“What happens?”
“There are two women; girls, really. They’re standing at a quiz machine in a bar on a hot summer evening. Just behind them and to their right, over their shoulders' right, three people sit at a table. Dropped down a level from the rest of the bar, nobody can see what is going on. Two of the people at the table are women, the other is a man. He eyes the girls on the quiz machine with malice. He wants to play the quiz machine himself. It’s a compulsion with him, never stronger than when other people are playing the machine in his sight.”
We are sitting on a bench in a park, side by side, staring straight ahead. The tops of our arms are touching, the sides of our thighs. That is the only way we ever touch.
“Go on.”
“One of the women at the table looks at the man, and says, ‘Burn them.’ The man looks at her. He hasn’t heard her properly. ‘Bone them?’ he asks. ‘No,’ she repeats, ‘burn them.’ She pauses, then continues, ‘They don’t deserve to be boned.’ The man looks at her for a moment, then laughs. He thinks she’s joking. The second woman is looking off to the side, away into the distance. She isn’t part of the conversation. She is thinking about other things. The first woman speaks again, pushing a glass jar that holds a tea light towards the man. ‘There’s a candle here. The rim of this jar will be hot. You could get some nice rings going on their skin.’ The second woman comes out of her reverie. ‘Ring of fire,’ she says. They all laugh. The man is looking from the jar to the girls on the quiz machine. He’s no longer sure that the first woman is joking. He’s no longer sure that burning the girls wouldn’t be a good thing to do. Ends justify means, after all. The second woman changes the subject of the conversation. She starts to talk about being an extra in the new film about Ian Curtis. The burning of the girls is forgotten.”
“So it doesn’t start with a simple act of violence at all.”
He looks at me.
“The violence never happens. It’s just talked about.”
He doesn’t understand.
“What’s the difference? In a film, to understand that the man is thinking about the violence, how it would play out, you’d have to show it. It’s going to start with that simple act, that moment where he takes the jar and pushes it against the bare skin of one of the women, searing her flesh, leaving a ring on her arm, or her shoulder, or somewhere.”
“You should say that, then. Don’t say that it starts with an act of violence and then talk about what the scene is like.”
“Are you trying to tell me how to do my job?”
I look straight ahead. There is grass and a few trees in front of me. There are people walking dogs along paths that go round the grass and the trees. There are other benches, but they are empty.
“I knew you wouldn’t understand.”
“I understand. I’m just saying. If you want to make a statement, if you think you’re going to shock them into listening by telling them it starts with a simple act of violence, you’d better describe the act of violence straight away. That’s all.”
He is silent. I am silent. It’s an argument that isn’t an argument, because we won’t ever let ourselves become heated about it. It’s an exchange of views. An interesting conversation. In all likelihood, he will go away from this bench sitting chat and he will think about what I have said. He will revise it and make it his own and I will have no acknowledgement for my work. The revision of history is there to make the reviser seem more glorious.
He revises everything after a point. In his own world view, where he is king, he is noble and upright and strong. I know him as something else. But I let him go on thinking that he is the king. I have no choice.
“And is there more to this film?”
“It’s a short.”
“A sting?”
“No. It’s just a short. I’m not trying to sell anything. It’s not a piece of advertising.”
“It’s advertising you.”
“No it isn’t. It’s art. It’s not commercial. It’s art.”
He says this in a low voice, and I have to look away; properly away, over my other shoulder, my line of vision moved to the line of the path this bench sits on. I look away and I try not to laugh. I smirk into my shoulder. If I laugh he will feel the shake of my mockery.
“It’s art,” he says again. “It’s a short and I’m submitting it as a short. They show shorts on that channel.”
“They show them at obscure times.”
I’m not being helpful, I know, but I’m bored. We all need to be bored. It pushes things along. It allows us to play with our victims. I feel like a cat playing with a mouse. I know that he is indulging me. I know that he has the ability to devour me. He’s not a mouse. He’s a black hole, a shape-shifter, a dragon. But I am bored, and I will take this risk for a few moments. My boredom demands that I see how far I can take it.
He is silent now. He knows what I am doing. I can feel the sulk building up inside him. I use him for these feelings. I use him for my boredom, for my antagonism, my frustration. Sitting at a table in a bar right now, with a candle in a jar in front of me, I would burn him. I wouldn’t talk about it. I wouldn’t declare that this begins with a simple act of violence. I would just burn him.
Sado-masochism. I want to hurt him so that he will hurt me later. I need his antagonism, too. I need him to reject me, to repel me, so that I can come crawling back. It’s a sick dance, but we both need it. I need to feel forgiven for my bad behaviour. He needs to feel that I need his approval.
A man with dark hair pulled back in a ponytail is rollerblading along the path. I follow his movement with my eyes, and it pulls my head back around so that I am once again looking at him. He is resolute. He is staring straight ahead. He is plotting his response. I will pay for this later. It fills me with a sick kind of glee.
I sugar my voice and patronise him.
“It sounds really good, darling. I’m sure they’ll love it.”
He wants to believe that I am sincere. He needs to believe that, because the sarcasm doesn’t sit with his internal view of his own abilities. He needs to hear what he wants me to say. I give him the words, but not the meaning. It’s up to him to choose his meaning.
In a flicker of an instant he chooses. His sulk evaporates, and he turns to me and smiles.
“Thanks, baby,” he says.
We kiss. It is light and airy, a quick brush of lips and acres of air in between, like an arid desert with a momentary breeze. It’s like two snooker balls glancing off each other.
We turn our heads, we face the landscape in front of us. He has chosen to let it pass this time. There will be nothing for me later, and I am now too bored to try again.
“I think I might walk.”
He doesn’t respond.
I get up and walk along the path, leaving him to sit in silence on the bench. Thinking. I pull my scarf closer around my face, and bury my jaw and mouth in it. Just my nose peeks over the top. My hat is pulled down tight against my brow. I push my hands firmly into my coat pockets. The winter trees are showing the first signs that spring will soon be here. The frost has gone. It ended weeks ago. I walk and follow the path around the piece of grass we were gazing out over minutes ago.
I am directly opposite where he is still sitting. I can see his form through the corner of my eye. He is a dark mass of denim and wool and leather. I walk straight ahead. I don’t follow the bend back to him. I walk on, out of the park and away.
The buildings I walk between are tall and dark and imposing. I feel dwarfed by them. My stomach rolls. I would look at my watch, but it is buried with my wrist under sleeves and in my pocket, so I trust my instinct and listen to my body, obey its need for food.
I go into a café and order tea and toast. The toast comes brown and golden with the butter melted right into the surface. The tea looks muddy. It is warm and wet, though. I have peeled off some of my layers and sit at a table with my back to the window. I don’t want to look out at the world on the street outside. I want to be alone with my tea and my toast and my thoughts.
There’s a blandness to his arrogance that I hate and also like. There’s an arrogance to his blandness that frustrates me. The violence in our interactions is pent up and distorted by the civility with which we communicate. He makes me seethe and weep and rage and whimper.
I eat my toast, and the tea is still too hot. My phone begins to ring in a pocket of my coat, and I let it. I need to change the locks soon. I need to redecorate. I sip on the still hot tea.
My phone rings like a doorbell to tell me I have a voicemail message. I will listen to it later. I blow on the tea and suck it into my mouth, in the hope that the air will help to cool it. When you drink hot tea this fast, it’s impossible to finish it. It seems to expand in your stomach. I leave it, three quarters drunk, and pull my layers back on.
The city is quiet today, and I walk onto the main street where shops are having sales of clothes it will soon be too warm for people to wear. There are trousers that I like, and skirts; boots and jeans and jewellery. No cloaks of invisibility, though. And that is what I would like. I’m wearing too many layers to be trying things on today, so I just look into windows and stay on the street.
I think of that kiss and how it might be our last. I think of the boredom, the yawn of our continued play, and the loss of inspiration each time we follow the script. Improvisation and free association has become its own pattern. We set off down the path and make the usual stops along the way. He has cast the players in this drama, and I have accepted my role, like always. But now I want to shake him and say that I am not the woman he has cast me as. I want a new role to play.
But I can’t be bothered. Boredom is sucking the marrow from my bones.
I answer the phone when it rings this time.
“Where are you?”
“Shopping.”
“Shopping isn’t a location.”
“Here, there, everywhere.”
“Don’t be stupid.”
“Where are you?”
“Home.”
“Whose home?”
There is a pause while he thinks about this.
“What do you mean?”
“Who pays the mortgage on the building you’re in right now?”
“Oh.”
I look through the window into
“Are you going to come round later?”
Come round from a knock out. Come round from an operation. Come round to a new way of thinking. Am I ever going to come round?
“I don’t know,” I say. “I’ll let you know.”
“Okay.”
That kiss was probably our last. In its own way, it was a simple act of violence. Its lack of meaning ripped something apart; made some kind of tear in the fabric of life. Not betrayal, but not love either. A nothing, floating in the winter air on a park bench with nobody there to witness it. An everything, that bore its own witness to the end.
I move on up the street. The city is quiet, and the day not halfway old.
© J R Hargreaves 2006
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