Voyage XX – Chauvinist

‘Hey man – where you been hiding all this time?’
It’s Damian, coming up the stairs as I go past. I don’t have a ready answer and I say ‘I don’t know’ – an answer I’m fast coming to loath. Why don’t I know? Why do all these things happen the way they do and I don’t know why?
‘I don’t think Lucy is that keen on me being...’
‘Forget it man...’ he says jovially. ‘She’s very fond of you – told me herself. Come and join us.’
I’m not at all sure this is a good idea but in the spirit of not wanting to make a fuss, and wondering what she’d said about being fond of me, I follow him through, realising too late that since there seems to be a torrential downpour outside, they’re in the bar. I sit down, warily, across from Lucy, beside Matt, who gives me a jolly double thumbs-up and welcomes me back. I rise to go to the bar, but he pushes me back down and asks what I want to drink. Lucy smiles and says ‘Hello’ in a friendly enough way. What was I expecting? To be ignored? Some sign of regret or embarrassment? Something. Anyway, my discomfort is short-lived because, as Matt reminds us when he gets back with a bottle of champagne, my recent triumph over “The Pork” is a cause for serious celebration, and there’s hearty congratulations and loud re-enactments to be done. The rat pack fume and glare. They are so pissed off. It’s very satisfying.
Eventually we get tired of that and take our drinks up on the deck where the night sky has cleared and everything is shiny and clean and the air is fresh. There is the dark outline of land not far off to port. I can see lights. We get some deck chairs and settle down for the evening. I ‘casually’ end up sitting next to Lucy. The conversation goes on as usual around us – idiotic banter and snatches of songs when Matt gets his guitar out.
‘It’s a beautiful night’ I say, as easily as I can to her. She just nods and I look up again. I feel so tense, waiting...
‘Are you ok?’ I say after a while. She shrugs. ‘Yes’ she says – why wouldn’t she be?
I know there was a small, cool, mature part of me saying ‘Just leave it now’ but a much larger, more insistent part of me needed an answer, was still convinced there had simply been some misunderstanding that I could still put right, if I could say the right thing. ‘The other night...’ I begin. She is silent, dark, unreadable. ‘I just... I just wanted you so much.’
All the ways I had rehearsed this conversation. The word ‘wanted’ I thought sounded mature, passionate, strong, but I knew as soon as I’d spoken – there was a pleading note in my voice and it was wrong.
‘And so you thought you could have me’ she says, still looking up at the sky.
I want to mention her being naked, and being in my room alone with me, giving me those looks, and all the conversations about oral sex and female orgasms. They’re evidence, surely, that she wanted it too, or at least that it was a reasonable assumption. But obviously they weren’t – otherwise we wouldn’t be here, would we. All my rehearsals are wasted, because, in my fantasy, she’s facing me – I’m able to see her face, and, more or less, she wants to sort things out as much as I do. Sometimes she’s tearful and grateful of the chance to express her feelings (which are essentially the same as mine). Other times she firmly but kindly tells me that although she likes me and she’s flattered, she doesn’t feel that way about me. But in none of my scenarios am I quietly pleading with someone who can’t even be bothered look at me when she speaks. I’m not prepared.
I try again ‘I thought, you know, there was something...’
‘What gave you that idea?’ says her silhouette, barely visible now against the night sky.
‘I don’t know, I...’
We sit in silence for a long time. She laughs at things Damian says. I don’t know where to go next with this.
‘You know you’re just so predictable, don’t you?’ she says eventually, quietly, conversationally. ‘Typical man – can’t have what he wants, so he sulks. Why does a man imagine that just because he likes the look of a woman that she must inevitably submit to him, or there must be something wrong with her, hmm? Why do you suppose that is?’
I have nothing to say. I’m glad it’s so dark, because there are tears again now.
‘It’s a cliché I know,’ she continues ‘but it’s true – men really do never grow up – you’re all just little boys crying “Mummy” and demanding sweeties.’ All this said in a whisper whilst “the boys” opposite mess about with the guitar. A fractured rendition of “Hey Jude” covers my disgrace.
I sit for a while in the dark with her there. I want to go but can’t face saying my goodnights whilst so obviously distraught, having to make an excuse. Part of me doesn’t want to believe she just said what she said. Mostly though I take it in, this judgement. We had talked about feminism as if these “Men” who did all this damage were somebody else, not me, and I hated them too, with their sports and their cars and their profits and their weapons, none of which I could relate to, and we were together, Lucy and I, against them. I was a new sort of man, on the women’s side. I knew what a clitoris was and I wasn’t afraid to have a go at using one.
But now apparently I am just another man, just like them.
I control my tears and get up. ‘Just going for a walk’ I mumble, but no one is listening. We all seem really drunk tonight. I look across the water at the string of lights on the coast, the black craggy skyline above, visible only because of a faint glow from beyond. The water’s ripples barely reflect it. Everything is just dark on dark except those lights. I wonder who lives there? I have a very strong sense that it’s time to go. I can’t wait to get off this thing.

To continue reading, either go to Lulu to buy or download the book, or let me know when you want to read the next bit and I'll post it on the blog.

Voyage XIX – Non-violence

I spent the next I-don’t-know-how-long in my bunk, breathing the smell of her body out of my pillow. All I could think was how I could have done things differently – going over and over everything that had happened. Sometimes I thought maybe I’d been too pushy. Then other times I thought I should have been more pushy, less hesitant, more manly. What had she said about a woman above all wanting a man who felt good about himself? I certainly wasn’t that. I went over all the conversations we’d had about sex and women, and I remembered how she’d looked at me sometimes (but didn’t she look at other men that way too?), and offered to come to my cabin and strip off for me (but wasn’t that all in the name of art?) and how later I’d gone to try to find out what was wrong and she’d dismissed me (but hadn’t I just been a silly little boy, again?).
And why would someone like her (a goddess, frankly) want someone like me anyhow, so weedy and awkward and pathetic and how could I have been so stupid to have, even for a moment...? The memory is just too pitiful, not least because I'm filled to a hard, purple bursting point with the image of her extraordinary naked body on my bed. My balls ache with the memory of it.
The pictures are there still. I can’t destroy them. I thought of throwing them in the sea, but I can’t. Instead I fix them (my craftsman brain, still there, in spite of everything, thinking practically) and roll them up and put them away.
I sleep as much as possible, and wake up to a second or two of peace before the memory collapses in on me anew and forces me to go over it all again. Not having to eat or drink or go to the loo means I have no distractions. I don’t seem to have been missed either. I suppose everyone knows by now too. I can’t face them.
But I can’t just stay in here forever. I wait until it’s dark and everyone has settled down for the night and I go up on deck to feel the fresh air on my face. Even then I can’t help fantasising that Lucy will be up there, unhappy, and I will go and talk to her. She’ll tell me that in fact, for all her bravado, she was shy and needed more time, that she wasn’t ready, and can I be patient?
Of course I can.
But there is no one up there.

The next morning Joe comes and knocks on the door and asks if I am ok. I say come in and he stands awkwardly in the door. ‘You heard what happened I suppose’ I say, turning away. I feel ashamed of myself now.
‘Everybody did’ he says, smiling. ‘I wouldn’t take it too seriously if I were you.’ But I do, I think. This was it, I think, my one chance. I really can’t imagine ever meeting a woman like her ever again, in any life or after life. She was it.
‘From what I gather you handled it rather well. I thought you’d be cock-a-hoop.’
I’m confused – what has she said? Maybe she’s playing a game with me? I did ok? Is there hope?
‘Harry is, if anything, even surlier than before,’ he continues, ‘and Jason says Liz is in tears most of the time... well, that’s confidential. So...’
Why’s he talking about Harry? Oh. I get it. I’d forgotten about all that. The memory makes me smile a little. It gives me a moment to come up for air. ‘Has Lucy said anything?’
‘Lucy?’ He looks blankly at me for a moment ‘Oh that tall, dark, well-endowed lass. No, why?’
I flinch at the description.
‘Never mind. Doesn’t matter.’ I turn away again.
‘You fancy her?’ he says with a sly grin. ‘Well who wouldn’t? I’m only about twenty percent straight and I can see it. Have you spoken to her?’
‘A bit’ I say, evasively.
‘Anyway, are you coming along later?’
I think about it and realise I really need to. ‘Yes’ I say. ‘I’ll see you later.’

Time is an odd thing here. There are no clocks. Hours and days just wander about casually. Back in life everybody knew – if you were having a shit time it went on interminably – a good day was over before you knew it. Here I suspect it’s a bit the other way, which is nice, but it’s hard to tell, looking back, how long you’ve been doing anything. You can count elephants to sixty, a hundred-and-twenty, three hundred, but sooner or later you get muddled and don’t know where you’ve got to. I’ve even tried keeping track on paper but I still get lost. Time is absolutely relative here. “Sooner or later” is about as close as you’ll get to describing it. And yet, somehow, I always know when it’s early afternoon or after midnight, or time to go see Joe for example.
He doesn’t know about me and Lucy. That probably means no one knows. He’d know if anyone knew surely? Maybe not. The guides keep themselves quite separate from the rest of us. I’m sure she must have told Damian and Matt. They probably think it’s hysterical. What was I thinking? I look at myself in the mirror on the back of the door. I’m just a stupid child. She’s a woman. It occurs to me that she doesn’t look very old – twenty-two maybe? I don’t know how old she is really. This revives my optimistic ‘I’m actually a virgin and need you to be gentle with me’ fantasy, although it’s not very convincing. She doesn’t seem like a virgin. That’s what I liked about her.

I feel hungry. There’s a small serving hatch near the library so I won’t have to go through the bar. I put on a dressing gown and open the door and Harry is there, just on his way past.
‘I wondered when you’d show your face again’ he says coming too close too quickly. He jams his hand across the door, blocking my way. I look beyond. Several other travellers have stopped to see what will happen. They look concerned, not entertained.
In retrospect I guess a part of me was scared – I felt faint afterwards, but mainly I just felt pissed off. I really couldn’t be bothered with this, and I guess it showed in my face. Even so, I couldn’t ignore the simple fact of his sheer physical size. I knew you couldn’t die here, but I didn’t want to get hurt. I didn’t want to shout for help either, so I just stood there. He grinned at me, too close, too heavy, too nasty. ‘And what are you going to do now, eh?’ he said in my face. I could feel his hot breath on my neck, his eyelids on my cheek. It was revolting. I was horribly aware that I had nothing on under the robe, and that it was falling open. I pushed a little with my body, turning my head away, not really expecting any result. He moved more firmly to block me and push me back but in the process began to lose his balance. He moved his arm a little to steady himself, and I stepped through, over his leg as he heaved himself toward me in an effort to pin me against the doorframe with his body. It didn’t work but as I slipped past he took a swing at me with his free hand.
It was very odd. I felt his hand connect but it was as if my jaw had become marble and his fist was a rubber ball. The force threw him across the passageway onto his back. I was standing there unscathed and he was lying there winded. We all stood around for a while wondering what had just happened. Harry was getting up, swearing under his breath, rearranging his tie. He went to hit me again.
‘You can’t do that here’ said a voice behind me. It was Angie again.
‘Who’s going to fucking stop me?’ he said, furious, spluttering his words, his face red, fit to pop.
‘Nobody’s going to stop you. It’s just not physically possible on the boat. No violence.’
‘Who fucking says?’ he cried as if this is the greatest infringement of his civil liberties imaginable.
She shrugged. ‘Just how it is’ she said blandly. ‘Are you ok Gabriel?’
‘Yes’ I said. ‘I’m fine.’ I didn’t want to gloat but we were all looking much jollier. I went back inside and put some clothes on.

Well it was a welcome diversion anyway, and I had a good half hour of chuckling to myself before my thoughts about Lucy came back to bother me. By then it was time to go and see Joe again.
To continue reading, either go to Lulu to buy or download the book, or let me know when you want to read the next bit and I'll post it on the blog.

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.
To continue reading, either go to Lulu to buy or download the book, or let me know when you want to read the next bit and I'll post it on the blog.

Joe VII – Hawkeye

‘MASH!’ says Joe as he enters, making me jump a little. ‘My favourite. How is Miss Hotlips anyway? Have you spoken to her much?’
I shake my head. I don’t want to talk about Lucy just yet, and she’s all I want to talk about.
‘Oh... Ok. So, what was it about MASH that you particularly liked?’
I sit and think for a while. My mind is blank. Why does he want me to talk about MASH? Was it something he learned in counselling classes or something? I don’t want to talk about MASH. I want to talk about Lucy. Why on earth did I tell him I didn’t?
‘Erm... I don’t know’ I begin vaguely. He gives me that look. ‘I mean it. I can’t think...’
‘Take your time...’
I sit and think for quite a while. Lucy comes into my mind – I can’t get rid of her. She’s nothing like bloody Hotlips. Hotlips was sort of thick, and she was with that stupid guy – what’s his name?  Major Burns. I really didn’t like him. Lucy does have nice lips though. There’s just the faintest trace of a moustache along her top lip – just a very fine shading. You’d think that would be fairly off-putting but somehow it just makes her even sexier.
‘What are you thinking?’ he prompts.
‘Major Burns and Hotlips’ I say, fairly hurriedly. ‘Why did she like him so much? He was a complete wanker.’
‘I don’t know.’ He thinks about it for a while with me. ‘Do you think it was bad writing – unrealistic – that a woman like her would be interested in a man like him?’
I consider it – it doesn’t seem unrealistic now I come to think about it.
‘I don’t really understand what women see in men to be honest’ I say. ‘I always think they just sort of tolerate us.’
‘That’s fairly harsh’ he says. ‘You don’t think much of men then?’
‘Well, look at them...’
‘Who exactly are we talking about? Me? You?’
‘No. I don’t know. No, not you, not a lot of men I suppose. Some men.’
‘Ray and Harry?’ he suggests. I nod. Absolutely. ‘Women seem to really like men like Ray. I have no idea why.’
‘What about Hawkeye Pearce?’ he says, grinning at me. ‘What about Trapper – what about Radar?’
I have to grin. I remember them. They feel like old friends. ‘What about Klinger?’ I say and we both nod and laugh.
‘It’s weird,’ I continue ‘because they were in the middle of a war, and there was all blood and guts, and yet...’
‘And yet?’
‘They were together. It felt like they were really close.’
‘Like a family?’ he suggests.
I pointedly ignore that. ‘They were all in it together’ I say.
‘You feel like you’d have been comfortable with them there?’
‘Maybe. Apart for all the shelling and so on.’
‘Obviously.’
‘Oh I don’t know though. Maybe not. Usually, sooner or later. I suppose... I make people feel...’ I cast around for the right word.
‘Uncomfortable?’ he says.
I nod. ‘Sort of’ I say. ‘They feel...’ I shrug. I can’t think of the word – pissed off? embarrassed? frustrated? ‘Awkward’ I say finally. ‘Not relaxed anyway, with me around.’ I sit and look into space for a while. I know it’d be exactly the same as it always is. And there’d be nowhere to go. I’d be trapped with them, at MASH 4077.
‘I always wanted to be like Hawkeye’ I say after a while ‘you know, sort of cool and witty, and sarcastic, but not nasty – d’you know what I mean?’
‘I preferred BJ’ he says.
‘Excuse me?’
‘B.J. Honeycut. You remember – I’m not sure if he replaced Trapper or Trapper replaced him. They were both cute’ he muses. ‘But enough about me - tell me more about why you liked Hawkeye.’
I think about it a bit more. ‘Women liked him’ I say. ‘He always had women around.’
‘He rather used them though didn’t he?’
I feel slightly affronted. ‘How do you mean?’
‘Well, different nurse every night – BJ wasn’t like that.’
‘Maybe he had something going on with Radar.’
‘No, Radar had a thing with the colonel. Definitely. I think maybe BJ just went with out the helicopter boys.’
‘I think – getting back to the subject (ahem) – I wanted to be Hawkeye because he was in the middle of everything – everybody liked him, or respected him anyhow, but he didn’t try too hard – he didn’t try to impress anyone. In fact he just said what he thought didn’t he – people respected him for that – even if it wasn’t what they wanted to hear – he got away with it. I guess he was a good surgeon too, which helped...’
‘Plus he had the war to be sarcastic about, which everybody agreed...’
‘Do you remember the episode where he’s cracking up and he remembers seeing a Korean woman kill a chicken to keep it quiet so the enemy won’t hear it? They were on a wrecked bus – but it turns out it wasn’t a chicken, it was actually her baby she smothered, and that’s why he’s so messed up.’
‘I remember that episode.’ He nods slowly. We take a moment to think about that.
‘But they all still looked after him when he got back’ I say, ‘and helped him, even though he was seriously losing it, even though he was a real mess...’
Joe looks at me for a while – frowning a little. ‘Well of course. Why wouldn’t they?’ he says.
‘I don’t know’ I shrug. But I do know and it makes me feel very sorry for myself. I can’t imagine what that’s like – to have people care that much, to try that hard. They’d have just told me to pull myself together and got on with what they were doing.
But I wasn’t in a war. I didn’t see a woman smother her baby so the enemy wouldn’t catch her and rape her. All that happened to me was I couldn’t keep up at school and I got dumped. Boohoo. Poor old me.
To continue reading, either go to Lulu to buy or download the book, or let me know when you want to read the next bit and I'll post it on the blog.