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'And on the jukebox is your, is your only song & I, I have never remembered the words.' - Martha Wainwright, When the Day is Short
I have been reading Anais Nin's Henry and June. My initial impression was undecided, I suppose. I had to remind myself that these extracts were written in diary format, that these are her thoughts, that self-absorption is the basis of a diary, not written or intended for anyone else except the diarist.
Now that I'm finished the book I have more of a sense of who she was and what she was searching for. The search for self, for actualisation, for meaning. The desire to feel and feel anything. In the last entry that was included in this book she writes:
'Last night I wept. I wept because the process by which I have become a woman was painful. I wept because I was no longer a child with a child's blind faith. ... I wept because I could not believe anymore and I love to believe. I can still love passionately without believing. That means I love humanly. I wept because from now on I will weep less. I wept because I have lost my pain and I am not yet accustomed to its absence.'I can't pretend to be able to take apart the book and analyse it for its literary impact, but I can see the advantage that Nin had of being first, being the first one to write about these things, being the first one with an openly bohemian lifestyle. Now, in 2008, if the same work were published it would be old, no longer fresh, boring.
Which brings me to my own diary. This diary. I thought it might metamorphose into something else but no, it's a record of my thoughts and actions from day to day. So it's a diary. There are some stories, some recipes, some other stuff, but it's a collection, a collecting place for everything I don't know where to put, including my thoughts.
I am almost tempted to make it private, but something stops me, I can't say what. The thrill of writing a diary lies perhaps in the surreptitious reader, the opening of the window into another life, the questions that each answered question raises in reply.
Anonymity is such a double edged sword. You think it protects you, but it's nebulous really.
Yesterday I went to read the scent of water and found a year of ordinary.
Beautiful writing about life, less ordinary.
'It's just that it's delicate.' - Damien Rice, Delicate
First the train station, and now the cafe...
'It's been how long?' she says, '3 weeks or so.'
'21 days?' he answers as he picks up his coffee cup. She picks at her food.
'Since?' She crosses her legs, sits tight, back straight, her body tensed.
'Since I first kissed you'.
'Oh.'
Head down in her cup of coffee she hunches her shoulders, avoids his face. The urge to run. Almost as strong as the urge to stay. His left hand, thin wristed, picks at the cuff of his sweater.
'Don't you have anything to say?'
'No, not really,' she says. 'I just never thought it would get this far. I usually run away before it gets this far.'
'Oh.'
'Does it scare you?' she asks, lifting her head for a minute and looking at his face, 'that I usually run?'
'I think,' his hand moves across the table to take hers, 'that it means maybe you don't know what to expect.'
'Now this applies both equally to you and I, the only thing we share is the same sky' - Bell X1, Eve, Apple of My Eye
Kids in the car.
‘Yes mama!’ chiming in unison.
She reverses the car out of its parking. It cuts out twice. Bloody battery. Then they're moving and she turns the radio up. They’re playing a favourite song, but she catches just the end of it. Pity.
‘Are you looking forward to being at the farm, guys?’ she
asks.
She thinks she knows the answer.
The little one is all yes yes yes.
‘Well, they’re all on vacation right now, so you’ll have to
use your charm and make friends with some of the other kids there instead.’
She's nervous of making new friends too. Still everyone wants a new friend, right?
Someone to shoot the shit with, drink overpriced coffee with, look at the people passing by and say 'god, she shouldn't be wearing that!' and then mutually appreciate each other's much better put together look.
Someone to play with.
Then they're there. Get out the car.
‘Careful not to open your door too wide!’ The parking spaces
are very small here.
The farm is idyllic. Typical Dutch for all the tourists, but
still a great place to visit.
Organic goats.
Finally a coffee. Never mind the slight underarm flavour. She can sit in the sun with her book. Watching the world happening.
There's a line of trees surrounding the meadow that holds the farm. In winter it's always cold here. The sun is low and the trees keep it from ever really reaching the playground. In summer, the longer daylight hours trap the sun here and it's a sunbowl. A dusty sunbowl. Full of children.
She looks at her book again. Hmm. Maybe
Lolita was not the best choice to bring to a playground. Good thing she isn’t a
man.
‘Mama!’
‘He hit me! And I don’t want to play with him!’
‘Ok, baby, go and play with that little girl then.’
‘But I don’t want to!’
Defiant and standing between her and her coffee.
She bribes him with sweets (bad mommy) and then when he's gone, she gets back to her book. It's so warm today. She can feel her face start to colour. Her sandal swings from her foot as she tries to immerse herself in the story. Lolita is sunbathing and Humbert Humbert is watching her.
Three pages later.
‘But we can’t go home now. We’ve only been here half an
hour’ she says, annoyed. 'What exactly do you think you will do at home?’
He goes back to play.
Finally, she abandons Nabokov and sits, quietly, watching
the people at play.
Suddenly she feels alone and reflexively
reaches for her mobile phone to call someone, anyone, to sit with her
and talk about nothing.
So it's just Lolita, Humbert Humbert and her.
The one who I lost my virginity to? The one who was dating my girlfriend? The one who I slept with for a year before she found out?'When the feeling's right, I'm gonna stay all night, I'm gonna run to you.' - Bryan Adams, Run to You.
Yes, that one. I think it's time to tell you more.
He's called Jono. Sexy name huh? And he is sexy.
Not over the top sexy like some of the other boys. Blond, a drinker, a smoker. He drinks too much and gets depressed and stubs out cigarettes on his palms. His hair flips forward over his face. He has a way of saying 'Ash?' in this husky, smoke-coloured voice and my knees shake. He has a history. He's a bit of a bad boy. His ex is called Carolyn and I hear they did kinky things but I'm not sure what that means.
He smokes about 40 a day. He's 19. He has a little roll of fat on his tummy, just below the belly button, with little blond hairs on it. The little roll is from all the booze I guess. Not that I really notice. I'm too busy looking into his blue-grey eyes.
He dates Juliet. A tiny framed girl with dark hair and doe-eyes. A goth-chick waiting to happen. Complete contrast to me. Maybe that was the thrill. Or just easy sex, who knows.
The night I lose it is strange. We're in my cousin's room which is outside the house in an outbuilding and we're drinking vodka and cooldrink (like squash if you're English or limonade if you're Dutch). It would be vodka and Coke, but all the Coke is finished. He sits behind me while we listen to music and talk shit.
Bryan Adams is playing. We've got a Bryan Adams thing going on that year. He loves it. Every time he can he blasts the Bryan Adams. Especially Summer of '69 and One Night Love Affair. He tells me that this is my summer of '69. Reckless gets played over and over, and when we're drunk our teenage voices sing along to Heaven.
He drives a pale blue (or is it white?) Anglia with brown leather seats that go all the way back. He rolls it one night driving drunk on a straight road. Everyone laughs.
So we're sitting there on the bed and the room is full of people and then I feel a hand go down the back of my shorts. I keep drinking and I'm all the time I'm thinking. Then I feel him behind me and it's not his hand anymore. My shorts come down at the back and then suddenly I'm not a naive little girl anymore. In a room full of people so quietly. Just a gasp and ...
Then my uncle walks in and the cigarettes go out and the booze gets shuffled under the bed and my shorts are pulled up and the lights go off and there's no time to talk, just 'oh shit, we're not meant to be this drunk'.
Later that night I creep, quiet as a mouse, into his room and we finish it. I feel strange and new and I can't tell anyone.
This is my secret life.
In my secret life I'm fucking him in the car outside nightclubs while Juliet is inside dancing. At parties. In the dark in the street. Outside on the grass in the rain during a thunderstorm. In the pool, in the gazebo. On the couch watching stuffy British TV about lawyers. Does anyone really think we were staying up late at night to watch that? I'm 15!
For a good long while he just stays at my aunt's house, which is where I also live. His house is the other side of town and he works for my uncle so it's easier for him to sleep over.
He drinks too much vodka and falls asleep in the bath. My aunt sends me to knock on the door and wake him up. I can't go in, because this is not my secret life. I stand outside the door and talk to him. He comes out with his towel wrapped around him. I have to pretend I'm shy and I've never seen him naked. He bums smokes from my aunt and walks around in his towel for hours.
A year later I start working and just before my interview we have sex for pretty much the last time. We've been such good friends. It's not really sad when we stop, just strange and unusual.
My secret life had become a secret habit.
In 2007 I go on facebook and I look for him. I want to see if he got fat and old and grey, like everyone else did. I don't know why. He's better left blond and 19 but anyway, instead, I find another boy I slept with back then and we chat and he tells me 'oh, that... everyone knew, even Juliet'.
So much for my secret life.
Tell me, did you ever have a secret life?
Confess, even anonymously if you like.
My bones ache, my skin feels cold, and I'm getting so tired and so old. - Snow Patrol, Open Your Eyes
Today, over coffee, we talked about how we would never go home again.
How the living, the living here, has changed us, made us into people we were not.
It has taken the people we were, uncomplicated and naive; and adding age, created tangles from previously unaddled stetches of being and process.
Talk of children, sex and life and Philip Larkin and his Importance of Elsewhere.
Lonely in Ireland, since it was not home,
Strangeness made sense. The salt rebuff of speech,
Insisting so on difference, made me welcome:
Once that was recognised, we were in touch
Their draughty streets, end-on to hills, the faint
Archaic smell of dockland, like a stable,
The herring-hawker's cry, dwindling, went
To prove me separate, not unworkable.
Living in England has no such excuse:
These are my customs and establishments
It would be much more serious to refuse.
Here no elsewhere underwrites my existence.
Where is your elsewhere?
'So mothers keep your girls at home,
Don't let them journey all alone,
Tell them this world is full of danger,
And to shun the company of strangers'
- Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, The Kindness of Strangers
The girl walks up the steps, doesn't punch her card. Sits down with one foot on the back of the seat in front of her. Small, dark skin, doe eyes. Straightened hair. Cheap perfume.
She wears a white puffa coat, jeans, a black belt. Nameless sneakers. She eats McDonalds fries out of their paper packet and watches the door. Her mp3 player, (it's not an ipod), blasts nameless music into her ears.
She taps her foot against the chair.
Opposite her a middle-aged woman, shopping bags in hand, lifeless skin, deflated breasts, soul escaped. Bags from Blokker with gifts for her children who are probably just as lifeless as their mother.
Destined for a bleak future.
Then a boy walks in, sits down, kisses the girl for just a little too long for them to be only friends. She leaves the headphones in. They don't talk. His hand rests on her thigh, near the top, just below her crotch. She eats her fries and listens to her music.
The middle-aged woman watches them. She's trying not to watch, her eyes pretend they're looking out of the window. She's not watching. But she is.
If she would speak she would say, 'I was 17. I ate fries while my boy put his hand on my crotch. I pretended I didn't care.'
If she would speak she would stand up and howl. The windows would shatter.
She likes to think she wouldn't be invisible anymore. She likes to think the boy and girl would notice her.
She'd be shaking her fists, roaring into a void.
Screaming, 'I'm here. Look at me!' Her voice would rasp and grate along the words.
They'd keep listening to their music. Their feet would tap to whatever it was.
The girl would leave his hand near her crotch. He would think about how he wanted to get into her pants. She would think about nothing.
The woman sitting opposite them is invisible.
They're only little tears, darling, let them spill
And lay your head upon my shoulder
Outside my window the world has gone to war
Are you the one that Ive been waiting for?
- Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Are you the one that I've been waiting for.
The tennis ball flips lazily from one side of the court to the other. Tanned, smooth, effortlessly hairless, teenage legs chase the ball.
Backhand, forehand, volley.
White socks with bobbles above white-washed plimsolls, painted every weekend to keep them white.
Green skirts short, slips of white bikini showing when they dip to hit the ball. White t-shirts pulled tight across suddenly full breasts.
The tennis teacher, Flash, he's called, leaning back characteristically on his heels and surveying the sea of hormones in front of him.
The best player is blond and cheeky. Her C-cup passes her in Maths and advances her in tennis. She has curls, good teeth, and an impish face. Even at 14 she knows how to stand close to the teacher, how to show the most flesh when she swings for the ball.
The ball slams, hits the faded clay, catches in the ancient net. The racquets squeak. Shoes thump.
The sun shines on and trickles of sweat run down the back of the tanned knees.
Circles of sweat start to form in the armpits of the clean white shirts. Beads form on noses. The ball slams.
Mid-afternoon and tennis ends, just as cricket starts.
The few boys, favourites of the tennis teacher, lift themselves from the shade of the hut, where they've been watching the play. Punching each other, horsing around, they pretend not to care.
Lanky and loping, they leave to chase different balls on a different field.
If I don't break a sweat, it ain't as good as it gets. - Beth Hart, As Good As It Gets
The veranda. Wide and low.
Soft darkness in contrast to the glaring October light.
Green gauze over the window apertures to keep out the flies. Whitewashed walls, paint flaking if you rub against it.
Inside, cool oxblood floors, polished to a high shine by the Boy and his polisher. Whirring and whining every morning at 7o'clock.
The electric fan on top of the gramophone, limply distributing the air. The heat pulling the life out of you.
Dad fiddling with the radio to get a station through the static. Eventually giving up and settling for torpid silence.
Ochre plastic leather covered chairs sticking to the backs of your
legs where your skirt rides up. A sucking sound when you shift in your
seat. You want to fling your legs apart and hook them over the sides of the chair, but that's impolite so you keep them together and squirm in your chair.
You really want to lie down on the cool floor like the dogs, who pant and salivate in the heat.
Kleintje the fox terrier lies on her side, panting, chest heaving, in an effort to cool down.
Tea in a metal teapot. The green knitted tea cosy made by one of the aunts pointlessly covering the teapot. All delivered by the Boy on a tray with four cups, sugar basin, hot water, teaspoons.
'Bloody Boy forgot the milk again. Can you tell him to bring it?'
'Ephraaaaim, milk!'
The conversation drags on about crops, rain, mielies, Boys and their wives, incest, polygamy, the goat herder and his penchant for fucking the goats. Having to call the vet for the goats and why can't he just be normal and keep it in his trousers.
'Jeepers, did you see that Juliet's husband beat her again. These people. Drink and fight. You can't do anything with them. It's not surprising they can't govern themselves.'
A sigh, and then the subject changes.
'Mmm. Do you want another cup of tea?'
I don't know you, but I want you, all the more for that. - The Frames, Falling Slowly
They walk awkwardly to the metro, the tension splits the air, cold breathes into them. His hands in his pockets, hers around her torso. Then his hand, warm from his pocket finds hers and they walk hand in hand. Nervously.
His accent, lilting and warm, wraps around her while they talk about nothing.
Up the stairs to the metro platform, and they wait ten minutes for the last tram. The cold causes everyone to huddle, but they stand apart, careful not to touch. Their ears ring with leftover music, his blue-grey eyes frankly open into hers.
'You enjoyed that, you think?' he asks. 'A little bit of chemistry there, maybe?'
She looks wordlessly into her bag for things that aren't there.
Ten minutes run by faster than they seem. The metro rushes in, the platform blurs with people.
He pulls her toward him for a breathless kiss. The smell of smoke from the club, the taste of beer, the warmth of his mouth on hers, the taste of his tongue. Magical.
'Go', she says, unsteadily, 'or you'll miss your train.'
The metro pulls away and she looks for him on the train but she can't see him, can't see his face in her memory, can't remember his body.
He's gone.
I would like you on a long black leash. You can bring me all the things I need. - Soft Cell, Sex Dwarf
When I was a girl I wore high heels.
Stilettos.
I had a boyfriend who loved me to wear heels, stockings and suspenders.
In bed.
There was a mirror...
OK, OK, enough.
Back to the heels.
Add 3 inches to 5 ft 11 and you get a whopping 6 ft 2. How many men do you know who are 6 ft 2 and up?
So I toned it down, and I stopped wearing heels.
I wore sensible shoes. I had my winter boots. Charmingly flat.
I had my summer shoes, sandals, very mommy. Ballerinas. Crocs. I even wore shoes from fucking Ecco. You know the ones? Flat, granny, cream coloured, lace-ups. Granted they were necessary because of the achilles tendonitis I had (and still have).
But, they jump-started me into a shoe revolution.
I talked to my physio and we agreed that I will never wear ugly shoes again. Never ever ever. Shake your head with me. Never never.
So the shoe shopping started. First I bought some boots from Duo. They're knee high but they're flat.
I thought, 'Oh, I won't manage heels every day so I'll just have them flat.' Oh woe. They're flat!
I started gently. I bought some of the new boot pumps. They have a sedate 2 inch heel. I bought some ankle boots. With a princess heel I think it's called. Still not really a heel - 2.5 inches. They were practice shoes.
I call them the 'Can I still walk in these after 15 years and kids?' shoes. The 'oh my god, I'm not going to fall am I?' shoes.
My practice shoes are well-behaved. They request tights, but the tights they ask for are black wool, brown wool, warm, comfortable, bound to sag in the crotch at the first wash.
Not sexy. Far from attractive. Practical. The kind of tights that say 'you'll wash me by hand on Wednesdays'.
I want sheer black, 10 denier holdups. The kind that tear if you roll them on wrong. I want purple with white polka dots, I want purple and black stripes, black fishnet, diamonds, patterns.
Tights that say, 'Rip me off, throw me away. There are no consequences.' Tights that beg, ' Where are my 5 inch heels? Where are the mirrored heels, my naughty boots?'
The practice heels are retired. They've graduated me from their class. I'm ready for 5 inch spike heels.
These shoes are in the driver's seat. The rest of me is just along for the ride.
