BETWEEN

It was coming up to university and I had still not got myself organised. Instead I went to parties and got drunk and pissed people off. That seemed as good a way to spend my time as any. I also talked about things, stupidly, and sometimes people listened to me. Also, sometimes I had a good time. A really good time, or just a really stupid time. And then that would make everything better for a few hours or even a few days.

September got me in a depression that year, as it always had done. I still hadn’t forgotten the thought of going back to school after the long summers and now, after one too short year I had to go to some bloody university and get orders again about what to learn. I thought I’d done OK in my “year out” - tried to learn about people, sex, jazz, books, writing. Failed I guess in all of them, mostly, but then you do. That’s what happens. The other side was that I reckoned I’d succeeded from time to time and that made me feel good. Not a GOOD FEELING I got whenever I thought about myself but a kind of half-positive undercurrent that somehow didn’t suffer from the rest of it.

So anyway I was at a dinner party. The food was good although the cook was pissed off at me for not helping her make it. A guy told me that afterwards - I thought that I’d never properly volunteered to do it but these things never really matter in the end. Probably the thing that had really annoyed her was that I’d started/stopped having sex with her. Both by then I reckon. So anyway the food was good and I sat there and drank some wine. Took some shit about how “I never really cared” which I guess was true, but then I never really not cared either. I mean, the girl was cool. It was just that… well I don’t know.

After dinner we were watching some video which had got boring. So it was going well but nothing seemed about to happen. So I called Scott and I said, “Hey Scott when are you going to this party?” and he says “Well we should be going pretty soon” and I say “Ok cool! Take you time though. It would be kinda rude if I left so early” “I’ll have to,” he says, “I need to get organised and stuff”

I gave him the address and after a while he turns up and the guys have found this fart machine and they’re talking about farts and it all gets really too much. I say to Scott let’s get out of here and we get on the train.

The train’s pretty weird because there are twenty drunk Australians on it at first singing songs from grease and I’m hoping they’re gonna get to tears on my pillow because I know all the words to that but they never do. They just get louder and Louder and LOUDER until there’s no point in talking and I just sit there and look and Scott and he’s laughing. Then this crazy woman gets in the carriage and she’s “Watch out there’s a bomb on this train!!!!” but we know she’s crazy and not clever enough to get a bomb on account of all the shit she’s holding up her jumper. We figure real terrorists don’t carry bombs up their jumpers and she’s way too far gone to notice a REAL BOMB laid by a REAL TERRORIST before we do so we just sit right where we are and she moves on to the next carriage.

And we get there and the rain is pissing down and we get chips and walk down the road towards the house. Scott reckons it’s 33A and I reckon it’s 33 flat 2 so we argue and he rings the bell and it turns out to be 33A flat 2. So we enter the PARTY ROOM and Jane’s “IT’S SCOTT AND NICK! SCOTT AND NICK!” and we say “Yes, it’s us” and all the other guys just sit still and smile and look underwhelmed. Sometimes some people just don’t get it. Or maybe sometimes they do.

So anyway there’s Alison who’s pretty and Chris and Andy who are kind of pretty too and also Jane who’s sort of pretty and Patricia who just looks crazy and comes from New York. So Scott reveals the contents of my bag which are “Nice Guys Sleep Alone: A guide to dating in the difficult eighties” and some vaseline but I reckon nobody hears so that’s OK. And I get looking at Jane’s fashion sketch book which has these cool line-figures sitting and walking and she says “NO!! Look at this one of Patricia” and there’s this new big blue book and I open it to see these multi-coloured cunts drawn in pencil staring at me and I look at Patricia who kinda smiles.

So after a while Scott and I got them reciting lines from our alleged forthcoming porn film. The script goes like this and is based on a real book…
Alison [as female id of Patricia]: Her guy was horned on my tits.
Andy [as male superego of film and narrator], acts horned on Patricia’s tits.
Patricia [as protagonist]: You can have them.
Jane [as little cousin]: Accepted…
Andy [as narrator]: My little sister grunted.
Jane: but I only want to borrow them. Fuck my bloke tonight, he deserves a reward.
Patricia: This is how I became the first prize for the first time….

Then we had them doing character exercises. We got them to hold coffee cups for realism and got Andy to shake a salt cellar whenever he was horned and got the others to put on accents when they heard the salt. Then I had a directorial tantrum and demanded to see the artistic director. There wasn’t one so I had to talk to Scott. I said I was quitting unless everyone worked with me in trying to imagine being “fucked by a totally strange man”. They all did to a greater or lesser extent but I felt my artistic control declining. I threw another tantrum and reassigned Andy as Leopold, the masculine background presence of the work. We roll and smoke another joint.

“There are two things,” said I, “that you must all know about Leopold. 1) He’s shy. 2) He fucks like a bull. GET BULLISH!” I shouted at Andy, “B- U-L-L. Like a BULL!” and to his credit the guy did his best.

Scott lost his temper now and we demanded that the whole thing become a porn opera. The sound of Alison singing “Her guy was horned on my tits” in a good drunken soprano was enough to get everyone pretty horned. Also Patricia had started stroking her own tits and so Scott ordered me to roll more joints.

Then Dave and Sara arrived and the latter talked for about two minutes then collapsed on the floor. She had a new job as a nightclub hostess and she had got wasted before she came. In fact she only came because she heard we were rehearsing a porn film and expected us all to be naked. Dave went and sat next to Alison and got talking and eventually at 3am they started making out by default. This got me pissed off and probably Scott too as we both felt that coulda been us.

So we were left alone with Patricia and out of the blue she says,
“If one of you two doesn’t fuck me soon I’m going to get ill”
And we sit there, very still. I look at Scott and he looks at me.
“Can’t we both do it?” say I and she says,
“Of course.”
Scott says nothing so I guess that’s not on but he regretted it the next day like a true hindsight hedonist.
Neither of us wanted to do the job at the time so we just start laughing.
She says,
“Couldn’t you draw straws or something?”
Later turns out she thought we were on the point of fighting over her.
“Shit!” I say. “We need a committee! Get some bureaucrats in here - I want this bitch wrapped up in red tape and filed away.”
We smoke a joint.
And she just laughs and sits between on the arms of the chairs and she reaches out with her hands and before long she has us both hard. But still neither of us wanna do it so she retreats to the floor, lies on her back and slowly takes off her pyjama top. And we’re just cracking up and Scott says,
“You lazy bitch!”.
She asks “WHAT??”
and I say “Look at you, you lazy bitch, lounging about on the floor topless”
“That’s not lazy!” she says. “You guys are lazy!!”
“You don’t see us lounging on the floor topless” Scott says and she doesn’t know what to say.

So she comes and sits between us and says “my ass hurts from sitting here” so like considerate boys we get her a cushion without moving from the chairs and she says nothing. She works my hand up onto her left breast and I can feel her nipple hardening as she looks at Scott on her left. Then I think “Hey” and I get my right hand into her pyjamas and stroke her clitoris which is soaking. And she looks at Scott and she’s saying “Fuck me. Fuck me” to him and he sits there and just laughs. So I get her to come and she falls off the chair onto the ground and she gets back up and says “I’ve chosen” and we just don’t know what to make of this. Especially Scott who passes out at this time. I guess about five in the morning.

Then she’s kissing me and I’m slightly panicking and I drink some vodka. She’s trying to dry fuck me through her pyjamas but the chair is too narrow and she cannot get her cunt down far enough so the whole thing’s a bit pointless as I look into her face and really just don’t feel in the mood. And I look bitterly across at Alison and Dave who are asleep or half-asleep, one holding the other’s wrist and I just feel horny and in the wrong place.

And she leads me out into the hallway. I think we’re going to the kitchen to get drinks but I can hardly walk by this time and she takes me round the corner and has her tongue in my mouth and I’m bending down and feeling very odd and a bit sick. Dave comes past to get to the john and take a piss and now I’m embarrassed too. He comes back and by this time I’m forgetting myself and sinking into it but then I have to move aside again and he smiles and shows me, gently, that I stink.

And then her face is in mine again and she says, “I want to fuck you now”, and I, dissolute, irresolute, pathetic, follow like a dog to the bathroom. Don’t turn the light on, she says; it’s horrible. I don’t object. We stand together. She strokes, unzips, kneels. I stand very still and stare at the wall. Old Nick. The old Clintonian posture. Politely, now firmly detached, I reciprocate. The familiar taste still interesting. Still - different.

Of course she has no condoms. It throws me into a special kind of terror when I realise this would not have mattered to her. I have to get my own from my coat in the front room, leaving her in the toilet, naked from the waist down. I have had condoms always since the Swedish model episode. I even feel annoyed to be wasting them. Two of my last three. I realise it doesn’t matter, mainly because I had reached the stage when nothing matters any more.

I don’t look at anyone when I get to the front room. I decide not to take the condoms out the wallet in the front room. I decide not to take my wallet out my coat in the front room. I take my coat out of the front room and into the corridor. I rummage my way through to the little plastic critters and take them into the bathroom. Patricia’s standing against the wall like a fool so I put her on the floor. Sliding in I remember what it’s like to fuck a sixteen year old. It’s tight. I come quietly and keep going. A while later I come again. I get very hot. Sweaty. Horribly sweaty. I think she comes but my head is spinning too much for me to tell. I just keep going for a while longer. I pull out, stand up and turn on the light. I lay the condom neatly on the side of the sink, noting the small blood spots abstractedly. Odd, I think. I look at my face and chest in the mirror.

I, I think, look like shit. I stare a while longer and I still look like shit. The face shows the 24 hours awake, the eight hours smoking joints, the two weeks working and partying. Patricia is standing behind me and she reaches round with her left hand and takes my half-hearted cock. Then she licks a long line of sweat from my back. I can’t see her in the mirror. She comes round in front of me and I’m hard again. I take her in some weird position, her arse on the rim of the bath. It’s not great. The light’s still on. I get the idea of turning her round and drape her over the bath. I look at the odd red crease stretching up from her arsehole. Afterwards she leaves and I wipe my face with a flannel.

I wake up Scott. We wake up Jane. We say goodbye. We go home.