And then I go to the bathroom, and clean my teeth; and then I come back; and then we make love; and then we talk for a bit; and then we turn the light out, and that’s it. I’m not going into all that other stuff, the who-did-what-to-whom stuff. You know ‘Behind Closed Doors’ by Charlie Rich? That’s one of my favorite songs.
You’re entitled to know some things, I suppose. You’re entitled to know that I didn’t let myself down, that none of the major problems afflicted me, that I didn’t deliver the goods but Marie said she had a nice time anyway, and I believed her; and you’re entitled to know that I had a nice time, too, and that at some point or other along the way I remembered what it is I like about sex: what I like about sex is that I can lose myself in it entirely. Sex, in fact, is the most absorbing activity I have discovered in adulthood. When I was a child I used to feel this way about all sorts of things—Meccano, The Jungle Book, Biggles, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., the ABC Minors … I could forget where I was, the time of day, who I was with. Sex is the only thing I’ve found like that as a grown-up, give or take the odd film: books are no longer like that once you’re out of your teens, and I’ve certainly never found it in my work. All the horrible pre-sex self-consciousness drains out of me, and I forget where I am, the time of day … and yes, I forget who I’m with, for the time being. Sex is about the only grown-up thing I know how to do; it’s weird, then, that it’s the only thing that can make me feel like a ten-year-old.
I wake up around dawn, and I have the same feeling I had the other night, the night I caught on about Laura and Ray: that I’ve got no ballast, nothing to weigh me down, and if I don’t hang on, I’ll just float away. I like Marie a lot, she’s funny and smart and pretty and talented, but who the hell is she? I don’t mean that philosophically. I just mean, I don’t know her from Eve, so what am I doing in her bed? Surely there’s a better, safer, more friendly place for me than this? But I know there isn’t, not at the moment, and that scares me rigid.
I get up, find my snazzy boxers and my T-shirt, go into the living room, fumble in my jacket pocket for my fags and sit in the dark smoking. After a little while Marie gets up, too, and sits down next to me.
“You sitting here wondering what you’re doing?”
“No. I’m just, you know … ”
“ ‘Cos that’s why I’m sitting here, if it helps.”
“I thought I’d woken you up.”
“I ain’t even been to sleep yet.”
“So you’ve been wondering for a lot longer than me. Worked anything out?”
“Bits. I’ve worked out that I was real lonely, and I went and jumped into bed with the first person who’d have me. And I’ve also worked out that I was lucky it was you, and not somebody mean, or boring, or crazy.”
“I’m not mean, anyway. And you wouldn’t have gone to bed with anyone who was any of those things.”
“I’m not so sure about that. I’ve had a bad week.”
“What’s happened?”
“Nothing’s happened. I’ve had a bad week in my head, is all.”
Before we slept together, there was at least some pretense that it was something we both wanted to do, that it was the healthy, strong beginning of an exciting new relationship. Now all the pretense seems to have gone, and we’re left to face the fact that we’re sitting here because we don’t know anybody else we could be sitting with.
“I don’t care if you’ve got the blues,” Marie says. “It’s OK. And I wasn’t fooled by you acting all cool about … what’s her name?”
“Laura.”
“Laura, right. But people are allowed to feel horny and fucked-up at the same time. You shouldn’t feel embarrassed about it. I don’t. Why should we be denied basic human rights just because we’ve messed up our relationships?”
I’m beginning to feel more embarrassed about the conversation than about anything we’ve just done. Horny? They really use that word? Jesus. All my life I’ve wanted to go to bed with an American, and now I have, and I’m beginning to see why people don’t do it more often. Apart from Americans, that is, who probably go to bed with Americans all the time.
“You think sex is a basic human right?”
“You bet. And I’m not going tolet that asshole stand between me and a fuck.”
I try not to think about the peculiar anatomical diagram she has just drawn. And I also decide not to point out that though sex may well be a basic human right, it’s kind of hard to insist on that right if you keep on busting up with the people you want to have sex with.
“Which arsehole?”
She spits out the name of a fairly well-known American singer-songwriter, someone you might have heard of.
“He’s the one you had to split the Patsy Cline records with?”
She nods, and I can’t control my enthusiasm.
“That’s amazing!”
“What, that you’ve slept with someone who’s slept with … ” (Here she repeats the name of the fairly well-known American singer-songwriter, whom I shall hereafter refer to as Steve.)
She’s right! Exactly that! Exactly that! I’ve slept with someone who’s slept with … Steve! (That sentence sounds stupid without his real name in it. Like, I’ve danced with a man who danced with a girl who danced with … Bob. But just imagine the name of someone, not really famous, but quite famous, Lyle Lovett, say, although I should point out, for legal reasons, that it’s not him, and you’ll get the idea.)
“Don’t be daft, Marie. I’m not that crass. I just meant, you know, it’s amazing that someone who wrote—” (and here I name Steve’s greatest hit, a drippy and revoltingly sensitive ballad) “should be such a bastard.” I’m very pleased with this explanation for my amazement. Not only does it get me out of a hole, but it’s both sharp and relevant.
“That song’s about his ex, you know, the one before me. It felt real good listening to him sing that night after night, I can tell you.”
This is great. This is how I imagined it would be, going out with someone who had a recording contract.
“And then I wrote ‘Patsy Cline Times Two,’ and he’s probably writing something about me writing a song about all that, and she’s probably writing a song about having a song written about her, and … ”
“That’s how it goes. We all do that.”
“You all write songs about each other?”
“No, but … ”
It would take too long to explain about Marco and Charlie, and how they wrote Sarah, in a way, because without Marco and Charlie there would have been no Sarah, and how Sarah and her ex, the one who wanted to be someone at the BBC, how they wrote me, and how Rosie the pain-in-the-arse simultaneous orgasm girl and I wrote Ian. It’s just that none of us had the wit or the talent to make them into songs. We made them into life, which is much messier, and more time-consuming, and leaves nothing for anybody to whistle.
Marie stands up. “I’m about to do something terrible, so please forgive me.” She walks over to her audiocassette, ejects one tape, rummages around, and then puts in another, and the two of us sit in the dark and listen to the songs of Marie LaSalle. I think I can understand why, too; I think if I were homesick and lost and unsure of what I was playing at, I’d do the same. Fulfilling work is a great thing at times like these. What am I supposed to do? Go and unlock the shop and walk around it?
“Is this gross or what?” she says after a little while. “It’s kind of like masturbation or something, listening to myself for pleasure. How d’you feel about that, Rob? Three hours after we made love and I’m already jerking off.”
I wish she hadn’t said that. It kind of spoiled the moment.
We get back to sleep, in the end, and we wake up late, and I look and perhaps even smell a bit grottier than she might have wanted, in an ideal world, and she’s friendly but distant; I get the feeling that last night is unlikely to be repeated. We go out for breakfast, to a place that is full of young couples who have spent the night together, and though we don’t look out of place, I know we are: everybody else seems happy and comfortable and established, not nervy, and new and sad, and Marie and I read our newspapers with an intensity that is designed to cut out any further intimacy. It’s only afterwards that we really set ourselves apart from the rest, though: a quick and rueful peck on the cheek, and I have the rest of Sunday to myself, whether I want it or not.