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Mary shuffles from one foot to another. She curses the lateness of her friend
and the typical English weather.
Her tight black shoes with tiny heels make clicking sounds on the frost
gilded pavement. A car draws up to the kerb, killing its
headlights instantly. A moment
passes and the man inside activates the electric window. Mary, in her naivety, assumes he is
lost. People do get lost. He leans across the gear stick and
speaks loudly through the open passenger window. How much for a hand
job? Mary is surprised. Mary is always surprised when life
speaks to her in this way. She
bends down so that she can reply audibly.
It seems only polite to answer the mans enquiry, even if it is
obscene. Mary considers for a
moment and knits the conclusion that this is a simple mistake. Im sorry. Im waiting for a
friend. Twenty quid for both of you, he shoots back
immediately. Seventeen years later Mary laughs when she
recounts this story. These days she
would have a witty response,
And he said twenty quid for both of you, and I
said you got two cocks then? She thinks about the mans offer briefly. Mary tends to think briefly. She finds long trains of thought
problematic, due to the tracks, level crossings, junction points and
stations. Mary prefers simple
mathematics to quadratic equations.
Her reasoning capacity is always more functional if constrained. As a child she had hated sweet shops,
too much choice confused her, she would become fraught with indecision. As an adult she prefers to buy her
clothes from charity shops, not because she is poor but because she is able to
differentiate more effectively if she is limited. Mary has imposed these limitations throughout
her life. She has learned that
rigidity negates confusion. She has
invented her own blacks and whites, accepting no grey areas. Mary does not like the colour grey. Mary does not like the colour brown
either. She clings to absurdities, providing they make
sense to her, Let your yes be yes and your no be no is a particular favourite
of hers. A priest had delivered
this arrow of illumination and she was forever grateful for this excuse for
frigidity. Mary clings to everything; to her husband, to
her role as a mother, to her pathetic achievements that she quotes in moments of
insecurity. She is not arrogant or
selfish, no more so than those who cling without consciousness, but she is
stagnant. Books are Marys escape. Every copy of fantasy that she opens
releases her from her shrink wrapped life.
She travels with authors and characters, preferring this dream work to
the usual anaesthetic of anti depressants.
She acknowledges that there is no hope, that reality does not comprise of
crisp bed linen and faultless orgasmic unity, but still, still she can
dream. Sometimes, she attempts to step outside of
herself, either with alcohol, creative _expression_ or both. She is moderately successful in this, in
as much as she permits herself the smugness of satisfaction. She reads complicated books because in
the pit of what she calls me she knows that there are colours other than black
and white. One day someone told her
that her life was a rainbow and then for a considerable period of time she
attempted to disinter the oranges, greens and violets, until in the end she had
to admit to herself that she did not know how the colour indigo looked. Practice had inured her to such
failures. When she was twenty, when she had been there,
with the man in his car, standing under the street light in her high heels and
black stockings and short skirt, she had not the wit to comprehend the message
she had been mutely sending. Now,
however, in these days that follow previous identical days, she knows more. She understands. She can shrug and laugh and think
back. Occasionally, she thinks
forwards, to herself as forty, forty five, fifty. She is getting
old. In the bath, surveying her freshly cleaned
bathroom which still smells of bleach, she soaps her legs and expertly positions
the razor. When she gets out the
bath she dries herself with a competently washed towel, appropriately scented
with fabric conditioner. She
smoothes herself and her ageing skin in moisturising cream. Such rituals are duties that come with
maturity. There are many similar
practises. She thinks about what he said. She had not meant anything by the
question, How old is she? And he had meant nothing by his reply Twenty,
but everything means something. The
exchange was innocuous; in the same way as catching a virus is almost mute,
inevitable, stealthy. Twenty, old enough to be her
daughter. Mary attempts to comfort herself with the usual
platitudes, age brings wisdom, a more rounded character, a certain level of
experience, etc, etc, but still she knows that age also robs women of particular
attributes, firmness of flesh, glisten of eye and the ability to stay up all
night without looking and feeling ragged the next day. Mary remembers being twenty and she
knows today, she is too old to be a
prostitute. |
- today i realised i am too old to be a prostitute 2 morrigan
