Driving has always made me nervous. The car being unknowable in its metallic intricacies, soft spots and braking power; I have never been able to trust in the expertise of others and really suspend my belief that at any moment the thing my feeble bones are cradled in will not disintegrate in the slow lane of the motorway. Not only that, but to trust in other drivers. To accept that they won�t be struck blind or have a heart attack and smash into your careful path, killing both you and themselves is just a step too far. But I have to do it. So I do it, carefully and with my right foot nervy on the accelerator, ready to hit the brake at any moment.
The car is loaded with jars of home made pickles, chutneys and jams. They sit on the back seat like specimen jars from an over-wrought laboratory. My mother, lonely in her divorcee dresses, divorcee hair and smaller house has taken up cultivation. Growing and cutting, scything the cucumbers and strawberries, damsons and cauliflower for the vinegar vats and sugared lubrications boiling up guilt on her lonely hob. The irrigation lines around her mouth feeding her steady nourishment of bitter recriminations, pulling at her lips like a drawstring on a plimsoll bag so that it sits rouched above the muffled point of her chin. I leave her house with jars and jars of the stuff so she can be sure I will spread a thick layer of viscous guilt on my morning toast. She gives me so much because I leave it so long between visits, and of course, that�s another heart break, she gave her whole life to my father and me and what have we done except abandon her, discard her like a Christmas puppy, large eyed and thankless.
I travel from her, to my home. The two sites tethered by the tarmacadam of this new road. Shedding selves on the way, like a snake in the midst of an accelerated growth spurt; I stop being her child, take off the cardigan covering my tattoo- a ten year old tattoo, hidden like the family freak in the attic, light a cigarette and become his lover again. I go from her to him and at no point am simply I. I drive steadily; the flinty English light meagre and thin through the windscreen. His love like a spool drawing me back to him, hands outstretched, feeling my way through distractions and faithless limbs, always back to him. Back to the me-shaped cavity left pressed into his male hardened body, the fibrous hairs chafing at my feminine- weak skin. Back to what is safe, his known moods, dark looks for forgotten items, angry at a lost sock, but still gentle and loving, and above all, just a man and one that loves me.
Six years of love, inconstant and variable, but still love and intimacy not known since infancy and the interminable vigilance of a loving mother. Six years of knowing, of being together even through the smell of his shit in the morning bathroom, faeces squatted over like he was a plucked hen, my hand being held as I vomited sangria into his mothers tidy rosebushes one summer barbeque, unsteady on my sandaled feet, and sex, secret wants finally confessed to each other - thumbs in forbidden orifices and watching each other orgasm, vulnerable and naked. Our lumpy flesh aging together, comfortable dinners expanding our coupled waists; knowing his reaction to an item of news, or fumbled bill payment and in all that, knowing that we were staying here, together.
The radio hisses through the padding of the speakers. An old sports star lists his favourite music and tells the bored interviewer why he chose each piece, namely to underline his successes. This tired old country filled with imperialist relics stands knee deep in water, damp, cold and exhausted it sags like depleted breasts beneath the clamour of its inhabitants. And old cricketers whose only triumph was trouncing, yet again, a former colony still pistol whipped and dusty from the twin vicissitudes of a tyrannical sun and a despotic invader; think the listening public will be interested in the stale saga of his life. A fake pride, like gilding, coats the populace; golden, it shines but has no weight. It doesn�t bother me all that much, what you know won�t hurt you. It is the unknown that unfolds a cascade of fear in my bowels, a long flag of lurid anxieties that knot and twist cutting off essential supplies of filth to my extremities.
I stop at a garage and refuel. Walking across the forecourt I see the crook of my nose supporting the weight of my brow and low-lidded eyes in the glassy reflection. I am not a looker, never have been. Thick in the hips and low on tits, I have no use for short skirts but God, I am great in bed, have an education, am well travelled and suck dick like I am sucking up life itself. So I guess I am still quite a catch. For his 30th birthday I treated my man to a threesome, I found a prostitute on the corner of Spitalfields who would join us for only a hundred and fifty quid. Her skinny hairless body rubbing against my mine, her fingers swallowed by the thick hair covering my vagina and thighs and both of us licking at his penis, sucking his egg shaped balls into our mouths and laughing when he came in our hair, his eyes vast in surprise and gratitude. You see, I know my man and what makes him tick, tick, tock.
I pee hot into the cold toilet, the relief almost as pleasurable as an orgasm. Patient over my yellow stream and small tender farts. I wore good underwear for my arrival home; he always likes us to go straight to bed after a separation. I am lucky he is still so passionate about me, has been utterly faithful and keeps no secrets. He never makes me feel insecure by pointing out a beautiful woman on the street or on TV, never makes comparisons, has no porn collection, nothing. I pull my trousers up, flush, wash my hands and look in the mirror. Thirty this year, and still no lines as such; I redo my lipstick, pat my frizzy hair into shape, scrape at my teeth.
I tuck myself into the snug warmth of the car. As I get closer to home and further from my mother�s place the close packed anxiety I carried there loosens and starts to flake from the smooth surface of my brain, it travels in drifts to the base of my spine collecting in soft piles of angsty slush and a sense of bliss and well-being expands through the tight veins of my limbs. The streets that belong to my life, that tend its occurrences, that we walk together and drive through on our way to work and tennis, dinners out and drinks with old friends wrap me up and tuck me into its workings, its loving infrastructure.
Home, I pull into the drive. The street is quiet, gentled in the afternoon. I check myself in the mirror again, no lipstick on teeth, no stray hairs. The door, green and solid, is closed and firm � gentlemanly, to my female hands. I take my bag from the boot and grab a few jars of my mother�s preserves to show him, it�s a running joke between us and I know he will laugh when he sees them, mollified as they are now they are out of her jurisdiction and will put them in the pantry till her next visit.
The door opens easily onto our clean, child free space. He has tidied; bless him, hoovered right through by the looks of things. I drop my bag at the door and walk up the carpeted stairs, lined with photos of us in attitudes of happiness and success, smiling on skis and squinting prone from plastic recliners on blue encapsulated beaches. The glassy preserves nestle against the padding of my bra, insinuating themselves into my closet affections like motherless kittens. The bathroom is empty, the door wide, our rows of cleaning products neat along the side of the bath and on the straight shelves. The mirror is still steamy though; he must have just finished a bath, and will be in the bedroom getting dressed.
Six feet, six feet from bathroom to bedroom, he is six feet tall, six feet from here to there, from known to unknown, from this to that.
I push the door open. It opens onto our room, the bed made; all the ironing put away, the dusting done. Our room, where we sleep and fuck and do all the obvious and natural things a couple will do, where I paint my toenails and look in a disinterested mirror at the fat squatting on my thighs. Where he watches TV till he falls into sleep, where he does a few token sit ups, and throws his dirty underwear into the corner. Where we sleep and fuck and do all the obvious and natural things a couple will do.
He is on the floor, leaning back against the bed, his cock, MY cock � our cock, in his hand, watching himself in the mirror. Watching himself in the mirror, pulling on his cock in my underwear, in my best underwear, my silk expensive underwear that he bought, that he chose for me. For me. He has lipstick on his stubble rimmed lips and kohl thumbed across his eyes. The camisole is taut over his chest, his balls sag from the loose hammock of the silky gusset of my knickers and stockings- that aren�t mine, that he had to go out and buy for himself, that he had to plan for and specifically go out and get- cling to his hairy legs. That this is not spontaneous is what breaks the bones in my legs. I stumble, he continues to pull at his thing, and he looks ugly, ridiculous, a fattening man dressed as a slut. He has disappeared inside my clothes, is no longer my man. My man has gone and left this thing, this silky, ugly thing, panting and open mouthed. He looks up at me, not stopping, not stopping or afraid. He looks at me and comes, he comes into my underwear, he comes like a man into women�s underwear and is lost.
The jars smash where I drop them, puddles of guilt sticky on our floor; spreading slowly towards him where he lays, limp in the sediment of his ejaculation.
DANIEL JOHNSTON
BILLY CHILDISH
JOHN STEINBECK
ANGELA CARTER
ALBERT CAMUS
