…sunny felix
A few days off work. I went to a spa. Had things done to me that only the female of the species can truly appreciate for their wonder. Foot massages. UNGH. Head massages. Double UNGH. Suntanning in the currently glorious English weather. Burning in the currently glorious English weather.
I love Britain when the sun comes out. Everyone emerges from their little houses like dust encrusted refugees from some atomic wasteland. They rub their eyes a moment and almost immediately emerge with summer clothing that was last worn when the Beegees still had soul. Mostly none of it fits correctly. A silent cheer echoes across the land. It ripples like a heat wave. Sunglasses appear. Hats. “flip flops” as they call them here (I love that) for sandals. In a single day every shop has barbeque equipment on sale. People walk! Walk I tell you. I know, I wouldn’t have believed it myself if I hadn’t seen it with my own baby browns. Teenage mums emerge with their offspring teathered to them with string like on those mommy monkeys in the zoo. Men (of all shapes) discard their shirts in favor of chests so pale that they wouldn’t look out of place advertising bleach. Their whispy hairs crawl upward toward the light hungry for sustenance. I love them all.
And not one of them wears suntan lotion. By next year they are all going to wrinkle up like yesterday’s half eaten apples.
And then in one week they all hate it; redder than Stalin’s pajamas; insomniacs because English houses are designed to keep IN the heat so none of them can sleep; watching the garden die because of a water ban (for the wettest place in the world England seems to drain water like a colander with a hole in it) and sick to the eyes with the happy feeling the sunshine brings…then, it will rain.
As I harken back to the west coast of the US (shock horror) sunshine is not a big riot for me to have sunshine. I love it, yes, but I actually prefer the temperate European weather to the heat back home. If I want a tan I fake it. If I want sun I take a weekend in Spain. But it rarely matters. The light in the UK is different to anywhere else. It’s reserved and glistens in places you least expect it. On my roof balcony I have pots full of daisies. There is a beautiful variety called Sunny Felix. Its blue center sparkles like sapphires in the sunshine. Those are the things I like about the weather here. And the breeze is beautiful….humm…No one has ever brought me sapphires.
I am currently on ’said’ balcony with a tumbler of nonalcoholic pear cider mixed with a healthy glug of gin and ice. On the table is a cup of freshly made espresso and beside it is my iPhone. I am plucking up the courage to give MR the ultimatum. The peace and quiet and mollification of three days away from the male sex, cigarettes, alcohol, work and food has done me the world of good. I am going to make a decision. MR or D&G. Two weeks. In two weeks it’s going to be one or the other.
Love of life, or man who smells like heaven and fucks like Jesus. Sometimes I think it would be so much more relaxing to be single. Maybe that is the third option?
…Richie
“Hello.” I said as I picked up the phone, finally, last night. I feel like I’m living in an 80s video, maybe for a Lionel Richie song. “Tony Billy Boy has been imprisoned for 25 years…Billy Boy, ask Amanda for a date.”
There’s a pause at the end of the phone, I felt sort of sick as I answered.
“Is it me you’re looking for?” I say, I want to be angry and sound bitter and beleaguered, but I can’t. I’m doing what I always do, and he knows it, because this is such a hard conversation. I have to make sure I don’t cry, watching the flesh pump up and down on the tv offers a mild distraction.
“Lionel Richie.” He sounds as if he is slightly smiling. I’m trying not to miss him, or think of the things I have been doing in his absense. “Appropriate.”
“It’s what I know.” I say, “this and the can…”
We used to do this, MR and me, when we were bored, quote cinematic 1980’s music videos. Thriller was always a favorite.
“We could go to Florida,” He adds, “Or we cold go out west.”
“Guitar solo moment.” I added, This is where he would dance with utensils around the kitchen. His preferred microphonic implement was a whisk. Omlette making was always good time.
“I miss you.” He says. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing. Sitting in a hotel room in Berlin, watching german porn.”
He said something funny here but I didn’t laugh.
“Work?”
“Yup.” I clarify. Then there’s nothing again. Except the noises being made by my Ten Euro televisual entertainment.
“So why haven’t you been answering?” He asked.
“Busy, you know.” I lied. Part of me wanted to tell him it was to make him hurt like hell, so i did. “And because you hurt me.”
“It was just a stupid arguement.” He clears up. I think I made a snorting noise out of my nose.
“A stupid arguement? Were you going to ever tell me about you and Claire or just leave it up to her to do your dirty work for you.”
“What do you mean ‘Me and Claire’? I can’t stand the woman.” He said, and he sounded geniunely confused.
“You’re a regular Rip Van Winkle aren’t you?”
“Don’t change the subject. What are you talking about?”
“Claire and you. Don’t lie about it.”
“About what…God, you have one blow up at me and suddenly I’m a dick.”
“You blew up at ME? I’ve got the fucking email chain to prove it.”
“Shit I can’t talk about this over the phone. When are you coming home?”
“Never.”
“Now you’re being facetious.”
“Now you’re being facetious.” I repeated. God I love irony.
“Don’t do that. Come home, let’s go see a movie. I just…I need to see you. I’m useless. Come on. Please. ‘We could go to the Paramount maybe, or the Alby.’..” He’s Richieing again. Of course it makes me miss him.
“Dinner. No movie. I’m not coming over to yours. A proper date.”
That’s kind of how it went. And I DO want to see him. I won’t tell you how much i cried last night because it’s depressing. I’ll just send you in the direction of good ol’ Lionel…
…yar
German porn is a wonderful thing. I’m sitting in a hotel in Berlin and there’s nothing to do but stare at the biscuits and feel guilty about my hips. So I thought I would waste my expense account on the porn channel. After all, you don’t REALLY need subtitles.
it looks amateur this stuff, and it’s costing my company Ten Euros, shocking. I looks as if it was filmed on my Mom’s DVD video camera ( which was purchased when the things were new and interesting, now it looks as though it’s held together with superglue and faith), but the women are pretty hot actually. I can say less for the men. The Aerean race, if they had been born out of Adolfo’s stringent party planning, would NOT have been attractive; blond with six limbs and a reduced sperm count, yes; attractive, NO. So I’m watching the women. it strikes me that lesbians must have all the fun. I mean I find men attractive, and goddamn if I don’t love playing with them and their endlessly entertaining bodies; but as I watch Mr Hotditz here is absolutely silent without the fun of a ballgag. He’s just … and … while they… and ….
It’s dissapointing. Ten Euros. Yet still endlessly watchable.
My cell keeps ringing.
MR is desperate to talk. It hurts every time it buzzes.
So I’m turning up the volume.
“Oh yar” Says big tits #1
“Yar yar” Says big tits #2
“Ummmmmm” Says big tits #3 with something between her painted lips. (I’m not even going to encroach the german sausage jokes pUrleasE, it’s a penis, a big throbby penis).
Buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
That’s my cell…not anything on the screen.
I may take votes on whether I answer him.
Back to the porn (I’m taking notes – D&G and I are running out of moves).
…marinara
So the weekend gone and the one before I have spent on a small boat type thing in the south of England. D&G brought the thing with his inheritance, which it turns out was not insubstantial based upon the prettiness of it. He is in fact almost entirely self-sufficient due to a wealthy relative back home who is happy to fund D&Gs whims since he is dead and can hardly argue about it. At lease D&G works hard too – I can’t bear those rich types that believe money equates to laziness. D&G wasn’t allowed access to his trust fund until after he got his first legitimate pay check. Hence I discover the ‘clowning’ was something he did to fund himself through school back on the ranch, so to speak, he keeps it up it turns out because he likes it, not for the money.
Like list 1) clearly cool with masses of screaming children. don’t think this can be deemed a bad thing.
But it turns out I am useless on the water and have suffered from an embarrassing bout of sea-sickness (throwing up into a sink is really not attractive on first or second date territory, but he was nice enough to be okay with it) both times we went out on the water. We therefore stayed moored up in the marina 90% of the time. I wasn’t going to complain: good wine; the great outdoors, and an incident that due to some rather aggressive love-making led me to hit my head on the roof of the boat (as they say in ‘rom coms’, “Hilarity ensued”) meant that I was very happy, if bruised, for that particular 90% of the time last weekend.
However (isn’t there always an ‘however’) not so much ‘happy’ this long weekend. Though the weather was hot and the company hotter, the water cool and rose cooler; the only difference between this and last weekend is that I was stupid enough to take my cell with me: and rendering only 30% of my time - until I checked my messages – anything like positive. Because we remained inland I still got reception this weekend, and unlike the seven days previously I began to receive contact from the now estranged Mr Right.
The first SMS was at 9am on Saturday, after a week of radio-silence.
MR 9.01 am
“I am sorry.”
Of course I didn’t receive this message, having at the time both hands upon the undercarriage of a professional clown it was difficult to check my messages. And the device was on vibrate.
MR 9.15 am
“I am really sorry.”
I would have been fretting had I not been, at that point in time nursing a small head wound.
MR 10.03 am
“I miss you, where are you?”
Now I was panicking because I had received the texts while D&G went to get ice. I shouldn’t have checked my cell. MR had called the weekend before while I was away, not texted, not left me a message, but called, about ten times. And I hadn’t called back. I couldn’t. What would i have said? I was so angry still, so heartbroken, so confused, so very happily smiling and waving knowingly at D&G as he breezed past me at work…that smell, and the mental images that now go with it are enough of a distraction for my loins let alone my mind.
There are more messages along those lines but the two that are important are these.
The first of only two responses:
Missy Monday 12.25pm
“You’re sorry for what exactly?”
MR Monday 12:29pm
“Fighting. It was stupid. Can I come over & see you tonight? We need to talk about it. I miss you.”
NOT SORRY FOR SCREWING CLAIRE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Missy Monday 13.00pm
“Fail.”
Still not sure if that was the right response. D&G and I used the ice in an impromtu batch of Mojitos.
But I’m still looking at my cell every 10 minutes. Nothing has been sent in return.
…deserts
So this time last week, and once this morning, I was lying in the tanned arms of D&G. We got a cab back to his and spent the evening inspecting the quality of his mattress. He has a stunning home, a little house on the outskirts of Notting Hill which he used to share with his brother **there are more of them** who was in the antiques business. He doesn’t collect action figures ad I had first suspected, but has a totally fascinating collection of clutter. It’s a breath of fresh air, MR is obsessed with cleanliness, he gets a headache if his books aren’t in alphabetical order. His home always smells of cleaning products. I guess I’m mommy bear in this little trio, my mess is solely confined to my bedroom, which is a clutter of travel memorabilia, a big fluffy duvet,clothes mountains, half read books and dusty jewel cases for CDs long since transferred onto my harddrive.
But let’s not talk about his collection of bottle caps, and dusty pile of international boardgames, his wall of hats or the fourteen umbrellas he keeps in a bucket by the door. Let’s talk about sex baby.
D&G is surprisingly nervous in bed, to begin with at least. Not at all as you would think from his assured behaviour at the dinner table. He is uber-conscious about ‘how long’ he can go. He clearly thinks he’s Sting, and ‘has practiced tantric techniques’, and yes I did have multiple orgasms thanks to his technique, and yes it seems he has some impressive stamina. I’m used to more slow and confident and comfortable love-making from MR (and don’t we girls so love to compare!) so his awkward stylings took me back at first. What a strange thing it is to be in the arms of another man, and try and learn his quirks and hot spots; he must be in the place. Further notes to follow.
I woke up and wandered to the bathroom, being nosy I pried through the cupboards. The closet klepto in me loves to poke through other people’s shit. I want to know what drugs he is on, is he loosing his hair, what sex toys he keeps hidden behind the toiletpaper. Nothing odd apart from a porn mag in the pile of readibles by the toilet seat. So I step into the shower and wash myself in his showergel. i love doing that, smelling of the man I just had all over me.
Breakfast is OJ and English Crumpets. He whipped up a cup of coffee wearing nothing but his boxers and a t-shirt with last year’s festival line up on the back, sat opposite me at the breakfast bar and watched me as I eat. Normally I find that a bit unnerving, but his eyes on me were great. I was wearing one of his towels with my hair scooped up in one of the clips I had the night before. I could see him stripping me down with his smile, it was WOBBLEMAKING.
“Come sailing.” He said. And it was really out of the blue. He had been talking about it the night before, how much he liked to be on the sea, or just drifting up a river with a bottle of wine. I never really registered it. “Just you and me in the boat for a weekend. You just need to be able to pull on the ropes,” I’ve not DONE water you know, flying I can handle, but I’ve never had the inspiration to get on the water. He said he’d drive. I pointed out only have four inch high heals and eveningwear. He said I’d look good in a black bin liner and I blushed. He said I could take some of his sister’s clothes from his room **and another sibling**, that we were about the right size.
I think about it as I munch my crumpet and sip at my coffee, he rounds my back and started to distract me by running his fingers down my back and over my neck. SERIOUSLY Men, don’t they appreciate that boiling hot drinks and flirtation are dangerous? If he had tickled me right then he would have been in trouble, but he didn’t and I said okay. Don’t know what came over me. I just said yes.
…starters
From the distance I have been observing him, and with little less than a few minutes to take in his entire persona (and usually when I am trying to focus on work) I never had the chance to truly appreciate D&G before our dinner on Friday. So while in my mind he had become Adonis like; perfect skin, perfect teeth, exquisite style and hair, piercing eyes, HUGWORTHY torso, SQUEEZWORTHY biceps and thighs so powerful you could crack eggs between them the wrong way around…Michelangelo’s David with a smattering more YES-please and better dress sense.
Closer up D&G is less than perfect.
His skin is a little more weather beaten (turns out he likes to sail and owns a yacht. I’ll get to that). His eyes are less blue and a little more grey. His wardrobe that evening was less tailored (he wears a shirt and suit at work, the only man that does), and that evening he wore a striped summer sweater, grey and black, a dark brown shirt underneath and a pair of expensive looking jeans. This is the man that clowns in a duck costume, why did I envisage he would be the same smart and put together soul in the evenings?
Though my eyes spent longer on the shiny cutlery than him, my psychiatrist knows why (I’m a closet klepto). I took snapshots of parts of him in my head, but never looked at him as a whole. As I looked up from the tableware, across the view of the London skyline, skirted my eyes over the eaves of the restaurant and other guests, I caught the crinkle of skin in the corner of his eye (he is a little older than I thought) and the slight crookedness of his bottom lip, the fact that he has one ear pierced but I have never seen him wearing an earring, he had his hair cut since I last saw him (Today? For me?) and that I think he was wearing a little makeup under his eyes. Nevertheless he was no less stunning. Not the slightest bit less hot to look at, which is why I couldn’t look at him all in one go, I thought I might faint, and I like eating at the Oxo, I wanted to make it to the third course.
He let me bluster through the first thirty minutes, after I had got over my soul crushing mute-iny nervous and desperate conversation took over. I must have told him all my innermost secrets in that thirty minutes, and he just looked on in wonder and tried to pick us a bottle of wine (the final choice was a Bordeaux; Château Montrose, Deuxième Cru).
The salt and pepper shakers were so goddamn cool!
So goddamn fucking cool that I wanted to melt them with my stare. Why could we not have gone somewhere a little less cool, somewhere a little more clunking and normal, or abnormal, does he think I’m one of those women like Claire who thrives on being on top of the latest trend (okay I know Oxo isn’t the latest trend, but it’s still a place she hangs out I’m sure); is he one of them, is that why were we there?
Okay so I was dwelling, my cheeks were flushed, and the server who had by this point been summoned over was looking at me expectantly to order. I set down the shakers which I had been absentmindedly playing with (date wasn’t going really that well so far) and ordered the first thing on the menu I could see.
When she had gone D&G asked me what was wrong. God that voice, creamy, deep, American; it made me miss my Dad (Yes, and my psych would have something to say about that too I’m sure).
I wasn’t about to tell him I should have been in the arms of my partner that moment, but that we’d had a fight, and now…yah yah yah. God how pathetic would that have been.
But what I actually did say wasn’t all that better, I just locked on his eyes for the first time that evening.
“You clown?” I asked, letting myself be ironic. He didn’t even blink.
“I don’t want to talk about that.” He said, hell he loves his own little mysteries. (And in truth that one’s killing me).
“I bet there’s loads of things you like people to know about but never explain,” I guessed, “Like I bet you smoke a pipe, or collect action figures, or…I don’t know…speak Polish or something.”
“Cantonese.” He added. “Like I said, I don’t want to talk about me. I’m playing hard to get.” Seriously he said that. I think I lost all control of my pants right then. They would have gone out on the top of my emptied starter plate if I could have slipped them off without him noticing.
“Hard to get?” I laughed.
He just smiled, god he loved himself a bit much right then. As my little brother says when we MSN, “meh”, because so did I. Love him. A bit. Right then.
“Why?”
“Because that’s what you’ve been doing to me for weeks now. It’s time you had a bit of your own medicine.” He grinned as we got our main course, I had completely forgotten what I had ordered, in fact I had completely forgotten how to use most of the extremities of my body right about that moment.
“I hadn’t even noticed.” I said, really I thought I had been too full on with my flirtation, then again, I remembered, I do HAVE a partner, even if he has gone and made an idiot out of himself, and called me condescending, and whined because I have to be nice to other people apart from him and screwed one of my oldest…
“There you go again. Being all coy.” He said.
COY!
I SHIT YOU NOT! ME! COY? WTF.
“I’ve got a lot of stuff on my mind. Work, you know.” I’m a terrible liar.
He’s so amazingly cocksure he leant forward and straight up took my hand.
“Can we get over the flirtation and just admit that we both want to screw each other’s brains out?” He asked. “I mean it’s fun and all but I’m not a patient person.”
I mean, come on… what would you do?
…@oxo
And so there we are. Him and me.
Me and him.
Me and NOT MR.
He met me outside the restaurant, pulled me straight out the taxi cab. He had kind of rough hands. He doesn’t moisturise. MR moisturises, his hands smell of pears. D&G smells of…that night, not D&G, something different. He has a kind of musky masculine scent on, but with a hint of fruit. I just wanted to bury my head in his shoulder, but I smiled sweetly and let him help me out the cab. It’s killing me. I want to know what it is. But for some reason at first I was unable to speak.
We took the elevator ride up to the Oxo Restaurant. It didn’t feel awkward. It felt, gentle, a short journey during which we smile at each other. He comments on my shoes. We both know we’ve never really spoken. Platitudes and comments about the weather (which as we all know is an English national past-time) have passed at work. Flirtation has been minimal. Conversations by SMS have been brief and never explored deep annals of greater meaning.
He has grey eyes.
I realised I was staring because the concept had dawned on me that I really didn’t know this man at all. I was working off pheromones here, fake pheromones, manufactured in a bottle and doused all over his impeccably tailored sweaters.
So when we exited the elevator I was about ready to make an excuse and leave, but I’d built no escape route, I hadn’t my cell, only one person knew where I was and that was because she spent 30 minutes attacking my nethers with wax and drinking my bubbly. And as far as she was concerned this was an anniversary diner for MR and I.
D&G took my coat and handed it to the server. That was it. Escape route erased. I was going to have to talk to him, flirt no doubt, say clever things, be funny and witty and all those things I am renowned for. But I kept thinking of MR, memories of our stupid fight, flashes of Claire and him, probably lying naked on each other. In my head she is snaffling popcorn and coke out of his crotch or reading something deftly intellectual like Nitche as she adjusts her expensive spex and they wax lyrical about the state of modern literature.
Fuck.
I smiled. All teeth and anxiety.
This was no way to start the show.
