Boyfriend in a Dress (14 page)

All our lectures finished the week before we left the States. We spent the last few days packing up, saying goodbye to people, playing tennis, going to the pub. I hadn’t seen Dale for a while. The last couple of times I had run into him things had been awkward – if he was in the room when I got back, he would make an excuse and leave. I figured that would be it, and we wouldn’t even say goodbye. Things had gone a little strange between us, we weren’t comfortable with each other, but it wasn’t mutual dislike any more.

Joleen packed up her stuff and cleared out the day after lectures finished, and it ended pretty much as it started, with an argument.

‘I’m leaving now.’ Joleen was loaded down with bags and coats, so I’d kind of guessed.

‘Okay, well, bye then.’ I looked up from my book.

‘Dale won’t come anywhere near the room now, you know that, right?’

Joleen followed this with a sly smile, as if somehow she had won a battle. I didn’t even realize we were fighting.

‘Okay, well, bye then.’ I carried on reading this time.

‘And if you do see him around campus, don’t talk to him,
okay? His silly bitch of a girlfriend has slashed her wrists after Dale finally ended it. It was no fucking surprise, she’s pathetic.’ She followed this with another twisted smile that implied she had won that one too.

‘Yeah, well, whatever.’ I didn’t look up, but Joleen didn’t seem inclined to leave.

‘I’m serious, Nicola, he won’t have time for your shit.’

I snapped. ‘What shit, Joleen? What actual shit is that?’

Joleen seemed to back down straight away. ‘Whatever, I’m going.’ Joleen swung open the door.

‘Okay, Joleen. Fine. Bye.’

She stormed down the hall, leaving the door wide open.

No hugs, thank God. We weren’t that shallow, we weren’t going to pretend that both our years wouldn’t have been a hell of a lot more bearable if the other hadn’t been there. As soon as she left, I filled her side of the room with my suitcase and boxes in which I began to pack a year’s worth of purchases.

Joleen had been oblivious to the shifts in my relationship with Dale – she hadn’t noticed that somewhere during the year, and somehow, we had actually started to like each other, maybe even understand each other. I honestly didn’t think I would see him, which made me want to say goodbye to him even more, and made me dwell on his absence more than I should have. I wondered how he was taking his girlfriend’s drastic actions – whether he was, in fact, the evil little bastard I had him pegged for at the start and he actually didn’t care. Somewhere in the back of my mind I didn’t believe it, but I wasn’t sure. He was, to all intents and purposes, a mystery to most people.

I was going straight home, as was Charlie, and we had agreed that we would work for a month, staying with our respective parents, and use the money we earned to bugger off to Greece or Italy for a couple of weeks and chill out together. It was all quite exciting, and yet terrifying, taking
this relationship back home with me. I had never met his family, or friends in England, and yet we had practically lived together for most of the year. What daunted me most was the prospect of making it work at home, slipping back into old routines but with a new variable. I wondered how long we would last. Not that I wanted it to end, I was just nervous.

I had to return my last pile of unread books to the library and decided to get a coffee to warm myself up on a particularly breezy May day, and stopped off in the cafe behind our halls. As I walked in, I spotted Dale sitting in the corner, staring off into space, with a barely touched cup of coffee and a muffin in front of him. As soon as I saw him I knew that I
had
to say goodbye to him. I liked the idea that now, my leaving might actually mean something to him, might blip on his emotional radar somehow. He didn’t notice me, as I ordered my coffee, but looked up as the door swung open with the force of the wind – you could hear the massive elms that lined the street struggling with their leaves outside. He looked over and saw me then, and he smiled. I paid for my coffee and went to join him at the back. The place was empty.

‘Dale, I was hoping I’d run into you. I wanted to say goodbye. I’m leaving in a couple of days.’ I felt flushed with the wind, and suddenly hot in my coat indoors.

Dale just smiled at me, intense and vacant at the same time. I sat down opposite him, and blew on my coffee.

‘How’s Marie?’ I asked, knowing that if Joleen were there, she’d be screaming obscenities at me just for asking him.

‘Joleen told you.’ Dale shifted forward in his chair, ran a hand through his hair, which was wet for some reason, no sign of any gel at all, the quiff strangely absent today. It made him look younger, his hair falling at the sides of his eyes. I nodded, and blew on my coffee again.

We sat there for a minute, and he didn’t say anything and just stared down at the plastic table, and his muffin.
Eventually I coughed, and stood up, as he showed no sign of moving.

‘Dale, you probably want to be alone …’ I started.

‘Can we go somewhere and talk?’ he blurted out, suddenly imploring me with tear-filled eyes, curtained by his hair.

‘Sure, of course,’ I said, and as he followed me out of the coffee shop, I felt a strange sense of pride, that after everything, he wanted to talk to me about … whatever he wanted to talk about. Joleen would be spitting chips.

We walked in silence for a minute, I kept blowing on my coffee, trying to cool it down, and so when I eventually sipped it, I wouldn’t burn my tongue. I should have blown on myself. Dale gestured with his hands, as we walked, having a conversation in his head, without actually saying a word.

‘I bet you wish Joleen was still here, to talk to,’ I ventured finally.

‘Yeah, I do actually,’ he said. ‘She means … a lot. You guys never really saw the best in each other.’

‘I know,’ I said.

‘Joleen and I will end up together eventually. I just need to find her physically attractive first, but I’m working on it.’ He gave me a wry smile.

‘She loves you.’

‘I know, I know,’ he said, like it was a burden he just couldn’t shake off.

‘Is your girlfriend going to be okay?’ I asked, as we turned in towards my block, my room, subconsciously.

‘She’s going to be okay. She’ll be in hospital for a while. I don’t know … what to do really.’

‘About her?’ I asked.

‘Her, me, everything. I can’t believe she did it. You know me, Nicola, I’m a shit. Why did she do it?’

‘Probably because you aren’t a shit. You aren’t the shit you want to be. It just takes people time to realize it. She obviously
has. But to do something like that, to try and kill yourself, it’s more about her than you, Dale. You were just her reason, she needed a reason. A completely stable, non-suicidal person wouldn’t have done it, even if you did break up with them.’

Dale nodded his head. My key was in the door, he leaned on the door frame beside me. I realized suddenly what was happening. But I turned the key without saying a word.

I opened the door and he followed me in, and shut the door behind him. I didn’t turn the light on, even though the sun was almost down. He moved up behind me, and brushed the hair away from the back of my neck, and pulled my coat off from behind. It fell on the floor. He ran his hands down my arms to my hands, and kissed my neck, and the top of my back, and I felt myself let go, and let it happen. I turned around, and he kissed his way up my neck to the side of my mouth, and then stopped. So close I could taste the coffee on his breath, and a couple of strands of his limp fringe touched the skin by my eyes. I looked at him, and I knew he needed this, and he needed me. And then we were kissing, his tongue moving quickly and sharply in and out of my mouth, the way he smoked a cigarette, the way he spoke, the way he did everything. He kept stopping and taking deep breaths, and then kissing my shoulders, pulling my top off over my head, kissing the skin he found beneath it. I didn’t try and slow him down, or guide him, I just leaned back and let him push me onto Joleen’s bed. We pulled each other’s clothes off, until I was wearing nothing but my knickers, and he was naked. He rolled me over on top of him, and laid back eyes closed. I moved down his body, and kissed him like a wife. I slipped his erection into my mouth, and stroked him softly. I crept back up his body, and took his face in my hands, peculiarly aware of his eyes now staring into mine. I kissed him harder on the mouth, so close that he couldn’t focus on who I was, just my body next to his, moving with his, just a mouth kissing his, a tongue licking
his, hands holding his. He rolled me back over on the bed, and he slipped a hand between my legs, under my knickers, and into me, gently stroking, and then pushing his fingers in slowly, and then quicker, as I felt his dick ready against me. But he kept tickling, trickling his fingers just inside me, working around my last item of clothing, refusing to take it off. I reached down and slid my knickers down my legs, and he breathed heavily, as if I had just said ‘yes’. He parted my legs with the weight of his thighs, as he guided his dick inside me, slowly, and stopped, as we both lay for a second, aware. Then he pulled back, and slowly, forcefully, pushed himself into me again, and then again, and I began to feel his need creeping, growing. I pulled his head into my neck and ground against him, faster, speeding him up. Dale pushed his hand into the small of my back, and arched me into him, and with no space between us, we urged each other on and on, and I felt an urgency inside me trawling through my body, a sweeping dread. Dale pulled back suddenly, but not quick enough. I closed my eyes, and brought my hand up to cover them.

We lay next to each other for a while, not saying anything, and then I got up and pulled on my top and jeans, over my naked body. Dale snatched up his shirt and trousers and did the same. I sat down heavily on the bed next to him, and he took out his cigarettes, lit one, passed it to me, and lit one for himself. We sat staring ahead, and I reached around smiling, and took his hand, to let him know it was alright.

‘What are you doing tonight?’ I asked him.

‘I’m going down to the hospital. You?’

‘Finish packing, I suppose.’ I sighed hard, took back my hand, and massaged my neck. I could feel the tension.

‘When do you go?’ he asked, watching me.

‘Saturday,’ I replied.

He nodded his head, as if he agreed that I should.

He got up to leave, and I watched him move to the door.
I got up as he twisted the door knob, and took a couple of steps forward towards him. He turned and smiled at me.

‘Have a good flight,’ he said, and laughed a short sharp laugh, at the weight in the air, at this strange way to say goodbye.

‘I’ll try,’ I said, and smiled back, raising my eyes to heaven, at us both, at our stupidity, and our misguided beliefs that we would make ourselves feel better, or lose ourselves in something so quick, and so small.

‘Take my number, well, my parents’ number,’ I said suddenly. ‘In case you’re ever in London, and need a place to stay.’

I grabbed a scrap of paper and scribbled the number down quickly. He took it from me, and stuffed it straight into his pocket without looking at it.

‘I’ll see you,’ he said, turned and spun out of the door, and I watched it close behind him. I heard him walking quickly away, his footsteps suddenly stop, then turn, and I could hear him walking back towards the door, and I prayed inside myself that he wouldn’t open it. Somehow he sensed my prayer. I heard him stop, and then the footsteps make their way back down the corridor.

I had allowed it to happen, convincing myself that I was making Dale feel better. I thought I was helping him, like some Mother Teresa figure on heat. I realized in the seconds after he walked away that was not what I had done at all. I had simply helped myself. The phone rang, and I picked it up, not saying anything, numb.

‘Nicola, are you there?’ Charlie said.

It takes me half an hour to get the fire going, but I don’t give up piling on log after log, and far too many firelighters. I leave Charlie undisturbed – he hasn’t come out of his room since the policemen left, and I imagine he’s sleeping. By the time I have had a shower, moisturized, plucked my eyebrows, taken time on random stupid tiny things that require all my concentration but no thought, I am relatively relaxed. I pour myself a large glass of red wine from the drinks cabinet, sit myself down on the sofa in a huge sweatshirt I got free from work, clean jeans, and damp hair, and I feel ready to face anything. I smoke a cigarette smoothly, and sit back and think. I need to have a proper talk with Charlie, I think he is crying out for attention, crying out to talk, he just doesn’t know how. For the thirtieth time since Phil rang, I mentally acknowledge that Dale has called, but in the same way as I have done for the last hour, I push it to the back of my mind. Charlie is my first, my only real concern. Dale is from a different world, Dale won’t even recognize me now.

I dig around by the phone and find all the takeaway leaflets that have been collected and kept in an orderly manner by Charlie’s parents. I find an Indian one and phone in our
order. It’s the same meal we always have, I don’t need to ask Charlie what he wants. I potter about, turning lamps on, straightening cushions and throws on the sofa, tidying books on the table in the corner, putting paper down on the coffee table, getting cutlery, pouring myself another glass of wine. The temperature has dropped, there’s a chill in the air, and I snuggle inside my sweatshirt, and close the back door. The sky is black. I look at my watch – it is nine o’clock. I see clouds creeping in from the wings, hanging over the cottage.

Somebody rings the doorbell, and I take my purse to the door, and accept two white plastic bags holding our evening meal.

I take the boxes out of the bag, put the naan bread on a plate, turn the stereo on, turn the volume down to low, press play on the Fleetwood Mac CD, one of Charlie’s dad’s, and move to Charlie’s door. I knock quietly, and wait for an answer.

‘Come in,’ he almost whispers.

Charlie is sitting in bed, naked from the waist up. He has obviously been asleep – his eyes are a little red, and his hair sticks out in strange clumps on his head.

‘Char, I’ve got us an Indian. Do you fancy a chat?’

Charlie just nods, and climbs out of bed in his boxers.

‘I’ll just put some clothes on,’ he points to himself, and smiles at me.

‘Absolutely – do you want a glass of wine?’

He looks up at me, debating it in his head.

‘Sure, thanks.’

I close the door and move back towards the table. I remember some candles in a drawer in the kitchen, probably for power cuts. I take all three, place them in the empty candlesticks above the fire, and light each one. I turn off a lamp in the corner, leaving only one other by the sofa shining softly.

Charlie walks out of the bedroom. He stares at the scene in front of him for a moment, pulling down his sweatshirt distractedly.

‘Come on, Charlie, it will get cold,’ I say quietly.

He sits down on the sofa, and I pass him his wine, which he takes with a serious look, and then his plate, which he accepts with a smile.

‘This looks great, Nix, thank you,’ he whispers. I flinch as I see a tear appear in the corner of his eye – he can’t cry yet; we haven’t even started. But it disappears almost immediately, and he takes a tiny sip of his wine. For a while we eat in silence, looking at the candles, listening to the music, feeling the summer evening’s chill, wondering how, in the midst of all our emotional turmoil and madness, we have found ourselves sitting in a parody of a romantic evening. I wonder how something that looks so calm, and promises so much romance, can actually be such a façade. I thought that if I made it look right, it would be right. But not a word has been said, and we both know that when it is, when one of us begins, and really talks, this calm room will be filled with all the madness again. Even if we whisper. You can’t stop what’s outside your door from coming in, you can’t just shrug it off with your coat.

Eventually we find ourselves small talking, about the food and the wine, but it bores us both, there are bigger things to be said. Charlie, with a newfound frankness, begins.

‘I’m alright, you know. Today, throwing that food in the village, I knew what I was doing. I just wanted people to … stop, to … look at me for a minute. A half-naked man in their midst, hurling fish and loaves, I wanted to wake them up. I wanted to, to break them out of their shopping, and their working, and everything! I wanted to affect them, make them think I was mad, shock them into doing something different. I launched a terrorist attack on their apathy. I just wanted them
to … care … about something, for a minute.’ Charlie stops talking, deflated, looking down at his plate.

‘Charlie, the thing is, your world isn’t theirs,’ I say.

‘If you are feeling detached, or alone, it doesn’t mean they are too. You are in a peculiar world, we both are. We work and play in a city that sits its homeless at ten-metre intervals on our way to our overpaid jobs, and we’re numb to it – we’ve seen it all before. If I sat and thought about it, it would break my heart. But, Charlie, we don’t, not because we don’t have time, but because we don’t have the inclination. We don’t care. In a way we don’t dare – how could we function?’

‘It shouldn’t be like that,’ Charlie speaks through his anger.

‘Why, Charlie, because you’ve only just realized it? All of a sudden you are ready to confront and condemn every social problem we have, you’re going to clean the streets and clear the loneliness, because you’ve had some sort of personal … epiphany? People have been doing it for years, Charlie. There are more worthwhile people than us, thank Christ, and they’ve been trying to make us care for years. You can’t go in to work every day with tears in your eyes, you can’t spend all your time at the soup kitchen, or in the counselling centre, and have the life that you lead, the drinks, and the fun, and the car, and all the accessories of your life. And you can’t see all the problems either. Those are just the ones that stand out. Everybody in London is kind of lonely, anybody in such a big city is – it’s a choice you make, when you decide to live in a place that grand, that busy, when you accept that the people that pass you in the street may never pass you again. You can’t have that, and a social conscience as well.’

I stop and take a breath, another gulp of wine. I am a little embarrassed that Charlie will think I am on my soap box, but when I get going, I find it hard to stop myself, I feel like I am an oracle. Of course it’s only an hour later, when I’ve calmed down, when my passion for my subject has abated,
that I remember every thought I’ve had has been had before. I remember that I don’t really know what I’m talking about, just another taxi driver spouting on about politics, another bloke in the snug declaring the perfect England formation, another office gossip on the moral high-ground. It’s always then, when I feel like a stereotype, that I feel like a fool, for while I am making my speech, in the middle of my monologue, I forget myself, and believe utterly in whatever comes out of my mouth. I can talk the big issues to death. It’s my issues I can’t voice.

‘I want to go away then,’ Charlie says.

‘I can’t live there any more.’

‘Where do you want to go?’ I ask, sincerely.

‘Somewhere, somewhere smaller, somewhere people know me. I could live here – more people know me in this village than in town anyway.’

‘You could, you could live here,’ I say, and decide for a shot at the bigger issue.

‘But, Charlie, why all of a sudden do you feel like nobody cares about you? Why now? You’ve always loved London, it’s always suited you up until now, what’s changed?’

Charlie shrugs quickly, turns his nose up, and looks down at his plate.

‘So it’s nothing then, no reason,’ I say. Charlie shrugs again.

‘Charlie, that girl, the girl being attacked – did you see more than you are telling me?’

‘What? What do you mean? I told you everything I saw. It was horrible.’ He looks up at me, pleading with me to believe him. I do believe him, but for the first time, something nasty clicks in the back of my head, some horrible thought that swims back with my memories, and song lyrics, and useless trivia, some terrible little question not yet ready to surface, that’s just burst its shell. It nags a little, but then disappears.
But it leaves a slight uneasiness in my head, in the air between me and Charlie, that I might not know everything he has to tell. It hadn’t occurred to me before that he might have kept something from me.

‘I don’t know!’ he suddenly says, louder, more forceful than before.

‘I don’t know what I want to do, but I don’t want to stay there – I don’t want to heal the fucking world, but I don’t want to be cold, I don’t want to be cut off from everybody. I want to … feel something. It’s just too easy, not to care. I get swept along, I got swept along.’ We finished our food long ago, half-empty plates on the table in front of us, both sinking into the sofa and the wine. Charlie reaches over and fills up both of our glasses finishing the second bottle of wine.

‘Charlie, you just, have to make more of an effort. It doesn’t have to be something dramatic. You just have to go after something that will make you happy. And if you know it’s not what you’ve got, then, well you need to clear out the deadwood.’ I half smile at him, knowing full well I mean me.

‘You’re drinking a lot, by the way, for a man who has given up booze.’

‘I know.’ He smiles and looks down at his freshly filled glass.

‘It’s okay, Charlie, it doesn’t have to be all or nothing.’

‘We’ve had trouble, haven’t we?’

‘Yes, but I think we’ve actually done quite well, considering what’s been in our heads.’ I look down at the wine in my glass.

‘I think it was that summer. I think it was that early. We should have just let it go. But I didn’t.’ Charlie is still smiling at me while he talks, but my whole body has gone tense.

‘Nix, don’t you think it was that summer, after America, it was back then that it started going wrong?’ He is still smiling
at me, like we can talk about anything now, but I carry on staring at my wine, gripping the stalk of my glass harder and harder, digging my nails into my hand.

‘Nix?!’ He nudges me on the knee, almost laughing, wallowing in this new found honesty, wanting to say everything now. I look up and glare at him. He pulls back, like I’ve slapped him.

‘What?’ he asks. ‘I need to talk about it. I know we were too young, but …’

‘Charlie, stop it, I’m not going to talk about that,’ I say fiercely. All my good intentions have come to nothing.

‘Nix, you have to,’ Charlie says quietly. ‘I’m not the only fucked-up one in this room, you know. I’m not the only one with issues, it’s just that mine … well, they’ve come to a head! Nix, you can talk to me about it. Surely by now, enough time has passed …’

‘That is never going to happen, Charlie, enough time is never going to pass. You can’t possibly imagine what it’s like. Try, try and imagine it – how can you?!’ I shout at him. But he just looks at me evenly. I slam my wine down, and get up to leave, but he lurches forward, and grabs my arm, pulling me back down.

‘No, Nix, not this time. You’ll never talk about it, you never say how you felt afterwards. What was I supposed to think? You were almost relieved, for Christ’s sake, you wouldn’t discuss it. How was I supposed to know? I just thought you were relieved, to have got it out of the way.’

‘“It”? “It”, Charlie, was a baby, and you thought I was relieved?! Are you fucking stupid? I didn’t want to be pregnant, but I was never … relieved. You know, I’ve never told my mother – can you even imagine what that’s like, or how she’d look at me if she knew? It didn’t happen to you, Charlie, it happened to me!’ I am crying now, tears streaming down my face.

‘No, you’re wrong. We both went through it; don’t say it didn’t mean anything to me, because it did! I know how hard it must have been, but you never spoke to me about it, you wouldn’t tell me. I tried, but when a person pushes you away, well, what was I supposed to do?’

‘You could have left,’ I say, slumping back into the sofa.

‘I know,’ Charlie says, evenly.

We sit in silence for a while, smoking cigarettes, drinking more wine. Charlie opens another bottle.

‘It was a strange summer,’ he says. ‘It was too early for us to have to go through something like that; we were both too worried about making it work, at home, away from America. I was so scared that we’d get home and you’d just see some little semi-detached house in Oxford, and think I was … different from what you thought I was. I thought you’d see my mates, and find me … ordinary.’

We lapse into silence again.

‘How did we last this long?’ I ask suddenly.

‘
We
didn’t really. You did, and I did.
We
was for America. We’ve had a six-year relationship, but we’ve both been single for five years. That’s what happens when you get two good-looking cowards together!’ Charlie leans his head on my shoulder, and nudges me in the ribs.

‘Ouch! Who are you calling good-looking?’ I laugh back.

‘We should have talked more, we should have talked like this,’ I say. ‘Charlie, do you realize that this is the best conversation we’ve had in about four years?’ I laugh. I know it’s my fault, but Charlie tries to make me feel better.