by Helen Razer
Many men in my fashionable town assume a seventies style. They claim to be passionate about the football and they wear retro-kitsch cologne. They drive obscene old cars from which they ironically blare their yacht rock. They wear club colours on top of their bespoke western shirts, and even though some of them are slightly hipster I quite like the way they play with the symbols of a dying patriarchy.
When first I saw him on Platform 5, I thought that John was one of these fun mock-masculine men. Then I smelled him and started to believe that he wasn’t impersonating an old-fashioned lad. He actually was one. He was real.
Public Service Announcement: Quite soon after that shithead has left you, you will meet somebody who you will believe to be ‘authentic’. Now, I’m not saying that this person you find so beguiling is particularly inauthentic. But I am saying please, for the sake of blind shit, stop being so convinced that there is anything authentic out there at all. Authentic, if you ask me, is an inauthentic concept. It’s also one likely to preoccupy you at a time when you don’t know truth from lies. Just give up on this. You will never know truth from lies. You may learn, when the divorce dust settles, to recognise lies. But the verifiable existence of these lies is no proof at all of a reliable truth. So stop telling yourself that the truth is right there before you. Even if it smells good to you. Even if you have encountered it in a very authentic place, such as a public transit hub. And it is wearing a becomingly unfashionable short-sleeved business shirt.
On the platform, I learned that John was from the country and that he carried a mechanical pencil in his pocket. Google had already told me that he worked for the nation’s oldest political party, but not that he was inclined to use phrases like ‘the bosses and the workers’ without actually taking the piss.
I knew from our messages that he had moderate cultural literacy and so must have understood that so much of what he seemed to be to others was antique. Some of this vintage shop steward stuff must have been a conscious act. But I was prepared to believe that some of it was also due to a genuine loathing for our era. This was a cause I could certainly support.
When he made a brief crack about that day’s prime ministerial address, I knew he was not hopeful. When he walked toward me, I knew he was not my height. When he stood beside me, I knew that he smelled like my very old memories of a man.
Tall. Male. Documented interest in federal politics and none whatsoever in hope. These qualities provided such sufficient distance from my ex that I immediately wished to be close to them.
As I suspect many newly dumped people are, I was also quite conscious of those differences and how they drove me. I’m sure there are folks just dumped by a garrulous man who now find themselves attracted to a quiet one. I’m sure there are those who have been kicked in the ’nads by a large-breasted woman and now long to hold an A-cup in their hand. I wanted difference. I saw that he provided it.
What I failed to see then, even as I looked into two familiar brown eyes, is that, physically, he could have been her brother.
‘It’s a lovely night,’ I said.
‘Sorry, but I’m not quite sure what we do now,’ said John.
‘Well, didn’t we say we’d decide when we got here?’
‘Oh. We did. Sorry.’
I was getting a bit shitty, so I said, ‘Are you sorry that you forgot, or do you mean that you are sorry that you are currently uncertain, or are you just finding this entire situation sorry?’
‘Um. Columns A through C. Sorry.’
‘Look, if you want to leave, that’s okay,’ I said, even though I knew that such a rejection would lead me to a barbecue chicken relapse.
‘Sorry,’ said John. ‘I’m sorry.’ And he just ruddy stood there.
When others fall into difficult doubt, I have the bad habit of becoming brutally certain. When they fall into complicated silence, I talk and act as boldly as I can.
So I said, ‘It is clear that you are sorry. It is not so clear what you are sorry about. I can only suppose that I am, being the only person to whom you are currently addressed, the source for all this sorry. As I neither have wish to hear further apologies nor cause you to produce them, I will now take my leave. We can’t have you feeling so sorry.’
‘Sorry,’ he said.
Oh, for the sake of fizzy drinks.
There was nothing for it now but to return home via Platform 7 and prepare for a life in poultry. I’d start calling the chicken man again. I’d marry the chicken man, if he’d still have me.
I was terribly embarrassed by this sorry rejection, but I had been told that such ignominy was common. It is usual, I had heard, for internet dates to end in minutes. Or for internet relationships to die when they move to real life within days.
Celine had warned me that the speed of the technology has come to shape the speed of the real. ‘Look, Grandma. Don’t expect courtly love from this manboy,’ she had said to me that day by Skype, which I had used to showcase a range of different date looks. ‘If he finds he doesn’t click with you as fast as a cursor, he might fuck right off back to fuckstick land. In my experience, some of them do.’
Although John remained quite still, looking down at his unfashionable shoes, I was sure that he was passively fucking off.
Of course I found it painful to compare the sunny nature of our messages with the sorry nature of our meeting. But I was now adapted enough to pain to walk right through it.
‘Bye,’ I said, and I began to move away.
And he said, ‘No, sorry. You have this all wrong,’ and there followed a dreary exchange in which he said sorry for being so sorry and sorry again, and I demanded copious reassurance that he was not just sorry that my virtual appearance was not matched by my sorry physical one, and he said something like, ‘No, it was exceeded,’ then dropped his voice to a lower register and asked, please, if he could take me to his local around the corner.
I said that I would feel more comfortable closer to my home and I said this not because I really cared where I was one jot. I just wanted to get on a fucking train because, in the past few minutes, I had become envious of commuters. They had moved forward with such certainty while I fell back into sadness.
So we boarded a train.
I looked at him. For a minute or so, I feared that birdwatching, compulsively apologising, poorly dressed John was not, in fact, someone with an appealing dash of neurodevelopmental disorder but a full-blown nutter. A nutter, I had noted as I sat beside him on the train, that clearly lifted weights.
I understand that the 40-something chap may be directed by his doctor to lift weights. However, John, who was a smoker and a drinker and obviously a frequent sausage eater, didn’t seem the sort to heed medical advice. Nor did he seem, in his hideous shirt, like the sort who cared much for his appearance. Therefore, even knowing that I was much more likely to be butchered by my statistical husband than by this awkward stranger, I had to consider that those guns had been developed not for reasons of vanity or health but with only femicide in mind.
John was an outlier. I was his improbable victim. The thought of death troubled me more now than it had a few nights previous as I worried that if I were slaughtered outside of my home, Eleven would have no meat.
These, I regret to report, were the thoughts in my actual head, and while they were quite unpleasant to endure they did help me achieve two good outcomes, and a third whose goodness I am yet to assess.
First, I was forced to address the gory and unreasoned nature of my thinking while in a public place. It is easy to think about being killed and then eaten by one’s cat while in a private misery. It is only when these post-divorce thoughts occur to you in the company of others that you come to see that you have been completely off your rocker. I truly recognised that I was bonkers, in a way that not even Javeer had conveyed. I was bonkers, but no longer so bonkers that I refused to see it as a problem. Good outcome.
Second, I was relatively quiet during this period of minor catharsis. This got John talking.
A little about his day, a little about the social anxiety that prompted him to say sorry so much, and quite a bit about the European Central Bank. Which I found interesting and knew would be useful information when I saw Eleni next. She had strong opinions on the Greek debt crisis. Good outcome.
Third, I had decided that we would go to my place, because I had shut up for long enough to see that he probably wasn’t going to murder me with those questionable muscles. I still don’t know if we can call what followed a good outcome.
The walk home was pleasant enough and dominated by discussion of John Maynard Keynes. The evening was tolerably warm and I was not murdered.
Then a very pretty Burmese rubbed against John’s legs as we were about to cross a busy road. When it seemed to me as though the cat was about to throw itself under traffic, I shouted, ‘NO! John! Stop the puss!’ and he dutifully did.
He held the cat and the cat started purring. I am sure I have no need here to report the arousing effects of this action. As we have learned, some women are won by male demonstrations of paternal concern. Whereas I will fuck just about anyone that is nice to a cat.
John, who was an online dater of some years’ dedication, had likely met many childless cat ladies before. Perhaps he’d mastered some trick of feline hypnotism known only to a sensitive sub-branch of pickup artists.
Public Service Announcement for Heterosexual Midlife Men: Greatly increase your chances of finding pussy by learning to love the domestic cat.
The cat, he said, as he turned it on its back to look at its collar, was a female called Champers, presumably a diminutive for Champagne. He said that there was a phone number and that he should probably call it.
At this point, John could have asked his entire football team around for a gangbang and I would have gratefully consented, sucked the tall forwards dry twice and made them all pizza toast afterwards.
John called the engraved number and Champers’ human directed us to her home, which was not far. We returned the suicidal animal to a grateful senior called Lucy who asked us in for oatmeal slice, and I wondered if you could call it a meet cute if you had already met on the internet.
I rushed John home. Eleven rubbed against his legs. Then I rubbed myself immediately against John, who was catnip and a friend to all cats, and he said, ‘I don’t think I’m sorry at all.’
It had been a while since I had properly kissed a person. The wife had lost interest in the practice years ago. The libertarian hadn’t kissed me, and nor had Hayden. Anton the Russian had just squeezed my poonanny. Georges had sort of bitten my mouth recently, though he was a hot little fucker and would probably win most contests of Who Would You Rather? But John was the person who went to all the bother of kissing me.
‘Whatever you want,’ I said to him. ‘Whatever you want, I’ll do it.’
This may have been a more significant offer from one who was not queer, fond of anal, intensely interested in BDSM and a three-way graduate. I mean, I’ll basically give anything consensual a go so long as it does not involve animals, underage persons or poo. The offer of ‘whatever you want’ to a shy straight man from the labour movement posed no real risk for me. I imagined that he’d ask me to wear suspender stockings, at most. Still, it felt quite hot and servant-girl to say it. Whatever you want.
‘Well. I’d like a drink,’ he said. Which was not so hot to hear.
There was no alcohol here. There had never been any alcohol here that lasted more than an evening. Bottles were emptied almost as soon as they arrived and rather than offer the history of my ex-wife’s alcohol use, I decided, for the sake of my vagina, to not say anything pompous about the Twelve Steps at all. I would just pop across the road and ask Sally for a loaner and get the reasonably handsome prick a drink.
Sally should be a mandatory presence on every street. Some may regard her as the neighbourhood gossip; I like to think of her as our local historian. She knows everybody’s name and their present states of housing equity and marriage. Last week she had seen me walk to Eleni’s and she said, ‘Oh darling. I’m sorry.’ There was no need to ask ‘How did you know that she left me?’ Sally just always knows everything.
‘Got company already? Good girl. Get a divorce, then back on the horse. Not a mare this time, I see,’ she said.
‘I was wondering if you had something cheap and nasty you could give me?’ I said.
‘I think we’ll leave that to the badly dressed gentlemen. Ha ha ha. No. Really. Wear a condom. I’ve got some sangiovese left over from Christmas. It tastes like rat piss, but I guess it’s not the only thing . . . ha ha ha . . . that does . . . ha.’
I reminded Sally that we all knew the Roadside Assistance van had been in her driveway again on New Year’s Day for a length of time sufficient to charge twenty car batteries, and that if she didn’t admit that she too was a dirty whore I would start a Facebook page called ‘Sally the Whore Across the Road is Doing the Automobile Club Man Again’.
‘Mechanics rev me up!’ she said gaily and gave me two bottles of wine whose quality, she hoped, would be outshone by the poorly dressed gentleman as soon as he took off his awful clothes.
‘Sorry,’ said John, as he looked up from his iPhone. ‘Sorry,’ he said as I poured him a glass of bad wine.
I gave myself a splash, too. I did this partially out of good manners and partially out of the need for insulation. He no longer seemed present. I was pretty sure he had just been on a dating app—by now I was familiar with the colour and the mood of brown eyes just raised from an intimate screen.
But as proceeds the motto of the desperate and horny: first, you lower your standards, then, you lower your pants.
The standard-lowering drop of wine was not to my taste. John, however, drained his glass with the blithe thirst of an old-time working man. He took another wine and set it down halfway so he could talk about the thoughts of the Greek economist, Yanis Varoufakis, and then when he’d hit some sort of peak on monetary policy, he said, ‘Whatever I want?’
‘Are you going to ask for cheese and biscuits?’ I said.
‘I was going to ask you to come over here.’
Look. This dialogue was not one shade better than anything provided by Fifty. And this faltering night had started to get on my last effing nerve. When I was alone I knew I could expect to careen from desire to despair in an instant. I had held out a more constant hope for the influence of other people, and this John fellow seemed to flip from intimacy to unconcern faster than a cat. He hadn’t just been left by his no-good girlfriend for a much younger woman or quit his hateful job. He was therefore obliged to act much better than me.
I didn’t come over there. Instead I sat, exhausted, on my own chair.
‘Yours is a pleasant home,’ he said.
‘Thanks.’
‘This sofa is comfortable but chic,’ he said.
‘Hmn.’
‘You have really remarkable tits.’
‘I know,’ I said, and he asked me to undress.
I said no.
Other than for purely comic purposes, I could never ritually disrobe for others. Striptease is best left to professionals, or at least to amateurs who have more rhythm than me. In general, I am about as rhythmic as gastroenteritis. I had also become pretty cranky.
I had also run out of economics conversation. I could either keep talking to this hyper-casually dressed member of the policy class and reveal the limits of my knowledge, or I could get my tits out.
I got my tits out. Comically, of course.
‘Oh. Goodness gracious. It seems that my teeny little dress has fallen off while I was foraging for blackberries for Mother,’ I said as I showed him my tits and my middle finger.
‘Whatever can be done?’ he said.
‘And I, just a mere girl of forty-three. I do hope I’m not snared in the brambles! Or that some terrible menacing man doesn’t come along and explain the danger of the overlooked relationship between monetary and fiscal settings in Europe again. Because that would
be fucking boring, John, by which of course we mean totally sexy and hot.’
‘Some beast who would threaten you with talk of public debt crisis? Some swarthy woodsman who would tell you to spend in a bust and frighten the dress right off you?!’ said John, as he moved towards me.
‘Yes, dude. Totally. Oh. Oh. Look at you. You are as big as the national debt of Portugal.’
‘You are as hot as the tempers of communist Greeks,’ he said.
I was enjoying myself again. I was laughing and had certainly picked up more basic knowledge on the role of the state in gearing economic cycles. This reminder of the superstructure would come in handy when arguing with my stupid neoliberal relatives again next Christmas.
He kissed me again and again; it was quite good. He did slobber a little and this was further enslobbened by his caution; every time he stopped kissing me, presumably to allow me to freely deny consent should I wish to, I felt the threads of saliva slowly break between our faces.
This guy needed help finding his way out of the policy class and into my vagina. It was frustrating that it fell to me, a person quite out of heterosexual practice, to take the lead. But not so frustrating that I wouldn’t take it.
It was now a matter not just of horniness but one of pride that I should have something like proper, lying-down sex. More specifically, proper, lying-down sex with someone who had half a mind to objectify me. I needed to be objectified.
Whatever shiny rot the Barbie feminists have to say on the topic, objectification is crucial to the act of sex. Even those in a long, intimate marriage need their partner to desire them not at all for their inner life but for their bodies alone.
This is not to say at all that the other person’s insides don’t count. This moment of desire with John was produced by the fact that we mildly respected the other’s insides. For all its flaws, this was the most genuine intimacy I’d shared in years and it could not have been enacted with anyone but a Marxist—which he was, despite all the Neo-Keynesian pillow talk.
