When Girls Read online

  Maybe this is a good place to go off on a not unrelated tangent. My break-up with TMGGiTW nineteen months before had been...not great. Her name was Claudia pronounced ‘cloudier’ so she called me ‘L’ and I called her ‘Clouds’ and we got as far as having a joint credit check done with a view to moving in together. The break-up had been not great because Clouds went off and got a secret, solo credit check done for a totally different place, explaining quite an inelegant amount of time later that she had a big plan to live alone and make money off a spare bedroom by doing B&B. ‘Why can’t we do that together?’ I obviously asked, whereupon Clouds visibly winced. It’s not easy looking right at someone’s face while they visibly wince at the thought of building a future with you, but at least her expression conveyed exactly what I needed to know. Clouds thought I was gorgeous and funny and she loved my confidence even when it was fake and the way I rescued houseplants when people left them outside by the bins, but she didn’t want to see me ‘everywhere’, she said. By this time she had already signed for her new flat so there was no arguing, not that she wanted to argue. All Clouds wanted to do was go and be elsewhere.

  Which wasn’t easy. We liked the same places, and I still went to these places, where Clouds would sometimes be, and because she had chosen the break-up it looked like I was now going to these places because she was there rather than because they were places that I liked and in some cases had been going to way before we even met. Like Deacon’s, which had wood-panelled walls and served spicy fries with a mini bucket of mayonnaise and had board games on a shelf, including Scrabble, which as you will recall was present on the night I lost my handjob-through-the-pyjamas virginity to Jules. In fact, Deacon’s was the place I had taken Clouds on the occasion of our one month anniversary, our six month anniversary, and to celebrate on the day my office flooded at 10 a.m. and they let us all go home. Plus any number of other times when we were heading back home and didn’t want to cook.

  The first time I went in to Deacon’s after our break-up Clouds was there as well, sat in the corner booth (i.e. the best table) drinking with a friend who turned and stared at me over her shoulder for literally seconds. I wanted to walk straight out but since that would have been worse I stayed and stood at the bar and ordered a tomato juice instead of the bottle of Scandinavian beer and spicy fries I actually went in for. Then Clouds came up and asked if the tomato juice had vodka in it, so I replied no, and remarked rather waspishly that she hadn’t needed to ask that since she was sitting less than ten feet away and doubtlessly heard me order, to which Clouds replied that she was talking to her friend not listening to whatever I was saying to the barkeep, also that I was welcome to sit with them if I didn’t think it would be awkward as hell. ‘I’m alright here,’ I said, ‘thanks though.’ Then I played with my phone for an adequate amount of time, drank the tomato juice and left.

  Outside my eyes stung. I slowly, deliberately, exhaled. Clouds still looked like the woman of my dreams and something in me was shocked and appalled that she was still out there going about looking like that, bright and gorgeous with the plaits in her hair falling apart and a high-necked blouse unbuttoned to the middle of her tits and that chain she wore with the horse head pendant. The horse was face-on and had red eyes - we thought they were garnets but didn’t know for sure - and she never took it off. My eyes stung as I remembered all the nights she’d be riding me, holding my leg up, looking down at our cunts mashing together while her breasts moved after her with that achingly beautiful delay and the horse head bounced on her sternum. A few hours later Claudia texted to say That wasn’t my gf btw, which clearly implied she had got a girlfriend, not that I wanted to ask. (Well; I wanted to ask, I just didn’t want to know.) Not long after that a mutual friend texted asking if I was OK. Yeah why? I texted back. Claudia said you were in Deacon’s she replied, as if that explained everything and also diagnosed me with some sort of Syndrome Ex: you were dumped and you’re sad so you’re infected with stalking her for the rest of your days.

  I went to Deacon’s one more time but didn’t enjoy the chips, because by then I had seen Claudia once at the bus station, once at the skating rink, and once - the worst one of all - near her mum’s house. I was actually hand-delivering a late Christmas card nearby because I needed some exercise and that errand gave me a reason to go for a walk. Maybe in my subconscious I did recall that Clouds’ mum lived in the next street along, and maybe my id made me go. Whatever it was, we ended up walking towards each other on the same side of the road, me looking like shit in jeans and trainers and an orange raincoat with the sleeves turned up because it was my brother’s raincoat and the sleeves were too long. Also I hadn’t washed my hair because I’d planned to go swimming that morning but hadn’t got my ass in gear to do it after all.

  Clouds nodded instead of waved. Her hands were in her pockets and as we got closer she pushed them even further in, which I read as a don’t even try to touch me gesture - which it probably was, since she straight away asked what I was doing there and actually leaned in to read the name on the envelope in case I was lying and I was delivering it to her mum’s house for her. On top of the shitty raincoat and bad hair I knew my nose was red and ugly with the cold while Clouds looked wholesome and rosy. We only spoke for about half a minute. I was still in the sentimental wanking stage and was afraid I might blurt it out if she asked what I’d been up to, ‘Oh, you know. Just chronically masturbating over you.’ Intrusive thoughts have a habit of chasing me away from conflicts, challenges, and any place that makes me remotely nervous, like the razor in the bathroom when Jules stayed over, when I feared my hand might just start shaving my mound Evil Dead-style. ‘I’d better go,’ I said, and Clouds replied that she had better go as well.

  She continued walking and I continued walking, imagining that she was not walking at all but rather standing watching me in utter bewilderment that she had ever let someone who looks like that put their face down between her glorious legs.

  ****

  Now I wanted to wank over Anna. I lay there thinking about it, wondering if it perhaps it was too windy to buy clothes and I should stay in and make meringues instead, absently rubbing myself through my shorts with the backs of my nails. In the end I decided against it; if I stayed in bed for another hour (which is how long I typically dragged it out for on my days off) I’d be less likely to go out at all, and if I did make meringues I’d definitely only go as far as the corner shop for cream and fruit.

  Also, wanking over someone before you’ve had sex is a dangerous game. You don’t know how they fuck or whether they’ll like the things that you like, plus it’s way too easy to slot them into pre-existing scenarios you’ve been getting off to for far too long. I had two of these, both so old I couldn’t even remember where they came from. I only knew that my relationship with baby-dyke-stablehand-who-I-employ-and-subsequently-seduce, and my relationship with woman-I-pick-up-at-the-beach-who-moves-in-with-me-the-same-day-and-goes-down-on-me-under-the-desk-while-I-write-my-magnum-opus, had both lasted longer than any relationship with actual real women. And everyone I’d met I’d managed to fit into at least one of these fantasies. If I tried it with Anna...well, if she was younger than me it wasn’t by much, nonetheless she would very definitely fit into scenario #2. I would have a mansion with a pool and she would loll around with her tits out and half her bikini bottoms up the crack of her ass, and when she brought out our tray of drinks she’d bend over to set it down so that her pussy was pretty much in my face and I’d have to pluck her bikini bottoms out and tidy her up, then I’d kiss it (of course), then she’d turn around and kiss me and she’d keep kissing me and she’d get astride me on our giant outdoor bed and she’d keep kissing me until she drove herself too mad to do anything except take her bikini bottoms off and crawl up onto my face.

  Do something different, I told myself out loud. It’s harder to contradict yourself if your self is not just in your head, and speaking audibly helped. I dismissed the pantomime image I was creating
of Anna as something out of a Miami-based spring break Snapchat feed, threw my bedclothes deliberately and entirely off and got up.

  I didn’t hurry to my phone either. It was 6:20 a.m., and obviously I hoped Anna had got home from her jazz club happy and maybe a little drunk, but not too drunk to make poor decisions, just drunk enough to realise things, such as Strangers are just women you haven’t kissed yet, or some other axiom from the lesbian canon. And upon realising these things she would have texted me instantly. Hello would do, because from Hello I could roll out any one of the five thousand replies I had already composed.

  First though I went for a shower, and blow-dried my hair, and poached myself a couple of eggs which I had with buttered toast. Then I emptied the kitchen bin and took it out, and folded all my laundry and put it away, and put a load of towels on to wash, and swept and mopped the kitchen floor, and ironed tomorrow’s outfit for work.

  Only then did I permit myself to check my phone.

  One notification: a message from my weather app, warning of high winds.

  Okay, I thought, that’s that then. So what have I learned? My chat’s not as cute as I like to think; bad jokes aren’t adorable; I should have addressed my aesthetic issues before giving out my number. Also that I came on too strong. ‘Bleach twins’. Not only was that downright pathetic, implicit in my use of the word ‘twins’ was the suggestion that a relationship was being established. One might even argue that ‘twins’ is more intimate than ‘lesbian’. Then I forced her into the peanut shop and made her buy two bags, then I followed her almost home, then I made her lie about being too busy to hang out, because it was only lunchtime and no-one’s having their retirement bash at 3 o’clock in the afternoon.

  You’re crazy and moronic. An intriguing yet undelightful blend.

  Also, she didn’t offer you her number.

  I decided I was dumb as fuck. If she’d have wanted to see me again she’d have given me the chance to get in touch.

  I was losing it. Quickly I texted Charlotte, Yeah I’m up for Evensong this w/end xxx Three kisses because the worse I feel about myself the more affection I put out.

  Charlotte buzzed me back. Good good. Let me know how it goes with herself.

  ****

  I used to be cute. I used to wear a certain type of clothes instead of no type of clothes at all. I used to meet women playing sports or at quiz nights or through friends of friends and some of them fell in love with me. Some of them ran their fingers through my hair and sucked lovebuds onto my clavicle and took one of my jumpers with them when they went to Fuerteventura out of season with their mate who had just been discharged from psychiatric care and brought me back a ring with a coral coloured stone inset with a gold enamel star and told me that the next trip abroad would be ours and it actually was. Jules had loved me and even Clouds had loved me nearly enough to commit to sharing a home. Others had enjoyed my company for an afternoon or a night plus half of a morning. One person had even enjoyed me flirting at work and left me a good luck card when she left. With a giftcard for Starbucks, no less.

  Where had I gone in the passing of these months? I worked and stayed at home. I hadn’t had spicy fries with mayonnaise and a bottle of Scandinavian beer for the best part of two years and I hadn’t had sex and I hadn’t met anyone new or gone anywhere or done anything and for some reason now I was dressing like someone had stolen my clothes while I was swimming and the lifeguards gave me an outfit out of their lost property cupboard and said not to worry, they didn’t need it back.

  I am going to get dressed now, and I am going out.

  When I was at uni I think I almost had an affair with one of my tutors. (This is related, I swear.)

  I say ‘I think’, because I still don’t know what almost having an affair looks like, really. She was Canadian and her name - Georgia - was my favourite name. Not sure if everyone has a favourite name, the one that you would choose if one day you decided to quit your house and your job and get a radical haircut then move to Shetland where one night in the pub when you’re sitting reading quietly on your own the landlady notices a violin case under your table and asks you about it and you tell her you’ve just been to Eshaness cliffs where you played a while so she asks you to play something now because that would be lovely and you say OK and take your violin out and play Vitali’s Chaconne while she sits and listens with her elbows on the table and a tea towel in one hand then when you’re done she doesn’t say anything until she just says, ‘Wow,’ with a look on her face as if there’s simply nothing else to be done then stands up to thank you and ask your name and you reply, ‘Georgia,’ because this is your new life and you want to be called the best name there ever was.

  This Georgia - or Dr Poston, as I usually knew her - wore pleated skirts over coloured tights and school marm-ish clips in her hair at the side. She’d teach us while propped up against the front of her desk with her legs crossed at the ankles and I’d always choose an aisle seat so I could look at her shoes. She wore shoes I’d never seen in any shops; one pair was black with a brown sole and a leather fringe across the top, they were flat and clipped when she walked and they always looked brand new. Another pair was secured with what looked like a small silver dumbbell. I’d sit staring with my chin in my hand looking as cliché as you like, thinking, Where does she find shoes that are secured with small silver dumbbells?

  I went to Dr Poston’s office on the day I found out I was shortly to lose a grandparent and needed to hasten home before the end of term. We sat and talked for a while; I told her how Great Nan wasn’t my actual great nan but we’d always called her that because she was great. How she’d always indulged my little idioms, like making me gravy in a mug when I went through my drinking-gravy-from-a-mug phase, or heating lemonade in a saucepan during the phase when I liked to drink lemonade hot. She’d also got four chickens when I wanted some and wasn’t allowed to have any at home, and used to sneak them into my room when I stayed over at weekends so that when I woke up there’d be a chicken on my bed.

  Remembering all that made me laugh and saying it out loud made me cry. Dr Poston passed me a packet of tissues from her drawer. She asked how old she was, so I said, ‘Eighty-six,’ which made me remember all the weird things Great Nan had said when I told her I was a lesbian. Not horrible weird; just weird. She told me how in her day women would live together as ‘very great friends’ because they ‘just didn’t like men’, as if it was a stately form of cohabitation wherein Dorothy and Agnes would sit in high-backed armchairs either side of a fireplace contentedly reading hardback books for all their days in a passive and entirely asexual existence. Later on - when I gave no outward sign of having any romantic life - Great Nan tried to explain to me how one woman is still the woman but the other woman ‘has to be the man’, and I that I had to decide on which side I wished to plant my flag. This was her aged and distant layperson’s understanding of butch and femme, categories which she believed a lesbian will choose from as soon as she comes out.

  Since I was already laughing/crying in front of Dr Poston - a disaster, really, because when I cry my nose swells up so much it hurts - I let loose and told her about the gay thing. My parents had been amazing, I said, with smothering hugs and handholding while we watched TV and increased checking up by text to ask me how I was, and even a cringingly celebratory dinner at the expensive burger place we never usually went to. But as supportive as my parents were, in some way Great Nan was more helpful, I felt. She didn’t stop what she was doing when I told her - and she could have done, she was only washing up - and she didn’t make immediate eye contact. Great Nan needed a bit of time to think. It took more than a few moments for her to process what it meant for her granddaughter to be gay, and to contemplate how her life might play out from thereon in. What I had told her was personal and important but it wasn’t necessarily news that should be festooned with ribbons then set on a high shelf for safe-keeping. It was a reality that would be lived for a lifetime, and Great Nan’s measured re
sponse was the truer indication of how others might react: muted and bamboozled, then noticeably pensive in the time it takes them to regroup.

  Obviously I was relating this to Dr Poston with a thick and gluey mouth while trying to plug my running nostrils without literally just stuffing the tissue up there and letting it hang, as I would do if I were crying at home. Meanwhile Dr Poston was nodding enthusiastically. She looks oddly gleeful, I thought, and almost didn’t catch her meaning when she replied.

  ‘I know exactly what you mean,’ she said. ‘I was very close to my aunt, who’s only ten years older than me, and when I came out she asked me to give her a week to think it over.’

  ‘...Did she?’ I mumbled.

  ‘It was like having to wait while someone tries to decide if they want to break up with you.’ She paused. ‘I had a partner at the time and I actually felt guilty, as if I’d been caught cheating, or something like that.’

  My mind was racing through the blur. Dr Poston is a dyke. In a bizarre non-sequitur I remember thinking, But she’s got such a tiny waist! (As well as wondering where she shopped for shoes I had genuinely been wondering if Dr Poston wore corsets.) She told me how she’d sat by her phone for days until her aunt eventually called and did ‘a whole Spanish inquisition’ about Dr Poston’s secret lesbian childhood, her current girlfriend, and whether they were planning to have kids. ‘I felt quite battered afterward,’ Dr Poston said, ‘but she wasn’t the last one to have questions, and there are certain questions from certain people you cannot simply shake off.’

  Dr Poston told me to keep the rest of the tissues and also donated a bottle of water from the multipack under her desk. We talked a little more about Great Nan, then she signed me out of classes for the three weeks of term that remained. Then she gave me her card and wrote ‘Georgia’ on it - even though DR GEORGIA POSTON was already printed on the front - and underlined her phone number twice.