know each other and if you don’t have to stay together just because otherwise you’ll never see each other again – then you can get through an awful lot of lovers. Besides that, it’s kind of nice, like keeping it in the family.”
I felt strange about all her relationships. I didn’t want to know about them and yet I did. I’d ask about them and then when she told me I’d get angry and jealous. I’d try to hide it but I’m not very good at hiding.
I suffer terribly from jealousy.
I met one of the men once. The carpenter. He seemed nice. And completely innocuous. Dull. Which annoyed me even more. Because if he was so dull and so nice, how was it that she’d ended up with me? That she said she wanted to spend forever with me? Was there in me some hidden shred of boring which she found attractive?
Though there is something about boring which is attractive. A life with no surprises. A life with no change.
I don’t like change.
We went to dinner at the carpenter’s house. He’d just finished renovating it. It had taken him five years. And he’d enjoyed doing it. Enjoyed stripping the banisters by hand. Enjoyed sanding the skirting boards, replacing the sashes on the old windows. I’d have ripped it all out and replaced it with chrome. Something clean and crisp with no hidden recesses. So nothing can hide away.
It did look wonderful, but he said there was still damp in the walls and rot in the foundations. He told us about therot as if that wouldn’t shatter the view of all that we’d just seen.
Once I know that something’s rotten, I can’t see it any other way.
And then when she went upstairs to the toilet he told me that he liked me. He liked me and he wanted to have sex with me.
I must have looked stunned because he said it again.
“I mean it Maggie, I think you’re really beautiful. You’re driving me crazy.”
Even if I’d wanted to, that would have done it. I couldn’t possibly have sex with someone who says “driving me crazy”.
“No Peter. I couldn’t. Apart from anything else, I couldn’t do it to her.”
“Well, we can have a threesome.”
Then I knew he was a bastard.
“No Peter. We could not have a threesome. Not only would it bore me senseless, but she wouldn’t like it. She doesn’t have good sex with men.”
“But she told me …”
“She was twenty-two, Peter. At that age women often lie to men. Some women do it all their lives. Some women really believe it would harm a man irreparably to hear that they were an incompetent lover.”
He was blustering now, “I’m not …”
“How do you know? Can you be sure that not one of the women you’ve seduced with your masterful technique was faking it?”
“Well no, but you just know don’t you?”
“Do you Peter? Do you know what it feels like to be a woman? Do you know what good sex feels like for a woman? I know because I’m a woman. How can you possibly?”
He was deflating in front of me. And the more I pushed home my point, the further he moved away from me. Not that it’s even a point I believe in. There’s a big myth surrounding “women-loving-women”, it sells a lot of books. No one can ever really know how another person feels. But it’s a great argument when dealing with a Neanderthal.
Then the Woman with the Kelly McGillis body swayed her slightly drunken way back down the stairs and came to sit beside me. Holding my hand and occasionally kissing my bare left shoulder. And we talked of nothing for another hour or so until she and I left for home. She was getting into the car as I turned to say goodbye to him on the doorstep. I looked up at him and was momentarily shocked to see that Mr Dull-and-Boring was long gone. He grabbed my wrist very tightly and snarled “You’re wrong, she did enjoy it. She never faked a thing.”
But it was him that was wrong there. She might have had good sex with him. Her memories, what she told me of its mediocrity, may have changed with the mists of time.
I felt strange about all her relationships. I didn’t want to know about them and yet I did. I’d ask about them and then when she told me I’d get angry and jealous. I’d try to hide it but I’m not very good at hiding.
I suffer terribly from jealousy.
I met one of the men once. The carpenter. He seemed nice. And completely innocuous. Dull. Which annoyed me even more. Because if he was so dull and so nice, how was it that she’d ended up with me? That she said she wanted to spend forever with me? Was there in me some hidden shred of boring which she found attractive?
Though there is something about boring which is attractive. A life with no surprises. A life with no change.
I don’t like change.
We went to dinner at the carpenter’s house. He’d just finished renovating it. It had taken him five years. And he’d enjoyed doing it. Enjoyed stripping the banisters by hand. Enjoyed sanding the skirting boards, replacing the sashes on the old windows. I’d have ripped it all out and replaced it with chrome. Something clean and crisp with no hidden recesses. So nothing can hide away.
It did look wonderful, but he said there was still damp in the walls and rot in the foundations. He told us about therot as if that wouldn’t shatter the view of all that we’d just seen.
Once I know that something’s rotten, I can’t see it any other way.
And then when she went upstairs to the toilet he told me that he liked me. He liked me and he wanted to have sex with me.
I must have looked stunned because he said it again.
“I mean it Maggie, I think you’re really beautiful. You’re driving me crazy.”
Even if I’d wanted to, that would have done it. I couldn’t possibly have sex with someone who says “driving me crazy”.
“No Peter. I couldn’t. Apart from anything else, I couldn’t do it to her.”
“Well, we can have a threesome.”
Then I knew he was a bastard.
“No Peter. We could not have a threesome. Not only would it bore me senseless, but she wouldn’t like it. She doesn’t have good sex with men.”
“But she told me …”
“She was twenty-two, Peter. At that age women often lie to men. Some women do it all their lives. Some women really believe it would harm a man irreparably to hear that they were an incompetent lover.”
He was blustering now, “I’m not …”
“How do you know? Can you be sure that not one of the women you’ve seduced with your masterful technique was faking it?”
“Well no, but you just know don’t you?”
“Do you Peter? Do you know what it feels like to be a woman? Do you know what good sex feels like for a woman? I know because I’m a woman. How can you possibly?”
He was deflating in front of me. And the more I pushed home my point, the further he moved away from me. Not that it’s even a point I believe in. There’s a big myth surrounding “women-loving-women”, it sells a lot of books. No one can ever really know how another person feels. But it’s a great argument when dealing with a Neanderthal.
Then the Woman with the Kelly McGillis body swayed her slightly drunken way back down the stairs and came to sit beside me. Holding my hand and occasionally kissing my bare left shoulder. And we talked of nothing for another hour or so until she and I left for home. She was getting into the car as I turned to say goodbye to him on the doorstep. I looked up at him and was momentarily shocked to see that Mr Dull-and-Boring was long gone. He grabbed my wrist very tightly and snarled “You’re wrong, she did enjoy it. She never faked a thing.”
But it was him that was wrong there. She might have had good sex with him. Her memories, what she told me of its mediocrity, may have changed with the mists of time.
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