hands in his pockets.
‘Er, yeah,’ he says, turning to the taxi driver.
Before I know it I’m grinning in the back of a very clean taxi listening to Magic FM. Foreigner’s playing. Foreigner’s always playing on Magic FM. Normally I call it Suicide FM and switch it off. Now I get it. ‘I Want To Know What Love Is’. Blimey.
seven
I am a slothful, flabby, fetid lump of female waste. I don’t leave the house. I don’t get dressed. I have been wearing the same pair of pink Primark pyjamas for three days. (I did change my knickers yesterday.) I am tea-stained and toast-crumbed and I itch. There are three reasons for this:
1)
Leos are lazy and this is because they are the lions of the zodiac. Lions apparently spend twenty-three hours of the day sleeping and the rest of the time looking for food and sex
2)
I am an addict and a slave to the Internet. My computer is always hot. This morning she groaned when I turned her on. She fears my abuse, but as there are no legal guidelines stipulating working conditions and breaks for laptops she must continue to work for her smelly mistress
3)
I while away hours simply daydreaming about Paul. I keep imagining him naked. I think I may be entering my sexual peak. I took the vibrator my sister bought me for my last birthday out of the box yesterday. I had been thinking about doing unspeakable things to his body after kissing him all over and I decided to get the massive fuchsia battery-operated plastic willy out. I turned it on. It sounded like a lawnmower. Simon was home. I put it back in the box quickly
The current mess in my room frightens Simon. He doesn’t understand that I have found order in chaos. Everything I own is strewn across my room so that I can see it and know exactly where it is. Simon came into my room earlier to give me my post and look in the mirror and he wasn’t armed with the knowledge that underneath my favourite T-shirt there was an opened tub of hummus. He trod on the T-shirt and the sensation of chickpeas and plastic and acrylic underfoot caused him to shout that I was a ‘dirty goat’.
There is a masculine knock on my bedroom door. I don’t answer. I count to one and Simon enters carrying my newly washed favourite T-shirt. He moves a dirty plate from the bed, sits down and carefully says:
‘Are you depressed?’
‘Not clinically so,’ I tell him. ‘Although do you think if you haven’t heard from a man after three days he’s not interested?’
‘I’d say if you haven’t heard from him after a week then he definitely thinks you’re a minger.’
‘Hmmm, well at least I’m still in with a chance. But he should have at least texted me by now. Don’t you think?’
‘Sare, I’m getting worried about you. You need to get out, or at least open the curtains. Why don’t you come for a run with me?’
‘Everyone laughs at me when I run.’
‘Only when you run in high heels, and you’d be wearing trainers and no one gives a damn about anyone else anyway.’
‘Simon, I’ve run with you before. It’s up there as one of the singularly most disturbing experiences of my life so far.’
A few months ago Simon and I went running in Regent’s Park. People who witnessed it probably still talk about the time that fit bloke sped around the park with that wheezing, pleading woman following ten yards behind him. Every so often I would stop and pant, ‘I can’t go on. It hurts. I can’t breathe,’ and Simon would run back to me and say, ‘OK, we’ll stop and do some stretching. Gotta stretch, Sare.’ Then he would lie me on my sweaty back on the cold pavement, pick a leg up and pull it about until I screamed. When we eventually got home Simon was barely clammy. I was red and wet. I looked like a glistening hog on a spit. I was just thinking how nice a bath with a gin and tonic would be when he said, ‘Now the abs,’ and made me do a billion crunches on the kitchen floor with him. We finished. I lay whimpering, unable to move.
‘Er, yeah,’ he says, turning to the taxi driver.
Before I know it I’m grinning in the back of a very clean taxi listening to Magic FM. Foreigner’s playing. Foreigner’s always playing on Magic FM. Normally I call it Suicide FM and switch it off. Now I get it. ‘I Want To Know What Love Is’. Blimey.
seven
I am a slothful, flabby, fetid lump of female waste. I don’t leave the house. I don’t get dressed. I have been wearing the same pair of pink Primark pyjamas for three days. (I did change my knickers yesterday.) I am tea-stained and toast-crumbed and I itch. There are three reasons for this:
1)
Leos are lazy and this is because they are the lions of the zodiac. Lions apparently spend twenty-three hours of the day sleeping and the rest of the time looking for food and sex
2)
I am an addict and a slave to the Internet. My computer is always hot. This morning she groaned when I turned her on. She fears my abuse, but as there are no legal guidelines stipulating working conditions and breaks for laptops she must continue to work for her smelly mistress
3)
I while away hours simply daydreaming about Paul. I keep imagining him naked. I think I may be entering my sexual peak. I took the vibrator my sister bought me for my last birthday out of the box yesterday. I had been thinking about doing unspeakable things to his body after kissing him all over and I decided to get the massive fuchsia battery-operated plastic willy out. I turned it on. It sounded like a lawnmower. Simon was home. I put it back in the box quickly
The current mess in my room frightens Simon. He doesn’t understand that I have found order in chaos. Everything I own is strewn across my room so that I can see it and know exactly where it is. Simon came into my room earlier to give me my post and look in the mirror and he wasn’t armed with the knowledge that underneath my favourite T-shirt there was an opened tub of hummus. He trod on the T-shirt and the sensation of chickpeas and plastic and acrylic underfoot caused him to shout that I was a ‘dirty goat’.
There is a masculine knock on my bedroom door. I don’t answer. I count to one and Simon enters carrying my newly washed favourite T-shirt. He moves a dirty plate from the bed, sits down and carefully says:
‘Are you depressed?’
‘Not clinically so,’ I tell him. ‘Although do you think if you haven’t heard from a man after three days he’s not interested?’
‘I’d say if you haven’t heard from him after a week then he definitely thinks you’re a minger.’
‘Hmmm, well at least I’m still in with a chance. But he should have at least texted me by now. Don’t you think?’
‘Sare, I’m getting worried about you. You need to get out, or at least open the curtains. Why don’t you come for a run with me?’
‘Everyone laughs at me when I run.’
‘Only when you run in high heels, and you’d be wearing trainers and no one gives a damn about anyone else anyway.’
‘Simon, I’ve run with you before. It’s up there as one of the singularly most disturbing experiences of my life so far.’
A few months ago Simon and I went running in Regent’s Park. People who witnessed it probably still talk about the time that fit bloke sped around the park with that wheezing, pleading woman following ten yards behind him. Every so often I would stop and pant, ‘I can’t go on. It hurts. I can’t breathe,’ and Simon would run back to me and say, ‘OK, we’ll stop and do some stretching. Gotta stretch, Sare.’ Then he would lie me on my sweaty back on the cold pavement, pick a leg up and pull it about until I screamed. When we eventually got home Simon was barely clammy. I was red and wet. I looked like a glistening hog on a spit. I was just thinking how nice a bath with a gin and tonic would be when he said, ‘Now the abs,’ and made me do a billion crunches on the kitchen floor with him. We finished. I lay whimpering, unable to move.
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