I find the men’s toilets and walk in. I lock the door. I stand before the mirror and raise my hand. I can smell my father on me, the sour fish-sauce smell of semen. A small streak of it is drying, claggy and white, on my index finger. I bring it to my mouth, I lick at it. I taste of my father. My father tastes of me. I wash my hands in the basin, I wash my dad off me.
•
It’s alright, Davey, I’m not angry with you, son, it’s alright.
Holding me tight against his chest, my arms wrapped around his broad shoulders, walking past the couples and families sprawled on the beach towels on the sand, curious children peering at us, my howls seemingly unstoppable, my tears still falling, my father carries me back to my mother and sister on the beach. Gently he puts me down.
My mother is about to say something, to scold me, but my father motions for her to be quiet. She shrugs and takes up her book.
He is looking down at me. The wide black lenses of his sunglasses hide his eyes. I see a little boy reflected in each lens, pale and skinny and frightened.
I muster all the strength I have, I take in a breath and hold it, I force myself not to cry; I need not to cry, I have to show my father that I can not cry.
My father, a colossus soaring over me, a hero, a god, proffers me a dazzling smile and points out to the sea. ‘Go and play, David,’ he says. ‘Just go out there and have fun.’
At the water’s edge, the waves rushing at my feet, the gulls screaming above me, the sun beating down on me, I build myself another sandcastle.
Jessica Lange in Frances
THERE’S NOT MUCH HAPPENING OUTSIDE THE window. There is just sound and violence. I’m looking down on cars slowly inching their way up the street, stalled by the trams. People are shopping. It’s a mid-afternoon, midweek crowd. The sun is still high in the sky, a thick sheet of heat.
The cat is asleep, sprawled across my lap. I’m touching my lips to the cool glass of my water, sniffing the drops of lemon I’ve squeezed into it. A drunk girl is cursing the world, stamping through the crowd below. She’s fat: her oversized Adidas shirt can’t hide the flab. I’m stroking the cat, drinking the water.
I can see Dirty Harry; he’s knocking into people, they’re cursing him. He’s eating paper. He tears it into strips, then sucks on it, chews it, swallows it all up.
‘Why do you do that?’ I asked him once. Drunk.
‘I like it.’ He asked me for another drink. ‘It lines my stomach,’ he slurred, ‘slows down the effect of the booze.’ He was scratching at a soaked beer coaster, scraping off the cardboard and rolling the scraps along his tongue. Washing it down with a whisky.
The telephone rings and I push the cat off my lap. She lands expertly on the floor, licks at a paw and then wags her bum disdainfully at me. I grab the receiver.
‘It’s me.’
I’m silent.
‘Aren’t you walking over?’
‘Maybe.’ I give in, I can feel a smile breaking through.
He senses it, the bastard can always sense it. ‘You glad I called?’
‘Where were you?’ I’m not giving in, not straight away.
‘Got pissed.’
‘I figured that.’
‘Oh, don’t start with that shit.’
My smile is gone. ‘I waited up.’
‘I said I’m sorry.’
‘No, you didn’t.’
‘I just did.’
The cat has jumped up on the coffee table and nudges herself into the fruit bowl. I’m lighting a cigarette, silent.
‘You’re smoking?’
I inhale.
‘It sure sounds sexy.’ Low, low voice. Late-night movie and joint voice. I exhale. Forgiving him.
•
The party was loud, crashing percussion on the stereo. There were bodies pressed against bodies in every room, the atmosphere thick and wet. Drunk people dancing, drunk people shouting, drunk people slumped in armchairs and couches. I turned up late, after a midnight session at the pictures. Sober. I weaved through the couples in the narrow hallway, made my way to the bathroom and tried to find a beer, but I was out of luck. There were only empty cans and cigarette butts in the icy bathtub slush.
‘Looking for piss?’ He held out his stubby to me.
I hesitated.
‘G’on,’ he urged, ‘take a swig.’
I took one.
He stumbled over to the toilet bowl and unzipped. I took another sip and watched him. His jeans were baggy, so I couldn’t make out the shape of his arse, but his black T-shirt stretched tight across his hefty shoulders. He started pissing and turned around to look at me. He held out his hand. I walked over and handed him the stubby and, still pissing, he took a swig before handing it back. We smiled, together.
‘Finish it,’ he said. The stream of urine slowed down to a trickle. He shook out the last drops, zipped up and left without washing his hands. I noticed that. I can’t piss without washing up afterwards. The habit of a lifetime.
I found Leah in one of the bedrooms, sharing a joint with some of her friends from college. I sat down next to her, put my arm around her and kissed her neck.
‘How was the movie?’
‘Good,’ I answered. ‘Fun.’
The man from the bathroom was now standing in the doorway, stroking the face of a very beautiful neo-hippie girl. She had glitter on her cheeks and he was tracing the stardust.
I looked away, pretending to ignore him.
He was pretending to ignore me.
•
A grape has fallen into the cat’s water bowl. Black hairs are swimming around in it. I pour out a dish of dry food for her and wash the bowl in the sink. The grape falls into the plughole and I squash it down with my thumb, watch the flesh drop through the grille. Some nights, especially when it’s rained, slugs swarm around her bowl, getting into the meat, drowning in her water. I pick them up with toilet paper. I hate touching them, hate the sticky residue they leave on my fingers. He doesn’t mind at all, picks them up and chucks them straight back into the garden, wipes his fingers across his jeans, leaving silver streaks.
The cat sniffs at the dry biscuits, eats a few, turns away. I close the laundry door, walk through the garden and go out the back gate. The kitchen hand from the Vietnamese restaurant next door is sitting on a milk crate, smoking a cigarette.
‘How you going?’ I ask him.
‘Alright.’ He drops his voice and points to the terrace behind us. ‘But I wish I wasn’t working in this fucking dump.’ A strong wind is blowing stale hot air hard onto my face. I smell the greasy stink from the kitchen.
It takes forty minutes to walk to his place. I arrive hot, sweating and in a bad temper. He is out in the back garden, a wet cloth draped over his head, empty beer cans around his feet. He’s wearing his underpants, nothing else. His white underpants, his very brown skin.
He looks up at me, squints, grinning. ‘How are ya?’ He doesn’t wait for a reply. ‘Feel like going to the pub, mate? I’m all out of piss.’
•
They had put chairs and a few cushions out in the backyard. Scented candles were melting over a small coffee table. I left Leah, her friends and their boring conversation about school and exams and gossip. I was stoned. There was no one else in the yard, the party had thinned out and I was enjoying the solitude. It wasn’t much of a garden, a few patches of green. I lay down on a cushion, looking at the stars. A half-moon.