No, reading for me is something more like beginning a relationship. It is total freedom, anarchy. That’s what I love about reading. It’s why I love prefaces, introductions, prologues, forwards, all the layers you are invited to peel off before you see the meat of the book. It’s like foreplay. The preface invites you in – come get to know me better. It’s the delicious, arch, conversation with someone you know will let you enter their intimate spaces later. Some author’s introductions are quirky – this is not how I feel now, but it was true then so I have let it stand. And that’s how love should be. We were (I pray) totally in love with each of our former lovers. That made us who we are now. Although that is now past, it’s not true to say we don’t love them anymore. Those passions lie quite close to the skin, we are palimpsests of past loves. How I hate writers who revise.
Some books don’t bother to tease and entice. The short book you can’t put down, like a one night stand. So exciting. Nothing wrong with that. And then the books you have to protect yourself from. Better double-bag your mind or you’ll start talking like those brutish men who seem so necessary in that thriller/crime novel world. Don’t let yourself share too much with them. Wouldn’t want to act that way. God forbid you start to write that way.
Then you have those special books that take a long time to read. At the end you stay up late into the night, desperate to reach the conclusion and reluctant to let go. Strangely like the moment of orgasm – inevitable but also (for unfortunate men anyway) the sign that, for tonight, this experience is almost over.
Some books we return to again and again. They nourish us. It’s fruitful. They shape our action, thoughts, inspire new writing. Our faithfulness to these partners in procreation is limited. We still stray to many other partners. But those big, important books always welcome us back, confident of their rank on our private top ten. Like a lover we’ve known for years – different every time, but always like coming home. I like to be promiscuous. I’ve got lots on the go at once. The book-me, the book-mark, slips inside the covers of many volumes. Nudging through the opening pages into the intense union offered inside.
Sometimes I’m playing a part. In this book I can be a woman. In another I can imagine what it’s like to be a “man” (ugh). Some books offer the delight of voyeurism. No need to get too close. Just watch this!
Each book is a conquest. We kiss and tell, we boast. Have you been there? Did you enjoy it? So many books, so little time. How delightful when you read something no-one’s heard of. A secret love.
Perhaps we are questing for a book that would be constantly satisfying. One we’d never finish, never want to leave. A book written for me alone. An unwritten, impossible book. The unattainable.
Friday 2 March 2007
Powers
It was dark. Richard waited for his eyes to adjust but nothing happened. It was a darkness too complete. He felt as if he was under the earth but with no sense of confinement. It was cool and breezes were coming from different directions at random intervals. Richard re-closed his eyes and opened them again. No difference. He was scared and could not move. He realised now that he was sitting on a dry surface, hugging his knees to his chest. He could have been sitting on a pillar, or on the floor of a huge cave or the cell of a drafty dungeon. Richard wished there was a light, then realised he didn’t want to see. It was better not knowing what was happening.
It seemed as if some time passed. He felt hungry, but not tired. His eyes were filled with light as if from a strobe. He wondered if this was some reaction from his optic nerve to being in total darkness. The burst lasted for a fraction of a second, but left an after-image. Richard moved his head and the burnt shape blurred through purples and golds. Within the etched after-glow he could see some darker areas. Now they looked like black eyes. They stayed fixed no matter how he moved his head. It was the same with eyes open or shut.
Richard closed his eyes and tried to think about something else. No use. He hypothesised that the image of a face had been projected on to him by some powerful machine. Now his retinas were smoothing themselves. That was how he imagined them – like those children’s toys that are a matrix of metal rods in a frame. Push your hand or face into them and produce a 3-D model of yourself. Shake the rods back and you can start again. Everything was on its way back to black. But as it faded, Richard saw a reddish image of a face. It was her.
When Richard was growing up, there was a thalidomide boy in his road. Flids, they called them. Name of Kevin. The name stuck in his mind because of that song: my perfect cousin. They used to tease him. This Kevin was far from perfect. Short limbs. The hands looked unfinished, like some seedling interrupted in its secret uncurling; mis-formed fingers bent back against the forearm. He was scarred too, from some kind of surgery, perhaps. Richard never asked him.
He told them a tale about the secrets of his body. They listened intently, unable to judge if he was telling the truth. He said that when he was with a girl, his body shrivelled even more, enlarging his penis, gorging it with borrowed body-mass. It seemed plausible at the time. This differently-made body, more plastic than our own perhaps, ready to assume another form. He was a kind of super-hero. Like Daredevil – receiving powers in return for his lost sight. A kind of cosmic, karmic compensation. Richard wondered if he was due some kind of compensation. What had he lost? She didn’t belong to him. But then the notional perfect pair of arms had never belonged to Kevin either.
The flat was dirty. The air hung heavy in the rooms, he could see dust in the air of the bedroom. As he looked down the hall into the kitchen, he could see crumbs on the working surface. They were more visible from this angle than if he had been looking right at them. Richard undid and removed his trainers. He pulled off his socks and stepped into the coolness of the bathroom to toss them into the washing basket. The lino felt cold against his toes; he was relieved to be out of his shoes. His t-shirt clung to his back a little as he removed it. He moved into the kitchen and got polish and a duster ready, placing them in a corner just outside the door. So that he wouldn’t have to come back in once the floor was wet. He filled a pint glass with water and put it on a coaster on his desk in the second “bedroom” of the flat, which he used as a study and shrine room.
Now ready to begin, Richard took everything off the long worktop surface along the back wall of the flat: kettle; toaster; mug-tree. He put them behind him, on the smaller piece. He took the dishcloth and spray and cleaned down the empty space. [add hob] Now he moved everything back and repeated the process for the rest of the room. He bleached the sink and cleaned draining rack and washing-up bowl. He swept the floor and then mopped it. Although no one else was in, he angled the mop across the kitchen doorway, to keep any feet off the clean wet floor.
He cleaned methodically. As his mother had taught him. Always in the same order. The routine ensuring nothing is missed, freeing the mind for other things. He stopped for a few gulps of the water and realised he could have some music on. Cleaning topless somehow made it seem a far more male activity. Like a kind of exercise. A ritual purging. He was hungry. Cleaning made him hungry, always. Once the main rooms had been dusted, he got the hoover from its place in the hall and vacuumed the carpeted areas. He listened with interest to the noise of particles being swept up into the machine. As he did this job he remembered his mother hoovering. He’d be sat on his chair (the one on which he always sat and underneath which he was allowed to keep a few toys during the week). As she passed he’d raise his legs and she’d go underneath. Richard attended to which areas were the dirtiest and considered why there was more to pick up in some places. Crumbs dropped where he sat to eat a sandwich, pieces of fluff where he got dressed. Richard bent down to pick up a thread which the hoover could not disentangled from the fibres of the carpet. His stomach felt slimy with sweat as he bent double. Glancing over at the bed he remembered her hanging down, letting her head flop towards the floor as he sat there, complimenting her on the complex patterns of her irises. He moved each of the chairs, the table in his study. He hoovered over each of the areas he’d uncovered, noting the indentations left by legs and casters, putting everything back just where it was. Around his shrine there was quite a bit of ash, from incense he’d burned. He cleaned it thoroughly.
The bathroom was last of all. He placed every moveable object on the carpet in the hall as he sprayed and wiped the surfaces. He paused to urinate before bleaching the toilet, sweeping and mopping the floor. The shampoo, toothbrushes, deodorants and so on would have to stay on the carpet until the lino was dry. Richard reflected that, despite his thoroughness, millions of her cells would still be present in the flat. On his desk, tidy now, in a pile of books and a few loose sheets of paper he spotted a note she’d written. A reference to something she’d read, an article by Marvin Minsky she wanted to track down. She never dotted her ‘i’s. Writing at speed, a desire to get the main points down, not worrying yet about the details. Like a builder getting big, firm, but rather rough-textured foundations down.
He’s finished. He lights and incense stick and places it upright in a small bowl of sand. The flat is clean and permeated with fragrant smoke.
When he was 19, Richard thought the world was a matriarchy. Thatcher, his mother, the queen. At university, the female tutors were the most exciting. They had the freedom to be unconventional in dress which male academics did not, or did not embrace. He was painfully aware of his dependence on the bounty of females for any introduction into the arcane world of sexual experience. While he was able to express his feelings well in language, they had physical mastery. He took it for granted that they would make the first move. It seemed a form of violence to come on to a girl. He was aware of the threat he might offer, although in pictures of himself he was appalled by the pronounced curve of his neck (not a stoop exactly) and the way his bony hands suggested indecision. He had a horror about exerting excessive force. Something about growing up in the 1980s. All the crimes performed by men. All the rage and inadequacy worked out upon the bodies of women. Sex used as a power move. Men who never questioned the irrational bias of older relatives towards male offspring and had carried that superiority complex directly into the bedrooms of their first lovers.
His first lover had dominated him totally. He felt this was right. Men had sinned, he would pay, make up for it. For the world was no matriarchy, how quickly that became obvious when he allowed himself to be conscious of the reality beyond his family and school life. Even there, in the laboratories he noticed with pain the excess deference he received simply on account of his maleness. So he waited for her. She instructed him how to give pleasure. She laid her thin body out on the bed and her thin lips invited him to join her. He was honoured to share her bed, on whatever terms. He massaged her, listening carefully to instructions about speed, pressure and position. He waited. It was like a game of twister. He held himself above her, suspended on one arm and both knees while his hand worked. He touched her. She referred to her vagina as her monster. She asked him to go fast, hard. Richard was surprised – had thought the whole thing should be gentler. She paid him compliments: he was like a statue. So silent. She taught him how to kiss her there. The monster was bony. As her rhythm crested, he rode the bruising shudders, bashing his teeth through his lips. She came and he felt momentarily cleansed. Her orgasm like communion, purging him of sin and welcoming him into the fold. He gave without asking anything. He waited. She looked at him naked, handled him. Her eyes were steel blue and her kiss was fierce. His lips, tender from being clamped to her through orgasm, bled under the pressure of her teeth and mouth. She never guided him inside her and he never asked her. He waited. This was how he loved.
It seemed as if some time passed. He felt hungry, but not tired. His eyes were filled with light as if from a strobe. He wondered if this was some reaction from his optic nerve to being in total darkness. The burst lasted for a fraction of a second, but left an after-image. Richard moved his head and the burnt shape blurred through purples and golds. Within the etched after-glow he could see some darker areas. Now they looked like black eyes. They stayed fixed no matter how he moved his head. It was the same with eyes open or shut.
Richard closed his eyes and tried to think about something else. No use. He hypothesised that the image of a face had been projected on to him by some powerful machine. Now his retinas were smoothing themselves. That was how he imagined them – like those children’s toys that are a matrix of metal rods in a frame. Push your hand or face into them and produce a 3-D model of yourself. Shake the rods back and you can start again. Everything was on its way back to black. But as it faded, Richard saw a reddish image of a face. It was her.
When Richard was growing up, there was a thalidomide boy in his road. Flids, they called them. Name of Kevin. The name stuck in his mind because of that song: my perfect cousin. They used to tease him. This Kevin was far from perfect. Short limbs. The hands looked unfinished, like some seedling interrupted in its secret uncurling; mis-formed fingers bent back against the forearm. He was scarred too, from some kind of surgery, perhaps. Richard never asked him.
He told them a tale about the secrets of his body. They listened intently, unable to judge if he was telling the truth. He said that when he was with a girl, his body shrivelled even more, enlarging his penis, gorging it with borrowed body-mass. It seemed plausible at the time. This differently-made body, more plastic than our own perhaps, ready to assume another form. He was a kind of super-hero. Like Daredevil – receiving powers in return for his lost sight. A kind of cosmic, karmic compensation. Richard wondered if he was due some kind of compensation. What had he lost? She didn’t belong to him. But then the notional perfect pair of arms had never belonged to Kevin either.
The flat was dirty. The air hung heavy in the rooms, he could see dust in the air of the bedroom. As he looked down the hall into the kitchen, he could see crumbs on the working surface. They were more visible from this angle than if he had been looking right at them. Richard undid and removed his trainers. He pulled off his socks and stepped into the coolness of the bathroom to toss them into the washing basket. The lino felt cold against his toes; he was relieved to be out of his shoes. His t-shirt clung to his back a little as he removed it. He moved into the kitchen and got polish and a duster ready, placing them in a corner just outside the door. So that he wouldn’t have to come back in once the floor was wet. He filled a pint glass with water and put it on a coaster on his desk in the second “bedroom” of the flat, which he used as a study and shrine room.
Now ready to begin, Richard took everything off the long worktop surface along the back wall of the flat: kettle; toaster; mug-tree. He put them behind him, on the smaller piece. He took the dishcloth and spray and cleaned down the empty space. [add hob] Now he moved everything back and repeated the process for the rest of the room. He bleached the sink and cleaned draining rack and washing-up bowl. He swept the floor and then mopped it. Although no one else was in, he angled the mop across the kitchen doorway, to keep any feet off the clean wet floor.
He cleaned methodically. As his mother had taught him. Always in the same order. The routine ensuring nothing is missed, freeing the mind for other things. He stopped for a few gulps of the water and realised he could have some music on. Cleaning topless somehow made it seem a far more male activity. Like a kind of exercise. A ritual purging. He was hungry. Cleaning made him hungry, always. Once the main rooms had been dusted, he got the hoover from its place in the hall and vacuumed the carpeted areas. He listened with interest to the noise of particles being swept up into the machine. As he did this job he remembered his mother hoovering. He’d be sat on his chair (the one on which he always sat and underneath which he was allowed to keep a few toys during the week). As she passed he’d raise his legs and she’d go underneath. Richard attended to which areas were the dirtiest and considered why there was more to pick up in some places. Crumbs dropped where he sat to eat a sandwich, pieces of fluff where he got dressed. Richard bent down to pick up a thread which the hoover could not disentangled from the fibres of the carpet. His stomach felt slimy with sweat as he bent double. Glancing over at the bed he remembered her hanging down, letting her head flop towards the floor as he sat there, complimenting her on the complex patterns of her irises. He moved each of the chairs, the table in his study. He hoovered over each of the areas he’d uncovered, noting the indentations left by legs and casters, putting everything back just where it was. Around his shrine there was quite a bit of ash, from incense he’d burned. He cleaned it thoroughly.
The bathroom was last of all. He placed every moveable object on the carpet in the hall as he sprayed and wiped the surfaces. He paused to urinate before bleaching the toilet, sweeping and mopping the floor. The shampoo, toothbrushes, deodorants and so on would have to stay on the carpet until the lino was dry. Richard reflected that, despite his thoroughness, millions of her cells would still be present in the flat. On his desk, tidy now, in a pile of books and a few loose sheets of paper he spotted a note she’d written. A reference to something she’d read, an article by Marvin Minsky she wanted to track down. She never dotted her ‘i’s. Writing at speed, a desire to get the main points down, not worrying yet about the details. Like a builder getting big, firm, but rather rough-textured foundations down.
He’s finished. He lights and incense stick and places it upright in a small bowl of sand. The flat is clean and permeated with fragrant smoke.
When he was 19, Richard thought the world was a matriarchy. Thatcher, his mother, the queen. At university, the female tutors were the most exciting. They had the freedom to be unconventional in dress which male academics did not, or did not embrace. He was painfully aware of his dependence on the bounty of females for any introduction into the arcane world of sexual experience. While he was able to express his feelings well in language, they had physical mastery. He took it for granted that they would make the first move. It seemed a form of violence to come on to a girl. He was aware of the threat he might offer, although in pictures of himself he was appalled by the pronounced curve of his neck (not a stoop exactly) and the way his bony hands suggested indecision. He had a horror about exerting excessive force. Something about growing up in the 1980s. All the crimes performed by men. All the rage and inadequacy worked out upon the bodies of women. Sex used as a power move. Men who never questioned the irrational bias of older relatives towards male offspring and had carried that superiority complex directly into the bedrooms of their first lovers.
His first lover had dominated him totally. He felt this was right. Men had sinned, he would pay, make up for it. For the world was no matriarchy, how quickly that became obvious when he allowed himself to be conscious of the reality beyond his family and school life. Even there, in the laboratories he noticed with pain the excess deference he received simply on account of his maleness. So he waited for her. She instructed him how to give pleasure. She laid her thin body out on the bed and her thin lips invited him to join her. He was honoured to share her bed, on whatever terms. He massaged her, listening carefully to instructions about speed, pressure and position. He waited. It was like a game of twister. He held himself above her, suspended on one arm and both knees while his hand worked. He touched her. She referred to her vagina as her monster. She asked him to go fast, hard. Richard was surprised – had thought the whole thing should be gentler. She paid him compliments: he was like a statue. So silent. She taught him how to kiss her there. The monster was bony. As her rhythm crested, he rode the bruising shudders, bashing his teeth through his lips. She came and he felt momentarily cleansed. Her orgasm like communion, purging him of sin and welcoming him into the fold. He gave without asking anything. He waited. She looked at him naked, handled him. Her eyes were steel blue and her kiss was fierce. His lips, tender from being clamped to her through orgasm, bled under the pressure of her teeth and mouth. She never guided him inside her and he never asked her. He waited. This was how he loved.
ADEC
“It is a simple game, played by men and boys worldwide.”
Mark looked at Dan intently, aware that he was about to discuss something intimate, secret and delightfully dirty. It was a measure of their alienated and sophisticated attitude that they could discuss such matters. Between them, no subject was taboo.
“It is called the All Day Erection Challenge, or ADEC. As the name suggests, the aim is to keep one’s penis in a state of at least semi-tumescence for the whole day.”
Mark took over here. As smoothly as the fourth man in a relay team, he seized the gristly baton of this deliciously risqué topic.
“Merely observe idle men in public spaces and you will see everywhere the adepts of ADEC. The man on a bus who touches the fly of his trousers – so swift is the movement that only a trained eye will spot it. He is delivering the minimum stimulation necessary so as to keep his pecker up.”
Dan picked up the thread without missing a beat: “A less subtle practitioner of the art can often be seen rummaging in a pocket slightly more than is reasonable. He is twitching himself back into excitement. Something has almost destroyed his concentration. Perhaps the sight of an old, feeble, man has made him consider, for a crazy moment, the possibility that he will one day be weak and impotent.”
“Of course, most ADEC masters are above such obtrusive techniques,” continued Mark. “They allow themselves to brush against pneumatic ladies ahead of them in carefully selected supermarket queues. They touch themselves unnoticeably with elbow or briefcase. Some have developed other strategies, even more cunning. One of the most common, known as ‘the flap’, simply involves a gentle, rhythmic, opening and closing of the legs.”
“The uncircumcised man,” began Dan, warming to his theme, “knows with certainty that if he retracts his prepuce and wears his most abrasive underwear (the ones with that slightly ragged seam) he will be reminded constantly of a comforting bulge until morning coffee at least. Some men slip their organ under their pant elastic. The firm constrictive pressure can delight for extended periods. However, it is the mind which is the ADEC addicts most precious ‘tool’. A good fantasy is superior to any of the more grossly physical techniques.”
“Throughout the ages, women have commented that men appear to be mentally undressing them. Of course, the reality is far more exciting than that. Men mentally fondle, cup, part and penetrate myriad women daily. The basic principle is to work with the material to hand. Scan the office, the waiting room, the bus or the gym. Select the woman who, at that moment, is the hottest. You are now free to imagine yourselves in any number of exquisite embraces. Some romantic types form an attachment to a specific woman and prefer to hold her image up to their inner eye. Others take a savage delight in visualising how they would encounter all the women in their immediate vicinity, so inexhaustible and egalitarian are their appetites.”
“Most members of the male race never stop to reflect on why they act this way. Do you question why you breathe? Here is my theory. We swell to feel our maleness. My argument is designed to be simple; you may find it tautological. Without a firm stirring in our loins we risk feel like nothing at all. Our bodies have not evolved to create life. We are fruitless, marginal beings, doomed to watch the magical narrative of ovulation and menstruation, child-bearing and child-birth, from the wings, like some unnecessary Greek chorus. Our erections remind us that we exist and matter. Those choric ejaculations may seem trite and banal, telling us what we already know, ours, however hidden or misdirected, are charged with meaning.”
They rested for a moment, exhilarated by their talk. They looked up at their teacher simultaneously. She was a fine woman, whose nipples were clearly visible through her long-sleeved t-shirt. How is anyone supposed to get any work done when she’s dressed like that? Nipples on bonk. Phasers on stun. I’m there. My slender stalk reaching inside as she rides, allowing her breasts to hang into my face as I crunch up, trying with a supreme effort of will to make this moment last, just seconds longer. I’m there. I feel her squeeze and let go.
Mark looked at Dan intently, aware that he was about to discuss something intimate, secret and delightfully dirty. It was a measure of their alienated and sophisticated attitude that they could discuss such matters. Between them, no subject was taboo.
“It is called the All Day Erection Challenge, or ADEC. As the name suggests, the aim is to keep one’s penis in a state of at least semi-tumescence for the whole day.”
Mark took over here. As smoothly as the fourth man in a relay team, he seized the gristly baton of this deliciously risqué topic.
“Merely observe idle men in public spaces and you will see everywhere the adepts of ADEC. The man on a bus who touches the fly of his trousers – so swift is the movement that only a trained eye will spot it. He is delivering the minimum stimulation necessary so as to keep his pecker up.”
Dan picked up the thread without missing a beat: “A less subtle practitioner of the art can often be seen rummaging in a pocket slightly more than is reasonable. He is twitching himself back into excitement. Something has almost destroyed his concentration. Perhaps the sight of an old, feeble, man has made him consider, for a crazy moment, the possibility that he will one day be weak and impotent.”
“Of course, most ADEC masters are above such obtrusive techniques,” continued Mark. “They allow themselves to brush against pneumatic ladies ahead of them in carefully selected supermarket queues. They touch themselves unnoticeably with elbow or briefcase. Some have developed other strategies, even more cunning. One of the most common, known as ‘the flap’, simply involves a gentle, rhythmic, opening and closing of the legs.”
“The uncircumcised man,” began Dan, warming to his theme, “knows with certainty that if he retracts his prepuce and wears his most abrasive underwear (the ones with that slightly ragged seam) he will be reminded constantly of a comforting bulge until morning coffee at least. Some men slip their organ under their pant elastic. The firm constrictive pressure can delight for extended periods. However, it is the mind which is the ADEC addicts most precious ‘tool’. A good fantasy is superior to any of the more grossly physical techniques.”
“Throughout the ages, women have commented that men appear to be mentally undressing them. Of course, the reality is far more exciting than that. Men mentally fondle, cup, part and penetrate myriad women daily. The basic principle is to work with the material to hand. Scan the office, the waiting room, the bus or the gym. Select the woman who, at that moment, is the hottest. You are now free to imagine yourselves in any number of exquisite embraces. Some romantic types form an attachment to a specific woman and prefer to hold her image up to their inner eye. Others take a savage delight in visualising how they would encounter all the women in their immediate vicinity, so inexhaustible and egalitarian are their appetites.”
“Most members of the male race never stop to reflect on why they act this way. Do you question why you breathe? Here is my theory. We swell to feel our maleness. My argument is designed to be simple; you may find it tautological. Without a firm stirring in our loins we risk feel like nothing at all. Our bodies have not evolved to create life. We are fruitless, marginal beings, doomed to watch the magical narrative of ovulation and menstruation, child-bearing and child-birth, from the wings, like some unnecessary Greek chorus. Our erections remind us that we exist and matter. Those choric ejaculations may seem trite and banal, telling us what we already know, ours, however hidden or misdirected, are charged with meaning.”
They rested for a moment, exhilarated by their talk. They looked up at their teacher simultaneously. She was a fine woman, whose nipples were clearly visible through her long-sleeved t-shirt. How is anyone supposed to get any work done when she’s dressed like that? Nipples on bonk. Phasers on stun. I’m there. My slender stalk reaching inside as she rides, allowing her breasts to hang into my face as I crunch up, trying with a supreme effort of will to make this moment last, just seconds longer. I’m there. I feel her squeeze and let go.
Towers
“if thy hand or thy foot offend thee, cut them off and cast them from thee” Matthew 18.8
Richard felt exhausted. The sangha couldn’t help him, he realised. Traditionally, the seeker has to endure some delay before receiving the teaching. Sometimes it’s little more than a formality – you have to wait outside the monastery for a day or two without food. It demonstrates determination, a real hunger for the Dharma. In Milarepa’s case he had to build towers. Marpa made him build towers and then tear them down again. Back-breaking work. Soul-destroying. Each stone felt as heavy as his bad deeds. Each tower three-storeys tall. Strong. Surely this time Marpa would be satisfied. But no, actually he wanted the tower in a different part of the field. Worse than Sisyphean labour. In his case gravity played the destructive part. But Milarepa had to pry each stone from its bed and hurl it down to the ground. Each thud shook the earth. What was Marpa playing at? Was this supposed to provide an outlet for his rage? It enraged him. His hands blistered. Was he paying a price for his murders? And then his blood thickened with fear. For how could any amount of playing around with stones make amends for the blood on his hands? Maybe it was meant to destroy his soul, or at least his ego. His submission to this task demonstrating the death of the selfish person who had killed rather than suffer in the past. Richard felt dizzy with fear; knowing that Mark had been at his talk on Milarepa – he’d been impressed by the story. Had he influenced the young man? Yes. Mark’s reading of the story was wrong-headed. As if you would set out to emulate Milarepa: developing homicidal powers with a view to turning it all around and becoming enlightened later. That was partly the appeal of the story. No-one wants to be mediocre, on the spiritual path any more than in any other arena. Better to be a great sinner and then a great saint than to muddle along, working in meditation, working on the self. Because that was what it was, so much of the time. Meditation just another thing on that long list of things to do. Eat well, exercise, read, keep up with the news, support a charity, get into some new music, get really good at your job, keep your house nice, stay in touch with your friends, forgive your parents. How quickly we prune that list. Richard reflected on the years when he did no exercise for almost the whole winter. Somehow in those months he felt the need to stay indoors, eat more and put on a little insulation. The same with meditation. When under pressure at the lab he stopped altogether. All that stuff about maintaining a practice seemed a luxury when put against meeting deadlines. Work. Work. Sorry.
So maybe Mark needed to suffer. Maybe he had even sought that out. But I am responsible too (Richard couldn’t escape the thought) I linked killing and Buddhism in his mind. How else could such a link have been made. It’s my fault she’s dead (no, don’t think about that). I set him going. An impressionable young man. Really it would be better never to do anything. Why does every action I take seem like violence? How did it end up hurting her? It is I who should atone. I need to suffer in order to be worthy of the truth. The Truth. The truth I was finding with her. A truth about sex, about male violence, about my own rage. Can I transform all that male evil force into love through an esoteric practice? What you set your heart upon, that you become. Mark wanted to be Milarepa. He was well on the way. I choose Tara. I want to be a green-skinned embodiment of compassion. My foot off the moon-mat, ready to step into the world to help whoever. Yes, even him. Green-skinned, female. I am not a man, I am a person with a penis. A good gender-studies soundbite. What if what’s wrong with me does reside in my sex organs? What you set your heart upon, that you become.
Richard, not sure of himself but full of self-hatred and wishing to rid himself of hatred. Richard, not setting a precedent, not inviting followers in his road of self-abnegation, self-purification, self-mutilation. Richard, setting his heart upon something perhaps impossible (as enlightenment too, seems impossible much of the time) took a sharp knife.
And you know what happens next. Because I’m guessing that if you’re a woman or a girl there have been times when you’ve wanted to hit where it hurts. Yeah, maybe we are the violent ones, but revenge is different. Take those weird, unbodylike growths out of the sack. What’s it about anyway? Horrible outside genitals in a wrinkly bag. Something wrong there. All you do is slit the sack. They’re only held on by some pretty minor plumbing. A couple of swipes and they’re gone. Better flush those bad eggs, you never know what they can do at the hospital nowadays, bet they’d sew a rapist’s cock back on out of some misguided idea of the right thing to do. Yeah, stick those murderer’s hands back on. He’ll never do it again. Lesson learned. Yessir. Boys, I know you’ve cradled them when they’re swollen and sore from denial. Take them out. They feel like tumours already. Malignant ones. Take them out. They’re where the bad thoughts come from. You know it. You know what happens next. He operates on himself and successfully removes the cancer that makes him sick. He destroys them utterly. With the last strength that remains he calls for an ambulance. Guiltily. Blood on the phone keys as he stabs the 9s. Shouldn’t be wasting their time on me. I did it to myself. But I don’t want to die yet. This is just the start of the experiment. What you set your heart upon. I will be Tara. I shall work for the benefit of sentient beings, but not in a male body. Green-skinned eunuch bodhisattva of compassion. I will sing a sweeter song than the castrati. Ordeal? Check. Ready for the Dharma!
He let the ‘phone drop from his hand. Pain. Thudding, welling. It scared him like being lost on the hills, miles from your car or anywhere. You panic. I don’t know if I can get through this. I can’t see and end to this. Just pain though. The body sending you a message. Big problem here. Still, that’s dealt with. What was it Simone Weil said – something like nothing on earth can stop us thinking clearly. And to think clearly now is the way to transform this moment from suffering into metamorphosis.
Pain. The pain is black smoke. This pain is worse. It’s like particles suspended in the air. Sharp, crystalline. Black razor fragments. Never mind that. Breathe it in. Suck it in, like a fag, like poison. But I am medicine for the sick. Within my heart is a brilliant white light. The white light absorbs the dirty blade shards. It destroys them, it transforms them into itself, into purity. Another breath in. More particles. This time it’s like dust. Like walking into an old bookshop. The white light laughs at the cloud of dust. Absorbs it, transforms it. Now there’s not much of the sooty stuff left. It’s like a lover breathing on you. Her smoky breath - the cigarette smell you might normally gag on somehow tastes exciting. In the metaphor the white light is lust, consuming the death smoke like a candle absorbing a smell. But now it’s diamond-like awareness. Firmly rooted loving-kindness. Swallowing the pain.
Richard isn’t in a meditation position. He can’t put his limbs into a prescribed arrangement. He’s flat out on the floor. The phone beside him is still live. He doesn’t hear the voice telling him someone’s on the way. He can’t respond.
He allows everything to go away. Blue sky. Emptiness. Shunyata. The void that is ultimate reality. He allows it all to dissolve, like salt in water. Except this is real dissolution. It’s annihilation. The flat’s gone. His chair. The shrine. His stereo. All gone. Not transformed even. Just faded out, leaving only blue sky. His books are gone. Memories slip away, like labels from cans left soaking in the washing-up. And thoughts too, the bit of his brain that makes those crazy images, always putting one thing with another. Making patterns. It’s gone into the pure cool blue. The blue is electric. It’s like cyberspace. Unreal. Everywhere.
Out of the empty sky, out of the electronic void, grows a lotus. Pale blue. It spreads its petals to reveal a moon-mat. So smooth, perfectly round. Looking like something you might eat. Looking like a mint. On the mat is Tara. I am Tara. Green. Born of Avalokiteshvara’a tears. Sixteen. My body is made of green light. It’s empty. Perfectly pure. I am smiling and beautiful. My right foot steps down, my right arm hangs down readyy to help all beings, a posture of supreme giving. That old thing I used to identify with is long gone. That damaged and damaging set of needs and fears has dropped into the blue sky, vanished like a star in the sunrise. A star that will not re-appear on any future night. And Tara begins to sing her mantra. Om tare tuttare ture svaha. She sets the words dancing round her infinitely compassionate, beautiful heart.
Richard is carried out of the flat into an ambulance. The mantra letters of the manta circle his heart like the ring of a kaleidoscope. Looking into the eyepiece you would be able to see rainbows. Tara, the swift rescuer. Tara, the saviouress. The paramedics listen to the strange muttering. Om tare. The kaleidoscopic ring rotates anticlockwise. What’s that he’s saying? Ture. Rainbows begin to pour out from his heart. It’s like a visual on a LSD rush, those moments when you can see things that are not normally visible to the human eye. Is he on drugs? Tuttare. The green body is filled with rainbow light. God, he’s made a mess of himself. Poor bastard! Ture. The body is purified by the light. Svaha. Richard has left the house of the senses. Tara, elfin princess, takes his place.
The mantra at Tara’s heart now begins to emit more light. The surgeons sew him up. The new wound will leave a scar, parallel to the seam where his body joins up between penis and anus. Om. Rainbows pour from Tara’s heart. Tare. Wherever a rainbow touches someone all their sufferings, physical and mental, are annihilated. Tuttare. Richard is taken out of surgery. Is the patient singing? Ture. Infinite compassion propagates from her heart like the light from the sun. Svaha. The universe is full of rainbows.
Tara wakes. She leaves the hospital. She walks to the prison. We are all prisoners in the world of samsara. She renews her vow to the Bodhisattva ideal. I will not leave until all beings have been released.
Richard felt exhausted. The sangha couldn’t help him, he realised. Traditionally, the seeker has to endure some delay before receiving the teaching. Sometimes it’s little more than a formality – you have to wait outside the monastery for a day or two without food. It demonstrates determination, a real hunger for the Dharma. In Milarepa’s case he had to build towers. Marpa made him build towers and then tear them down again. Back-breaking work. Soul-destroying. Each stone felt as heavy as his bad deeds. Each tower three-storeys tall. Strong. Surely this time Marpa would be satisfied. But no, actually he wanted the tower in a different part of the field. Worse than Sisyphean labour. In his case gravity played the destructive part. But Milarepa had to pry each stone from its bed and hurl it down to the ground. Each thud shook the earth. What was Marpa playing at? Was this supposed to provide an outlet for his rage? It enraged him. His hands blistered. Was he paying a price for his murders? And then his blood thickened with fear. For how could any amount of playing around with stones make amends for the blood on his hands? Maybe it was meant to destroy his soul, or at least his ego. His submission to this task demonstrating the death of the selfish person who had killed rather than suffer in the past. Richard felt dizzy with fear; knowing that Mark had been at his talk on Milarepa – he’d been impressed by the story. Had he influenced the young man? Yes. Mark’s reading of the story was wrong-headed. As if you would set out to emulate Milarepa: developing homicidal powers with a view to turning it all around and becoming enlightened later. That was partly the appeal of the story. No-one wants to be mediocre, on the spiritual path any more than in any other arena. Better to be a great sinner and then a great saint than to muddle along, working in meditation, working on the self. Because that was what it was, so much of the time. Meditation just another thing on that long list of things to do. Eat well, exercise, read, keep up with the news, support a charity, get into some new music, get really good at your job, keep your house nice, stay in touch with your friends, forgive your parents. How quickly we prune that list. Richard reflected on the years when he did no exercise for almost the whole winter. Somehow in those months he felt the need to stay indoors, eat more and put on a little insulation. The same with meditation. When under pressure at the lab he stopped altogether. All that stuff about maintaining a practice seemed a luxury when put against meeting deadlines. Work. Work. Sorry.
So maybe Mark needed to suffer. Maybe he had even sought that out. But I am responsible too (Richard couldn’t escape the thought) I linked killing and Buddhism in his mind. How else could such a link have been made. It’s my fault she’s dead (no, don’t think about that). I set him going. An impressionable young man. Really it would be better never to do anything. Why does every action I take seem like violence? How did it end up hurting her? It is I who should atone. I need to suffer in order to be worthy of the truth. The Truth. The truth I was finding with her. A truth about sex, about male violence, about my own rage. Can I transform all that male evil force into love through an esoteric practice? What you set your heart upon, that you become. Mark wanted to be Milarepa. He was well on the way. I choose Tara. I want to be a green-skinned embodiment of compassion. My foot off the moon-mat, ready to step into the world to help whoever. Yes, even him. Green-skinned, female. I am not a man, I am a person with a penis. A good gender-studies soundbite. What if what’s wrong with me does reside in my sex organs? What you set your heart upon, that you become.
Richard, not sure of himself but full of self-hatred and wishing to rid himself of hatred. Richard, not setting a precedent, not inviting followers in his road of self-abnegation, self-purification, self-mutilation. Richard, setting his heart upon something perhaps impossible (as enlightenment too, seems impossible much of the time) took a sharp knife.
And you know what happens next. Because I’m guessing that if you’re a woman or a girl there have been times when you’ve wanted to hit where it hurts. Yeah, maybe we are the violent ones, but revenge is different. Take those weird, unbodylike growths out of the sack. What’s it about anyway? Horrible outside genitals in a wrinkly bag. Something wrong there. All you do is slit the sack. They’re only held on by some pretty minor plumbing. A couple of swipes and they’re gone. Better flush those bad eggs, you never know what they can do at the hospital nowadays, bet they’d sew a rapist’s cock back on out of some misguided idea of the right thing to do. Yeah, stick those murderer’s hands back on. He’ll never do it again. Lesson learned. Yessir. Boys, I know you’ve cradled them when they’re swollen and sore from denial. Take them out. They feel like tumours already. Malignant ones. Take them out. They’re where the bad thoughts come from. You know it. You know what happens next. He operates on himself and successfully removes the cancer that makes him sick. He destroys them utterly. With the last strength that remains he calls for an ambulance. Guiltily. Blood on the phone keys as he stabs the 9s. Shouldn’t be wasting their time on me. I did it to myself. But I don’t want to die yet. This is just the start of the experiment. What you set your heart upon. I will be Tara. I shall work for the benefit of sentient beings, but not in a male body. Green-skinned eunuch bodhisattva of compassion. I will sing a sweeter song than the castrati. Ordeal? Check. Ready for the Dharma!
He let the ‘phone drop from his hand. Pain. Thudding, welling. It scared him like being lost on the hills, miles from your car or anywhere. You panic. I don’t know if I can get through this. I can’t see and end to this. Just pain though. The body sending you a message. Big problem here. Still, that’s dealt with. What was it Simone Weil said – something like nothing on earth can stop us thinking clearly. And to think clearly now is the way to transform this moment from suffering into metamorphosis.
Pain. The pain is black smoke. This pain is worse. It’s like particles suspended in the air. Sharp, crystalline. Black razor fragments. Never mind that. Breathe it in. Suck it in, like a fag, like poison. But I am medicine for the sick. Within my heart is a brilliant white light. The white light absorbs the dirty blade shards. It destroys them, it transforms them into itself, into purity. Another breath in. More particles. This time it’s like dust. Like walking into an old bookshop. The white light laughs at the cloud of dust. Absorbs it, transforms it. Now there’s not much of the sooty stuff left. It’s like a lover breathing on you. Her smoky breath - the cigarette smell you might normally gag on somehow tastes exciting. In the metaphor the white light is lust, consuming the death smoke like a candle absorbing a smell. But now it’s diamond-like awareness. Firmly rooted loving-kindness. Swallowing the pain.
Richard isn’t in a meditation position. He can’t put his limbs into a prescribed arrangement. He’s flat out on the floor. The phone beside him is still live. He doesn’t hear the voice telling him someone’s on the way. He can’t respond.
He allows everything to go away. Blue sky. Emptiness. Shunyata. The void that is ultimate reality. He allows it all to dissolve, like salt in water. Except this is real dissolution. It’s annihilation. The flat’s gone. His chair. The shrine. His stereo. All gone. Not transformed even. Just faded out, leaving only blue sky. His books are gone. Memories slip away, like labels from cans left soaking in the washing-up. And thoughts too, the bit of his brain that makes those crazy images, always putting one thing with another. Making patterns. It’s gone into the pure cool blue. The blue is electric. It’s like cyberspace. Unreal. Everywhere.
Out of the empty sky, out of the electronic void, grows a lotus. Pale blue. It spreads its petals to reveal a moon-mat. So smooth, perfectly round. Looking like something you might eat. Looking like a mint. On the mat is Tara. I am Tara. Green. Born of Avalokiteshvara’a tears. Sixteen. My body is made of green light. It’s empty. Perfectly pure. I am smiling and beautiful. My right foot steps down, my right arm hangs down readyy to help all beings, a posture of supreme giving. That old thing I used to identify with is long gone. That damaged and damaging set of needs and fears has dropped into the blue sky, vanished like a star in the sunrise. A star that will not re-appear on any future night. And Tara begins to sing her mantra. Om tare tuttare ture svaha. She sets the words dancing round her infinitely compassionate, beautiful heart.
Richard is carried out of the flat into an ambulance. The mantra letters of the manta circle his heart like the ring of a kaleidoscope. Looking into the eyepiece you would be able to see rainbows. Tara, the swift rescuer. Tara, the saviouress. The paramedics listen to the strange muttering. Om tare. The kaleidoscopic ring rotates anticlockwise. What’s that he’s saying? Ture. Rainbows begin to pour out from his heart. It’s like a visual on a LSD rush, those moments when you can see things that are not normally visible to the human eye. Is he on drugs? Tuttare. The green body is filled with rainbow light. God, he’s made a mess of himself. Poor bastard! Ture. The body is purified by the light. Svaha. Richard has left the house of the senses. Tara, elfin princess, takes his place.
The mantra at Tara’s heart now begins to emit more light. The surgeons sew him up. The new wound will leave a scar, parallel to the seam where his body joins up between penis and anus. Om. Rainbows pour from Tara’s heart. Tare. Wherever a rainbow touches someone all their sufferings, physical and mental, are annihilated. Tuttare. Richard is taken out of surgery. Is the patient singing? Ture. Infinite compassion propagates from her heart like the light from the sun. Svaha. The universe is full of rainbows.
Tara wakes. She leaves the hospital. She walks to the prison. We are all prisoners in the world of samsara. She renews her vow to the Bodhisattva ideal. I will not leave until all beings have been released.
Bookcrossing
It’s a cold day in September. She is walking a buggy through the park at 8am. No shops are open yet, but if she stays indoors with him for another hour she’ll go insane. In the buggy Edward is chewing on a hard biscuit attached to a clip with a string. It’s supposed to help with teething. She breathes deeply.
The air is damp and you can smell plants. No idea what their names are. Dave sets off for work at 7. He has a long drive to work, in Halifax. We could move closer, but you’ve always liked it here. The schools are better here. It hasn’t rained but the pavements are a dark shade of wet tarmac. The rhythm of the buggy is soothing to mother and child. Is it the same Mclaren who make Formula One cars?
Ahead of her an old couple are walking along. They wear the brown and beige waterproof coats of the old. Where do they get them from? Never seen them in a shop. Probably years old from C&A, BHS, other long-defunct department stores. He’s walking is irregular. One leg seems stiff and he’s dragging that foot through the arc of his stride, effortfully. The woman links arms with him. Her hair is thin, curly and grey. They are here every day. They carry food for the wild birds and from time to time they stop and scatter some, like a story-book farmer broadcasting seed. Or that parable. Some falls on stony ground. Some dies. They do this every day. Faithful to the birds, linking arms as she supports him on this walk which must be really good for his mobility. Wonder what’s wrong with him. Is it a false leg? He can’t be old enough to have been in the war, can he. Old men always make her sad. Sometimes seeing them alone, in their formal dress as they walk up to the chemist – wearing a suit and tie to do the shopping – makes her cry.
They stop at a railing next to the water and feed ducks bread. She overtakes them, peering into the large cuboid plasticised canvas bag the woman carries. In it are a couple of fat-balls. She’s seen the woman tying them on to trees. Fat balls for the wild birds in the park. Raided by squirrels too.
She glances over at the swings as if looking into her future. There’s one child there already with a parent who, like her, has abandoned the house early this morning. The woman stands near the climbing frame spotting the child as it scales some netting.
She’s moving down the slope now. Letting the steepness take control of her, her feet slapping down harder now. The slope makes it easy to peer down at Edward who’s soothed by the motion of the buggy and is peaceful. Someone is running along the road at the bottom of the valley. A woman alone, wearing headphones – an I-pod in one of those trendy arm things. There’s a bench down here where she usually sits down. Should bring a flask. Should bring my MP3 player. Why don’t I remember. Dave’s put some new music on it. He takes a can of lager out with him, putting it in the baby-bottle holder as he goes up-hill, steering with one had and drinking as he goes along the flat. Probably get arrested: drunk in charge. Half the town is a no-drinking zone anyway. But you can’t tell him anything, of course. Another runner passes the woman from the other direction. They nod at each other, the courtesy of people with a shared passion. A random connection. The man stops near to her bench and puts something down. Doesn’t look like litter. How strange! Wonder what it is?
Sophia rounds onto the flat just as the runner crosses the path she’s come down. She looks down at the palms of her hands. Someone told her once that that blotchiness means that you are exercising well, extremities well oxygenated or something. All this walking: it’s good. Must weigh myself. Should give Trace a ring. Wonder if she still goes to the gym. They have a crèche, don’t they? Or a swim would be nice. Just once a week, perhaps. It’s nice, doing this route. You notice things: the changes in the weather, the way the air tastes in different months. How the trees grow.
On the bench is a ziplock bag. There’s a book inside. This is strange.
Inside the back, outside the book is a brightly coloured slip of paper. On in is printed the legend “Book-crossers Scatter Sunshine”. The letters have been shaded across in a sort of rainbow of pencil-crayon. It looks childlike. Sophia parks the buggy, puts the brake on and sits down. Eddie is asleep. She opens the bag. Sophia’s hair is a rich dark brown, curving into her jaw, shelving up towards that pointy bit at the back of her head. Dave likes this style of bob: it accentuates her nape. Sophia allows herself to enjoy the sound of the word “nape” with her mind’s ear.
No-one is watching her. The bookcrosser ran past after leaving the bag here. Sophia opens the bag and takes the book out. It’s a funny-looking book. Not like a real book. It seems a bit home-made. The cover is un-illustrated and there’s no blurb. The title of the book is “Read Me” - like a magic object in Alice in Wonderland. Sophia wonders what transformation will occur if she obeys the book’s imperative.
Are you reading me? Before radio, before telephones, there was this low-tech telepathy. I write and you read my mind. In return I have a glimpse of the thoughts in your mind – mostly guess-work but there’s some hope I’ll be right about how you’ll react to my words. I might have written in another language. I might be dead, but in this encounter we are intimates.
Sophia reads. In the morning sunshine, her hair is shiny. She crosses her feet at the ankles and reaches out with one hand to rock the buggy gently, but Eddie is out like a light. The light is dappled by its path through the leaves of the tree near which the bench is sited. Sophia’s mouth is slightly open and the tip of he tongue rests lightly behind her top front teeth. Now she draws her hand back from the buggy and her shoulders relax as she takes a deeper breath and settles herself on the bench. Now the book is resting on her lap, cradled comfortably in both hands and she gives herself up to it.
In the story, a boy and a girl are flirting.
I don’t know why we are doing this. No actual kissing. She moves her lips over mine, touching but not softening or opening into a kiss. This is torture. But we’re not ready yet. I smell her skin. Warm clothes on a cold day. Autumn; she smells like September afternoons. Gold, cold, clean days, walking out into fallen leaves.
Sophia notices the wide spread of the book, her thumbs on the margins. Sophia allows herself to feel the excitement of a first kiss. On page 7, the two characters are kissing goodnight.
She’s wearing a red dress. They’re on the drive of a house. It’s not her parents’ place – she’s a lodger here. It’s a hot summer evening. The fact that they have been for a meal in a restaurant, that they are saying goodnight on a doorstep, all this makes this moment suddenly significant.
Sophia imagines the scene, which could so easily have been from her own life, years ago. The thrill of a kiss when a kiss is as far as things are going, for now.
She likes to kiss in pubs. It’s quite early and we meet in a pub in town. I buy pints of dark beer. She leans across and kisses me hard on the mouth. I close my eyes, because I am self-conscious. Now the bitter is staring to work and I don’t care. It’s wonderful. I really don’t care who sees. I can smell her foundation , tiny particles dislodged by the friction of this kiss. I sniff it in. This is her smell: a mixture of he body’s signature and the make-up she uses. It’s unique. I’d know her in seconds anywhere. When I think of her it’s in the act of kissing blindly in public.
Sophia moves her left thumb into the centre of the book, pinching the spine so the book stayed open. She touches her mouth. She’s thinking about kissing for the first time in years. In the story the boy is staying the night at his girlfriend’s house for the first time.
Her mother doesn’t allow boys in her room, so you sleep on the sofa. It’s hard to get to sleep. It’s a strange room. The smells of her mother’s cooking, her scent and the cleaning products she uses. Like a patina left on the surface of everything – the deposit left by their lives on the fabric of the rooms. But in the night she comes to you. It’s dark, so dark in the living room. You can’t say anything, for fear of waking her mother. For a moment you’re disorientated. What’s this? Who is this? The curtains are heavy, dark, totally opaque. Your eyes don’t adjust. You feel her hair on your face. For seconds you are unsure – is this some bedroom farce where the girl visits the wrong room? No – and you feel the shock of it again – she is going out with me. She bends low to kiss you. The smell of her skin is unmistakeable. It has an automatic effect on you. You wonder for a moment if you are subjects in some strange experiment. But then there’s nothing to think about except her lips on yours. You feel the roundness of her nostrils against your face. In your mind’s eyes you are re-constructing this invisible scene. The kiss in the dark. The fatness of her lips, the texture of them registering against yours is synaesthesia. This visit from a succubus.
The next kiss is in a different house. Sophia wedges the book’s spine more firmly into her lap.
They are lying on the carpet. Light streams in aslant through the patio windows. He feels the weight of her, the heat. The beams of the sun make her hair iridescent. The light and warmth excite molecules of perfume, her own smells, the oils in her skin become airborne. He can see capillary veins in her ears. Her clothes are black. Her hair black. He looks up and sees her dark eyes, unreadable against the washed out background of blinding window-light. He breathes her in, feels her pressing him down into the floor. Every part of her penetrating him utterly. She takes part of his lip between her teeth.
Sophia checks her watch, continues. A few pages later, they’re in bed.
It works by touch alone. She’s wearing something rough to the touch, like winceyette. Too scared to open his eyes. There was a wordless invitation. He had been sleeping on the floor beside her; now he’s fully awake in her arms, exploring the way her nightgown opens at the front. The feel of her torso. There’s an impossible trade-off. To be totally present is to risk losing some detail to the oblivion of amnesia. To hover above, observing and recording is to be a tourist in his own life. A man who sees everything through the lens of a camera. Never to experience the fine hairs above her top lip, now slicked with sweat, now kissed smoother still, because too busy recording the experience. His mind slipped away as he gave into the moment and the unreflectiveness of his flesh.
Sophia reads on, about what happens the next day. She looks down self-consciously at the dark hairs long her forearm.
Under the table. What are we doing here? I can smell the grill, days-worth of toast. That window looks down into a yard, across to a magic shop. We’re between the pale wooden legs of the square kitchen table, topped with an orange oilcloth. Sudden urge to kiss took them to the floor. What are we doing here? Like lovers sheltering from an earthquake. Should be in a door jamb. Sheltering from a falling bomb. Like lovers. Sorry. Fudge-mouth. Kissing that sludgy sweetness. Licking the grainy crystals off her teeth. Soft chewed bits down round her gums rooted out with my tongue. Take it down into my mouth. Sticky sweet lips her hair gets in her mouth gummed up with sugary saliva and fudge juice.
Time has passed, Eddie is blowing a small bubble in his spit. He stirs slightly, still asleep. Sophia looks around, feeling somehow guilty. Reading is a guilty pleasure in which she retreats from the world into silent communion. Dave makes her feel guilty about reading – always wanting to watch comedy DVDs that are never funny after the first time. Inside the book there’s a sticker explaining how bookcrossing works. “Take me,” adds a handwritten note. Sophia slips the colourful slip of paper she first noticed inside the book to mark her place and slides the book back into its ziplock bag. She pops the whole package between some folds in her buggy’s hood and moves off.
Sophia turns the buggy back up the slope towards home. She feels her leg muscles working against the gradient, slight dampness in the small of her back. She notices the light scintillating a loose strand of hair. She sweeps it back over her ear and leans into the steepness. Dave doesn’t like to kiss.
Sophia feeds Eddie and puts him on the floor with some toys. She puts the TV on, the familiar chatter of Cbeebies presenters saying that Balamory is coming on next. At the computer she finds the website mentioned inside her book ands registers that she has found it. There’s an option to leave some feedback. Without pausing to consider where this chain of actions might lead, Sophia composes a response. “I have just found this book. I had never heard of it. It’s good; I like it.” Only after submitting the form does Sophia remember the man - a man running who left the book carefully sealed in a zip-lock bag to protect it from the elements until its random recipient might find it. She smiles then, to think about a man leaving a book about kissing for a stranger to find. She’s got ironing to do, she notices. Before starting she puts the book in her shopping bag, folds the buggy up neatly.
The air is damp and you can smell plants. No idea what their names are. Dave sets off for work at 7. He has a long drive to work, in Halifax. We could move closer, but you’ve always liked it here. The schools are better here. It hasn’t rained but the pavements are a dark shade of wet tarmac. The rhythm of the buggy is soothing to mother and child. Is it the same Mclaren who make Formula One cars?
Ahead of her an old couple are walking along. They wear the brown and beige waterproof coats of the old. Where do they get them from? Never seen them in a shop. Probably years old from C&A, BHS, other long-defunct department stores. He’s walking is irregular. One leg seems stiff and he’s dragging that foot through the arc of his stride, effortfully. The woman links arms with him. Her hair is thin, curly and grey. They are here every day. They carry food for the wild birds and from time to time they stop and scatter some, like a story-book farmer broadcasting seed. Or that parable. Some falls on stony ground. Some dies. They do this every day. Faithful to the birds, linking arms as she supports him on this walk which must be really good for his mobility. Wonder what’s wrong with him. Is it a false leg? He can’t be old enough to have been in the war, can he. Old men always make her sad. Sometimes seeing them alone, in their formal dress as they walk up to the chemist – wearing a suit and tie to do the shopping – makes her cry.
They stop at a railing next to the water and feed ducks bread. She overtakes them, peering into the large cuboid plasticised canvas bag the woman carries. In it are a couple of fat-balls. She’s seen the woman tying them on to trees. Fat balls for the wild birds in the park. Raided by squirrels too.
She glances over at the swings as if looking into her future. There’s one child there already with a parent who, like her, has abandoned the house early this morning. The woman stands near the climbing frame spotting the child as it scales some netting.
She’s moving down the slope now. Letting the steepness take control of her, her feet slapping down harder now. The slope makes it easy to peer down at Edward who’s soothed by the motion of the buggy and is peaceful. Someone is running along the road at the bottom of the valley. A woman alone, wearing headphones – an I-pod in one of those trendy arm things. There’s a bench down here where she usually sits down. Should bring a flask. Should bring my MP3 player. Why don’t I remember. Dave’s put some new music on it. He takes a can of lager out with him, putting it in the baby-bottle holder as he goes up-hill, steering with one had and drinking as he goes along the flat. Probably get arrested: drunk in charge. Half the town is a no-drinking zone anyway. But you can’t tell him anything, of course. Another runner passes the woman from the other direction. They nod at each other, the courtesy of people with a shared passion. A random connection. The man stops near to her bench and puts something down. Doesn’t look like litter. How strange! Wonder what it is?
Sophia rounds onto the flat just as the runner crosses the path she’s come down. She looks down at the palms of her hands. Someone told her once that that blotchiness means that you are exercising well, extremities well oxygenated or something. All this walking: it’s good. Must weigh myself. Should give Trace a ring. Wonder if she still goes to the gym. They have a crèche, don’t they? Or a swim would be nice. Just once a week, perhaps. It’s nice, doing this route. You notice things: the changes in the weather, the way the air tastes in different months. How the trees grow.
On the bench is a ziplock bag. There’s a book inside. This is strange.
Inside the back, outside the book is a brightly coloured slip of paper. On in is printed the legend “Book-crossers Scatter Sunshine”. The letters have been shaded across in a sort of rainbow of pencil-crayon. It looks childlike. Sophia parks the buggy, puts the brake on and sits down. Eddie is asleep. She opens the bag. Sophia’s hair is a rich dark brown, curving into her jaw, shelving up towards that pointy bit at the back of her head. Dave likes this style of bob: it accentuates her nape. Sophia allows herself to enjoy the sound of the word “nape” with her mind’s ear.
No-one is watching her. The bookcrosser ran past after leaving the bag here. Sophia opens the bag and takes the book out. It’s a funny-looking book. Not like a real book. It seems a bit home-made. The cover is un-illustrated and there’s no blurb. The title of the book is “Read Me” - like a magic object in Alice in Wonderland. Sophia wonders what transformation will occur if she obeys the book’s imperative.
Are you reading me? Before radio, before telephones, there was this low-tech telepathy. I write and you read my mind. In return I have a glimpse of the thoughts in your mind – mostly guess-work but there’s some hope I’ll be right about how you’ll react to my words. I might have written in another language. I might be dead, but in this encounter we are intimates.
Sophia reads. In the morning sunshine, her hair is shiny. She crosses her feet at the ankles and reaches out with one hand to rock the buggy gently, but Eddie is out like a light. The light is dappled by its path through the leaves of the tree near which the bench is sited. Sophia’s mouth is slightly open and the tip of he tongue rests lightly behind her top front teeth. Now she draws her hand back from the buggy and her shoulders relax as she takes a deeper breath and settles herself on the bench. Now the book is resting on her lap, cradled comfortably in both hands and she gives herself up to it.
In the story, a boy and a girl are flirting.
I don’t know why we are doing this. No actual kissing. She moves her lips over mine, touching but not softening or opening into a kiss. This is torture. But we’re not ready yet. I smell her skin. Warm clothes on a cold day. Autumn; she smells like September afternoons. Gold, cold, clean days, walking out into fallen leaves.
Sophia notices the wide spread of the book, her thumbs on the margins. Sophia allows herself to feel the excitement of a first kiss. On page 7, the two characters are kissing goodnight.
She’s wearing a red dress. They’re on the drive of a house. It’s not her parents’ place – she’s a lodger here. It’s a hot summer evening. The fact that they have been for a meal in a restaurant, that they are saying goodnight on a doorstep, all this makes this moment suddenly significant.
Sophia imagines the scene, which could so easily have been from her own life, years ago. The thrill of a kiss when a kiss is as far as things are going, for now.
She likes to kiss in pubs. It’s quite early and we meet in a pub in town. I buy pints of dark beer. She leans across and kisses me hard on the mouth. I close my eyes, because I am self-conscious. Now the bitter is staring to work and I don’t care. It’s wonderful. I really don’t care who sees. I can smell her foundation , tiny particles dislodged by the friction of this kiss. I sniff it in. This is her smell: a mixture of he body’s signature and the make-up she uses. It’s unique. I’d know her in seconds anywhere. When I think of her it’s in the act of kissing blindly in public.
Sophia moves her left thumb into the centre of the book, pinching the spine so the book stayed open. She touches her mouth. She’s thinking about kissing for the first time in years. In the story the boy is staying the night at his girlfriend’s house for the first time.
Her mother doesn’t allow boys in her room, so you sleep on the sofa. It’s hard to get to sleep. It’s a strange room. The smells of her mother’s cooking, her scent and the cleaning products she uses. Like a patina left on the surface of everything – the deposit left by their lives on the fabric of the rooms. But in the night she comes to you. It’s dark, so dark in the living room. You can’t say anything, for fear of waking her mother. For a moment you’re disorientated. What’s this? Who is this? The curtains are heavy, dark, totally opaque. Your eyes don’t adjust. You feel her hair on your face. For seconds you are unsure – is this some bedroom farce where the girl visits the wrong room? No – and you feel the shock of it again – she is going out with me. She bends low to kiss you. The smell of her skin is unmistakeable. It has an automatic effect on you. You wonder for a moment if you are subjects in some strange experiment. But then there’s nothing to think about except her lips on yours. You feel the roundness of her nostrils against your face. In your mind’s eyes you are re-constructing this invisible scene. The kiss in the dark. The fatness of her lips, the texture of them registering against yours is synaesthesia. This visit from a succubus.
The next kiss is in a different house. Sophia wedges the book’s spine more firmly into her lap.
They are lying on the carpet. Light streams in aslant through the patio windows. He feels the weight of her, the heat. The beams of the sun make her hair iridescent. The light and warmth excite molecules of perfume, her own smells, the oils in her skin become airborne. He can see capillary veins in her ears. Her clothes are black. Her hair black. He looks up and sees her dark eyes, unreadable against the washed out background of blinding window-light. He breathes her in, feels her pressing him down into the floor. Every part of her penetrating him utterly. She takes part of his lip between her teeth.
Sophia checks her watch, continues. A few pages later, they’re in bed.
It works by touch alone. She’s wearing something rough to the touch, like winceyette. Too scared to open his eyes. There was a wordless invitation. He had been sleeping on the floor beside her; now he’s fully awake in her arms, exploring the way her nightgown opens at the front. The feel of her torso. There’s an impossible trade-off. To be totally present is to risk losing some detail to the oblivion of amnesia. To hover above, observing and recording is to be a tourist in his own life. A man who sees everything through the lens of a camera. Never to experience the fine hairs above her top lip, now slicked with sweat, now kissed smoother still, because too busy recording the experience. His mind slipped away as he gave into the moment and the unreflectiveness of his flesh.
Sophia reads on, about what happens the next day. She looks down self-consciously at the dark hairs long her forearm.
Under the table. What are we doing here? I can smell the grill, days-worth of toast. That window looks down into a yard, across to a magic shop. We’re between the pale wooden legs of the square kitchen table, topped with an orange oilcloth. Sudden urge to kiss took them to the floor. What are we doing here? Like lovers sheltering from an earthquake. Should be in a door jamb. Sheltering from a falling bomb. Like lovers. Sorry. Fudge-mouth. Kissing that sludgy sweetness. Licking the grainy crystals off her teeth. Soft chewed bits down round her gums rooted out with my tongue. Take it down into my mouth. Sticky sweet lips her hair gets in her mouth gummed up with sugary saliva and fudge juice.
Time has passed, Eddie is blowing a small bubble in his spit. He stirs slightly, still asleep. Sophia looks around, feeling somehow guilty. Reading is a guilty pleasure in which she retreats from the world into silent communion. Dave makes her feel guilty about reading – always wanting to watch comedy DVDs that are never funny after the first time. Inside the book there’s a sticker explaining how bookcrossing works. “Take me,” adds a handwritten note. Sophia slips the colourful slip of paper she first noticed inside the book to mark her place and slides the book back into its ziplock bag. She pops the whole package between some folds in her buggy’s hood and moves off.
Sophia turns the buggy back up the slope towards home. She feels her leg muscles working against the gradient, slight dampness in the small of her back. She notices the light scintillating a loose strand of hair. She sweeps it back over her ear and leans into the steepness. Dave doesn’t like to kiss.
Sophia feeds Eddie and puts him on the floor with some toys. She puts the TV on, the familiar chatter of Cbeebies presenters saying that Balamory is coming on next. At the computer she finds the website mentioned inside her book ands registers that she has found it. There’s an option to leave some feedback. Without pausing to consider where this chain of actions might lead, Sophia composes a response. “I have just found this book. I had never heard of it. It’s good; I like it.” Only after submitting the form does Sophia remember the man - a man running who left the book carefully sealed in a zip-lock bag to protect it from the elements until its random recipient might find it. She smiles then, to think about a man leaving a book about kissing for a stranger to find. She’s got ironing to do, she notices. Before starting she puts the book in her shopping bag, folds the buggy up neatly.
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