smalltown adultery

noreply@blogger.com (Ellie) — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 00:00:00 +0000

I hit the ground running.

She picked me up from the airport at nine - "Sophie and I are going to an opening tonight. So boring, but we know the owner, so he'll take care of us. Want to come?" She casts a dubious look over me; unmascara-ed and feeling Singapore's muggy climate a world away from frigid Melbourne. "When are you heading out?"
A little laugh and a disparaging wave. "Look at me! Do I look like I could go anywhere? I could hardly bear to call a cab! It's not a big night, so maybe... twelve? The party won't start without us."
She leans back and crosses barbie-doll legs. I think about the casual contents of my suitcase, more suited to poolside and shopping than being the glamorous centrepiece of a launch party.
"Can we stop at Zara first? I have nothing to wear."
L. sighs and checks her watch. "You can, but I'd really better get home if we're going again by twelve." She starts to riffle through her bag with Chanel-platinum fingernails, finds a card and half-working biro. "Here. I'll write down the apartment address and you can hail a cab when you're done. Make sure they drop you in the basement, they'll try to just leave you outside the lobby but then you have to walk to the lifts."
Of course. Anyone who staggers about in size-too-small Louboutins ("The agency listed my shoe size wrong on the card! What was I supposed to do? They're Louboutins!") doesn't tote up the pedestrian miles.

She said.

noreply@blogger.com (Ellie) — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 09:09:00 +0000

This is what happens when worlds collide too forcefully. I run away.
L. skyped from Singapore on a bad day. Warm, sunny, lounging beside the pool while I shivered through work emails in arctic Melbourne.
"Ellieeeee, I'm bored. It's my birthday in two weeks. Don't you have a work thingy or something you can do out here so you can come stay?"
"I have a quiet patch coming up if you want to pretend it's really three weeks away. Depends on flights."
"Well, you can stay with me. Plenty of room," she sighed and slithered down the sunlounge, squinting at the screen. "As long as you can put up with all the kids." One languid hand waved at a father and two littlies splashing through the shallows.

"Yes, I can see the shrieking hordes rampaging through your sacred space," I quipped.
"Whatever. People just seem to hit this age where they want to breed."
"Or perhaps all the guys on their big contracts con their wives into dropping their jobs when they pull up sticks and they decide they've got nothing else to do."

L adjusts her sunnies and crosses her arms under her padded bikini bra."I'd like one of those."
She's only been a part-time student for the last seven years. "What, a job?"
"A rich husband, bitch!" But there's no malice in it, and we both laugh.

"Look, I have to go. Work in five. But I'll check flights," I promise. L sticks her lower lip out petulantly, but I blow her a kiss and a "Ciao, bella!" and zap my end of the call. I can always find a reason to spend a week in another country, and
five minutes is a long time. Enough, it seems, to find a likely-looking studio and type a quick notification of absence.

Plane travel

noreply@blogger.com (Ellie) — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 13:12:00 +0000

I have a knack for attracting the leftover teenager of a loud, obnoxious family, or the businessman complaining about being bumped and whatever will he do, this meeting was such a scheduling fuckup in the first place and now everyone needs to reconvene and why don't they show decent inflight movies, if I have to watch Sandra Bullock try to have a facial expression one more time...

So I'm prepared. iPad, virtual books, headphones and pashmina. I will sleep, I will type. Chuck Palahniuk had it right when he wrote about single-serve friends. Plane pleasantries are not my métier.

For once I'm pleasantly surprised by the blonde sitting in the window seat. She fills her economy space without spilling into mine, survival novel (Penny Vincenzi) and teeny-weeny iPod at the ready as the plane taxis and I snap my carryon into the overhead locker.

She opens with "I'm so sorry, I only shifted over a couple of minutes ago when I thought this seat would be empty. Do you want me to move?"

I'm already buckling my aisle seat belt and shoving my 24A boarding pass into my bag, unpacking my travel arsenal. "It's fine. I was a little held up before checkin, had to race and just made the last boarding call. I'd rather have the aisle anyway."

Actually, I hate nothing more than the cattle call of boarding lounges, the quick desperation of people queuing and then their shamefaced realization that we will all shuffle onto the tin can and along it's cramped aisles and breathe each other's air for the next eternity no matter who's third or thirtieth. It wasn't so much J's impetuous, passionate goodbye that occurred at the same hourly rate as a trashy motel room - damn airport carparks - that made me 'late' as it was the grande hot chocolate I nursed reading Cryptonomicon until I was paged by name.

"You sure?" She's just the right level of pretty to want to please, to be uxorious, and sure enough there are fine lines around her eyes and a left hand that announces her availability. I'd feel bad about checking her out if she hadn't already up-and-downed me during my struggle with the overhead, pricing my roomy leather shoulder bag and matching my ipad cover to my scarf. I travel in expensive monochrome.

“Really. Enjoy the view.” My playlist is keyed up, genius mix based on Clare Bowditch's cover of Fall at your feet ready to cover the groaning liftoff. My headphones are halfway to my ears, and I smile apologetically in that small, self-effacing way that professional women have with one another.
“Excuse me. Work things to catch up on. Got to hit this conference running.” She smiles a "Sure. Thanks about the window," understandingly and turns away, already untucking the corner of her blockbuster.

I’m escaping.

B. is for boom

noreply@blogger.com (Ellie) — Fri, 03 Jun 2011 13:17:00 +0000

Wow.

That’s all I can think when she finally slides past the teasing stage and I feel ridge after ridge curving inside me.

Let’s rewind a little.

A package arrived on my doorstep today. I wasn’t home to meet the postman, or I might have invited him to stay to the grand opening. However, being the caring, sharing person I am, I promptly phoned a girlfriend to voice my excitement. The second she answered, I squealed “It’s here!”

“No! Really? Really-really?!”

“Mmhm.”

“I don’t believe you!”

“Come over and see for yourself. I’ll cook.”

She did, although I didn’t cook. There was Thai. There was a bottle of wine. There was a lot of eye contact and fingertips-caressing-knowingly action. There may have been a short discussion about the impropriety of screwing around with a good friend, and what technically constitutes cheating, but let’s be honest, it was sketchy at best. Just another box to tick on the way to an inevitable seduction.

All of a sudden we got down to business. A quick bathroomy exit revealed its real purpose in a kerfuffle of packaging and unwrapping: the discovery of a magic wand. “So, you’ve tried one of these before?” she breathed into my mouth.

“I wish. You get to do the honors.” It was still warm from a hot-water blast, impossibly smooth and unyielding as it glided up my leg, sliding along the inside of one thigh to nudge the willing fabric of my skirt aside. “Round and round the garden…” she crooned, caressing with a fairy’s touch and the finest glass point, kinked and narrow as a fingertip.

All I could do was laugh, tickled as much by the sensation as the naughtiness. She pulled it away and thoughtfully considered the business end.

“Hey! I was enjoying that!”

“Tough.” It’s a cluster of glass droplets above three larger spheres. “What’s it called again?”

“The triple pleaser.”

“Hm.” She caresses it thoughtfully, and I move her hand to a more advantageous position; the glass slips smoothly over my panties and I draw breath a little more quickly, feeling the contoured little bumps send a quick wake-up call. “Lower?” She grins, bites her lip complicitly, and widens her circle. I nearly wet my pants.

“So, I think I need to get rid of these now.”

She raises one eyebrow, carries on twirling, even grinding a little, measuring her pressure by my steady pushing back. “Oh… No, I really need to get rid of these now.”

“Not yet,” she teases lightly.

“I don’t remember putting you in charge. Oh. OH.”

Boom, just like that, a subtle clitoral orgasm. Who knew glass could be so good?

Everything’s quite damp, and she turns the glistening wand thoughtfully between her palms, waiting for my breath to return to normal.

“I was going to ask where you keep your slippery stuff, but somehow I don’t think that’ll be necessary. You’d better save some strength though. I definitely want a turn.”

B. is for beautiful

noreply@blogger.com (Ellie) — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 12:20:00 +0000

Our family-friendly campsite has fallen silent, children napping in caravans while their parents sneak a leisurely afternoon Corona, the teenagers walking off their hangovers or loitering at the local store, trying to bum cigarettes from each other and talk up their marijuana experiments.

The campsite across from us homes a contingent of hard-drinking surfer dudes and their identical, white-denimed blonde girlfriends, and with the boys out on their boards the girls have descended into a stoner reverie of low-volume Keisha and sipped Bacardis.

B.'s swabbing and tidying away things that will be newly strewn about within five minutes of everyone's return, and my rereading of "Sing you home" is palling.

"I think I need a nap," I announce to no-one in particular, and slink off to my tent, conscious I'm being observed. It's only a few minutes before B. taps at the fly. "You okay?"
Propped on one hand I smile brightly, beckon her to unzip the flap. "Sure. Come in if you want. I thought I'd just rest my eyes a little, enjoy the peace."

She's too vulnerable: the blue eyes hood and inside her head she is straight away retreating, apologizing and finding somewhere else to be. Damn.
"Not you, you're peaceful." I pat the space beside me invitingly. Our tent is a combination of very small and a queen-size inflatable mattress: put simply, wall-to-wall bed.

"I could probably nap a little," she admits, and I scootch to one side to let her slide in beside me. I study her profile a few minutes as she stares at the sky-blue ceiling, hair tangled under her shoulders and fists clenched softly over her hips, nothing speaking of repose except her horizontality. I know how to change this, but what will I unleash?

Too late. I curl toward her and prop myself up again, freeing one hand to stroke her hair away from her face, threading my fingers through the wind-rough dreadlocks and teasing it from beneath her head and neck. She doesn't respond, except to lift her shoulders in compliance, and then I understand how this is going to be. How, perhaps, she needs this to be.

I keep smoothing and plucking until B. is a sleeping beauty, letting her breath slow and spread from her throat through the sponge of her lungs, the flush of a sleeping child gradually appearing on her cheeks. Then I start on her face, lightly drawing her features as if sketching her, feathering her skin delicately and crossing the line into intimacy - the shivery territory of behind earlobes and the tender territory beneath her jaw, freckled from driving.

She shivers a little, the hypnic jerk of sleep overtaking her, and I cautiously withdraw my hand, uncertain of what I've promised. It's impossible to sleep beside her, and I shimmy myself out into the light carefully, telling myself there is nothing untoward about what's we've just enacted.

Camping

noreply@blogger.com (Ellie) — Sun, 24 Apr 2011 06:28:00 +0000

It's one of those perfect afternoons; lazy and undirected. Finally the torrent of food we call lunch dribbles to a conclusion, cheese and olives then cups of over brewed tea ameliorated with too much milk and still somehow scalding. My appetite's always better camping, as if my senses sharpen and refine in the absence of stimuli.

"Walk? Beach?"
J.'s suggestion, and in a couple of minutes everyone's moving, eager to be included. Extra layers, beanies; defense against the creeping chill of dusk and dimming light, and they're reconvening while I still drowse in diabetic bliss.

He caresses my head gently. In one smooth, familiar gesture he tugs my black beanie over my hair and tucks an errant chunk behind my ear, bending to kiss my forehead.
"Ell-bell. Coming?"

I cross my arms and slouch a little lower, squinting into the last sun.
"I'll stay. Ate too much. And B. just made me more tea."
At the sound of her name, B. looks up from the camp sink, shading her eyes with a sudsy hand and flicking blonde wisps away from her calm, Botticelli-angelic face.
"Oh, sure, you guys go ahead. I just want to tidy up a little round here. Maybe put a load of washing on while the place is quiet."
I tug on J.'s sleeve and tease "Maybe I'll put some washing on too - ready for you to hang out when you get back."

"Mmm, not so much of that would be great," he scoffs, then catches my warning look. The guys have had it pretty easy this trip, putting up tents and building fires like no tomorrow, undeterred by the mounds of dirty dishes and stacks of Tupperware from our lovingly home-cooked meals, oblivious to the queues for bathroom facilities and damp socks steaming up our tents.

J.'s clearly well attuned to my mood; that's all it takes for him to throw up his hands and start backing away, blowing a kiss and striding to catch the rest of our gang as they disappear through the gates of the camping ground, and B. throws me a small, self-conscious smile- almost coy- as she dries and stacks the enamel dishes.

This is our history, the narrative we're writing ourselves into. An annual camping sojourn, a little escape from civilization, our clients, our families. The kind of tradition our grandparents relate nostalgically to the tune of our parents' scoffing.

Winter's here.

noreply@blogger.com (Ellie) — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 11:49:00 +0000

These days are the kind I can't get enough of; the slow, lazy wake-ups and meandering about the house, pottering from one gentle activity to another sharing complicit glances and shy, sideways stares that end in giggles, silliness, enveloping bearlike hugs.

If every day of my life could be a lazy Saturday wearing catseye eyeliner and finding things to do to fill the time before going out I'd be a happy girl.
Let's just glide along the surface of who makes me happy, homebodying porcelain-framed tea and a thick book, pages dog-eared by favoritism, some cruisy nothing music bubbling in the next room. These days in and out of blankets pretending to convalesce when really we're wearing each other in all over again.

This is what always draws me back. Comfort like the best teeshirt you've ever owned, warmth under my skin better than cashmere leggings or peach schnapps, happiness flickering under my ribs and over my stomach when he smiles.

And I tell myself I would never give this up. Again, and again, a little firmer every time. There is no use wondering, there is no use wondering, there is no future in things burned and buried, there is no going back and no returning to the past and even if I could cross the same street twice (walk into the same cafe twice, board the same train twice, fall into the same bed and trap and vice) I would not.
I would have ended it.

I would have.

Ups and downs.

noreply@blogger.com (Ellie) — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 12:21:00 +0000

The thing about grief is it's stopping power. If I could bottle it I'd sell it as brake fluid.

I sit, and suddenly the big hand points in the opposite direction.

Two sips of tea, and there's a scummy layer of milk over the tepid water and my cheeks are just as clammy.
My body's a desert; water only flows in the cool of night, and only from my gritty eyes.

And then a day of peace; of blessed forgetting and skating through the pleasures of food, work.
A satisfying day with each thing in it's place and time for each event. My day, until I step on sun-warmed boards and hear the slide of graphite on paper and the click of a neighboring door.

I don't know what to do with this grief. It has no audience, no circle of commiserators. No low-voiced confidences to share and pass around like small heirlooms polished by our retelling. It circles repeatedly, can't find it's weight or rhythm.

Unwanted advances

noreply@blogger.com (Ellie) — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 13:59:00 +0000

When we sit to drink coffee looking out past the grey breakers he sits beside me, pulls his stool a little closer than I'd like. It's impossible to move it away without toppling myself from the weathered porch, so I hold firm and hope he'll tow the line.

The last time we were on this beach it was midnight, he was lost, I wanted to get lost, and it was so easy to let him work his usual magic. Today his steel-blue eyes leave me cold, and I want to let him freeze. Want to make him work himself through something instead of just misdirecting, distracting, running away and only returning when the pain's receded into a manageable throb.

In the fiasco of nodding and mm-ing his hand slides up my thigh, fingers seeking to tuck familiarly between my legs in the old gesture of reassurance, possession. A familiar precursor to intimacy, it should scoop my pelvis open with desire, throb my stomach and flutter in my chest. That I am still goose-pimpled by the wind and unlit within is bitterly disappointing, and I don't even need to push him away.

He can feel the lack of spirit. I don't talk about J., about Wolf or Boyd, about the way dancing makes me feel or how I've contracted a layer of scar tissue he can't slice away. He does all the talking, while his eyes gradually shut up shop and come to understand the wall's not coming down today. Perhaps not ever, and perhaps it's not just the tyranny of distance or his desertion that's built it.

Back again.

noreply@blogger.com (Ellie) — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 10:24:00 +0000

He's back from across the sea. Checking in to inspect the troops after the recent spate of disaster, I'm laughingly told. Up close he looks like a man untethered, become free to reinvent himself from the template of his father and disaster of his fickle mother.

Walking, he tells me his sister's husband won't let her speak to him anymore, as he's "such a fine specimen of moral degeneracy," but there's freedom in the bitter twist of his mouth and I can tell that deep down this orphaning suits him well. He's finally free to skate the shady periphery as it suits him: a freelance role here, hospitality drudgery there, sycophantic P.A.-ing, organising the kind of life he's dressed for and laughing at it's all-important posturing before another dump and overseas dash.

"So the climate didn't suit?" I know full well what the answer will be.
"The climate was fine. But everywhere you go people take themselves so seriously. Fucking idiots, living on major geological fault lines."
"Aren't we all?"
"I guess."
He takes my hand, and for a while we walk silently, the feel of his warm, dry skin searing my fingers.
The surf crashes sullenly, and it's a grey day everywhere.

oops

noreply@blogger.com (Ellie) — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 09:37:00 +0000

I forgot about this bit - oops! Boyd's far from over.

When I return it’s merely to snaffle a fan from my bag and flourish it efficiently; Melbourne might suffer four seasons in a day but it’s always summer in the Night Cat.
I wait for him to suggest we dance but I’m disappointed; he seems to prefer watching me people-watch, and I hook his gaze toward a girl floridly garbed in a shiny red satin confection which fails to stretch quite as much as it needs to. He nearly chokes on his drink, and I savor his delight. “Really, everything –that was completely on your face, you know.”
I breathe back into his ear “No! Was it really? I’m devastated!” He laughs again at my faux-naïve chagrin. “Not everyone can look as stylish as you.”
“Oh, this is old faithful – the magic black dress I wear when I have nothing to wear.”
“Well, you do it well.” He’s sweetly awkward, loosely strung and eager to please. I’m whisked away again but tell him “Save a dance for me!” - oddly, I don’t want him to feel abandoned.

He’s quite the cool customer, happy to remain apart from the crowd, merely dipping his chin or tipping a finger from his crossed-arms to acknowledge an acquaintance. I’m vacillating between unfamiliar leads and familiar moves, caught up in the crush of bodies spinning, the press of alien hands over my ribs and under my shoulderblades, manipulating, responding, directing. Every new partner is an extra heartbeat and kick of adrenaline, and whenever I have a chance to glance Boyd’s way he’s determinedly not watching.

Meet Boyd.

noreply@blogger.com (Ellie) — Sun, 06 Mar 2011 09:26:00 +0000

After class I drop my nametag in a bin and collect a glass of water, wish I’d brought a towel but settle for freshening my lipstick.

By the time I make it back to the table he's glowering into a tumbler of melted ice and we do that awkward “hey” thing - the one where he remembers my name and god help me I don't know his. It's more than a little small talk before I confess and he smiles - wistfully, or do I just imagine that? - "Yeah, I kind of guessed that."

It's endearing, this teenagelike gawkiness. At the same time I remember his earnest affirmation on the basis of a half-hour's acquaintance; "You have the most ridiculously expressive face. Everything... It's just right there." I wonder what it's showing now.

He shoves his hands in the pockets of his dark skinny levis, scuffs a battered converse against the battle-scarred floor while dipping his head apologetically toward mine. "Boyd." I don't catch it the first time. His plosive disappears into the band's warmup, and I mime confusion, brushing a wing of hair away to show him my earplugs. He bends in closer, enough for me to feel his breath down the bare side of my neck, enough for me to scent his cologne above the dusty skin-reek of the club. "Boyd."

I draw away, eye him appraisingly. "Really? I'm bad with names, but that's not ringing any bells."

Maybe I never heard his name correctly last time, either.

"Are you sure?"

"That's my name? Yes." Hands back in pockets, one foot atop the other. He's back to relaxed slouch mode, giving me all his eye contact without the puppydog cringe.

"How do I know?"

He pulls a folded sticky label from the breast pocket of his shirt. Red check tartan, the kind I'd like to steal for a bare-legged Sunday breakfast or a night snuggling on the couch in front of an Audrey Hepburn fluff film. The fuzz invites my touch; I'm suddenly hungry for an excuse to touch him. "See?"

"Bo" on one side, "yd" on the other.

"All that proves is that 'Boyd' is tonight's alias." I say archly, handing the crumple back to him so he can flick it into his empty glass, narrow mouth twisting wryly.

"In which case I'm at least consistent in maintaining my fiction."

I raise an eyebrow, and he laughs easily.

It's such a pleasure to make him laugh, to unkink the slope of his shoulders and have him mirror my own leaning-against-chair stance that I'm sorry when another man whisks me onto the dance floor. Breaking my own rules, I go so far as to roll my eyes a little and slash my fingers subtly across my throat in a universal 'save me' gesture. He doesn't, though. Just lounges, nodding gently to the salsa beat and watching us dance.

nights without plans when fools rush in.

noreply@blogger.com (Ellie) — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 13:17:00 +0000

Of course, it begins with a plan. Dinner; Spiegeltent; gig; meander about aimlessly. I follow it to the letter. The gig is great. The delight of attending these things alone occasionally is that I can arrive as late as I like, hit the end of the queue and still score a second-row seat, secretly laughing at the annoyed mumbling of the man beside me. "I cannot believe - we waited in the rain for a whole hour before the doors opened."

Yes, you did. It's Melbourne. Get used to it. I smile sweetly in his direction, narrowing my eyes in a I-didn't-absorb-a-word-of-what-you-just-said way, and relish my running-late-but-not-that-late latte. It’s possible I surreptitiously push my empty cup beneath his seat when I’m done, smile with a milligram of condescension at his overdressed, compacted wife.

They applaud resentfully, bitter some latecomer can sit beside their hard-won seats, and I know I've become a bitter-mouthing story commensurate with the actual performance. After the stuffiness of the spiegeltent the light drizzle is fresh on my leather jacket and I’m grateful for my scarf. Strolling past the gentle slap of the pond at the NGV, I relish the leisurely stroll across to my car and the click of my high, high heels on the pavement, the calming damp settling the air.

Only fools stray onto the baize-green grass.

Only barefoot fools walking home after a long night of dancing.

Sunday salsa at the Night Cat.

Yes.

Excellent.

When I walk into the room, distractedly smoothing a nametag over my clavicles to save partners staring at my breasts, his face lights up.

Even from the other side of the room I can see his sudden radiance, grinning gleefully into the face of his dance partner.

Rotating through different columns of paired couples perpetually out of sync, we don't speak for an hour, but I'm conscious of his eyes flicking over me. Suddenly I'm unable to remember simple combinations; I stagger into the ham-fisted leads of my partners like a blister-footed novice, grovel and apologise while I fidget with my awkward nametag and realign bra straps behind my lacy excuse for a little black dress. The last time we met I flitted away like a moth who’d found a brighter flame, but tonight more subtle fires are burning.

back in the world

noreply@blogger.com (Ellie) — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 01:10:00 +0000

I'm on the prowl.

There's a pretty boy in the coffee shop but the forelock in his eyes is the central concern of his unfocused life, and the battered rings guarding his right hand tell me all I need to know about his emotional baggage, the whispers of ex-girlfriends still between the sheets of his unmade bed. He tosses his head playfully as he asks me "One sugar or two?"

"None." I snap back then soften. He's not to blame for my horrors, and it's too early in the day for unrequited nastiness. He has the grace to toss me "You're sweet enough, right?"

"There's not enough sugar in the world," I toss back. It's a nice enough little banter.

One latte down and I have a page covered with scrawl, all the tat echoing inside my brain. The sweet tattooist with a grotesque Kiwi accent, so I lulled to the music of his voice before startling at every mashed vowel and clipped syllable. The boy could certainly draw, and he sketched my idea guiding my hand over the pencil to round my crooked arcs. A thin whistle between his teeth when he deciphered my symbolic marriage and unfused the commingling of ideas. Quick eyes and an appreciative smile.

"Very nice, very nice. Wish I'd thought of that."

"Ah, but you didn't. When you put it on someone's skin you'll have to tell them 'It wasn't my idea, there was this girl in Melbourne...' "

"Yeah, right. I'll be taking all the credit."

"I'm sure you will."

"I can't tempt you then?" He eyes me, calculating where he might stamp the brand.

"I'm a cleanskin."

"Well, you know where I am."

"If I ever feel like a holiday in Christchurch I'll call."

And then there's the come-hither eyes of the girl at Chapel St., swiping blood out of the way like an annoyance, just one more thing standing between her and her vision, a dangerous dame across the tender expanse of upper thigh.

She smooths wipes clinically, impatiently, only caressing the fresh-inked lines with tenderness, while her client adjusts her maxed-out white-noise headphones and grits her teeth against the gawkers. I'd give anything to be able to draw.

Sex and not having.

noreply@blogger.com (Ellie) — Sun, 13 Feb 2011 09:39:00 +0000

We are all creatures of the sea runs through my head as the salmon melts on my tongue. Miso salt in the crevices of my lips, pink flesh dissolving across my palate. It's a peace offering, one speciality garnished with love to tourniquet to my poisonous behaviour.

Another work trip in the calendar finally, undeniably close, and what he can't know is the way his presence holds me together. One restrained glass of white wine I can't finish, acid aching my teeth. It's too reminiscent of my defeated, lonely late nights. When he's home at six I measure out the minutes and stay away from the scrapbooks, knowing there'll be cups of tea, conversation. Lights out around midnight, even if my eyelids keep fluttering open.

I need to go shopping. Not for books, or clothes or shoes. Not even for the unaptly named sex aids that rattle and distract. Just to know I have currency, that there's still a crackle of power in my heels and no regret knotting the strings of viscous blood in the toilet bowl. I need him to stay and if he can't neither can I.

Floods and cyclones and grief, oh my.

noreply@blogger.com (Ellie) — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 14:22:00 +0000

He’s back, and I’m doing my best not to bite, not to snap, not to pull out my stash of scrawled charcoal papers and pore endlessly over every sweeping smudge and line. Artifacts I can’t bear to burn, so that my sobbing over Cairo’s tragedies is not grief for a populace, but my own selfish grubby desire.

Yasi - Queensland’s cyclone - is just another manifestation of my tumult; just another natural disaster, barely worth raising an eyebrow. I’ve stopped caring about all the abstract toyless children and flooded kitchens, sitting in the eye of the storm. Dead calm. Dead. Calm. He’s dead, but I’m not calm. I’m the faux-static of white noise trying hard to mask the churning of destruction, the upward mania of Stepford prozac.

Not even his skin gives me solace.

Not even the fluttering of his pulse under my mouth reassures me that tomorrow this will not all be whipped away, that my eye is widening, dissipating and soon I will find a way to clean up the debris.

All across our bed I’m haunted by empty space.

noreply@blogger.com (Ellie) — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 08:04:00 +0000

I sit with Julie at the funeral, doing my best to blend in with the slender-bodied women and men sleek in dark shirts.

Melbourne's become a monsoon city in the last few days, continuously drizzling. The grass is horribly lush and green for all it's non-denominational godlessness. So alive looking at it hurts, even behind sunglasses.

I'm wearing sensible ballet flats so I don't sink into the turf, but I wish with all my heart I'd worn my impossible dancing stilettos. I'd like nothing more than to get further from the ground.

I don't hear the service. I see three women who can only be Lex's mother and sisters, one with solemn children. They sit quietly, watching their mother and squinting into the cloying, second-chance sunlight that flickers between the damp air and murmur of mourning. Some funerals are celebrations. Not this one. We're all shocked into speechlessness.

On my way I stopped at the very intersection where he was hit and stalled, stranded in the middle of a hook turn, stuck between heartbeats. Wondering if I could have forestalled that night. I'm never going to know.

There are readings, Julie and tall, fair Matt, a ballet compatriot from the early days, who talks about Lex's tenacity, his history of injury and the new course he'd carved for himself, the courage it took for him to begin a life after ballet. They don't talk about the alcohol, and I wonder if his AA circle know, if they think he's just fallen off the wagon again, chasing some skirt.

and on it goes.

noreply@blogger.com (Ellie) — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 02:19:00 +0000

Untethered, I’m staying up too late, waking up too late, too late, too late. For everything. For my life. Sewing dresses I won’t wear, patching together tiny felt toys for children unborn, ripping apart my wardrobe and remaking it. Throwing out everything with the possibility of Lex’s portraiture. Skyping odd, international hours with a husband two continents and three weeks away. He calls my reddened eyes fatigue, hot nights plagued by mosquitos, the stress of a new year and timetabling. I don’t know if I wish it was longer or over.

Cereal at four in the morning, the milk’s never cold enough until I slide an iceblock down the side of my bowl and numb my throat on the gritty, milk-roughened shards. The neighbors try to have a summer barbecue but I Jeff Buckley all over their parade, windows open and sucking in the cool dark air, a fair trade for my melancholy.

In my clammy-sheeted solitary bed summer peaches turn sour mush in my mouth; their fuzz revolts me and I find myself heaving over the toilet bowl with sour wine burning my throat, fever racing across my skin. There's a funeral yet.

blank

noreply@blogger.com (Ellie) — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 10:55:00 +0000

Some things end not with a bang, a final door or the click of a dial tone, but with a whimper. The soft fade of missed phone calls and further-apart meetings, arriving late, in the wrong place or not at all, until no more excuses need to be made and a final line can be sketched beneath.

This was not one of those non-endings. There was never apathy in our meetings, no insidious torpor, and today when I pause above the keyboard I don’t know; he might have won in the end. There’s no more game. He swore up and down the benders were over; hooked up a new mentor while visiting the old; I could never go with him and now I don’t know how I could go without him. I’m trying to draw a line but the paper’s been slid away while I wasn’t looking.

It was Julie’s voice on my private voicemail. Little sallow bird with the beautiful black hair, I can hear her fiddling with the tiny gold cross slung between the points of her collarbones, picture the injured ankle still carefully elevated even though it must be healed by now.

“Ellie? I found your number in Lexei’s flat. I’m calling- oh, shit. Ellie, he’s dead.”

Four times I listen to her gravelly recitation and then I hit 3. Delete.

The salient points:

(There’s no way to pretty this up.)

Lex was walking home from an AA meeting.

He stepped off the kerb and was hit by a driver running a red light. Drunk. 0.12, the police told her. They don’t know how he was driving in a straight line, let alone- oh, never mind.

Multiple fractures, pronounced on arrival.

The pedant in me screams – pronounced what? They diagnosed his fractures on arrival? It’s the kind of illogical thinking that can drive you mad very quickly. I know exactly what she means. I just choose not to understand right now.

Like a consolation prize she offers the good news. “They said – even if he’d lived there was a good chance he’d be paraplegic, and that would just kill him, really.”

I don’t know. He’d already survived the loss of his legs once. January has begun without him and I don't even know who's most bereft.

The time between the throw and the catch

noreply@blogger.com (Ellie) — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 09:47:00 +0000

We persist in thinking that a single moment can be defining, refusing to consider that this instant, that coin edge spinning on the table is a product of all the moments we've lived so far.

Crossroads are only straight roads as far as the eye can see, poor flawed bloodshot orb nestled in a skull of contradictions. Naked and oily, squirming on a bed of fallible tissue and shot nerves. Sometimes as far as you can see isn't even the other side of the road, and this asphalt wasn't laid on good foundations.

But we persist in believing it all hinges here, on this knife edge. The one we just sharpened to a bare glint in the pupil. Surely, after we score this line in the sand there will be a happily ever after.

No. There's more sand. More blades, and they’re double-edged, a mouthful going down and worse coming up. More abandoned sandcastles, and the tide is inexorable.

It's why I never learnt to catch a coin flip. It's why I don't believe in fate. It's why I create situations that allow me to meander in the grey spaces between black and white even while they demand a final reckoning.

Musing upon the human condition...

noreply@blogger.com (Ellie) — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 06:47:00 +0000

No-one ever asks if Samson wanted Delilah to cut his hair. All the responsibility of being the tough guy grates after a while. Perhaps he craved a woman's tenderness. Perhaps he wanted to succumb to a soft bed and clean sheets. We'll never know.

I do know it's human nature to rebel against comfort, that joys won too easily quickly pall, that the worth of an acquisition is measured by the battle that gains it. Unmanly to shirk battle or renounce power, what better vessel to unman than a woman?

I imagine that he asked her with scissors lying on the pillow, with the curve of her pregnant belly in his eyes. With dreams of ploughshares and a small private domesticity, the scent of a child and small, unsteady steps trusting his calloused hands.

Delilah did as she was told, shyly grating the blades and wincing when they refused the coarse strands bunched in her fist. Perhaps she cried, watching battle flames lose their spark; seeing threads of grey in his new, uneven crop. Felt the vulnerability of a shorn skull and the skin so close over the bone.

Coming home

noreply@blogger.com (Ellie) — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 09:54:00 +0000

We crash through the door of his apartment twined, shedding clothes like pieces of an outgrown chrysalis. My silk wrap spills a mint green and cherry blossom glaze across his polished boards, next to the scar of his crumpled charcoal pants. Shoes seem to proliferate – wait, that’s shoe, sock, shoe, sock, dinosaur high heels clunking down and off in a percussive attack. My hands are under his shirt, tasting the tension of his ribs and fluttering heartbeat, and he scoops me up, forearms across my back and elbows tight against my hips, strides to the bathroom and turns on the hot water. I don’t get it, but he kneels and strips me, skirt down, top up. Underwear on the fluffy bathmat, and I step into the bath and drown my tears under the cascading blood-warm water.

take me to your dealer

noreply@blogger.com (Ellie) — Wed, 01 Dec 2010 23:37:00 +0000

"You've been the only thing I crave since that day in the cafe." He scrubs a hand through his hair and I notice new stubble; flecks of grey are beginning to insinuate his crop, pulling the planes of his face into stark reality. An aging, Czech caricature. "I've been skipping meetings when I see you."

I hear and understand perfectly well, even as my mouth drops open. Henry. Steps. Meetings. "You mean AA."

He steeples his fingers and contemplates me frankly over their hyperextended angle. Taps the paired indexes against his nose, considering. "Yes."

Of course. So many fragments click together into a whole, even down to knowing my preference while eschewing his own. The air of abstinence and iron discipline, the subtle attractiveness of the guru who denies and rises above. My intense satisfaction in corrupting the apparently incorruptible and his greedy delight in bingeing. I am the other woman.

He clicks ice, sliding it across the bottom of his glass with an air of surprise that gravity still demands its movement. It gives him something to do with his eyes while he mutters, "At first it didn't matter, then I couldn't find a way to tell you. That day - in the cafe? I was visiting my sponsor, just found out he's got cancer." He doesn't look up to see if I care. "Terminal."

I'm starting to feel I carry the genesis of tragedy in my bones; I cast a cancerous net over the people who shouldn't come too close then exist only to palliate their agony.

enough distance to see

noreply@blogger.com (Ellie) — Sat, 27 Nov 2010 04:28:00 +0000

Today it's difficult to hear him over the buzz of taps and glasses, the hum of patrons and clatter of trams outside our window.

Otherwise I'd swear he just said "My name's Alexei, and I'm an alcoholic."

Fuck.

I should have known.

The world's come unmoored and flapping around my ears; I feel drunk myself, on a kind of despair and hilarity, a tension I recognise as hysteria in the classical sense. For an inane second I'm back in university stacks shaking my head over the ridiculousness termed 'a wandering uterus', thinking I shouldn't have worn that corset last weekend. Idiocy.

I stare at his glass of ice water, my bottom lip tight between my teeth to clench the tears. I know they're threatening a hostile takeover. There's nothing glamorous about drunks. About any behaviour twisted into compulsion. I should know. Fuck. My script's disintegrating.

Looking at his long fingers spread on the table I have the urge to play chicken, get a knife and not stop until someone bleeds. Really I just want an adrenaline rush to chase this dulled, thudding miasma. Sharp focus: he’s still wearing that damn ring on his left hand, an ink stain blooming over the middle phalange of his third finger, charcoal bruises staining the fingertips of his right hand. A contemplative bender, then.

"So we're both married," I try to joke. Miserably feeble, it falls flat as it deserves.

He grimaces, nods, swallows the last of his water and watches the ice clink.

"You didn't think it might be important?"

His shrug is full of bile, eyes hooded and guarded. "You don't seem to think so."

Despite the sunshine my fury is cold, and quick-cutting, and my legs have me upright before I know I’m saying "I'm leaving."

He thrusts out a hand blindly, and the impotence of his gesture catches me, sits me back down again on poisoned territory."Don’t. I should have told you. Henry said I should have - it's a step, being honest with others as well as yourself - I wanted to believe I wasn't any more."

"I'm not your replacement drug."

His gaze meets mine and there's electricity in it.

Fragmented

noreply@blogger.com (Ellie) — Wed, 24 Nov 2010 10:33:00 +0000

He called late on Thursday night. Risky, at best, but I'm alone, so I picked up. And recoiled from the glare of his breath, even as it carried - or failed to - through the skin-warm screen of my iphone. Slurred, sibilant. Not the Wolf I know.

I couldn't even talk to him, just stared blankly through tthe raindrops slicking my windscreen, distress throbbing in my chest.
It sounds like he fell off the wagon Monday, when I went home.
Monday, when I walked out and left him in a tangle of sheets.
Monday, when we cried, and fought, and I slapped him when he asked for the third time why I wouldn't leave J.

He kept rambling; I didn't know what to do. Talk him out of the glass in his hand? Hang up? Would he notice if I did?

Everyone breaks along different fault lines. Everyone has a
different type of glue. I sense this could be the nasty permanent type, not the careful application of molecular layers that I seek.

He sobbed, inarticulate. Thick, and heavy. He could have been drinking forty-eight hours straight by now, I just don't know.
Monday,
nothing,
nothing,
this.

Bang. I hung up. Sent him a text. Don't call me back. I'll meet you.

Some truths are never easy. Some are more difficult to write than others. Bear with me.