91. Facing each other

Martin and I are lying on my bed, facing each other, staring into each other’s eyes. His left little finger is wrapped around my right little finger. We have not said anything for at least a minute. I have a horrible suspicion that we are in love.

In love. Alice Chambers in love.

YOU CANNOT BE IN LOVE. LOVE IS VERBOTEN FOR YOU.

And why is that, Matthew, may I ask?

YOU AREN’T GOOD ENOUGH. WHY WOULD ANYONE LOVE YOU. YOU ARE UGLY, STUPID AND BORING.

Martin likes me.

MARTIN IS LYING. HE WANTED SOME SEX. HE THOUGHT “SHE’S GOT HER TONGUE HANGING OUT FOR ME - I DON’T EVEN LIKE HER, SHE’S AN UGLY FAT LOSER, BUT WHATEVER, SHE’S SO DESPERATE I WON’T EVEN HAVE TO TRY.”

We had sex ages ago, so if he’s that bored and repulsed by me why hasn’t he put his trousers on and fucked off then?

Hmm?

Matthew?

Yeah, you don’t have an answer for that, do you? You fucking loser.

Martin gives me a slow smile. It makes his brown eyes crinkle up underneath. It is a sly, shy, happy, utterly beautiful smile. I feel my own smile start in response and in this moment I feel there is nothing more I want from life. I have now tasted the best - the absolute best - that the world can offer a human being. This is the pinnacle. Anything good from here on in is just a bonus

I remember, just for a second, that what I think is Matthew is actually me. Of course it is me. The real Matthew, from what I remember, could hardly string a sentence together and is unlikely to use “verboten”.

He's probably graduated to internet chatrooms now. Course he has. Stalk children in the comfort of your own home why am I thinking about him now? I'm lying on my bed with a beautiful half-naked man who is - however improbably - apparently interested in me. Why am I thinking about Matthew now?

Is this not ever going to go away?

The answer is no, it's not. It doesn't ever go away. You just learn to accept it as normal and live with it. Or spend your entire life out of your head on drink and drugs, or selling yourself, or hysterically scrambling to the top of the corporate ladder in a desperate struggle to be someone different, or any of the other variations on “not living with it” I have seen in my time.

Sometimes I live with it, sometimes I don't. Sometimes I should just fucking forget about it.

I'm suddenly terrified. I can't have sex with Martin, what if he thinks I'm laughably crap in bed? What if I freak out and have a flashback at a crucial moment? What if he gets upset by my pubes?

(One of the insecurities I have, sexually speaking, is that I flatly refuse to shave my pubic hair. I don't know why that is, exactly; I have no trouble with armpits or legs, but the thought of anything more intimate provokes an immediate and hysterical emotional response along the lines of: "I WON'T DO IT AND YOU CAN'T MAKE ME!" As a result, my hair sprawls where it pleases, wild and untamed. Occasionally I clip it a bit, as I have a couple of very long tufts which give a kind of Mohican effect if left, but usually it just does its own thing. The idea of shaving makes me feel like a prepubescent and, for obvious reasons, I hate that. But it's also the norm. People expect it. Martin probably expects it.)

He's kissing me again. It's really nice. No, it's more than that, it's great. He smells lovely, and I want to bury my face in his neck but I don't because I'm not sure whether he wants me to. Whether this might not be real, or somehow might turn out to be some huge hurtful joke. There are so many conflicting emotions – happiness, lust, astonishment, guilt, shame, fear, insecurity, the overwhelmingness of being this close to another person after so long – that I'm starting to feel nauseous, which isn't helping on any level.

Oh God. I can't do this.