So Saturday morning we're
on the balcony and it's the time of the day when you can't really
tell what it's supposed to be morning or night. We're smoking fag
after fag and he's sipping on a bottle of whiskey the really
expensive kind that goes for five figures that you're supposed to
keep in your cabinet for a special day and not get pissed off it.
His parents got him the
bottle when he moved out I remember that, I remember how disappointed
they were when he moved into a cheap flat instead of staying with
them in their 18th century house with the massive cabinet of five
figure liquor and the Tudor style furniture that his mother never
ever shuts up about. The bottle is near empty and he shoves it over
to me, it's my first taste of it and it tastes disgusting and I tell
him and he says, "you're supposed to like it because it's
expensive not because it tastes good," and I say "I don't
understand," and we both shrug.
We watch the streets below
us with the girls in their cheap clubbing outfits with their
dishevelled hair and heels too high to walk on doing the walk of
shame and the drunk guys vomiting out doors and windows onto the
pavement trying to hit the storm drains and we listen to the party
going on down the road where someone turned the drum n bass up way
too high. We're laughing at them, the whole time, and we think we're
better than them because we know we really are.
He finishes the whiskey
and throws the bottle down into the road and sits on the banister, a
minute or so until I tell him to get off and he says I sound like his
mum and kisses me and I still taste the stuff in his mouth and it's
just as disgusting.
I say "let's go
inside," and we do, we go to his room and I put on one of his
sister's old mix CDs from the 90s that's all Pulp and Suede and Sonic
Youth and it's nice and we don't talk about anything. We make out for
a while and he doesn't taste like whiskey any more just the dirty
sour gritty of an empty stomach, and then when "Common People"
comes on we've got our shirts off and I'm giving him a hand job. He's
breathing in my mouth and pulling my hair so much it hurts and I hope
he likes it and I kiss him, I taste the gritty over and over and I
wonder if he tastes the same and then I taste blood and pull back and
it's coming from his nose. It's not a lot, this time around, but we
stop and I wipe it all away with an old t-shirt that's probably mine,
and then we just lie there with our shirts back on and he holds me so
tightly it hurts, and I say, "fuck." I can't think of
anything else so I say it again and then again.
He says, "no, calm
down, it's all right," and his voice is soft and easy and his
shoulder is digging into the side of my face. "It's just a
nosebleed, people get them," he says, and I nod, and ask, "sure
you're okay."
"Yeah, of course,"
and he laughs and rubs my back, a little, and says, "I'm just a
bit tired. Let's just go sleep, all right?"
And I say, "yeah, all
right," and he goes to sleep and I don't, I can't, and I watch
the posters on the wall above us, watch them watching us, and the
walls bend and the faces do with them, like they're breathing on us.
Above me, Courtney Love is
breathing on my face, blurry with the wanting to go to sleep but not
being able to, and the part where her mouth is supposed to be, the
red lipstick, it looks like a little smudge of blood and it makes me
think of the party from last week.
The girls we'd been with,
he and I, they weren't the cheap type, they had couture dresses and
gold necklaces and fingers heavy with rings, gemstones and little
animals with eyes that were actual crystals and not rhinestones made
to look like crystals and one of them had a diamond encrusted rosary
so heavy it made her hunch forward a bit. That one, she'd said they'd
share their coke with us if we took them home after and we had, we'd
snorted it off the glass of the coffee table and it made his nose
bleed, just a small smudge, less than what came out today. The girl I
took home the blonde of the bunch, I remember her name and the way
she'd said mine and the colour of her eyes and I wish I don't. Her
hips were too curvy and too girlish and too much under my hands and
that she passed out on the old cracked leather couch in the living
room after I'd taken her bra off and then after that I had to listen
to the sounds of him and the redhead in the bedroom and wonder if he
thought it was wrong too.
The posters are still
breathing staring greedy and I remember the ten minutes when he said
he had to take a piss when I was all alone with the girls and their
drinks and their long nails on the vinyl couch that wasn't cracked
and grubby like ours but so shiny that the redhead one had to peel
her naked thighs off it every time she went over to the bar and when
the blokes across the room kept staring at me like I was one of them
one of the girls. I felt them staring at my legs and my face and my
hands wrapped around my glass of rum and coke, like I was a piece of
meat and I kept trying to not stare back and instead I looked at the
girl next to me whose hair colour I don't remember now the one with
the tiger tat on her thigh and I wondered if that's what it felt like
all the time for them.
One of the blokes some
quiet tall one with a nice suit, he came over to our table and sat
next to us and then he was ordering shots of bourbon and downing them
without ever really looking sloshed, and he was talking to the
brunette girl about sex about hurting people like there was nothing
he liked more and the whole time he kept looking at my lips and my
throat like he wanted to eat me. The brunette girl was clicking her
fingernails painted the same dark as her lipstick against the glass
of tequila she had in her hand and she said, "I think it's
interesting, getting hurt, my last boyfriend never wanted to do
anything but I think I'd like to try that, whips and chains, all
that," and the tall bloke nodded the way you nod when someone
who's as smart as a box of rocks is talking to you and he kept
looking at me and said, "well, we can try, I'd like to hurt
you," and he wasn't saying it to her but to me.
He said, "we could go
back to my place, it's not that far, I can still drive," and
when the box of rocks girl went out to the patio so she could smoke a
fag because her friends hated the smell he leaned over and touched my
face and said, "what about it, pretty face," and, "you
up for it?"
And me, all I could say
was, "I've got a," and then, "someone," and he
kissed me so hard it felt like being punched almost and he bit my
tongue and my lips and it all didn't taste like the bourbon he'd just
drank at all it tasted like pain and I think he made me bleed.
I liked it I think, I
liked it a little too much but I pushed the tall bloke off and when
my boy, my someone came back from the bathroom and sat down on the
leather armchair across from me I was talking to the blonde girl
about the shite music they were playing and I actually wanted to cry
but I didn't.
My boy, he asked,
"everything all right," and I didn't do anything at all I
just asked him if he wanted something from the bar and when I got
back with our drinks he told me he'd gotten us coke for free.
I watch him breathe next
to me and the way the bit of blood that's still stuck to the skin
between his nose and top lip looks like a Rorschach stain like an
octopus or like a chandelier maybe, I've never seen a chandelier in
one of those things before.
And I think about the tall
bloke again and whether I should have said yes and let him take me
back to his place and let him hurt me because maybe I would have
wanted it maybe I really wanted it maybe I still want him. I want the
tall bloke to cuff me to the headboard on his four poster bed and do
whatever he wants to and hurt me, I want him to slap me across the
face and call me a slag and a bitch and not care if it hurts and
whether I cry or get off. I want him to push my knees back onto my
chest and thrust into me so hard they force all the air out of my
lungs and I want his teeth in my skin I want him to bite my nipples
sore and I want his hands around my neck so tight they leave bruises.
Maybe on my stomach so I can't even see his face just feel him
scratch my skin open and his hands on my mouth so I don't scream when
he goes in dry maybe I want that. I think I remember that the tall
bloke went home with that third girl on our table, the brunette that
night and I wonder if she actually let him do those things she said
she wanted to try and if she liked it as much as I would have and I
wonder if the tall bloke thought of me the whole time he was fucking
her.
Above me they are still
watching and it makes my stomach curl and it's like thinking about
God about having someone looking out for you who's also constantly
judging you except God is a poster of Kurt Cobain from a magazine. I
roll over to my boy and pull the blood Rorschach from his skin and
make him squirms and whine and go, "what are you doing."
I say, "it's okay,"
and I say, "calm down love, go sleep," and it's not an
answer at all but it's enough that he shuts up and goes back to sleep
and I shut my eyes and I do the same.
I wake up later that day
and I have no idea what time it is I can't remember whether I ever
even changed the clocks from daylight savings, and he's still asleep
next to me all peaceful and lovely and I want to kiss him again just
a little just a kiss and nothing more.
I go to the bathroom and
drink a glass of water from the tap and I shower and then I stand in
front of the mirror naked.
I do something stupid, I
don't know why I do it but I feel like it, I cut my arms open from
the side of my wrist where the bone sticks out to the knobbly part in
the shoulder, and I use the Swiss army knife that's actually his that
he got from his father once and I don't know why I do that either.
The normal knife blade isn't sharp enough to break the skin so it's
like trying to carve your name in a bench with your fingernails and
so I use the saw blade, my hands aren't steady enough so it leaves
tiny little scratches next to the big cut and it's ugly. I don't cut
that deep not any deeper than a cat scratch but I pinch the skin to
force out as much blood as I can and when the floor tiles are covered
in little red stains I wrap myself in year old gauze from the
emergency kit in the medicine cabinet and I mop up all the blood with
a wad of toilet paper and I go back to sleep.
The next time I wake up
he's up as well and he's watching the telly some programme I can't
remember the name of and don't want to, and I kiss him good morning
or good evening I guess and taste coffee black with four sugars the
way he likes it. We don't do anything more after that either just
watch the posters who don't breathe any more and the people on the
telly who do and he asks, "what'd you do that for," and
pulls at the gauze and I don't want to move my arms even though I
think I've already got scabs all over them. I don't want to move any
part of my body and so I just stare up at Kim Gordon's face and wait
as if she would start breathing again and answer the question for me.
I say, "I don't
know," and, "I was bored," and, "I wanted to I
guess," and he doesn't say anything and kisses my cheek and
strokes my ribs.
He says, "when'd you
eat the last time," and I say, "I don't know," again,
and "three days maybe, you were right there you should know."
He says, "we've got
to get you something to eat," and then we both remember that
there's nothing in the fridge because we both hadn't been shopping
for anything the last week or so because we just couldn't be
bothered, and he orders us a pizza from the place around the corner.
Then we lie on the bed and
eat and smear grease stains all over the sheets, and we put on
another mix CD and it all feels really unreal like being in a dream
or really really high. We drink apple cider because it's the only
thing left in the cabinet and he makes me eat three slices pizza in
total and I eat his crusts because he doesn't like them if they're
too burnt.
Later that night when the
pizza and the cider are long gone I blow chunks into the bathtub even
though I hadn't even meant to, it just kind of happens because that's
what always happens when I eat too much at once, and he holds my hair
back the whole time and cries not because he's sad but because the
sick coming up my throat is making my eyes water and he always cries
when I do.
We lie in bed after that
and after I've eaten around half a box of tictacs and we turn the mix
CD all the way down so we can hear the people above us have the kind
of violent sex the tall bloke was talking about with screams and
bedsprings squeaking and the headboard banging into the wall where
you can't tell if they love or hate each other, and the sirens
outside and someone else's music and a kid crying outside below our
window, and a barking dog.
He holds me and pets my
hair and strokes my stomach and I'm glad he does these things because
with the bleeding and the vomit I feel so god awful light I feel like
I could float off or wither away, and he tells me that I'm beautiful
for no reason at all, and I say, "I know."
When the banging upstairs
stops we hear the hushed voices of the people there, the man telling
the woman the exact same thing, that she's beautiful and lovely and
wonderful and we don't hear an answer from her, and then the man
turns the telly on. The newsreader says that it's 10 PM and I don't
remember much after that, I fall asleep to the sound of a war
somewhere that isn't here and my boy's breath in my ear.
The morning after he helps
me pull the gauze off and we take the train all the way down to the
coast and on the ride I let him have the window seat because that's
his favourite, even when I know that he'll fall asleep half an hour
into it but I do it either way because I love him or something like
that. We fold our legs up against the row of seats in front of us but
I take mine down after five minutes because the hard plastic digs
into my kneecaps, and I'm wearing jeans with holes that day so I can
see the red raw skin stretched across the bone and it makes me want
to be sick again. He's half asleep already and I put my head on his
shoulder and lean in and pretend that I'm asleep as if I can sleep on
trains, and I listen to the roar of the engine under the music from
my headphones and it's nice and some people look at us like that and
I'm not sure what they're thinking so I ignore them.
When we get there we walk
from the station to the beach and he makes us stop at three different
shops along the way because he wants to read the paper and then eat
fish n chips where he makes me eat half of it with him, and then we
buy a plastic cup of some iced drink that isn't really tea or juice
or soda or anything recognizable. We walk along the beach for a while
until we find a quiet part away from the families and children and I
take my shoes off, they're the cheap ones I got for thirty quid which
sounds like it should be a bargain but it's not because it shows, I
dig the pebbles from the soles and he laughs at me the whole time.
We're sitting right near
the water and letting it lick at the bottom of our trouser legs and
we take turns sipping from the stuff through a straw even though we
both think it's disgusting, and then he says, "fuck, this stuff
is disgusting," and he chucks the plastic cup away and it lands
some 20 feet away in the sea. I pass him one of my ear buds and we
listen to some playlist I made when I was drunk for a while and let
it mingle with the sound of the waves, and he tells me a story he
heard from his sister's boyfriend, about Irish seal women who fall in
love with fishermen.
In the end I let him fuck
me right there with our jeans pulled down to our ankles and the tide
still licking at our feet, and it's soft and slow and perfect and the
exact opposite of what I want, and I keep my eyes open the whole time
and watch his face and keep telling myself that it's him who's
fucking me and that I really do want it like that.
After, we stay lying there
like that and the pebbles dig into my back and the scabs on my arms
are starting to itch and it's all painful but he's happy, and we
share a fag between us and we only get up when the tide washes up to
our thighs and he says that his arse is getting cold. I pull my shirt
back down and he laughs at my back and tells me that I've got a rash
all over, and I tell him to fuck off and kiss him and I taste salt
and am not sure if it's sweat or the sea.
When we get back, we take
the detour through the park even though it's smothering hot out and
we're still sweaty and the salt is crusting in our trousers fabric,
and we buy another portion of chips and feed half of it to the swans
and we lie in the grass and let it stain the back of our white shirts
green. We watch the people passing us, the mums with small children
and the teenage girls with their boyfriends and we stay there until
the weather has gone from bright and disgusting hot to dusky and
slightly less disgusting hot.
We hold hands when we walk
to the tube and I can tell that there's people staring at me again
and at the thin shirt on my shoulders and my lips and the cuts and
bruises I've got on my arms. I want to kiss him the way you only want
to when you've just fallen in love otherwise and instead I sit on his
lap while we wait for the train to get there and tell him, "you
know, I really do love you," and I believe it and hope that
everyone else does as well.
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