in my bedroom, I achieve an orgasm of gasping, heart-stopping, free-falling depths. Like staring into the abyss, and watching it stare right back at me.
I woke up late after my evening with Audrey and Vaughn. I lay there with the sunlight coming in through the gap in the curtains, thinking of my late nights with the bottle of whisky rapidly depleting and wondering if it was too early for me to consider counselling for my problem. And as for the masturbation – well, thanks to the dream, or was it a nightmare, of wanking over Audrey’s prolonged and disappointing strip, I feel quite positively that I will be able to pursue a path of abstinence for at least a week. There is something deeply offputting about having to change your sheets and have a shower in the middle of the night because you’ve soiled yourself in a nightly emission like a hormonal teenager. Even my subconscious thinks it is a disgusting way to behave.
I got up eventually and made breakfast, then washed and dressed. It’s a bright morning so I’ve taken myself off for a walk while I think about how to fill what remains of the weekend.
On the main road a badger lies on its side, its head flattened by the wheel of a car. It’s relatively fresh, just starting to enter the Bloat stage, its four legs raised and straightened by the gases of Putrefaction that are distending its abdomen, the blood around its head still red. I stand and observe it for a little while. There is no pavement here, just a wide grass verge with a hedge and fields beyond.
I think about going home and getting a bag of some sort and taking it away somewhere so that I can watch the process unfold, but of course there is no point in intervening. It defeats the whole object. The decay must be allowed to take place here, where the animal died, otherwise it is not a genuine process. I leave it, reluctantly, thinking about coming back tomorrow evening after work, if there is time, and assuming that the council haven’t found it by then and shovelled it on to the back of their roadkill van.
After luncheon I do some studying, looking into tag questions, embedded commands and double binds, thinking about the badger, thinking about Leah. Each of them is so different; each has such different needs.
She told me what had happened to her, eventually. It didn’t take much to get her talking, and as she did so I responded appropriately, teasing out the story like pulling on an unravelling thread, and then watching her come apart. She had been working at a superstore as a management trainee, and the boss there had been flirting with her for weeks and weeks. He was older than her, and gradually she began to fall for his charms and admit to herself that she found him attractive. Eventually one night after work she agreed to meet him for a drink, and from there they went back to the store. I wanted details, of course – this was the interesting bit, after all – but to press her on that would be to distract from the main purpose of our conversation, which was to help her find the right path. Reminding her of the details of the sexual affair that followed was not going to do that. So – they had an affair which seemed to consist mainly of sex in the store after hours, or in his car parked in isolated rural locations. And then his wife discovered what was going on, and a humiliating encounter at work followed, with Leah shamed in front of all of the staff and a good few customers too. I wouldn’t have believed it possible when first meeting her – such a shy, quiet girl – but she genuinely didn’t realise he was married. And after that, of course, he avoided her at all costs, shunned her and excluded her from all the management training she was supposed to have. She applied for a transfer, which was blocked by head office. And despite it all, despite this man’s appalling behaviour, the trigger that brought Leah to me was that she still loved him, even though it was hopeless.
There was the word: hopeless. The word I need to hear, to start things off.
‘It’s easy to make things better,’ I said. ‘The end of the road is easy to find, and it’s a very simple