This is Who We Really Are
by David William Rea
Mary is in bed behind me listening to talk radio; I'm standing by the window watching and listening to the rain. I can see Mary's colour-drained reflection in the window. She's doing her nails, her tongue touching her top lip in concentration. She has this special way of doing them. She doesn't use brushstrokes like in the ads. She dabs the stuff on, bit by bit.
She's acting weird tonight. She's huffing and puffing. She always huffs and puffs when she's angry about something. I don't mind really. It gives an edge to the evening. I go into the kitchen to get our drinks.Mary likes her gin and tonic a certain way. I take three ice cubes from the freezer, pour an exact half measure of gin, add tonic up to the top of the Coca-Cola writing and add two thin, half slices of lemon. I grab a can of Foster's for myself, put everything on our evening drinks tray and go back to the bedroom. As I come in I start to listen to the radio, so I'm ready if Mary wants to talk about what they're saying.
". . .Regent Street remains closed due to that crash earlier today. It's causing delays of up to an hour. Police are saying. . ."
Mary takes her gin and tonic and takes four tiny sips with her tiny mouth. She doesn't look at me. Her ice cubes clink as she settles it on her beer mat on her bed-side-table. I drink my beer standing by the window. She huffs. We listen to the radio.
A bit later on, she takes a couple of gulps from her gin and tonic, settles her glass carefully back on the beer mat and gets out of bed. I turn and watch her. She's wearing her purple, period knickers and a white bra. She has these bumpy vertebrae like the Ethiopians on telly. She plods into the front room and I hear some cushions being thrown on the carpet, from the sofa or armchair. The squeak on the floor sounds like the armchair is being moved about. She comes plodding back in with a Tesco shopping bag and starts throwing magazines onto the bed. It's my porn mags. She opens some up and places them down so the pictures are showing. She's found them in the lining of the armchair after all these years. Maybe she's always known they were there and has chosen tonight to get them out. She puts her hands on her bony hips and looks at me with raised eyebrows and that high forehead of hers. I hate that.
I'm trying to judge how bad the situation is. Porn mags seem sort of normal to me, they've been part of my life on and off since I was a teenager, but sitting there on our duvet they suddenly seem seedy. I know I have to get the magazines off the bed. I put my beer down, go over and start putting them back in the bag. This takes ages. It's humiliating with Mary watching, there seems to be so many of them. When I've finished I slide the bag behind the bedroom door with my foot. Having had time to think, I turn and say, "Look, let's not make this into a biggie. I'd even forgot they were there. Don't you think I would have chucked them if I'd remembered they were there? Come on, let's have a nice cosy evening, I'll get us some more drinks. Oh, you haven't finished yet. Let me get you a top up."
I take her half empty glass and my empty can and go into the kitchen. When I go back into the bedroom, Mary's got that look of hers. Her lips are all bunched together and her forehead is sky high. I put her glass on her beer mat. I realise the mags are still in the room. I want to get them out of here but don't want to draw attention to them again. I wonder if we're over the hump of the argument. I doubt it. We listen to the radio in silence. We drink our drinks. Mary's ice cubes clink.
". . .it's just after nine o'clock here on LBC. We have Ken Livingston here in the studio answering your questions and. . .Gary's in Islington, Gary, you're through to Ken. . ."
After a while Mary gets up, plods across the bedroom, picks up the plastic bag from behind the door and plods into the front room. I hear her putting it in the dresser drawer. Then she comes back in, finishes her drink in an endless series of tiny sips, switches off the bed light and pulls the duvet over her head.
A couple of days later, I'm working the afternoon shift so I get up late. Mary has already left. She works as a receptionist in the centre of town. I go into the kitchen to make a cup of tea and there on the washing machine is one of my mags. It's open, as if someone has been reading it. It's on a page of ads. I put it away in the dresser drawer with the others. Mary's trying to rub my nose in it. That night neither of us mentions it.
The next time I have an afternoon shift, the same thing happens. There it is on the washing machine, open. I put it back in the dresser drawer and make my cup of tea. I really want to call her and have a go at her but I know I won't. When it happens a third time, I get really angry. I'm so wound up I go to rip the magazine up, but then I see one of the ads has been circled in red, with one of Mary's neat little question marks next to it.
I put the magazine back in the dresser drawer.
That evening, Mary's feeling horny. I can tell because she's in one of her quiet, intense moods. In bed, a few minutes after we've turned off the lights, she reaches into my Y-fronts and gets hold of my prick. She asks, "Do you want to give that club a try then?"
"Whatever."
I say it like I'm really sleepy.
Later that week, I'm talking to mum on the phone when Mary comes out of the bathroom, naked. She's got a towel wrapped round her head, like she's some Indian, but otherwise she's stark naked. She's got talcum powder around her armpits, tits and bum. She takes the towel off her head and starts patting her face with it. I swear her forehead makes up about half her face. I ask mum to hold on and say to Mary, "What are you doing?"
"What?" she asks, all innocent.
I put my hand over the phone and whisper loudly, "I'm talking to my mum on the phone and you're standing in the front room with no clothes on, patting your face with a towel."
"Nothing you haven't seen before," she says grumpily and plods back into the bathroom.
"Leave the water, will you? I want a bath before dinner." I say this in a normal voice, to try and get things back to normal.
I hang up with mum and have a long, deep bath. I love baths. We have a sort of tray that sits across the tub where you can put all your soap and stuff. And there's a little skylight. If I get in the bath at the right time I get to watch the sky change from blue to dark blue to black, or from grey to sort of grey-blue to black. In the day you can watch the clouds pass by and it feels like the bathroom is moving and not the clouds. It's like the bathroom is flying, being blown across the sky by the wind. I love that bathroom.
We go out with Richard and Liz. They've got a new fish tank and they're going on about that. Mary gets really into it and says we should get a bigger one to replace our three-footer. I like our three-footer. I get really smashed. I like getting out of the house at the weekend, watching all the different people, listening to Liz talk about all the gossip from her office and Richard talk about his garden. As always, Mary keeps the drinks coming, either getting them in herself or suggesting the next round. I can't remember leaving the pub. I have a weird dream that Mary is pulling all my clothes off me and getting me to stand up in front of her. It's weird. Weird.
We're watching telly but I'm also watching Mary. She's had her hair cut. First time she's had it bobbed like that since school. She keeps on playing with it, tucking it behind her ears like she's on camera or something. I hate that. Earlier I cooked us up some egg and chips. She only ate one of her eggs. Said she was watching her weight. Her weight.
After the news, she passes me a folded bit of paper and says casually,"I forgot to give you this. That's where that thing is."
I open up the paper. It's a photocopied road map with a street highlighted in fluorescent orange. Next to it Mary's written: The Swinging South meeting, Sat 15 July.
My heart starts racing.
"What's the date today?" I say, keeping my eyes on the telly.
"The tenth." She gets up and goes to the bathroom. But she doesn't have a piss. I listen and she doesn't seem to be doing anything in there.
Me and Mary have gone all embarrassed and formal with each other. It's really awkward when we're in the same room together.
Friday night, Mary goes out with Liz and I stay in by myself. The flat feels different. When I'm in other people's houses I'm always aware that they're full of different stuff from different shops. But not when I'm at home. Then all the stuff just makes up our home. But now it's like the china leopard doesn't belong next to the TV stand; the aquarium doesn't look right in the corner. It looks like it's all been put together in a hurry by people who've just moved in. It's just a series of box-like rooms with random furniture in it.
On Saturday night I drive there, of course, even though it's all her idea. It's in Streatham, miles away. I haven't been over there before. I know the A2 pretty well up to Kidbroke but then Mary tells me to turn off onto the A205, by The Hope and Anchor. I've passed that pub a hundred times. Never been in it. Never been down the side of it. It's weird to see the side of it. There are loads of bins and then a big beer garden. Then we pass a new MFI Superstore, just like the one behind our flat. It's like our home isn't in the middle of everything any more, the world just goes on and on, repeating itself, not giving a shit about anyone. My heart's beating like a mad man and my mouth is all dry.
The man who answers the door has a thick salt and pepper moustache and a pair of those tinted glasses that darken in bright light. He has a digital camera in his hands. We walk in. It's got the same weird home smell everyone's house has got.
We walk along the corridor, covered in that old fashioned flowery wallpaper, and take a left and we're in the bedroom and there they all are. They're all on the bed. It's difficult to see what's happening because the curtains are drawn and there's only a couple of desk lights on. It takes me a minute for my eyes to adjust. There must be about eight of them. Fat hairy legs, bikini-lined hips, small floppy dicks, hard ones, flab, loads of different sorts of pubic hair. This one woman has a massive forest down there. I swear to God there are these pair of erect brown nipples that looked like cigar butts.
After the initial shock, I see that some of the bodies aren't doing anything, just lounging around or watching the others. The main thing that seems to be happening is an older woman, about sixty, is sat astride a body. It's difficult to see what she's doing exactly but she seems to be rubbing something (the person under her?, herself?) She seems to be having a real go at it anyway. Her head is thrown back and her arm is moving like a piston. You can see her arm muscle, a bit loose off the bone, swinging back and forth with the effort. Finally, the man who answered the door says, "Everyone, Mary and Simon are here."
He says it as if it was a party and everyone knows us. He goes over to the other side of the huge bed and aims the camera at the middle of the scene. The flash momentarily lights up the bed. It hurts my eyes and I blink. Someone on the bed says, "Guy, do you have to use the flash love? It blinds everyone."
Guy ignores this and says to us conversationally,"These are for our online magazine, The Swinging South. The one Mary got hold of through Men Only."
I'm glad this Guy bloke is here. He's making it easier. Now my eyes have adjusted properly, I don't know where to put them. What am I supposed to do?
The next thing I know Mary's taking off her shoes. She nudges me and turns her back for me to unzip her posh black dress. Just like that. As if we're in our bedroom together and I'm about to get our bedtime drinks. I catch the look on her face and she's blushing like mad. She's got a determined look in her eyes I've never seen before. For a moment, I feel sort of proud of her for being so plucky. Then the jealousy hits. She wants the men on the bed. She's attracted to their bodies. She whips her knickers off in an instant and there she is, with her boney body and massive forehead, just going for it. She kneels down and puts her hands on the edge of the bed, as if trying to find an opening into the sea of bodies. I look down to see her bumpy vertebrae caught by the desk lamp. Her back looks animal. She looks vulnerable. A fat, hairy male body rolls over and pulls her onto the bed. She squeals and lets out an excited giggle. Her hand reaches for his prick. I look up at Guy, expecting him to say something, to do something about all this, but he's getting a close up of the older lady who's still rubbing whatever she's rubbing.
I look down at the balding brown carpet for a while to try and get a grip. I realise my knees and hands are shaking. My tongue keeps sticking to the roof of my mouth. When I finally look back up it is difficult to track Mary's body down. I want to scream. There's at least one other girl with the same kind of thin pale arms and legs. I try and catch a familiar movement of Mary's, but for the life of me I can't. She's just lost in there. Then I see her three gold stud earrings caught in the desk lamp light. Her head seems buried between some legs. I follow the trail of her spine and there is the fat, hairy bloke. I walk out with my head down.
I walk into the front room. My legs are like jelly. I feel like I've hurt my insides or something the jealousy is so bad. Everything in the front room is surprisingly normal. They've got one of those brass models of The Eiffel Tower on their telly. There seems to have been a bit of a warm up party in here. The swan-shaped glass ashtray is full of dog ends. On the glass dinner table there's a half finished crate of Boddington's. I grab a can, open it and flop down on the sofa. My hands are still shaking. I drink about half the can in one go. I'm sort of aware that I'm sitting in a stranger's front room, drinking their beer, and I haven't even met them. I realise I can't sit still so I start pacing. My legs are still like jelly. I go over to the window. They have new double glazing. The windows are spotless. Outside, there's an old man walking his dog. As if everything is normal. Amazing. He's almost doubled over, leaning on his walking stick. The dog looks about as old. You can see the old man's shadow on the pavement, stretching taller and taller as he pidgin steps away from the street lamp.
What are they all doing in there? How long do these things go on for? What the hell is Mary doing in there? I keep on getting madly jealous and then really angry and then madly jealous again. It's wearing me out. I want to go back in there, do something about all this, but it's like I have officially left now and can't go back in. It feels so uncomfortable to pace about the room and I finally realise that I've got a boner. I go behind a curtain and readjust myself. I don't want any of those weirdoes coming in and thinking I am getting involved.
I sit and stand and pace and drink and look out the window and nearly tear my hair out waiting in that bloody front room. At one point, I even tiptoe up the hallway to listen to the sounds coming from in there. There are lots of different breathing noises and that's about it. I can't hear Guy saying anything. I can't hear Mary.
When I get back to the front room I try and find a clock. There's a little Casio travel alarm clock on the side. It's 10:07pm. This doesn't' help because I can't remember what time we got there. I put on my anorak to be ready to go when Mary's finished.
It's 10.48 when someone comes out. I hear footsteps in the hallway. I've just finished my fourth can. Then I hear Mary's voice. She calls my name from the hallway, as if I might be asleep,
"Simon?"
I think: she's the first one to leave. The others want to stay but she wants to leave. I walk out into the hall way. I keep my eyes on the floor so I don't look at her. I open the front door. Freezing air pours in from the garden. She walks past me and out of the house. It's the way she walks out that really sends me over the edge. Her usual heavy plodding. As if we had just been shopping. I get so angry I lose control of my voice.
"Bitch! Biiiiiiitch!" I shout after her.
I walk out. I see she's already half way down the driveway so I jog to catch up with her.
We find ourselves sort of marching along together, in the opposite direction to where we parked the car. We're on a street of terraced houses. The moon is really bright and there's frost on the road and pavement. I shout at her again, my voice snatched by the freezing wind, "Have you washed yourself?"
Mary's just ahead of me. She says, irritated.
"Of course I haven't."
We march on in silence. God knows where we're going.
Up ahead there is an Off-licence. I tell her to wait outside while I go in. I buy a six pack of Stella. Outside, I walk over to the bus stop and sit down on the red plastic bench. Mary comes over and sits at the opposite end of the bench.
The beer buying seems to have changed the atmosphere between us. I open a can and gulp about half of it down. I pass it to her. She has loads of small swigs. I ask her, matter-of-factly, "Did you enjoy that?"
"Yes and no."
It's a good answer. Clever. I suddenly feel that I've got to be clever too. As if I've got to woo her or something. Now I feel jealous, angry and excited as well. I push her on the shoulder, somewhere between a get-you-back and a playful shove. She lets herself fall back on the bench and actually giggles. I've never seen her so loosened up.
She's still taking loads of tiny sips from the can I gave her so I open another one. I drink about half of that one down in one too. She puts her can between her thighs and rocks back and forth, like a mental patient. She suddenly moves along the bench, reaches over and places her hand over my crotch. I let her do it. She rubs away, through my jeans. I throw some beer at her face, which takes both of us by surprise. She throws some beers in my face. Now she's destroyed everything, we can do whatever we like. It's like this is who we really are.
She chucks her can across the road and jumps up screaming. She doubles over, shakes her fists in the air and screeches,
"Oh my God, I haven't cooooome."
I go up to her, grab her by the back of the neck and we start snogging. We have a really good go at it. I see there's an alley down by the side of the Off-license and I grab her by the wrist and we cross the road.
There are no lights up the alley. We sort of push each other down onto some bracken. We really go at it, like we haven't done in years. Some bloke runs past us at one point. When she comes it's mental. Her whole body sort of shudders. Completely mental.
We never spoke about it again. Over the following days what helped me deal with it all was the fact that those weirdoes hadn't been able to make her come. I'd had to take over. And I really made her hit the jackpot.
That saved me. That and the fact that it was as if we'd just got married again. We couldn't keep our hands off each other. We were shagging in the kitchen and bathroom. We took the car out and shagged in the back of that. We went out together and got Mary these two new dresses. Mary said I should take my earring out so I did. She said I looked much sexier without it. She said loads of nice stuff like that. We started going out on our own in the evening, without Richard and Liz. One mad Saturday we went out and bought a couple of guinea pigs for the front room. We had lots of silly conversations. There was lots of teasing and giggling.
But that phase seems to be fizzling out now. She's started calling Richard and Liz more and more. I started feeling weird without my earring so I put it back in the other day. That night of swinging is already starting to feel like just another part of our past, along with my drinking problem and her running away that time.
I am a thirty-six year old novelist and short story writer, based in London. I have lived and taught English in Poland, Egypt, Argentina and France.