Andrea III – Black Sheep and Scapegoats

‘Andy wants us to carry on – says it’ll be good for us’ says Andrea, scowling slightly.
Can’t run off that easily then, I think. Good. Serves you right. Supercilious cow!
‘Shall we move on then?’ she says stiffly. I nod, smiling smugly.
‘Ok. So why do you think you were such a total failure?’ she says, coolly.
And I’m stunned, I want to hit her. Then I want to run away so she doesn’t see me cry... But I don’t do anything because the goblin in my brain is telling me she’s right and I deserve this. I sit silently. I look at the chair, the window, my drink, my legs, try to look calm. I fidget but silence descends anyway. Dust motes drift in a beam of light. The sky is blue.
‘I wasn’t a “total failure” as you put it’ I say quietly, eventually – not looking at her, trying to look like I mean it. ‘I think I did pretty well – making a life in your cut-throat pitiless game of a world.’ I look straight at her. My jaw feels locked. ‘I think I did ok considering. Ok, it doesn’t look like much but I didn’t fill the world with crap. I didn’t feel the need to own all the junk most people seem to think they need to make them happy. I didn’t have to have everything matching. I didn’t need to be fashionable. I didn’t need to get everywhere yesterday. That’s not nothing, and I know you think I was like that because I didn’t have a choice and I envied them or something, and I guess I did a bit, at first, but then I realized it was ok to be the way I was, and the envy was just about seeing myself the way everyone else saw me – as a failure. But I wasn’t. In the end – that was how I wanted to live, more-or-less.’ I think about the loneliness for a moment. ‘And actually I think some people would have done well to look at that, and look at all the stuff they own and the damage it does to the world, and how jolly it makes them feel, and think... not that I’m the great, you know, example of environmentalism or whatever, but I did my bit.’ I pause again. ‘And people liked my pictures.’ (I knew I’d made a couple of friends really happy by giving them pictures I’d done.) ‘I know I wasn’t exactly Mr. Sociability... I found people... difficult, you know? But I was ok. I wasn’t evil. I tried. It just didn’t work out, but that doesn’t make me a monster. Just small doses, you know? Better off in my own space, but it was ok. I tried, and I did ok. I wasn’t a total failure...’ and I feel the tears come, again. Why do I always have to cry?
‘Actually I didn’t say you were’ she says quietly. ‘I asked why you thought you were a total failure...’
And I breath deep again and slump backwards. ‘Cow’ I think. Got me again.


‘Better now?’ she says, at length, and I am. I feel much better. I take a few sips from my glass of water and sit quietly. I can hear music coming from somewhere.
‘I’m not here to judge you’ she says after a time. ‘There is no final judgement here, contrary to popular belief, except the one you impose on yourself, and you, darling, are harder on yourself than anyone else is ever likely to be. You do know that don’t you?’
‘It’s been mentioned, once or twice...’
‘I imagine you found it very difficult being alone so much of the time.’
I don’t know what to say. I’m not used to people being understanding, and I don’t trust it.
‘It wasn’t so bad’ I say. ‘You get used to it.’
‘Yeah, righty’ she says smirking. ‘You are a crap liar. You know that?’
I shrug. Got me again.
‘I just wanted to disappear. Slip off the radar. Submerge without trace.’
‘But it must have been weird, I mean, at the end, the neighbours must have known you were there, living in the garden. Didn’t they say anything?’
‘Not really. They didn’t know that I didn’t use the house...’
She looks at me doubtfully. ‘But still, looney old geezer mooching around?’
‘I got used to it. It was much worse when I lived on the street.’
She’s not convinced, and rightly. I’m not sure I want to go into this. She can see I’m hiding something. I can’t tell her. I didn’t do anything wrong but as soon as the word “paedophile” comes into the conversation you’re a suspect.
‘They tried to get me arrested once’ I say, and that’s it – I suppose I am going to tell her after all. ‘They tried to get me put away for child molesting.’
She looks at me. I look down. I know what she’s thinking. We sit in silence. It’s Holst’s Planets, I recognise it now. Saturn. My dad used to have this record.
‘Did you do it?’
‘What? No’ I say, too loudly, too quickly, and I bite my lip, looking at her face. ‘I don’t even like children’ I say, knowing it doesn’t help. She looks disturbed, but I don’t know who for – me, the children, or herself.
‘I didn’t do anything’ I say, more calmly.
‘So how did it happen?’
‘What? Nothing happened.’
‘I mean, how come you were even accused?’
I shrug again and shake my head, look away, hiding the tears. This really was the worst thing that ever happened to me, beatings and hypothermia and gastro-enteritis included.
‘They just didn’t like me. I never went near any kids. They just wanted rid of me.’
She sits and looks at me, appraising. ‘That must have been very hard for you’ she says at last, too blandly.
‘You don’t believe me do you?’ I say quietly. She doesn’t respond. ‘Look, I never went after their kids – they didn’t like me and I didn’t like them. That’s not how paedophiles are – read up on it. Paedophiles try to be charming, approachable – get to know the kids, buy them sweeties, invite them round to look at puppies, chat the mums up. I just wanted to keep myself to myself.’
She’s still watching me closely. ‘Please don’t take this wrongly...’ she begins, trying to be tactful or something, ‘but you do seem to have thought an awful lot about it.’
I know this one – the more I deny it the more suspect I look. I’ve been through all this “No smoke without fire” crap. What a stupid metaphor. I force myself to keep calm.
‘I had to think about it. What would you expect? For six months I couldn’t think about anything else. They were going to lock me up with criminals. I read everything there was about it. They had me down the nick three times.’
‘And they never found anything?’
‘There was never anything to find. They raided my place twice. I showed them my porn collection – actually got it out for them. I said “How do you account for the fact that every image is of a large-breasted woman? Hm?” I mean, did they think I’d put it together deliberately as some sort of elaborate decoy?’
She continues to observe my increasing agitation. I can’t tell what she’s thinking.
‘I wasn’t into children’ I say and I can hear that old note of pain and panic in my throat, at the top of my chest. What can I possibly say to convince her?
‘Did your sisters believe you?’
‘I never told them’ I say and she nods.
‘So... were you ever molested yourself, as a child?’
I have wondered about this. It would be a nice easy explanation for everything – maybe too easy. Uncle Len would have been the obvious suspect – there was always something about him, and granddad too – my mum’s dad. He was a dodgy old geezer if ever there was one. I barely remember him. He died when I was only about five. It’s an appealing thought – to be able to just pin the blame on him, on somebody nobody liked anyway – the family bogeyman. But I don’t really believe in it.
‘I don’t think so’ I say eventually. ‘I don’t remember anything.’ More nodding. ‘So, do you believe me?’
‘Yes’ she says simply. ‘I believe you. It’s very difficult to lie here anyway. This place seems to bring out the truth in people.’
I take a deep breath and look about the room. So she believes me. And why shouldn’t she? I did nothing wrong. It still feels wrong though. It might be impossible to lie here but it is possible, apparently, to be economical with the truth.

The girl just turned up one day and said could she see the chickens. How could I say no?
She must have been about twelve. Siobhan her name was – one of those clumsy embarrassed children the other kids will only play with if they’re forced to, and I could see why. She always seemed slightly ‘off’ – not quite ‘normal’ and children can be very judgemental can’t they. But she was very sweet natured and I could tell she was going to be a real beauty one day but those little squirts couldn’t see it, or if they did they’d never admit to it.
And it was good to have her around even though she prattled and got in the way. But I knew even then, before all the fuss, how it would look and I made her promise not to tell anyone where she’d been and it was our secret but I knew that you can’t do that and she knew it too. That’s my guilty secret. You can’t ask children not to tell their parents where they’ve been, even when it’s all perfectly innocent, and I knew, if she told them, what it would look like, but I didn’t have the heart to stop her. I suppose she was lonely.
Who am I kidding? I was lonely.
So I let her come and play with the dog and pick my runner beans and when it rained we sat inside and I listened to her read one of her stories. She was quite a good writer. I wonder what became of her.
Anyway she must have kept our secret because the police never asked about her – every other brat in the street but not her.
I never really wanted children of my own but if I could have been guaranteed of getting one like her I’d have been very tempted.

I know we’ve gone on longer than usual and it’s getting dark but Andrea and I sit for a while anyway.
‘It must have been terrible to live with that, all those years, all those people – your neighbours, talking about you.’
‘Well, it passed. There were never any actual abuses reported for them to pin on me. If there had been... well... But it was just the suspicion, the whispers, the curtain twitchers. There’s always a few aren’t there – don’t like anyone to be different.’
‘So you got used to it, being the outcaste, the loner, the scapegoat?’
‘They always say that don’t they – in the news reports – “He was a loner” they say, as if that proves it. But no, you never get used to it. But life goes on, hey-ho.’
We get up to leave and she says ‘I can’t believe you used a collection of dirty pictures as evidence of your innocence.’ She seems to think it’s very funny, and I suppose it is ironic but it didn’t seem funny at the time.

Voyage XVI – Fantasies

I go back to my cabin and get out my drawing things. It’s getting dark now but the lighting in here is really good – like one of those daylight bulbs you can get. I lean back and look at what I’ve been doing lately. The fact is they’re mostly of Lucy, but not from life obviously – from my imagination.
Back home, when I was about thirteen I suppose, I started making my own pornography. I just started one day when I didn’t know what to do next and I was doodling and the lines of a woman’s body just emerged from the pen like magic. I suppose I’d spent so much time looking at the magazines they’d just got printed on my brain. So, I never could get hold of enough real porn, and most of it was pretty dreary to be honest, so I started making my own.
I didn’t have a type – I drew redheads with freckles and olive skinned women with black hair, slender women and voluptuous women, mature women and teenage girls, shaved women and hairy women, women undressing, women masturbating, women together. After a while I didn’t draw anything much else, and I think I got quite good at it, considering I’d never actually seen a real live naked woman in my life (and certainly not an actual vagina) and still haven’t to be honest.
God knows what would have happened if mum had found any of it.

I’ve been thinking about what Joe said, about being gay. It’s funny but I never really thought about it before. Freud said that everyone naturally has homosexual tendencies (and other tendencies too). I never really wanted to put men in my drawings at all. I’m not really sure why. I tried once or twice but it felt sort of, I don’t know, sort of ugly. If I think of men having sex it just seems sort of clumsy and a bit disgusting to be honest. I don’t know where that idea comes from. I try to think of Joe like that, sexually I mean. He’s a nice enough looking bloke I suppose. If I was going to handle someone else’s penis I suppose his’d be as good as anyone’s. I just don’t really fancy it. I suppose I should be a bit more broad-minded, in a ‘don’t knock it until you’ve tried it’ sort of way but I think I’d have some sort of sense even without trying it, that I’d like it, but I don’t. Margaret Mead said that extreme heterosexuality is actually a sort of perversion. Anyway, I just like looking at women. I think they’re absolutely fantastic, and if that makes me a pervert, well, so be it.

Sometimes I spent almost all night in the Wendy house, looking at porn, thinking about women. It was really dark and a bit dingey in there, damp and dusty, with the ivy coming in and the spiders and such like, but it did feel very peaceful, especially if the rain was really battering down outside and the trees were whipping about on the railway embankment or the fog-horn down at the harbour was going. I usually went down there in just my dressing gown and wellies so I could cover up immediately if anyone came, and I kept the drawings and photos in a sketchpad so I could close that up quickly too. Nobody ever did. My mum used to wonder why I was exhausted in the morning. Sometimes I couldn’t get up in the morning at all.
I used to think about women I knew – the one who ran the pet shop for example – she was a little weird looking (quite a long nose and big googly eyes) but you could tell she would be a good shape under her clothes, and then there was Amelia’s friend Katrina. She was fucking amazing. Really tight jeans – you could see the outline of her vagina when she sat down. And then there were some of the girls at school – Camille especially, and then later on there was Gill of course. She was the best. I used to imagine coming across her while I was out walking on the Downs in the wind and rain – her in just a plastic mac and boots after she’d been out riding. I imagined seeing her sit down on the wet grass, open her coat, letting the rain wash over her pale breasts and belly (not caring if anyone was looking), watching her slip her knickers down over her boots and throw them aside and then begin to touch herself. Or else I imagined her walking up the hill ahead of me – seeing her bare arse under her coat and watching those two fleshy folds between her legs squeeze and slip together as she walked. I don’t know why but it was always cold and drizzling, or else snowing in these fantasies. I always liked the feel of the cold air on my skin and the wet grass. I don’t know why.

Of course the actual girls at school thought I was a joke. I don’t think I ever actually made an appearance in my own fantasies – that would have been just too ridiculous. I was just forced to watch them, but that was ok.

Actually though, don’t laugh, but I don’t think it was just about sex. I really wanted more than that. I suppose I’m a bit of a romantic too. Honestly, I really wanted to sit on a balcony by the sea with a girl and watch the sun go down and sip champagne or something, and pick flowers for her, and make her sloppy compilation tapes with people like Dusty Springfield and The Walker Brothers. I wanted to slow dance with her to Body Talk. I know, I know. It’s a ridiculous record. I can’t even remember who recorded it now, but every time I hear it I despair. I just wanted that, to do that – to hold onto her (whoever she was), moving together, lost in each other, oblivious, going round and round on the dance floor, breathing into her hair, my hands on her hips at the end of the evening, and her not embarrassed and wanting to get away but there with me, as relieved and amazed as I’d be. And when they turn the music off and the lights go on, to look shyly into each other’s eyes and hope that this was not all.
Jesus Christ I wanted that. I never asked any of them to dance, I admit. If they weren’t going to say yes in private they certainly weren’t going to say it in public.

Well anyway... I don’t know if any of the other blokes felt the same way – we never talked about it, but that was what I wanted – I wanted to be in love. I still do, more than anything in the world. I want a girl who will come to parties, and come for walks in the country, and most of all I want her to share my bed. I want someone to sleep with, and that’s not a euphemism. Ok, I admit I want her to be sitting there on the balcony watching the sunset with no knickers on, but I also want to bring her croissants and orange juice in the morning.
That’s what all this is really about. All that stuff Joe talks about – about careers and so on. I can’t tell him all this. Of course I’d love to earn a living doing something I like, and rent a nice room in Brighton or out in the country, go to university, maybe travel a bit. I’d love to do those things, for myself. But really, the main thing is, when I do those things, maybe I’ll meet her, and what’s more, maybe she’ll want to get to know me and I’ll have a proper relationship. I don’t feel very manly for admitting it, but that’s what I want.
And then we have the reality, as mum would have said.
I don’t know where all this comes from, this hope. Mostly my life has been fairly useless, but somewhere, part of me has always had this idea that, if only I could meet a girl and she got to know me properly, without all this shit about money and living with my parents in the way, that it would be alright, and I’d stand a chance.
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Voyage XV – Sex education

The voyage has definitely settled into a routine now. I don’t actually spend a lot of time with Ray and the crazy gang, although I’m always aware of them. I find them hard to ignore. I am drawn to them though. I admit it. There’s something about them, something ugly but fascinating. Don’t know. Have to think about it.

Then sometimes I sit near to Lucy and the others. I feel a bit stupid, hanging around them like a little dog, hoping for some attention but quite often Damian or one of the others’ll say hi and how am I. I’m never sure if Lucy welcomes my presence but she doesn’t complain. She doesn’t say much at all to be honest.
But then there’ll be other times, like that wet day in the library when I found her looking at those pictures and she’ll call me over and say ‘Have you seen this?’ with a look of disgust and fascination on her face and I’ll go over and she’ll read me a passage from usually a history book, or something on politics and she’ll start on about how they don’t know what they’re talking about because of something she read back when she was writing her thesis and these people just haven’t got a clue. Then she turns the book over, her hand still on the page so she won’t lose it, and checks the author and it’s never anyone she’s heard of, but then she has to go back and look again. It’s like she can’t leave it alone.
Her main thing seems to be about the “objectification of women” and the “male gaze”. I thought at first she was talking about gays. She thought that was funny. I didn’t mind her thinking I’m funny. I never went to university of course, although I read a lot. I’d read The Female Eunuch, which impressed her a bit, although I wasn’t sure I agreed with a lot of it. I always had a problem with this stuff because it’s always seemed to me that women are very much in charge, but then with a family like mine that’s not too surprising is it. I tell her about this and she tells me that I experience women as emasculating. I tell her I never really wanted to be like the other blokes anyway and actually I’d like to come back as a woman next time if that was possible (but as a lesbian of course) and she’s just full of scorn, like it’s just their exclusive club and how dare I presume to even want to join? She goes on about menstruation, and pregnancy and sex discrimination as if being a woman is all about being proud of your suffering, and I want to say ‘But what about all these other fantastic things about being a woman?’ but I don’t feel qualified.
‘For a start’ she says, ‘You can’t know what the heck you’re on about, pretty much by definition, simply because you are a man. You simply cannot identify with a woman. You cannot know what it means. The whole way you view the world is different. You have this idealised image of what a woman is but no conception of the reality, and I really can’t be bothered to go into it with you. Trust me, you couldn’t handle it.’
I look at the page again. I can’t handle being a man either.
‘I don’t know’ I say. ‘I just like women, better than men anyway.’
‘Sure you do’ she says, obviously unconvinced. ‘But you like the ones with nice tits better, am I right?’
‘I think that’s different’ I say tentatively.
‘Oh you do.’
I’ve been thinking about this and I have an answer ready.
‘It’s like, if you’re friends with someone, you don’t just like them for one thing. Maybe you like that you can go out to gigs with them, and maybe their record collection, and maybe sometimes you have a laugh together, but you know they’ll never be the person you go to, to tell your troubles to, or for a walk in the country. You do those things with someone else...’
‘Is there a point to this?’
‘With women, the way they look is maybe just one part of why I’d spend time with them, and maybe if what they look like is the only thing, then maybe I’d just want to have sex with them. But if I wanted to have a relationship there’d need to be other things, like...’
‘Like doing your dishes, or saying “there, there, poor baby”...’
‘No, like going out walking or talking about life, or having a meal out.’
‘As a prelude to sex. It’s all about getting women into bed Gabriel. Don’t fool yourself.’
‘No’ I say, ‘I reckon it’s possible to be friends with a woman and not be thinking about sex with her.’
‘Has that ever happened to you?’
‘Well... no, but I’m sure it could.’
‘I think you’d have to be gay. Really.’
I almost ask about Damian and Matt but don’t really want to know. I don’t really feel qualified to say anything here. I never had a female friend in my life but then I never had a proper girlfriend either, so what do I know? Come to that I never had much in the way of real close friends at all – not ones I could really talk to.
‘All that men are doing when they look at a woman’ she continues, ‘is deciding if they want to fuck her and then working out how to make it happen. It might not be obvious. He may end up being a friend because he still thinks he’s in with a chance, or maybe he thinks he’ll get off with one of her friends.’
‘But even then, what if he does actually like her and enjoys her company, even without sex?’
‘How do you mean?’ she says, with exaggerated patience.
‘Well, women talk more about people and life and...’ I suddenly remember the sixth form common room, a group of us, sitting around for lunch, and then afterwards if there was a free period I always ended up chatting to Rachel or Camille, or Sally. Ok, I did fancy Camille, but I knew she was out of my league, and Rachel was taken, and Sally just really wasn’t my type, not physically. I can’t believe I forgot about them. I wonder what happened to them. Rachel, I know got married quite soon after leaving, and the others went to uni of course. The blokes were always talking about physics or Michael Moorcock or Genesis or something and I just didn’t know anything about that stuff, but I could talk to the girls, Rachel and Sally especially for ages. Camille I was always a bit self-conscious with. I’d forgotten about that.
I explain some of this to Lucy and she listens and then says ‘Still...’ and goes back to her book.

My mind wanders back to my sisters too, to Amelia especially. I always liked her toys – the doll’s house, and the books she had. And then there were her friends and her clothes and make up – I just loved all the colours and textures and smells of it all. I should point out that I never tried her stuff on, or not seriously – I’d have looked ridiculous, obviously, and I’d have wanted to be beautiful, not just a boy in drag.
Maybe I should have been a girl. You do hear these stories about people who are anatomically one sex but genetically the other. Who knows? I know I hated being a boy anyhow.
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Joe IX – Some sort of future

Next time he looks hard at me and says ‘Give me one thing your parents could have done to help you out.’ I look at him, wondering what he’s getting at. I can’t think.
‘Take your time’ he says, ‘I’m going to get a coffee. Want one?’
‘Please. White, two sugars.’ He leaves.
What could they have done? I don’t know what he’s getting at. Dad was always trying to get me to go and play football with some of the lads he knew (he must have known I hated sports but he kept on trying), or help him do the house up – rubbing down or mixing cement or whatever. Mum was always getting on at me to come downstairs and ‘at least’ watch some telly with them. To be honest I think the best thing they could have done was bloody well leave me alone.
I don’t know. It sounds ungrateful, but I just wanted to get on with my painting or reading or whatever it was I was doing. I went to the library a lot, and I had this idea that if they built me a shed down at the bottom of the garden I could use it as a studio, maybe have a gas heater in it and a hammock and they’d never have to see me again. There was the Wendy house down there with all shrubs overgrown around it. Dad built it for the girls when they were little, and, say what you like about my dad – if he built something it stayed built. I spent a lot of time down there, especially after I screwed everything up, but before that too. I took my books and some paper and stuff and found a little cupboard and an old deck chair and some candles and made myself a little retreat. I spent a lot of time just sitting in there, peering out through the bushes at the garden. I had all the porn I’d collected hidden down there too, in a big Tupperware box underneath the floor. I used to go down there at night sometimes, or when they’d all gone out. Anyway...

‘A studio’ I say when he gets back with the drinks.
‘Sorry?’
‘Like a big shed at the bottom of the garden, so I could go down there and work without them all...er...’
‘Without them all what?’ He takes a mouthful of coffee, watching me over the rim of his mug.
‘I don’t know. It was just, in the house, you were always aware of them, downstairs, or in their bedroom, moving about.’
‘Why did that bother you?’
‘I don’t know. It was just like, they could come in at any time and see me there, and there’d be this, I don’t know, irritation, like I should always be doing something else. They just had this exasperation all the time. I was always doing the wrong thing. Do you know what I mean?’
‘Just as an aside Gabriel, are you aware of how often you start your sentences with “I don’t know” and then go on to give a perfectly good answer? I’m not saying you should stop necessarily, but I thought I’d point it out. You do know Gabriel, actually. And yes I do know what you mean, but wouldn’t they have come and disturbed you down the garden just the same?’
‘I suppose so. Actually it probably would have been worse. Mum was always going on about dad and what he found to do down there in his shed. They’d have thought I was a real weirdo, even more than they did already. “Oh here comes Rasputin the monk.” She thought she was very funny.’
‘Perhaps you could have got a place on your own somewhere, once you left school I mean.’

I don’t know what to say to that. It doesn’t seem very likely. I know other people my age did that but they had rich parents or good jobs or something (or else they went to university of course). And I know there’s no excuse because I should have just ‘got off my arse’ as my dad used to say, and bloody well earned some money instead of faffing around in my room. I know that, I do, really, but then I used to look at the jobs in the paper or down the job centre and all I could see was weeks or months, maybe years of shelf stacking or sweeping up, always being checked up on, looked down on. The best dad could suggest (if I was ‘lucky’) was that I’d be a manager one day and then it’d be my turn to make someone else miserable, telling people who thought I was a jerk what to do. And that was all I could see – stretching on into the future, like endless shelving stacked with stuff I didn’t want – mortgages and insurance and MOTs and bills and pensions. And every day getting up and going to the same place, wasting all that time – time I could have spent doing something else, something better – painting or travelling or... something. I don’t know what. And then you’re old and sick and you think –  what the fuck was that all about?
But then actually I couldn’t imagine sticking at any of those jobs for very long. Sooner or later they’d find a reason to sack me, which would be a relief, for a while, but then what? Back to mum’s – that’s what, and signing on.
There’s nothing to say, no excuses. I’m submerged in shame and uselessness. I just shake my head.

He looks at me, like he can’t think of anything to say either. Eventually he leans forward and says ‘Was it just about the money?’
‘I suppose...’
‘What about the thought of you being out on your own, fending for yourself? Didn’t that scare you?’
‘That wouldn’t have bothered me.’
‘So it was just the money.’
Hah! “Just the money” he says, as if it’s no big deal.
I look about the room, not focussing on anything especially. Someone up on deck is laughing, a woman’s voice, light, feminine, sexy. I feel a surge in my chest, in my groin.
‘Can’t you imagine getting a good job – one you could enjoy?’ he says.
I pretend to think about that for a while but I know the answer.
‘Not really’ I say, and I’m not being melodramatic. I honestly can’t. Work’s not about enjoying. It’s about fucking well doing as you’re fucking well told and fucking well putting up with it. That’s what my parents taught me.
‘We need to work on that’ he says, and begins to gather his things to leave.
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Voyage XI – Jamming

I’ve started to hang out with Lucy and that lot more. It took a while before I got the nerve to ask if I could sit down with them. It was like a school kid wanting to sit with the seniors. When I finally did, Matt and Damian were really cool about it and Lucy didn’t object, even though I can’t stop looking at her boobs and she keeps having to tell me off for it.

We tend to hang out in the forward lounge – there’s a lot of big sofas there, or up on deck, on the deck chairs. The weather is a lot brighter now, but still a bit fresh for sun bathing if you ask me. Damian is really skinny and pale, but he takes his shirt off and lies there with his sunglasses on nevertheless. I did him in charcoal a while back and Lucy thought it was hilarious – black spikes, white forehead, black shades, white nose, black choker, white ribs, black drainpipes, white ankles, black plimsolls. I don’t think it’s possible to get a tan here. You either have one or you don’t. You don’t have to cut your hair or trim your nails either
I talk quite a lot more with Lucy. She seems impressed that I know who George Elliot and Nina Simone were. We discuss all sorts of things – university, feminism, travel, and sex. We talk a lot about sex. My whole sex education has been my Dad’s Mayfairs and there’s quite a lot they don’t cover. She told me about the clitoris and the female orgasm. She even drew diagrams. I think I’m obsessed with sex, which is funny for a person who is still a virgin at nearly nineteen. All I could think was how I wanted to have a practice on her, and it almost seemed like it might be worth asking but I didn’t. I’d heard of oral sex but I’d never realised what we were aiming for, if you see what I mean, or that there was a thing, exactly, to aim for. I guess I thought you just sort of, I don’t know, licked it, generally.
I think I really envy women now because they have all these different sorts of orgasms that can apparently go on for hours and we just have this one quick spurt and that’s it.
‘A man is just totally fixated on his penis’ she said. ‘All he wants is to get in there as quickly as possible and...’ (She makes this rhythmical grunting noise in my ear – ‘Uh uh uh uh...’ over and over until it’s really beginning to bother me. ‘That’s what it’s like’ she says eventually) ‘and then it’s all over and you’re left with the washing up, as usual. Or, which is worse, you get a guy who thinks he knows all about foreplay, but he just thinks it’s about going on and on and on until you’re both rubbed raw and wondering what's on the telly. You men – it’s just like you haven’t got a clue.’

She’s right, I haven’t. I don’t even really know what foreplay is but I don’t like to ask.
One of her favourite topics is pornography (It’s one of mine too, but in a different way and I keep quiet). The way she talks about it though it’s as if it’s nothing but violence, like it’s all under-age girls being forced to have horrible things done to them. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like that. Well there was that one thing I found in the lorry park. That was horrible, so I do know it goes on. I suppose it never occurred to me to wonder who all these women are, having their photos taken, or how they feel about it. Most of them just look bored to be honest – just smiling woodenly for the camera and holding their vaginas open. It’s pretty crass. But then sometimes, the ones I like, they look like they’re normal women having a laugh, or maybe even actually enjoying it. I don’t know. I can’t believe they all hate what they do. They must be bloody good actresses. Lucy says you can tell it’s really all about child pornography because they force the women to shave but I always thought that was just because you could see everything better. And anyway pubic hair can be a bit off-putting. I never liked mine. I used to shave it off sometimes and then the stubble got bad so I didn’t do it any more. I know for a fact she can’t stand men with beards anyway so she can’t talk. Maybe she likes young boys, which would be good news for me.

Another time I remember having this heated debate with her about breasts, because she’d noticed me looking – again. Well, hers were quite hard to miss to be honest. I’d find my eyes homing in on them in the middle of a conversation and it was very off-putting. All the blokes commented. She wore these tight, low cut tops too, which didn’t help.
‘My god! What is it with you people?’ she said, amazed, aggrieved and amused at the same time. ‘It’s just a pair of breasts for god’s sake. Men! You’re just like children, just transfixed...’
I looked at my book, embarrassed. We were in the lounge. People were listening. She was talking quite loud.
‘What is it? Tell me, what is so fascinating? They’re just big blobs of fat for feeding babies. Look’ she said and took hold of them and wobbled them about in my face. ‘Fat’ she said again, grinning. She evidently thought it was amusing, making me embarrassed.
I gave my usual considered opinion, that is, I shrugged and said ‘I don’t know.’
‘Look at them’ she said.
‘What?’
‘Look. Get an eye full’ and she pulled her shoulders back and thrust them at me. I still thought they were fantastic.
‘Tell me what you're thinking’ she said, challengingly.
I was struggling to say anything at all. ‘I just...’ and I tailed off, shrugging again. I looked around. Nobody was overtly listening but I knew they could hear.
‘I don’t know why I like them. I just...’ I said finally.
‘Doesn’t it bother you that you’re just automatically adopting this crass stereotypical male behaviour? (She does a thick voice) “Ooh, look, there’s some tits” you say to yourself. “This woman is clearly in need of some ogling.”’
‘I’d never say anything like that.’
She pauses and looks away. She’s taking time to think.
‘Ok. You see a woman in the street and you don’t know anything about her, except she’s got these huge breasts. So obviously you’re interested, but you don’t think “Maybe she’s got a Phd in psychology – I’d love to go and talk to her.” do you?’
‘Well I can’t tell if she’s got a Phd in psychology just by looking at her can I? And any way, I wouldn’t fancy her just because she has big boobs.’
‘No?’ she looks sceptical ‘What else?’
‘Eyes?’ I say, without much conviction.
‘Oh give me strength. You want me to believe that? I’ve never met a man who’s attention extended anywhere above the neck for longer than it takes to – I don’t know – light a cigarette.’
I’m silenced again. But I do like women's eyes. Always have. I loved Camille's eyes. They were a gorgeous olive green colour and they really sparkled. Lucy’s eyes are lovely too but it’s hard to ignore that cleavage for long. In all the excitement her breasts seem to have swelled even more than usual.
‘I do like eyes’ I say, finally, quietly, ‘and hair. I love long hair.’ She appraises me suspiciously, ‘and she wouldn’t need to have big breasts, necessarily, just... nice breasts.’
‘What about no breasts?’
I think about that. ‘Not really.’
‘So you would dismiss a woman completely on the grounds of being flat-chested, no matter what else she may have to offer?’
Actually I think I might. It’s a bit too masculine or something. It’s just sort of weird.

‘I don’t think it’s like that really’ I say after a while.
‘What isn’t?’
‘Attraction. It’s not just about physical stuff. It’s the whole look of her. I don’t know – it’s like the way she dresses or the way she moves. Subtle things. Like the expression on her face...’ I go off into a bit of a dream, thinking how that feels, to see a woman like that.
‘You’re still just working out how to get into her knickers Gabriel’ says Lucy, laughing sarcastically.
I study her face as she shakes her head and goes back to her book. My feelings for her shift slightly. Sometimes she’s not very attractive at all.
‘So why bother to ask me at all if you’re not going to believe me?’
She turns her head and looks hard at me. ‘I thought you’d at least be honest about it’ she says.
‘I am being honest’ I say. She goes back to her book, still smiling slightly. Why is she being like this? What can I say to convince her?
‘We could be friends’ I suggest hopefully. ‘I wouldn’t just dismiss her completely. I just might not want to have sex with her.’
‘I don’t think men and women can be “just friends”‘ she says, which seems a bit sad. ‘There’s always something else.’
‘But if he doesn’t fancy her at all...’
‘Still. There’s always something, sooner or later. Trust me.’ and she looks a little sad. I didn’t really fully realise until much later that she was talking about herself, about her life, about how men had looked at her – her and her breasts and how they’d never really wanted to be “just friends” with her. No, I didn’t realise this until I was at the retreat, but I got my first inkling of it at this moment. She wore her breasts like that, as a challenge – gawp if you dare, fantasise at your peril.
‘I just like looking at breasts. I don’t know why’ I said finally, not looking at her. ‘I mean, why do people like looking at flowers? It doesn't have to be logical.’

Anyway she seems to like my work – I showed her some of my pictures and she seemed really interested. I want to do one of her soon. She said she’ll pose nude for me... I think she said that. Probably she was having me on. Anyway, a few days ago we were all sitting around talking about what we’d do different next time – it’s a common subject with us. Nobody else I’ve met seems to want to talk much about their past life or their next, just stay in the present, but Damian especially can’t shut up about it. He’s got this idea about getting a punk band together by 1974 so he can “be there” when it starts. He wants to call them The Sex Objects. We all think that’s very funny, all except Lucy that is.
He’s a good musician too. He does these really funny rip-offs of old Sabbath and Zeppelin numbers on his guitar, like using the sound but faster and furious-er. It’s ridiculous and really cool at the same time. I asked him if he could do Purple Haze but nobody messes with Hendrix apparently. I think he was impressed by the fact that I knew about Hendrix at all.
Anyhow, I was saying that next time, I would try to lose my virginity a bit sooner, and Lucy just looked coldly at me. Damian said he’d want to fuck a lot more women next time. Lucy said to me ‘What else?’
‘Go to more parties, and gigs’ I said, doubtfully.
‘But you’ll still be the same person’ she said, as if that was a real problem.
‘Yeah, you gotta handle it different next time man’ said Marcus, another guy who was hanging out with us. ‘I mean, you can’t just be your same wimpy self all over again, you know what I mean? Women want you to stand up, make a move for yourself man, not all this hiding in the back.’
‘You’d think some girls would go for such a quiet, sensitive chap as yourself, wouldn’t you Gabriel?’ says Lucy looking at me. I don’t know if she means it but I love the way she says my name, curving her lips around the ‘B’.
‘Nah, that’s crap’ says Damian ‘except for your “Mad Bitch” of course. They’re always on the lookout for the confused and vulnerable.’
‘Damian, you’re a disgrace’ says Lucy sexily.
‘Well if all else fails, your mad bitch’s a distinct possibility. She’s a bit desperate, grateful for whatever’s going, willing to do the leg work...’ Everyone laughs. ‘I mean, she’s the one’ll get off her arse and come to grab you – none of this you plucking up the courage shit – she’ll nag you onto the dance floor and bingo, you’ve scored.’
‘Plus you’ll be up all night with her. She really goes, your average mad bitch...’
‘On the other hand she’ll literally have your nuts nailed to the bed if you try to make a run for it.’
‘Literally?’ says Lucy.
‘Literally. These are not my original pair. These are in fact made of pure new wool. My mum knitted them for me.’
‘I’ll take your word for it’ she says, pouting at him. I sometimes think something’s going on between them. I don’t know. Sometimes, she looks at me, I feel so amazingly light and free. Other times, I just want to drop into the ocean and sink.
‘You should learn to play guitar – be in a band. That’s always a good one’ says Matt. Damian looks doubtful.
‘I might get a car next time’ I say, although I can’t imagine how. I’d have to fork out for lessons first.
‘Nah.’ says Matt. ‘More trouble than they’re worth. You just end up giving everyone else a lift everywhere, so you end up not drinking...’
‘You could smoke.’
‘You could, if you’re a wanker.’ Everyone looks a bit awkward, recalling too late that Matt was killed by an intoxicated driver.
‘Just saying...’
‘I don’t think it’s about what you have’ says Lucy finally. ‘If you want to know the one thing that a woman wants? – every time? – it’s a man who knows who he is and feels good about it.’
‘That’s cobblers’ says Damian ‘I fucking hated myself half the time – and I got plenty.’
‘Yeah, but your self-loathing was kind of like an art form – you really went for it – you did believe in yourself in a way’ observes Matt.
‘I believed in being bad news’ says Damian, nodding deeply.
‘You did. And a woman appreciates that in a man’ says Matt.
‘Some women’ says Lucy
‘Younger women’ says Damian, gleefully.
‘Masochistic women’ says Lucy.
‘Exactly’ agrees Damian ‘Same difference...’
‘Gabe’s not mean enough’ observes Marcus. ‘He’s one of the good guys.’
‘I’ll bet he’s not’ says Lucy, turning to face me. ‘I bet he could be a right bastard if he wanted to, if he had the motivation. If he had the nerve...’
I don’t know what it is – sometimes the way she looks at me. What is she thinking? Sometimes I feel like I’m nothing to her. Sometimes I feel like she wants me – both at the same time.
I look at her. The conversation among them heads elsewhere but I saw her wink at me, I swear.
Sitting beside me I can see her shoulder exposed, soft and milky where her top has slipped, then a smooth curve between her armpit and the start of her breast. The fabric hangs away from them and I can see where the curve goes down, concave to convex. I look up, as if surfacing from a deep dive and register the faces – did anyone see me looking? I can’t tell.
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