Altar ego, p.10
Altar Ego, page 10
I bummed a cigarette off him – that’s the kind of health nut I am. ‘So, how’s the case going?’ I small-talked.
‘Some motherfuckers called the Broadcastin’ Standards Commission say my words are too fuckin’ crude to play on air …’
‘Fuckin’ cheek …’ I heckled. ‘So, tell me, are you one of those singers who the critics all go apeshit over, or are you any good? … I mean, what sort of music do you play?’
‘There’s only two kinds of music. Good an’ bad. But if the rap don’t cut it back home, I’m gonna move into retro rock with soul elements.’
‘So what does your mum make of your filthy lyrics then?’ I said, in an effort to get away from the rock’n’roll Esperanto.
‘Mom’s dead. When I was ten. OD.’
My interest in him rose meteorically. But I wasn’t going to say I was sorry. ‘Is that what gave you the determination to succeed?’
‘Naw … It just gave me an instant way in with women.’ He grinned broadly. It was the sort of smile that made you wish you were wearing Polaroids. ‘They feel sorry for me, know what I’m sayin’?’
I shook my head in disbelief. ‘Hardship can be character building, sure,’ I said, a tight-lipped frugality to my tone. ‘But you really require a character to begin with.’
‘My family taught me everythin’ I know. My Granmama was the first person I saw thievin’ – robbin’ candy for me. My Old Man bolted. Brought up to fight and steal and survive by a family that’s as far from two-point-four cosy Bill Cosby land as you can imagine.’ He fires up a joint.
I glanced up at the grey cauliflower clouds. Suddenly, it was as though a hole had been punched in the sky. We were drenched in pale sunshine. Steamy heat rose from the soil around us, which gave off a pungent, visceral smell.
‘And what about you?’ He offered me the joint. Usually I don’t smoke dope. It dulls my sarcasm. Besides, Julian didn’t like it. I surprised myself by taking a toke and even more by answering.
‘Hated my parents. Dropped out of school. Travelled. Around Asia, backpacking. Grew a new layer of skin. A taste of something else.’
‘Yer dropped out? How come yer talk so uptown then? You’re such a lady. I mean, I can’t even imagine yer takin’ a crap. I bet when yer do, they’re just tiny, delicate little party frankfurters.’
The man was a poet. I laughed, despite myself. ‘I finally went to art school, on a grant,’ I explained. Though really it was Julian who’d ‘refained’ me.
‘That’s what I wanna do. Grow a new layer of skin. An’ play Madison Square Garden, of course.’
The horizon was fevered. Crimson welts scarred the sky. Beyond the line of trees, Telecom Tower rose like a swizzle stick in an exotic cocktail.
‘See, that’s one of the reasons I like yer. ’Cause yer know all them big words, an’ ’cause yer one of the sweetest women I’ve ever had the pleasure to suck.’
I held my breath. Just as well we weren’t sitting indoors because I would have just set off the smoke alarm. This had to stop.
‘Look, I’m flattered, Zachary. Really I am. But it would never work between us. We’re too different. I mean, you’re American. You have perfect teeth. I’ve got fillings. Look.’ I opened my mouth and turned towards him. ‘Five.’
‘Yer look pretty damn good to me.’
‘And that’s another thing. Americans are so polite. Whereas I’m a loudmouthed old slapper.’
‘A slapper?’
‘You see? You don’t even speak my language.’
‘I wanna fuck you. Is that plain enough English?’
I stubbed out my cigarette. Holy Hell.
The evening air, mysterious and satiny, was threaded with possibilities. Our thighs pressed conspiratorially together.
‘This is just impossible. I’m in love with Julian. I can’t see you again.’ I said, holding on to him as though we were both covered in superglue. I smudged my heated face into his hot neck with a sigh.
But even as I spoke sane and sensible words – You’re pubescent; I’m pensionable. You’ve got groupies; I’m practically married – my hormones were betraying me. The fact that I was now wearing nothing but a pair of Adidas running shoes should have been a clue.
‘You had sex with him, didn’t you?’ Kate interrogated when I went back to the office to shower and change. She always worked late.
‘How do you know?’
‘The fact that you have half of Hyde Park in your hair is a teeny-weeny give away, you big boofhead.’
‘Isn’t sex the best, most wonderful thing in the entire world?’
Kate glared at me over her spectacles. ‘Have you tried skydiving?’
‘Don’t tell Anouska, okay? I don’t want it getting around.’
‘Okay.’
‘She rooted him.’ Kate announced when Anouska dropped by the office half an hour later to return the ice-cream the cop hadn’t eaten.
‘No. What was it like? Are you going to tell Julian?’
‘No. Absolutely not. Look, I had to do it once, just to get him out of my system. Okay? And now I’m cured. I’m not ever going to see him again.’
‘Good,’ said Kate.
‘Good,’ said Anouska.
‘Yes,’ I reiterated.
‘So,’ said Kate, after a pause. ‘When are you going to see him again?’
‘Just as soon as we finish this conversation,’ I replied.
That night we made love in one of those seedy No Tell Motels in King’s Cross. ‘Can I see you again?’ he asked.
‘No. Absolutely not.’
‘Can I just make ya come then?’
‘Oh. Okay.’
* * *
The next day, we clung to each other in the sauna at the YMCA as though drowning.
‘Do you know how long purely physical attraction lasts?’
‘Um … I dunno. Five to six hours?’
‘We’d better get cracking then.’
And, dissolving in an exchange of salty, smouldering kisses, we jammed the door
Over the next week, we had sex in every conceivable place and position. Only lab rabbits had more sex than us. We had phone sex – but in the booth. We did it while listening to music – but in the back row of Wembley stadium. Believe me, I was an FBI agent’s wet dream – I had fingerprints all over me.
Zachary’s hands located places on my body I didn’t know existed. Whole erogenous topographies, as yet unconquered. Through all our fevered grapplings in twisted sheets, storeroom cupboards and on car bonnets – I had a BMW car-hood emblem imprint on my back for days – we lost grip on the passage of time. Mornings, afternoons, midnights … all telescoped into one another. Our warm, tangled toes became the edge of the world.
When I did return, reluctantly, to normal life, I felt groggy and disorientated, like a scuba diver leaving the bed of a spectacular ocean. The world seemed grey and drained of sensation; the air clammy. I missed the pure oxygen of lust.
‘So, Beck, will you have an affair with me?’ Zachary asked superfluously on day seven.
I was in a steady relationship. My fiancé was urbane, intelligent, sensitive, compassionate. This punk was a rap star, the lowest of the low. His hair was snarled; his tatty T-shirts torn. He smelt of Johnny Walker and had never read Thomas Pynchon. I told him – hell yes.
12
How Many Rock Stars Does It Take To Screw In A Light Bulb? One: Rock Stars Will Screw Anything
‘AN AFFAIR?’ KATE’S face fell, as though I’d just told her I had terminal cancer. ‘I thought you said that once you screwed him, he’d be out of your bloody system?’
‘It’s only a fling. I’ve got my return ticket, okay?’ Who knows? Maybe after this burns itself out, I’ll be able to finally settle down?’
The black refracted lines on the bottom of the blue pool shimmied as Kate plunged into the ‘fast lane’. As most of Australia seems to be situated outdoors, Kate, a dedicated sportswoman, was always hijacking us off to the pool. In my opinion if God had meant us to swim he would have given us waterproof cigarettes.
‘But he’s so young,’ she chastised, as her head broke the surface. ‘I mean, what are you going to do? Date him or adopt him?’
‘An affair! My God, doll. How grown up!’ Anouska said, cringing at the insalubrious surroundings. (It was her first time at the YMCA. Darius was proving such a drain on her finances that she’d had to give up her Chelsea Harbour Club membership. Kate had greeted this economy drive with scorn. ‘Don’t you have a spare palace to fall back on?’) ‘I mean, Adulteress! It sounds so deliciously decadent, doll!’
‘She is not an adulteress,’ Kate reprimanded, licking the eye sockets of her anti-fog goggles. ‘To be an adulteress, you have to be an actual adult first.’
‘In all my girlfriends, you’re the first Scarlet Woman,’ Anouska thrilled, peeling off to a bikini so flimsy that any contact with water would reduce it to a piece of dental floss. She produced her mobile phone (we called it her ‘It Girl Earring’) and set off on the telephonic trail of her absentee husband.
‘Sex with a lead singer does not mean you’re a scarlet woman. It means you have a personality disorder.’ Kate kicked off from the wall, showering me in a jet of spray.
I pursued her in a leisurely old-ladies breaststroke, neck periscoping above the water so as not to get my hair wet. Clinging to the lane rope, I tapped Kate on the shoulder as she tumble-turned and torpedoed past me.
‘Jesus, Kate. When was the last time you did something just for fun? Just for the hell of it? When was the last time you twanged a guy’s jockstrap, huh?’
‘I am not a Jockstrap Twanger, thank you very much,’ she said, treading water.
‘You’re pleasure-deprived, that’s your trouble.’
‘This may come as a surprise, you big galah, but the rest of the world couldn’t give a rat’s arse about your imprudent dating habits.’ She sprinted overarm towards the shallow end, capsizing me in her wake. I clawed at the air, spluttering like a spa pool. I was ready to send up a distress flare, when she powered past me again and I grabbed hold for a tow to shore. Swimming really would be fine, if it weren’t for the water. ‘So,’ she pried, against her finer feelings, ‘the sex is really that hot, huh?’
‘Hot? My IUD smelted.’
‘Jesus.’
‘We’ve been through the Kama Sutra. Twice. We’ve done the revolving table with the melon, the flambéed banana. The lot. The man licks out my naval lint. If there were such a thing as Frequent Leg-Over points, he’d be flying Concorde, first class, for the rest of his natural life.’
‘No wonder you look so damn happy, doll,’ Anouska said enviously, dangling her legs in the tepid, chlorinated stew.
‘Girls, on a cloud rating of one to nine, we’re talking ten.’
Kate slammed her palm against her forehead. ‘Why is it that whenever a woman starts having great sex, her IQ goes down?’
‘Why don’t you start having great sex and find out? Just get yourself a man and …’
‘The reason I can’t get a man, Rebecca, is because you’ve got them all. But he’s a rock star. We’re talking about people who insert wildlife into their rectums. Jesus Christ, Becky. I hope you’re using condoms …’
‘He’s not like that …’
‘Oh yeah. I bet you can buy bumper stickers that say “Honk If You’ve Had Zachary”.’
I retreated into the amniotic waters, ballet-kicking my way at glacial speed. A lap or two later I was prodded from above by a pedicured toe. Anouska giving up the hunt for her husband detached herself from her ‘It Girl Earring’.
‘But, doll, don’t you feel guilty? About being unfaithful?’
‘Gee, I dunno. If you’re penetrated while having an out-of-body experience, does that count as being unfaithful?’
‘To die for. Can I have him when you’re finished? … Watch out!’ Anouska shrieked. ‘You nearly got my bikini wet!’
‘Oh, God forbid,’ said Kate with mock mortification. ‘A wet swimming costume!’ She was breaststroking towards us, her hands coming together as if in prayer. ‘And what about Julian?’ She trod water, hands on Speedo-ed hips. ‘He must have noticed you acting weird …’
‘He’s a man. He probably just thinks the goldfish’s dead or I’ve got my period or something.’
Anouska’s hand froze, mid-hoik of a wayward breast. ‘Your goldfish is dead?’
Kate and I eye-rolled each other. Sometimes Anouska’s brain waves didn’t quite break on the beach.
‘Besides, he’s so busy liberating uniped Inuits or whoever that I hardly ever see him. Unless you’re fleeing some Junta or other he’s just not interested in you.’
Kate shook her head. ‘Sometimes I think you only have a larval sense of what is right and wrong, Rebecca.’
‘Oh Kate, why should I worry when you worry so well for me?’ I playfully jettisoned a plume of pool water in her face. ‘You’re my surrogate. Anyway there’s no need to get your Tampax in a twist. It’s nothing. It’s just a primitive urge. Hobbesian. Look, he makes me laugh, that’s all. He says that cheese is nothing more than “grown-up” milk. Isn’t that cute? He asked me why British mail comes in First and Second, but not Business Class?’ Kate gave me a dubious stare. ‘He calls the Millennium a creepy crawly thing with too many legs.’
‘Oh God. You’re falling in love with him, Becky. You are.’ Kate surged towards me, eyes at water level, like a crocodile.
‘That’s not true. If you knew how I abuse him. Ignore him. How rude I’ve been …’
‘But that’s a bloody aphrodisiac for men. Since you don’t love him, the Himbo invariably imagines he’s in love with you! Soon he’ll be swallowing you whole!’
‘Yeah, well. I like that in a man.’ Irritated, I pushed up on the side of the pool and made the toe-cringing cross over tinea-infested tiles to our towels which were nestled on the bench beneath a six-foot replica of a hammerhead shark, which seemed, in the half light, to be grinning lasciviously.
Kate began towelling herself dry with great ferocity, loofah-ing off layers of skin with each rub. ‘But why, Becky?’
‘I dunno. Excitement. Danger. It makes me feel sexy. Wanted. It makes me feel young. The question is not why am I having an affair, but why aren’t more women having them? I can control my feelings for him, okay?’
‘With what? … Medication?’
‘It’s no big deal. Nobody will get hurt.’
‘No? What if Julian finds out?’
‘Julian will never, ever know. Generally speaking, there are four words you don’t want to hear whilst having oral sex. They are “Hi, darling. I’m home”.’
‘Yes. All it takes is a little planning,’ encouraged Anouska, living vicariously. ‘A little discretion …’
‘How the hell do you know?’ demanded Kate as we descended the mouldy spiral staircase.
‘I … well … I think Darius is an infidel.’
‘A what?’
‘You know. Committing infidelity.’ Cue eye-rolling from Kate and me. ‘It’s all a matter of not changing your behaviour in any way. That’s what leads to suspicion …’
‘Exactly. This will be a liaison planned with military precision. I mean, God, I don’t want to lose Jules. Who would? If I did anything to jeopardize my relationship with Julian I’d need to have my head examined.’
But if I’d known then what I know now, I would have had only one thing to say. ‘Paging Doctor Freud to reception …’
13
How To Have An Affair. A Beginner’s Guide
‘LISTEN,’ I PANTED to the guy in the off-licence as I rummaged frantically through the champagne bottles in the fridge, ‘just say a woman is going home to her partner, five hours late with no alibi, which vintage would reduce the chance of him breaking up with her?’
‘Krug,’ he said impassively. ‘ ’86.’
Having An Affair – A Beginner’s Guide
Beware the itemized telephone bill.
Don’t suddenly abandon knickers with questionable elastic for more stimulating smalls.
Don’t hide your spermicide in your toothpaste tube. You’re sure to forget and end up with fluoride in your fallopian tubes, not to mention tooth decay.
Take up an evening exercise class, something energetic which definitely involves showering.
Choose a hobby with no obvious end product. A year of African craft with no woven baskets at the end of it could be a bit of a give-away.
Best not leave your lovers semen-stained black-leather-studded cock-pouch (two sizes bigger than your partner’s) in your swimming bag … because yes, the dog is sure to sniff it out and bound into the lounge with it clenched between his teeth.
If this does happen, pretend you are a cross-dresser.
‘Slut’, ‘whore’, ‘trollop’, ‘tramp’ – remember that these are words used to describe a woman who has the sexual appetites of a man.
When feeling cheap and nasty, remind yourself that without infidelity, literature and opera would be up shit creek. There would have been no siege of Troy for Homer to chronicle in the Iliad. No Anna Karenina. No Emma Bovary. And what the hell would Chaucer and Shakespeare have written about? Imagine if Cressida had stayed with Troilus? If Tristan had never played tonsil hockey with Isolde? What would Wagner have done then, hmmm?
Don’t appear happier than usual. Nothing gives away an affair faster than frequent smiling for no ostensible reason.
Don’t indulge in late-night whispered conversations on the phone. Can be just a bit embarrassing when you get caught saying ‘I need your hot rod, you wild, satanic Sex Viking, you,’ when you’d said you were just off to phone your dad.
Cover your tracks with Sherlock Holmes thoroughness. Nothing worse than driving along with your Significant Other and suddenly noticing your lover’s upside-down footprints on the car window.
Be careful not to call out the wrong name when making love. Recurrent coital amnesia has blown the whistle on many an illicit love affair.
Plan your liaisons with military precision and don’t change your behaviour in any way as this will lead to suspicion. And, most important of all,
