Some nights I’m haunted by footsteps on Montmartre cobbles.
The skies back then were slopped out grey and chilled by the November winds. Alone on the steps was a good place to sit but after twenty empty minutes an old lady took my hand, raised me to my feet and pushed my face to the side, profile towards the cemetery. She stroked above the tangles in my hair and I’m sure she whispered Musidora before pulling out tiny silver scissors. As she clipped she breathed heavily and out of the corner of my eye I saw her elbows crane and fly. I have always loved the silhouette cutters of Montmartre. A species apart they inhabit a world of deep slopes and polished cobbles, of smokey bars and shadow theatres. They work the streets, plying their craft back to those dirty heady days when Suzanne Valadon walked her goat. When making art was a brotherhood.
It didn’t take her long, perhaps 90 seconds in all. She placed the black shadow onto a cream board and watched as I caught my breath. The day had already been too much for me but her inky black kirie gave me poise. It fixed me like a silver halide in the womb-red glow of a developing room. As I fumbled in my pockets she touched my wrist, ‘ c’est pratique’ she smiled.
Perhaps I am crazy. On days like this, I hear her words.
.
.
.
I can never be rid of the fear that they don’t like me, that I’m not good enough. That I’m unfindable. That essentially I am alone and negligible. This is what I see as my under-the-table contagion. I am like a child, hiding under a table , cross-legged and watching the world, an uneasy observer. Yet inside my head I’m good and kind, I’m sex and lick and yield and kick. Inside I’m stretched-out fantastic, holding nataraja-asana with grace, and the flowers I grow are beautiful. Blew bice and verdant . But outside it’s freckles and frizz and an Owen Meany voice. It’s simper and kowtow and knocking the neb, Sir. I’ll replay situations until I am toe-curled and red-faced and mortified.
How many useless knots I tie.
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When he hit her, it felt like a kiss. It was a song but it was also true. This wasn’t something she could talk about . Outside their bubble it would feel like a betrayal. But under an amber light in sheet twists and back arches, it was the sweetest thing.
He wasn’t a violent man. Childhood memories ran deep with him. At seven he had watched unnoticed as his uncle, a tall methodical man crushed a heavy bellied spider under his leather sole into a flagged stone floor. The image still appalled him. This was a different tyranny. It was flesh to flesh. It intoxicated him. The dark wanting look in her eyes spurred him on. Her submission caught him, weakened him , enslaved him to her. He wasn’t sure if it was love.
Weekends were like being in another country. The lie of the land was different, the light was altered. Anticipation flooded her and hardened him. Under a burrow of sheets with arms pinned and legs clutched she would barely whisper, ‘we are like animals’ and feral and thrusting he’d pant through tight lips and bared teeth , ‘we are animals’. It was then she knew it was something other than love.
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The man from 12 b eats his tea alone.
The nights are closing in now, it’s almost dark by 6 o’clock and he draws the curtains as the light becomes grainy outside. He feels safer that way. Held in his cocoon of a room surrounded by a clutter of stuff. It’s a small flat and the door opens straight from the street into his living room. The heavy stream of traffic blackens his window, sometimes kids coming home late and buzzing finger scrawl foul words and cartoon cocks. He hears them when he’s in bed and wonders that a piece of dirty thin glass can be such a powerful barrier. And a lure.
I see him twice a day on Saturdays. The first time is at 12.30 as he walks past, hair slicked and mouth smoking. His fingers glow at the nubs, stained by nicotine, saffron yellow and burnt umber. He always wears an old jacket. Harris Tweed with a ripped lining and a greasy collar. At 4.30 he passes again, homeward bound. His breath is beery and fagged and he walks differently, with a kowtowed slope, through rheumy eyes. He remembers coming home to the smell of cooking, to the sound of pan-clatter and radio-songs. To a time when the space he occupied was full of someone else. Now he comes back to a dank fridge and spilt-full ash trays. To a silence that has been waiting for him. There was a time when Saturdays meant dancing and girls in clean dresses with three-span waists. He’s not unhappy. In the pub, with the lights dimmed, he laughs side by side with the other day drinkers and bet makers. But at night , as the moors drink the dark at the end of the road and this small town rumbles in its sleep, he wonders just what happened.
..
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“What’s in a word ?” he asked. It was half past two in the morning, he was trying to get inside my head and I imagined strands of my hair inching towards his own, wrapping him like a vine.
“Words are like colours” I whispered. “They have their own hues and change according to the mouths they tumble from”. We lay there in silence with eyes closed. I wasn’t sure I could explain anymore.
I thought of plump swollen words or slimy viscous worded strands that leave the throat reluctantly in grief or anger. Words which sprinkle like glitter, bringing with them smiles and ridiculous moments of breath sucked away. I thought of sharp red-blue words to cut and cauterise and of my favourite; words eaten straight from anothers mouth- with no gap between- received before they can fall out into the world. In the dark I felt his mouth opening, mouthing full blown and softly, cunt , I caught and swallowed.
Cunt, a fleshy oyster of a word.
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‘I am fashioned out of perversity and there’s ribbons of lust amongst my hair.’
That’s how I introduced myself one stupid fanciful brimful night with the lights of Pigalle reflected in my eyes and the busy mix of exhaust fumes skirting around our ankles. I was drunk, of course. That’s the way he liked me best – the only way I liked myself.
He laughed and grabbed my hand.
The hotel room was as gloomy as we’d imagined. A beige brown concoction with the ghost of other lives ingrained in the walls. Deep reggae rumbled somewhere else sending the bed tingling and we opened the window to let the city in. Later that night the shower tray flooded and we mopped the floor naked and slippy with hotel towels smelling of laundries and bare wooden cupboards.
He was always a stranger to me, bringing with him the thrill of a first taste. As his fingers roamed my body I became twisted into something else, something away from myself. Seen through his eyes I was braver, funnier, lighter. He was a mirror who reflected all the right answers and consequently he was an addiction.
But above all else it was his name I loved. It flew from my mouth , the whole of it, first and second as I spent myself over and over again, or it clung to my lips , tongue tipping , delicate. Sometimes I wonder that had he been called John or Ben or anything else but his name, it would all have been so different.
Ok so. Shall I tell you how much I’d like to word wrap you sticky sweet and screaming ? Lick lick lick late night swollen and bandy toss damp hair into clumped flesh. Because you are whoreish, of that there is no doubt. If I scraped away the layers I’d find a boys amoral interior. We are simpler than the other girls , I’d laugh. No pontification, just blood lust action, sardine slippy ssssside be side on the bed and I’d provocatively accuse you through taut lips of p e n i s envy. Whispered, just like that. Hot breath swarming onto wet mouth steaming, a rush of prickling stinging welts. We’d laugh in snorts as I confess I’d like to try a dick on for size. Not because I want one forever. Not cold hard plastic but a real one. Just to be a man boy for a day and prove that it wasn’t gender man, it was what you are, what you like. We can’t box off so easily, we can’t try to explain it that way, that’s the way it just is, I’d sigh- we don’t need no god.
.
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love me
-
He used to write
in two ways ( love me ! I cry )
the first time, meandering thoughts and
far fetched, stretched out climbs.
His second way ( love me,
I shout, for I need
to be loved ) – trickles secrets
as soft as the breeze .
‘
‘
He likes fucking her when she’s hungover, when she’s all ragdoll limbs and pickled insides. She blinds herself with eyes closed tight and sinks into somebody else. The games they play are inevitable, he likes to be the daddy but schoolgirl’s her favourite. And when he looks at her , across the kitchen table he knows he’ll stay, for now. There is still some more of her to know.
He finishes work at five thirty and takes forty five minutes to drive home. He listens to a radio show which plays music from his youth. Songs he loved, songs he hated, he goes through them all again. It makes him feel a little sad, a little old, but he indulges this sentimentality. The remembering, the thick heat of the car, the bumps in the road and the vibration of the engine make him hard. He likes it.
When she’s not on nights she gets home before him. The kitchen still smells of burnt toast from the morning and the washing machine has finished its load. She pulls out skeins of colour, clothes twisted and spun together, black tights spiralled around damp jean legs and she thinks of fucking him and of the way two bodies can merge seamlessly and yet be so distinct. He makes her smell muskier than other men.
