Girls’ Night In. Jessica Adams
I have come here to escape. To forget about the love that never was. (Not true of course, but right now, I would prefer the never was.) I can bear never was far more easily than never will again. Less present pain in return for denying earlier pleasure. I am raw and can no longer imagine what the earlier pleasure might have been. It is all hurt, all loss. And still there is no word, no sign, from you. I am melodrama abandonment, but find no enjoyment in my over-the-top. I’ve always placed far too much hope in the possibility of eternal clairvoyance for lovers. The possibility of love for lovers.
Girlfriends and boyfriends and ex-lovers and maybe-lovers and concerned mother smiles have all offered helpful advice. The same helpful advice. I was counselled warm beaches, hot sun, hotter bodies. I was counselled sun and sea and surf and alcohol and illicit drugs if at all possible and beyond that, over and above the hedonism of sinning skin, I was counselled hedonism of the flesh. Let them get in. Anyone, anyflesh, anyman, anywoman. Just let someone in, not too deep, but far enough, fill enough of that aching gap and then you won’t notice it quite so much. The pain, the loss, the yawning void of the full urn on my mantelpiece. (You’d think after almost a year I’d have done something with it, scattered them somewhere, for God’s sake. My friends think it’s time I did something with it. They’re quite possibly right. Their Tightness is why I’m here.)
My friends think it’s high time I did something with you. But I’m still waiting for a sign, a smile, a cool breeze in the middle of the night from a draft-proofed double-glazed window. You promised you’d let me know it was all right. I’m still waiting. How hard can it be for you to break back through? Is your love really so held by traditional physics? Where’s the quantum leap of desire you promised me? I’m looking for miracles and seeing darkness magnified through tears. I’m looking for hope and losing you to black holes.
The obvious correctness of my friends’ and family’s suggestions though, is why I’m here now, why I’m by the sea. Come to find myself again. (They actually meant come to lose you for the first time, come to let you go, though no one had the guts to say so.) I think perhaps I was supposed to try Barbadian lust, Bondi bonding, cruise the cruisers and find one for me. (Maybe not the latter, even my most desperate mates don’t think seventy-year-old rich Americans are my type.) Instead I have chosen Wales. Anglesea. Peninsula insular. Like me. Like I’ve become. I used to be the outgoing one of our pairing, the loud one. There seems little point now. Without my other there is nothing for my shadow to fall against. I find I am undefined.
You found me too loud always. In bed, in bath, in Bath. In hotels especially. Too thin walls letting through my too loud desire. You tried to hush me, shut me up. You tried to shut me. Impossible. I blossomed open, time-lapse photography fast, when I met you. And stayed that way – it’s why daily life scrapes against my open flesh now – I do not know how to close up again. Not since you. You loved to go away, summer killed you in London and you made a motorway maid of me too. We found the finest – and grottiest – hotels in the land, and the so many others. As long as they were within the reach of the sea, or sunshine, or just a running tap if that was all we could manage. You needed water and I needed you. Need you.
At first I thought this was a mistake. There was too much of a sense that you might be round the next corner, hiding in the headway. I kidded myself for a whole half a day that we had arranged for you to meet me later. I do not like to dine alone. It takes no time at all to eat a three-course meal by myself and even the best intentioned kitchen staff cannot maintain the pace when there is no knife-and-fork banter to fill up the clock space necessary for perfectly sautéed meat. You did not come to the table. I offered your glass to Elijah, but he wasn’t thirsty either. I drank it myself instead. I have drunk alone far too many of the bottles I used to share with you. It’s one way to get to sleep. It’s the only way to get to sleep. Which is still infinitely preferable to waking up.
Milos. Cycladian sea island. Circadian rhythms shot to fuck by the fuck shooting through me to you and back again. We are on a tourist boat charting the island circumference. You marvel at my bravery as I dive into cliche-clear waters. I marvel at your bravery as you dive into me. I swim beneath the sea and look up to you, magnified by the depths of sea-through ocean. You are an amplified version and the water might be sea, might be me. My love/lust/lost-in-you tears make you huge. You fill the space of my vision. You fill the space of me.
The first night here it rained seven hours solid. Howling rain pelted by a broken wind against my window. I knew how it felt. I lay awake as I do so often now, waiting for you. Wondering if here you might be able to find me again. I worry that you are lost out there, elemental soul beating against closed doors unable to worm-hole your way through to me. And then too, I worry that there’s nothing to worry about. That there is none of you left. That the reason you have not managed the Cathy/Heathcliff reunion we promised each other is because there is nothing to reunite. I am real, corporeal. You are not. I should hope that your present nothingness is the truth, hope for your sake that you aren’t wandering the darkness trying to find me. Should, don’t. My grief is still selfish enough to deny you a peaceful nothing. I just want to touch you again. (And even when I say that, I know it’s not true. One touch would never be enough. I would keep you with me forever.) Your departure has made a genie-keeper of me. I’d lock you back in that urn quick as kiss you. I’d lock you back in my flesh quick as love you. Love you quick again.
Sydney sunshine. You and I and the antipodean sky, lost in the sharp blue, astounded by the fierceness of the sun, astonished that while it burnt my skin, you burnt my lips more, branded ourselves with each other. My body was made to hold yours. There were wonders to see and you ignored them to look at me. We were not good tourists, I could send home no postcards of the fine sights they offered us, I had no ‘wish you were here’ when I was with you. Your topography was more than enough.
There is a man here, also alone. I think the breakfast waitress would like us to talk to each other. I think she is more interested in the morning ease of having to clear just the one table, than the possibility that this man and I might find conversation possible. We don’t talk, but I do begin to watch him. He eats toast and marmalade, no butter, as you did. But his toast is cut into quarters, eaten carefully, he does not crush a slice in half as you did and finish one piece in three mouthfuls. He seems to have more time than you did. I’d steal it from him if I could, give you his time. Your death has made a murderer of me. The man is slow and deliberate. Every morning he sets out, walks the mud flats of the shallow tide. He has binoculars and telescope. It is a wet summer, he watches shore birds, writes them down in a notebook. At least that’s what I imagine he’s doing – sighting, writing. As if simply seeing is enough. He does not need to touch as well. It’s a skill I would do well to learn.
Hot Paris summer. All the Parisians have left, abandoning their over-heated city to we foolish tourists. You and I are over-heated and weighed down with shopping and crowded by jostling Italian school children. We fight on the Metro, an argument about nothing, escalating to everything. It is not unusual for us to fight and even so, every time we do, I think it means the end. Still I cannot stop myself. Run up the stairs and into the sweltering city and far from you. Will not back down, don’t remember where this began, probably don’t care, and yet am so caught up in the emotion, the wave of your fury and my anger, that I have no way of coming back to you. You come back to me instead, remind me that however much I hate you, you are going nowhere without me. That I can push you away as much as I want, beat you off with my violent words, but you’re not leaving. I glare at you and refuse to admit my relief, my gratitude at your astonishing staying-power. It’s impressive. And I do believe you. Believe I cannot push you away. That night we lay in a hot bed, desultory ceiling fan stirring humid air around our dark-painted room, sticky skin making the slow approach, remembering who we are because we are with each other. And I did believe you when you said I couldn’t send you away. You were right, of course, it wasn’t me who sent you. It was summer.
On the third morning the sun was shining when I awoke. I was surprised by the brighter light through the heavy curtains. Did not understand the faint ease of spirit, tried to banish the half-smile playing with my features, but