TUESDAY AFTERNOON
by
Kyoko Gardiner
Dear Martin,
It is now 15:56 on Tuesday. It has been almost 8 hours since I last saw you. I had my fish pie for dinner at lunchtime and haven’t managed yet to comb my hair nicely. I might not be going out tonight anyway. Last week you were a luxury. The week before you were a passer-by. Or maybe even not that. Who cares now, though, that you are the life itself, and I push and wait and think and sink and my heart is all tired. I don’t know if it should smile or look serious. It is tired and sore and maybe bored of the routine.
It is 16.00 now on Tuesday. I spent 4 minutes writing the last paragraph. 4 minutes farther away from you and my knees are going to sleep. I need to go to the loo but I don’t want to leave this screen either. Soon the day will be over and it will be tomorrow. Or will I see you before then? Or will you call me before then? Or maybe it is not that important after all, and I have other things to think about, like Frazer for instance, and how he has been sweet, how I have been not sweet although I had promised I would be. All these lies, selfish, but without me, they are without me because I am here, untouched and sort of bored.
Frazer will be back shortly and then it will be me heating up yesterday’s supper with my worked-up smile, is this me or is that me, what is the difference, I need to get through to the end of my life, possibly find something on the way, a man maybe, who will give me peace, who will give me children, who will maybe support me, not just financially but emotionally but then financially as well, I don’t know, what am I going to do with the rest of my life anyway.
It is now 16.04 and this means it has been just exactly a day since we were eating soup in a cozy street-side shop. And did I have any fear, did I have any worries? I had said I loved you but what does that mean anyway? Or should I put this all aside and go and watch television and wait for you to call, or wait for Frazer to be back and ask him to impregnate me so that I can have an ordinary life with something ordinary to worry about like pregnancy and motherhood? Rather than this eternal not knowing who will be next? Everyone is a luxury in the first week then the life itself then the life becomes pale, just everyday background. Joy or defeat?
Today I will now shut this screen down and maybe get a little bit more productive than this. I will hoover the floor, maybe. Go shopping and fill the fridge with ready-to-eat stuff. Write to my mum.
My phone makes that noise. You texted me there and will I wait will I wait will I wait or what difference does it make? It is obvious I have been waiting for your contact and yet I pretend that I was busy doing other things. Other things than the life itself?
Headache is what I feel and the life itself feels far away.
I need to go to the loo as well.
And Frazer will be back soon anyway, with his usual but familiar, quite warm, quite content smile, of hominess, of stability, of warmth, and my hair is not combed but Frazer won’t mind as long as I am sweet.
Sincerely yours,
Your woman.
~~~~~~~~~~
Dear Frazer,
I will be gone by the time you will find this letter. I will be far away, maybe not necessarily geographically so, but emotionally, psychologically, ontologically.
We have had some good times, and you will always remain my favourite person. I am sorry I am having to break our promise, that we will never leave each other, that we will grow old together and wake up to each other every morning of our lives and that we will be there if one of us becomes poorly so that we can remember what good days can bring us. I am sorry. You have done nothing wrong, I think we just grew apart, or maybe it is my fault. You have done nothing wrong.
I am taking some bottles of sparkling water with me as I will not have a car from now on so it will be difficult for me to buy these heavy things. I am also taking the wok with me because you never use it, but if you say you need it I can come and return it to you. I don’t want you to keep any of my photographs and I will appreciate it if you could destroy them all. I am not taking any of yours with me. If any post arrives for me, can you pile them up and forward them to me every now and then. I will email you my new address when I know it.
I am very sad writing this but I am sure this is a good thing. We will both be happier this way. We haven’t been terribly happy together of late. We never did anything out of ordinary, we never even went out to the pictures. It has become too natural for you to see me around that you stopped paying attention to me and our sex was becoming the repetition of the same routine. I think that was a bad thing.
I hope you are not upset to read this, and will see that I am doing this for the sake of both of us. I think it might be painful for some time but then we will come to a stage where we can look back at this and say that this was a good decision. I will always love you, you will always remain my best friend, but maybe it will be better if we didn’t contact each other any more.
Take care of yourself and please remember to take the bin outside next Tuesday.
With lots of love,
J
~~~~~~~~~~
Dear Martin,
I would understand if you cannot make up your mind that quickly. I know that I am merely one of your options and you need to keep all of your options open until you are sure of which one to choose. Or maybe you are never going to choose. But it has been 28 hours now since you last texted me. Why can you be so cruel?
I did tell you at the start that I want a steady relationship – it doesn’t have to be anything too exciting, just something nice and warm, that we can come back to each other everyday, to a smile, to a hug. We don’t even have to go out, I just want stability, warmth, just simple niceness, that we can come home to each other to a familiar comfortable content smile. We have known each other for 8 days now and you should know by now if you want that with me or not. Just tell me now, please. If you say you don’t want me, that will break my heart but it still would be much better than if you tell me that two months later.
Or am I stupid? What do I want? Is it that I just want to keep meeting new people so that I can feel that ‘this is the one’ feeling? or do I really want a stable relationship, with constant content familiar smiles? Staying in and watching television over a tin of soup and bread from the reduced shelves? Or what?
Martin I will be so good to you, I think by now you cannot live without me anyway, I am what you want, you should have seen that by now. I will be so good to you, I will be calm, friendly, nice, generous, and I will cook too, and I will be a good lover. So please phone me soon and let me know that we are together, and that that is what you want, and that you are just mine. I need to know or I will go insane.
But I don’t want to scare you either, Frazer. Should I just wait? Erase this letter and wait?
For you to get in touch? But will you get in touch?
I need to go and get bread, there’s nothing to eat in the house. It is cold, maybe I will turn the heating on.
I hope you’re okay, and are thinking of me, too.
Yours, very much yours,
Jennifer
© Kyoko Gardiner
Reproduced with permission
Kyoko’s Top Five Exciting Artistic Experiences This Week:
Listening to Six Organs of Admittance's album 'School of the Flower'
Reading Michael Gardiner's short stories collection 'Escalator'
Eating chocolate cake my aunt bought me
Trying on a dress by Preen
Watching Todd Solondz' film 'Palindromes'
TOVE JANSSON'S MOOMINTROLL STORIES
MAX ERNST'S COLLAGE NOVELS
JAN SVANKMAJER'S SHORT FILMS
GERHARD RICHTER'S ATLAS
NICK CAVE'S LYRICS AND ARTICULATION
JACQUES DERRIDA'S UNDERSTANDING OF GIFT AND PARDON
DUMBO
DAISIES (Sedmikrasky) 
TIME OF THE GYPSIES (Dom za vesanje)
BREAKING THE WAVES
ALL ABOUT LILY CHOU CHOU (Riri Shushu no subete) 
