by Sandy Meredith
On the climbing wall, somewhere after halfway up, there’ll be a hold beyond which lies the peak. Ascent seems impossible; my only hope is that I have the strength to climb back down without falling. But if I stick to the hold and wait for the fear of falling to subside and that drug of cool calm to settle through my body, taking the peak might come more easily than I expect. And if I do it brings such a surge of warmth, it makes me smile, it gives me hope that I might make it up the next challenge. It’s both completion and promise.
Day 1
I got drunk with the only person I’ve come across in three and half years who’s stirred my heart. He’s hot, handsome and honey tongued, but it’s something primitive that makes me want him. If he’s in the same room I always know where he is and wish he was closer, paying attention to me. He didn’t know that; at least he never gave it away if he did, until we got drunk.
During those many nocturnal hours of downing rum, we went all virginal teenager, holding hands, touching legs, hugging, a peck of a kiss but not too much tongue. Talking, talking, talking. We can make this work. We can do this. Didn’t get past first base, but didn’t stop until hours after the sun had risen and we were finally too drunk for words.
Day 2
I’m still drunk. I’m so exhilarated I want to tell someone; someone very distant so they can’t watch me fall if …
Dear Rob,
Getting a small boat and living out your days in the daggiest seaside town in Oz sounds peaceful. Staying on the land and battling lace bug in the olive trees, on the other hand, sounds like never-ending war.
In the countryside here the pretty Englandness is being sap-sucked by St George flags. Wouldn’t want to be walking around in dark skin in some of those places. Hundreds of thousands of the bastards marched in London yesterday and Musk turned up to address them via starlink.
I would have gone to the counter-demo but unintentionally stayed up all night drinking rum with a workmate, a bloke from Paris. Do you remember doing that in our wild days? Up all night drinking so much you can barely walk home while everyone else is soberly going to work? And no end of propositioning going on but not getting past hand-holding and hugging–although that might have been to avoid falling over–provoking the desire etc etc. Spent the last 24 hours juggling getting over the hangover with the bright tingle of promise and the dark possibility that nothing will come of it. It’d be nice if it did, though. He’s the most attractive person I’ve come across since Benny died, and while I’ve learned to be alright with being alone, it feels like only half-living. Lying naked talking and touching would make life infinitely richer. And maybe even getting laid–I miss that a lot.
Dear Sandra
I think you’re terrific and I love you. So great to hear from you. Do Parisian men deserve their reputation? It is good news, albeit against the backdrop of fascism ascendant. Perhaps ascendant fascism provokes amor.
Nevertheless, you need a little tenderness; I am sure you deserve it. I’ll be thinking of you and send my fondest wishes that the ‘bright’ will prevail.
Meanwhile, we have a bandit at large in the hills. According to a friend who’s known him for a long time, “he’s not a sovereign citizen, he’s a prepper”. We have a lot of these around here, a peculiarly North East response to the times— they don’t take to the streets, they take to the hills. The other day the police helicopter had flown over to spy on/intimidate a local looney who had been an influence on the prepper and may be aiding him; then it turned around and flew over to where I was out in the middle of the paddock hoeing capeweed. I waved my hoe to them in what I hoped was a salutary gesture, non-threatening, and all the goats came and gathered around me for protection so I was standing there like St Francis. Then it flew away.
Our friend tells us “civilians” have nothing to fear from him, but he won’t go to jail, so it will end badly.
Day 3
When I walk into the after-work party the Parisian smiles at me and holds out his hand and I grab it and squeeze it and let it go and walk on by. I don’t know where we stand in this crowd—I definitely don’t know if we stand together. One or two know about the long night of drinking, but not, probably, about all that touching, about all that talking about whether or not we could make it in some way together.
I don’t know what to do in this room, at this party. Have the promises of the night dissipated in the day? How am I supposed to know? I’m freaked out halfway up the wall, fear of falling is kicking in strong. I can’t find the cool calm.
Even at a distance, he electrifies me. I ache to touch him, hold him, be physically connected. Must be want of my old friend oxytocin, which hasn’t surged through me in so very long.
Eventually I go and lean into his back and say I need to know if I’ve got a chance of getting him into my bed. I lean into his heat and he leans into mine, I’m all about the touch and not really paying attention to the talk, he’s saying he stands by everything he said that long night of drinking—we can make it, we can do this—then he blathers about being no good at relationships and it’ll take a while, and he talks weirdly about waiting three years, by which time I’ll be dead, I say. But he goes on leaning back into me, his back against the front of me, we’re all touch, and when I ask if it’s ok he says, yes, yes we can keep leaning into each other, then he says I’m messing with his head and he never expected anything like this would ever happen to him again, and I say that if I’m in his head I’ll settle for that. But
But I’m an oxy junkie, fallen off the wagon. I suffered through all the withdrawals. I stayed off it. Replaced it with exercise and music, the nearly-it clean substitutes, the way reformed addicts do. But it’s still life with the colour blurred out. And then out of the blue I score, I find someone with the right skin, the right electricity, the right whatever the fuck it is because it can’t be just anyone, and I want, I need, right now, more. Give me more, give me that again, please, more. I want him naked in my bed for the skin to skin, for the talk, for the oxy. Every cell in my body is yearning for it. It’s making me downright uncivilised.
Day 4
In the cold light of morning I think that what the Parisian was actually saying was no. He’s made it up to that hold on the wall and all he feels is fear of falling. Took his courage and his warm words from a bottle of rum in the long hours of darkness. When the drunk wore off he couldn’t find the cool calm; he’s not up for trying the push to the peak. He’s trying to climb down and he’s clumsy at it.
As for me, I’ve fallen hard. I’m broken right up. It hurts worse than I’d ever imagined.
Over a decade I’d gone all armadillo. The hard shell began growing when the doctor told Benny the pain was prostate cancer that would would kill him, sooner rather than later. I needed defence against the certain future losses. The treatment that killed the pain also killed fucking, the glue that had kept us together whenever everything else threatened to go to hell. We still held each other all night long and hugged each other in the days; we kept touch, and we got by on that. When the esophagus cancer attacked, alcohol caused pain so no more sharing a bottle of wine. Then eating became painful so we lost not only the pleasure of sharing a meal, but also lying in bed in the morning talking about what we would have for dinner, which had become our replacement for an early morning fuck. After the esophagus operation he couldn’t lie down without pain and there went a whole lot of whole body touch. We were left standing hugging and kissing, and we got by on that.
The losses hit us one by one and I didn’t cry for them because I didn’t want him to bear my pain. I toughed it out in my armour. I worked at living only for each moment. I gave up plans, hopes, dreams—abandoned future because it promised only more loss.
All through his heartbreaking decline I still didn’t cry, because it was hard enough without me adding my anguish. As the end approached we had only talk and holding hands left, and we held tight until the end.
I couldn’t cry when Benny died. Nor since, for three and half years. Lived the way I’d learned: in one moment, one hour, one day. Kept future at bay. Until now. Grief and desire are colliding.
One night of drunken touch and talk and now I’m hungry for what could happen next. I want to hold the Parisian again. I want to feel his smile flow through me. I’m barely eating. Having trouble sleeping. Mooning about with my head full of him. It’s all so bloody teenaged. Listening to Do I Wanna Know?, Arctic Monkeys’ sweet anthem of the lovesick, on repeat. Also, weirdly, Radiohead’s You and Whose Army?—what’s that about? to give myself strength for the moment when his no really is no and I’m on the edge of that abyss?
Day 5
I wake up crying, finally, years of unwept tears pulsing out without end. I’m aching for those decades of skin-to-skin sharing, the late night chatting, the early morning greetings. When we were first together we lived on coffee and cigarettes, chocolate cheesecake and scotch, and touch. It was touch that kept us together as the decades passed. And touch is what I got in that long night of rum drinking. Touch is what I’ve been lacking and what I want. This solitariness will kill me, like a plant deprived of light.
I’m undone completely now, my armadillo shell smashed by letting hope in. Damn that bottle of rum. Damn the Parisian for reaching out and taking my hand. Damn him for that glimmer of hope.
Nothing but Benny’s favourite playlists and tears all the livelong day.
Eventually I try to drag myself up to equilibrium by going to the climbing wall. Three routes that should be possible defeat me. My body won’t hold. I don’t trust it.
At night a message from the Parisian on my phone:
“How are you doing? Do you want to meet up, maybe for something to eat and have a chance to talk?”
I wait a couple of hours, pretending nonchalence, then reply:
“I think I’m doing ok now. I’ve had an interesting few days. How are you?”
Followed cautiously by:
“I would like to meet up. I probably have way more time on my hands than you have on yours, so why don’t you suggest times and places and I’ll let you know what I can do.”
No reply.
Day 6
No reply from the Parisian in the morning.
No reply all day long. Checking my phone with the obsessiveness of a teen on heat.
Drowning in memories and deep dark despair, tears and more tears, and Nick Cave’s grief music all day.
As the sun sets I go back to the wall and easily climb two of the routes that defeated me the last time. The third is still beyond me, but I reach the cool calm and tarry there a while trying to figure out how to take the peak.
Day 7
I wake up elated by the memory of the Parisian holding my hand in both of his, sucking my fingers. Audaciously send him a message:
“Good morning. Did I make it too complicated? How about you just call/text me when you’re free and we’ll figure out where to meet and take it from there?”
And get a reply straight away, and some friendly chat. Sorry, but how about this day or that, which I can’t do, so maybe Saturday, maybe, he’ll let me know.
He doesn’t. The day passes without a word, Saturday passes without a word, and the next day…
And since
I go to the wall, learn something new, do my best climbing yet.
The Parisian still hasn’t got back to me. I’m hanging on the maybe … holding in the cool calm. I’ll take what I can get.
I’m nourished by the best long night I’ve had in years, and I needed the turbulent week it kicked off, and I know the future is only dreams. In the hiatus of maybe I’ll keep his honeyed words as good coin, and I’ve still got him smiling at me in my head, so I’m rolling with the dreams. If it turns out it was all rum-talk and bullshit I’ll hate him for that, and it’ll cushion the fall when it comes.
Sandy Meredith started out as a farm girl in south-east Australia and has ended up as a barmaid in an east London jazz club. She is the author of two YA novels: A Death in Custody and Two Down in Paradise (Lightwood Books).
Photo by cottonbro studio: https://www.pexels.com/photo/silhouette-of-man-and-woman-kissing-6800204/
