W - Shape

It started with a joke. I'm refitting Miriam's shop, so we ended up
spending a lot of time together. It already felt as if I'd spent half
my life hanging round that place. When we were at school, we crammed
into the chippy every lunchtime chatting to Miriam's mum until she gave
us bags of scraps. Later I hung around outside at the end of my shift
hoping to get a glance from Miriam, who helped out her dad behind the
counter while her mum was ill. Of course, she never did look at me. By
that time Kelvin was on the scene and she was too good to be seen me
with me. Added to that, the acrylics at the plastic factory had brought
my face out in a puffy rash so I permanently looked like I'd been in
the bath too long. Hormones were using my body as a racetrack. I wasn't
feeling too confident about myself back then so all I ever did loiter
by the chippy with my hood up and hope the neon sign outside wasn't
picking out my rash. I knew the place well. Forward a few years.
Miriam's parents have ambled off to the Costa Brava to live out their
last days running a British Pub and Miriam decides to convert her
father's life work into a tanning studio. She places an ad in the
paper. Two days later, I turn up ready to sweet talk a Mrs Brandon into
giving me the fitting job, because I know every inch of the place. When
she unlocks the door, her first words are something like, 'Oh my god
Darren, where's the rash gone?' Miriam? I though Miriam would have got
out of town a long time ago. But it turns out that the guy she met on
her business masters has a thing for country life. After she married
Patrick, he announced that he didn't want a highflying job in the city,
so why didn't they try making a go of her father's shop. This is the
brief version of events. They wrote up a plan, that explained to the
bank exactly why a tanning shop, beauty parlour and sauna was exactly
what a drab midlands town needed, offered the bank manager some free
treatments and smugly shook her hand. So that's how, ten years on, I'm
sitting where the fryers used stand chalking rude noughts and crosses
on the lino tiles and making inappropriate jokes about her
figure.

Whatever her husband is meant to be doing, he isn't doing it right.
Miriam sits cross-legged, a yard away with her skirt working it's way
above her knees. Each time she laughs, she throws her head back swigs a
bottle I brought and slams it down in the space between her legs.
Sometimes the beer froths over the neck and spills onto the floor. I
can see right up her skirt, but the funny thing is, I'm don't
care.

Ten years ago, I would have paid money to shady looking men for this
privilege but today something's changed. Yes, I've changed. The rash
cleared up just after I told the foreman at the plastic factory in
which vat he could stick his lousy job. I moved around a bit, went to
see some places. I came back. I learned the right way to act with
social security commandants, how to talk rubbish until dawn with people
I barely knew. I found music that I could move with and places where
people didn't laugh. I met girls who weren't repulsed by me, who didn't
mind sharing their beds, who did things that shocked. I grew a stupid
beard and then shaved it off.

I saw my friend's lives stumbling around in the dark, moving forwards,
falling back and getting nowhere. They were all buzzing around me but
calmness overcame me and I became the still point at the centre of the
storm. The more I watched them, the more horrified I became. And
somewhere in the middle of the madness, I got motivated. I realised
that doing any of those things was fine, a laugh. I realised more that
none of those things would keep me alive for very long. I realised my
sell by date was short and getting shorted. Yeah, just like everybody
else. Only I was different, I was smart. I had enough of them yapping
on about their wasted lives and how they'd like to do this or love to
do that but never had the opportunity, had too much responsibility, all
the regular excuses. Unlike everybody else, I did something about it. I
turned my life around.

One day I walked into my local, I found it swarming with carpenters,
plasters and guys hammering the crap out of the ceiling. They were
stripping away the years of nicotine, rolling the beer sticky carpet
into a skip and tossing guys who had drunk in there since they closed
the mines into the street. They were knocking all that stodgy tradition
out with the fag ends, getting the place ready for a new world. The
thing that struck me wasn't 'how could this happen without me noticing'
but 'this is what I want to do'. I had it right there in front of me.
If this was the future, I wanted in. And I wanted it on my terms.

My terms were this. I'm my own man. I charge high but put in a good
days work. I don't know anything about the refit game so I hire guys
that do, craftsmen, all of them. Know more about MDF than I ever will
but no drive. They can erect partition walls like I can piss, but they
can't do anything unless you tell them. Keep them motivated, keep them
busy, don't care what they do as long as the job get done. I'm
knackered all the time just by telling them what to do. It's worth it,
they skip off down the pub with a few quid, and I pocket the rest.
Times are good. Demand is high so I hire more guys. There's not much
commitment from me beyond Friday at five and anyone who doesn't turn up
on Monday gets replaced straight away. Give me a few years and I'm
rocking it.

So yeah, I've changed. Being liquid, buying a good car and a building a
nice house in the edge of town has perks. Most of them come in twos. By
the time I'm staring at the colour of Miriam's knickers, I've seen it
all before. Now I know better. Miriam looks good, but I can spot the
problems.

These are Miriam's problems.
The few years older that Miriam was when we were kids has grown. I'm
still mid thirties while she's skiing the down slope of forty. Not that
you would know to look at her. That's problem number two. Plastic. She
looks younger sitting opposite me know than she did when I lusted after
her at fifteen. Her body is technically perfect. Airbrushed skin curves
over marble features. A nose she never had before, present from daddy
and a chin tighter that her daddy's battered sausages. Her clothes are
designed to ride up over her cellulite free calves and tucked tummy
leaving the right amount of cleavage to squeeze from those breasts.
Those breasts. We're not talking hack and shove a pint of bath sealant
here. We're talking about a surgeon with the hands of Michael Angelo
working from the A-to-Z of the world's most beautiful women. A man who
signs his works with cherry nipples that finger the inside of her top.
And that's problem number two. Nothing of the seething mass of flesh
before me Is real. How much of that flesh jiggle before my lusting
teenage eyes? Not much, believe me.
The final word on the matter she constantly draws attention to. Miriam
punctuates every flirtation with a quick twist of the gold on her
finger. Sometimes she'll emphasise a point by pulling it to her knuckle
and showing the white band of fidelity underneath. Then her cheeks pink
and hint of smile twists her lips. She lingers a long time over
something I said and then she looks at me.
'How come we never got round to it David?'
'Got around to what?'
'You always hung round the chippy. Even in the winter, you were always
outside. What were you after?'
I shrug.
'If you still want it David.'
Having said all that, having listed my reasons, her eyes are the same.
Maybe she looks into my changed face and remembers those hungry eyes
too.
'Move you fat ass over here,' I tell her.
'I'm on a diet.' I've seen skeletons with more fat that her, skeletons
with more sense of irony. She's pulling back, pushing the material of
her skirt between her legs. 'I haven't eaten for three days. I've been
working out.'
'I didn't mean that, your ass is fine.'
'So you've been looking then?'

--This is work in progress. If you would like me to finish it, please
email or vote. Thank you --