Boyfriend in a Dress (15 page)

‘I know, I know. I’ve never really had that much to say, though, have I?’

‘In all honesty, it was never your personality I was interested in, and once you lost your looks, well, it was all downhill …’ We are both giggling now, slumped back on the sofa next to each other, a glass of wine each, feet up on the coffee table.

‘It won’t be like this when we get back to London, you know that, don’t you?’ I say, quietly.

‘It could be,’ Charlie says, under his breath.

‘Charlie, in two months’ time, we’ll be back where we started.’ I pull myself up to face him.

‘You’ll be going out with the boys, drinking yourself silly most nights, sleeping with anything in a skirt.’ Charlie looks up at me quickly, as if somehow I wouldn’t know about the others.

‘Charlie, come on, I’m not stupid, and I’m no angel either, but obviously nothing on your scale.’ He raises his eyes to heaven.

‘No, come on, I’m serious, you don’t talk to me like this usually.’

‘I don’t talk to you?! You drove me away. You made me feel like it was my fault, like everything was my fault. You were hard to pin down to a two-line conversation, if it was about us. Anything else was fine, everything else, you’d talk about anything but us. The only thing I wanted to talk about!’

‘Maybe, or maybe I resented you for … the pregnancy, or maybe you didn’t try hard enough, or maybe we just weren’t meant to be. But whatever, Charlie, there’s too much baggage now, no matter what we say, we couldn’t go back to town together, I couldn’t know that you’ve slept with half of your building, but this time actually caring! It would rip me apart.’

London flashes through my mind – Charlie’s work, my office, and Dale … I don’t want to see him, or speak to him. I hope Phil has lost his number.

Charlie is speaking.

‘What if we didn’t go back?’

‘Sorry?’ I ask, incredulous.

‘I mean we’d have to go back, to hand in our notice, to get rid of our flats, but then – what if we went away … together?’
Charlie turns and grabs my hand, his eyes light up with the excitement, as the idea sparkles and glows inside his head.

‘Charlie, don’t be ridiculous – we can’t just jack everything in. I don’t have the money to go off … wherever.’

‘I’ve got enough for both of us, it’s not about money. You say we can’t work in London, and maybe we can’t, but what if we went away somewhere completely different – it could be like America again, just the two of us!’

‘And two hundred million Americans,’ I say, but he has me interested.

‘You know what I mean. You said it yourself, how did we last this long?! Anybody else would have finished it years ago, but we both hung on – it counts for something!’

‘Charlie, we’ve had too much wine!’

‘No, we’ve had enough to wake up!’

I look at him seriously.

‘Charlie, I’m not an easy answer to your problems. And you aren’t a different person, neither am I. We can’t just go off on two days of weirdness, and a half-decent conversation after a couple of glasses too many. It just wouldn’t work out.’ I hold his hand as the lights fade behind his eyes.

‘I don’t want to finish this, “us”, now,’ he says. I give him a sensible smile, squeeze his hand; you know it makes sense.

‘At least think about it,’ he says. I realize for the first time that he is slurring, and all of a sudden I feel the clouds in my own head, the taste in my mouth. I look around at the table and see four empty bottles of wine. We have been having this whole conversation half-cut.

‘Charlie, look how much wine we’ve had.’

‘I’m a different person now,’ he says, reasonably. The candles have burnt down to their stubs, and are begging to be put out. I stagger up, and try and steady myself.

‘I’m taking an executive decision to leave the tidying up
until the morning!’ I declare, and manoeuvre myself around the end of the sofa, bashing my thigh nonetheless.

‘I’m going to bed – are you going to be okay?’

‘I’ll be fine,’ he says.

I walk over to the back of the sofa, and put my arms around his neck from behind.

‘It is for the best, you know that, Charlie,’ I say, and kiss him on the cheek, lightly.

He nods, and I go to my room. I hear him say ‘Thanks,’ as I close my door.

I sit in front of the mirror, and brush my hair, now dry, back into a ponytail, and put on a vest top and clean pair of knickers. I get into bed, and turn off my light. I stare at the ceiling, at the wall, at the window. I toss and turn for twenty minutes, and just when I start to doze off, and what I was thinking and what I am about to dream are beginning to merge, I hear a strange noise outside my door. I prop myself up, and listen for it again. It sounds like somebody is crying. I pull back the duvet, walk over to the door, and open it.

Charlie is sitting, hugging his legs, against my bedroom wall. His eyes and cheeks are wet with tears.

‘Charlie?’

‘I’m sorry,’ he says, and he hugs himself closer.

I reach out my hand, but he doesn’t take it. I kneel down in front of him, and push his hair out of his eyes.

‘What’s wrong? Please, Charlie, you have to tell me so I can help.’

‘I’m a different person now,’ he keeps sobbing into his hands. I pull his hands away from his face, and he suddenly clutches me around the stomach, and sobs into my belly.

‘I know you are, I know you are,’ I keep saying, stroking his hair.

He looks up at me.

‘Can I stay with you tonight. Just next to you?’

‘Of course.’

I take his hand, and pull him to his feet. He wipes his face with the back of his hand, and follows me into my room. I shut the door behind us.

I hug him from behind, and he cries quietly for a while, but it’s soothing – it sends me to sleep. Somewhere in the night we twist and turn in our sleep, and we wake up in different positions, Charlie on his back, me with my head on his chest. His arm clutches at me tightly. When he wakes up, I am sitting at the end of the bed, looking at him. Thinking, what if we did go away? Could we do it – just up and leave? It wouldn’t have to be forever, just the obligatory year that starts in Australia and ends in San Francisco, and leaves us both longing for home. And even if we didn’t last past Sydney, it would be somebody to go with, it wouldn’t be a town full of strangers. But now it’s different. Now something makes me want to stay with him. Now I want it to last. Charlie looks at me sleepily.

‘What shall we do today, you fruit loop? Let’s fit the breakdowns in around fun!’

Charlie half laughs, rolls his eyes to heaven at his own predicament.

‘We could just go for a walk.’

‘We could do that … where, though?’

I mentally run through the shoes I’ve brought and whether I can go for ‘a walk’ in any of them.

‘Let’s just walk, see where we end up. Start as we mean to go on.’

Charlie hasn’t forgotten last night’s conversation. I feel my nerves tingling … with relief.

With jumpers around waists, plimsolls on, shorts and sunglasses, we set off down the beach, over small rocks, round trees. We chat, but mostly we just walk. Every once in a while
we stop and catch some lovely view, and we both stare off in the distance, thinking our different thoughts about the same thing – could we go away? Eventually we sit and reapply sun cream from my backpack – ever the girl scout!

‘We should head back early tomorrow, in case the trains are up the spout,’ I say.

Charlie just looks off into the distance, then nods, without looking at me.

‘What are you thinking?’ I ask.

‘I’m thinking about sex,’ Charlie replies, unapologetic.

‘What about it?’ I laugh.

‘Just that … it’s strange. I mean, it’s a weird thing to do. Especially with somebody you don’t know very well.’

‘What do you mean, weird?’

‘Like, you actually let somebody into your body, or you actually enter into somebody else’s body. It’s just so – God, it’s so intimate! So personal! Like somebody sticking their arm down your mouth.’

‘It’s pretty damn personal, yes. It’s as intimate as it gets.’

‘I’m never having meaningless sex ever again.’

‘Charlie, I think you’re getting carried away …’

‘No, I’m serious, I’m not throwing it away. I’m going to get one of those books on the art of sex. My sex life is going to become legendary. Every single time is going to be different, experimental, deeply personal. No more average drunken sex for me.’

‘Average sex isn’t so bad. Just safe sex would be nice these days. If I could just completely relax, and not think about disease … the disease …’

We’re the scared generation: we were just at the right age to be petrified of AIDS. We got pages and pages in the
Daily Mail
telling us we were going to die from a little bit of slap and tickle. I don’t think I’ve ever coped with that. It still scares me.

‘You should have a test. It’ll put your mind at rest,’ Charlie says matter-of-factly.

‘Or yours, you mean. If I don’t have it, you don’t have it? Can I tell you something else? I still, STILL, don’t get condoms. Even now, even after years of using the damn things. I still worry every time I open the packet that I’m going to rip it to shreds. And for your information, I have had a test. I had it a couple of weeks ago. I went for a Well Woman check, and they asked me if I wanted one.’

‘Have you had your results back?’ Charlie looks at me suddenly with a little more concern.

‘Yeah, I got them a week later – you have to go back and get them in person, in case anything’s wrong. I thought I’d be a wreck for that week – I thought the whole thing, the impending doom of it all, would get me, but I was okay. A few fleeting flashes when I turned the lights out at night, that it could be coming, but then I’d just tell myself not to worry, that I’d have had some kind of symptom, that I’d be fine. So all week I just convince myself it’s okay, until the morning I have to go and pick them up. And even that’s okay – I’m a bit twitchy, and I’m clockwatching because I have to wait until lunchtime, and the time is dragging. But then ten minutes before, I’m walking to the clinic, and I am absolutely freaking out. Physically shaking. Because it occurs to me that the only reason I’ve been fine for the past week is by convincing myself that I’m fine, and I haven’t slept with anyone I know to be bisexual, or a needle drug-user, or from Africa – which are all the questions they ask you by the way, I’m not being a Nazi! But what if I’m just unlucky? What if, on one of the random occasions that I was stupid and drunk, I got literally shafted? I wouldn’t be able to cope with it, if they told me I was positive. So then you start doing this terrible mind scan of every sexual indiscretion you’ve ever had, every stupid thing you’ve done. But it’s only really stupid if it leaves a calling card.’

‘So I’m guessing … you’re okay, right?’ Charlie ventures.

‘Yeah I’m fine,’ I shrug. ‘I sat shaking in the waiting room for five minutes, feeling completely sick, and then they call you in, and the first thing they say is “You’re negative.” And I wanted to jump up and hug the doctor. And then they start going through all the other stuff you don’t have – you don’t have syphilis, you don’t have thrush, and I’m just like “fuck the rest, I can get antibiotics for that lot, I don’t have AIDS!” I’m actually considering creating a form, in Excel, that men have to fill in before touching me now – I want references for any distance less than three feet!’ I’m laughing, until I realize that Charlie looks deadly serious.

‘What?’ I shove him in the arm.

‘I’m promiscuous. I’m the definition. I sleep around. What if you got it from me?’

‘Charlie, I just told you I don’t have it! Don’t worry about it.’

‘You didn’t have it two weeks ago, or a month ago, or whenever your test was, but you might have it now. From me.’

I drop my head, before explaining. It’s going to sound insulting, but it was just self-protection at the time. I take a deep breath.

‘Charlie, we haven’t had sex without a condom for seven months. We’ve hardly had sex, but each time we’ve used protection. And since my test … Charlie we haven’t had sex since I got my results.’

‘Right.’ Charlie looks like I’ve slapped him in the face. Like I’ve just branded him as some sort of walking health risk.

‘It wasn’t to be mean, but you admitted you’ve been sleeping around, Charlie, and I just … I just didn’t want to take any chances. I’m not stupid, I knew it was going on, I just … never would have forgiven you if I’d caught something from you.’

‘So …’ Charlie searches for the words, ‘are you saying that you’ll never sleep with me again?’

I wasn’t expecting that at all. We had decided to call it quits. I had decided never to sleep with him again. Not because of the disease thing, but because our sex had become painfully routine, an embarrassment of rehearsed moves performed time and time again. We barely even kissed any more, during sex. But stupidly, childishly, I couldn’t say no to him, I couldn’t say we wouldn’t sleep together again. Because he seemed like a different person now. In two stupid, maddening days, he seemed like he needed me again, and liked me again. And if we could talk, if we could clear up … all our hurt, then maybe we could work things out.