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NB: posted this elsewhere a little while back. wasn't going to post it here, not sure it's a good idea even now. anyway, it isn't very pleasant or very cheerful. adult content. my apologies.
...
He give me room-temperature red wine and told me I was pretty. Pretty like Peter Pan, he said. Pretty like a pantomime faux-boy. Pretty like a pre-pubescent girl. He asks me do I want cough-candy, but I don’t even know what that is.
He puts out a hand with a round red sweet in it. His hand is dry, and white as a magician’s glove. The round red sweet sits dead centre, looks for all the world like a drop of blood.
When he moistens his lips with his tongue, I can see he is wearing a gloss. He has it on his teeth, and that is red too. He might be a vampire. Or his gums might have bled from brushing his teeth too hard. He does not scare me. He takes the round red sweet away. No, he says, perhaps not. You would like a cigarette, maybe, instead?
The cigarettes aren’t ordinary. They are fruity black cheroots. The smoke is purpley. It hangs in the interior of the car the way the Calpol we take for sore throats and fevers goes down in a glass of cold water. I watch it settle on the dashboard and smile vaguely to myself.
A cat crosses the opposite lay-by. He asks me where I live. He tells me he has seen me around. He smiles. When he smiles flakes of powder fall away from the creases and crows-feet around his eyes and mouth. He has a lot of little lines. He must laugh an awful lot. It’s funny that stuff on his face, like a Japanese lady, like a Geisha, Geisha they call them.
Where’re you from, Princess, hum? He gives me more wine. His hand shakes when he pours it. Sip it, he says, don’t slurp it. He asks me what school I go to. That’s a good school, he says when I tell him, that’s a good school. You behave yourself, don’t you? You mind your teachers?
Yes sir.
Yes sir, he repeats, pleasantly incredulous. He takes my chin between forefinger and thumb, tilting my face very gently towards him. Yes sir, he says again, I’ll bet you do, butter wouldn’t melt in your mouth, would it? He laughs like he just made a joke, but I don’t really know what he means so I look away.
A lovely green car rolls past outside, a sports car with the top down. A Stag, I think it was. I stare after it enviously.
Where’re you from, Princess, hum? More wine. I can taste the cheap plastic party cup as much as I can taste it. You know, he says, I think you can probably take that off now. He leans over and depresses the red release button on my seatbelt. It slithers back across my chest, whirring and retracting. The silvery clasp-bit catches the light. Pretty.
It is getting dark out. Not much of a talker, are you? He says. I shake my head. Shall we have the radio? He asks. I shrug. He puts the radio on. It is classicy old-man stuff. Jeux d'enfants, he says, and laughs again as if he has just said something tremendously funny. I roll my eyes at him and get out of the car to piss.
Outside it smells of cats and dusk. I wonder how long this will take. It is rather cool outside and I shiver. I observe my own goosebumped skin, the texture of skinless chicken. I look over my shoulder towards the car. He is watching me piss. His face at the driver’s window is the weepy theatre mask from the start of those black and white TV films.
I feel sorry for him.
More wine. You’re cold, poppet, he says, come and sit here next to me. He slides me across on to his lap. It’s a rather ungainly manoeuvre, his car is tiny and my legs are long, but he manages anyway. He’s had practice.
That’s it, he says, that’s it, we don’t want you catching your death of cold, do we? He holds me rather awkwardly, his nose buried in my hair, his hands rubbing my arms. The way that I’m sat I can feel his poor, apologetic erection pressing against my buttocks, small and sad.
He knows that I know and he laughs nervously, as if his cock were a cough that should be covered by his hand, a sneeze that ought to have a handkerchief, a belch requiring a beg-your-pardon, if only for dignity’s sake. Last little drop? He asks. He brings the cup to my lips hisself.
I think it’s easing off, he says. I hadn’t even realised it was raining to begin with. I have my head against his shoulder while he pets me and strokes me in tactful places: along my collar-bone, just above my knee, behind my ear, the back of my hand.
He winds the window down and leans out. Yes, he says, it’s fine again. His voice is brittle and cheery, pleading. He is diplomatically desperate. Shall we go for our walk now? He asks. I nod my head slowly in non-committal ascent. I feel drunk, lazy.
He opens the car door and slides out from under me. I slump in the seat and he pulls me after him, loose-limbed with pliant indifference.
He is courtly, chivalrous, accommodating. Guilt makes him incredibly well-mannered. I lean against him, befuddled and unsteady. He leads me.
You’re very beautiful, he tells me. The way he says it makes it sound like it’s causing him pain. Maybe it is. We are well enough in to the woods now. I stand still and allow him to take his time. He talks and talks and talks, enumerating my qualities as if he were eulogising me, as if I were dead. Maybe I am. The moon is flat and white as a swatch of surgical gauze. It looks like the patch the kid with the lazy eye has to wear at school. I have to suppress a giggle about that. I feel slack and rather silly. He his touching my face with the crooked finger of one hand.
Lovely boy, lovely boy.
It’s the way Danny talks to the dogs, that is. Or like my grandfather with the horses when they need to be broken in. It makes me want to laugh again, but I look at my feet instead. I would never hurt you, he’s saying, not for anything in the world. I find it funny that he thinks that he could. I find it funny that he thinks that he’s not.
Poor boy, poor boy.
I hate that phrase, I hear it a lot. I hate that phrase, but it makes my heart pump faster and I have to hear it again. My need for sympathy is massive, vociferous, terrible. It is totally out of control.
I allow him to undress me. He does so fussily, folding my clothes. It isn’t reverence so much as pedantry, everything has to be just so. In a similar way his finger tips make a silent inventory of my bruised fruit portions, my soft silk-worm-alike scars. He tells me it will be all right, he tells me I am safe now, he tells me he will look after me.
Funny sort of champion, this finicky painted Methuselah.
He studies me without my clothes, a naked accomplice to the moon and its dispassionate whiteness. He makes me turn around, then clutches at me from behind, hostage style. The sound of his fly opening seems disproportionately loud in the silence of the woods, like a tear being rent in the fabric of the night.
…
After all his protracted finessing, the physical fact of his fucking me seemed so inelegant, mechanical, crude. I lie on the autumn floor and taste moss, sweat and cheroot. He waits for me at a discreet distance. He looks out of breath, slightly puzzled, like a man who just received bad news. He turns away while I dress, a funny inverted sort of embarrassment.
I follow him to the car and we drive back to the city in silence. I begin to doze. He puts me out about half a mile away from home. Nobody goes the estate after curfew. Will we do this again? He asks. I nod and watch him hare off in the direction of the barracks. I put my hands in my pockets and begin the slog back.
I feel nothing at all.
------
The human race, the only race I know where everybody loses.
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we are not amused
