Andrea V – Life Choices

‘So what were you like, as a child?’ she says as I arrive.
‘Oh Gahd, do I have tah?’ I drawl, pretending to collapse with ennui.
‘Not if you don’t want to.’
‘I don’t remember. It was a very long time ago.’ I sit back and think. What was I like? Oh God. The horror!
‘I was useless – always sort of saying stupid things, always sort of wrong somehow, uncomfortable, out of place.’
‘Give me an example.’
‘I don’t know. Errrm.... I know – for a while there, when I was about fifteen I thought I was The Fonze...’
It’s nice to see her laugh at my pain, really it is.
‘I got this fake leather jacket and some sunglasses and a white tee shirt. I thought I looked so cool.’
‘You were finding your identity, identifying with a hero figure’ she says charitably.
‘Nobody else did anything like that though.’
‘What did your friends say?’ She’s still giggling.
‘They mostly ignored me. They were all useless tossers themselves anyway. At least I was trying to look cool. I had a Starsky cardigan too...’
‘Very stylish.’
I look at her smiling at me. It does seem funny now.
‘I take it the other kids didn’t play with you much.’
‘Well, I don’t know which came first – me avoiding them or them avoiding me. It is strange now I come to think about it. I wasn’t unhappy I don’t think, being on my own. It was just, when I did try to play with them or go and see them at home or whatever kids do, it was always somehow difficult. We never just relaxed and had a laugh or even a fight for that matter. I always felt uncomfortable somehow, like I didn’t know how it all worked, what to say, and I didn’t understand their games – I hated football, and I didn’t want to fight, and the girls wouldn’t play with me, so I suppose I was on my own a lot.’
‘So you had to use your imagination, invent things.’
‘I suppose so.’
‘Sounds hard.’
‘I’m not saying this to get sympathy (but thank you anyway), I just never really thought about it before. It’s just like, I didn’t get it. Like I missed something – some vital piece of information.’ I think about it for a while, trying to think of an analogy.
‘I’ve got it’ I say. ‘It’s like, I’ve always been able to draw. I don’t know why, it just comes naturally. I never had any training, I just know how to do it – I understand how perspective works, and how colours combine, and how to put what is in front of me on a piece of paper, or make it in a piece of clay. I’m not saying it’ll be brilliant, but it’ll be recognisable, and I know, if I chose to, I could go to classes and become good. It’s something I always knew I could do. Now, you talk to my sister Amelia – she went to art classes for years and she never really got it. She can follow instructions, copy a picture, but stick her alone in a field with a pad and an easel and she’s lost.’
‘I’d be the same. I can’t draw to save my life.’
‘See that’s what it’s like. But I thought about it a lot back then, tried to work it out – how to be normal. I picked up some tricks. I learned to avoid certain kinds of people – most people actually – “real” men, uptight fussy anxious women, “right-minded” god fearing folk. Children... I learned to appreciate my own company. But it took a long time. Up until I was in my early twenties I just kept on trying, making a twat of myself, over and over again.
‘So, what subjects were you good at, at school I mean?’
‘I don’t think I really stood out at anything. Well, art and writing stories but that all stopped at secondary school really. Once they pointed out that actually my spelling and grammar were abysmal, well, you know... I enjoyed reading though.’
‘What about the art?’
‘I kept that up whether they wanted me to or not. That was the thing that kept me going really, and then actually I really got into languages later, Spanish especially, and my biology and English were ok. My maths was terrible and I always hated sports.’
‘And you took your A levels’
‘I failed my A levels.’
‘But you were entered for them. You can’t have been that useless.’
‘I suppose not...’

The next session, she starts with ‘One thing has been bothering me about your story Gabriel...’
Here we go, I think. I feel like I’m being held for questioning.
‘Given your family background and the fact that you don’t seem to have had a major drink or drugs problem or serious mental illness - well, going on the street seems pretty extreme... as a life choice I mean.’ She’s flicking through some papers on her lap. Evidently I am on file here as well. I’ll ask if I can have a look later. I bet she says no. But, anyway, I think about what she has asked. It’s a good question.
‘Well, it was choice, and at the same time it wasn’t’ I begin. ‘I couldn’t stay at home with my parents all my life. And I do mean “couldn’t”. We’d have ended up hurting each other I’m sure of it. But then, on the other hand I suppose I always knew, if things got too bad... they were there.’
I tail off unconvincingly. It’s not good enough and I know it.
‘But you didn’t have to live on the street is what I’m getting at. You could have stayed in a hostel or something.’
‘And I did. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to give you the impression I was out on the pavement the whole time. I stayed in squats a lot for example. It was just, sometimes... it didn’t work out, or I ran out of money, or I pissed someone off and I had to move out. I don’t know...’
She frowns. I know what she’s thinking. She’s wondering why I put myself through all that... all that brutality, because it was – really brutal at times, when I could have just gone home to Ma and Pa. Was I just too proud? It doesn’t seem enough. What the hell was I thinking? I didn’t really fit in with the other homeless either. It seems stupid but I couldn’t even be a proper homeless person. I couldn’t even get that right.
I look about for inspiration. I notice that the curtains here are the same as at my Auntie Jen’s place. I can’t think what to say.
She looks at me intently. She’s working something out. Here it comes.
‘I just don’t really see why an obviously intelligent person like yourself would let this happen, do you know what I mean? All that dirt and degradation, and humiliation. Why did you put up with it?’
I sit back and think about it briefly. Where to begin?
‘I just never really saw it that way.... I suppose, given the alternatives. People go on about the disgrace of it, signing on, queuing up for hand-outs, being dependent on charity, on your parents, whatever, but then if you get a job you’re still sucking up to the boss, putting up with a lot of arbitrary crap from ignorant customers. You’re still dependent whichever way you look at it. Going in to sign on once a fortnight - it’s not so bad.’
I see Andrea shift irritably, trying to decide which of the many obvious objections to this she wants to begin with. I let her stew for a moment and then say blandly ‘Obviously I’d rather have been doing something worthwhile with my time and I can honestly say, in all the years I spent as a drop-out, I don’t think I ever met anyone who genuinely wanted to just do nothing with their life. They’d have all wanted to do something worthwhile, given the choice. Of course people’s ideas of what counts as worthwhile vary.’
I think back to how I was then and it occurs to me that life would have been a lot easier if I’d been able to just do as I was told once in a while, know my place in life - get a normal job, a tolerable wife, some irritating kids, live somewhere safe. Behold the happy moron...
‘I can’t believe some of the crap I was offered at the job centre’ I muse casually. ‘I mean, the employers don’t put up with just any old employees. I don’t see why we should be expected to put up with just any old job. I don’t think the employers were even trying half the time... just expected it all to be handed to them on a plate...’
I watch for her reaction. Did she see what I just did there? Apparently not. Either that or she doesn’t want to give me the satisfaction.
‘Well I suppose...’ she begins wearily, ‘I suppose it’s about doing what has to be done, fulfilling a role...’
‘So the needs of the individual must be subject to the demands of the economy. Sounds suspiciously like totalitarianism to me.’
She sits back, looks about the room. She’s had enough, and so have I. I suddenly feel terribly tired. I want to stop. I lean back too, shrug, shake my head.
‘I don’t know. I suppose a lot of it was wanting to be independent, get away somewhere, be on my own, not have to deal with all that crap – parents, bosses, landlords, social workers, people in general.’
She stares at me for a while. I can’t imagine what she thinks of me.

‘You seem to be making friends here ok’ she says eventually. ‘What’s different?’
‘I don’t know actually. I have had friends before you know – later on in life. Not usually really close friends, but still, you know, acquaintances. And of course it’s early days still...’
‘You don’t think you’ll stay friends for long?’
‘I don’t know. But it’s different here isn’t it. I can be a normal person here – relatively speaking. No worries about money and status here, or “What do you intend to do with your life sonny Jim?” I can be me here.’
‘You’re happy here.’
‘You know I think I am. What have you got there?’
‘What?’
‘The papers...’
‘Oh, just some notes – to jog my memory – questions I want to ask, things that occur to me between sessions.’
‘Can I have a look?’
‘Be my guest.’ And she hands them to me and I’m flattered to see how much she seems to think about me. I hand them back and she smiles at me knowingly.

Voyage IV – Black Bryony

I saw Cathy and Trevor and the others from time to time. (Paul, it turned out, was not particularly a friend of theirs and was usually to be seen in less articulate company). I’d smile and nod when I saw them but it took Fiona to actually come and ask me to join them before I felt ok to go over. I’d always felt awkward in a new situation – everyone already seemed to have made friends and I didn’t want to have to intrude. I don’t know if it’s just me, but I always have this feeling that you can’t just expect to join in with a conversation, at a party for instance, unless you have something very interesting to offer and everyone is going to like you (which is obviously not the case here). Otherwise it’s a bit presumptuous I think. You’ve got no friends but for some reason you expect them to take you in anyway. I just don’t want to make a nuisance of myself.
So anyway, it was nice when Fiona came and asked me to come and join them, although I still thought at the time it was partly out of charity. She sat down and asked me what I was reading, tipping the book up to look at the title, then pushing it over so I couldn’t read at all. ‘Come and join us’ she said. ‘It’s happy hour.’ The drinks were always free so I guessed she was making another point.
I went over and she introduced me to everyone. We dourly nodded our greetings and I sat down and Fiona went and got the drinks. No one said anything much. I felt like I’d butted in on the middle of something, and the panic began to rise. I could feel it swelling up under my diaphragm. I knew they wouldn’t want me here, but I didn’t feel I could just get up and go. Maybe I could go and help Fiona I thought, but I could see she was already on her way back now with the drinks on a tray. Once everyone had got their drinks she went and found another chair (I realised too late I had taken her seat) and we all sat in silence and sipped. Everyone looked very serious. I felt terribly self-conscious. I thought I’d died and left all this pressure behind. This was why I went and hid down the bottom of the garden for twenty years – to avoid just this sort of situation.
‘Do you know anything about human biology?’ said Trevor eventually to me. I wasn’t sure what he was implying. He looked almost menacing – pent up, frustrated.
‘Not really’ I said ‘Why?’
‘Aorta!’ said Cathy suddenly, hitting the table, and suddenly everybody relaxed and congratulated her.
‘That’s the one’ said Trevor. ‘And the other one’s the vena-cava.’
‘That’s it. I knew I’d get it eventually’ said Cathy, taking a long drink from her pint.
‘So tell us about yourself er... Gabriel?' said Trevor. ‘We saw you sitting on your tod over there - weren’t sure if you wanted interrupting or not? Is it a good book?’
‘It’s alright, but yes’ I said, much relieved. ‘I needed a break.’
‘You’ve come to the right place’ said Fiona raising her glass and winking at me, a fag end between her fingers.

I went and sat with them quite a lot after that. Mostly we just sat together and read or ate and drank or looked at the sea. Sometimes we discussed what was going on here, what this was all for. None of us was very sure, and our guides were so far being a bit cagey.
What we did know was that we were going to live our lives again at the end of it, enriched, it was hoped, by what we learned here.
‘I’m not learning anything I don’t think’ says Trevor one morning, dunking his croissant in his chocolate. ‘It all seems like a bit of a waste of time if you ask me.’
‘You’re dead you berk’ says Fiona jovially. ‘Do you have something better to do?’
‘I have a theory’ says Bryony, a pale girl with very straight black hair and wearing what appear to be widow’s weeds. We turn to listen. She doesn't normally say much at all.
‘There isn’t a point’ she announces dismissively. ‘It’s like life – it’s just something you go through until...’
‘Until what?’ asks Cathy despondently.
‘Until you stop, I suppose.’
‘That’s a bit bleak’ says Harvey, the third man around the table.
‘I don’t know what any of this means’ says Cathy, rather hopelessly. ‘I just want to go home.’
And there’s nothing any of us can say to that. Trevor looks around, absentmindedly mushing his croissant. Harvey looks at his book but doesn’t focus. Fiona grips Cathy’s hand. I try to appear downcast too, but I’m actually quite enjoying myself.

‘I was a ghost for a while’ says Bryony cheerfully another morning at breakfast.
None of us can hide our amazement. We sit there looking at her, speechless, except for Fiona, who says ‘Shit. What was that like?’
‘Fairly boring actually. Less fun than you’d think anyway.’
‘How’d it happen?’ I say. ‘Did you put in a request or something?’
Bryony is dissecting a Danish with her fingertips and feeding the tiny pieces between her ruby-rouged lips. She’s amazingly erotic at times.
She shrugs, not looking at us. ‘I spoke to Ian, my guide. He said it’s like they say. Your spirit just sort of hangs around if it has unfinished business in the world.’
‘What was yours?’
‘What?’
‘Your unfinished business?’
‘Oh. Doesn’t matter. Anyway. Basically it’s a bust. You can’t do anything useful at all. It’s like one of those nightmares where you know you have to do something but you can’t quite get it together. You can’t even remember what it was you were supposed to be doing most of the time.’ She feeds the last morsel in without touching the sides and looks around at us rather too directly. It’s a bit unnerving actually. The black eye liner doesn’t help.
‘But what’s the point of that?’ says Fiona.
‘Of what?’
‘Of being back in the world as a ghost and not being able to do anything while you’re there. It’s stupid.’
‘Well duh, I don’t think there is a point. That’s what I’ve been saying. It’s just something that happens. You die, you’re not really paying attention for whatever reason and you fail to go toward the light or something. I don’t know.’
‘But did you end up just, well, haunting somewhere?’ asks Cathy. Bryony nods and turns to her blackcurrant smoothie, pumping the straw up and down.
‘I was just stuck in the house where... well anyway’ she flicks her fingers, as if shooing away a troublesome bat, or perhaps drying her purple nail varnish. ‘I just kept coming down this hallway, over and over again. And I knew something was supposed to happen but I couldn’t figure out what. Then I found myself back at the beginning, starting all over again.’
‘How long did that go on for?’ and ‘Did anyone see you?’ say Fiona and I at the same time.
‘Seemed like forever. I guess time is even more irrelevant when you’re a ghost, and yes, once.’
‘Anyone you knew?’
She goes quiet and looks away. I suppose this is what she doesn’t want to talk about.
‘Did you achieve what you wanted to?’ asks Cathy, clearly concerned.
Bryony doesn’t respond.
‘How did you get here?’ I say.
‘Look I just gave up ok? Sheesh I wish I’d never told you guys. I just found myself giving up on it and... ended up here. Look I’m sorry. I wish I’d never started this. Can we change the subject?’
We all agree, reluctantly, to change the subject.
We can talk about it later, after she’s gone...

Joe XIII – Sisters

‘The trouble with all that school stuff we were talking about before’ Joe begins, ‘I believe it’s all based on early childhood experiences, and as you pointed out at the beginning, even if you can change how you react later on it can still be there, in your subconscious, affecting everything you do, undermining your confidence. A lot of what Freud said has been discredited since, but I think that part holds true. I don’t envy you.’
He sits, hunched, looking about, I don’t know what’s coming next.
‘All the same’ he says, ‘it doesn’t seem enough, considering what came next. There has to be something else.’
‘Like what?’
‘I can’t tell – some childhood trauma? Something your parents did? Some other family member? Do you see what I’m getting at?’
‘But maybe that’s just how I was’ I shrug. ‘Maybe I was born that way.’
‘What? Thinking you were a useless prat and everything you did was probably wrong? Oh yes, children are born like that all the time.’
‘Maybe it was school then’ I say. ‘I think things were alright before I went to school.’
‘Do you remember anything from before you went to school?’
‘I know we lived on a farm. It was a little place out in the country. I don’t know exactly where. Apparently I was always running down the garden in all weathers with no clothes on. Justine says they used to call me nature boy. I remember there was a big garden. I used to come in freezing, covered in mud and scratches and grazes and bruises but I never complained about it – I just carried on. That’s what they told me. I don’t think anybody remembers much about that time do they?’
‘Just as well sometimes’ he says. He seems sort of angry – I’m not sure what about. I don’t know if I’ve said something wrong. I mean, they weren’t bad parents. Maybe I was just difficult. I don’t know. I don’t miss them at all – I know that. I feel terrible about that. I feel like I should miss them but I don’t. I miss my sisters.
‘Do you want to know about my sisters?’ I say, conversationally.
‘Er... yes, I do actually. Tell me.’ He looks relieved to change the subject. ‘They were quite a bit older than you weren’t they?’
‘My first memories of them they already seemed like adults to me. I suppose they were just teenagers but they seemed so... grown up. And they had all these really exciting friends round and all this amazing music was going on in the next room. They let me stay in with them sometimes if I was quiet. I loved that.’
‘And they helped look after you?’
‘When my dad was at work. I have this memory of the three of us on the sofa and I’m squashed in between them in my pyjamas, like a little puppy or something, and I can feel that fatty bit over Amelia’s hips through the horrible acrylic material she’s got on and I was just fiddling with it and making her giggle. She wasn’t fat – both of them were quite slim, but she was nice and soft too. And she had this really strong smell – I think my head was right up under her arm pit and I was so warm, and it was dark except for the gas fire and I remember thinking “I want to be here for ever”. I think I must have been about four.’
‘So they’d have been, what? In their mid teens?’
‘About that.’
‘Describe them for me.’
This is good. I like talking about my sisters. ‘Well, Justine was the older one, about twelve when I was born. She was quite tall, nearly six foot I think, and she had very straight red hair and this very long, very serious sort of face and you’d think she was really going to give you a hard time and then she’d say something ridiculous and it was just hilarious. She was quite a serious person though. She wanted to go to university but changed her mind. I don’t know why. She was the one that looked after me most. Mum used to say she was the one that could be trusted. I think a lot of people were a bit scared of her but she was always good with me.
And then with Amelia, the younger one, she had this long dark hair, like mum, and really lovely dark eyes. I loved her eyes – they were almost black sometimes, the irises. I used to love watching her getting ready to go out, putting on her make-up and getting dressed. She was always going out and getting into trouble, having to phone dad to come and fetch her in the middle of the night. But she did look after me sometimes too. Nothing bad ever happened.’
‘What happened when they left home?’
‘Oh god, that was terrible. I was about ten I think when Amelia got married, and then Justine moved out soon after. It was just horrible. Mum said I made a terrible fuss about it. They were trying to get me to cheer up for ages.’
‘How did they do that, cheer you up I mean?’
‘Oh, I don’t know. They just, you know, told me to go out more, make some proper friends my own age...’
‘Which you did?’
‘Not really. I don’t really remember. It doesn’t matter...’
I can feel him watching me. I focus hard on the legs of the table – curved, shiny.
‘Just take it easy Gabriel’ he says. Joe has that worried look on his face again. I wish he wouldn’t. He sits and looks at me for quite a while.
‘Do you want to go on?’ he says quietly.
‘I don’t know’ I say. And I don’t. I don’t know anything. He lets me go.
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Joe XI – A levels

‘Tell me about school, and try and do it without saying “It was alright” or “I don’t know.” Go.’
‘I hated it. It was shit. How’s that?’
He looks impressed ‘Brief, to the point, certainly. What happened? Did you get into trouble a lot, or get bullied or what? I seem to remember, before you said not.’
I look about. I don’t want to talk about this shit. Can’t he tell?
He flicks through some papers, finds something, reads rapidly, moving his lips and gesticulating a little as if re-enacting our conversation. ‘Blah blah blah... invisibility. You relied on being inconspicuous apparently.’ He raises his eyebrows. I nod.
‘What were you avoiding?’
‘Attention.’
‘Obviously. Why?’
I want to say I don’t know but I stop myself just in time. Then I decide I really don’t know and just say so.
‘Did you think you might get into trouble?’
‘Not really. Mostly it just seemed less complicated that way.’
‘Dealing with people was complicated?’
‘Definitely.’
‘But you had friends.’
‘Sort of. There were a few I hung around with at breaks sometimes, but we weren’t close. Actually they were really irritating. I spent a lot of time on my own.’
‘So, why didn’t you go and make other friends?’
‘I don’t know... Shit, sorry.’
‘I’m going to install an “I don’t know” box if you’re not careful, except there’s no money here of course. Anyway, go on. Other friends?’
‘I just didn’t want to hang around them, make a nuisance of myself. That sounds pathetic doesn’t it.’
‘It didn’t occur to you that they might want to be friends with you?’
‘No. And I’m fairly sure they didn’t. Everybody was just in their groups already – they didn’t want me coming over and saying (I do a whining voice)“Can I be in your gang?” It would have sounded feeble anyway, like I thought they were so cool.’
‘But other kids do that all the time, though not usually in that voice. They go up and say “Can I join in?” or, you know, “Can I come along?” well, Kirsty did anyway.’
‘But she was a kid wasn’t she, and girls are different anyway.’
‘I don’t know. Little girls can be complete b... I don’t know whats.’
‘Well, maybe I was too proud.’
‘So you stayed with the losers because that way you didn’t have to risk rejection. Is that it?’
I think about this. Was I just too proud?
‘No, I really think the other groups didn’t want me around’ I decide finally. ‘I was a bit of a weirdo. It would have just been pointless humiliation, and actually, if I’d been in with the cool kids it would just have been complicated in a different way.’
‘How?’
‘I think they were quite, like show-offs, you know, joking around, being cheeky, taking the piss out of the girls and so on.’
‘You weren’t really like that I suppose.’
‘It would have been really hard work.’
‘Whereas with your loser friends you didn’t have to try at all. Wasn’t there anybody else you could hang around with?’
‘I can’t think of anyone in particular. We didn’t mix much with other classes, so that was it – weirdos or dudes – take your pick.’
‘Or girls presumably.’
‘There weren’t really any boy-girl friendships then.’
‘What age was this?’
‘Secondary school, up to about sixteen. It was better later, in the sixth form.’
‘How was that?’
‘Well I hung out with the people who’d been in the class above and they were kind of weird, but cool too – university types I suppose. Some of them went travelling – inter-railing and or went to a lot of concerts. Some of them were really clever. Some of them actually discussed chemistry in free periods...’
‘God how dreadful.’
‘I know...’

‘How was your school work?’
‘I don’t remember much about it actually. It all seemed a bit of a mess – I was always handing stuff in late, getting into trouble.’
‘And yet you were always near the top as I understand it – one of the brighter students.’
‘That’s not how it seemed at the time. It just all seemed like a huge mess.’
‘Did that worry you?’
‘I just didn’t think about it really. ‘
‘But it must have become a problem, with dead-lines and so on.’
‘I suppose it was always in the back of my mind. It just all looked like a horrible muddle, and then it got worse because I missed stuff or didn’t really understand and then we moved on to the next topic and I was just completely lost. I have no idea how I passed my O levels.’
‘But would you describe yourself as fairly relaxed about it?’
‘No, I just stayed away from it as much as I could. I think if I’d actually thought about all the stuff I was supposed to be doing I’d have had a breakdown or something. I had quite a lot of time off, feeling sick, headaches and stuff. Or in the sixth form I just went away.’
‘Where to?’
‘Over the Downs. I’d set out for college in the morning and just walk straight past the school and up onto the hills.’
‘And the teachers? What did they do?’
‘I don’t think they knew really. I mean, obviously they knew I wasn’t doing very well. They didn’t know what I was doing.’
‘Did they ask?’
‘Ask what?’
‘Did they talk to you about why you were having trouble?’
‘Well, they did the whole “Pull your socks up or else” speech. Everybody was just fed up with me.’
He gets up and begins to pace about ‘You see this is what really pisses me off’ he says. ‘They can see you’re struggling, or something’s not right anyway and they know you’re bright, so if you’re not stupid they assume you can’t be bothered and the only strategy they have available is to give you a bollocking, like that’ll do the trick. It really gets my goat – I mean, it’s not the fifties any more – haven’t these people heard of educational psychology?’
‘But it’s not all that easy to talk to teenagers...’
‘What? Who the hell told you that?’
‘Er... well my mum, for a start...’
‘I bet she did. I bet she did.’ He’s really pacing now, double time. ‘Shit I can’t believe it’ he says. ‘Really makes me mad. So I suppose when you came to do your A levels that’s when it all fell apart because you couldn’t just muddle through any more, and I bet they still didn’t ask you what was going on, just told you to buck your ideas up.’
‘I don’t think I knew what was wrong either, to tell them I mean.’
He shakes his head frustratedly. ‘How long is it since this all happened?’ he says.
‘A year, eighteen months? It was before the end of the first year things started to go really wrong.’
‘You think you’ve changed much in that time? Apart from having died and so on of course.’
I shrug.
‘But we’re having this conversation now, and are you “hard” to talk to? Are we not having a conversation?’
‘Yes but...’
He leans over me, a hand on each arm of the chair. He looks intently into my face. ‘I could have helped you’ he says fiercely ‘and I’m not even a trained fucking shrink. Even I could have got you your passes. Shit!’ he says and bangs his fist down. He goes and resumes his seat. ‘I wish we had more time’ he says.
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Joe X – Dreams

Another day, another session, and he’s consulting some papers on his lap when I come in. He doesn’t look up but says ‘I got you a coffee. Two sugars, right?’
I sit down. ‘Thanks’ I say.
‘I want to pursue this question about your, er, putative career...’
I snort with derision. My “career” indeed. That’s a laugh.
‘Why do you find that funny?’
I shake my head and try to avoid saying ‘I don’t know’. I do know, it’s because it’s unimaginable, me, with a career. I have an image of all those people in suits or uniforms being terribly important and responsible and serious about life. I can’t imagine myself like that.
‘Ok’ he says, trying not to look exasperated, ‘what would you most like to have done, no, what would you most like to have changed about your life? Anything you like...’ He clicks his fingers ‘...different. What would it be?’
Again I sit and my mind goes all over the place. So many things, none of them very realistic...
‘Go on, a place of your own? A round the world air ticket?’
God, I think, yes, either of those. To get away, be myself somehow. I nod and he smiles, and I think he’s going to say ‘But you need to earn the money first’, which my mum would have said (she used to take great pleasure in “bringing me back to the real world” as she called it) but he doesn’t.
‘Alone or with someone else?’
I consider the people I know, go through them one by one. There’s nobody.
‘Maybe I could meet people when I’m out there’ I suggest.
‘Highly likely’ he says.
I have this image of a group of fairly cool but not too pretentious people, maybe about my own age, maybe more varied, male and female, hanging out in a bar, or just in someone’s room, and I feel completely relaxed with them, and we chat but I don’t feel I necessarily have to say anything. It’s just easy, and there’s a girl...
‘What are you thinking about?’ he says.
‘Oh, this fantasy I have, of a group of friends, a girlfriend...’
‘What are they like?’
‘I really don’t know. They’re just friendly, relaxed...’
‘Anyone you know?’
‘Not really.’
‘What about the girl? What’s she like?’
I feel a little inhibited at first, but then it occurs to me I wouldn’t mind him telling me about his boyfriend (maybe I should ask him some time) so I go on to talk about her, how she’s witty and funny and likes a lot of attention, and how we spend a lot of time in bed just cuddling and listening to music...’
‘And having sex?’
I smile sheepishly. ‘Lots of sex’ I say.
‘I should bloody well hope so’ he says, cheerfully.
I take a moment to enjoy the fantasy. He watches my face. He sees it turn from happy reverie to hopeless.
‘What happened there?’
‘It’s just... the money. I lived with my parents for fuck’s sake. What am I going to do?’
I see him think about how to put it. ‘I actually don’t know Gabriel...’ He sees me sag a bit ‘But hang on. That’s not the point. The point is there’s no point in thinking about work and savings and insurance and all that crap if you don’t know what you want it for. You’re putting the cart before the horse Gabriel. We don’t live to work Gabriel. Live in your dreams for a while. Work out what you want to do, feel it, see it as a possibility. Then you find your way...’
‘But that’s all I have done Joe. I’ve done nothing but dream, and it just doesn’t make it seem any more possible.’ I’m almost in tears again, lost.
‘But what you’ve said doesn’t seem very impossible – friends, a girlfriend, a place of your own, a trip abroad...’
‘But it does. I have to work.’
‘That’s the finding your way part. We can talk about all that another time. The take-home message for today is just that your hopes are not unrealistic. Really. Ok?’
‘Ok.’
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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 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.
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Voyage VIII – Listening skills

I have to say, I’ve noticed there are an awful lot of good-looking women on this boat – more than you’d expect (but then, I suppose they’re all looking their best here aren’t they). There’s one in particular I keep seeing around who’s really gorgeous. I don’t seem to be able to stop looking at her and a couple of times she’s caught me and she’s given me that haughty sort of sideways smile, like she thinks she’s so much better than me. I’m used to this sort of reaction but it still bugs me. It’s not like I would do anything embarrassing. I’m only looking. Anyway, she’s way out of my league, that’s for sure.
Sometimes I slip into the kind of thoughts I used to have at home – worrying mostly – Am I going to be a complete looser forever? Am I going to be alone forever? And then it hits me – I’m dead – all that’s in the past. I don’t have to worry about all that any more. And then I actually feel better than I ever did when I was alive.
Mostly people here seem to be keeping themselves to themselves (apart from Ray and the others, and Lucy and her group of course). A few friendships seem to have started. The women seem to pair off more easily – find someone so they’re not just sitting there talking to themselves. The men don’t seem to be able to do it so easily though. It’s sad. They try but no one knows what to say. It’s like they don’t trust each other. Then they try to talk to the women but they don’t really know how to. No one really knows how to behave. No one knows what’s going to happen next.

I do sometimes wish I had someone to talk to other than Ray and the others. I know there’s Joe and I don’t want to seem ungrateful because I know he doesn’t have to be here, but it is a bit like a job for him. It can’t be easy. I saw him up on deck with his morning coffee the other day, watching the water (there’s a lot of really big fish here suddenly I’ve noticed) and I stood there casually and asked how things were going and he said ‘fine’ but didn’t elaborate, so I mentioned what Liz had told me (not naming her of course) and asked if there was any way she could find out what happened to her grandchildren. He looked like he was thinking about it but had other things on his mind. I said I was quite worried about her. He suggested I get her to come and see him. I said I would try although I was not hopeful, but I could tell the conversation was over.

Ray and the others just seem to want to spend their time complaining about things. Brenda especially just seems permanently pissed off with the service – not because it’s bad, which it isn’t – everyone’s very helpful here, but more I think because the staff aren’t servile enough. They’re not our inferiors. Like Joe they’ve chosen to stay behind to help out. Recently Brenda wanted to have a go at one of them about something – having to wait a while for her coffee I think it was, and she really flew off the handle at one of the girls from the kitchen. Ray wanted to call the manager but the girl just looked at them with this quizzical little smile on her face. ‘Well, there isn’t a manager, per se’ she said. Harry commented on her use of ‘per se’ but she just carried on calmly, speaking quietly, explaining where the facilities were where we could make our own coffees, should we so wish, and then with a bright smile she turned and went about her business.
‘Well...’ huffed Brenda, obviously very put out. But there was nothing she could do, except make her own coffee presumably, and she wouldn’t stoop to that, so that was it. She had to wait.

In some ways this is a lot like my old existence – going off to write or draw or to think, or just to look at the scenery, except no one’s having a go at me here.
I actually did get talking to someone new recently – a skinny little bloke with a pencil moustache. He looked about twenty-six but talked like my granddad - really nasal London accent. He had been a mechanic in Croydon apparently. I was being polite, passing the time, he was talking about his business – I wasn’t really listening properly – I’ve never been much interested in cars. Actually I was thinking about how much I wanted to get away to work on this painting I’d started. But I wasn’t exactly short of time, and I had wanted to talk to someone new. Why was I so keen to get away from him? I forced myself to listen.

I suppose some people just love talking don’t they. I don’t. Well, I say what I want to say, if I’ve got something to say. I get it over with, but some people just go on and on. They don’t just say ‘I went to the shop and got whatever it was half price’. They tell you the whole conversation – and he said and she said and then I said... Maybe that’s why I don’t have a lot of friends. You need a certain quantity of talk to fill the time to maintain a social life, and unless you’re a comic genius most of it’s not going to be that interesting is it? Or you could be lucky enough to have a friendship with ‘comfortable silences’, but that’s quite rare I think.
So I try to listen and it feels like a real effort to nod in the right places and smile and say ‘really?’ I feel like I want to go get a hammock but that’d be rude. I shift from foot to foot and try not to yawn.
‘I’m sorry’ he says sadly ‘I know I go on. I just miss her so much. I’m sorry. You go’ and I feel like a complete shit. I don’t even know who he’s been talking about.
‘No, it’s okay’ I say brightly, but I do have to sit down. ‘Do you fancy a coffee?’ I say, indicating the stairs down.
‘Nah, s’alright’ he says, and goes back to looking out to sea.
I want to ask him about ‘her’. I hope he didn’t notice I wasn’t really listening. Maybe he was just talking for himself, not really caring if anyone was listening. I hope so.
I couldn’t do Joe’s job. But then, maybe he’s not really listening either.
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