Monkey Grip

It was early summer. And everything, as it always does, began to heave and change.

I remembered only the good and loveable things about him, not the wretchedness he caused me, and the dope, and the resentments and silence and the half-crazy outbursts. I remembered his smell and the colour of his eyes and his head thrown back to laugh; these things were a second away, in time, but the others I dredged up dutifully, knowing that I must, for the sake of truth and sanity, try to keep a balance.

...as if, one lover gone, I was opening up for an immediate replacement. Smack habit, love habit - what's the difference? They can both kill you. For the bus journey I fell in love with a woman who smiled at me. The motion of the bus made her thick mop of fair curls tremble. We talked about desperados. 'I am fatally attracted to them', I said. 'In fact, I probably am one'.

I saw the bumpy shape of my skull, I saw myself shorn and revealed. I wandered in a dream around the city, glimpsing in shop windows a strange creature with my face.

I’ve seen the way she comes on to him—I just can’t stand it. You know—what really shits me is how you spend years working on yourself to get rid of all that stupid eyelash-fluttering and giggling, and then just when you think you’re getting somewhere, you find out that guys still like women who do that sort of thing. I watch ‘em fall for it, every time.

I thought about the patterns I make in my life: loving the wrong person, loving not enough and too much and too long.

I realised I had a stream of thoughts about him which ran for the most part below conscious level. I noticed jets spurting up from this stream: comparisons with other relationships I knew of which had weathered massive changes and shifts of balance; small crumbs of hope he would find he missed the familiarity of my company, or that his gestures of comfort meant more than a gentle goodbye. I grieved for these hopes, and their hopelessness.

Such was my elation that I ran inside, put on our ancient cracked record of Aretha Franklin singing ‘Respect’ and danced all by myself for half an hour in our living room, without inhibition, almost crying with jubilation—not just about the wood, but because I could live competently some of the time, and because that day I liked myself.

No touching, he won’t touch me, he won’t allow me his body. But, as usual when I was being of service, he cheerfully accepted an omelette and a cup of coffee when I made lunch for everyone.

Hunger’s like a disease: it has to be tended.’ So is loneliness.

I sat down opposite him. He looked up, straight into my eyes as he does, and smiled at me. At that moment, we were both a hundred years old and we had known each other for ever.

Francis stayed with me and was patiently kind to me; but when we were fucking I began to cry again out of weakness and fear that he was fucking me, as a man does to a woman or out of fear that I liked it. I couldn’t find his mind, or his heart; he was away in his own travelling.

My heart opened and closed like an anemone.

He said, “How’s your reconstruction program going?” ’ She gave a painful laugh. ‘It’s not that I mind being criticised. It’s just that it’s done in such a hard way.’ Too much righteousness, not enough love.

It doesn’t matter, though, does it?’ I remarked, suddenly filled with a certainty that fucking occupied far too important a place in all our lives.

Nothing is ever one-sided,’ I wearily replied. I tried to summon up a memory of how I used to argue for my life against the cold face of someone I was in love with. I couldn’t remember. There is no logic in feelings. No logic.

I slept so still that the bed was undisturbed. When I got up I just had to tuck it in. Rita was not in the house. She must have stayed at Nick’s. She would not give up on that man. It looked crazy to me, wanting to run herself again and again into the wall of his indifference. Juliet cried when she found Rita’s bed empty in the morning, but she was easily comforted.

it’s OK for you to use it, because I don’t love him any more.’ ‘Good on ya!’ cried Javo with a laugh. He meant it. I did not mean it. But at that moment I realised I had better start meaning it. Any kind of love for him was no longer appropriate, if I wanted to stay in one piece.

I couldn’t keep up this adolescent game. It always ended up showing its fundamental brutality, and I found myself suddenly depressed, and frightened by the gap between a remark like that and my fantasies, which were of love.

Gracie took my hand. ‘Come on, Nora,’ she said. ‘Let’s go. That’s the way life is.

we with our blank wall between us and our fear of speaking the truth. Fear of being loved; fear of not being loved.

He did not seem pleased to see me, and was offhand and cold. I went home and did four loads of washing at the laundromat. I washed his shirts and jeans and socks. Why do I do it? I do it for love, or kindness. Women are nicer than men. Kinder, more open, less suspicious, more eager to love.

I didn’t wait for the show. I got in a cab and came home. Not unhappy, but tired in the heart. When I got home, it was like having escaped from a stricken city.

Gracie writhed with laughter. ‘I hate love! I’m never going to be in love!’ ‘Good on you, Grace,’ said Javo, grinning. ‘Love’s shithouse. It makes you forget your friends.

my stomach was weak with sadness. It was still all an absurd fantasy. I remembered only the good and lovable things about him, and not the wretchedness he caused me, and the dope and the resentments and silences and the half-crazy outbursts.

There was a life to be made.

We lounged on the beds, talking about junk and our households, speculating and exchanging anecdotes about broken resolutions and night-time freakouts and lies told and tears shed and love refused.

How is it you’re so good with children?’ ‘B-because I used to be one,’ he said.

eyes, like his, took on a certain opaqueness, the mouth turned up a little, the head cocked slightly, and the words flowed out too easily to be the product of real, gritty thought. It was the repetition of a catechism.

Oh, you steer in a bog, there’s not a thing I can do to help you. Love is not enough, and you are often unwilling to take it.