Sweet Sorrow(92)

‘“All right for you?”’

‘I wasn’t going to ask that,’ I said, though I was.

‘It was lovely.’

‘It was quite quick, I’m sorry.’

‘That’s fine.’

‘I thought I’d get to move around a bit more.’

‘Next time.’

‘So you didn’t have …?’

‘An orgasm. Oh, yes, about, what, nine?’

‘Oh, God.’

‘Why, did you?’

‘Ha.’

‘Shh. Just lie there. It was really lovely, like I said. And the first time is always a bit like that. It’s just like, I don’t know …’

‘Clearing your throat?’

‘No! That’s gross. What I was going to say was, it’s like … have you ever made pancakes? Well, when you make pancakes, the first one’s always a bit of a try-out.’

‘Oh, Christ,’ I said, ‘I’m the bad pancake.’

‘It’s not bad, it’s still delicious, but the next one’s better. What I mean is, everyone makes a fuss about the first time, but it’s the second or the fourth or the twelfth that matters. And we’ve got all weekend. The main thing is’ – she took my hand and stared into my eyes – ‘you came to me as but a boy, and now you are a man.’

We laughed and she pulled up the second sheet. To be lying in a bed with the whole length of our bodies pressed together was, in its own way, just as intimate and startling as the sex itself and I was newly grateful that this had happened here rather than down the back of the sofa.

‘Don’t fall asleep, will you?’ she said.

‘Not for a bit. You look beautiful.’

‘Thank you. You too.’

‘Well, handsome.’

‘No, beautiful,’ and she laid her hand gently on my face and slipped her little finger into my nostril.

‘Can you not do that please?’

‘Is it not sexy?’

‘No.’

‘Just trying something new. So. How does it feel? Manhood?’

‘All right. Do I look different?’

‘Worldly-wise. Also, this is new …’

‘Oh, sorry.’ The condom still lay against my thigh like some freshly shed skin. ‘Should I get rid of it?’

‘No, keep it on. Wear it always, to remember me.’

I removed the thing, tied a knot with a dexterity and deftness that had escaped me earlier.

‘Boys love to really look at it. Why is that?’

‘Dunno. It’s disgusting but sort of amazing too.’

‘Look at you, holding it up to the light. It’s like you’ve won a goldfish. All proud. They should put markings up the side, in millilitres. And at the top, write “Kapow!”’

‘What do I do with it?’

‘Oh, keep it. You have to keep the first one.’

‘In my wallet.’

‘Yeah, like a lock of my hair. Take it out and look at it.’

‘But surely you should keep it.’

‘I’m okay, thanks. Put it down now.’

We rearranged the sofa cushions into pillows of a sort, and reached for our vodka and Cokes, syrupy and flat. Soon we were drunk enough to dance to old Prince songs, though Fran looked better doing this than I did, my nakedness providing one more reason not to lift my feet off the floor. We were also smudged with dust and grime. In the shower we squeezed beneath the feeble trickle, alternately scalding then freezing and barely wet enough to scrape the dirt from each other’s bodies with the blade of pink soap. ‘It’s like we’re in a Bond movie,’ shouted Fran over the roar of the cheap plastic water heater. No towel, and so we dried each other on yesterday’s T-shirts, and soon we were back on the sofa-bed, less panicked and self-conscious this time, more at ease and Fran was right, that was the time that mattered.





‘I have bought the mansion of a love’


We must have drifted off to sleep at three or four. We’d been listening to music as the nightlights puttered out one by one and the last song I heard was ‘Lilac Wine’, the Nina Simone version, the low thrum-thrum-thrum of it.

‘I like how she sings “lie-lark”.’

‘Make wine from lilacs is terrible idea,’ she mumbled into my neck. We were very drunk now.

‘Sweet and heady, she says.’

‘All right. Let’s try it. Tomorrow.’

‘Have it as spritzer.’

‘Ha.’ I heard the crackle of her smile. ‘Ssh. Sleep.’ And so we slept.

But the novelty and thrill of having her there, the warmth of her in the heat of the night, her movement in sleep, the springs and struts of the sofa-bed, meant that I was wide awake a few hours later, mouth dry, head booming. In the grey dawn light, the room had taken on a new type of squalor. We’d drunk the entirety of our weekend’s supplies on the first night. The empty bottles now lay close to my face at the side of the bed, alongside a great many condom wrappers, a half-eaten packet of biscuits, a pint glass of cloudy water and the saucer we’d used as an ashtray. At any other time I might have groaned and clutched at my head but this seemed to me like the bedside detritus of a new man, a man of experience, a lover’s bedside. Looking at Fran, I actually began to laugh, a mad, gleeful laugh that I had to stifle with my hand.