Yes Yes More More Page 6

  “You’re talking as if that’s a bad deal for women, again, but I’m not sure it is.”

  “Well, that’s fair enough.”

  He started humming, Nellie the Elephant packed her trunk and said goodbye to the circus.

  “When did these phrases start?” I asked. I was relaxed and my mind was noodling about. “When did they go away?”

  “Nowadays we all know that no one’s actually joined the circus. They’re just divorced somewhere with two kids, or they’re in prison.”

  “No shame in either of those things,” I told him.

  And he agreed, or at least he nodded. He was having a think. “I don’t want to be lazy,” he said.

  “Do you live in London?”

  “No, no, I live in Paris.”

  “Ah, lovely.”

  “Although I’m actually flying to Milan in the morning.”

  “Well, now you’re showing off.”

  “I am rather jetset.”

  “Do you speak Italian?”

  “Ovviamente parlo Italiano,” he said.

  “Is that Italian, or pisstake Italian?”

  “How rude.” He was smiling at me, not in a pisstake way.

  “Sorry. I am ignorante of the romantic languages.”

  “That’s actually the right word, in Italian. Ignorante means ignorant. So you’re not as ignorante as you think.”

  “Ha! I’m more romantico than I realised.”

  He looks down as if I’ve said the wrong thing.

  “Or would it be romantica?”

  “Romantico,” he said. And then he said, “Do you think we’re flirting?”

  “I’ve no idea,” I told him, which was true.

  That shut us both up but it didn’t feel uncomfortable, or not to me anyway. I had a slurp of my tea, which had some very very small bits of Kitkat floating in it, evidence of the dunking I’d been doing, and the tastes and the textures were so slight and so familiar, the tiny blobs of fat and the sugary soggy fragments of wafer, and the whole miniature experience blossomed into a great reassuring flower with me curled up inside it like a flower fairy, and then I imagined the flower fairy, who was me, sitting on the floor in front of the easy chair where my grandma was sitting, and she had a cigarette burning in the ashtray next to her (this at a time when the smell of a Lambert & Butler cigarette was associated with half my family, was no bad thing and was certainly not some bearer of feckless doom and death) and she had a rag in her hand, a torn strip of cotton from an old sheet or something, and she was putting my hair into rags which means she was winding a segment of my damp-from-the-bath hair around each rag and then winding the remainder of the rag back around the hair and tying it at the top, moving across my scalp with gentle attention and method, pausing sometimes to take a drag on her cigarette but mainly leaving it to burn away in the ashtray, and in a little while it will all be done and I will look like a Victorian child, and then she’ll take the rags out, starting where she began, and then I’ll have soft ringlets. And I will be gloriously dipped in the playfulness and lovingness and sparkling idleness of my grandma.

  “I think it’s probably okay to be lazy,” I told the handsome man, stirring in my seat and actually, I realised, trying to get more comfy because I was in danger of dozing off again.

  “You’re probably right,” he said. “Again.”

  I laughed because he was being sardonic or whatever, but also he was right about me being right. I am frequently right.

  I looked out the window for the first time in a while, at the low grey northern sky, daydreaming a bit, about those hard smooth battered torsos in Beau Travail, imagining how they would taste, if I licked them, how they would feel underneath me, on top of me. I was very relaxed with this strange man. When I looked over at him again, he was listening to something on his headphones and looking quite dreamy himself.

  “What you listening to?” I sort-of mouthed this at him and tapped one ear.

  He took the headphones off. I’d interrupted him entirely.

  “Steppin’ Out,” he said. “An old song by Joe Jackson.”

  “He’s not one of the Jacksons?”

  “Nope. A different kind of Jackson.” The handsome man leaned over the table and put his headphones on me which for a second was just slightly thrilling. Then he skipped back to the start of the song and I listened. It was good. I recognised it, maybe. It was dreamy, too, with lyrics about two people on a night out, stepping into the night, he sang, stepping into the light.

  “What does this sound like? My Sharona? Devo? The Go-Go’s?” I was careful not to shout, with the headphones on.

  He shrugged and nodded because, yep, it probably sounded like all of those. I kept listening, looked out the window, with Joe Jackson sounding a bit melancholy but also hopeful, and like he’s in the early 1980s and probably in New York, a bit bookish, a bit cocainey, quite well groomed, wears pastels.

  The handsome man opposite me was talking, and I couldn’t really hear him until I took off the headphones and he repeated, “Is it a shame, do you think, that everything reminds us of something else?”

  “Does this song remind you of anything?”

  “It reminds me of being a kid and thinking that grown-ups are glamorous.”

  “What else?”

  “Well, it reminds me of a feeling. It reminds me of my parents having parties.”

  “Did they play this song at their parties?”

  “I don’t know, but I feel like they did.”

  “Good enough,” I told him. “Good enough. Where did you live when you were little?”

  “In a semi in south London. Dulwich. Mum, dad, younger sister. My uncle lived nearby.”

  “Nice.”

  “It was nice.”

  “Nice to have family living nearby. Your uncle, I mean.”

  “It was. It meant a lot to me, when I was little, having him close. But then he had a falling-out with the rest of the family. Which was my fault, really.”

  I settled in my seat even more when he said that, because I knew he was about to tell me a story and because if there’s something that makes you feel guilty in a complicated way, I want to hear about it.

  “Every week, or sometimes twice a week,” he began, “I’d be allowed to go off on my own to visit my uncle. That is, I’d be allowed to cross the main road near our house and cut through the park to get to his house.”

  “How old were you?”

  “I’m not sure. Eight or nine, maybe.”

  “So that was quite an adventure, at that age.”

  “I realise now that my mum and my uncle – her brother – must have agreed on the times I’d go and visit. So she’d wave me off, and he would be waiting at his house for me to arrive, he’d either be at the door or it’d be on the latch so I could saunter straight in. My mum probably watched me cross the road and then phoned him to tell him that I’d be there in ninety seconds. A domestic operation of military precision.”

  “Loosening the apron strings, just a bit.”

  “Yes. She softly chucked me over to him and he softly caught me. And I used to love his house. He would sit with me at the kitchen table there and chop up fruit with a stumpy little knife, an apple or a pear or a banana, and we’d eat the pieces together, one at a time, and talk – I mean, I suppose we talked, I can’t remember properly, but I remember the kitchen, and the colours in there, it was a rich blue, the kind of blue you want to stick your finger into, a heavenly blue, and the smell of his house was heavenly too. Our house didn’t smell of anything, not that I remember, but my uncle’s house would be alive, alive inside your nose.”

  He laughed at this phrase – ‘alive inside your nose’ – and I did as well but only a quick laugh so as not to interrupt him. I felt like a fin-de-siecle psychotherapist, and I was enjoying it.

  “It smelt soft and slightly sweet, in his house. Like someone had been crushing and toasting hazelnuts in there, maybe a couple of days ago, and then the windows had been open for a f
ew hours in the late morning on a warm day. It smelt like how hospitals would smell if they wanted people to heal faster. If shops smelt like that, no one would buy anything because they’d already be completely content. If schools smelt like that, the children would learn faster, their times tables but also how the soil feels when the grass pushes through it, and how the ant feels when it’s climbing that grass and the blade swings and bounces gently under its ant weight.”

  “Under its ant weight,” I said. Enjoying even more this unexpected and pleasantly doolally turn in the conversation.

  “And my uncle smelled good too, he wore a bit of aftershave I think or he used a nice soap or washing powder. And sometimes we would sit on his sofa, which was a long stylish sofa with a long stylish coffee table in front of it. I do remember some of what we talked about, actually, on that sofa. I do remember him playing me records and telling me about the bands he liked, and I’d tell him which songs I liked. We had a little listening club. I was into Soft Cell but I wasn’t sure about Redskins, and he’d play me a song and get me to listen to a particular bit that he loved, over and over. Ba-doo, ba-doo-doo. And he’d make me a cup of tea, something I considered at that point to be very grown-up, almost as grown-up as a glass of wine.”

  The handsome man looked at my plasticky-paper cup of tea, finished now on the little table between us, and at his cup, which was empty too.

  “I don’t think I was exactly aware of the judgements and opinions of adults, as a child, but I knew that my uncle liked me, and that he thought I was funny and clever, and I took this to be a reassuring indication that I would turn out alright. I was starting to become aware of the ongoingness of things, the fact that if I liked something now, I might like it later. That if I was okay now, I might be okay later. Does that make sense?”

  “Yes, of course it does.”

  “The house I lived in then is still there. My uncle’s house is still there. But I did fuck up, and I also feel like if I fucked up then, I’ll fuck up again.”

  I wanted to know how the handsome man had fucked up. I waited for him to tell me.

  “One morning, I went round to my uncle’s house without letting anyone know I was going out. I woke up, and I wanted to see him. It was a Sunday morning, and I don’t know what had happened but I woke up feeling unfinished and alone and I wanted to see my lovely uncle. I just walked out of the house. Over the road, very very careful even though there were no cars in sight. I crossed the park and knocked on his door and it didn’t occur to me that he might not want his young nephew visiting early on a Sunday morning. I knocked and I heard noises inside, and music, and even then I don’t think it occurred to me that, oh, maybe I shouldn’t be here. Maybe he has other things to do. Other things to do on a Sunday morning.”

  I tried to imagine the handsome man, aged eight or nine. It was quite easy.

  “Adults notice things about you that you haven’t noticed yourself yet. When you’re on the inside, and this is your first time around, you don’t know what you are. You know you’re not your mum or your dad or your sister. I did think I was my uncle, that’s what I was realising, and this seemed a good thing. I liked him so much.

  “When he opened the door that morning he was disheveled and wide-eyed. We might know what that means, now, especially on a Sunday morning. But I didn’t know then. I don’t think I even realised anything was different to my usual Tuesday afternoon visit, or not until I got inside, into the front room, where three other men were sitting, disheveled and wide-eyed and delighted to see me. It was, as I remember it, as though an extremely sweet and slightly shy puppy had ambled into the room. ‘Oh look! Hello sweetheart!’, they said, and ‘Oh my god, the cuteness!’ That’s the phrase that stuck in my head: oh my god, the cuteness.

  “He introduced me to these three men as his nephew, and they wanted a name, and they asked how old I was and would I like a glass of pop and I was just the most delightful thing they’d ever seen. Oh my god, the cuteness. They were elegant and exciting, fully formed men having so much fun and no one to tell them off, no one they had to ask for permission. One of them had blond curls, almost corkscrew curls. I could hardly bear to imagine ever being so comfortably and beautifully myself. I wonder what they look like now, where they are now. One of them wasn’t wearing a top and I was thrilled, enthralled, by his bare chest. I was thrilled and enthralled that I was allowed to have a good look at it. I was probably staring, because he laughed and said, ‘Do you like my pecs?’ and my uncle made a strange little warning sound, a little tone from the back of his throat. And I wanted to nuzzle right into that man’s chest, I wanted to put my face into it and I wanted to disappear into him like a little blob of mercury into a big blob of mercury.

  “‘Does your mum know you’re here?’ my uncle asked me. She did not, of course, so I shook my head. And all that happened next was that my uncle put on his shoes and got his door keys and said to me, ‘Come on, we’re going back over to your house. Your mum’ll be worried.’ And he took my hand, and I probably didn’t say a word, and the three men said ‘Seeya!’ and ‘Goodbye!’ and ‘Lovely to meet you, young man!’ and off I went back over the road with my uncle. He didn’t come in, he didn’t even come to the door, he just watched and made sure I went inside.

  “Except as we crossed the road he said, as if it wasn’t very important, something like, ‘There are things your mum and dad don’t want to know.’ It felt like a little puzzle to work out, but also I knew that what he meant was, ‘Don’t mention this to your mum and dad.’ I wasn’t at all clear, though, about what I shouldn’t mention.

  “And I was so pleased to have met these three friends of my uncle’s, and so proud that they had liked me, and so delighted by this new sentence – ‘oh my god, the cuteness!’ – that I told my mum all about it. There was nothing bad to tell, it was all wonderful, these three glamorous and smiling men who approved of me so heartily.

  “And my dad was there too and he was furious. I didn’t know why and I still don’t know really, except of course for the mundane dull-dull-as-fuck theory that he could see his only son turning out a bit queer and he didn’t want me hanging out with any happy gay queer gay men. So I stopped going to my uncle’s on Tuesday afternoons, and I don’t think he came round to our house anymore either. I saw him at the shops, a few months later, and he looked like he was about to walk over and talk to me, but I looked down at the ground, totally blanked him. I didn’t have the sense or the decency to know what to do, I was flummoxed by the whole situation. Kids are shit, aren’t they? I didn’t even ask my parents about it. Kids are shit. And I never saw my uncle again. He was dead, four years later. Out riding his bike, hit by a car. Killed instantly, I was told. Although I’ve become rather suspicious of how often people are apparently killed instantly.”

  “Oh fucking hell,” is what I said in response to all this.

  “And now I live in Paris, glamorous and friendly and successful, and I am a happy gay queer gay man.”

  “Your uncle would be entirely delighted,” I said, trying not to put a that’s-alright-then lid on his story.

  The handsome man smiled at me, in agreement. He breathed in, soft and deep, then he breathed out again. “You were asleep, when I sat down.”

  “I was dreaming.”

  “What were you dreaming about?”

  “I was dreaming about two women I haven’t seen for years, women I was good friends with at school. We were chatting. They were going to the seaside and they invited me to go with them.”

  “And did you go?”

  “I didn’t quite fancy it.”

  “You might have had fun.”

  “I’m sure I would’ve. But the dream had already moved on, I was dreaming about things and fabrics and distant years, and how good it feels to have a really good solid obliterating fuck.”

  He shifted in his seat a little, but he didn’t look away from me. And he smiled again. The smile wasn’t bestowing anything on me, it was simply a happy reaction. S
o I’d checked, and it was okay to say ‘good solid obliterating fuck’ to this handsome man.

  “Where did you come from?” I asked him. Then, to clarify, “Did you get on at Aberdeen?”

  “My seat was in the next carriage, and it was near the toilet, and the toilet was oozing chemical shit smells and I was not into it.”

  “Eugh.”

  “Yes. Eugh. So I got my bag and I moved. And I thought, Ideally there’ll be a seat at a table, and no one else there except for a woman who is fast asleep.”

  “That sounds weirder than you meant it to.”

  “I knew it would sound a bit weird.”

  “Tell me about your mum.”

  “No,” he said, softly. “Don’t get me started.”

  “It’s true, you really can talk when you get going.”

  “I can do other things too,” he said, and then he smiled at me and I felt comfortably wildly alive right there.

  “Oh, well now we are flirting.”

  “I think I might be offering, rather than flirting.”

  I took a good look at him. At his face, first, and then at the way he was sitting. He had one hand, his left hand, resting on the table, slightly towards me, and he was leaning back in more of a repose than a slouch, elegant and louche, with his face relaxed and still, even more so compared to the speeding whizzing whooshing hills outside the window. It’s true, I’m delaying telling you what happened next, which is that we talked about bodies and sex and terror.

  He’d told me, I thought, that he has sex with men, and that made me relax because that meant we had something in common. No, I’m joking. It made me relax because I didn’t have to worry too much about whether he wanted to have sex with me, a woman, or indeed whether I wanted to have sex with him.

  So now he asked me, “What do you think about when you think about sex?”

  “Weight. Heft. Heaviness,” I told him. “Being banged.”

  “Being banged?” He didn’t seem entirely impressed by the idea.

  “I know. Fucked into oblivion.”

  “Okay.”

  “That good solid obliterating fuck.”

  “Okay. I’m getting a hard-on. I mean, I think it’s alright to tell you that, but also I’m thinking about all the other possibilities. Apart from being obliterated, I mean.”