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9. i want your nipples
Next time we were out with two new gay friends Julian and Pete. When Frazer went to the toilet, Julian looked across the table and said to me, 'What is an angel like you doing with a monster like that?' 'And not only that,' said Pete, 'He's weak as piss. You've got to get out'. I looked down to see my hand glowing slightly on the table by the ashtray. It felt like light was pouring through my eyes. Earlier that night I had felt sad. I'd noticed all these other loving couples walking hand in hand, or flirting on the street. Meanwhile Frazer walked ahead of me in his blue suit. Cigarette smoke was streaming over the top of his head, like a steam train would blow smoke. Yet one look from him before we went into the hotel and the world was right again. Soon he was back at the table in full force and any comments were quickly forgotten. I used to tell him what people said about us both, thinking that he would want to know where he stood. I wanted no secrets between us. But he got really angry when I did. He accused me of betraying him. He said, 'They only think they can get away with it, through your lack of fucking loyalty!' Once he had raised his hand so that I cowered. He was like coming face to face with a rickety old train. I was seriously at risk, but I couldn't see a world beyond the tracks. As the evening wore on, there seemed to be these signals going on between the three men at the table. The ash in the tray was growing as they got more and more drunk. Frazer was insisting to the Jewish owner of the pub that Hitler was a good bloke because he gave the world the Mercedes Benz. It wasn't long before we were asked to leave. On the way home down the street, Julian started saying to Frazer, 'I want your nipples'. Frazer said, 'Fuck off', half laughing. Apparently he could hardly resist the advance himself. I was worried but could see that he was too drunk and probably not under enough threat to reach in for his gun. Then Julian started chasing him down the road yelling, 'I want to lick your nipples', whilst Pete laughed hysterically. Frazer was also laughing, yelling out for me to do something. The closest it got was Frazer being pushed up against a wall by Julian who was a lot better built than him. Half of Frazer's blue shirt was being pushed up, with one pink nipple exposed. Then just as the tongue of Julian swept past it, Frazer pulled free and raced away down the street. It had been a tense moment. Two seconds later, Pete collapsed laughing onto Julian. 'There was almost conception.' I was left with the two men as they twittered to each other. Julian turned to me and said, 'I'm sorry sweetie, but he asked for that'. No matter what anyone else said, I knew that Frazer loved me and I was not to believe them. Instead I knew only to believe what Frazer said because I trusted him. After the bashing later on, I realised that I had been no-one special to him. I realised that I had been unloved. This was because Frazer was not capable of treating anyone as an individual. He was simply relating to them like he would relate to anyone else, which was through his own neurosis. All the letters he sent pleading for me to come back after I had escaped, and all the phone calls where he would do the same or just listen until I hung up, and all the following me around in cars, were because he thought that he loved me. Whilst he simply loved me through his own neurosis. The more he loved me the more he hated me and I think he hated me with all his heart. I felt sorry for the future women that he would be with. He would treat them in much the same way, transplanting my head onto theirs, as he had most likely transplanted their heads and the heads of his parents onto mine. He would ring me up and tell me that he was using them as a body whilst he pretended he was fucking me'. I gotta do it, because I like fucking,' he said. 'It was her body, but it was you I was thinking of.' I retreated to far away inside myself, to remain anywhere near the battered surface was suicide. Mixing with trash like Frazer ends in self-mutilation if it doesn't end another way. The fragile heart is worn on the sleeve like a bloody display inside a butcher shop. I am carving into it with the knife he provided me with. The years of this struggle into intimacy, each mistake tried on and worn out like new clothes, turned into rags. I ended up holding the toilet door jammed shut, with a razor blade in my hand as he tried to get in. But he didn't try too hard and he wasn't fast enough. To be so angry as to cut myself again, with all the years of discipline flooding out with the blood and rage into the screwed up toilet mat, was the worst thing. As I was being crushed I knew that I could go down for good. I knew that nothing but a power greater than myself was going to work. I placed my life in the hands of it, as I went over the edge of Niagara Falls in a wooden barrel. I jumped into the fast river that I knew would meet the ocean. Naturally, I took my chances. Whereas Frazer had chosen to make his feeble life a threat to others from the lookout. He was the mad sniper that arrives to shoot the tourists the day after you leave. It always could have been you, but instead it was me this time. He had tried to push a number of people over the edge but had been too weak to do it. He was the type of man who when he got depressed and threatened to jump off the bridge, even his own mother wouldn't bother to talk him down. |
