name.
“All right, Marky Marc.”
It would have been easy to acknowledge the call and move on. I could have raised one hand in salute and continued toward that farthest booth. In the Basement Bar nobody’s need for space was ever questioned. The problem was I had time on my hands and time is the enemy of good decision-making. The names of the two lads who had called me over don’t matter now. They were just hyperhormonal men, the big beasts of the student savanna, nostrils open for the scent of an available pheromone. I knew instinctively that if I sat down with them, talk would soon turn to the pressing matter of sex. For these men sexual conquest was a sport to which they offered their own commentary. Too many times I had found myself an uneasy and counterfeit coconspirator. I had sat in too many of these booths listening to this sex talk and, still surprised by my own lack of experience, had chipped in with a special arrangement of knowing guffaws and wisecracks which kept me in the conversation without ever drawing me too close to its center.
This morning was different. As of the previous night I was what my doctor would have called a sexually active male.
“Young man, are you sexually active?”
“Well yes, Doctor. Yes I am. I am sexually very active. I was sexually active last night, as it happens, thank you for asking.”
I deserved a place in that booth. I could join the herd out on the savanna. So I slipped in along the warm leatherette bench, scrounged a fag, and sipped my coffee. Off went the conversation, this chatter of capability and willingness, and at some point, buoyed up by success, I joined in. Looking back, I can now see the flow of that conversation spreading out like a mighty river with its tributaries and bifurcations. I can still identify the narrative beats along the way which would have allowed me to send the talk off down another channel; streams which would have left me innocent and unsullied. But the truth is—and I accept this now—I just didn’t want to. I wanted these boys to know that I was one of them. I wanted them to hear me boast about sex. Most of all I wanted them to hear me boast about sex with Jennie Sampson. I needed them to know about it because somehow it would make the whole event seem so much more real. Naturally, in the desperate pursuit of this realness, I was more than willing to lie.
When one of them said, “Is Jennie Sampson a shouter?,” I answered in the affirmative, even though all I remembered from the night before was the warmth of her breath on my neck and the hum of the fridge in my dour kitchenette.
But I was flying now, writing my own story lines, crafting my own narrative arc. “She howled,” I said. “I thought someone might call the police, she was so bloody noisy. Seriously, I was so worried I …”
It took me a few seconds to notice that their gaze had lifted from the Warner Brothers animation of my face to a place just up and behind me. Their lascivious smiles had subsided to be replaced by something closer to a smirk. I said, “What? What is it—”
“Hello, Jennie,” one of them said cheerily.
“Yeah, hello,” the other one said, just as eagerly. “We were just talking about you.”
I swung around. She was standing at the end of the table, a pile of books gripped tightly to her chest. She was blinking and even in the gloom I could see tears beginning to form. God knows how long she’d been in the Basement listening. She could have been in the next booth, her head rested back against the divider that separated us. However long she had been there it was long enough. Behind me the boys started sniggering.
I tried a welcoming grin and said, “Actually, we were just talking about …” But it was pointless. She sniffed and blinked so that her eyelids fluttered beautifully, and she mouthed the words “You bastard” at me. Then Jennie Sampson turned and fled. We left university without saying another word to each other.
Once
“All right, Marky Marc.”
It would have been easy to acknowledge the call and move on. I could have raised one hand in salute and continued toward that farthest booth. In the Basement Bar nobody’s need for space was ever questioned. The problem was I had time on my hands and time is the enemy of good decision-making. The names of the two lads who had called me over don’t matter now. They were just hyperhormonal men, the big beasts of the student savanna, nostrils open for the scent of an available pheromone. I knew instinctively that if I sat down with them, talk would soon turn to the pressing matter of sex. For these men sexual conquest was a sport to which they offered their own commentary. Too many times I had found myself an uneasy and counterfeit coconspirator. I had sat in too many of these booths listening to this sex talk and, still surprised by my own lack of experience, had chipped in with a special arrangement of knowing guffaws and wisecracks which kept me in the conversation without ever drawing me too close to its center.
This morning was different. As of the previous night I was what my doctor would have called a sexually active male.
“Young man, are you sexually active?”
“Well yes, Doctor. Yes I am. I am sexually very active. I was sexually active last night, as it happens, thank you for asking.”
I deserved a place in that booth. I could join the herd out on the savanna. So I slipped in along the warm leatherette bench, scrounged a fag, and sipped my coffee. Off went the conversation, this chatter of capability and willingness, and at some point, buoyed up by success, I joined in. Looking back, I can now see the flow of that conversation spreading out like a mighty river with its tributaries and bifurcations. I can still identify the narrative beats along the way which would have allowed me to send the talk off down another channel; streams which would have left me innocent and unsullied. But the truth is—and I accept this now—I just didn’t want to. I wanted these boys to know that I was one of them. I wanted them to hear me boast about sex. Most of all I wanted them to hear me boast about sex with Jennie Sampson. I needed them to know about it because somehow it would make the whole event seem so much more real. Naturally, in the desperate pursuit of this realness, I was more than willing to lie.
When one of them said, “Is Jennie Sampson a shouter?,” I answered in the affirmative, even though all I remembered from the night before was the warmth of her breath on my neck and the hum of the fridge in my dour kitchenette.
But I was flying now, writing my own story lines, crafting my own narrative arc. “She howled,” I said. “I thought someone might call the police, she was so bloody noisy. Seriously, I was so worried I …”
It took me a few seconds to notice that their gaze had lifted from the Warner Brothers animation of my face to a place just up and behind me. Their lascivious smiles had subsided to be replaced by something closer to a smirk. I said, “What? What is it—”
“Hello, Jennie,” one of them said cheerily.
“Yeah, hello,” the other one said, just as eagerly. “We were just talking about you.”
I swung around. She was standing at the end of the table, a pile of books gripped tightly to her chest. She was blinking and even in the gloom I could see tears beginning to form. God knows how long she’d been in the Basement listening. She could have been in the next booth, her head rested back against the divider that separated us. However long she had been there it was long enough. Behind me the boys started sniggering.
I tried a welcoming grin and said, “Actually, we were just talking about …” But it was pointless. She sniffed and blinked so that her eyelids fluttered beautifully, and she mouthed the words “You bastard” at me. Then Jennie Sampson turned and fled. We left university without saying another word to each other.
Once
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