a rational man

by J S Hollis

  This psychology of constant justification spread from arguments about the existence of God to whether there was any moral reason why Emma shouldn’t drink a bottle of red wine with dinner. Cecil enjoyed these constant arguments. His brother, Julius, simply ignored them. Cecil therefore knew when he arrived at Emma’s flat that straight batting any questions about Clara was unlikely to put an end to the subject. Although that didn’t stop him from trying to avoid the subject altogether.

  “I could see you coming,” Emma said, opening the door, fiddling with her SpeX, covering the glass with her fingerprints, reaching to kiss Cecil and scurrying back into the flat rubbing her arms, in one swift crazed movement.

  “Yes, Mum. We can all do that now.”

  “It’s amazing really. Quite scary. Come in, come in, it’s freezing out there.”

  Cecil entered and went up to look out of the flat’s expansive glass walls.18 “When you said Wood Green, I worried you’d purchased some brutalist monstrosity to prove something to someone.”

  “I thought about it. Sadly they’ve demolished most of that stuff.” She began waving her arms in the air. “I did a design earlier for a new type of removable shoe sole and now I’ve lost it.”

  “Can I have the tour?”

  “Let’s wait for your father and Julius to return – greenie?”

  “Sure,” Cecil said. He walked around the room inspecting each trinket with the purpose of an undercover police officer looking for some clue as to how to escape the inevitable conversation.

  “We haven’t got the table and chairs yet – if you fold that wall back, you can sit at the end of our bed.”

  Cecil folded the wall back, opening the bedroom into the lounge, and, at a loss for rabbit holes, sunk into the edge of his parents’ bed. Emma sensed his weakness and shot the question. “So you’re in love?” Somehow she mustered up the remnants of her South African intonations in the question and made “love” sound filthy.

  Cecil had spent so much time thinking about how to avoid even getting to the question that he hadn’t prepared a response. He lost control of his gestures and ran a heavy thumb along his eyebrow. “You know I am seeing Clara.”

  “Yes – but I didn’t know you were in love with Clara.” Emma had never adjusted to the English way of negotiating sensitive subjects: the narrow pathway around a crater approach. She preferred to jump straight in and splash about in the bubbling lava.

  Cecil couldn’t challenge this conclusion – he couldn’t say that he didn’t love her – but he couldn’t agree with it either – he didn’t want Clara to discover he was in love with her via W. “We are getting on just fine,” Cecil whispered, adjusting his position on the bed.

  “And why haven’t you introduced her to your mum yet?” Emma said, handing Cecil his greenie and sitting down beside him.

  “Well I wanted to introduce you to her in person and there hasn’t been a chance.”

  “We live in the same city – we’re practically neighbours!”

  “It’s not time for her interrogation yet.”

  “Interrogation? I already know everything about her. It’s amazing a neurotic mother didn’t invent W before Mullangi did.” Emma paused, giving Cecil hope that she was about to move on. She was rarely able to concentrate on a point for too long. “She is very energetic, isn’t she?”

  “Yes, she is active,” Cecil ventured, unsure about the implication of Emma’s words. He thought better of asking her what she meant.

  Emma sipped from her glass seemingly appreciating the taste of the greenie at that moment. Her SpeX had flecks of green juice on them and so she rubbed them on the bottom of her t shirt. “Explain this to me – doesn’t your generation disapprove of this kind of relationship?”

  “And what kind of relationship would that be?” Cecil said, unable to restrain a touch of inner turmoil from penetrating through his placid demeanour. Cecil knew Emma was one of the few people who could twist his blood vessels until they popped and yet he had let her in. He told himself to relax but it was impossible while he was still throwing the slip-up around his mind like a wrestler.

  Emma’s cheeks tightened. Not quite a smile, she was too experienced. “You know, one based on looks alone – I thought you all used that Matchstick app.”19

  “We knew each other quite well before the relationship became romantic.”

  Emma laughed. She knew how Cecil hated having his integrity questioned – maintaining the impression of being an upstanding citizen had become his modus operandi – but she feared he would become arrogant without being taken down a stratum or two from time to time. “Well, I suppose it’s a university relationship – it’s not like you’re marrying the girl.”

  “No. I’m not marrying her,” Cecil replied. “But, even though on this occasion we got to know each other first, I don’t subscribe to this mad view that you should ignore the fact you are attracted to a person. It’s natural.”

  “How many times have people used the word ‘natural’ to imply something is OK? Arsenic is natural. Violence is natural.”

  “OK – so natural isn’t sufficient – but what is wrong with it? With being attracted to someone?”

  “Oh, many things. It’s short term. What do you do when you’re old? It means that little girls spend more time on their makeup, or should I say their public W profile, than their homework. It allows people to get away with being unkind. It’s a subtle form of discrimination. What is it that Peter says? Do not let your adorning be external, let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart.”

  Cecil got up from the bed, put his hands on either side of his jaw and cracked his neck with one swift move. “I’m not saying beauty should override personality,” he said, “but it’s not a sin to appreciate it. If we ignore it, we might end up in a pretty unpleasant place – all overweight, living in pragmatic concrete housing and with the countryside merely functioning as an oxygen production device.”

  “Rare to hear you rallying against pragmatism – you really must be in love. I don’t disagree with you though. Invanity shouldn’t be a war on aesthetics, it should be a fight for the recognition of everything else. Anyway, it is as the masses decide, they can’t be wrong.”

  Cecil decided to take these jabs. He had made his decision and he was happy with it. Normally, he found himself on the moral high ground and would battle to the end, desperate to convince the other person of his point of view irrespective of the result. In this case, he would have to tire Emma out. Cecil knew she was fuelled by the argument itself rather than faith or dedication to the cause. Cecil needed to offer nothing. He looked up at Emma and said, “Good greenie, by the way.”

  She didn’t respond. She was looking at him and then tilted her head a little. “Tell me,” she said, “is the lack of sex a sudden resurrection of your faith?”

  Cecil didn’t know how to react and his eyes were sent into a fit of blinking. He hadn’t expected Emma to go anywhere near this far. “Look, I don’t pry into your sex life with Dad, so I would hope you could leave mine alone.”

  “I haven’t been prying. I am just aware, that’s all.”

  Emma had been prying, but even the casual observer couldn’t have missed the sex issue. It lurked in the shadows whenever Clara and Cecil were together. Clara had plenty of experience of it and Cecil had none and they were both incredibly conscious of this discrepancy – still, it wasn’t a discussion either of them wanted to have. Cecil feared that, like a squash game between a beginner and a pro, both would find the whole experience disappointing – he didn’t want Clara’s only reaction to be “at least it was a good workout”. So they both adopted defensive tactics. Cecil put it off by revising for sex like an exam – spending night after night watching other people do it.20 Clara just waited for Cecil to make the first move – although experience suggested that she would have to initiate matters. But it had to happen soon. Cecil
was not sure how many more times he could bear Sylvio saying “have a good night” with added winks and eyebrow shifting. Emma’s question was the push Cecil needed. (Emma almost certainly knew Cecil would never admit that he lost his virginity to spite his mother.)

  Cecil left his parents’ flat uncomfortably aware of the limits of his control. The door lock clapped once behind him and drummed as the momentum reverberated through the door and into the ether. He counted the stairs to the ground floor and saw that the carpet had already frayed in some places where it met the metallic edge of the steps. He took his bike and pedalled slowly at first, feeling the drag of the chain in the teeth of the sprocket. Then, he looked to see what Clara was up to. She was lying down and watching him. “Hi,” he said. “How long have you been watching me?”

  “Well,” she said, “I just wanted to see what you were up and found you talking to your mother. It was pretty gripping stuff so I haven’t left since. Wanna come over?”

  “Sure, I’ll be about thirty.”

  When Cecil arrived at the flat, he kissed Clara immediately, probably a bit hard, still projecting a Hollywood gesture he was yet to disassociate with reality. His blood pulsed, tightening his muscles and his eyes lost themselves in her face.

  Clara felt the sweat filtering through Cecil’s shirt, examined it with her hand, and, momentarily repulsed, left the hand where it was.

  Cecil lifted her into the bedroom and tried to take her clothing off in swift, fluent moves, making her t shirt jam beneath her armpits and her underwear skew across her crotch. She helped him. Pulling her underwear off in as ladylike a way possible with her knees bent. The process slowed down briefly. For as much as it was passionate, it was a process. Clothes, or at least some of them, had to be removed. There had to be the pretence of foreplay even if Clara could have taken him straight away. So he explored her body, kissing her nipples, behind her ears, her legs and eventually, just before Clara was going to shove his face down there, her clitoris. It happened in the end though – an embrace that was short and wrenching and incredibly close. And then there was nothing but Clara’s languid body curled against Cecil’s bulk.

  They didn’t talk for a while. Cecil’s mind had wandered far from the bed, enjoying the pure escape of the heavenly space between the reality of Clara’s body and the temporary impossibility of imagining time. Who knows where it took him? Somewhere he could see the artistry in the stitching of a cricket ball – the inherent inconsistency despite the pursuit of an identical product – wondering whether a non leather ball could be as beautiful or if, even when the ball performed and looked exactly the same, it was tarnished with the absence of history. Then Cecil saw how the paint had peeled off on parts of the ceiling.

  “Have you thought about repainting the ceiling?” he asked Clara.

  “What?” She turned her head from Cecil’s chest to look.

  “No – I hadn’t even noticed it, to be honest.”

  “I’d be happy to repaint it for you.”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  “Please let me.”

  “You really can’t bear it.”

  “I just thought I’d be helpful, that’s all.”

  “Cecil – I have seen your room – it’s like a fucking show home. I think there are only two colours – charcoal grey and white.”

  Cecil winced when Clara swore but had to admit defeat. “I admit – it would be for me – so I can come here again.”

  “Well, we will have to see about that,” Clara responded as she nestled back into Cecil’s body.

  “You’re lucky. When I was a boy I couldn’t even eat from a plate on which the foods had mixed. Eventually I ended up eating every meal from a bento box so nothing could merge.”

  “Was something wrong with you?”

  “Apparently not – just a genetically fascistic approach to aesthetics. I like clear divisions, block colours and nothing to interfere with the simplicity – normally that means straight lines do it for me as well. Probably why I liked that Mondrian exhibit so much. It’s hard enough working out where things start and end without confusing them on purpose. It’s why I prefer cities to have grid street plans, why I use nail clippers rather than scissors—”

  “Why you love your penis?”

  “Well, your vagina is also a beautiful line.”

  “Well it’s never been described like that before. But from a fan of the linear, I’ll take it as a compliment.”

  Cecil continued to think generally about his condition. “Maybe that’s why I tend to be attracted to women with streamlined features.” He twirled Clara’s hair in his index finder. “With straight hair and dark eyes.”

  Cecil was oblivious to the effect of this comment and maybe Clara was too. The information was parked, and when, months and years later, Clara straightened her hair and applied thick mascara, neither of them thought back to this moment. But something changed after they had sex. Cecil was satisfied – he was no longer in the chase. He had Clara, and now he could mould her or, more accurately, erode her so that she would be shaped just as he wanted. An effect that was normally as unconscious as the sea forging arches out of the cliffs, but from time to time Cecil would hear himself doing it and privately admonish himself for not loving her exactly as she was. But the tide never stopped.

  3

  Mould

  Although their relationship was flourishing from its tentative start into something passionate and mature, Clara’s decision to move in with Cecil for the final year of university was surprising.

  Cecil practiced caution as if it was his moral duty. Despite finally succumbing to his desire to make love to Clara, since the initial experience Cecil had struggled to maintain an impulsive nature. He suffered from the unromantic affliction of always wanting to announce intercourse before it happened. Saying things like “shall we do it?” or “are you interested?”. Clara typically responded by noting that “it’s not a business meeting. We can just see if something happens.” “OK, sure, sorry,” Cecil would say, acknowledging his mistake. But as soon as he was uncertain of Clara’s commitment to the enterprise – following a pause in their kissing or the removal of his hand from certain places – he would ask a similar question. He couldn’t control his pragmatic aversion to engaging in foreplay without the endgame. If the foreplay was for nothing, he would rather be doing something else. Something more productive.

  And sometimes after sex, he would become contemplative about it. He asked Clara, who could still feel his come between her legs, whether she wondered if they should wait until they were married. She laughed, of course. He didn’t admonish her and she didn’t see the way he plunged his nail into the scar on his forehead. Another time, he mentioned how Kant had argued there was a categorical imperative against sex before marriage on the basis that it is degrading and objectifying to both partners.

  “It is all about each of us satisfying out sexual desires,” Cecil said. “Do you think he has a point?”

  “No,” Clara replied, “I think he was just postrationalising something he didn’t agree with.”

  “I guess so, but it is interesting though.”

  “That’s because you always presume something is wrong until you can convince yourself that it is right.” They continued to have sex, but there was always the sense that Cecil felt guilty for enjoying it.

  One night, while they lay in Clara’s bed in postcoital respite, Clara said, “You know Jude is studying abroad next year.”

  “Yes.”

  “Well I’m either going to have to find someone to replace her or find somewhere else to live.”

  “Why don’t you move in with Sylv and me?”

  Clara craned her neck to look Cecil in the eyes. “Really? Bit fast, isn’t it?”

  “Not fast. Decisive.”

  “OK. Sure. That would be great, as long as Sylv doesn’t mind?”

/>   “He won’t,” Cecil said before falling asleep.

  And like that, despite his caution, within months of beginning a relationship with Clara, he had asked her to move in with him.

  We could give Cecil the benefit of the doubt here. Maybe he was so deeply in love with Clara that he decided to suspend his caution for once. He knew he wanted to be with her for the rest of his life and he saw no reason to take it slowly. And, in his defence, he didn’t seem to have the typical concerns of young men about allowing relationships to develop quickly. He never appeared to be worried about not experiencing other women before settling down, nor did he fear commitment at too young an age might stifle his independence.

  He made that much clear in a discussion with Sylvio, who, despite his expansive size and straggly beard, seemed to be constantly in and out of relationships.21

  “I don’t want to be one of those guys who wakes up married at thirty-six and wants to seduce every woman who passes by. I want to get it out of my system now,” Sylvio said. He was watching his latest match from the comfort of the long side of their L shaped brown leather couch. Cecil guessed the woman knew Sylvio was watching her. Laying down reading, she should have looked relaxed. But her body remained taut and upright against the sofa arm as she strolled her eyes across the words. Her messy hair and fraying dressing gown couldn’t detract from the definition of her thigh, running at ninety degrees along the cushions. So much for Invanity.

  “I’m not convinced by that theory. That you can get it out of your system. It may be that the more women you encounter, the more women you want to encounter.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Like an addiction. You are not satisfied by taking more. You just increase your need. It’s not like you’ll ever get to the point where you will have slept with every possible type of woman.” Cecil bit the end of his tongue for a second, hearing his words over again. “Not that there are types of women. But instead of being satisfied, you will become used to change.”