Love Secrets of Don Juan

by Tim Lott

  I shake my head, pick at a dollop of sour cream on the side of my blinis. You have to sleep with them to qualify. That’s when the wrapping comes off, see?

  So all you’ve ever seen is my wrapping?

  Outstandingly choice wrapping it is too. What happened with you and that married ponce by the way? Howard, or whatever his name was.

  He was a lying, duplicitous, scheming bastard.

  Sounds familiar. I bet you love him for it, though.

  Carol looks thoughtful. I don’t, actually. I think I’m finally waking up to the fact that unpleasant men are really what they appear to be. Unpleasant. They’re not waiting for some woman to come and save them, change them, reform and redeem them. They’re just wankers. Full-time. Unredeemable. I’m not interested in Howard any more. I’m not interested in any of the Howards out there any more. They can all get stuffed.

  Good for you, Belly-flopper.

  I’m going to find myself a good man. A man like you, Danny.

  She looks at me. Is this a come-on? After all these years? After our relationship has been codified and concretized into what it is?

  There’s no such thing. No good men, and no good women. Just people doing what they must.

  People can surprise you.

  They certainly can.

  By the time we make it back to my flat, I’m convinced. I worked my way down to strawberry on the vodka menu, so perhaps I’m not thinking straight. I’m certainly not walking straight. Carol has to support me. It’s the way she holds my arm, the way she keeps her face pressed close to mine. Something’s happened. More than thirty years of resisting my charms has proved too much for her.

  I still feel sick with sadness at the decree absolute, but the vodka and Carol have taken the edge off. She’s laughing as she propels me up the stairs. Christ, what a great woman! Why shouldn’t we sleep together? It’s only natural. Amazing that it hasn’t happened before. She looks good tonight. I was jealous. Frogs can turn into princes. She wants me. And why not? We’re both alone, we both like one another, both love one another. The most natural thing in the world.

  She’s cautious, obviously. She needs a little help, a little encouragement. She needs me to show her what she wants. People say no when they mean yes. We’ve both been saying no all these years. But what we mean is yes.

  God, I’m lonely. Lonely and sick. Ten years together, fallen to dust.

  Come on, Spike. Up those stairs, you reprobate.

  Want a coffee?

  I’d better make you one.

  She’s coming up for a coffee. That confirms it. I need someone to hold tonight. But what will it do to our friendship? I’m too far gone to care about our friendship.

  Carol drags me on to the sofa. I flop back on the cushion. The room is spinning. Carol tries to pull me upright so that she can feed me a cup of coffee. I gather myself, raise my back towards her. She has her hand at the back of my neck, and she’s slightly off-balance.

  She held my gaze at the paddling-pool. Her skirt rode up her thighs. She loves Poppy. She loves me. A frog can turn into a prince.

  Suddenly, I have my hands round the back of her head and I’m pulling her towards me. Before she has a chance to resist, my lips are against hers, my tongue seeking a space. In my drunken, desolate mind, the logic seems perfect, the signs are clear.

  Carol pulls back. She tries to laugh it off. Come on, Spiky. What are you doing, you drunken nutter?

  I pull her down. This time she loses her balance and falls on top of me. For a moment her weight is full on me, her breasts on my chest. I put my arms around her back, start kissing her neck.

  Now Carol isn’t laughing. Spike! What are you… No!

  You have to show them what they want. You have to let them slip responsibility. I run my fingers up the inside of her thigh. I want to find what I found with Sharon Smith. That portal. In a moment, my finger has found the gap between her knickers and her inner thigh. She pulls back, but I hold her tight with my other arm. Then, suddenly, I feel Carol’s other arm reaching over my head, and I feel it brush my hair and I know she is letting go, she is finding out that she wants what she didn’t even know she wanted.

  Then I feel boiling liquid, down my shirt, my face, my trousers. The coffee is all over me – scalding. I am yelling: What the fuck did you do that for?

  Seizing her chance, Carol jumps off the sofa, as I stand there drenched. She is shaking, pale. You IDIOT, Danny. You stupid, pathetic… What did you…

  I stare up at her, a chill working its way to my heart. My head is clearing and I recognize the awfulness of what I have done. Carol. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to… you know. I thought you… Don’t be angry.

  She’s crying now, and grabbing for her coat. Carol, I’ll call you a cab. I’m so sorry. It was a stupid… Don’t hate me. But I’m talking to her back. She’s walking towards the door.

  She’s gone. Gone to join Beth, and Alice, and Martin, in the house of nowhere.

  11

  People can surprise you. Not when there’s pain and need and the dog-fight that is human mating they can’t. Not when there’s loss and anger, pride and revenge. Even I don’t surprise me. It was horribly predictable that I would do something so fucking idiotic. Why? Because I’m a fucking idiot – and that’s what they do.

  I’ve blown it all. All my attempts to heal my life have come to this. I’ve lost my marriage, Martin, Alice, and now Carol. What more destructive force is there in this universe than the search for love? The earth is scorched.

  It’s a week since I made my ludicrous, doomed pass at Carol. My date-rape, my date-grope, my single act of carnality in over thirty years of knowing her, and it’s enough to smash our friendship to pieces.

  I’ve called her repeatedly. The answering-machine every time. It’s a grey day, and my tiny flat is cramped and untidy. A free Smurf from McDonald’s is wedged between the sofa cushions. I drag a razor across my face, cutting myself in three places, then make a cup of coffee, put on Radio Four and stare out of the window. I’ve got work to do on the krusha Bar™ campaign today. I’ve got maintenance to pay, recompense to make for sins deep and numberless.

  I stare out of the window until I hear the mail arrive. I’m a great window-starer. Staring at nothing – a fence, a bird, a piece of sky – my mind as blank as air. Then sometimes the knowledge that it’s all pointless, all meaningless hits me, and I rush to make myself busy to blot out the truth. But today all I have is a melancholy calm.

  I rouse myself, still in my dressing-gown, and make my way to the doormat. One letter. At least it doesn’t appear to be a bill. I pick it up and inspect it. My heart sinks. I’ve been hoping for a letter from Carol, but it’s from Beth.

  Beth only sends me letters (1) when she wants some thing and (2) when what she wants is so outrageous that she doesn’t want to be around me when I find out what it is.

  I toy with the idea of sending it back unopened, but curiosity, I know, will get the better of me. I feel particularly piqued because we’re divorced now, for fuck’s sake. Why can’t she just leave me alone? Is this going to go on for ever? Am I going to be haunted and mugged like this for the rest of my life?

  I take another slug of the coffee, put it on the cluttered table where the remnants of last night’s chill-cook meal lie. My bedsit is a mess. Indifference to life produces only chaos.

  Slowly, reluctantly, I tear open the letter. I can see at once that it is much longer than usual. As a rule, letters are short, angry and to the point: little paper daggers. I take a deep breath, brace myself, and start to read.

  Dear Danny,

  A few days ago I received our decree absolute through the post. 1 suppose you must have had the same by now. I don’t know what it did to you. Delighted, I expect. I suppose you hate me now days.

  Beth’s always had a bit of trouble with spelling – dyslexic she claims. I mentally insert the a in ‘nowadays’ – habit from when I used to proof-read.

  I’ve hated you too, Danny, ov
er the last – oh, I don’t know how long. Since all this blew up. But I just wanted to say that when that letter came through the post, it was one of the saddest days of my life.

  Oh, Danny, what happened to us? We have a daughter, Danny. We loved each other, Danny. And now we can’t even speak to each other, now we can’t even be in the same room as each other. It’s all so insayne.

  I pick up a pencil, put a little mark through the y in ‘insayne’.

  The other day when you accidentally called me darling, when you were picking up Poppy – after I closed the door I just burst into tears. 1 cried for – I don’t know how long. An hour. All you saw was my smile. Perhaps that is the secret behind the failure of everything.

  I don’t know how to show you who 1 am.

  I know you think I’m a bitch, and 1 suppose 1 have been sometimes, because I’ve just been so hurt. You didn’t want me any more – or, anyway, you weren’t prepared to keep on fighting for our marriage any more. 1 know it wasn’t working out very well, and I have to take some of the blame for that. 1 wish I could go back and…

  But I can’t, can I? We can’t. We had ten year’s together, Danny. It’s a big piece of someone’s life. We have a daughter. Oh, I’ve said that already, havent I?

  I cross a pencil through the apostrophe in ‘year’s’ and insert one in ‘havent’.

  I don’t know. Don’t know anything any more. How does life do this to people? How do things get so twisted up? I don’t wish you any harm. For God sake, your my husband!

  I put down the pencil now, let the mistakes stand.

  Sorry, your not are you? Not any more. It’s going to take a bit of getting used to. You made me happy sometimes, Danny. You remember that holiday we had in Devon? When Poppy took her first steps? I’ll never forget.

  My tears are falling on the page now in large, uneven drops, smudging the ink. Page one is finished. I turn to page two.

  I don’t know what I’m going to do any more. I know you think I’ve tried to use Poppy against you, but I would never never never never try and keep her away from you Danny. I would never do that. She loves you so much. She misses you so much.

  I want to say sorry, sorry for everything. I don’t know what I did, I don’t know what you did. But I’m sorry. For the bit that was my fault, whatever that bit was, I’m sorry. I’m crap sometimes, I know. But I tried, really I tried.

  It’s so hard being a single mum, you know, Danny. I know you think I’ve just gone after the money, but the money doesn’t matter to me, it really doesn’t, it’s just that I’m scared, and I’m angry, and now it’s all over and I’m not angry any more I’m just scared and sad and wondering what’s happened. I’d give the money back if we could just be a family again. I’d put the money on a bonfire if I thought it would mean that Poppy could wake up every morning and see her mummy and daddy together again.

  But she never will, will she, Danny? I guess we just messed up too much.

  OK, well, I’m going on a bit now I suppose. I just want you to know that, well, 1 don’t suppose that maybe one day we can be friends can we? It would mean so much to Poppy. And to me Danny. But maybe it’s all gone too far.

  Whatever happens, please believe this. I know how hard you want to be good, 1 know how much it matters to you, although I think you’ll never feel good enough to please your mother, and anyway I’m not your mother and that’s one of the ways it all went wrong. But 1 don’t want to get into that now, what I want to say is that you are a good man. I wish you well Danny and 1 truly, truly hope you’ll find happiness somewhere. I miss you. I miss us.

  Goodbye, Pookie. I guess I can’t call you that any more, can I, but just this last time doesn’t matter really. Take care of Poppy when you’re with her. Love her like only her father can.

  That’s it.

  Your (ex) wife.

  Beth

  People can surprise you.

  I sit there, turn the letter over and over in my hand and consider this proposition: maybe she really was one of the three great women, after all.

  *

  I met Beth two years after splitting up with Natasha Bliss, when I was in my early thirties. Something had happened when I hit thirty: I don’t know if it was the thickening waist line, the receding hairline, a progressive sense of panic because all my friends were getting hitched and I was still on my own, but things between me and women were on the downslide.

  After I’d split up with Helen, I’d felt sad, but there was another world, a world of casual sex and conquest, parties and drugs.

  But by this point in my life two important things were drying up. First, the supply of women. The hard fact of relationships is that if you haven’t got yourself sorted by your early thirties most of the best women have been taken. The occasional young one might want a father figure, but have you ever been out with someone who’s ten years younger than you when you’re, say, thirty-one? I have. Think of the most boring thing you’ve ever done, and double it, then extend it over a whole evening in a pub or at a club. There’s nothing there. They’re blank, unleavened. They talk about school like it was yesterday – and it was! There might be some interesting sexual experiences to be had at the end of the (interminable) evening, but they will be of the most perfunctory and unsatisfying variety imaginable, whatever enthusiasm and technical skill goes into it. You’re trying to connect with thin air, and that’s OK when you’re thin air too, when you’re twenty-one, because it’s all part of… thickening yourself. Of learning how not to be thin air.

  The other thing that was faltering, along with the supply of women, was desire. Desire in the sense of good, positive desire, desire fuelled by myth, the myth that a relationship can make everything all right, can complete your world and heal your wound. This myth is crucial.

  When you have to live in a world in which all the myths have been punctured, when you realize that all that’s out there is life itself, neutral, unvarnished, imperfect, random, blissless, blissful, pain-edged, then something of your energy in pursuing certain goals evaporates. More and more positive pursuit of joy is replaced by negative flight from soli tude – since what the world tells you is going to deliver joy rarely does. Joy, it turns out, is a less active or potent force in the world than misery.

  This change in perception shows in you: women can see it and men can see it in women. Suddenly you’ve had one relationship too many, you want another relationship a little too much. At the same time, simultaneously and paradoxically, you don’t really believe in the whole package any more. That shows too.

  So. The pond is depleted. Your rod is broken. You’ve gone off fish anyway.

  But you’re hungry.

  It was in this context that I met Beth who also had a broken fishing-rod, a depleted pool and an empty stomach. In short, we were attracted to each other’s damage and we were in a hurry.

  This isn’t to say that the love we quickly discovered wasn’t genuine – at least, it felt genuine on my side. But who can be sure that what they’re experiencing isn’t illusion, isn’t a highly variegated form of wishful thinking? Sometimes people manufacture their emotions because they need them. Born-again Christians manufacture certainty out of nothing. Those who have lost someone they love manufacture a sense of purpose out of nothing – a new campaign, fund-raising, reform. We call into existence those emotions we require.

  When I met her she was a nurse. I was at some media party, full of ad executives, journalists and TV hustlers, and I was bored and wanted to go home. I had no interest in these people, and they had no interest in me. I hated advertising, I had decided. I wanted to write, I wanted something real. And I wanted someone real.

  When I overheard this very tall, slightly overweight blonde woman (blonde again – yes, Terence, I know) talking about the day she’d just spent in the intensive-care ward, and how she’d lost a patient, and how she was fed up because she also seemed to spend half of her day wiping old men’s behinds when she was a highly qualified medical professional, I immedi
ately took an interest. I sidled – I did, I sidled.

  Hello, I said, when I found a gap in the conversation, and she seemed at a sufficiently loose end.

  Hello, she said, glancing at me momentarily.

  My name’s Spike.

  Right.

  This was clearly going to be hard work. Something, however, made me continue: What’s your name?

  Are you trying to chat me up?

  Not yet, no. I’m just asking your name.

  Now she let her eyes rest on me a little longer. She took another swig of her drink. I’m sorry. My name’s Bethany. I’m afraid I’m a hit down on men at the moment. I’m on the point of giving up on them altogether, to tell you the truth.

  Hello, Bethany. Oh, we’re not so bad. We’re like cigarettes. You always go back. Anyway, you apologized. I like that in a woman. Very rare quality.

  Well, I didn’t really mean it.

  I know.

  Because men are pathetic.

  Is that right?

  Yes. They don’t… they’re not… human.

  She said this, not in an angry way but in a disappointed sad way that stopped me in my tracks. She looked as if she was about to burst into tears in front of me, a complete stranger. She finished her drink.

  If you’re accepting them from non-humans, I’d like to fetch you a drink.

  She looked at me with these tired, yet sexy eyes, and I saw a phrase in those eyes, a lament buried in the weariness. I know because the same phrase was in mine, and I suspected she could read mine as well as I could read hers. The phrase was ‘Here we go again’. Then she said, Sure. Why not?

  So she told me her hard-luck story, about what bastards men could be, and I went along with it, because I knew it wasn’t in the rules for me to talk about what bastards women could be, and after a while we struck up a working rapport based on the general non-legitimacy of men. I would, of course, disavow most of my opinions later, but since we were in the theatrical stage of our embryonic relationship, the acting and role-playing stage, I was ready to speak my lines. It did the trick.