member, set down mysteriously on the ground in front of him, but a shocked (of course he was shocked, I had opened the door) boy of nine, and the member not even that, but the boy’s bare forearm, that made a bridge of flesh between himself and Mr Nugent. His hand was buried in the cloth, his fist clutched around something hidden there. They were not one thing, joined from open groin to shoulder, they were two people that I knew, Mr Nugent and Liam.
I am trying to remember what he looked like, but it is hard to recall the face of your brother as a child. And even though I know it is true that this happened, I do not know if I have the true picture in my mind’s eye–the peculiar growth at the end of Mr Nugent’s penis, the bridge of flesh between the man and boy. The image has too much yellow light in it, there are too many long shadows thrown. Mr Nugent is leaning back slightly, his hands are set square on either knee. I think it may be a false memory, because there is a terrible tangle of things that I have to fight through to get to it, in my head. And also because it is unbearable. Mr Nugent is leaning back in the chair, his chin is tucked in to his neck, his face pulled hard back with satisfaction, or pain. He looks like an old farmer getting his feet rubbed.
I don’t know why his pleasure should be the most terrible thing in the room for me. The inwardness of it. The grimace it provokes like a man with a bad fart making its way through his guts, or a man who hears terrible news that is nonetheless funny. It is the struggle on Lamb Nugent’s face that is unbearable, between the man who does not approve of this pleasure, and the one who is weak to it.
I have slept since with men who are like this–they give nothing away until the last, and then they whimper, as though something terrible had happened. The pleasure that overtakes them is like some kind of ambush. And you feel to blame, of course. You feel it is all your fault.
I say I have slept with ‘men’ but you know that is a sort of affectation, because what I mean is that when I sleep with Tom, that this is sometimes what he is like, yearning on the pull-back and hatred in the forward slam, and, ‘What are you looking at?’ he says, or a weird sarcasm at dinner with friends about coming, or me not coming, though you know I do come–at least I think I do–realising then, later, that what he wants, what my husband has always wanted, and the thing I will not give him, is my annihilation. This is the way his desire runs. It runs close to hatred. It is sometimes the same thing.
‘What did I ever do to you?’ I shout. ‘Except love you? What did I ever do to you?’ which question he finds too stupid for words.
I know all men aren’t like this. Somewhere out there a hundred thousand Michael Weisses are walking their sons and daughters to saxophone lessons or piano lessons, living in some mellow American movie, where men are men and their hearts are easy. I know that these men exist, I have even met them, it is just that I could never love one, even if I tried. I love the ones who suffer, and they love me. They love to see me sitting on their nice Italian furniture, and they love to see me cry.
And I know how silly it is. You don’t kill someone by having sex with them. You kill them with a knife, or a rope, or a hammer, or a gun. You strangle them with their tights. You do not kill them with a penis. So it is all–the I hate you, I love you, I hate–a dream of killing and dying, I understand that much; that when you roll away from each other to go to sleep, then the dream is over for another day.
There is also the pleasure of the boy to consider. There is also the question of who he hated, or who he loved. Though Liam, in this memory or image, had his habitual face on, which was an open face of plain white, with two looping black eyelashes over eyes so dilated