kind of wishing he wouldn’t – fell into an exasperated, self-conscious sleep while he sat in my chair, quietly reading The English Auden. When I woke up
the next morning, the scene was exactly as I’d left it, except he was three-quarters of the way through the great red tome. A few nights later, he sat in the same chair and began to read Heart of Darkness aloud. I was half bored, half charmed and half asleep to boot. Throughout the night I drifted in and out of consciousness (in retrospect a great way to soak up this delirious tale). Once he’d finished reading, he asked if he could curl up on my bed. I nodded. This went on for several nights, until eventually he plucked up courage to ask to sleep next to me. The weight of his arm round me kept me as wide awake as if it had been a cattle prod. A quiet, trembling joy was bubbling up within me and it was all I could do to keep the lid on. Afterwards when my lumbering suitor was around, I came over all jittery and busied myself with constructing elaborate toasted sandwiches.
He couldn’t work out what was going on. ‘Excuse me,’ he asked, ‘but do you have a boyfriend?’
Adrenalin rushed through me – was I going to be sick? Here was the gigantic, earth-smashing moment I’d been waiting for: at last, something was going to happen! ‘Um, no,’ I replied, looking intently at my knee.
‘Right.’ He nodded.
Sharing a fondness for playgrounds, we’d go on moonlit walks in search of swings. Our favourite park not only had an on-site chip shop but a slide with a wooden Wendy house at the top. We’d climb up and shelter from the rain, chips steaming in our laps. He’d give me ‘blowbacks’ from his joints, bringing his lips perilously close to mine and stunning me into silence for moments at a time. I wasn’t into drugs, except on prescription, but it seemed the friendly thing to do. Maybe I’d learn to like them.
Finally he asked if he could kiss me.
Here was the man I would love for ever. And yet I was furious if he was still there when I woke up in daylight because I didn’t like being looked at. I thought he would notice my face and realize he’d made a mistake. But the days went by and he continued to reappear. He often came to my bed after using drugs, going to sleep at dawn and refusing to budge until well into the afternoon. The college cleaner would come in at eleven a. m and roll Jack on to the floor where he’d lie, snoring, then crawl back between clean sheets. I did my best to keep our relationship a secret, but in such circumstances it wasn’t possible.
That was about all we did for the first three weeks until, during a heavy-petting session, he asked politely to move things forward. I consented – I’d already gone on the pill. Physically, the experience was no more stimulating than my annual date with a speculum, and certainly didn’t match up to the relief and pure joy of being able to say without blushing, at long, long last, that I was a Virgo. For the entire minute and a half, all I was thinking was ‘OH, MY GOD! I’M HAVING SEX WITH A BOY!’ Next, I went to a one-on-one tutorial in which my poor professor enthused about Richard Martin’s crazed heavenly scenes.4 I couldn’t hear a word because my mind was ablaze. An internal voice shouted, ‘OH, MY GOD! I JUST FUCKED A BOY! I JUST FUCKED A BOY!’ I was so excited I almost told him.
I had a boyfriend. I had a fucking boyfriend! He was adorable, strange and polite, and delighted to have me, too. He laughed at my jokes and looked after me when I was ill. I’d set my alarm in the middle of the night so I could wake up and think, There he is. This is my boyfriend. He’s in bed with me. With me!
The sex had novelty value, but that didn’t last – we were always the same people, doing the same things in the same place. A few times Jack struggled to make things more interesting, but he was fighting a losing battle: I didn’t want anal, I liked lying down – and I wanted my home comforts, too. After a couple of scratchy incidents in North Wales and the New Forest, I vetoed outdoor sex.
Heavy Petting
You made me give you a blow-job in a field.I didn’t really want to but to ave a fuss, I kneeled.You wanted me to finish you ithout using my hands – I had to scrunch my lips up tight just like a rubber band.
As I laboured on I felt my knees get damp.Fifteen minutes into it my cheeks began to cramp. You cried out, ‘My God! Don’t stop! I’m nearly there!’ I knew the worst was coming when you grabbed hold of my hair.
OH! Heavy petting in the great outdoors, Caterpillars, ladybirds and dandelion spores, Cold and wet, no privacy, Doesn’t sound like fun to me!
You made me fuck you in among the trees, I didn’t really want to but you kept on saying, ‘Please’, Lying on a prickly patch alive with ants, I was cold and petulant without my pants.
It was over quickly but then, oh, my cries When I saw that I’d attracted half a dozen flies. Leaping up, I grabbed my clothes and drove back home, And that’s where I’ve had sex since then; preferably alone .
OH! Heavy petting in the great outdoors, Caterpillars, ladybirds and dandelion spores, Cold and wet, no privacy, Doesn’t seem like fun to me!
Hmmm, sex. I quite liked it when it was going on, but I’d always need a drink to get remotely worked up, which insulted Jack and pissed me off. I thought he was totally gorgeous, so why didn’t my body react? I put it down to inhibition and my old standby: something was wrong with me. Also, now that I was ensconced in a relationship, all the longing faded away, and sex never crossed my mind unless it was happening. It was like the jam in a doughnut – the sticky, messy bit that came wrapped in lovely sweet dough. A typical post-coital scene looked something like this:
‘Chief, where did you put my knickers?’
‘Huh?’
‘You know, sex is like violin practice: I have a hard time getting started. I can’t be bothered, and then afterwards I feel like it was worth the effort, and I’m, like, “Hmm. I should really do that more often …” So I’m sorry … Jack?’
He’d already be asleep. This kind of activity took a lot out of him, and a twenty-four-hour post-coital depression would inevitably descend.
And so, things pootled pleasantly along until he went mad. When he stopped being mad we ended up in London, like everybody else, living first in a vicarage, then on a council estate and, finally, in our own flat in a mansion block infested with homeless drug addicts. We got easy, silly jobs writing nonsense, and hung out with my friends after work. About five years on, everything was trundling along nicely, but there wasn’t much magic in the air. I was a freelance recruitment copywriter, stuck in the armpit of the advertising industry. I used my wits for the powers of evil, luring people into unappealing jobs. And, for some reason, I felt sad as soon as I had any free time. Our flat was infested with mould, insects scurried through the gaps, the electrician said we’d die if we used the shower, but the sports centre had only one hot one and that was marked ‘disabled’. The day a disabled person banged on the door, I realized I’d had it with London. I walked back through the frost, marched into the bedroom and shoved Jack’s toe.
‘Chief,’ I said, ‘wake up. I want to get married.’
I had a plan: we’d go to San Francisco and ride the dot-com boom with our friends Tim and Tina (T&T). My friend Ben handled fish-fingers and sanitary towels at a fancy product agency in Soho: if I wanted a sexy job like that, I knew I had to move to where the economy was exploding. The Great Move would also salve my travel complex. The Brontës had done OK stuck in Yorkshire; my grandparents would never have left Scotland even if they’d had the chance; my parents thought going to France was an adventure. But