Anyway, being a fan of terrifying myself with videos of the Slender Man, or ‘The Operator’ as he is known in MarbleHornets, I cajoled my mother into buying me Danielewski’s cult novel for Christmas. After reading the first few pages I remember thinking something along the lines of “this might be one of the most important novels since Ulysses”, which put me in mind of a quote from the experimental novelist Bryan Stanley Johnson where he asked “Why do so many novelists still write as though the revolution that was Ulysses had never happened?” True House of Leaves is very much more towards the post-modern than the modern, but it has very strong elements of modernism in the Joycean stream-of-consciousness side-notes of its main protagonist, and in its relentless T. S. Eliot-style theft of famous literary and mythological phrases.

In the post-modern fashion however, its central concept is as difficult to grasp as anything Italo Calvino of John Fowles ever wrote, approaching more the complexity of Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow (which I have not yet attempted to read, I must add), but I shall try to sum it up for you: A young Los Angeles tattoo-apprentice named Johnny Truant finds a series of notes in the apartment of an old recently-deceased blind man named Zampano. These notes were dictated by Zampano and amount to a critical work on the subject of a supposedly-famous documentary film that does not exist. To suggest that the film does in fact exist, the notes extensively reference other critical essays, many of which are also fictitious.

To draw a parallel, John Fowles’ The French Lieutenant’s Woman has sometimes been referred to as a ‘braided narrative’ due to the contextualising footnotes it contains, which support and enhance the content of the main story. This ‘braided narrative’ could be said to have two threads; the thread of the main story and the thread of the footnotes. House of Leaves shows a comparable, but more complicated, braided narrative in that there’s a constant interplay between the thread of the story of the fictitious film, the thread of narrative within the critical essays about the film, the fictitious titles referenced in the footnotes which, though non-existent, suggest ideas that support the critical arguments, the thread of Johnny Truant’s comments, and the final thread of the appendices, which contain such items as around 50 pages of letters sent between the young Johnny Truant and his institutionalised mother. If you want to get into proper post-modern terminology about it, you could say that House of Leaves is a novel that plays with a multitude of ontological layers, constantly shifting and undermining them to create feelings of uncertainty and paranoia in the reader which mirror the unpredictable and incomprehensible movements of the titular house.

That’s a point; I still haven’t really said what the novel, or rather the ‘film’ at its centre, is about. Well, the ‘film’ that Zampano’s notes discuss is called The Navidson Record which is a film made by a supposedly famous photographer about his family’s move to a house in the country. Despite being a documentary film, the notes reference the fact that a lot of people have called into question its authenticity, due to the events that occur within it. Nevertheless, it starts out ordinarily enough, with the family adjusting to their new life, but then the house starts to change: first, after they’ve been away for a few days, they return to find a cupboard on their landing which had not been there before and is not on any of the original blueprints. Next, the wife, Karen, is putting up some shelves in an alcove. In the film there is a moment when she puts books on these shelves and then they fall over like dominoes, but fall against the wall, and so remain on the shelf. When, by chance, the books are knocked over again a little while later, they fall off the shelf because the shelf is no longer flush with the wall. The most dramatic of the house’s changes, at least up to the point I’ve reached in the story, is that a doorway appears in the living room that, due to being in an outside wall, should lead straight into the garden, but instead leads into an ever-expanding unlit space, superficially resembling a house, but without any windows or furniture or fixtures or a very, very long list of very, very specific items that is detailed in one of the footnotes.

So that’s what the film is about, but of course the film is only the creation of Zampano. The thing is, Zampano died alone in ‘mysterious circumstances’, the implication being that his death was somehow linked to these notes. And then Johnny, reading the notes, starts getting really paranoid and lots of strange things start happening to him, which sounds pretty trite, but it’s handled with a reasonable degree of subtlety, and the structure of the book makes for an unusual way of building tension, going into long theoretical discourses about, for example, the scientific explanations and mythological representations behind the ideas of echoes, before suddenly revealing a moment in the film where one of the children’s voices can be heard to echo, despite there being no room in the house large enough to cause the phenomenon, except of course the impossible hallway through the living room. The book also does some clever things with layout so that the form mirrors the content, like for example in a chapter about labyrinths printing footnotes in weird places on the page, and having footnotes link to other footnotes, which then refer back to earlier or later footnotes and sometimes just go round in circles.

It’s clever in a way that is not entirely original, but is certainly under-used when most writers do still write as if the revolutions of modernism and post-modernism hadn’t ever occurred. Certainly I’m enjoying it and am eager to return to it each night, except for one criticism I have with the book: too much sex.

I don’t find Johnny Truant a particularly relatable or likeable  character, and he lacks the depth the rest of the novel delivers, but he’s passable. What is beginning to annoy me about him is that almost all of his longer notes turn into long, graphic descriptions of all the sex he has and, so far, I don’t think he’s described a single female character he hasn’t then had sex with, regardless of the context of their original meeting. Now, people have expressed to me a lot of shock at the amount of sex in my book (still on sale at Lulu.com, by the way), which I didn’t think was that gratuitous or even that shocking, eighty years after Ulysses and forty years after The French Lieutenant’s Woman, but House of Leaves is something else. Every single woman!

There’s a very fine line between art and pornography; D. H. Lawrence had to go to court over which side of the line Lady Chatterley’s Lover occupied, but the key factor with Lawrence’s novel was that the sex scenes were thematically necessary in establishing the development of the attitudes of the character’s and, in particular, Lady Chatterley’s sexual liberation. My work is more about sex and sexual tension than actually containing all that many full-on sex scenes, but where it does contain graphic scenes I hope they are always thematically justified, as necessary to the story as any other aspect. In House of Leaves however, unless Danielewski ties it all together at the end, the sex scenes read like superfluous erotic fiction, serving no purpose other than titillation. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with erotic fiction, if that’s your thing, but it detracts from the overall quality of the work here and, rather than, as it was possibly intended, holding the interest of otherwise bored male readers, distracts from what is otherwise a distinct and enthralling novel.

It was Saturday morning. Her hair had recently been the colour of candy floss, and before that, shocking pink, but had since faded to the bleached milky hue of evening clouds. Several strands of it clung to the brush. She turned.

“Are you still here?”

It was a joke.

She plucked a tangle of hair from the brush’s plastic spines and nonchalantly let it fall from outstretched fingers into the bin. The previous night’s nail-varnish, chipped in places, still clung to her nails. She was beautiful; he was her audience.

“What shall you do today?” he asked.

Her reflection began to apply eye-liner, its eye very wide open, lashes fluttering slightly.

“I suppose I’ll meet friends in town, or I’ll do some drawing.”

The mirror was set into a dressing table that must be old, but he did not know whether it had come with the room or she had brought it from home.

“How about you?”

She put the eye-pencil down on the untreated pine, where it rolled against a pot of lime-green nail-varnish. She picked up a tube of mascara. The dressing table was integral to her, symbolic of her. It often appeared in her candy-gothic illustrations like a signature. In the drawings it was less cluttered.

“Write, or play videogames.”

He shrugged. Beneath his bare elbow the sheets were still warm, but he could not tell whether from only from his own body-heat, or from hers as well. They smelled of her, and when he moved, the scent was disturbed. Above the bed’s head was draped a line of unlit fairy-lights.

She looked at him, smiled. When he left they did not kiss goodbye. They only kissed when they fucked.

~ ~ ~

He picked at a foil tray of leftover Chinese takeaway.

“That’s been out all night,” Gemma said.

“I like it when it’s cold.”

Sometimes they watched films together. This morning she had asked to use his computer to do some work. He sat back on his bed and watched her. He often felt she worked harder than him, and he admired her for it. Sometimes her work would stress her, she would lose confidence in herself, but she never asked for his support, only his dispassionate love. He was drawn to her independence. He rarely thought of her when he wrote.

She frowned at the screen. Tim put down the empty tray, picked up a conker that lay on his desk, began to toss it from hand to hand. The sky through the window was clear, but the winter sun was weak. He frowned, the conker moved faster. She looked at him, then back at the screen. She was wearing strawberry-mousse coloured pyjamas. Her fingers tapped on the keyboard.

“There was this time,” he began, still looking out the window, “I went to my cousins’ house. They had just moved into this new house on this estate. The house was new, and everything in it was new. It smelled of plastic. I was in the living room and there were my two cousins there as well. I was about eleven and my cousin was five or six, and her brother was just a baby. We never saw them that often. I don’t know where my aunt or my mum were, but it was just the three of us in the living room and I was sitting on this new leather sofa.”

He paused, but did not turn from the window.

“My cousin used to like to sit in my lap, or maybe anyone’s lap. I was sat there, watching TV or something I suppose, and she jumped up and started bouncing and shuffling on my lap. I was kind of ignoring her, watching the TV or whatever, but it felt kind of weird. I guess I got kind of, we used to say a ‘stiffy’ at primary school, and it felt kind of good, then it felt like I needed to pee, so I moved her off me and went into this little toilet-room.

“The toilet seat was made of this really smooth varnished wood. I lifted it up and pulled down my pants. I had sort of a semi, and there was this sticky stuff at the end, I didn’t know what it was, but when I touched it it felt kind of tingly. I don’t know what I was thinking about, not my cousin, not anything really, but I started to rub. My hand was shaking. Then after a few minutes I came, into the perfectly white toilet bowl. But it wasn’t, like, proper, it just sort of dribbled out. I got some on my fingers. Then I washed it off, and I flushed, and I went back into the living room like nothing had happened, but didn’t let her sit on my lap again.”

He looked at Gemma. Her hand rested on the computer’s mouse. Their eyes met, then she looked back at the screen.

“I felt guilty as hell afterwards, like I knew I’d done something wrong, but I wasn’t sure exactly what. I was terrified my aunt or my mum would find out and tell me off, but at the same time I kind of wanted them to, so it was done with and I didn’t have to think about it any more. I really hate that feeling, that sick-guilt when you’re a kid, when you don’t know how the world or anything works and you’re terrified of grown-ups because they have all the power over everything. I didn’t stop being afraid of what would happen if I touched myself until years later. Sometimes I still feel guilty about it, like I did her wrong, hurt her somehow.”

He fell silent. Gemma turned off his computer and stood. When she left, she squeezed his hand. The walls of his room felt tight around him.

(The above illustrations can be seen full size at Victoria Stitch’s blog.)

I don’t feel that’s entirely my fault: I was called into work unexpectedly and have only just, fighting through post-work, food and shower drowsiness found the time to make the final edits of this story, which I fear might not actually stand up to any hyperbolic statements I may or may not have made about it (I’m really too tired to remember what I said about it, if anything). Regardless, it is a good story, possibly a great one, and I think there’s a fair bit going on in it, which I hope will come across in subsequent re-readings of the story, if not the first time through.

So, yes, I am proud to have this as my one hundredth post, and I hope you all enjoy it,

Henry.

The New House

“Hey,” said Kate, “hey, stranger.”

She grabbed Jay’s arm, brought him to a stop in the cloying heat of an August Saturday as he picked his way through the crowd. People continued to push past, making little, if any, concession.

“Hey,” he said, looking at her, surprised.

“You nearly walked right past me,” she said.

Large sunglasses obscured her eyes, and she had cut her hair into a neat bob since the last time he had seen her, a few weeks ago, just after the start of the summer holidays.

“I didn’t know you were back yet,” he said.

“The weather wasn’t great, so we came back a few days early.”

“Didn’t you enjoy it much then?”

“It was okay, but we just ended up going in the arcades and stuff every day. It was too rainy and miserable to go on the beach.”

She pulled off her sunglasses, revealing blue eyes. Jay grimaced sympathetically.

“It rained here last week too,” he said.

He paused awkwardly and rubbed the back of his neck, which was slick with sweat.

“Hot today though,” he continued, “stuffy.”

“Yeah, it is kinda. Anyway, how are you?”

She reached up to rub the side of his arm.

“I’m okay. Sick of town; too many people and I couldn’t find -”

A man bumped into him and carried on walking, but did not say anything. Jay watched the man disappear back into the crowd, shook his head.

“We should probably get out the way,” Kate said.

The two moved aside, against the white stone wall of a bank.

“What were you looking for?” Kate asked.

“A desk,” said Jay, “for my new room.

“Doesn’t it come with one? I thought student rooms always came with desks.”

“Yeah, well it does, but it’s not a nice one. I don’t like it.”

Kate nodded, then squinted as a momentary break in the clouds illuminated the wall behind Jay.

“Have you moved in yet?” she asked, shading her eyes with her hand.

“No, not yet, I picked the keys up yesterday, but I’m just moving my stuff across bit by bit at the moment.”

He reached up to brush his hair away from his forehead.

“So what you up to now?” Kate asked.

Jay shrugged.

“Nothing really, I was just going home.”

“Shall we go get a cup of tea somewhere?”

Jay looked around, felt sweat in the lines of his palms. He liked Kate’s eyes.

“Okay,” he said.

In the café, cold drinks stood in neat lines on the shelves of a glass and metal cooler, condensation clinging to their slender-necked bodies. Jay grabbed a bottle of sparkling pear juice. Kate ordered a latte. All the outside tables were taken, so they sat opposite each other at a small round table by the window, and their knees brushed against each other as Kate told Jay about her family holiday in Cornwall. When she had finished they both took a sip of their drinks and there was silence between them. Jay looked around, thinking of something to say. He could feel his t-shirt sticking to his back with every movement he made.

“It really is hot today,” he said.

“Yeah,” Kate said.

Jay scratched at a scab on his elbow, his fingers curled into claws.

“How’d you do that?” Kate asked.

“Basketball,” said Jay, “I tripped.”

Kate leaned in close to examine the wound. It was only small, but stood out vividly against his pale skin, accentuated by a salmon-pink halo. Jay watched her, felt too hot. Once outside, he pushed his hands into his pockets and rocked on his heels. Kate looked at him.

“Wanna see my new house?” he said, finally.

“Sure,” Kate said.

The cloud-bank shifted uneasily in the sky and let out a few drops of rain. Jay felt their coolness on his skin and smiled. Kate was looking at him, smiled.

“I hope it rains,” Jay said.

Kate frowned.

“I’m sick of rain after last week.”

“I love summer rain,” Jay continued, “it’s so refreshing.”

“I like summer to be hot and sunny,” Kate said.

Jay looked at her. He still felt sticky with sweat. He wondered if she had noticed.

“Here it is.”

They stood outside a terraced house with a blue front door and a gated alleyway leading up the side. Dirt clung to the walls, clumped together in irregular veins on the white-painted walls. At the back there was a concrete yard, divided by four timber steps halfway along its length, which ran up to a gravelled rectangle with regularly placed slabs like uniform islands in a gravel-sea. A couple of small trees with sharp yellowish leaves brought colour to the yard.

“Nice garden,” Kate said.

Jay was flicking through the unfamiliar keys to find the one for the back door. He raised a gold-coloured key and tried it in the lock, but it did not fit. The keys jangled. He tried another and the door came open. They stepped into a small kitchen which had black and red tiles across the floor and faux-marble worktops. He was not used to the smell of the place, did not yet identify the smell of dust on the static air with home. He felt like an intruder, a stranger.

Next to the kitchen was the bathroom.

“I need to go wash my face,” Jay said.

He closed the bathroom door behind him and took his t-shirt off. In the mirror he saw himself, skinny, nervous. He had always thought Kate beautiful. The water ran off his face, dripped into the basin. The sky looked washed-out through the frosted glass. Jay wondered if it would rain more as he reached for a towel, dabbed at his face and under his arms. He put his t-shirt back on. It smelled of sweat.

He opened the bathroom door. Kate had walked through to the living room.

“Have your house-mates moved in yet?” she asked.

“No, Andy’s home this weekend and Neil’s working so they’re moving in on Monday, and Tom’s gone home for a few weeks, so I’m not sure when he’s moving in.”

Kate nodded.

“You going to give me the tour then?” she asked.

Jay showed her round all the rooms, mentioning who would be taking each one, finally ending with his own, which was furthest along the corridor at the top of the stairs. The room was smaller than the rest, though not by much. Against one wall stood a small computer desk with a silver-grey plastic covering. In a corner was a chest of drawers, opposite which was a wardrobe. On the same wall as the wardrobe were some shelves, which had a few books and DVDs piled haphazardly across them. The bed stood by the wall with the window in it. Kate went over to this first, and knelt on the bed so she could see through the glass.

“It’s a good view,” she said, pulling off her shoes so she wouldn’t get them on the bare mattress.

She turned back round to see Jay at the wardrobe changing into a clean t-shirt. Jay was conscious of her watching him.

“It’s so quiet here,” she said.

Jay turned round.

“Yeah,” he said.

They looked at each other across the room.

“Come here,” said Kate.

Jay sat down on the bed next to her and she kissed him on the mouth. She drew back, smiled, and kissed him again. Their tongues met and moved against each other. She put her arms around him and held him close, then their lips parted and she pressed her cheek against his neck. She began to kiss his neck, but felt his shoulders tense beneath her palms. She pulled back and looked at him.

“I must stink of sweat,” he said.

“No, you’re fine,” she said, moving close to him again, kissing his neck, his cheek, his lips.

She swung her legs up over his knees so she could move closer to him and continued to kiss him passionately, almost desperately. Instinctively Jay’s hand moved to her waist and then up her back as they kissed, then it began to move around the front, pushing her away almost, even as he pulled her closer. Her lips smiled against his, and so he continued, rubbing gently at first, then grasping her breast more firmly, with the same awkward desperation of their kissing. Apart from her bra, he could feel nothing through her t-shirt, so he pushed his hand up under the cloth and pulled down the cup. He reached back up and felt beneath his open palm her nipple, hard and round and firm as a blackcurrant. He continued to massage the warm flesh.

In response she moved her hand down from his waist to his crotch, where the head of his penis strained against the thick denim. As with her breast through the t-shirt, the sensation was muted. Still, Jay felt a twinge of raw physical pleasure with every movement she made, but he did not smile: his expression remained serious, almost pained with concentration. Kate did not notice; her eyes closed as her lips moved between his neck, his cheeks and his mouth, her fingers dancing towards the zipper on his jeans.

“Wait,” he said, pulling his hand out from her top.

“What?”

Their eyes locked, stayed locked as a second passed.

“The bed’s not made… it doesn’t feel right.”

Kate looked down at the bare mattress.

“Really?” she asked, adjusting her bra.

Jay shrugged and stood. There was still a ridge in his jeans and his heart pounded as he moved towards the chest of drawers to pull out some sheets. Kate got off the bed too and watched Jay spread a bottom-sheet over the mattress. He took a long time smoothing the sheet out, so she began to stuff the duvet into its cover. He helped her, and their hands brushed against each other, then she pulled him close, wrapped him up in the duvet and pushed him back onto the bed.

“Happy now?” she asked.

Jay shrugged. She lay down on top of him and kissed him again, then rolled under the duvet herself and pulled off his shirt. She kissed his stomach and Jay felt again, inevitably, the tightness in his jeans. Kate felt it too and, covered by the duvet, pulled off her own top. She lay back on top of him again. Jay felt her breasts against his chest and her crotch against his. The heat of her body was irresistible. He pushed her onto her side, unhooked her bra and kissed her breasts as his hand slid into her pants. His fingertips came against the short-trimmed pubic hair, at once familiar and alien, and then pushed further down, following the curve, closing around a warmth that was delicate and internal, distinct in the dirty, muggy heat of the air.

Meanwhile, Kate was already fiddling with his belt, pulling his waist-band apart so she could reach inside. He felt her fingers close around the shaft and pull once towards her, as if trying to take it for herself, and then push down, pulling the skin back. He bit his lip, felt his heart race, felt sick with excitement. There was a pause, a momentary lull balanced on a knife-edge, as they both looked into each other’s eyes and lay perfectly still, her hand closed tightly around his penis, his fingers inside her pants cupping the soft flesh of her labia, before he suddenly pulled his hand away and yanked her jeans and her pants down to her ankles in one feverish movement. She kicked them the rest of the way off and sat up to pull down his jeans and boxer shorts.

Then he was on top of her, kissing her all over, pressing against her even as she pulled him close and dug her fingers into his back. She had to fight against herself to push him away even for one moment, just to ask in a rapid whisper,

“Do you have any condoms?”

Concern clouded Jay’s face, made him pause.

“No,” he said, “they’re back at the old house.”

The passion in his body, the erection of his penis, began to ebb. He felt oppressed by the stark walls, by the haphazard books on the shelves and a crumpled plastic bag on the floor. The silence of the small room, like the heat of the day, was all around, inescapable, smothering. Jay pushed himself up on his hands and Kate leaned up to kiss him once on the chest, before falling back to the pillow and staring at his troubled face.

“I don’t care,” she said, “I can’t wait, I’ll get a pill later, I want you.”

She tried to pull him back down, but he resisted, as if teasing her. He had suddenly become again concious of the ugly computer desk that loomed by the bedside on its skeletal silver legs. Kate mirrored his concern in her own features and shifted her feet against his under the duvet. A question trembled at her lips, but was held back by a shapeless fear. She squeezed his arms and he looked down at her, at her eyes, at her nipples, offset by the weight of her breasts like two cherries on swirls of melting cream. Whatever the internal conflict that had raged inside his brain during those seconds of hesitation, lust had emerged dominant, and now gorged itself on the sensation of her breath on his cheek, of her thigh against his penis, of the sapphire shine in her eyes.

When Jay pushed inside her, Kate gasped and pulled him closer and further up as if she wanted the entry to go on forever. It could not and so, reaching the apex of his thrust, he stopped and pulled back slowly, savouring each second, each minute tingle of sensation. The fear that had been embodied a moment before in the ugliness of the computer desk now hovered ghost-like beyond the moment of ejaculation, obscured by distance but drawing ever closer as Jay pulled down, down, almost until he came free, and then again up inside of her. Kate gasped, kissed him, rubbed her breasts, jerked her hips, and he gradually went faster and faster, until his loins burned with the strain of holding back the release. In a final attempt to avert the cataclysm of his climax, to outwit the nameless dark spectre, Jay pulled out and his semen sprayed over the bed-sheet and the inside of Kate’s thigh.

For several seconds, Kate was oblivious to the warm liquid running down her leg, and continued to crush Jay against her, aching to have him back inside her, demanding that it would not end like this, so soon, that she would not be denied the final wrenches of pleasure when she was so close to orgasm. But he was spent, hollowed out, and, as the waves of ecstasy rippled away into nothing, she became aware of the semen cooling on her skin. It did not disgust her, as she lay beneath Jay’s hot body, but he felt sticky and wanted to shower. Both of them were panting, and could feel the other’s hot breath, but they did not kiss. Jay’s fingers clenched the loose cover on the pillow. He wondered how many people had had sex on this bed before, wondered if it mattered. Slowly he allowed his muscles to relax and slid down by her side.

“I hope nobody saw us,” Kate said, remembering the window.

“Mm,” said Jay.

He realised that his elbow was raw, so he propped himself up to inspect it. At some point in the throes of passion, Kate had caught the scab, and now an edge of it had been separated from the skin beneath. He picked at it gingerly.

“Did I do that?” Kate asked, “sorry.”

Jay nodded absently and continued to pick.

“Hey, don’t do that,” Kate said, “it doesn’t look ready to come off.”

She put a hand up to his, but too late: Jay yanked off the crystalline skin with a grimace. A crescent sliver of blood shot to the surface, but did not pool up enough to run down. They both looked at the irregular circle of taut pink skin that had been revealed, then Kate lay back down to look out the window at the first heavy drops of rain which had begun to fall. Jay lay down behind her and wrapped his arm across her chest, so that his hand rested across her collar-bone. Past the side of her head he could see the indifferent backs of the houses opposite, which rose high above his bedroom window and stretched up towards the low grey sky. He wondered who his neighbours were and felt the wet patch on the sheet against his leg, the curve of her buttocks against his hip, the weight of her breast across his arm.

“I love you,” she said suddenly, after several minutes of silence.

She took his hand and kissed it and waited for a reply. Jay said nothing, but stopped thinking about the neighbours.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, twisting round to look at him.

Jay shrugged and did not look at her eyes for a long time. Eventually he did look, and she was still watching him, so he said,

“I was wondering if we should break up.”

Kate’s face went pale and she looked away.

“Why? Because I…?” she paused, “that was months ago.”

Jay moved so he was not lying on the semen patch any more.

“I told you about it straight away, said I was sorry.”

Kate waited for him to respond, but Jay continued to stare at the backs of the motionless houses opposite.

“It was one time. We were both drunk,” she pleaded, wide-eyed, “you said you forgave me.”

Jay looked at her, felt a pang of guilt, thought he was stupid, knew he had gone too far, shrugged. He had never asked her about her past lovers, and she had not told him.

“You never did, did you?”

When he did not answer, she hit his shoulder with her palm and drew the duvet tight around herself, then she started to cry, silently, and rubbed her leg. Jay watched her. She had taken most of the duvet and he began to feel cold and disgusted.

“So what was this?” Kate demanded, semen cold and sticky against her fingers, “one last fuck before you dumped me?”

“I don’t know,” Jay said, “I didn’t expect to see you today, I thought you were still in Cornwall.”

“Maybe if you texted me once in a while you’d have known. I missed you, you know, even though… I felt guilty about our fight, but it was your fault, you started it. You. Oh, just fuck you. Give me my clothes.”

Sheepishly Jay gathered up her bra and t-shirt, and then dragged up the crumpled pair of jeans with her pants still inside them from the bottom of the bed where she had kicked them off. They both got dressed, lying sideways under the same duvet, in silence, then Kate crawled awkwardly past Jay, who drew in his legs to let her pass. She stood.

“Why didn’t you just say you couldn’t forgive me, instead of pretending everything was fine and never talking to me about it?”

“I didn’t want to keep making you feel guilty since there was nothing you could do about it.”

“Yeah, well I did feel guilty about it, for ages, but I thought we were getting over it. I thought I’d go away and come back and everything would be like it was before, better even, we’d be stronger for it.”

Jay shrugged apologetically.

“Fine,” Kate said, “I’m going. I hope you’re happy here.”

She opened the door.

“I’m sorry,” Jay said before she walked through, “I couldn’t help it.”

Kate turned round and looked at him hard for several seconds, still sat on his bed. She could still feel the warm wetness inside her and the way it made the cotton of her pants sticky and tingling when she moved. She shook her head.

“You weren’t even drunk.”

She turned away and Jay watched her leave, heard her close the back door, which was below his window. He rubbed his elbow. For a while afterwards he lay there, looking at the rain, and at his new room. It was bare, almost stark, and very silent. Jay breathed in. The air was fresh and cool from the rain. He closed his eyes and saw the room with a new desk, with his books and films all neatly on the shelves, with posters on the wall. This room belonged to him now. It was his room. He stood up and stretched out, then went downstairs to shower. He could have been anyone.

“Okay,” said Steph.

Rich stood and crossed the bar. As he pushed open the door to the toilet he looked back at Steph. She was sitting on a stool at a table by the window, with her fist pressed into her cheek, watching people walk by. She was pretty, in a way, but Rich had thought about breaking up with her today. He still was thinking about it. He entered the toilet.

Inside was like any other toilet. The door of the lone cubicle was closed. He went over to the urinal, where another man stood. Rich paid no attention to the other man as he unzipped his flies. Instead he looked down. It was one of those long metal urinals that looked like an animal trough. Rich looked down and he looked at his penis. He saw the gold-coloured urine as it streamed against the metal wall with a tinkling sound. Rich thought about Steph. He thought about sex. He was looking at his penis, as gold-coloured urine streamed from it, thinking about sex. He thought that the sex was good, but there wasn’t any connection, that he and Steph didn’t have anything in common.

Someone opened the cubicle door and walked out. Rich saw him out of the corner of his eye, then he felt the stream coming to an end. He became aware that the other man was just standing there, flies undone, hands at his crotch, without urinating. The man said,

“It’s no good. I need to piss, but there’s just nothing happening.”

The last few drops of Rich’s urine rang against the metal trough. The room was silent. Rich zipped his flies back up. He strained a smile and half nodded at the man, but didn’t look at him, then he moved over to the sink. He turned on the tap. The man at the urinal sighed and adjusted himself.
“It’s no good,” he said again with a shake of his head.

He walked into the cubicle and locked the door.

Rich soaped his hands and put them under the tap. The water was warm against his skin. Rich noticed that his hands had been cold. Then the water became too hot and he had to pull his hands out from under its scolding stream. He finished off washing his hands under the cold tap, then he dried them. As he dried them he looked into the mirror above the sink. His hands felt dry enough. The drier was still running when he left the room, when he stepped back into the afternoon somnolence of the bar and again caught sight of Steph, with her fist pressed into her cheek, watching people go by.

“When you say ‘I love you’ and I say ‘I love you’,” the boy replied.

“I love you,” the girl said.

The boy looked at her and he felt sad.