Siobhan
"These two very big statues, these `Colossi', are all that remain of the funerary temple of Amenhotep III", our guide warns us, shouting for the whole bus to hear. I wince and glance at Adam, looking sternly through the window. "It's really beautiful: you basically have two giant figures, proud and strong, guarding ferociously a whole vast stretch of nothing."
I'm pretty sure our guide doesn't like me. I reckon she likes my husband but she hates me. Earlier, when she talked about the temple of Hatshepsut, she gestured at the whole grandiose site and glowed: "Hatshepsut means the `foremost of Noble Ladies', so you see how a lady is treated in Ancient Egypt!" She chuckled, finding her own humour charming, then glared briefly at me. She seemed to say "How much of a lady are you? What kind of bloody temple do you get in fucking Watford?" I wonder what she sounds like when she curses in Arabic, when she gets really mad, or really sad, or really frustrated.
The bus is stifling hot, almost like outside, minus the little breeze. We stop; the horde gets out; the horde snaps pictures of the two giant statues; the horde snaps pictures of the whole vast of nothing; the horde gets back in the bus and starts babbling again. God, I want to be back at the hotel. I want to be alone, I want to think.
It'll be nice, and new, to think about my life. I haven't often done that; there hasn't been much to ponder, I guess, in the last few years. But misery brings change and change could be exciting. It has to be. Thinking about being back home, about what comes next, is all I really want to do today. The prospect of being able to is actually exciting, even if daunting. Yet, it is one way to get me through this day. And the next. And the next. And the trip back to England. Thinking about my way out is my way out. For now.
The guide just made a joke on her microphone, but I didn't catch it. The horde is having a big laugh. Adam is still looking at the dreary landscape through the window; he is smiling, but I'm not sure he heard the joke either. My God, I didn't sign up for this. For any of this. I want to be alone and I want to think.
I am ready to think about Callum, something that I haven't done in years now, not consciously or willingly. I am strangely keen to face him, to confront his memory, like a hand drawn the burning tip of a melting candle. Or am I like these girls who need to cut themselves, to suffer a pain that makes them feel alive? I read about them in a magazine.
I buried you, Callum, buried you alive and left you behind. But I haven't, have I? Not really. So we might as well talk. I might as well tell you. My shame, my anger, my failure are now so complete, so final, that I am ready to bow to you and admit capitulation. There really isn't much that can add to or worsen the resounding fiasco of my choices and delusion. You win, Callum, you win.
I remember when I first met you, Callum. Surely you do too. It was in one of those clubs, nestled underneath the arches on the beachfront of Brighton. I was with a group of girls, who probably all looked like me. You were alone, aloof and bored. You wouldn't dance, you were too cool for that, but you kept looking at me, who was jostling around awkwardly on the dance floor, trying so hard to appear poised, sexual and confident – everything I wasn't, not before I met you. Oh, you were such a cliché, the bad boy my mother (all mothers, really) would warn me against. But you were such a sexy, enticing, dangerous cliché.
I see us later, underneath the pier, standing against one of its dirty, mossy, wet wooden pillars. That was the first time I touched your cock. Yes, Callum, your dark eyes were beautiful, your unruly mop of hair was appealing, and your sweet-talking voice was husky. But it was your cock that shattered the old me at that moment. It was a throbbing, tumescent beast staring me down. You didn't exist for a brief moment, you evaporated. It was just me and It. I knew, I really knew, with the kind of clarity that shakes you inside and chills your bones, that whatever I did next was a pivotal choice. I could run away, back to my pink room in a pink flat, and lock myself shut in choking, crushing, pink boredom. Or I could be the girl you picked, the girl you chose, the girl you selected in the club; I could be what you saw and who you fancied. I could be that person, not just for you and not just for tonight. Your cock, your long and veiny little monster, was staring me down and waiting for an answer. I took It in my mouth and something was sealed.
You fucked me in your car that night. It wasn't very pleasant. You then laughed at me asking if it had been my first time. I didn't lie, not really, when I said no. I did lie when I claimed experience (a half-failed, bleeding, and rushed one-time thing isn't really experience) and I did make up, on the spot, a new and different Siobhan: one who sneered at the number of cars she had shagged in, one who was casual about the soiling of her most expensive dress with all the dried cum, one who uttered a blasé "maybe" when you asked if I'd like to meet up again.
I would have died if I hadn't seen you again. I was young and stupid, I know, but there you have it. I wanted to grow into that person I had invented while your middle finger was expertly invading my vagina, right under the pier, with the sounds of the waves and of your whispered cursing of the foulest sex-talk I had ever heard. Because you liked that person, you obviously did. "Jesus, fuck", you exclaimed, surprised, when I repeated later in your car some of your own trash talk (I lacked the imagination and vocabulary I gained in the following months).
You were an apprentice electrician, nicked a few trinkets from old ladies, dealt a a bit of weed on the side, had both your arms covered in tattoos and shared a flat with an old, deaf, incontinent uncle. I was a bored, two a penny psych student at Uni and went back most weekends to my parents' middle-class semi-detached in Tunbridge Wells, imploding inside at the dullness of my female flatmates (and only friends), suffocating with the dreary landscape of my likely future. But still you said, barely two months after we met, "You and I, babe, oh, you and I. We're so alike. We're nothing like all these twats, right? You and me, babe."
We were never "together". You were always very insistent about that. "That'd be so fucking boring, Shiv. Imagine that." No, we fucked and we talked. I listened to your rants about the world being unfair, the London girls not putting out, your boss being on your arse, the police being fascist pigs, the London girls being so snotty. You really had something for these London girls, I don't know why. Fucking a London girl, the object of so much vile and scorn, was apparently the height of sexual achievement, and fucking a London girl up the arse was the Holy Grail. "Imagine that", you said, repeatedly.
I talked too. You liked hearing about the blokes I had seduced (some of them, I can tell you now, were entirely made up). You liked hearing about what I did to them and with them, but nothing pleased you more than when my stories, recollections and gossip amounted essentially to a spiteful emasculation of these guys. You relished premature ejaculations, small dicks, limp dicks, clumsy inexperience, or inability to stir up at least one orgasm on my part. The smarter, the posher, the nicer, the richer these guys were when I met them, the more inadequate, laughable, prudish, and humiliated I had to make them. For you. For you to fuck me, for you to say "Oh, you and me, babe, we're nothing like these twats, right?"
I sucked and fucked all these other guys to be better with you, to become the skilled and voracious lover that I pretended to be. "I like that you you are in charge of your cunt'," you once told me. "What does that even mean?" I asked, feigning lack of interest. "You're like a man, you fuck just when you want. No bullshit about it. You take it and enjoy it." Then you slid your hand under my skirt and went straight for my pussy, knowing I wasn't wearing any underwear because I had told you I wasn't. I had told you I very often wasn't - whereas I would only do such things when I knew I'd see you, when I knew I'd have the chance to tell you something dirty about me. I wouldn't wear panties because I knew it'd increase the chances of you fucking me, it'd further build the image of Siobhan the wild little thing. It'd make you think, apparently, that I was "in charge of my cunt". Christ.
I thought you might change your mind about us being together. Well, I actually lived for that, restively attentive to any sign you might give away that the "soulmates" you claimed we were could become the "lovebirds" you usually sniggered at on the pier. So I waited. And masked the pain whenever you started a story with "Let me tell you about the bird I fucked last night". And rejoiced silently whenever you held my hand or took me to the movies or held me in your arms on the beach or said something sweet like "I love that I can cum on your tits".
I wasn't a victim, let me tell you that. I guess I did actually own my sexuality. And I took plenty from you. You made me feel alive, Callum, so incredibly, bloody alive. I shed my friends, I didn't lose them. I became confident, I became beautiful. There was some gossip about me, sure, but I existed. A whole new breed of people became intrigued by who I was, cool and interesting people. Some of these new friends I never talked to you about much, because you would have found them pretentious or "too normal", or you would have fucked them (Sarah, my new flatmate, was a London girl). I had a good life, based only partly on lies. I wasn't the girl I used to be and wasn't becoming the woman I was expected to turn into. And I knew I was special to you and that was incredible. "You and me, babe".
Some blokes were actually nice and sweet and caring; they found me beautiful and engaging. Adam was like that. He seemed flattered and surprised when I came on to him or when I took his clothes off or when I sucked him off or when I rode him. Always flattered, always surprised. He was sweet and he told me the nicest things, things I rarely heard from one-night stands whom I had just fucked commandingly. Adam was moving and stealthily attractive. I tried to tell you about him, Callum, probably to make you jealous. "He looks like a bloody poofter," you had sneered, which didn't make me think much, since every guy not working-class or not in prison looked like a poofter to you. So, of course, I dropped Adam ("Who'd want such a boring stiff?"), told you how small his cock looked compared to yours (another lie, yours was big but not that big), and ignored him for the following two years.
Two years. Two years of waiting for you, two years of increasing disorientation and yearning. Two years of hearing you say "I'll never get fixed up. No way. No woman is ever going to chain me, you know. I'm just like you with your men. Oh, you and I, babe, we're the same".
Two years until you stopped calling me, until you told me with an inept mixture of bravado and coyness that you'd met someone and that she was pretty possessive when it came to you seeing other people ("Even my friends!"). A London girl, of course. Of course. Then you disappeared. You fucking got married. You moved. You sent me a postcard from Benidorm ("I envy your freedom, babe! Keep shagging!"). You worked for your father-in-law on construction sites. I thought the joke would be on you: your fucking London girl is from bloody Croydon. But apparently, you liked it there. You chav.
So I ran into Adam in the Lanes and we talked. And again, he was nice and sweet, he was flattered and surprised. We had tea together a few times (tea!), he took me to the cinema. We kissed at the door of my flat. He smelled good, he smelled clean. I never talked much and that seemed to be fine with him. He wasn't very sexual and it was definitely fine and soothing and cleansing to bury that side of me (a side which belonged to you, Callum, to you). The first time we found ourselves naked in a bed, I hadn't seen a cock in five months (and the last wasn't yours, Callum, it was the cock of that bouncer you asked me to suck off so he'd stop being such an arse with us).
I was numb, but not unhappy. Adam asked if he could introduce me to his parents and I said yes, knowing that this was the beginning of something which would then unfold in an unbroken, predictable, dreary sequence. His parents were civil but glacially distant; I had to step out into their manicured, tiny garden to get some air. When we left, driving back in his little Vauxhall, he shyly said that his parents were nice but he didn't want to lead the life they had. I looked away, through the window, and said "Good, and if you promise we won't become like mine either, we have a deal".
And that was that. I signed up. It was either that or drinking myself to oblivion or blowing my brains out (or yours).
While you were fixing electric doorbells in stupid Croydon, we settled in real London. Watford, granted, but still: north of the Thames, Callum. We have real jobs, we travel to interesting places, and we have a real garden. And Adam didn't "chain me", didn't make me into a tame neutered poodle like Croydon girl probably did with you.
"You married the poofter!!!!!!" was the last thing you scribbled to me, with actual spelling mistakes in both the insult and my wedded status. I tore that card in so many pieces, the joints of my fingers hurt. I watched all the tiny pieces snow down in the bin but felt only pain and anguish. You weren't even jealous, or piqued, or bitter: it was all a big joke to you.
Then came the anger.
A slowly burning, quietly gnawing anger. At you, of course, though it is easily quashed down, ignored or diverted. At Adam sometimes and, granted, for no particular or decent reason. At the world, stupidly yet decidedly, for its unforgiven nature, for its relentless insistence on making you pay for your mistakes and on reminding you about your failures past and present.
It never subsides, or not for long, this anger. It is intent on tarring and spoiling any little bright spot. Whenever I start to feel calmer or, God forbid, happy, something nasty comes up to fuel its fire. When Adam and I started really planning for this trip, buying books and reading about the highlights, I have to learn from Seanna that you just had twins. You, Callum, who loved the pose of despising children. When I start packing a few days before we leave (Adam's insistence, not mine), I go out with the girls at the pub and I have to run into Liam. Liam, Adam's roommate at Uni, a bloke so pathetic even his dumb wife left him. And Liam makes a pass at me. He is drunk, smelly, sweaty, stupid and he makes a pass at me. "Come on, Shiv, I remember, you were quite the cock-loving fun girl at uni. Come on."
But I now know the anger is not the worst. You're too idiotic to have crafted some fucking master plan, but the anger is nothing compared to your worst parting gift: the curse of missing your touch. Yes, Callum, I still miss being touched the way you touched me. I don't miss you, you little shit, but I miss your big hands, your huge hands on my body. I don't know what you did and how you did it, but I haven't been touched like this in years now. And it is killing me.
Adam is nice, he is attentive. He is meticulous, even. But he grabs me or holds me or positions me, it always feels perfunctory, proper, courteous and polite. yet he doesn't touch me, not the way you did. Even when he tries. A couple of nights ago, he uncharacteristically forced himself on me, late at night. That could have been nice. It was different, at any rate. But it ended up being ridiculous: he was fucking me with the gestures and groans and posturing of some kind of moustachioed porn star. I thought briefly he was fucking like I imagine Don Johnson would have fucked in `Miami Vice'. And my second thought was that I wished I could tell you that, I wish we could still talk about our conquests and make snotty fun of them. And I hated myself for letting my mind go in these dark corners. And I was angry.
And here, Callum, comes your final stab, your ultimate knifing, with cruel irony as your sharpened blade. Because I have to see (and hand it to you) that it was the missing of your touch, of being touched at all, that set everything off. I am this pathetic: I needed to get a massage, to fucking pay for some guy to actually touch me the way a woman like me needs to be touched. So yesterday, when I was naked and ready, when I lay on the massage table barely dried after an hour of steam room and cold water pool, I was happy. I was longing and yearning, but happy. And then the masseuse got in the room. A bloody woman, a bloody fat and middle-aged French woman. Not the beautiful Egyptian body builder I had glimpsed at the day before.
I wanted to scream, to scratch that woman's face with my manicured nails, to throw her massage table smashing her hi-fi set and destroying the tape inside, with whale and pan flute music.
But I just left. I got dressed, mumbled some apologies and got out. And when I got to the lobby, I froze. Adam and that young American were coming down the stairs together. The wrong stairs, the stairs that lead to the American's bedroom, not to ours. They were together. Together.
In retrospect, this is when I could have come up with alternative explanations. Or this is when everything could have started to make sense. Or this is when I could have lashed out at Adam, call him a pervert while slapping that arrogant young kid.
I didn't. I thought about you, Callum. "You win," is exactly what I thought. And I started sobbing, just when they were both out of sight, finally going their own separate ways after a brief, light touch of their hands.
The old American saw me as he exited the gift shop. I don't what else he saw, but he saw me. "Are you okay, dear?" he felt compelled to ask. What do you fucking think. "I'm fine", I managed to say, somewhat neutrally between two hiccups. He nudged me towards a chair, sat me down, disappeared in the bathroom and came back with some a tissue. "Do you have a cigarette?" I asked. I don't know where that came from. I haven't smoked in years. He hobbled like a Labrador towards the concierge and came back with a cigarette and a matchbox. I grabbed both, stood up and hobbled to my room. I did turn around and thank him.
Adam was in the shower. I knew he'd startle hearing me back sooner than expected. He would be scared and anxious. That was good. I went to the balcony and lit the cigarette. And I started to think. I felt something nice creeping up inside me. I couldn't quite tell what it was. But it was comforting, perhaps even exciting. Something to look forward to. But what? Something will change, my life will be different sometime in the near future. That was nice. I will make Adam pay, too. He will suffer, I was pretty sure about that. That was also nice.
This is what I call the resounding fiasco of my choices and delusion, Callum. You win.
* * *
I'm in another bus now. It's smaller, but cooler. I am alone and this is fantastic. Part of the horde is with me, but only a small part, all clamped in the front seats. I am sitting alone in the long, undivided row at the very back.
I couldn't quite fathom staying by the pool all afternoon next to Adam. He would be staring at Ben (this is how we call him now apparently, not Benjamin), watching nervously for each of the young American's moves. It's rather ghastly and sad. So I decided to sign up for the jolly afternoon at the Medina, the local market. We're almost there and I'm quite set on ditching the horde as soon as we arrive.
It's a different guide, the task of touring us through a souk being probably beneath our usual one. The new guide seems particularly bored and distracted and I find myself watching her and anticipating her moves the way I did in school when I tried to ditch our teacher during a school trip. This is actually a lot of fun. And soon enough we reach a y-shaped intersection and, as the horde follows her blindly to the right, I take a left. Within a few steps, I'm steeped in a different world: curious eyes are on me, hands are grabbing my arm to pull me toward a store, kids are asking for money and candy (with a look both pleading and aggressive), shouts of Arabic are flying around (and, as always, I can't tell whether they're angry or just animated).
I smile at first, proud and commanding. Then I slowly start to panic. I wave off kids and old men with a growing forcefulness, I increase my pace and bump into more kids and old men. My voice declining their offers or supplications is growingly curt and abrasive. I don't know where I'm going and I am having a hard time breathing. As I try to push away a woman who is pulling me by the waist, I inadvertently slap her. She freezes then curses me angrily in Arabic, soon joined by more voices, until there are more and more people circling around me, drowning me in suffocating fear, until a hand grabs me by the arm and pulls me away. It is the old American, "Richard," he'd soon remind me as we reach the Y-intersection again and I gasp for air, suddenly feeling safe again.
He doesn't say anything, he just gives me time to catch my breath and find my bearings. I feel stupid and confused. I look up toward the street we just left and find none of the assaulting frenzy I think I had just caused. Have I imagined this? Overreacted? Richard's caring and protective touch on my shoulder could mean anything.
"I think I need to get back to the hotel", I say decidedly.
"Let's", he says and starts ahead, turning his head briefly to check if I'm indeed following him.
We reach the bus pretty fast, but it stands empty, the driver probably enjoying tea somewhere.
"It's all right, I'll just walk. I'll be fine", I tell him.
"Nonsense. We're not far from the hotel, but the sun will kill you." He scans our surroundings and sees a line of horse-carts, tackily decorated with fake flowers and waiting for tourists to hop in. Richard slides his arm under mine and drags me gently towards one of them. We climb in and the driver starts yelling at his horse as soon as we give him the name of our hotel.
The ride is longer than I expected. It feels longer, at least. There is no way to hide from the sun and I can feel my cheeks, nose, shoulders boiling. I feel dizzy and have a hard time absorbing Richard's soft-spoken rambling. Whatever he is talking about is soothing, however. There is something in the tone of his voice. I catch something about me needing some rest. Then something about life and adversity and uncertainty. I try really hard to focus now, because I'm taken aback by the turn he seems to have given to the conversation. He tells me about his wives, one who died, the other who left him alone to raise his three kids. I don't want to know, I don't want him to impose intimacy between us by force-feeding me revelations and confessions. He is sweet but, my God, he is so American.
But he is persistent. He leaves silences open for me to jump in, to interact, to share. I try to stay polite, as we're stuck in a horse-cart anyway, but make a point not to encourage him. I stay mute, but it doesn't deter him. I am sweating profusely and am looking for my sunglasses, rummaging in my purse, while he chatters engagingly about "trust" and "commitment" and "self-realisation" and "moving forward" and "love" and "hope" and "finding your way".
I finally have my sunglasses on, which gives me briefly and falsely a sense of victory against the sun. As I breathe out, I hear him say, in a conclusive tone: "So you see, that's why I needed to let her go". I turn towards him and stare at his expectant eyes. He can't see me through my glasses. What would he see? Am I surprised or resentful or offended or upset or shaken? Am I angry?
"You're telling me I need to let my husband go?" I ask accusingly.
"No," he answers, flustered and embarrassed. "No, not at all. I'm sorry, Siobhan, that's not what I meant. What I'm saying is, he has to let you go."
* * *
I'm alone in bed
and Adam's not here. I'm not bothered, not really. This is how it'll be until
we get back to England. He wasn't by the pool or in our room when I came back
from the market. He mumbled some excuse when he finally joined me outside
(something about walking on the banks, I think). He had these large red spots
on his neck, the ones he sports during and after sex. He wasn't very talkative
during dinner, but that's fine. He made a lot of trips to the buffet. He was
fidgeting in bed, all the while trying to be quiet so I would fall asleep. He
stepped out of the bed noiselessly when he thought I was. It was quite
delightful to scare him, just as he was going through the door: "What's wrong,
Adam, where are you going?". "Nothing, darling, just bloody insomnia
again. I'll walk it off. Go back to sleep."
I do want to sleep; sleep is the only way to make time move faster. I wish I could sleep for hours and days, until Adam would tap me gently on the shoulder and tell me, "Wake up, Siobhan, we're home". And if I can't sleep, this is actually my second best choice: being alone and thinking. Thinking about being back home, about what comes next. Thinking that I'm not that old, that I can start again, that I can be yet another new Siobhan, one whom I like, who has a flat in the city and posh friends and a glamorous job. A real London girl.
I'm not quite there yet. And it seems exhausting to get there, somehow. There'll need to be some talking. Maybe I can do that. Maybe Adam and I will talk: he'll cry and hug me, I'll tell him he is and will stay my best friend. I'll wish him the best and he will do the same. We'll stay in touch, he'll come to my new flat in the city and he'll be in awe. I'll pat him on the shoulder goodbye.
Or maybe we won't talk. I'll make him cringe and contort whenever I feel he's about to talk, to bravely start a confession, humbled and pathetic. I'll stop him short and have his agony renewed and renewed again, through a whole series of silent dinners. I'll make him question himself, I'll have him wondering whether I know and what I know. I'll make him pay for a few months, pay for the years of longing to be touched, by him if not by anybody else. He left me standing there all these years with my pain and anger. He left us both there, like two giant figures, falsely proud and strong, guarding ferociously a whole vast stretch of nothing.
Chapter 6 coming soon.
Comments, reactions and feedback are welcome: benashtonvilla@yahoo.com