THURSDAY
14 NOVEMBER, 1996
ISAIAH

               'I've no clue what I'm doing with my life.' The words come from me with too much ease for me to bother to fight them — as I said; cars make you bear your soul. I sigh, sinking in my seat while Pictures of You plays on my break-up mix. 'Why the fuck would I study literature? It's a completely useless degree to have. Should've become a doctor.'

'You're awful as maths.'

'Oi.' I snatch the apple Chupa Chup stick from my mouth, hold it between two fingers like a cigarette, and stare at him with exaggerated hurt. 'Not as rubbish as you.'

Dorian wrestles a grin. 'Yeah, but that bar is really low. I think a housecat is better at maths than me.'

You are so beautiful when you smile.

'I don't know either,' he adds, still trying to control his expression. 'Our plan wasn't very specific.'

Our plan was rubbish when I look at it as an adult.

Dorian watches me with his head lopsided over his shoulder, one side of his mouth forgotten into a grin. His eyes catch yellow from the dome light and it might as well be the sun: he's no less beautiful illuminated by it than bathed in daylight. Do you know you turn any lamp into a celestial body? The moon is nothing compared to you. How I long to caress your lips the way the light does.

I return the lollipop stick into my mouth and chew the flavour of plastic even if I've flattened it far past the point of the satisfying sensation when my teeth sink in.

'You are aware that the sweet ended right?'

'Shut up.' I shove him which only shakes out more giggles from his chest. 'Stop laughing.'

Dorian's whole face lights up and I shove him again. Before I know it, I've dropped the stick into the cupholder and wrestled him against the passenger door, my palm clamped over his mouth though he continues to giggle into it. I can't stop laughing either, as though five years' worth has been compressed in my gut and now the dam is broken. It rushes out uncontrollably and I wheeze to speak through it.

'I am trying so hard to quit. I feel like my lungs are closing in, and as soon as I ain't got ten distractions, I want to commit arson.' Dorian's entire body shakes under me. The bursts of breath from his giggles tickle my skin. 'And you laugh in my face. Lech lehizdayen.'

He holds his breath to compel a convincing expression of remorse to the half of his face visible above my hand. It's useless: his smile presses to my palm.

My own fades. I stare down at him and my heart races.

I peel my hand away and grab onto the headrest instead to keep myself upright in my awkward half-seated half-standing pose over the centre console. Only now do I become aware of the burn in my right arm from supporting my weight alone, though it leaves my focus equally quick as I find Dorian's lips.

Then his smile is gone too.

My eyes flick to his to find them waiting. I swear his lashes have grown since we were in school.

'I didn't have sex with no one last week.'

The words are out of me before I know I've strung them together. I slump back into the drivers seat. Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover plays low.

'I only went to the river. I couldn't... I can't do that anymore.'

His eyebrows twitch but he doesn't ask — he doesn't have to, I know exactly what he's thinking: Why are you telling me this? Why are you telling me this?

Why? I wanted you to know. I need you to know that after one night with you, I can't ever imagine myself touching anyone else, that even with six years of practice, I still can't stand the taste of other people.

I hate existing only as a body and I thought I would learn to love it by now. I thought I would find it liberating, that having sex with any man who looked at me was the best way to stick it to everyone who ever called me a puff, to Thatcher and my mother and... you.

And God, because if They had to give me this dilapidated frame of a body, isn't disrespecting it the best way to get back at Him?

That body is nothing like the body I occupy when I'm with you. With you, I understand why God gave us bodies.

My desire for him is heightened tenfold from what I'd feel for any adonis I might find at a bar, not only because I crave it in my chest, but because my body can tell the difference too.

This is a kind of lust impossible for strangers. I want to kiss him because I know the taste of chamomile and honey trapped under his tongue from his before-bed tea, I want to dig my fingers into his spine, the globe where back becomes neck where they fit so perfectly, to kiss his throat because I know precisely the spot that'll draw out the filthiest sounds from him, to trace the skin of his thighs because I know how soft it is. I want to slip my hand right into his underwear because I know exactly how it feels when he grows hard in my grip. It's knowledge that mothers intimacy.

I won't though. Car sex is just a euphemism for "get it over with" and I want every moment I have with you to last. I've had sex everywhere but a bed and I never want you to feel as cheap as I do.

And I need to learn to stop using sex as self-punishment first. I don't want to ruin us by tainting our touch with something so wretched.

Dorian's words float to the surface of my thoughts, re-contextualised with new clarity: "I don't understand it, wanting to have sex with people."

'I'm dirty,' I confess. 

His stare prods my cheek but I refuse to look at him.

The night he left I thought that was the worst I'd ever feel, that what he did was the worst I'd ever be treated. Now I know what it actually feels like to be used, to not be respected, to be an experiment, and as much as I hate to admit it, that's not what Dorian makes me feel. Maybe he really didn't mean any of it...

'What?'

'I've no idea how many people I've had sex with. Thirty. Fifty. Three hundred. Five hundred.'

Dorian wraps his arms around himself. He can't stand to be near me anymore.

'That's a lot.'

'Yeah... it is a lot.' I skewer his stare with mine, make sure he can't look away, and when he squirms, I grin. My voice soaks with derision, with enjoyment at his discomfort. 'Imagine it: hundreds of men have touched me, sweat on me, cum on me. Really think about it, all them hands on me, their fingerprints. Does that disgust you?'

'No–'

'Of course, it does.' I already taste his blood. 'You can barely sleep in this motel cause you keep thinking bout all them people who've lied and God knows what in those sheets and it ain't matter that they've been washed cause they'll never be clean to you.'

Tears glistening in his eyes, Dorian shakes his head. 'You're not bedsheets, Isaiah.'

'What's the difference?'

'One's an inanimate object and you're a person.'

'Why can't you just admit it?'

Dorian reaches for me but I shove him away. 

He still answers patiently: 'Because it's not true.'

'It is true,' I croak. 

It dawns on me how little he knows. He thinks Daniel was an anomaly. He has no idea that Daniel was a loving romantic experience in comparison to most. He has no idea about any of it.

'They was already doing all that before. I'm sorry I didn't tell you when we was kids. You had a right to know before you touched me.'

The ironic thing is I used to watch the way men treated my mother and swear to God I'd never let anyone treat me like that. I bet she's proud of me now.

A mother teaches her child how to apply perfume at the pulse points where it will last longest. A mother teaches her child how to eat a pastry by breaking it into bite-size pieces to remain elegant with a food that sheds layers faster than she does. A mother teaches her child how to identify the worst man from across the room, how to be exactly what he wants, and how to convince herself she has control when he can snap her neck if he feels like it.

Maybe that's where it started. From the men my mother brought around.

There's a ravine between victim and asking for it and I crossed it my first term at Oxford. How does one weep after willingly walking through a slaughterhouse?

'I'm so full of sin there's no space for anything else.'

Dorian fills with agony. It's glaring from the way his lips pucker to the awkward bend of his neck and his inability to keep still. His fingers play Chopin against his outer thighs. Maybe this all hurts him more than it does me. Or maybe he's just less used to carrying it.

I'm slumped against the steering wheel and Dorian rubs my back. He begs me to go inside, to let him help me inside while he massages the ache he knows is there and tries to warm me up. But I don't feel it. The circuit that connects my body to my consciousness has snapped again. 

'If they forced you to, it's not your sin, Shay.' He begs me to believe him.

I want to. I don't.

Notes

Lech lehizdayen: Fuck you.