What passes for romance

So I was sitting on the steps of the closed and silent church, on a Friday out of the office, pure freedom dragging a bit now, I should confess, I was feeling bored. The sun was dappling down through the trees’ leaves onto me but not in my eyes. Sitting, attempting to contentedly read a book that purported to explain the empty, aching hole where my soul should have been along with other essential truths I was supposed to be searching for, when I could be bothered. Except that I was really skimming whole paragraphs trying to get to the end quicker so I could say I had finished it, when he came up and said, with this slightly bashful air that made me think that I could fall for him, that he had liked it too. Slim, with black jeans that had seen better nights, a black t-shirt with a band I didn’t know on it and some battered black boots, at first he looked so young that I almost didn’t recognise him. Then, suddenly, surprising me, he sat down. We talked of this and that to do with the author and his work and some of the things he said came from it and we agreed they were true. Come for a coffee he goes. Oh I don’t drink it I said, before I could think of anything better. Good lass, he comes back with, his voice deeper than his face would make you think it should be, tea it is then.

So we went and drank tea in the café on the corner and spoke about our hopes and fears and songs and tv shows and loves and hates, swapping tales that should have embarrassed us but which were used to boost our hip credentials. Speaking in the comedy back-handed, fake-modest way laid down for us by generations of previous use, which allowed for the semblance of a conversation without giving away too much. In the shop’s mirrors we looked good together, he dark, me fair, reflected over and over, looking as I imagined we might do in paparazzi photos one day. He seemed to understand me and me him without the need for too much boring explanation. Then as I reached for the tea-cup without meaning to my hand brushed his, causing a jolt up my arm like when I broke it when I was a kid. I had to dig my nails into my palm under the table not to do something pathetic to ruin it like taking his hand. I knew that once I did I would never want to let go and it scared me.

So we talked for hours and drank more tea and afterwards stronger brews until it was later and we were in a place which may or may not have been his flat by now and there were people coming and going, friends and flatmates, girls in eyeliner, boys wearing it too. Everyone bedecked and be-TopShopped in all manner of polyester finery, looking like they had just stepped off the set of someone’s girlfriend’s film about something edgy or from out of a catalogue for fine, youthful living in a modern, urban setting. A girl leaned across me to talk to him, her eyes so cold and dark that I knew she had had him once, or wanted to maybe, but he introduced us so sweetly to each other that we ended up laughing, telling more stories of fucked up things we had heard of. She pointed out her boyfriend on the other side of the room and the friends she had come with and they asked me how I knew him but before I could say anything he said oh we’re old pals, aren’t we? Just bumped into her today and now we’re catching up which gave me something to wonder about as I sat and checked out the assembled crowd. Everyone looking like we were living the dream: an advertiser’s star demographic. And there was a party going on suddenly around us, getting messier and messier, the talk and the shrieks that punctuated it getting louder and the eyes wider and more rolling, but he didn’t join in, or not that I saw anyway and I didn’t either. The music got louder too and people danced, girls kicking off their skyscraper heels so they could leap about, pretending it was a club and not a flat. We laughed and watched and talked some more, yelling into each other’s ears over the beat. Until eventually I was tired and said I had better get off but no, he says, stay there where you are, these idiots will find their way home sooner or later.

So I did and then I woke up and he did too and I had to fake a nonchalance I didn’t feel as I bumped into his flatmate on the way to the bathroom, me wearing a black t-shirt with a band whose records I had now heard on the front, a smile and not much else. We went for breakfast, greasy fry-ups and builders teas in an ungentrified caff not too far from his place. He ate like a horse which hadn’t seen hay for a year, although he looked like he weighed less than six stone and I said what’ve you got? hollow legs? and he smiled a sweet smile that hit his eyes and made them squint a bit at me and said yeah, that was about right. Still we were talking, about books and music and dreams and more funny stories about the people that we knew, without getting bored or repeating or losing track. It felt as if we would talk forever and neither of us seemed in any hurry to head back to what we had been doing before he interrupted my reading in the sun. I checked my mobile screen but there weren’t any messages from anyone I needed to ignore.

So we decided to sit in the park, strolling through the market to get there. Everyone acted as if they were heading to the beach but if so then it must have been the most over-dressed beach anywhere, once you noticed that people’s idea of beachwear was tights and shorts and knee-high boots, which I did. There was a guy wearing a very unnecessary tweed waistcoat over his t-shirt and it seemed as if on every head there was knowing headwear. Why don’t we go in here, I overheard, check out this deli? Weekends are a time-killing exercise, a game to see how long it can take you to get down the street, with a pub at each end so you can nurse a hangover in one and begin the next in the other. I might get some juice, this bloke said to his girlfriend with the same gravitas as if he were proposing a slightly controversial United Nations resolution. I escaped into the corner shop to buy us some water and snacks and when I went to pay a man leant across me and yelled at the Turkish guys (or I think they are anyway) behind the counter, Oi, you got any unbranded paracetamol? as if the tablets would be purer and more potent for having escaped the branding exercise. I didn’t wait to hear the bewildered answer, instead we fled to the safety of the park. We wandered, looking for what would become our perfect spot. Kids screamed out from the swings and I realised that this is where yesterday’s trendsetters come to grieve, silently minding discarded bikes by the side of the playground while their issue exhaust themselves running around chasing each other, they wait bored, wondering where their wild days went. That won’t be me, I remember thinking, I could have 12 brats round my feet and I would still keep a sense of self. Not looking so defeated, as if losing a battle I hadn’t known was raging.

So then we headed towards a tree for shade when the sun got too fierce. Also I thought, though it was unspoken, we both wanted to be at the edge of the throng. It was warm and the park was busy, with a mass of humans and dogs, a be-quiffed dandy with a beautiful Dalmatian, a slinky greyhound walking beside a slender black-clad girl, the lads in tracksuits with direct descendants of Cerberus on the end of chain leads. We got comfortable and I carried on pretending to read my book while secretly people watching, as he flicked through a paper he had found on a bench while I was in the shop. Other couples lazed around us, all quarrels forgotten as the rays caressed the skin while gaggles of friends shared bottles and gossiped, bitching about colleagues and petty work annoyances that should have been left behind, ignored until Monday. And we, we sat quiet, for once, happy reading and saying nothing. A dad and his son kicked a ball which was taller than the little boy, professional picnickers, with hampers and barbeques, got plagued by ants as the smoke drifted towards us across the grass, bringing the smell of hunger with it and a group of boys played an increasingly erratic game of Frisbee to give them an opportunity to chat to the girls as they nearly took their heads off with the projectile.

So then he pulled his t-shirt over his head and balled it into a pillow, before curling up, using the shade of the tree and my side to keep the sun out of his eyes. He fell asleep quickly, gently, hardly breathing at all and I sneaked a glance at how he looked, so innocent and guileless, while I wondered if I would get the chance to get bored of the sight. I tried to push the thought away with another assault on the book, but it proved too dense for summer reading and I threw it to one side, disgusted both with it and my lack of sticking power. I picked up the paper and idly leafed through, but there was little amusement to be had there either. A girl on the next blanket sat smoking and I watched her for a while, remembering other summer days when I sat and smoked, but realised I didn’t miss it as much as I should, content to watch her and catch the light hint of nicotine that drifted just under the aroma from the barbeque coals. The sun moved across the grass, the mothers with pushchairs began to head home, day-dreaming of lofty aspirations and their best friend’s spouse. After a time, he woke up with a noise in his throat as if finishing a conversation with someone, pulled his shirt back on, shook a hand across his hair and said, come to this thing, I kind of have to go, I promised, but you should come too if you’re not doing anything else and I went ok, why not, I will.

So we went and it was really awful, a big cheesy night out for a birthday he had been invited to in a club that should have smelt of smoke but now all you could sense was the stale beer and desperation, that didn’t really fit with us and where our moods were or our earlier chatter, strained now because of the blaring music, all nineties songs supposed to have been long forgotten, but for all that we didn’t mind. A band came on and the lead singer shouted fuck you, I’m drunk but I’ll still hit every note, which was optimistic but turned out to be a lie. As they played, the girls sang along with every word, punching the air and laughing with their mates, all bed-head, bright lips and panda eyes, in the uniform skinny jeans, ballet pumps, AA tops, and headbands, while the boys, at once attracted and appalled, leant against the sound desk with a studied, insouciant air, barely moving or acknowledging the show from the stage. He talked to everyone now, not only me, including a few that you could say he probably shouldn’t have, guys who could talk to him impassioned and knowing but remained unimpressed with my attempts to engage, as if estimating my place in his world and judging my usefulness to them before finding me severely lacking and turning away.

So eventually we got bored of the band and left to go somewhere else and when we were walking in the bottle-strewn streets, past the groups of laughter and shouting, I told him, you give up too much of yourself to fools like that, they’re not worth your time, you should be a bit more thick-skinned and turn a cold shoulder to them. He goes yeah, but I don’t want to be that way and sometimes they turn out to be good people, although most of the time not, I grant you. What if you missed out, the one person that you could have spoken to, who might have had something good to say and you didn’t talk to them because you hated the shoes they were wearing. I thought about it for a moment and went, yeah, it would be a shame if that happened, I grinned, there are worse things to fear than talking to the wearers of bad shoes. He laughed and swung me round into a hug, saying, see, you’re learning! As he grabbed me I got a jolt right up the length of my spine like you would from a chiropractor. I pushed him away and told him he was daft but both of us knew I didn’t mean it. We walked on, down a side-street and past a club as it was chucking out and as we passed I heard, come on, let’s go home to bed, said briskly like an instruction, from an ugly boy to a pretty girl swaying on her high heels, looking like she wasn’t so sure. We were past them before I saw what she decided.

So later still, when we are back at mine, drinking more tea I go, too much of what we have to say to each other is meaningless, just noise for the sake of it and then you can never remember it afterwards and so it doesn’t have to stand for anything. I hate that, I said, I hate when people come out with the things they’re supposed to say and not the things they really mean, because they think you’ll think they’re an idiot or not understand and laugh at them and he said yeah that’s true too as he leaned in to kiss me and I kissed him back. All thoughts of the boy I had been brooding over before deciding to go and read my book outside somewhere long gone now.

So much later on, I’m lying with my nose to his back, my legs through his and I’m listening to him snore and all I can think is wake up and fuck me. My hand drifts down his arm, across his hip and up his chest, wake up and fuck me, it slams around my head like a drunken gatecrasher. The same hand strays down his chest, pressing slightly firmer now, over his stomach, taut but from not eating much like mine rather than sit-ups like it maybe should be if we could be arsed with the gym, anyway, wake up and fuck me, my head screams it, but only so loud as I can hear, evidently, because all he does is shift in his sleep, then roll over and pull me nearer to him, all in one motion as still he sleeps on.