This is the sort of place where I’m going to be exposed as a horrible fraud, who preys on the issues of others. It will come to my turn and I’ll have to say the only thing I can: One time Martin McAllister accidentally slipped his cock in my bum a bit, when aiming for my vagina. And then he expected me to be mortified, only I wasn’t!
God help me, I wasn’t.
And then maybe I’ll cry a little, or wring my hands, just to make the whole thing more convincing. Though I can already tell it’s not going to be. My sensible half is laughing at my ridiculous attempts at sexual verisimilitude, and even if she wasn’t I’d be aware of how silly I am. I have to go, now, before others find me out. I have to Google sex and authenticity instead of making any attempts at actual research – after all, that’s what most authors do, isn’t it? Scour Wikipedia for a helping hand?
But of course it’s already too late. I can see some kindly aunt-type standing by the door to the main hall, and as I do my best to slink past her, she hooks my arm. She actually hooks my arm, like she just knew I was trying to make my escape.
And once I’ve looked her in the eye, I know I’m not going anywhere. There’s just nothing I can convincingly say to this woman, to make a clean getaway. She has the friendly, open face of some beloved relative I don’t actually have, and, when she speaks, things only get worse for me.
She has a Scottish accent. A kindly, whisky-biscuit Scottish accent. And she uses that accent to say the following:
‘Are you a little bit nervous, petal? Don’t be. Come on in, and have a cake.’
Which is quite possibly the most welcoming set of words I’ve ever heard. It started with an acknowledgement of my main weakness – nerves – before launching into the kind of epithet I’ve always wanted. And to finish, she offered me a cake.
A cake.
She gave it to me with both barrels, and doesn’t even know it.
‘Well, maybe I can … sort of … I don’t know …’ I hear myself saying, as she leads me into a hall that time forgot. Honestly, for a second I expect my old headmaster to come bouncing over the trampoline-like wooden floors towards me – which only makes things worse.
I can’t lie in front of my old headmaster. I can’t even lie in front of this lady. She asks me what my name is, and instead of offering the fake one I thought up for this very occasion, I go with the real deal. Kit, I say, and then she writes it on the sticker in her hand and plasters it to my right boob.
Now I have to be me, for all eternity.
‘You just take a seat when you’re ready, Kit,’ she says, but the sight of that prison-like circle of plastic chairs makes me dizzy. I try the fold-out table of orange squash and home-baked treats, instead, only to find I’ve forgotten how to eat. My hand shakes as I raise a square of ill-gotten ginger cake to my mouth, and I end up putting it back down.
But that just makes me look like some nervous first-timer. A willowy woman in seventeen layers of lovely clothes pats me on the back, and tells me everything will be fine. ‘Just share your inner self,’ she says, as though my inner self could be so easily persuaded. I can’t even tell someone on the subway that they’re standing on my foot, let alone this.
Because, oh, this is something else.
The guy in the tweed with the nice professor’s face – he can’t stop masturbating. He masturbates so often that I find myself doing the maths in my head, but once I have I’m no less in awe. His weekly total is more than my yearly one. In fact, if I divide the four and carry the one, it’s more than I’ve ever masturbated in my entire life. I don’t even know how he’s functioning, in all honesty. I don’t even know how someone can physically crave something that much … something so small and ordinary and nothing. God, when I do it – it’s nothing.
But when he describes it …
‘It’s a rush,’ he says. As though it’s some new drug I wasn’t aware of. And then even more thrilling: ‘It’s a rush to think I might get caught. I do it in my office, sometimes, with the door unlocked, half hoping someone will walk in.’
And once he’s done, all I can think of is my old university professor, Dr McCaffrey. Dr McCaffrey, with those leather patches on his elbows and his pipe and his neatly parted hair. And most of all those steel-grey eyes of his, surveying the study hall with a kind of disaffection.
Did he have a secret life like this, behind the cold façade? Did he imagine keeping students behind after lectures – students more lovely than me, obviously – before offering them something strictly prohibited in the university handbook?
Bend over, he says in my head, and then he raises that pointer of his, about a second before I snap back to reality.
God, Lori’s right. My attitude to sex is weird. They’re talking about their problems, and I’m in the middle of some crazy fantasy featuring a teacher I once had. I’m imagining what it’s like to be this consumed by sex, to be this nuts about it. The woman on my right has a ritual, for fuck’s sake. An actual ritual.
She goes to the same bar every Saturday night, and picks up a dark-haired man – preferably with a moustache. And then she takes him back to her apartment, puts a collar on him and makes him stumble around her living room like a dog.
My Saturday-night ritual consists of me deciding whether to wear pyjamas or a nightie to bed. Is a jam sandwich a good idea, after ten-thirty? Or will I wake up feeling nauseated and too thirsty? Chances are I’ll be thirsty. And then I’ll drink half a pint of lemonade and need to pee at six in the morning – it’s a whole big thing, and far too much hassle.
Better that I don’t have the jam sandwich.
Yeah, that’s right. She has trouble fighting her urge to have wild and anonymous sex. I have trouble deciding about preserves and buttered bread. I’m ashamed of my attitude to late-night snacks. If I needed any further proof that I shouldn’t be here … that I should feel guilty about peeping in on their private feelings … this would be it.
I mean, these people are really hurting, about actual things. They’re all freaked out by their obsessions and unsure of what to do next – all of them are. Every last one of them, down to the girl who can’t even bring herself to say the word ‘vagina’ and the man who’s never so much as shaken a woman’s hand.
I don’t belong here.
And neither does that guy on the other side of the circle.
I don’t know how I missed him, at first. He’s completely unmissable, in every way possible. He’s like a sore thumb in a room full of perfectly healthy fingers, though I really don’t think I can be blamed for overlooking him. I was just so engrossed in other people’s sad tales and my own rampaging guilt that I didn’t pay any attention to the one other person in the room who isn’t real. Maybe I thought he was a mirror on the other side of the circle, reflecting me.
Because it’s obvious he is. He isn’t slumped in his chair, defeated, or full with celebration of some small victory over sex. He doesn’t look the least bit sad or ashamed about anything. His arms are folded jauntily over his chest, and I immediately notice two things because of this:
First, his arms and his general chest area are absolutely enormous. They’re so enormous that they briefly blot out all light in the universe, and cause a cataclysm the likes of which the world has never known.
And:
Those earth-destroying arms are covered in tattoos.
Though maybe all of that is just a slight exaggeration. He’s so incredible-looking I briefly