Of the
cover sheet, what remains in place does so only by being snared around her
ankle, the majority of it spilled out upon the carpet alongside and below. The
hour being so late or so early depending, channel 16 has reverted from
transmitting pornography to a default holding screen, its advice to consult
with the menu card for current programming afloat upon the television’s
otherwise unbroken blue emission by which their uncovered bodies are
illuminated.
Finally
separate from her in her bed, he is conscious of the sweat beginning to cool
upon his naked skin and its residual damp turning chill in the sheet beneath
them both; running the length of an index finger around the edge of her left
breast prompts from him a laugh so quiet and incongruous she raises herself up
to check his face for confirmation of its having been heard at all.
Skunk:
What?
ache1:
Nothing, just… checking. Something on your mind, maybe?
Skunk:
Oh this is… I was um… When I was a kid, I I, I don’t, I I I mean I couldn’t
tell you what age, but… uh… we used to get the… My mum used to get a
newspaper, not for, not for long
laughing
Skunk:
huh, but she would get a newspaper, one of the tabloids, over here the
tabloids have got… I would imagine this doesn’t happen anywhere else in
the world but over here the tabloids have got like a glamour model on,
on the, in there, a topless model, and eh,
ache1:
Oh no it’s not just, we had, I mean there’s at least one I know of in
Toronto, I’m sure…
Skunk:
That had naked ladies?
ache1:
Yeah I’m pretty sure they used to have guys as well.
Laughing.
ache1:
Like dudes, dude.
Skunk:
I mean, this is, this isn’t family eh, you know, it just seems a bit weird, it does
seem a bit weird, but it’s such an institution over here that you don’t, it’s
not something that you would ever… think to question.
ache1:
Uh-huh.
Skunk:
But eh, I twigged, at some point I twigged that what was special about these
pictures was that you could see the um, the women’s nipples,
ache1:
Oh this is gonna be good. Proceed.
Skunk
(continuing almost in spite of himself): you know uh, which in in eh other
magazines or other pictures of women like, I I wasn’t aware of pornography I
don’t think I was aware of pornography anyway eh ehm, you know, you you
couldn’t, so I I figured that was, that was what was special about these
pictures, so what I started doing was um,
blushing
at the revelation
Skunk:
I would cut… the… like it was a, I’d get a pair of nail scissors
ache1:
Oh-oh.
Skunk:
and I would cut these, eh, I would just, just the nipple, I would cut the
nipples
ache1
(hands quick to cover her ears): LALALALALALALALA
Skunk:
out from these pictures, these glamour sort of pin-up things. And I used to
keep ‘em in a tin in my bedroom ehm, like a little tinful eh, a little
Sellotape tin, it was a little blue round tin that eh, a roll of Sellotape had
come in and eh…
ache1:
Why on earth would you do such a thing?
Skunk:
It was about the right size and shape.
which
makes her giggle.
Skunk
(laughing too): I can’t remember how it panned out but I do remember
being confronted about it eh… but I don’t, I don’t remember what the outcome, I
mean, obviously
laughing
Skunk:
my mum stopped buying the tabloid paper. I think, I have a feeling that that,
you know, she maybe had to polish her shoes or something and she went to
to, to the wastepaper to to eh, to get a paper to eh
laughing
Skunk:
to em, to put her shoes on and opens it up and my goodness there’s a topless
pin-up with her nipples… ehm, removed eh… Yeah, that’s
ache1:
Well, what can I say? I’m glad we had this, ahm, I’m glad we had this
conversation.
Skunk:
You know, uh, I’m not even sure if, if there was any sort of of, if the thrill
was a sexual thing, like if it had any sort of sexual… element, or if it
was because I knew at the time I really shouldn’t be doing this, and it was
just this illicit thing of keeping something hidden from my mum.
Remembering
how deleted name had explained that annual gifting of her diary ache1
speaks now in less specific terms about some parents’ secret knowledge
of their children’s hidden world, but Brother Skunk is too tired to really
listen.
Skunk
(interrupting): Why was I telling you this again? How did we get on to this?
ache1
(this with a deal of fondness): I think you were just ah, weren’t weren’t you
just trying to confirm for me that you’re a twisted weirdo deviant?
Skunk
(yawning): Hunh, if you think that’s bad wait til you hear about my
tinful of piss.
Years
later when he had long since ceased to even think of the house as having
exhausted its capacity to ambush him with revelation, he will find himself
again subject to what almost feels like an agenda all its own, the suckerpunch
winding him of breath.
Requiring
a particular colour of thread to sew back a button he digs down through his
mother’s old wicker basket, unearthing as he does so a small blue Sellotape
tin, empty by suggestion of its weight.
For
long minutes he kneels transfixed in deliberation, understandably hesitant
despite the logic of her using such tins herself for storage until finally,
having dared himself both to and not, he twists off the lid stiff with
corrosion to find inside the neatly excised scraps of newsprint, each yellowed
with age and worn beneath her fingers to the delicate consistency of cloth.
