C.A.
C.A.
“Another kiss to say goodbye, another cross upon a chart”
Take That, ‘Another Crack In My Heart’
“Nothing is muddy that runs in time and to laws of time-Shakespearian stress of dramatic need to speak now in own unalterable way or foreverhold tongue”
Jack Kerouac, ‘Essentials of Spontaneous Prose’
Strange, this gap year between kisses. You never met him we split up last week and laughing at your everperceptive wit I thought you split up four months ago it’s a shock to realise he scarcely remembers your name. We should have done this months ago and I unwittingly echo your words.
Three moments define these years. The first, walking across the Union to greet you for the first time; a smile from James, our saga about to begin, but your unforgettable presence first. The second, drinking with someone else’s girl, and your surprising willingness to kiss me. The friend I make a week before I leave never forgets the “smug grin” on your face, the proud arm around me; I never remember it, not knowing when I asked to kiss you goodnight that I already had. Correcting the friends who thought you were my latest notch, when I walked on air for days. They called us Romeo and Juliet, Rodin’s The Kiss. The third, inconsequential talk of Eighties games; chatting idly for hours, curled around ivory pillows and unhampered by desire. (“Are you going to ask him out?”, and the fifth-form phrasing makes me smile. I won’t, probably because you’d never agree. Too unlikely, again, and you think little of me. I’m shocked that your friends find me attractive, and they discourage you by urging me on.) Around them, endless vistas of wasted space.
In the Love Bar she sees sexual tension, but I don’t believe her, and through the drink I’m astonished when you acquiesce. Hazy memory proved correct, you the best kisser, and most attractive man, I have ever known. “Rebound” flashes, inaccurately, in their eyes. weakattheknees invented for you, and always was.
Endless tedious nights, too dulled and awed to be your friend. You have all the brilliance, and I all the confidence of it. Hacking at oysters and longing for chips, you sympathise with similar tastes. Why tonight? The same answer recurs: because this is the end. But the first night – why?
***
Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America – nineteenth century women see “conjugal authority [not as a] usurpation of their rights”, but rather “attach… pride to the voluntary surrender of their own will”. An anonymous male at the first Women’s Rights Convention, New York 1848 – within a heterosexual couple, “[the man] has made [the woman], if married, civilly dead”. Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique – “[marriage is] the comfortable concentration camp”. C. Pateman, The Sexual Contract – modern marriage may be termed a type of “voluntary contractualism”, a contract similar to slavery where the weaker party’s legal acquiescence is essentially a willing surrender to conjugal control. Sylvia Plath concludes that the heterosexual relationship is a form of nonviolent, consensual ideological repression. I research these issues with passion, but she questions me, my voluntary contractualism, this strange obsession with being obsessed. Excepting the masochistic desire for the unattainable, I can’t explain. “Everything I think is mocked by everything I do”, George Bernard Shaw, Arms and the Man.
***
We’re pre-pre-season, Ollie frustrated and bored, and without minor details of obscure football trivia, you don’t reply. Monday 3am, and my regular dose of Latin American football, Boca Juniors and the Copa Libertadores. As always, it’s a superficial knowledge, and I leave the sport to the boys. The next day, there’s affection in your eyes, your frequent smile, and I refuse your habitual pulling away. Unthinkable, however brief, to kiss you on the quad – but three years have gone, and there is nothing left to lose.
Despite a shower, she smells drink on me. You leave, return smelling heavenly, voluntarily move close. All the way home, this confined space I already hate, your scent twines through my hair.
***Sixty hours later and I still can’t breathe. I dream of the Booker Prize, Miriam giving chase, your kiss. You giving me amber and gold.
“Follow roughly outlines in out fanning movement over subject, as river rock, so mind flowover jewel-center need (run your mind over it, once) arriving at pivot, where what was dim-formed “beginning” becomes sharp-necessitating “ending” and language shortens in race to wire of time-race of work, following laws of Deep Form, to conclusion, last words, last trickle-Night is The End.”
Kerouac
Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose leaves
The way I feel today - 10 July 2004
Just seventeen - 17 March 2004
Roads to freedom - 25 February 2004
Confessions of a failed self-harmer - 25 February 2004
Manchester, united - 25 February 2004