Author: maleghast (Page 15 of 35)

“I dunno, it just feels as though there has to be a better way to organise Christmas than on a minimum damage basis, you know?”

I nodded, but took my cue nonetheless to pour out more of the single malt that we had been drinking since dinner had ended some hours before. The ashtray had the stubs of more cigars than I was happy with and yet the evening, had become one of those special times when opinions are tempered in the forge of debate and the whole world is put to rights by three friends, armed only with good scotch and no desire to sleep.

“I guess I am blessed”, I said as I put the stopper back into the bottle; “Christmas has always been a happy time for me. Single or in love, child, boy or man I have always felt the love of family and friends, the sense that we are all together, in spirit at least as the year ends and we look forward to the new. Who watches what on the TV, and who got what as presents has never really featured as long as some of us could be together.”

“You are lucky. That’s for damn sure.”

“Where are they?”

“Er, third drawer down, I think. I bought them months ago to be romantic with Becca and then she left me before I got around to it.”

“D’ya think that might be why she left? Romantic is not something that you ‘get around to’ you know?”

Cheryl was right of course, but my lack of spontaneity was not the only thing wrong for Becca and I. When all was said and done I was not the right woman for her and we knew it, but the circumstances of our beginning and some great sex made letting go too terrible an option. Like any relationship the cost of ending it was added to, multiplied even by the way our families and friends would be affected, and then there were more mundane things, like our mortgage. The horrible truth that we were not a good fit was too much to contemplate until one day she snapped and just left.

Cheryl found and lit one of the candles, and we laughed together in the soft yellow light as we realised that with the power out we could not even make tea.

“I’m sorry Teri, I know you did try.”

The party was jumping for sure. The kitchen was full of people, and lo it was indee a party.

John leaned back on the kitchen unit and let himself listen to the converstaions around him…

“Well she really likes to suck cock, so I think you ought to be looking for friendship and no more.”

“What are you saying?

“Well you need to think about how much you will disappoint her with your distaste for blow-jobs.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well you don’t like to have your cock noshed on, and she likes to suck cock, so I think that you are better off not trying to date her, you know?”

Off to the side…

“No, man, Punk Rock is not the same as Punk! I know that it’s a fine distinction, but we need to clear this up, yeah. Punk Rock is the US evolution of Punk and gave us bands like the Ramones and all of the bands that came after…”

“Yeah, Felicity is unwell, and so I need you to recommend an alternative drummer apart from youself.”

“The figurine started to crumble, but as if by magic a handful of the good earth starts to hurt favourites.”

“What are you doing down there?”

“I’m kissing your thighs, touching you, I’m going to go down on you… Why? Am I doing something wrong?”

“Oh no, and the thought is very sweet, but look around you. I just dragged you out of a fire exit into an alley behind the club so that you could fuck my brains out, not so that we could have fantastically caring, mutual sex with orgasms and everyone’s needs met. I’m not looking for the big O, I just want your cock inside me. As soon as possible, yeah?”

This was not how it goes in the magazines and the books and the conversations with my unrepresentatively large coterie of female friends, but then Jess really isn’t like any of them anyway. On our fourth date she took me sky diving, without telling me until the door was opened on the plane. Still I would tandem with her again in a heartbeat.

I fumbled with my fly and after a couple of false starts got my cock out and slid it straight into her, effortlessly; she moaned with relief and looked right into my eyes.

“Now really fuck me!”

I can tell you is that dying is the easy part. Don’t misunderstand me, pain is pain, and if you die in pain then clearly it won’t be ‘easy’, but it’s nothing to the pain of carrying on. Seeing the people that you left behind grieving, coping, healing and then moving on; that’s pain.

Imagine seeing your lover every day as their soul is held against the flame, week after week, and yet you cannot reach out to them and let them know that your connection to each other while no longer physical is no less powerful in death.

Now imagine that time passes, they heal, and though they never forget you, there comes a day when you watch them all day long and it becomes clear that they have not been troubled by their grief; that life carries on. Of course you want and indeed need them to be happy, but oh what a subtle edge to this particular turn of events because now they are turning away from their memories of you. Then one day they touch another the way they touched you. Imagine all that; dying is the easy part my friend.

What is there other than this? A fairly broad question I’ll allow, but one that merits thought nonetheless. Is there not a moment, or a day or a week in the life of every modern man and woman when they wonder if they were really brought into this life to eat frozen pizza, keep up the numbers using public transport and either watch or berate those that watch populist television? Sure there are the people who live unexamined lives, the people who do what they are told, without reflection or consideration, but if my life has taught me anything then those people are actually few and far between.

There’s not many who spend the majority of their time questioning their existence either. For most of us it is as Harry tells us, a fleeting thought that passes in and out of the transom of our minds, when we are confronted by death or injustice or just the horrifying spectacle of the dullness of our lives, from time to time. You want to know the secret that they will never tell you? Being dead does not change any of this.

If you get really close to the yellow lines painted in the gutter you can see the reflective flecks in the paint that make it light up at night. It never ceases to amaze me the way that the human mind can fill even the most abject moments with trivia as an attempt at distracting from the greater horror. Because I was face down in the gutter on Greek Street, in the pool of bright light from the headlights of Keiron’s Jag, with some nameless thug in his employ standing on my back when I registered the above fact about the yellow lines.

You may ask, quite rightly, what I had done to end up in this ignominious position? The truth of it is more than slightly fantastic, and while I would happily tell you the whole story I was only one small part of the events that led to this rather uncomfortable and potentially hazardous pass.

You don’t mind if I fill in with heresay and what I’ve been told, you say? Very well then. In order to explain I need to go back two weeks to a members club in Shoreditch called The Tobamorie.

“It all started to go wrong in Berlin. I was supposed to be shooting in the KitKatClub, and the agency had booked three local models who were going to be meeting me there. So I arrive at Tegel and there is a guy there with a board, you know it has ‘Freeland’ written on it with a Sharpie or somesuch, and so I lug my gear over to him and stick out my hand. He just smiles and beckons, doesn’t take my bags, heads off at speed towards the exit. I follow and find him standing by the open boot of a large silver Merc. I think “that’s more like it” and start to lift my camera bag into the boot.

I don’t even remember getting koshed one, but I must’ve been, ‘cos I woke up here, camera gear gone, clothes gone, but I’ve still got my wallet and my cell, even my passport. You’d think if it was a serious theft they would have taken the stuff that is easy to flog, right? I mean there’s not a lot of places you could get half the value of the gear that was in that case.”

“Stop talking Mr. Freeland. Your lies do not impress us.”

There was nothing left to say. We were sitting opposite one another, but we were no longer able to even look at each other. I was stirring my coffee, even though I did not put any sugar in it, and wondering if I should fix it; not could I fix it. The thing was, I was fairly sure that nothing was going to fix this. The words were still hanging in the air over her head;

“I’m sorry, Paul, it just happened, and once it did I’ll be honest I wanted it to happen again.”

Now, I am not trying to be overly dramatic, but once my lover had told me that not only was being unfaithful to me ‘just one of those things’, but also that this momentary lapse of reason did not lead to feelings of guilt and shame, rather a desire to do it again, I did rather feel as though there was an end in sight vis à vis our relationship. I didn’t want to fix it now; in fact I just wanted to burn down the house.

She stood up and started checking her pockets; she was leaving, and I was starting to feel the anger rising;

“You’re going to him, right?”

She is standing there by the window, in my memory, but not as the grown woman in the exquisite ivory wedding gown who stands there now. As I enter the room and see my daughter, looking out expectantly for the car, a memory of another time comes forward to me so strongly…

Suddenly it is thirty years before. Though dark outside, the moonlight is streaming in through the window, and my little Molly is standing in a moonbeam, face pressed against the cold glass, staring out into the snow-covered garden.

“Look, Daddy, the snow has come! Do you think that Santa will be able to come now?”

I am a younger man; stronger and surer on my feet, and I cross to the window and quickly enfold my flannel-clad princess in my arms and pick her up;

“You, Mistress Molly, are supposed to be in bed. Santa won’t stop by this house if little girls are wandering about trying to sneak a peek of him about his task. Come on, I’ll take you back to bed and tuck you in.”

And then I am back in the room, and my daughter is to be a bride this day.