.

  Also like every other communal area in the buildin, this one had an indented rectangular yellow sign on the door - RECREATIONAL ROOM it read - and sea blue walls risin from grey lino floors.

  It was a residential centre for firesetters and Niall was visitin a few of us individually, as firemen often did.

  He was probably in his late thirties judgin by that look of poetic resignation and pruned, unretirin grey hair.

  We were sittin alone, facin one another on two grey plastic chairs in the centre of the room.

  I had been tellin him all about my favourite hobby.

  Explainin that I normally set fires after nightfall, because my chances of bein caught were lower and I could watch them from further away. How I always wandered around for an hour or so beforehand, looked over my shoulder and imagined things on fire. That helped me decide.

  Over half the time I was sensible and set fires in places that were secluded, like cul-de-sacs and carparks. I never lit a fire in the exact place another one had clearly occurred because that wouldn't have counted and when I zeroed in on a spot would circle it for some time. Become familiar with the area. Wait for the right moment and be sure to have an escape route.

  Often this part of the routine took only minutes but it could take me hours. Sometimes I didn't set a fire and just went back to the camp. Yet whenever I left without gettin my fix I would return very early the followin mornin and havin not really slept.

  I might set several small fires in my chosen spot or one big fire, dependin on my mood.

  I was well aware of the risks of hangin around and always walked home normally to avoid lookin suspicious. Three times, on the way back to the camp, I passed fire engines which added to the thrill.

  Watchin the fires from a good vantage point was important to me. I could usually see them from the dump. They looked so beautiful in the night.

  Afterwards I always became mildly distraught and wanted to set another one. I learnt to manage that feelin. To call it a night. Touch myself in bed instead. Replayin everything that had happened in my mind's eye. From the explosion of the lighter wheel, to how the settled people reacted. My breathing also quickened when I heard about the fire on the radio and particularly one time it was on television - though a problem I had tryin to record it onto videocassette in Auntie Nelly's made me lose my temper.

  A day later I always revisited the scene of the fire and marked a map. Kept a little diary and returned on the anniversaries. Always.

  Over the years I set exactly one hundred and eight fires in a twenty two mile radius of Longcommon, with four arrests and no injuries.

  'They said it was an outlet,' I sighed wearily. 'Never found any connection to my menstrual cycle. They don't know what the fuck they're talkin about, to be honest. I still feel like settin fires after spendin fifteen months inside here. Don't even have to stay anymore if I don't want to but? just feel completely lost whenever I go back to the camp? always have the same old feelins.'

  Niall smiled and nodded gently.

  'You're very well spoken,' he said. 'You're from the travellin community, aren't you?'

  'Yeah,' I said, checkin him out.

  There was a smallness about him and yet the rigours of firefightin had admitted dark, handsome and even lanky strokes. He looked great for his age, would be one way of sayin it.

  Slowly, I moved my hand off my stomach and onto my thigh.

  There was also a hardness in him - yet not something he ever wished to acquire or convey. More that pallid, austere quality seen not so much in doctors or nurses but perhaps hospital porters. Ambulance men. Those who move through tragic situations. Those who shoulder.

  'Would you like to have sex with me?' I suddenly asked.

  The poor guy disappeared from the room so fast that he knocked over the plastic cup of coffee sittin on the floor beside him.

  There were thirteen firesetters in the residential centre and only three of us were female. I was the only traveller. The place had a real laddish quality and our first floor corridor felt sort of haunted because the management would leave rooms empty rather than stick fellas next to us. Other centres wouldn't touch cases like ours with bargepoles because of our history and that was why eventually Newpark Residential Centre for Firesetters had to be unveiled.

  The buildin itself was less than a decade old, its exterior made that clear. The facade length curved in a stylish way that threw you off a little. Banks of unfocused glass cubes were set into both ends allowin blurry glimpses of emergency stairs. Yet inside it was clearly the nineteen eighties. The Irish nineteen eighties, despite the place havin been built much later.

  I trust all the politicians and local counsellors and representatives from the regional drugs task forces and so on who attended the openin and accepted tea and biscuits - I'm sure they all crumpled their chins in respect. Cast their eyes over the walls and floors that were nothing if not clean and the series of mosaics on the canteen wall that were visible from the foyer. A feelin of rudimentary cheer pervaded, no doubt. Sure wasn't it great such a place existed at all?

  Wanderin around the centre made me weary, though. As I mentioned earlier, I would become involved with many voluntary organisations for travellers in the years to come and sometimes think my time in the residential centre was preparation for all that. After all, it was the first time I was really interactin with people outside the camp. Not a wonderful place to start.

  Everything was controlled there. If you had access to a lighter they reckoned you would probably start a fire. We were prohibited from smoking or havin access to ignition materials and the kitchen was obviously locked at all times. We were not allowed to wear, draw or showcase any material or clothing related to fire.

  That afternoon, after meetin Niall for the first time, I was scheduled to do a workshop with the other female residents and wasn't much lookin forward to it. Clearly remember walkin over to the hatch and impatiently askin for my pills.

  The medical student, whom I would bet money had recently started doin hours there to satisfy a work experience stipulation, casually kicked his feet so that his chair would move backwards toward the key box on the wall. Opened the box, selected a key on a Red Cross chain and then pulled himself back to the desk where the meds cabinet sat in the corner beyond an unruly pile of phonebooks. Unlockin the cabinet revealed such an assortment of click-closed plastic food containers filled with pills and white paper bags from pharmacies that my finger was trained to point at the shelf of the door where my Abilify sat.

  'Do you have water?' the student asked.

  'I'll neck them first,' I said.

  'I have to see you swallow them,' he insisted.

  'You will,' I sighed. 'Just give 'em here.'

  He slowly handed me the pills, his mouth hangin open with integrity and I put them on my tongue before turnin and headin for the canteen opposite.

  Meetin a fireman like I had been doin that mornin was just one in a series of things they had us
do, part of a course they perceived us to be on. They would try and solve the mystery of why you set fires and develop ideas about how they could work with your family to cure you. Clinicians would grill you. Trauma work was tried, mood stabilization and social skills development. It was theoretically about learnin to take responsibility, understand what you had been doin, stop fuckin doin it and eventually interact safely with fire. One important part of it was supposed to be makin amends with your victims or people who could potentially have been your victims. Didn't have to be people we slaughtered or maimed. It could be some fool whose shed we helped him get rid of. Could even stretch to firemen. We were supposed to write letters of apology and, whenever possible, have face-to-face meetins with the wounded party. In some workshops we were also meant to hold each other accountable, offer feedback and provide suggestions which could actually be quite good sometimes. That part was quite good.

  You could earn privileges too, if you were doin well. For instance, over the fifteen months I had slowly earned kitchen privileges. Not to say the staff would ever have left me alone in there but I could set foot and bake what everyone called Christine's Cookies.

  You were supposed to keep next of kin updated on all your progress and I must say it was a real blast seein the fourteen members of my immediate family crowd into Dr Ryan's office every month.

  We occasionally watched Longcommon Fire and Rescue train and there had been talk that we would be allowed enter a buildin filled with non-toxic smoke to help us understand how shit it was bein a fireman but so far that had not panned out.

  A lot of the lads had said in the past that meeting firemen was one of the best buzzes. I concurred with that as I strolled into the canteen that day after my first meetin with Niall. I had only met one fireman before him, a month after arrivin - some sixty year old who thought I was a dirty beggar.

  I wouldn't have been willin to lose my virginity to him - or any of the residents for that matter.

  I mean, these were the kind of lads who looked at those ink blot pictures and said 'it looks like a house on fire' or 'a fire engine skiddin around a corner' or 'a sun exploding' or 'fireworks goin off, one after another?'

  The kind who responded to sentence completion tests in the same way. He walked towards... the flames. People forget that... fire is so powerful.

  You might think I would relate to them, lovin fire myself, but actually we were like chalk and cheese.

  They were boys.

  When Elton John (not the singer) was five he was left alone and unsupervised in a B&B by his mother. He hated it, played with matches and soon burnt them out of the room - leavin them homeless and facin charges in Leitrim District Court. I watched him workin his way through a packet of cornflakes in the canteen that day, his eyes dartin around and smilin at me for a second. I can relate to the fact that he has never gotten over that one single incident. It's his trajectory.

  Padraic had been in care since age eight, when his parents claimed they could no longer control him. He had been lyin, robbin, boltin and had a history of firesettin. One day he set his father's bed on fire while his father was lyin in it! His father almost died. I had been briefly attracted to him a long time ago at which point we'd had an awkward kiss. My second kiss.

  'I was mad at the lady because she gave out to me,' I remembered his starin into my eyes in the yard. 'I hid a burnin matchbox inside the bonnet of her Toyota.'

  'What happened then?' I asked.

  'Got in trouble?'

  Aran used to sneak out his bedroom window in the middle of the night and go set fires in bins and doorways. They got bigger every year and recently he had started settin them outside occupied homes. He always experienced a pang of guilt right before he did so but explained how the feelins of guilt gave way to another feelin.

  Simon's thing was vandalism. He had boasted to me about that when we'd first met. Explained how he used to hang out with a group of older lads who were into all that shit. Smoked hash, drank. Was in the residential centre because they had torched a rural buildin site.

  Lookin around at the lads, waitin for the female firesetter workshop to begin, reminded me I would never let any of them touch me and made me think more about the fireman.

  He hadn't seemed all that offended by my request.

  'Women don't set fires,' Sheila's voice had a warmth that suggested she was inspectin the first page of a children's story, although her hands were clasped under each side of a grey plastic chair in the recreational room. 'That's what most people in my line of work think.'

  Her gaping smile was chubby, toothy and her short blonde hair had grown into waves. Some fashion label's idea of a hoody left her upper chest free to emphasize a plain silver necklace with a silver dove that swayed slightly as her eyes swapped unassumingly over the three of us.

  'But every year I come here there's more of you and you probably need different things than we give the lads,' she said.

  We weren't sittin in a circle or anything and although there was potential for a certain solidarity because of our shared gender I already felt sure it would be squandered.

  Sheila glanced at me as if readin my mind.

  'I know you have already talked a lot about fire and there have been various counsellors and clinical psychologists who have tackled things with you,' she lamented. 'Some trauma work and mood work. I know you have done lots of general stuff? That you've been learnin to cope and behave responsibly and some of you have privileges. But, if it's okay, I would like to go right back to the start again! If that isn't a pain in the arse. We'll go round in a circle, start with each person tellin us a little bit about themselves and maybe how they ended up here. Maureen. Would you like to go first?'

  'They say I have schizophrenia,' Maureen said slowly. 'I set two fires in my flat and then two more when I was in different places - a hospital and a nursin home.'

  I was only vaguely aware of this cream dessert who was older than my mother and wore one of those perforated milky brown sweaters people her age find sexy, beige slacks that concurred and ridiculous summery white shoes with little holes over the toes if I remember correctly. Her fadin blonde hair was that kind of short, sharpish compromise people her age make.

  'When were you diagnosed with schizophrenia, Maureen?' Sheila asked.

  'When I was thirty three, think. Thirty two. Same for my mother. I don't know if they said schizophrenia then but-'

  'They said you might have some problems,' Sheila finished. 'Do you have any family?'

  Maureen nodded.

  'Four children,' she said slowly. 'After all the children were born was... when I set the fires in the flat - they took the matches and the children away on the same day.'

  She laughed to herself.

  'Okay,' Sheila nodded a little slower than her integrity would go. 'And what do you expect to get out of these workshops with the other women?'

  Maureen stared at her for a while, then glanced very briefly at the rest of us and shrugged.

  'I only ever set fires because I was schizophrenic and that's been treated.'

  'We're just here to talk Maureen,' I said.

  Sheila glanced at me and then leant forward in her chair, hangin her arm over her knee, which was hangin over her other knee.

  'We're here to explore the issues, Maureen. It's your prerogative. Your choice. But the more you are willin to tackle things, the more progress you are likely to make.'

  'I still don't really believe that my fires were that serious,' Maureen almost laughed. 'I had a mental problem.'

  'There may be other issues though,' said Sheila. 'It doesn't have to all be about fires. There's the rest of your life, too.'

  I nodded.

  'Why are you interested in the rest of my life?' Maureen, however, asked.

  'Well, it's all connected,' Sheila smiled. 'Bernie!'

  Bernie's hair would suggest she had recently climbed out of the shower all day long. Her face was both drawn and bloated and liberal lipstick was the counterpo
int - the stamp of a commitment she had made to always hold it together. Her clean jeans and a clean, light blue top backed up the casual story.

  'Well,' she had been sittin forward in her chair since arrivin, not wantin to get life wrong. 'I married very young. We had three kids. Split up. I moved in with Sean. Sean had three kids. I drank a lot and, y'know, got a lot of... drugs through the doctor. They took my kids away and in court they also, they sent me to that psychiatric place. I only tried to set fire to my own bed. I just wanted to kill myself. They fuckin convicted me of that! Sent me here. Even though I never set a fire before. Youse set fires for fun. Sorry, I'm not bein thick with ya. But I never done that.'

  'Are you aware though, Bernie, that other people might have been harmed by the fire you set?' Sheila asked.

  'No,' Bernie shook her head like she had explored that question on many levels. 'Who was in the bed?'

  There was silence in the room until that older lady, Maureen, exhaled properly for the first time and relaxed a little in her seat - as if given a temporary pass by Bernie's self-delusion.

  'Who was in the bed?' Bernie asked.

  'Okay,' Sheila drew in her face. 'A bit of fire awareness might be something we need to explore there.'

  'Who was in the bed?' Bernie kept repeatin. 'I'm not goin to do it again!'

  Then she sighed demonstratively and rearranged herself further back in her seat, foldin her arms and lookin aside.

  'I'm happy to fuckin sit here,' she said. 'Talk about it, but-'

  'That's all we're here for guys,' Sheila leapt at the chance to accentuate how obvious a point that was, after I had already suggested it. 'Christine?'

  I sighed and looked in the direction of the window although it wasn't really possible to see out from my angle, completely lackin the energy to shake my head or even indicate much.

  'I'm a member of the travellin community,' I mocked. 'I believe it's wrong to live in a house and so I wanna burn them all down.'

  I didn't cry until I got back to my room and then it was like takin a hit whilst lyin back on my disgustin bed. Became aware of a black plastic bag tucked down the side and pulled it out. It was ripped and empty and had a sticker with Christine scrawled on it by an exuberant volunteer - from when I had temporarily left the place after my year was up and they'd bagged and tagged the room. It had the effect of remindin me how circular, how unconsciously circular my existence had become.

  I took off my top, under which was a ruined Diesel t-shirt, because there was no need to hide my arms in the room.

  I had been a cutter for two years. Before that I used to hit myself with my phone or just bang my head against walls. Sometimes I scratched myself really hard too. Then one day on the dump I started using a razor. I had been on various pills since arrivin at the centre, but they rarely did much and usually had some side effect which was exasperatin and made it hard to know whether it was actually helpin or not. When you're tired or suddenly puttin on weight, you feel quite different anyway.

  Sure, I had felt better on the Abilify in recent months but I still didn't know if it was impactin my cuttin directly or not. It seemed to help with the depression, though.

  Much more important than the pills, actually, was for me to physically get away from triggers or things that I had harmed myself with or locations I had harmed myself in. I was meant to find a comfortable place where I felt safe. That was the big problem with stayin in the residential centre. I might rid the room of triggers, but it was a place where my cuttin had occurred many times before and so I would never be entirely safe there.

  I filled out what my counsellor Dr Ryan called an impulse log. Basically a journal. I tried to write, draw or doodle. Do something calmin like takin a shower, washin my hands or doin my hair. Occasionally talk to him, to Dr Ryan, or maybe even one of the lads if I felt foolish.

  I sometimes prayed or listened to music, though my collection was a shadow of what it had been since binnin all triggerin CDs. Hugged my cotton dog Donagh. Cried. Made a list of affirmations in the impulse log.

  Imagined that I was back at the camp, married to Michael and we had three little boys.

  I read books constantly, when I could get compelled rather than glassy eyed and worked up. Played with Play-doh although it had been ages since I had done that and the plastic tub on top of my shelf looked less invitin with every passin week. Repeated mantras. I feel fuckin shit. It's okay to feel fuckin shit. Sometimes I walked around the garden, but not today because it was rainin. Occasionally did yoga badly. Meditated. Cleaned the room. Not today. All those things were tricks. Tricks weren't enough. So much was floodin in!

  It had started the moment Sheila sensed I was bein evasive.

  I needed to cut and nobody could help me. Nobody understood. There were so many fuckin myths about it. It was attention seekin, a lot of people used to say. That was the biggest misconception of all, so probably best to get it out of the way first.

  Cuttin was my secret, okay? I was determined to conceal it from the whole camp and remember goin for months without anyone in the centre findin out. A few people did it for attention, that was true, but they were the minority and really engagin in something different to us.

  Another fallacy was that cuttin was a failed suicide attempt. Ma had freaked out that way on a visit three months earlier. What I was experiencin was, again, completely different from what a person goes through when they're feelin like endin it all. I was actually copin by cuttin, strange as that may sound.

  Yet another myth was that it didn't hurt. It didn't hurt the way it otherwise would because I was so numb, but actually I needed pain to release endorphins. That was what provided the feelin of escape. Don't even know if I would call it escape. It was something better. Shock postponed the pain, as it always does, but pain caught up with me soon enough. Another myth was that we were all lunatics.

  The truth was that havin wounds validated the hurt I felt bein a traveller.

  For a brief period after cuttin, nothing else mattered. It had said what I couldn't. It was like fires or writin. Something I was good at.

  I was lyin there, thinkin about all this, when suddenly there was a knock on the door.

  I opened it and Maureen was standin there.

  'You have a visitor downstairs dear,' she mumbled and moved off.

  'Who?' I called after her.

  'A young man,' she replied.

  The fireman.

  I spent somewhere between three and four minutes choosin a t-shirt that held up my tits and washin my face with Silcock's Base and my teeth with nothing but water because I had run out of toothpaste. Then put on my small, silver dragonfly earrings and bounded down the stairs, nearly fallin but definitely not fallin. The fireman didn't see any of this, though. He saw me walk around the corner casually.

  He was readin one of the few sheets on the noticeboard, relatin to five aside I think.

  I tried stickin my hands in my back pockets and givin him a cool gaze.

  'Howaya,' he nodded.

  I smiled.

  He glanced out the window next to the noticeboard, at the vegetable patch.

  'Nice enough,' he sighed. 'The whole place.'

  I stared at him for a moment and then slowly looked across at buildin C.

  'I wonder would it melt?' I murmured.

  He shrugged slowly.

  'You been thinkin about what I said?' I asked.

  He nodded slowly, then looked at me.

  'Obviously it'll never happen,' he sighed like he was only resistant for practical reasons. 'At least not while you're in here.'

  'There's a balcony around the back Niall,' I said. 'All you have to do is wait 'til 1am.'

  He squinted.

  'Are you joking?' he asked.

  'Some guy sneaked in here last week,' I nodded.

  'Your boyfriend?' he smiled.

  'Someone broke in,' I said. 'They had to call the Guards.'

  'Yeah,' he said. 'No thanks.'

  'Jus
t come around 1am,' I nodded confidently. 'Nobody's gonna know.'

  'Some guy broke in?' he asked, almost weighin it up.

  'An ex-resident,' I nodded. 'He came back a few days later but they had it locked so he smashed the manager's car. I'll leave it open for you. It's impossible to climb out but it's easy to get in.'

  He studied me for a while, with a more realistic face.

  'Y'know the long steps beside the buildin that go up to Knocksedan road?' I whispered. 'Climb over the wall half way up and you can see the balcony from there. Come at 1am. I'll keep an eye out.'

  Dr Ryan emerged from the canteen at that moment and walked past the two of us. I didn't see him so much as feel him, keepin my eyes on Niall. It made me realise how risky the conversation was, though.

  'Whether you're coming later or not,' I said. 'You better go now?'

  I turned and walked off. Out of sight, I laughed. Even if he didn't come, I felt much better. Had been headin towards cuttin a while ago but didn't feel like I would anymore.

  I closed the door of my room and started cleanin it up until my grasp of the chemistry between myself and the fireman stopped me from tidyin it too much.

  It was only after some more smirkin and adrenalin had been gotten out of the way, when I was downstairs peelin potatoes on the dull steel worktop by a sink in the kitchen, that I actually started wonderin whether he would take the bait. Thought he would. Reasoned that if he didn't, he would seem feeble.

  Then the winds in my mind shifted and I became insecure about my looks and reckoned he could probably get plenty of girls, bein a firefighter. Next I reminded myself that he was a guy and had been offered sex. Dangerous sex. I knew there had been an attraction. It wasn't all about me. It was the situation. How it had started. There was something there, I recited while unhookin my apron. It was out of my hands.

  The evenin didn't drag, because of commotion I knew was occurrin in each of us.

  Every ritual, from dessert to Chinese dominoes to the nine o'clock news, passed in a blur.

  I washed underwear in my gammy sink and dried it with a blow dryer borrowed from Bernie. It was silly, because I would obviously have to don my jeans to get him off the balcony. But I would do that wearin only a bra from the waist up and when we got back to the room would take off my trousers immediately, like I was gettin back into bed.

  I thought about it all too much.

  Worried whether the graveyard shift employee stationed in the office would spot us on those two small squares of the screen dedicated to the balcony and first floor corridor. Listened to Longcommon FM which excited me because it was the local radio station, swirlin around his head wherever he was. Made myself read The Picture of Dorian Gray.

  1am came tamely enough. My eyes did a lot of handstands within the hands of the clock, divvyin up the time remainin before there was only a certain amount more time remainin. The tunnel of the last twenty minutes was all about sighin and throwin my eyes to heaven.

  At 1.04am it was important to look out the window.

  There he was, the fucker, remindin me how much I liked him and wanted this.

  I thumped the window aggressively because he wasn't lookin at my room at all.

  'Shhhh!' I could actually hear him say, his eyes becomin so small they nearly disappeared.

  I suppose the other women had their lights out.

  He was on the other side of the drop, standin on the soggy wood and kickin a rusted white metal bowl out of his way. He looked at me properly and shrugged. I was worried he was too close to the edge but guessed he was used to that kind of thing, bein a firefighter. He looked quite sexy actually. Not givin a shit about the drop. Apparently willin to risk gettin caught. His boots even slipped and slid a little on these incredible skinny vines that hung three quarters down the cement wall, past the moss stains and black rain stains. Unfortunately for some of the girls, it wasn't high enough to fracture more than a foot.

  I jabbed my finger to the left a few times - if I had been in one of the rooms at either end he probably could have literally jumped in the window and I could tell he was thinkin that. Instead, he sensibly walked along the wall and then coaxed his body onto the balcony with the will of a child.

  I took one last look at my virgins room before sneakin out to meet him. I had one of the slightly larger rooms and was supposed to feel sorry for people who didn't, although havin a larger room only meant more purple breezeblocks.

  I opened the door to the balcony and there he was, over by two chairs. Like the chairs, his demeanour was planted in half an inch of water from the day's rain. He nodded at me and suddenly we were strangers again. Maybe this was the threshold for him. Suddenly, he walked across the balcony to the door.

  We didn't say anything as we walked to my room, just kept our eyes from strayin too far from one another. He tried not to get the corridor floor wet, but of course did. I gestured at my room. Once inside, he stepped over my pro-fitness exercise mat and glanced up at my Play-doh before I gently pushed the base of his spine with my hand.

  'Sit down,' I said, unzippin my jeans.

  One of the first things I had done after movin in was shift the bed. Most beds in the centre were lengthways in the room. I had moved mine so it was across the window wall. It was cheerier that way. Perhaps only because it wasn't standard. I fucked my jeans in the corner.

  As Niall slumped onto the bed, I leant over him and pressed eject on my Jwin stereo before insertin Nina Simone.

  Wild as the Wind came on real low as it does.

  He pointed at a photo of Michael taped on my wall.

  'That your boyfriend?' he asked.

  'Well,' I grinned. 'My childhood sweetheart.'

  'A traveller?' he asked.

  I sat down beside him and took his hand in mine. Couldn't find any cold in it. Just invisible wet from climbin and bein efficient. I leant into him a little and he closed his lips around the edge of my mouth, not unlike Michael would ten years later. We found a rhythm and it was really nice. Here was the closeness. We stopped, then, sort of satisfied with that introduction and he took a bottle of Buckfast from his coat which we both took turns silently drinkin.