The man stood next to me at the bar asks me if I’m Spanish.
‘I’m not’ I say,
'But I have a Spanish GCSE!' The conversation goes no further. I’ve not been to this pub before; it has spectacular prices and chests filled with gold. The man who thought I was Spanish sits next to a woman whose chest rests on the small round table ahead of her, across beer mats and filth. I unbutton one of the buttons of my blouse; participating in the local culture. I order strong foreign lager, the only one they sell – the wife-beater one; and I pray for an easy pick up.
Decorating my new flat has been hard on a budget of benefit money and family handouts alone
(I long got used to my ex being the big earner, and consequently the big spender of my existence - the fat controller of my life). The task hasn’t fulfilled me - instead it has turned me upside down, sent blood to my head, and has shaken up from-outta-me, the strays of my reluctant transition back to singularity - and there you see, I'm already getting sick over this 'raw deal' of mine.
The move has provided me with drawers to store an infinite amount of stock inside of (of all the nothingness acquired, or required of me, so as to ensure that I matter in this modern world). The move has also earnt me my own double bed, one that doubles up on the exaggeration of what has become my private&confidential-loneliness-quota.
It all reminds me of how it feels to be the last child to leave home, watching everyone else leave before you do, the send-offs getting smaller, possibly less-important (at least it felt that way) each time the family unit dwindled down. And then when your turn finally does come round, you find that you're a repeat of all that went before you - only bravery and adventure are overshadowed by loneliness this time. The event is sad. All lives involved are making craters, are imploding - and the general feel of home has changed, now that all its sons and daughters have moved on.
You might see yourself as the last pea of the pea-pod; that's how I saw it, and that's how I feel again. A pea falling off the edge of a plate from the nudge of a spoon. Dismissed and poised to forge a new path for themselves. I've started to do things like hinder my own comfort-zone. A pea wanting to be less defined. I'm more of a vegetable these days.
I fear upon my mattress, as though a pea has been set below it. I don't know much that is making sense anymore - all I know is that I've not been sleeping. I'm nobody's princess pea. A trend had already been set for the outcome of my last relationship, right from the off. Apparently you see, I wasn't the first sucker in Zack's life. As it transpired, my ex-boyfriend screwed around (prolifically). I have a feeling even my hairdresser knew about it before me - and heck - of course she did - Zack's with her now, and dear God, how I hate my showing roots and the fact that she knows how to fix them.
My dinner-service-set is stored in an incomplete mess in my kitchen, but that's okay, as mostly I eat out from paper bags now anyway - the kind Zack would refer to as yesterday's news - he has the rest of the dinner-set, but he doesn't use his share of it much either - I hear he takes most of his meals in bed these days as he enjoys the indoor fuck-fest of a new relationship; that most enjoyable of diets that can turn fat people into svelte sex slaves.
So my last relationship was a sham. Got it? The sort of thing you'll have read about in glossy women's weeklies, time again, especially in those times before meeting the dentist's chair, again, at scheduled six-month check-ups. It's situations like these where other people's pain, like my pain, becomes a sedative for painful&imminent treatment (especially when it's being sold out for all but a two-page-spread, and a nominal amount of cash). We don't feel so bad about that kind of trade off; it's back-scratching - an evolution of conscience (that's all).
I’ve been told to laugh about it
(my situation that is). So I forced out one laugh, and have continued acting ever since (more of a subdued persona though - that one off laugh of mine came and went rather quickly). The shit happened two months ago. I’ve since lost my job, moved town, and have learnt to be a dab hand at the ol' prestige of method acting. I went out on a limb and reached a brink. I lost friends and alienated people. I drank in bars (alone). I prayed to get laid. And when it happened. When religion actually came through for me - well, it wasn't quite an -
'Hallelujah!' moment, but an -
'Oh Lordy!' one
Beer breath lingers on the most intimate parts of my body. A male voice asks me to talk dirty to him
(in Spanish). So I count up the numbers one to ten, and then make colloquial conversation of questions that go unanswered. A woman is with us too - she makes orgasmic noises from just watching – her part is easy I think, and his is, too (in-out-repeat-satisfaction). I feel my heart sinking.
The sex is bad, like soap-opera bad. Afterwards the woman realises she recognises me from one of the True-Life stories she has read from one of her women's weekly magazines, and right on cue... There! She gets a twinge of tooth-ache - I'm a visual association you see. A subliminal message of pain. And although this isn't quite infamy, it feels shameful all the same. I'm being pitied by the high-rise swingers of doley-society. I'm being made a cuppa by these strangers in my own home. They hold me, and it feels like a knot holding me in place. I sit gripped. This is a bad trip.
'Smile senorita' They say.
It doesn't take long for them to wane. The antics and alcohol have tired them out. They sleep in my bed with looks of satisfaction lodged in smirks from their mouths upwards to their brows. Dislodging these looks would be my own sword-in-the-stone moment - but I'm too weak for heroics. And whilst the bed looks full, I myself only feel more empty than ever.
'I'm not Spanish' I say in a whisper
'I'm just plain sad'But either way I feel foreign to them.
'Buenas noches'They spoon each other as they sleep. Their relationship stranger than any love I might ever choose to have; but it is working for them, and of that I am jealous.
To them I was neither a destruction or a distraction, but an action likened to what makes a key functional when turned in the right door. Maybe Zack was just being human after all; functioning in the way nature told him that he could - because really, this precious type of love I herald, is just too painful to bear sometimes.
And there on the vessel of my bed, I watch as my night-time visitors float on and live. I clutch a straw from a drink I've fixed-up (it tastes stronger than I feel) and as I drink it, the drink wastes me, and I make the decision that I don't want to sleep alone tonight.
I clamber in beside the company that's found me, as though they're a lifeboat sent out for me to climb aboard - and all of this is better than religion I think - but like religion commands sections of linguistics for use in its own propaganda, I'd like to go ahead and describe this new feeling of mine as like one of being:
'saved'.
