Yes, Floyd. Your invitation to dinner. I know you will try to twist this and rewrite it, like you try to twist and rewrite everything, but you know and I know that you started this. You saw me, Floyd. You saw me and you wanted me. You asked me to dinner. You turned up at that dinner on time and smartly dressed. You did not look at me and say, This has been a terrible mistake, and do a runner. You smiled when I walked in, you stood, you took my shoulders, and you pressed your face against my face. You said, “You look lovely.” You waited until I’d sat down before you sat down. You maintained a steady line of eye contact.
You did. You totally, totally did.
And then it was you. You phoned me a few days later (just long enough to make me sweat, just long enough to make me think about calling you first but I did not. I did not.). And you invited me to your house.
Yes you did.
Your goal was clear that night. You wanted to fuck me. But that was OK because I wanted to be fucked by you. I didn’t care that dinner was somewhat perfunctory—what was it now? Pasta, I think, with some kind of shop-bought sauce that must have taken you all of five minutes to throw together. But a nice bottle of wine, if I recall. And we ended up on your sofa an hour later and while you were pulling at my clothes and panting all over me I said, “Believe it or not, I am a virgin, possibly the last one in existence.” And you were very kind about it. You didn’t laugh or say, You’re taking the piss. You didn’t recoil or sigh or tell me to go home. You were kind. You touched me all over until I was a blob and then you were slow and patient. And it did hurt. Yes, it really did. But I’d been expecting that and frankly, you weren’t the biggest boy in the class, if you know what I mean. A blessing really.
And I knew. I think I really did know from that point on that you and I were mainly about sex. And that was fine with me.
But I grew accustomed to you over the months, grew accustomed to your pillows and your cereal bowls, the smell of your scalp before you had a shower, the sight of your name on my phone when you called or texted. You inhabited a big chunk of my life: over 30 percent if we’re going to talk in numbers. And probably 30 percent of that 30 percent was sex. The rest was just lying in your bed listening to you shower, waiting for your calls, watching you cook, watching you eat, sitting on your sofa watching TV with you, meals out from time to time, walks in the park from time to time, making arrangements to meet. That’s a lot of shared existence for two people in a sex-based relationship, a lot of time not having sex. More than enough time for a bond to form. I never told you I loved you. You never told me you loved me. Some people would say that that was sufficient grounds to diminish everything else that happened between us. But I disagree.
I disagree very strongly.
29
I first met Sara-Jade when you and I had been together for a year. Up until then she’d only been spending every other weekend at yours and it was easy to keep us compartmentalized. But then your ex got a job and suddenly she was dropping Sara on your doorstep all the time, quite often at short notice, quite often when you’d already invited me over for the evening.
Well, you’d told me that she was a difficult girl; she’d responded badly to the split, so you said. And like I said, I’d never really liked little girls. They have a way of looking at you sometimes, as though their hearts are full of hate.
And Sara-Jade, she barely looked human. Skin so thin and pale you could see the veins of her. And this shock of white hair. Not blonde, no; white, like an old lady. She was tiny too, more like a five-year-old than an eight-year-old.
I tried to be nice. I really did. You know that. You were there, remember?