Skunk
(withdrawing): Uh-oh. There’s blood on this.
ache1:
Is it mine?
Skunk:
Yeah, yeah.
ache1:
It’s okay though, it’s just don’t don’t it’s nothing to worry about.
Skunk:
Yeah.
peering
at the condom as he knotted it before taking it to discard in the bathroom
wastebin.
Back
in the room he pulled the curtain just a little, permitting entry a bright and
cloudless strip of monotonous summer, the morning’s fresh clear heat just heat
by noon and afternoon when its measure could be taken in the stiff puddled tar
that would slack and bubble and thickly shift at any gradient’s urging, and the
glands of ripe women exude the soft sour perfume of fertility. He pushed the
window wide, stood deeply inflating his lungs as if taking sustenance from each
draught.
ache1:
HEY!
Skunk
leapt a little in himself.
ache1:
Are you getting up now, or ahm... are you coming back to bed?
More
than aware of her body’s physical moderation, still there was something to the
way ache1 confronted that moderation with habitual and impudent
abandon which managed to conjure up a sexuality comprising ingenuousness and
intrigue, respectively active and passive, in about equal measure.
ache1:
Hmm?
Skunk
returned to bed, beginning to pull at
the tugs in her hair, its short lengths matted into angled stalks by
yesterday’s gel.
Skunk:
Are you okay? You’re not ehm
ache1:
No I’m fine I’m fine. Mighty fine. I’ve never really, I’m not one for being
greatly troubled by “the monthly purge”. No sir, not me.
Skunk:
Who calls it the “monthly purge”?
ache1:
My granny called it that, my mum’s mum. She used to say stuff like um “Have you
girls started your monthly purge yet?” and then after my sister started she’d
say to me “Hey it won’t be long before you’re getting your monthly
purge", she was kind of funny about it all, not like not, I mean at least she
told us about it, some of
Skunk:
Did your mum not expl-
ache1:
Oh yeah yeah, I think my mum told me first, and there was his special class in
school just for the girls about they ah
coughs
ache1:
but I remember my mum and Granny, I remember them both talking to me about it,
and another time it was just my granny but that was after I’d started.
Skunk
(lying flat out beneath the eiderdown): Do you remember what it was like when
you started when you, your first period?
ache1:
Oh God yeah I was at school and ah
slipping
back down the bed, her hair buckling out upon the pillow and as she spoke
Brother Skunk, now up on one elbow, leaned over to place his palm flat upon her
forehead.
ache1:
it was the last day of term before the Easter vacation and it just happened, I
was kind of late or relatively late anyway and it it just happened.
Skunk:
You didn’t have any indication or there wasn’t
ache1:
No no there, well there it, I still remember this but I don’t, it’s not something
I think about but I remember this feeling, like you know when you’re on a
trampoline and that kind of of pulling and pushing feeling you
get
banging
her fists together outside the covers
ache1:
and that’s, I mean that may have been something else, but a bit after that I
was bleeding and I had to go to the sickroom and the nurse just told me to go
on home when I was ready because it was the afternoon anyway and the last day
and everything so...
Skunk:
And you never looked back.
ache1:
Nopes, here I am in all my glory. But, well no, because the thing is that that
was the very start, I had a I had a my first period, and then
after that I didn’t have any more for a few months until, it was oh God I
remember this alright because I the next one came on my birthday.
Skunk
(laughing): On your birthday?
ache1:
I know I know, it’s one of those strange things that has a a it, you know
what it means even though you don’t really know, like when you meet a
really nice person and you find out they were born on Christmas or something.
Skunk:
Yeah yeah well, see that’s what I was trying to tell you about Faulkner, it’s
full of stuff that that, if somebody asked you what it meant or what was going
on exactly, you’d you wouldn’t be able to tell them even what it but, though
you’d know really.
ache1
(smiling): Yeah.
Skunk
(laughing): So... your birthday...
ache1
(laughing): Actually no actually it was quite a traumatic experience because
and
for a moment she gave up trying to talk across her laughter.
ache1
(eventually): I ah I I’d asked for this little E.T. ah game, a little handheld
electronic thing but I, one of my friends had, the thing was that there were
two different games, and one of them had a little joystick, you know, and the
other one just had four, they were little cursor buttons but I couldn’t use
them at all, that was the one my friend had so I kept on and on and on at my
parents, you know “Make sure you get me the one with the joystick. Make sure
you get me” and ah a few just a I, I started hunting around the house to see if
they’d got me it yet and hidden it someplace and I found it in the wardrobe in
their room, and I used to go in there every day after school and play this
little game
smelling
again the stale dust and the quick pubescent sweat
ache1:
and then on my birthday morning, because my parents didn’t have any idea that
I’d been in their wardrobe playing with ah with the game, and then on my
birthday morning and I got the game and I went to switch it on and the
batteries were dead!
Skunk
bent over forward coughing out a mad hoarse laughter that eventually produced a
stream of tears down his face.
Skunk
(still laughing hard): Oh Jesus. Oh Jesus Christ. That is excellent.
dabbing
at his eyes with the cuff of his pyjamas.
ache1
(laughing): I didn’t tell them either. They still, well, you know, if they ever
think about it they’d still think that they’d bought some crappy batteries. Oh
God it was dreadful, all I wanted was to sho- I’d had all this practice and I
wanted them to think I had a great natural ability at this little game and and
laughter.
ache1:
I’ll be back in just a second.
Skunk
yawned and lay back down flat as she skipped in to the bathroom. From outside
he could hear floating chatter, sunlit voices of men and women followed by the
hollow popping of tennis from the courts below.
Skunk
(yawning again): Oh. ARE YOU ALRIGHT?
ache1:
YEAH. GIVE ME A SECOND.
stopping
at the window on her return to look down upon the tennis and then with a circle
of thumb and finger in her mouth whistled her fierce appreciation.
Skunk
(startled): Jesus Christ!
and
cogs
(taking bows): THANK YOU. THANK YOU.
ache1
(kneeling on the bed, sunlight on her red pyjamas): Are we getting up or what?
Skunk:
I have a wardrobe story too.
ache1:
Yeah? What kind of a wardrobe story?
Skunk:
Ehm, similarly confessional.
She
raised her eyebrows, expectant.
ache1:
Proceed.
Skunk:
Remember I told you about that flat I lived in when I was at college, the one
with the
ache1:
The one with the two girls yeah...
Skunk:
Well, in the living room behind the tv there was a locked cupboard or it was
ehm, or it wasn’t actually, it wasn’t locked but it did have this little
lock fitted onto the front, a padlock kind of thing and ehm, apparently it the
eh landlady’s son had lived there before, or he’d used the flat for a while and
he was he kept some of his stuff in this cupboard. He’d gone off to America I
think. Anyway eh, I was, behind the wardrobe in my room there was a pool
table, and eh, it occurred to me that there might be, he might have left a set
of balls and cues in the cupboard, the one with the lock on it, and I thought
if there was, you know, we could set up the table and play. I didn’t know what
the girls were like about going into, you know, going through someone else’s
stuff, so I waited... A lot of people aren’t, they’re not, they have no
curiosity about stuff like that but, you know, I was at college, and they would
be in most nights and we’d watch tv and... Whatever, they went off to see some
film one evening, and I took the lock off with my, there’s a screwdriver
attachment on my penknife, so I unscrewed the lock and I was I was really
careful about the whole thing. Gillian used to keep a sort of mobile thing,
ehm, windchimes, hanging on the door, so I made a little pencil mark where that
was, and I laid it down exactly as I’d taken it off the door, and I
opened the door... baboom!
ache1:
What? What baboom? Was it anything, I mean it must have been something
otherwise you wouldn’t be telli-
Skunk:
Boxes and boxes of videos, and that was it, that was all there was. These high
stacks of brown cardboard boxes, and each box was full of videos and they
weren’t they weren’t in individual cases or anything, I mean apart from the big
cardboard boxes.
ache1
(bewildered): Of?
Skunk:
They none of them were prerecorded videos, they were all blanks but they’d all
been, or at least all of the ones I saw had stuff on them, and each of the
videos had labels on them, you know, on top and along the side and these had
logging numbers and details of what was on each cassette and it was all,
it wasn’t really pornography as such, but he’d obviously been using it as
porn because all the little numbers referred to stuff that was either it was, I
mean these were just typical tv programmes, but if ever a woman was on with a
short skirt, or if there was a sex scene in a film or something, it was
carefully noted on these labels and and a lot of it wasn’t even
ache1:
Mondo weirdo. Jesus. That’s... weird.
Skunk:
Weird is that I actually met the guy, when, I got in from college and ehm Sally
said that the landlady had called and her son was coming.
ache1
laughs.
Skunk:
He’d come back and was going to be round later to get some stuff from the
cupboard.
ache1
(her hands up at her face in mock horror): The Cupboard! And what was he like?
I bet he was just
Skunk:
He was okay, about my age, a bit not fat but you know ehm and he had
glasses and he he was actually very pleasant but, the thing was...
ache1:
What? What was the thing?
Skunk
(now coloured by partial blush): Well the thing was that I didn’t just go into
that cupboard once...
ache1
makes some hooting noises of laughter.
Skunk:
Hmm. So ehm... his visit had a kind of Goldilocks thing about it and I was
really eh, edgy, you know, and the this is the really bizarre thing
ache1:
Oh right, yeah, the really bizarre thing.
Skunk
(suddenly interrupting his own thoughts): Actually no it isn’t. The thing I
found most bizarre was that he nev- all the mentions of breasts he had down as chest,
you know, he hadn’t used any slang terms it always said eh, something like
“blonde, big chest” or “bare chest” or something like that. Very very strange.
ache1:
And what was the other
Skunk:
Well he came round and we were all watching, you know, we moved the tv so he
could get into the cupboard but ehm, he said he’d lost the key! So he’d brought
a screwdriver with him and he opened it exactly the same way I’d done!
Laughter.
ache1:
Oh God! Did he say anything, like “HEY! How come these screws are so loose?”
Didn’t he didn’t he ah didn’t he notice that you’d been through his
stuff or anything? I mean, if he was so obsessive about cataloguing all of his
videos, or all the... or had you
Skunk:
Well I’d been pretty careful about what I was doing, but mainly so the the
girls
ache1:
Of course. Didn’t they know what, obviously you...
Skunk:
Well, we were sitting there watching tv, and I don’t think the girls
knew what was in there, or at least if they did they’d never mentioned
it to me, but then again I’d never said to them that I’d been... well, you
know
ache1
(laughing, nodding toward the tv on the wall): Oh yeah sure, sure.
Skunk:
But they might have been sitting there as apprehensive as I was, you know, a
three-way guilt I don’t know I don’t know, but I, I just concentrated on the tv
hoping he wouldn’t say
adopting
pantomime voice
Skunk:
“Who’s been poking around in my videos?”
ache1:
And he didn’t notice anything wrong? It’s kind of disturbing to get such a an
ah, such a clear look at someone’s private their, I mean he obviously enjoyed
looking at that stuff, or he got something out of it. You must
have enj- God that’s creepy. You’re creepy.
pulling
her arm deep into the sleeve of her pyjamas and batting him with the loose flap
of cuff.
Skunk:
That’s why I stopped, or partly why I stopped anyway. Once I met him I didn’t
want to ehm... I, I, a lot of the stuff he’d recorded was marked “large chest”
ehm... You know, even women who, there was nothing sexual at all to the to the
what they were doing, but if a woman had, you know, that was patently his own
particular fetish, women with large breasts, but it’s not mine, but the
more I watched of his collection,
ache1
(still slapping him with her sleeve): You are a deeply creepy man.
Skunk:
the more I started to, I found I was actually getting something from a
lot of the most innocuous tv and I was a bit uneasy about that. I kind of felt
that by watching this stuff I was almost adopting this guy’s own brand of ehm,
you know, whatever it was that was arousing him, I started thinking that
another
yawn.
ache1:
Do you think his mum knew what he had in that cupboard? God if I had
kids I’d be right in there after they’d gone. Everywhere and everything, I’d be
all through it.
Skunk:
I have no idea, but I doubt it, really, I doubt it. I don’t... euh.
contorting
his face into an expression of disgust.
Skunk:
Anyway, that’s my confession for the morning over. Please to leave the building in
a calm and orderly manner.
ache1
(laughing): Just a second just a second. When this guy when he, didn’t he say anything
about taking, he did take some of these videos away with him, right?
Didn’t the girls ask him about them at all?
Skunk:
We no, none of us ehm, we just sat watching tv. Maybe they had already been,
you know, maybe they did know, but... I left there shortly after that
anyway. I’d already been going home at weekends to check on Mum and just, but
ache1:
Of course, yeah.
Skunk:
This is going to sound really stupid, but for a while I thought that what was
happening to Mum might be some sort of punishment for my for my
ache1
(laughing): For watching pornos? or not-pornos even? You’re kidding.
Skunk:
Well, I was brought up, you know... I don’t know. I have to run a line out,
excuse me.
ache1:
Have a shower while you’re in there, see if you can’t purge yourself of sin.
Skunk
(from behind bathroom door, blotting out her voice with his own): OH CANADA!
OUR HOME AND NATIVE LAND!
