Chapter Thirteen
He says that he’ll call me, afterwards. But it’s the first time that I really suspect he won’t. And I’m right, it seems.
He doesn’t call, or come to my place of work, or stop by my apartment like I sometimes fantasise about him doing. Because we’re not that sort of people really, and even if we were … even if he was the kind of guy who could come to my apartment and have a movie night with me and eat dinner and take a bath and all of those normal things … I’ve stripped him down to the bone now.
I’ve made him think about that word ‘meaningless’. I’ve forced him to put it in front of ‘sex’. He’s probably at the sexual healing group right now, talking frantically about this chick he banged one time in a confessional, just to make absolutely sure that I’m not anything more.
And I’m right about that, too.
I wait outside the building and he comes out a little while later, like a sign I should have paid attention to all along. He’s a sex addict. He’s crazy for wild fucking, not fun-time sharing. I’ve probably been making him worse all this time – all of this lovely, lovely time of sexual exploration, and it’s actually been a total nightmare of confusion for him. It’s like I befriended an alcoholic by partying with him every weekend.
Which is probably what all the trying to talk about ordinary things was about. He can’t go deeper, but he did try to go sideways. He tried to be ordinary, and I’ve just made him even weirder. I’ve fucked him up, I think.
And then I put my head on the car wheel, in utter despair.
Utter despair that comes with a side of car horn. A really, really loud and inappropriate car horn. I mean, let’s be honest here. When people think of abject misery, they do not think of a big toot from a clown’s nose, do they? No. They think of haunting cello music and maybe some sad ethereal girl moaning about the winds and the seas in Gaelic.
But of course, good old Kit Connor can’t even get that right.
My life is a goddamn clown nose, I think – and naturally, just as I do so, it starts to get even worse. I glance to the right and there’s Dillon Holt staring over at me. He even has a look on his face like I’m a slightly insane person, which, in all fairness to him, is probably true. After all, I did just follow him to a sexual healing group. And I am physically and mentally incapable of working any of this out, on any level whatsoever.
I can’t understand my sexual responses. I don’t get why I’ve done any of the things I’ve done. I don’t know what my feelings are, or what his feelings are, or why it seems so desperately important to start the engine right now and drive away like I was never there.
There are several contenders, as an answer to the latter. But all of them just make me panic more. Behold:
You have to leave because now you look like a sad, pathetic loser who chases around a hunk when he doesn’t call.
It might be best to leave, because he’s clearly in pain and you put him there with your hunger for actual sex.
You just tooted a big clown nose. Well done.
See? All of them are awful, are they not? And they’re making me sweat, and flood the engine when the car won’t immediately start. They make me grind the gears like a maniac, and beg silently for someone to save me from what is undoubtedly going to be a horrible confrontation. YOU MADE ME TRY TO SHARE! he’ll scream at me, while clawing at my window.
And then I’ll have to kill myself, for crimes against humanity.
I’ll have to kill myself, for crimes against Dillon Holt.
Or, at the very least, I’ll have to kill myself for being this embarrassing. I think I’m crying a bit, and I don’t even know why. It’s not as though I expected myself to be successful at being with another human. I didn’t really believe that we could work things out and talk things through.
I guess it’s just … it’s just that I’d hoped.
I’d let myself hope, I think, for a little while – though I know that hope always ends the same way. It ends with books at the bottom of the drawer and friendships fucked beyond repair. It ends with: You’re useless and awful and I never want to see you again.
I know it does.
So why am I getting out of the car?
‘I’m so sorry!’
Probably because I want to do that. And then maybe cry a little, very manfully.
Or, if I’m really being honest: blubber a lot, absolutely ridiculously. In fact, it’s so ridiculous that after a second he laughs – though I’m not going to put my name to that assumption just yet. I’ve covered my face with my hands, so it’s entirely possible that what I’m hearing is his death rattle, as he dies of horror.
But then I dare to peek, and no, no.
He’s actually laughing at me.
And that’s not even the strangest part. No – this is the strangest part:
‘What are you sorry for?’ he says, and then quite suddenly grabs me by the back of my head, and yanks me into a bear hug. I get my face smushed against his left pec, which in general circumstances would probably be really uncomfortable.
But of course it’s not, here. It’s feels wonderful, here.
‘Kit, you’re such a goof,’ he says, and that feels even better.
‘I know I am.’
‘Why are you so intent on thinking you’ve done terrible, wrong things when you haven’t done anything at all? I’m the one who … who …’
I force myself away from him then. Because I’m strong, OK? I’m strong and good and I can do this. I can tell him that we can’t party any more. Hell, maybe I need to not party any more. I’ve had more sex in the last two months than I’ve ever had in my entire life, so clearly something is going wrong.
He needs to know that I know that something is going wrong.
‘Yeah, but I’ve pushed you there with all of my … need for shenanigans.’
It sounded better in my head, I have to say. But even so – I don’t expect the level of what the fuck on his face. It’s sent his left eyebrow into the stratosphere. It actually makes him ugly, for a second – which is testament to how scrunched-up his expression is.
And then he laughs again, just to cap it off.
‘Pushed me where? Into sexual ecstasy?’
‘No! Into … being weird and addicted and probably unwell.’
I point in the general direction of the place he just came from, but that only makes him laugh harder. He’s almost holding his belly by this point, and I swear he swipes away a tear.
‘Oh, I see. So you think I’ve been secretly coming here all this time to work through the terrible pain of bonking you into oblivion.’
I’ll admit, it sounds less logical when he puts it like that. Especially as he uses the word ‘bonking’, then chuckles after it and shakes his head over mad British words.
‘Maybe not … exactly.’
‘Kit, it’s not an addicts’ group. You went to it, right? You know it’s all about healing your feelings and being positive and all of that shit. I’m just trying to get in touch with my … you know. Inner self.’
‘Then how come you say “inner self” like it’s a flying banana-coloured unicorn that farts rainbows and sings in stereo?’
‘Maybe ’cause I’m not sure I have one.’
I can’t help hearing the slight change in tone when he says that last bit. It’s a little less flying banana-coloured unicorns, and a little more disturbing. So disturbing, in fact, that I feel I have to insist his inner self is present – despite barely knowing what it looks like. It could enjoy wearing striped pyjamas and dancing the fandango, for all I’ve been told.
But the thing is, I suppose … I know it’s there. It’s so big I couldn’t possibly miss it. Whenever I’m near him, I can feel the hulking shape of it rubbing against my body, like an animal seeking warmth. I can make out its shadow at the centre of him, subtle and mysterious but still completely visible.
‘You have one,’ I tell him, because I can see it right now. It shifts restlessly beneath his skin, when I unwittingly poke
it with my next words. ‘Even if that one is a crazed sex addict.’
‘Oh, Christ, Kit. I’m not a sex addict. Is that how I seem? Like a sex addict?
‘Well … maybe. Sometimes.’
I’m thinking specifically of the times when he wakes me up in the middle of the night for the seventeenth time, with an erection like a constantly regenerating Duracell bunny. But of course I don’t say that. I fear it would only muddy the waters, just as they’re starting to clear. His expression is so open and honest, suddenly. I can actually see how that inner shadow matches up with his outer self, if I strain hard enough.
And to cap it off, one of the guys from the group gives him a sobbing hug, as he passes us on this little narrow and very wet street. ‘Thank you for helping me actualise myself,’ he says, which pretty much sums up what Dillon’s saying. It backs up what I remember, too, about the crystals and the healing hugs and all the other hippy-dippy stuff.
But it still doesn’t get to the heart of the matter. And I want the heart. I do. I don’t care if it’s black with despair and riddled with rot. I’d live inside the bits of him that are barely functioning, if I could. I’d spend the rest of my days trying to piece him back together, if he’d let me.
Which I suspect he won’t.
‘Honestly, Kit,’ he says. ‘I’m really not that fucked up.’
He even puts his hands in his pockets, and kind of shrugs – like hey, I’m totally OK with the world and my place in it. I’m cool and laid-back, without a care in the world. And it’s convincing too. I could probably go on for ever with him like this, in a fantasy land of fucking and fun.
If it were not for the other him just waiting for me behind his eyes.
‘Yeah? Then how come you can talk about meaningless sex with strangers but you can’t talk to me about … anything?’
There, I think. That’s got you.
But of course it hasn’t at all.
‘Because I made that up.’
I’ll admit, it’s not the answer I was expecting. It’s not even the answer that really goes with my main point, which is basically: why do you avoid telling me anything real about yourself? But it’s there now, and it has to be addressed.
And I address it thusly:
‘What?’
It’s very articulate of me, if I do so say myself. My brain wanted me to go with ffffffffffftttttt, but I refused to let it get the upper hand. I stick to my guns, and only allow actual words to escape.
‘I made that up. I don’t find it easier to talk about it with strangers because I adore meaningless sex. I find it easier to talk about it with strangers because I totally made those stories up. They didn’t mean anything.’
But I’m less successful after he’s delivered that little doozy.
‘Ffffffffffffffftttttttt,’ I say. I think I’m attempting fucking terrible, though I could be wrong. There’s nothing actually terrible or fucktastic about what he’s just said, so who knows, really? I could just as easily be trying to tell him that he’s the craziest, most spectacular person I’ve ever met, on so many, many levels.
Like this one:
‘Yeah, I’ve never actually had a threesome.’
I’m so speechless that I sort of stand there with my mouth open, for a second. He made it up. One of the main instigators of this wild journey of sexual excess and he just pulled it out of his ass, for reasons that are not going to remain unexplained for much longer.
‘Why would you say that, then?’
He shrugs again, but this one is even more magnificent than his last offering. It actually says whole sentences to me about his state of mind. It’s full of that wryness he’s always got all over him, that laughter he’s always aiming in his own direction.
Only much more bittersweet now.
Oh, it’s so bittersweet when he gives me his answer.
‘Because you liked hearing it,’ he says, as though it’s the most obvious thing in the world. Of course he’d want to give me what he thinks I want, at the expense of himself. Of course he would. That makes perfect sense, in a universe where everything is completely different from this one in every way possible.
I almost want to glance around, in case the trees in the park beside us are suddenly reaching their roots towards the sky. Any second now the pavements are going to start losing their solidity, until we find ourselves sunk into them up to the knee.
Not that he’d notice if it did. He seems to have no clue that my idea of how life should be is slowing imploding, a piece at a time.
‘You did like it, didn’t you?’ he asks, as though that’s perfectly normal. It’s absolutely reasonable for him to wonder and worry, even though no one else has ever bothered before. Mostly they just act as though I’m enjoying something even when I’m clearly not, and hope for the best.
So really I have to reassure him on that score. It takes me even further away from the point I was trying to make, but there’s simply no avoiding it.
‘Of course I did, but –’
‘But what?’
‘But now I feel like I know even less about you. Which was really not the aim of this.’
‘You do know me, Kit.’
‘Really? Because I think you just told me that you made up your entire sexual history because you thought I might like it. And although that’s rather nice of you, it’s not really what’s missing from our time together.’
‘And what is missing?’ he asks, only he does it so desperately I don’t know what to think for a second. He actually almost grabs me; the way the hero might grab the guy who knows how to defuse the bomb, at the end of a movie. Goddamn it, man, I think. You’ve got to tell me which wire to cut, before we’re all blown to smithereens!
Even though the answer is obvious.
‘You,’ I say, without a single second to consider. ‘You’re missing.’
He looks somewhat taken aback for a moment – as though he’s really never considered that idea before.
And then he gets a grip.
‘I’m not completely missing. I’ve told you things,’ he says, which is perfectly true. He told me about his first time, for example, and he’s occasionally nudged me down some dark alleyways that he obviously enjoyed.
Only those tiny moments of revelation are not really the problem any more.
This is.
‘Yeah … but none of them actually happened.’
He throws up his hands, then, but he’s kind of laughing while he does it. And it makes me realise that I do know him in some respects. I know him in the here and now, in the little things he does and says. I know him as someone who so easily turns difficult things around and makes them easy.
I just don’t understand why I didn’t think of that, when I was so busy worrying about how to ask him this. I should have remembered his lopsided grin and his laid-back manner … his way of relaxing me even when I don’t think it’s possible.
‘Some of the things happened,’ he tells me. ‘I do love pizza.’
And I love him for saying that. Some of the tension drains out of the conversation the second he does it. Now we’re no longer facing a minor nuclear explosion because I don’t know what wire to cut. We’re just standing here, on this street, actually getting to know each other.
‘And if I’m being honest … I have been with a lot of women,’ he says, which should probably tense every muscle in my body. But of course it doesn’t. It’s something about him that I can hold onto – it’s part of the foundation I’ve built him on.
And then he goes and detonates that foundation all over again.
‘But the thing is … I guess … I don’t want to be with a lot of women any more. I’m not some sex addict trying to sort myself out. I don’t get a high from fucking everything that walks. I get a high from wanting someone as much as I want you. From actually thinking that for once … for once in my life someone actually cares enough to cry because they think they’ve messed me up.’
It’s true. I did. But when he says al
l of that amazing stuff in a big fountain of incredible awesome-sauce, I don’t immediately recognise it as me he’s talking about. He says things like ‘want’ and ‘you’ and I imagine some other woman. Some other, Valkyrie-like goddess of unspeakable power and beauty. Seven feet tall with breasts akin to casaba melons, legs that could wrap once around the world …
He can’t mean me.
Only I think he kind of does.
‘Do you have any idea how hard it’s been for me to find anything even remotely like that? I’m quite aware of what I am, Kit. I know how people look at me. I’m the guy you see in some bar, being loud and obnoxious. I’m the jock at your college, throwing a basketball onto your desk as you’re trying to study. I know I am. But I want more than that now. I’m too old to be playing games any more.’
His last sentence pulls me up short, but it’s a good thing it does. For a while there I was in real danger of falling down a rabbit hole of his words. I’ve flushed from hot to cold about thirty times since he started saying all of this, and I only level out when I can focus on one thing. One small thing, that’s not about me being fabulous.
‘See, I don’t even know that much. How old are you, exactly?’ I ask, because quite frankly I’m now wondering if he’s secretly one hundred and twelve. He’s probably an android from the future, sent to destroy the sensible centres of my brain.
‘I’m thirty-two,’ he says, which is in the ballpark of my mental guessing. He looks thirty-two and mostly acts like he’s thirty-two … he just doesn’t sound like he really believes he is thirty-two. He sounds like he believes he’s five hundred and nine – and this weariness continues into his next words. ‘I’ve had thirty-two years of feeling … disposable. And I don’t want to be disposable any more.’
Lord, what a thing to say. I think I actually clutch at myself, to hear it. I mean, even if I don’t really know him – even if I haven’t gotten to some mystical core of him – he does realise how he comes across, right? So affable. So easy to share things with. I only realised he’d barely said a word about himself after he’d pried my every fantasy out of me.
And that’s a good thing in one way. But such a sad thing in another.
Addicted (Mischief Books) Page 18
