Andrea VII – It’s so very different for girls

‘It doesn’t sound like you had much of a love life’ she observes.
‘That’s putting it mildly’ I say.
‘What was the most exciting thing you ever did? – best sexual experience of your life.’
I think about it but I can’t think of anything much. Then I wonder why she’s suddenly so interested in my sex life.
‘I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours’ she says, mock flirtatiously. I wish she wouldn’t mess with me. She must have twigged what effect it has by now, surely.
‘I honestly don’t know’ I say wearily. I want to make something up but she’s right about the lying. I can’t seem to formulate a fabrication. I decide to go for comedy.
‘There was this time in the sauna at a festival.’
‘Really?’ she says. ‘They never seemed very sexual to me. Too hot for one thing.’
‘True, but on this occasion there was a woman in there I really fancied – amazing looking woman – amazon-like and we’re all in there, chatting as usual and it’s dark and there’s the burner in the middle and candles and the herbs and the steam – you know. And this woman asks me if I would like a massage.’
Andrea grins broadly at me. ‘What did you say?’
‘Well I said “Yes” of course, and I turn around and she’s kneading my back very expertly and making comments about how tense I seem and I’m like “You don’t know the half of it lady”, and I don’t know what to think.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Well you’ve been there. There’s an etiquette, isn’t there. The festival sauna is not about sex. It’s about relaxation and fellowship with nature or something. I mean sure – we all check out each other’s bods don’t we.’
‘Absolutely.’
‘But it would be bad form to do anything about it actually in the sauna. Am I right?’
‘Broadly.’
I look at her doubtfully. ‘Broadly’ she says. There was so much I didn’t understand in life.
‘Anyway, so I have to assume she’s just being a hippy. Nakedness – it’s no big deal and she just wanted to help me relax. That’s what I told myself.’
‘Did you think her behaviour was unusual?’ she asks.
‘No. Not really. I told myself she was just being friendly.’
‘She probably was.’
‘Very probably, but anyhow, I don’t feel friendly. That’s the problem. I feel horny, and if there’s one total no-no in festie sauna etiquette it’s getting a hard-on.’
‘What did you do?’ she grins, waiting for the punch line.
‘Well I passed out in the shower, didn’t I.’
She falls about, clapping her hands and rolling back in her seat.
‘Really?’
‘Really. I think all my blood had rushed to my – I don’t know where. It wasn’t in my penis and it clearly wasn’t in my brain.’
‘So what happened then?’
‘Nothing. I think she really was just being friendly. Maybe a bit flirtatious, but I don’t think she was really interested in me.’
She’s unconvinced I can tell.
‘I’m not entirely sure either, but I tried to talk to her afterwards and nothing happened.’
‘Do you want to hear mine?’ she asks gleefully. I don’t really but I shouldn’t be rude.
‘Does it involve public nudity?’
‘Yes, and cunnilingus. Me and a mate on the top of a late bus in Aberystwyth.’
I shake my head. ‘I can’t take this any more’ I say jokingly, but I’m not really joking. Why had everyone been having so much more fun than me?
‘What’s wrong?’ she says finally realising I am not laughing.
‘It’s not funny’ I say. ‘Really it’s not. I don’t want to sound like some pathetic whinger but it’s not funny when everybody else is doing it and...’ and I shake my head. ‘Actually it wasn’t just me. I knew a few other lads like me – nice ordinary lads, not weirdos, not unsanitary – went years without once getting any. Can you imagine what that’s like?’
‘Not really.’
I look into her eyes. She really doesn't. She doesn't get it at all.
‘Well’ I shrug, ‘It’s different for girls, as the man said.’
It seemed to me at the time that any of the girls I knew, with a few rather gross exceptions, could have had it any time they liked with no more subterfuge than a smile. We on the other hand were just gagging for it. Maybe the girls didn’t really want it, maybe they did, but, short of rape, it was their choice. We, on the other hand, because we were not rapists, were forced to wait.

‘Do you know how sexualised your average adolescent boy’s life is?’ I say.
‘How d’you mean?’
‘Porn, fantasising, looking at girls, wanking, permanent hard-on, all day, every day, nights too. Not getting to sleep before three in the morning some nights because you can’t stop thinking about it. And you look around at the girls in the class and that little group of ‘cool’ lads and you hate them and want to be them at the same time. And that’s it – just girls looking at you like you’re something someone’s walked in off the road. So much power...’ I take a moment to think about that, how utterly derisible it made me feel. ‘And it goes on forever, years.’
I can see she still doesn’t get it.
‘Some days’ I say, ‘I’d be out walking in the countryside and I’d come across some fragments from a porno mag all tatty and stuck together in a hedge and it would be like treasure trove.’ I sit and shake my head slowly. ‘You want to know my best sex story? Well that’s it pretty much.’ I know I’m being melodramatic but I can’t help it. ‘The pressure is awesome – I mean that literally, in every possible sense. You can’t imagine.’
‘But you did lose your virginity eventually?’
‘Yes I did.’
‘And?’
‘It was alright.’
She looks quite shocked. ‘Just alright?’ she says.
‘It wasn’t great. They were just drunken one-night-stands. I barely remember the first one.’
‘Did you not fancy any of them?’
‘Some. A bit.’
She looks disappointed by that. She’s not the only one.
‘But before that, weren’t there parties and so on, when you were younger? You know, teenage girls and boys out to have a good time? Clubs? Gangs?’
‘I was a bit of a loner to be honest. We’ve talked about this. I couldn’t do the flirting and the showing off and the chatting up thing.’
‘Maybe you didn’t really want it badly enough?’
I look coldly at her. I hate that phrase. I think of all the people I’ve known who weren’t really bothered but got it handed to them on a fucking plate. A fucking plate. That’s exactly what it would have been served on – like one of those stainless steel platters with spikes for carving the joint on. I can see it now.
‘Maybe I wanted it too much’ I say. ‘I know I looked kind of desperate sometimes. It’s not attractive.’ She nods. ‘It makes you rather humourless and intense – not much of a laugh.’
‘Yes’ she says at last. ‘I get that.’
I've got an example for her.
‘There was one party I went to – this would have been after everybody else had gone off to uni and I was left working in a DIY shop. There was a girl – Gill her name was – one of those rare and magnificent Bardot types. Fabulous woman. Way out of my league, although she was always pleasant to me.’
I can still picture her...
‘Anyway, the party was ok. I was feeling a bit out of place, as usual. I didn’t really know anyone and it was getting really late and I was just about to go for a walk, clear my head... Anyway, something stopped me... I don’t know what... I just had a bad feeling about it. So anyway I headed out the front instead and there she was, Gill, and she was with this guy Dave, who was bit of a jack-the-lad and he came and grabbed me and put his arm around my shoulders and dragged me up the steps onto the pavement and he said “Gill quite fancies you. Do you know that? She says she thinks you’re quite ‘dishy’” and she looks absolutely mortified and I don’t know where to look and he says “Ok, lets have it out” and everyone’s laughing – all the lads from the shop and some others and we’re out in the street and it’s a rainy night and he’s being really loud and he goes to undo his flies, in the middle of the road and he gets it out right there and then and says “Let’s see yours then” or something like that. “Lets see who’s the best man.” That’s it. And I look at it, and he’s got his hard-on alright but it’s not actually very impressive – sort of thin and pointy - a bit like a dog’s, and I’m not bragging but I knew mine would have been a lot more impressive than that thing.’
Andrea’s grinning at me, clearly enjoying herself.
‘But here’s the thing – I’m not going to get my cock out in the street am I? And even if I did it’d probably shrink up to the size of a walnut. So I just stood there, like a lemon. And I couldn’t do anything, and he flips this... thing back in his trousers like he’s a rock star or something and strides off down the street, a girl under each arm, one of them Gill, and I remember thinking ‘This is it. This is what it’s going to be like. You don’t have to be better. You just have to act like you are.’
‘You poor bugger’ she says without humour. ‘And that’s when you stopped trying?’
‘No, of course not. Well, not just that. It didn’t help. It encapsulates the situation nicely though, don’t you think?’
‘Did you see Gill again?’
‘I left that job soon after. Couldn’t face them. Worked for an accountant for a bit – can you imagine?’
‘Down hill from there?’
‘More or less.’
‘Do you think having a girlfriend would have helped?’
‘Who knows? It would have depended what she was like. She’d have had to have been quite tolerant.’
‘Well the girlfriends of young men usually have to be very tolerant in my experience.’
I laugh a little. It’s quite true. I hadn’t thought of it like that.
‘Maybe next time’ I say.
‘Maybe’ she says and we end the session there.

A few sessions later she says ‘Actually you can’t have been that desperate.’
I say ‘Why do you say that?’
She says ‘Well it’s not like nobody wanted you.’
I run through, in my mind, the images of the one or two women I knew had wanted me – sad, neurotic, lonely women.
‘So you could have had someone, if you’d wanted to.’
‘Well yes...’
‘What were they? Really disgusting old sluts or something?’
‘No. Absolutely not. I just didn’t...’
‘Fancy them? Did anybody else fancy them?’
‘I don’t know. They weren’t hideous or anything. A bit needy perhaps...’
She looks at me like I’ve just said something very funny.
‘They just weren’t quite what you were after’ she says.
I shrug. I suppose not. ‘But why should I? Why should I settle for something...’
‘No reason. You shouldn’t. But you’d be surprised how many do just settle for someone, because they can’t bear the thought of being alone or not having children. How many of the people you knew were in relationships that were even remotely enviable? Seriously. Think about it.’
‘Well...’
‘You didn’t settle. You held out. You didn’t give up. You thought you deserved better. I actually find that quite laudable. Good for you Gabriel.’
‘Thank you’ I say, not quite sure how to take that.

Voyage VI – Ciconiine?

I keep on thinking about Andrea. There’s something, I don’t know, strange about her, not quite right somehow. There’s something... I want to say ‘flakey’, insubstantial, lightweight, about her, considering the life she’s led. She doesn’t seem to know much about the world for such a supposed ‘high flyer’. I’m not sure what to make of her. She maintains that she just hated all the politics – just stayed away from it as much as she could. They were always going on about ‘realpolitik’ when all she could see was kids with their hands blown off and mothers who couldn’t afford to buy a fifty-pee rehydration pack for the baby. Ok I can see that.
I do like her though.
Oh for God’s sake. Here we go again. You’d think all this hormonal crap would stop when you get old and die but no. Apparently not. Bollocks bollocks bollocks.
I’m getting that feeling again, that itchy giggly feeling under the ribs I used to get when I was younger. I remember it coming on when the weather warmed up and the hedgerows were filled with buzzing and people sat outside with their drinks and the girls started to wear their little tops again, and I had that widespread wonderful feeling that at any moment, anywhere, it could happen. There might be a party, or an exhibition, or, I don’t know, just a chance encounter. It could happen any time. And I looked pretty sexy then, even if I say so myself – ‘chiselled and swarthy’ as they say. And I wasn’t skint. I had a place to stay with a bit of privacy and a shower. I couldn’t wait.
And then it got cold again. Then the money was all gone or something else happened...
Anyway she’s way out of my league.

I do have some idea when someone fancies me. I’m not completely naïve. I can tell Fiona is interested in me for example, and she’s nice enough – short black scruffy bob, a rather narrow, avian sort of face. ‘Aquiline’ I think is the word (I wonder what the term for ‘heron-like’ would be? It’s closer.)
She motions for me to sit next to her, and I do because it’s the only free seat, but once there I try to be as un-arousing as possible. I think she thinks I’m playing hard to get. Or maybe she’s just desperate, which would be typical. This happened to me a few times in life, mostly at the festies. Some overweight radical feminist with spikey red hair, biker jacket and purple Doc Martins would take a shine to me, and I didn’t like to be rude, so, to cut a long story short, that’s how I lost my virginity. It’s not that nobody ever fancied me exactly. It’s just that I suspected they were kind of desperate too. But I’m being unfair. They were good people generally – funny and warm, and I enjoyed their company, but not like that. So Fiona is into me. She can smell sexual frustration, but it’s not for her. I look at her again. Would I, if it came to it? No. I saw her without her jacket on the other day and she looked like one of those Mexican Day of the Dead figures. Frankly I’d rather she was obese.
Cathy isn’t bad looking, in a mumsy way, but she’s always so sad. She’s always thinking about the family she left behind and she blames herself – it was just a stupid car accident she says – she was on her mobile, going around a roundabout, and... She’s inconsolable, although we do keep trying.
Bryony is interesting, but terribly young and she had a horrible death that might have involved sexual assault so we don’t pry. She’s oddly cheerful for all that and makes us laugh with the things she comes out with. She used to be ‘One of those Goths’ she says, ‘so actually being dead is quite fun, by comparison.’ She’s the one I’d go for given the choice, despite the strange black hair. Goths are supposed to be quite good in bed, or so I hear. All that bondage gear I guess – piercings and tattoos.
Oh listen to me. Look at where I am. The afterlife is so not the place to get laid. Get a grip man.

Journey IV – Fuddy-Duddy

As time went on I was further disappointed to discover that the conversations I’d been so intrigued by simply revolved around what the people they knew had been getting up to. As I got to know more of them, so I was included in the conversations more. Maureen and Jo had apparently been sleeping together at first but then Jo got off with a guy called Graham at one of the parties and brought him back. Maureen seemed to be interested in Ian for a while after that (the guy with the shaved head) but he wasn’t all that keen and she disappeared soon afterwards.
To be fair, Darren’s contribution could be very entertaining but it was all incredibly trivial. Occasionally there’d be a long discussion about the music we were listening to or, among the girls, something daring or unflattering that had been worn at the last party. Very occasionally someone would start talking about something philosophical or spiritual but it was all very woolly and pretentious. There was vague talk of missed lectures and overdue assignments, and a suggestion that I enrol in something but I never came across anything even remotely resembling a college or university. Other times there’d be a brief but pointless argument over some trivial matter, usually started by Chloe – the short haired girl whose bottom I’d seen that first morning. Nobody really paid her much attention and she usually stomped back to her room and slammed the door, which was at least a refreshing display of genuine feeling.
Early on I had tried to talk a bit about the meaning of all this and why we were here, as we had on the boat, but it was impossible. They didn’t exactly avoid the subject, and sometimes some anecdotes and vague hypotheses were put forward but nobody seemed to want to pursue the subject. Sometimes I persisted but I got the impression that they thought I was being a bit too “intense” or “paranoid”. They thought I analysed things too much, as if thinking was the cause of the problem rather than vice-versa. I came across a similar argument when I was alive, as if my trying to work out what was wrong with my life was the cause of my problems.

And, as time went on I got used to the inconsequential exchanges, the shifting, superficial relationships, the unmemorable conversations. Most of the people were friendly, many were indifferent, few were hostile but there was no sense of any developing connection with anyone in particular. This made life casual and relaxed on one level but made me feel horribly vulnerable on another. If anything happened would anyone come to help me? Would I even be missed? Would any of us?
And there was a feeling of menace about the place, although I couldn’t begin to say what or who the menace was exactly. To me it was palpable in every empty doorway, in every darkened window, in the night time itself – not hostile or predatory exactly. I couldn’t imagine their motives, whoever, or whatever they were, living in the shadows. Sport perhaps? Fun?

Eventually though I found myself going with the flow. I shut up about my worries and my thoughts and found myself surprisingly content. It was a weird situation in that I looked and felt about thirty but still had all the memories of an old man. I was amazed every morning to see my flat, hard belly back again. I wandered about in just a pair of worn army surplus shorts, vest and para boots and looked, I thought, pretty good. It was exactly like life in fact, except without the worry of where the next meal was coming from and whether I was going to die of cold next winter. And thirty had been a good age for me, relatively speaking. I’d been to raves and festies and gigs and parties, I’d danced all night and hugged scores of strangers. This place was a bit like that, and it made me wonder just how old all these others (average age about twenty-two on the face of it) really were. Or maybe they’d all died young, having too much fun and this was their idea of heaven. In which case, what was I doing there?

And for a while it even came to seem quite interesting – or at least – it came to seem that it might get interesting. I enjoyed the music and no longer felt too old to get up and bop about. Also I no longer felt I was old enough to do without sex. I gave up on meeting anyone at a party and I stopped going to a lot of them (it was just too frustrating) but some of the girls at the house were pretty and seemed approachable and available, so I remained quietly optimistic on that front.
The menacing atmosphere of the town at night too, secluded as we were in our little island of music and warmth, provided an interesting backdrop. Sometimes, when the conversation drifted off and I was bored I would think about our isolation and vulnerability there in that little kitchen and when the evening became too sleepy and giggly I’d go and stand behind the sofa at the window, drawing the curtains behind me and look out at the street and the darkness, feeling the draught on my body, and I’d be sure I saw strange beings moving about out there. I accepted that I was probably just being paranoid but I couldn’t be sure. I felt fairly safe moving about during the day, and to some extent in a noisy group at night, but nothing would have made me go out there alone after dark. Nobody did. Even my route past the entrance to take the steps up to my room was something I preferred not to do alone and I always made sure the lights were on. My room I kept locked, and once I was up there I didn’t go out again until it was light.
I’m not sure how much the others felt the same way. I noticed they didn’t tell me there was nothing happening, only that they didn’t seem to think it was worth talking about.

Eventually though I had to accept the fact that I was trapped and furthermore that I probably wasn’t going to find a girl who was interested in me at any time in the near future. This was particularly frustrating since many of the girls went around the house only slightly dressed, casually falling out of their tops on a regular basis. Quite often we would be sitting around in the kitchen, in the afternoon or late into the night and the conversation would get a little more charged and there’d be maybe a game with forfeits leading to some playful exhibitionism or the girls would dance erotically together and pretend it wasn’t for our titillation. Sometimes a rather intense flirtation would develop between people who were otherwise ‘just good friends’ and we’d be sitting right next to them on the sofa as they embarked on some fairly advanced foreplay. Next day they’d be slightly flushed, but still ‘just friends’, as before. Sometimes the heavy fumes of sex were all but unbreathable. I never got used to it. In some ways I didn’t want to – I wanted more than casual sex, certainly, but I wouldn’t have turned it down. I thought about Andrea’s advice but it didn’t seem to apply. They were just girls after all, and as she had warned me, they just wanted to have fun. In retrospect I realise my age – even looking just thirty, didn’t help but I wasn’t like them. There were the guys who looked even older than I did but I wasn’t like them either. It wasn’t that I was rejected so much as that no one saw me that way. The girls seemed to like to think of me as friendly and nice but perhaps a bit too serious. Some of them took to calling me Mr Giles who I understood to be some sort of fuddy-duddy librarian character on the telly. Once or twice I tried a flirtatious comment but was made to understand that I was embarrassing them so instead I went for displacement activity – dancing until I fell over.

So as autumn became winter I spent more and more time in my room or wandering the streets, looking for a way to move on. I found a storeroom with a lot of old magazines and books in it and that kept me occupied for a while. I can’t say my room was a particularly attractive place to spend time in, what with the mushy pea paint job, but I kept it warm, and I cleaned the window and washed the bedding so it wasn’t too bad. A girl called Kim came and joined me sometimes saying she just wanted to relax away from the others and liked me because I didn’t see her as a sex object. I didn’t have the heart to correct her on that. She was a pretty girl who liked to wear low cut tops and short skirts and I found her company rather unrelaxing, but it was good to have company. Alone, I fantasised about her mercilessly.
I did also notice that there were other quiet, sexless souls about the place that rarely or never came down to the kitchen, keeping themselves to themselves. Something about them though discouraged conversation.

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.
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Voyage XVIII – Life-drawing

I felt so good yesterday. Seems like a very long time ago.
I’ve done it again. I can’t believe it. I can’t believe how fucking stupid I am – every time. Unbelievable.
We’d been up on deck sitting in the sun, Lucy, Damian, Matt and I, and some of the others. I looked over the side and there was a branch floating by with green leaves on it still. I couldn’t believe it, after all this time, I don’t know how long – feels like months, there’s life out there. Huge black shapes, as long as the ship, rise and wallow a little way out. Fergus was with us. He told me they were not whales – they had the fins of fishes with rays and spines, and scales too. He said he’d never seen anything like them. The birds were not familiar to him either. Although they generally resembled the seabirds he’d known back in the world, they were wrong in detail. He couldn’t even work out what family they belonged to for sure. Matt and Damian were very interested in what he had to say. Damian couldn’t resist making comments about how you’d go about catching one and what they’d taste like. Lucy told him to stop being disgusting, but Fergus went on to tell us in great detail about some of the revolting things he’d been given to eat on his travels.
I was sitting directly opposite Lucy. She had her sunglasses on, so I couldn’t tell where she was looking. I tried not to look at her too much but I couldn’t help it. Once, when I realised I’d been staring at her legs for ages I looked up and she had this really knowing sort of smile on her lips - an ‘I know what you’re thinking’ expression. I know I went really red, but then she shifted a little and I could see almost all the way up her skirt. Those soft white thighs... I could have sworn she did it on purpose. Then she crossed her legs again. Everybody was laughing. I don’t know what at. I’m sure it wasn’t anything to do with me, but I hadn’t been paying attention. She looked over the top of her shades at me and asked me if I was alright, grinning dirtily at me all the while.

Later on it started to get chilly and we were going to go down to the bar. I wasn’t keen – not because I was scared of Harry and the others, but I just wanted to relax. Near the hatch, after the others had gone on ahead, Lucy turned to me and said ‘You could do some drawings of me now if you want to.’
I tried to act cool ‘Sure’ I said. ‘Why not?’
‘I’ll just get something to drink’ she said ‘and I’ll be with you. Ok?’
‘I’ll get set up in my cabin’ I said, my voice wobbling a little.
‘Ok. Can I get you anything?’
‘Some bubbly?’ I said. She looked a little surprised but I’d been drinking champagne a lot recently. And it seemed appropriate.

It seemed like ages before she arrived, and the champagne was a bit warm. I’d got a book out to try to look relaxed about it all but I was very tense. ‘You’ve made it nice in here’ she said as she came in the door, bottle in one hand, glasses in the other. I’d lit some candles and arranged cushions and covers on the bed.
‘How do you want me?’ she said smiling a little.
‘I don’t know’ I said. ‘I’ve not done this sort of thing much before. Errm... on the bed?’ and then I thought I should take charge more, so I showed her how I’d like her to pose.
‘Ok’ she said and began to take her boots off. I made vague noises – getting the easel adjusted, and arranging paper, glancing over – she was pulling her top over her head, smiling sideways at me, turning away from me, unclipping her bra – her breasts, I could see, falling free, moving the way only breasts can. She unzipped her skirt and stepped out of it and then slipped her red silky knickers down. Turning toward me, I tried not to stare at the mass of thick, almost glossy black curls between her legs. She slid onto my bed, leant on my pillows, and arranged herself the way I’d asked, waiting to see what I’d do next.
I’d seen naked women before of course – in magazines. I knew what to expect. But I’d never seen a real one, still less been in my room with one. Still, I tried to maintain a pretence of cool. I fiddled with the paper, took some deep breaths and looked, I hoped, appraisingly at her again. I could see everything. I looked at everything, closely. I looked, long and hard. I was vaguely aware of the wicked smile on her face but I couldn’t stop looking. I wanted to strip off and climb onto her and writhe about, and thrash and tear at her and swallow her, sink myself into her.
‘Everything alright?’ she said. ‘Would you like me to move at all?’
I looked at her again. Now I could almost feel a different part of my brain taking over, leaving the other part to have its way with her. Yes I did want her to move a little. It occurred to me that the shape would be better if her hand was close to her thigh rather than actually on it. I went over and picked it up (Oh my god, the skin under her wrist, so silky soft) and laid it on the bed beside her. (I could smell her now, a scent I’d never come across before, but which I knew was simply pure, unadulterated woman. I went to bed with that scent until we disembarked.) I stood back. I looked at her. I looked at the paper until I could see her there, and then took up my charcoals and chalks, and began the process of sculpting her out of the grey, two-dimensional surface.
A tutor once tried to tell me that real art has nothing to do with sex, that working from a nude is no different from drawing a bowl of fruit (although the still life we then attempted was a banana and two apples, so perhaps he wasn’t being completely straight with us). The truest art, we were told, was as disinterested as mathematics. It was simply a matter of exploring shapes and colours. Nudes were simply a different shape to apples, and, he pointed out, they had the advantage of being mostly just the one colour all over, allowing us to concentrate purely on form. Any erotic sentiments, he said, talking specifically to girls giggling at the back, could only compromise technique and lead to second rate work.
He was a pompous prat, and now I knew he was wrong too. I’d never drawn so well, nor so easily in my life. Her form grew out of the paper as I ran my eyes over her, feeling exactly the shape and texture of every part of her, and transferring it precisely. I managed five drawings in different poses before my artist brain finally gave out and the part of my brain that was poised to fall on her and dive in took over. I almost passed out.
I didn’t know what to do next. I said something about taking a rest and sat down beside her. She smiled a little uncomfortably and moved over to give me room. ‘How about a drink?’ I said and went to fill our glasses again. The champagne was very warm now, but still better than nothing. She asked if she could put her socks on because her feet were cold.
When she’d done that and we were sat down together again I told her I thought she was very beautiful, that she had beautiful skin, and I held her hand and caressed the skin under her wrist.
We were at an uncomfortable angle. She was slightly behind me as I sat half on the bed, so when I turned to kiss her it was awkward. I hadn’t done this kind of thing much before – just Naomi really, but she had always been fully clothed, so I wasn’t feeling very confident. Anyway, when I twisted around and moved toward her face with mine she stopped me, firmly with her hand flat on my chest. I opened my eyes.
‘What are you doing?’ she said, angry and apparently surprised. Her reaction simply made no sense so I pushed forward again. I suppose that part of my brain that was in control now had assumed that there must be some sort of hallucination going on and chose to ignore it, but she pushed again, slid out sideways and stood beside the bed.
‘What are you doing?’ she said again, this time with some derision in her voice. I looked at her again. She was still naked (apart from the socks), I could still smell her, I could still have touched her. I couldn’t think of anything whatsoever to do. I let her get dressed and go. She didn’t look at the pictures at all. I went up on deck. It was a nightmare.
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Journey XI – The Retreat

The Retreat came upon us suddenly, although she’d been preparing me for it for a while. We came to a curve in the path and suddenly there it was, looking something like a Highland castle converted into a school or a hospital, or an asylum – a mix of ancient stone turrets and battlements and Victorian sash windows and gutters. It was raining hard again. Autumn was moving in fast and Miranda would have to leave me here before the winter. She didn’t know exactly what would happen but she was optimistic. She didn’t expect to see me again. That’s how it is in the afterlife – people and places are very rarely encountered a second time – though sometimes, in a future life, people recognise each other at a party, in the street, and can’t think where from. But not Miranda – she said she wasn’t going back, ever.

The last few weeks, I suppose it was, had been blissful for us. After that last encounter it was like we were free at last. Maybe more so for me – I didn’t know what was coming. I did notice that every time we came across signs of recent human activity again she was distant and preoccupied for a while, but then she’d perk up quickly and be even more lively and sexy than ever. The land was a green and rolling and full of life and the road was broad and easy to follow. We were relaxed and cheerful and it seemed like she might choose never to say goodbye. What was more, there were moments when she almost seemed to be a normal size. I began to think there might be a future for us somehow. I kept trying to bring up the subject of her finding somewhere, maybe somewhere she could settle, be happy maybe, but she wouldn’t have it. She didn’t belong anywhere she said, and she never would.

It was late summer, an Indian summer almost and we’d not had the tent out for quite a while – it had been too hot. We just slept under the sky and marvelled at the lack of stars and moon (and yet there was that clear silvery moonlight). There were late summer storms too, which drenched us and made us laugh and dance. Her silk wrap became completely transparent and she looked at me challengingly, biting her lip.
Our feelings for each other were getting irrepressible. We watched each other intently. She seemed to be waiting for something, but what could I do? I didn’t even like to touch her because I was afraid I’d damage her.

I needn’t have worried. One night we were both lying out on our bedding. It had been raining heavily and everything was steaming. I just had a cloth over my hips, but it was clinging to me. Her sarong was clinging too and I could see every curve of her. Neither of us could sleep. She got up and came over to me. ‘Turn on your back’ she said softly. I did and she stepped onto my arm, climbed onto my belly and lay down on her side facing me, looking at me. She seemed unsure what to do next. I pulled some of my clothes over to put under my head so I could look at her properly.
‘You’re afraid to touch me, aren’t you?’
‘You said...’
‘Shhh...’ she said ‘It’s ok. I trust you. I’m not that fragile. Give me your hand.’ and she sat cross legged against the palm of my hand, and let the silk fall down around her waist. I tried not to look too obviously at her sweet pointy breasts but it was hard, in every sense. It was very hard.
‘You can look’ she said lightly. ‘I don’t mind. You’ve been looking at me all this time. Do you think I’m not flattered?’ and she settled down lower against my hand, and I could feel the silk ride up and expose her cool bottom on my belly. ‘I’ve been looking at you’ she said, mock coyly. ‘You’re a very handsome young man you know’ and she leant forward and lay there, looking with curiosity at the curved blond hairs above my navel. ‘Your skin is so soft. Perfect skin’ she said, a little breathlessly, then paused. ‘You look worried’ she said and propped herself up to look into my eyes, still stroking my skin with her hands, still breathing deeply. ‘I do understand’ she said.
I was in agony, trying to hold myself in. Nothing could possibly happen between us. Why was she doing this to me?
‘I do understand’ she said again, sitting up. ‘I know what you want, and it’s not possible, obviously. But there are other things. I’ve thought about this a lot, as you can imagine.’
‘Me too’ I say, almost inaudibly, croaking slightly.
‘I know, and I didn’t expect this to happen – you know that. All I know is we must have each other, somehow.’ And with that she got up, turned and walked toward my hand. ‘Move your hand’ she said.
I felt reluctant and ashamed, but I couldn’t refuse. I put my hand on my thigh and she looked at my cock there, like a stranded manatee under a tarpaulin beside her diminutive figure. She walked down toward it and peeled the cloth back, knelt down and touched the swollen purple knob delicately with her hand and I groaned. She turned and grinned at me.
‘I’ve seen this before you know’ she said, and I gestured silently (for I couldn’t speak) that of course, she must have seen many men’s... ‘No, I mean I’ve seen yours, like this’ pointing at mine, ‘every day actually. I did my best not to watch...’
I’d guessed this but I’d been suppressing the knowledge. Shame and embarrassment overwhelmed me, but also pride, actually – there was no hiding it. She knew everything about my daily habits (although thank whoever we didn’t need to crap in the afterlife.) She’d been there when I’d got myself off, every day, sometimes more often than that, sometimes several times a day. She’d seen the expression on my face, heard the noises I made when I came, and yet here she was. She smiled wickedly as the news sank in.
‘So...’ she resumed, standing up, posing a little, making her breasts look extra perky. ‘It’s not very fair is it?’ she said, pausing for dramatic effect ‘Would you like to watch me?’

I won’t go into the details. She’s gone now, my gorgeous nymph, and I am here. This is the next part of the journey and I have to accept it, alone.
They’ve given me quite a big high-ceilinged room – I think it used to be someone’s study. Two of the walls are lined with dark wooden bookshelves, but most of the books are gone. The ones that are left look like the ones nobody would ever want to consult ever again. The whole room has a long-unused smell to it. Little dust has settled because no one has kicked any up recently. The walls are painted off white and I have a desk, a single bed with a shiny green quilt and a faded green candlewick bedspread on it, and there’s a small cupboard. It’s all a bit like the stuff my grandparents had. There’s also a lot of metal chairs stacked up, a huge easel and a big old brown leather arm chair by the enormous floor-to-ceiling bay window. They tell me they’ll find homes for some of the excess clutter soon. The spiders seem friendly enough.
Autumn is here. It’s cold. I wish she was here. I feel like a patient but I don’t know what I’m sick with.

Those last days together play in my head incessantly. After that first time everything was a bit awkward for me, not to mention weird but she seemed relaxed enough about it and although I never really got comfortable with the situation I accepted her lead. She told me a lot about women and sex and so on. I think, although of course nothing much physical could ever happen between us, in a way, that was a good thing. It made me think about it, and ask questions, and it made it not such a big deal. We watched each other all the time, played little games. It was fun. It had never really occurred to me before that sex might be fun. I guess I’m still technically a virgin but I don’t feel like one.
I look around the room, wondering if anyone will watch me having a wank here, some musty academic gnome perhaps. I don’t care.

It wasn't such a bad place. That first morning after I arrived I went down to breakfast and met some of the other residents seated along the trestle tables that occupied only a corner of the huge old dining hall. They seemed friendly enough, but not very talkative. That was ok, I didn’t feel like talking either. I sat for a while before I realised the food was on a counter at the other end of the room. I went and got some porridge with spiced stewed fruit. It was the first real food I'd had in what seemed like years and exactly what I needed. After I’d eaten most of two bowls I leant back on the bench and looked around. The others were mostly sitting eating quietly. People left, others arrived later, all had the same sort of hooded gowns on, although the colour of the material varied. Mine was a faded grey mauve felt, and was obviously not new but it kept the draughts out. I looked at the faces of the others along the table. Some had their hoods up. There were both men and women but I was relieved to see that everyone seemed pretty sexless. I didn’t want to think about anyone that way for a long time. No one said anything to me except when one of the staff (I guessed she was) came over to ask if I’d go up to see Theodore to sort out my duties when I’d had enough to eat. She gave me directions.
I sat for a while anyway. I had very little clear idea what I was here for, except that Miranda had told me that this was the next settlement on the route and I should take advantage of their hospitality for a while, at least until next spring when I could move on. There was no coffee so I sat with my warm fruit milk for a while, trying not to think about her, feeling cold and empty, like a cast-off skin where the living animal has gone elsewhere.

Theodore seemed a nice enough sort of chap, a professor at some American university he said he'd been. He made vague perfunctory noises about settling in and getting to know the ropes and tossed me a list of jobs that needed doing, asking what I fancied having a go at. I wasn’t feeling very motivated and he clearly wasn’t that interested in me. His room was thick with books and papers and various other bits and pieces. I never did find out what he did but he clearly wanted to get back to it. I didn’t want to think about work and I suppose I wanted someone else to make the decision for me so I stood there as he looked at his desk and muttered. I tried to look like I gave a toss but it was a feeble pretence. Finally, I think he got fed up with me dithering and said go and see Jim and he gave me directions, the only parts of which I remembered was ‘down the stairs’ and ‘through the kitchens’.

Asking around, it turned out you had to go through the kitchens, which were in the basement, to get out to the gardens, which was where Jim was in charge. Gardening. Great. Not at all what I had in mind, but I couldn’t be bothered to complain. Instead, I took my time finding my way around. The kitchen was down some stairs from the dining hall, and the dining hall, I knew, was off the central quadrangle – a broad square of cobbles with the entrance on one side, and some very ancient looking trees set into it. Everything was grey and wet and hushed. The trees were beginning to lose their leaves. Few people were moving about as I found my way – I had no idea how many lived here. Maybe it was me, but there was a definite air of sadness about the place, or perhaps not quite sadness, but something else that made people slow and silent and distant. Maybe they had all recently lost the loves of their lives too, or maybe it was the time of year.
The kitchen was livelier, and certainly hotter, but dark and wide with a low ceiling, and a very palpable sense of it carrying the rest of the building on its fat, stone pillars. Still no one said anything much. I asked the way to the gardens and someone who was cutting up vegetables pointed with his knife to a large doorway at the far end of the room where I could see cool daylight leaking in around a corner. I went through and found myself in a wide chamber with huge stone sinks, and various gardening tools leaning up against the walls. Dark empty doorways lead off into storerooms on either side but it was completely open to the outside ahead and I could see greenery beyond.

I walked around the garden, deliberately not asking about Jim immediately so I could take my time and look around. It felt good to look at the trees and feel the misty rain fall on my face again. The garden appeared to be laid out with long rectangular borders with grass paths in between and a high buttressed wall all around. Many of the borders were freshly turned over and just bare earth, but in places there were rows of sprouts, cabbages, leeks and the straggling remains of bean vines still hanging onto their canes, and a whole range of smaller herbs and salads in rectangular patches. The walls all had trees trained up against them – strapped onto ropes in disturbingly strict horticultural bondage. All the fruit had been collected. No windfalls lay about. Occasionally I would come across a gardener, hood down, obscured by a waterproof cape, kneeling on a mat, doing something in the dirt or lugging something about. The rain was not hard but it had made the soil sticky and it stained everything black. The gardeners ignored me or nodded expressionlessly. My dad would have loved it. He’d have been in his element.
Further on I discovered this was just the upper terrace, and wide stone steps lead down to at least two more levels of walled gardens with fields and sheds with goats and ducks and probably all sorts of other things. I decided it was time to find Jim and ask him what he wanted of me.

Jim, I have to say, I took to immediately. He was where they said he’d be, with the goats, showing someone how to arrange their bedding. ‘Jim?’ I said, and he turned, hugging a mass of hay and smiled at me. ‘Gabriel’ he said, dropping the hay and striding forward in the mud and the manure to shake my hand. ‘Good to see you’ he said cheerfully. ‘Just let me get Annie started here and I’ll be with you’ and he turned and carried on with that as I waited. I couldn’t help noticing that he was wearing shorts and sandals under his cape.

I’m not sure anyone else really liked Jim. He was always cheerful and helpful and full of energy, and he didn’t often wear the gown, because it would only get wet and muddy and need washing all the time. ‘Nobody’s forcing them to wear the bloody things’ he told me as we headed for shelter. ‘People are strange’ he said once we get to his “office” – a shed among the dung heaps and wheel barrows.
‘Stunning bloody weather hey?’ he added, grinning at me.
I nodded and shrugged, not sure if he thought stunning was good or bad.
‘Good weather for ducks’ he went on, ‘although, actually if you take a look, the ducks are hiding in their shed, under cover. Sensible creatures.’
Jim seemed to have got the idea from somewhere that I knew something about gardening. I didn’t like to disappoint him. His passion was food he said. His life was food and how to grow it. He talked about everything growing in the garden in terms of how much food it could provide, but this was no bland commodity he was talking about. When he said “food” you could almost feel it nourishing you. He looked at the huge heads of cabbages and sacks of spuds as raw sustenance – for work to be sure, but also for philosophy, music, art, love (‘although there’s precious little of that around here’ he confided in me, stagily.) and of course, for growing more food. But he wasn’t interested in mere bulk. He showed me the modest greenhouse where he had managed to get ginger and lemon grass to grow. The ripe vapour of tomato, coriander and basil was pleasantly stupefying. Lemon trees stood in pots, ready to be brought under cover for the winter, and fig trees, trained against the walls, were already screened off so the frost wouldn’t interrupt their setting fruit.
Over the weeks that followed I was introduced to compost heaps and beehives, carp ponds and wells, dovecots and vegetable clamps, wild rocket and good-king-henry.
‘So animals do breed here’ I said to him one morning, looking at a clutch of jostling, newly hatched chicks. He just smiled at me like I was a little dim.
‘Well there always seem to be more of them here when we need them’ he said cryptically.

Jim’s main ally in all this (although her attitude to the system was more amused aside than out-and-out ribaldry) was Jo, who ran the kitchen. Jim and Jo conspired together on the menus and crop rotations well into the night, aware that most of the residents would have been equally happy with boiled veg and bread but determined to spring culinary excellence on them anyway. The delight of the few that appreciated their efforts was enough, and really, they didn’t care if no one but they enjoyed it. It was what they did. Over the three and a half years I was there I managed to split my work between the kitchen and the gardens, so I got the best of both worlds, and I saw the whole process from soil to groceries to plate to belly to fertiliser and back to soil. All that winter I was out in the gardens, digging, repairing, mulching and harvesting or in the kitchen if the weather was rough. And Jim had been right. I did have a feel for this stuff. I guessed it must have been watching my dad in the garden all that time. Something must have stuck.

It did take me quite a time to accept the situation however. For a while after I arrived I spent all my time in my room, looking out of the window, or wandering around wondering where everybody was. It was not a big place, with just two stories of bed and bathrooms on two sides of the courtyard, plus the kitchens below and attics above, but the corridors were badly lit, took odd turns, went up and down small staircases, and were just generally very hard to work out. In short I kept getting lost and ending up in all sorts of dusty corners, looking out at unexpected views. I very rarely saw anyone up there, and then only fleetingly. Sometimes it seemed the place was haunted. It was certainly very creepy. At night I avoided leaving my room if possible even though the tall dark shelves and piles of random furniture (which were never taken away) cast odd shadows and made the room feel strangely occupied. I never felt quite alone at night, but I got used to that. Outside my door was much worse. The sounds of things moving or being moved about in the corridor in the small hours kept me awake for several nights at the beginning. I asked, but no one seemed to know what had been going on, and they changed the subject.
Daytimes in my room though were a different matter. I took my food up there and spent a lot of time, as I say, looking out of the window which had a phenomenal view out over the gardens to the land beyond which was nothing but trees as far as the eye could see – an endless rolling forest landscape.
Back in life, when I was in the sixth form and had some free afternoons, mum took me into work a few times to see some of the old folks homes she had dealings with, to meet the matrons, and see if maybe care work might interest me. Actually, it had nothing to do with what I was interested in. It was about finding some way I could earn my keep. The other people at school were surprised that I didn’t run a mile when I told them what went on there – the shit and the dementia and the dribbling, but it interested me, the way people end up, what happens to them. In particular it was the tranquility of the place, the dim routine, the gentle squalor, life breaking down and letting go. I particularly remember one afternoon in the sun room about tea time, with the geraniums half dead on the windowsill there, and the budgie chirruping to itself, and the old ladies (there weren’t any old gents) dozing in their chairs, and it was warm and there was vaguely unpleasant but somehow comforting smell of beef stew, toiletries and just a hint of excrement, and I sat in one of the chairs, with its floral print and wooden legs and began to drift off, and I remember thinking that it was actually quite nice here, and you could drift off and fade into the upholstery and it would be an ok way to go.
That’s what it felt like in my room those first few weeks – peaceful and dull, warm in the sunshine (but chilly at night), and just looking out the window, paying occasional attention to a bird in the trees below, or having something to eat. Actually it was better because I had no need to get up to go to the toilet, or to eat, for that matter. I could just sit there, and not be missed, fade away, with just the ghosts of my predecessors for company at night. I sat in the stiff old leather armchair and drifted. Sometimes I went for a little stroll in the garden and Jim tried to tempt me with chores and I fiddled about obligingly in the dirt in a half-hearted sort of way until I got cold or wet or bored and I went inside again.

I did think about Miranda over this time though, up in my room especially, of an evening, because nothing much else happened after dark, after dinner, and I made up fantasies and stories about her, and us, together somehow, which always ended up with me finishing myself off in the way I knew she would have approved. She wasn’t just a sexual fantasy though. During those last few weeks we’d talked about so many things – we got on so well I thought, and I began to think about how we’d be together, permanently. I knew that wasn’t possible, but I dreamed of us living together, travelling together, doing the normal things couples do. I had to ask her what she thought of that and her only concern was that she’d have been fifteen years older than me. I said I didn’t care about that and she said she didn’t see why not then, and smiled happily at me. That was when I knew I loved her and I suspected she might feel something similar about me, but I never told her. I wish I had. Maybe things could have been different somehow.
Now, to be honest, I’m not even sure she wasn’t just a hallucination all along. Now, in the cold light of day (a phrase that seems especially – what was the word she used? – apposite, in this place) I find I can’t quite believe she even existed. I realised this forcibly the other day when I discovered I wasn’t going to tell anyone about her (even if anyone here had been prepared to listen) because I knew how bizarre the story would sound. And also how predictable – a young man’s sexual fantasy, a young man who had been alone in the wilderness for who knew how long, and was close to losing it, to getting completely lost. (For hadn’t she conveniently appeared at just the moment when I was most in danger?) I could see their expressions, part sympathy, part knowing smirk, part bafflement at the fact that she was the size she was. (What the hell did that mean? Was this a fixation on my sister’s Sindy dolls?) And then I look at the rucksack, bent and stale in the cupboard, and it does have little transparent ‘windows’ in it. It occurs to me that they might be there so the traveller can see what’s inside. It doesn’t seem a very plausible explanation until you consider the alternative. Maybe they’re just for decoration.
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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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Journey VIII – In The Wilderness

We soon discovered why nobody had tried to stop us. They knew no one would be stupid enough to go running out into the wilderness.

It seemed like the best thing to do was to move on as quickly as possible. Miranda agreed. I checked the equipment, took one last look the way we’d come and we set off up the slope into the forest.
Later on, sitting at the campfire, chewing on the bones of some sort of wild chicken that Miranda had chased down, I asked her, just conversationally, if that was how all after-life settlements were going to be. She looked at me with a troubled expression and said nothing. I was happy though. If that was the case then that meant I wasn’t going to be settling anywhere any time soon and we’d have more time together, but I sensed she didn’t feel the same way. It wasn’t because she didn’t want to spend time with me she told me and I believed her. It was just... ‘complicated’ she said and then I just felt sad again because I knew she would have to go at some time. I’ve never been any good at putting things out of my mind.
The night passed uneventfully but I didn’t feel sleepy. I watched Miranda sitting there. She was thinking but she wouldn’t tell me what about. It felt like she really wanted to be somewhere else. Sometimes she looked up or turned around – like I’ve seen small animals do when they’ve heard something inaudible to the human ear, or picked up a scent. Then she turned back, glancing over at me, propped up in my sleeping bag, to see if I’d noticed. I pretended not to. (I remember realising, with some surprise that she was about a foot tall now. When had that happened?)
We kept moving – she insisted on it. She said we’re not out of the woods yet and I thought of making a joke about it because obviously we were deep in the forest, but I didn’t say anything. I was just enjoying the scenery. I’d felt nothing of the ‘presence’ I’d felt before. As far as I was concerned it was just another fabulous spring day.
And I watched Miranda’s little body, no longer very thoroughly covered with my scarf. Its hem barely covered her bottom now and I stayed alert for glimpses of what lay underneath, following her as we climbed whenever I could. I couldn’t help it. Of course she knew what I was doing but I didn’t realise I was so obvious at the time. I felt guilty and horny more or less equally and very immature but after all, there were larger pieces of fabric in the bag. She didn’t have to keep on wearing that one. And it was wearing very thin in places too. She said she liked the colour.
Anyway, we travelled uneventfully for the next week or so and our conversation fell into the same half playful – half serious groove it had been in before. She told me more about her childhood and the friends she’d had and places she’d been when she was alive – things she said she’d not thought about for a very long time, things about her mother and the place they’d lived in when she was little, up in Snowdonia. She told me she’d finally ‘checked out’ in ’74, but she’d done everything, and didn’t regret any of it. I knew that wasn’t quite true but I didn’t argue. She had good memories of the sixties and a lot of parties and festivals. She’d seen Bowie and T Rex and The Small Faces and I was very envious. She described for me some of the parties and the bizarre things that had gone on. She didn’t talk about the drugs specifically but I got the impression that they were heavily involved.
And it was good that summer – sleeping in the sun, swimming in ponds, watching the animals and plants do their things. One morning we watched a vast herd of immense shaggy beasts pass by in the valley below, crashing through the undergrowth and churning up the ground. They were accompanied by tall, stocky grey giraffe-like animals and some long-legged birds. I thought it was all fabulous and Miranda was very excited too. She said she was so happy she could show me all this. Then she told me to keep very still and pointed out another animal, something like a cross between a wolf and a wild pig moving stealthily along, keeping pace with the herd.
‘It’s ok’ she said. ‘They’re not very bright and I still remember some of my old guide tricks, but better safe than sorry.’
I’d never been so scared in my life but I thought it was magnificent. Later on, after dark we could still hear the herd going past. There must have been millions of animals out there on the move, each as big as a bus. I asked her what she meant by guide tricks and tried to make a joke about baking cookies and doing the ironing but she ignored me and said some vague things about covering our scent and camouflaging ourselves but I knew that wasn’t the whole story. She was hiding something. I also asked if the animals were in their afterlives, like we were and she said they probably were. They ate and hunted and mated and migrated just as they had in life because they still had their instincts. But they never died, and they never reproduced. ‘They just keep on going, forever’ she said, a little sadly I thought. I wanted to ask how they could survive being eaten but decided I didn’t want to know.
Another night, a few days I suppose later on, we were sitting by the tent looking out across an infinite ocean of grassland with patches of woodland and pools of water like islands randomly scattered across it. It was a clear night and everything was picked out in silver, and quite suddenly I realised there was a sound coming from across the way. I suppose I’d been dozing or maybe just thinking. Miranda looked up at me to see if I’d noticed. The sound was so subtle, like the wind in the trees or rippling the water. It was hard to tell where it was coming from. We sat very still.
‘Best not to disturb them’ she said and nodded a little to our right. There was a ghostly movement in the grass. When I looked directly at it there was nothing to see but I knew they were there. I could feel them somehow. It was as if I could perceive their feelings. It was as if they were nothing but feelings and I could plainly feel them passing by - sad, confused, lonely, and yet wondering vaguely if perhaps things might be better somewhere else.
‘Where are they going?’ I whispered to her.
‘Home’ she whispered back to me and cuddled my arm, like she was suddenly very cold.
‘Where’s that?’ I said.
‘No one knows’ she replied.
Gradually they passed by, in little groups or lone individuals. The yearning in them so strong by the time they came parallel with us I swear I could almost see them – just the merest trace of a person, a feint grey sketch, all substance erased and just this one thought left – to find a place to rest.

The next day we packed up and moved purposefully on, as if we had somewhere to be, but I could see Miranda was even more preoccupied than usual and I knew what she was thinking. She was thinking ‘That’ll be me, one day.’ And she didn’t know if it was better to keep going like this for as long as possible, with me, or to just give in to it.

Anyway, before long it looked like the decision was going to be made for us. Some of the lost were less content to pass peacefully into oblivion.

Something woke me up. I still don’t exactly know what. It was like a sudden drop in temperature or pressure. The woods were utterly silent. I glanced around looking for Miranda and there was just enough light to make out her tiny crouched form staring fixedly at the entrance, waiting, petrified.
I said ‘What’s happening?’ and she just said ‘They’ve found us.’
I got up and slithered toward the door on my belly but she leapt on me and begged me to be still. I wanted to ask what had happened but she fiercely shushed me and made me lie flat.
‘They might not have seen us’ she said in a desperate shrill voice but then there was a sound, a deep groan that I felt through the ground rather than heard exactly. I thought maybe it was a machine, something huge. It reminded me of the sound of the engines, thrumming constantly in the background when we were at sea. But we were in a forest, on a mountainside. And in any case it wasn’t a mechanical sound. It was a voice, or many voices. We felt it become quieter, moving away down the slope and I thought it had gone but then there was another sound, harsher somehow, rushing across the place where we were lying flat on the ground, sweeping down through the tree tops and then whining back in from another direction, flattening us again. I whimpered a little from the pressure in my skull.
It happened three more times that night and each time was like it might never end. I waited in dread for the next one and we were both sat rigidly upright when the dawn came, staring at the doorway (as if something like that would bother with a door.) By morning I was utterly incoherent and we sat in the sun, twitching at every sound.
As soon as there was enough light we packed everything up and moved on.

After a lot of seemingly random scurrying about I had to ask her if she knew where we were going. For the first time since I’d left the boat the path seemed to be petering out and Kevin had told me the most important thing was to stick to the path, whatever happens. Now, here, there seemed to be a whole maze of weak, twisting, overgrown paths, and places that looked as if they might once have been paths but were now just random clearings among the trees. Time and time again we came to places where the way was blocked and I knew we were in trouble. Miranda said nothing to me but her movements had an increasingly frantic pace and she began to mutter to herself. When I asked her what was happening she told me to let her sort it out and there was nothing I could do. She looked at me with contempt and exasperation, then tried to apologise when she saw the hurt expression on my face but there was no time to talk. All too soon the sun was motoring off into the distance again. It was too late. The path disappeared altogether and we came to a slope of boulders, come down among the trees off the side of the mountain above. We hopped and slipped and staggered our way some way up. I knew she no longer knew what she was doing. We were just trying to get out into whatever remaining light there might be, as if that might stop them, whatever they were. She still hadn’t told me.

Miranda and I made it to a relatively large clearing just as the light failed. We sat on a rock too small and craggy to pitch a tent on, surrounded by thorn scrub and watched the night move in among the trees. The forest here was like a spruce plantation. Ranks of tall, perfectly vertical black trunks surrounded the clearing on all sides and receded endlessly into the wet fog, apparently into infinity. I looked up at the canopy of sea green needles above, merging into the haze as night and drizzle descended on us. There wasn’t a breath of wind. I felt her reach for my hand and huddle against me. ‘I’m so sorry’ she said and began to cry, slow heavy tears. ‘I have been so selfish’ she said. All I could do was hold her close and stroke her hair. I said ‘It’s ok. We’ll be ok’ and she just looked at me with an expression that simply asked how I could be so dim. But she was grateful for it. I sensed that.

When nothing happened immediately I asked her what it was we were running from and, because she knew there was no point wasting time hiding any more she sat up, dried her eyes and told me I wouldn’t see them probably. They would come for us, cautiously at first because they were afraid of us too, and they couldn’t see very well or move very easily, but when they knew where we were, and how alone we were, and how powerless... Then they’d come. I asked who ‘they’ were and she told me they were the lost – her kind, the hopeless and the despairing. The way I looked at her I suppose showed my scepticism. They sounded tragic, certainly, but not dangerous. She shook her head. ‘You don’t get it’ she said and at that moment I saw the first movement among the trees at the foot of the slope. She saw it too and at the same time I heard that same low mournful note echoing up and down the valley below, hunting for us it seemed, blindly, casting about.
‘What’s doing that?’ I yelled over the row. We heard it coming up towards us again and crouched down against the rock as it came down. I looked up and all the trees were bending and twisting as if something was trying to wrench them down. But of the thing itself, all I saw a darkening wave in the air as it went past – nothing more.
‘Despair’ she said. ‘Endless despair’ and I was immediately aware of figures watching us from the edge of the clearing, barely distinguishable from the silhouettes of the ferns and brushwood they stood amongst, but undoubtedly there. They were just pale forms standing about in the undergrowth with just the trace of a face – just a smudge for eyes and mouth. I never saw one move but every time I looked back they were a little closer. I swung around and found they were standing all around us, just a few feet away, and with that impossible clamour in the air, swirling like a tornado above us, thrashing the branches about, I stood up and yelled at them. I stood up and I screamed ‘Fuck off! Fuck off and leave us alone!’

Everything stopped. The noise tailed off and settled to a hum. They were all very close. Miranda was crouched at my feet transfixed and shaking somewhat, waiting for the worst and I stood there watching them all, staring them out, not taking my eyes off them. Eventually I couldn’t stand up any more and I crouched down but I watched them all night, with Miranda sat there beside me, waiting for a move that never came. When the sun came along she was asleep and I carried her out of the clearing and along the ridge and onto a well-worn path, exactly where I knew it would be.
After a while I pitched the tent and lit a fire, all the while letting her sleep. Then, by mid morning I had to lie down too, just as she was blearily beginning to move about. She let me sleep.
Later, when we had both recovered a little she said ‘It’ll be a bright night tonight. No clouds. They won’t be back tonight.’ We knew they’d watch us but they weren’t going to try anything. I wasn’t even sure now that they were going to do anything to us. They just seemed to want to look at us. I was sure they weren’t like the first group we’d seen, out on the savannah. The feeling was quite different. 
Looking at them standing around in that clearing the night before, the only thing I’d felt was emptiness and loneliness and cold but they were attracted by our warmth and liveliness. They wanted it and hated it at the same time and if they got close enough I knew they’d extinguish it. I wasn’t sure whether they understood that, or anything, for that matter. They just had to come and find us, to be near us, to look at us. I wondered where Miranda fitted into all this.

After several uneventful nights she began to tell me a few things. We’d been travelling along broad ancient roads cut into the hillsides and with traces of cobbling still visible in some places. We were making good time, beginning to talk more normally, as we had before, but I knew she was keeping things from me.
We were sitting looking into the embers and she said ‘That was very brave of you, back there, swearing at them.’ I knew she was being sarcastic but I pretended to take it as a compliment.
I said ‘I was just sick of waiting for them to do something.’
I suppose I was being a bit cocky.
‘Well you were lucky’ she replied after a while. ‘We both were.’
‘Well it was a lot of noise and so on but really, what could they do?’
‘We were lucky’ she said again, looking intently into my face.
I couldn’t accept that. I’d been the hero after all. ‘I don’t know’ I said ‘I just thought they needed a bit of standing up to. I think they responded...’
‘You confused them. That’s all. They didn’t know what to do about you. And yes, you may be right. Maybe they’ll just leave us alone now. I don’t know.’

Something about her tone brings me back down to earth, or wherever. I want to know what she knows about them, what her connection with them is and she begins to prevaricate again but I push her for an answer.
‘You know them don’t you.’
She looks away, then finally, she nods.
‘Ok. Are you one of them?’
‘In a way, yes. But it’s not that simple. Gabriel please...’
‘Why aren’t you with them. Why didn’t you stay with them? I mean, I don’t want you to go, but...’
She sits and says nothing again but I think she will talk eventually so I wait. We sit and look into the embers a bit more and I decide to get up and throw some more wood on, to keep it going a bit longer. I stand up. They’re still out there. I know it. She knows it. It occurs to me that maybe she fell in love with me, like in those old stories about squaws and cowboys and now she’s trying to protect me from her people. Maybe that’s it. I can’t ask her though. It would sound ridiculous.
‘The thing you have to remember Gabriel’ she says at last, almost inaudibly ‘is that nothing’s cut and dried here. It’s not them and us, or you and us rather. It’s all rather confusing...’ I watch her trying to formulate her sentences, explain to me without getting herself into even more trouble, because she is in trouble. I can see that.
‘But you are one of the lost spirits, right?’
‘It’s not as simple as that. Please Gabriel. I’m trying to...’
‘You’re nearly lost, or something. You said something like that. Is that why you’re so small?’ And I see her begin to cry. I reach out to her but she turns her back on me and curls up. She looks especially small now and I suddenly realise it’s because she’s far away. It’s a trick of perspective. She doesn’t shrink and grow at all. She gets further away or closer. How strange. I sit down and want to cry a little too. It all seems too terrible but she turns on me and says, very fiercely ‘Don’t you start’ and I’m not sure if she’s joking. I look about to see if they’re closing in again. I can’t see anything.
‘I...’ she begins, leaning back ‘I just sort of hitched a lift, you know? With you. I liked the look of you, so I... We do that some times. Like a final fling, you know?’
‘Did you want to trap me, get me lost too?’
‘I don’t... No. Not really. You don’t... we don’t, think, exactly. It’s not planned. We don’t think “Ooh I’ll have him. I’ll make him one of us.” It’s not like that.’
‘But you could have.’
‘Could have what?’
‘Made me like you. Couldn’t you?’
‘Maybe...’
‘Maybe?’
‘You looked like... I thought you might be. I don’t know...’
‘You thought I looked hopeless. But I’m not, am I?’
She says nothing for a while, then looks up at me and says ‘Make us a coffee will you?’ and I can see exactly how she was when she died, that sadness on her face. I know it. I’ve seen it before.
I get the coffee pot out and find some water. She just sits and looks into the newly roaring fire.
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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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