Janita Lawrence - The Memory of Water

“I have a theory for you,” Eve says, her eyes glittering, “but you’re not going to like it.”

I put my glass down, look up at her, waiting for a revelation.

“Here’s the thing,” she says, soft and gentle, like a nurse with bad news, “I think you’re stuck because you’re not giving enough, not putting enough of yourself out there.”

I feel the warm beginnings of anger but I wait for her to explain.

“You’re a taker. And you’ve been taking for a long time. And I think that you can only take so much from the universe before it closes shop.”

I laugh bitterly. There is a sad old man attached to my back.

She is infuriating, and she smells too good. Like sex and cookies.

“Look, Eve, I appreciate the concern. I really do. I am a taker. I’m not denying it. I have to take in order to write.”

I stand up and Eve follows suit.

“It’s about more than that, Slade,” her voice is rising, trying to get through.

“It’s about how you use people and then throw them away. You leach everything you can and then you crush them and trash them.”

In my imagination I have the vision of myself downing a beer, squashing the tin on my forehead and then throwing it backwards, over my head, a perfect landing in the bin. I don’t cover my mouth to burp. In reality, I sway and look at Eve with weary eyes.

“I understand that you have issues with women; that it’s very difficult for you, especially with what happened with your mother.”

I grab her wrist to stop her words from splattering on the walls and carpet.

“Don’t bring my mother into this,” I whisper, close to her ear. “This is not about her.”

It’s a lie: it’s always been about her. Everything has always been about her. And Emily.

“I just think that there are some things that you have to start facing!” she yells, “Otherwise how else are you going to get better?”

“I don’t need to get better!” I yell back. “I need to be this! The person I am.”

“Damn it. Slade, there are people who care about you! Who hurt when you hurt yourself! Why are you so fucking self-destructive?”

“It’s not about being self-destructive. It’s about living and living requires taking risks. My writing demands it of me.”

“Ha! Like almost ending up in a wheelchair after deciding to jump out of a plane? And almost dying in Nigeria?”

I wave my hand at her to signal she’s exaggerating.

“And Bangkok? You were in hospital for two months, Slade. No one even knew what had happened to you, or where you were.”

“None of that was my fault! You know damn well that I was on assignments. Would you have had me turn down some of the most important writing assignments of my life?”

“Like driving your car over a bridge?”

It had always been a sore point. I wish I had never told her about it.

“I planned that very carefully, nothing could have gone wrong.”

“It was suicidal, Slade. Everything could have gone wrong, you’re just lucky it didn’t!”

“Am I?” That was the bitter old man speaking.

Despite the evidence to the contrary, I’m not suicidal. If anything, these stunts make me feel more alive. Maybe Eve will never understand that.

Heat rushes inside of me. Part rage, part lust, my body is magnetised by Eve’s. I step closer to her, too close, forcing her to take a step back.

“You treat your life experiences like… like notches in your bedpost! I just think… that if you had more meaning in your life…”

As I advance she takes another step back. I’ve had enough. I fling open the double doors that lead into the garden as a sign for her to leave.

I have to shout over the noise for her to hear me.

“Maybe I think that meaning is overrated. As far as taking risks is concerned – perhaps you should try it sometime. You, sequestered in your cocoon of a studio. You’re hardly, as you say, ‘putting yourself out there’.”

Eve is trembling. She moves towards me. We are standing so close now I can feel the warmth radiating off her body and my senses are singing.

“It’s a gift, Slade,” she breathes, “my art, your writing. If you misuse it, it will abandon you.”

The moment has come. There will never be a moment like this again. It feels like the world is holding its breath. I am electrified. Despite the violence of my feelings I am gentle when I grasp the back of her head and kiss her.

Not a second of hesitation passes before she slaps me. The revellers nearest to us turn to look. Eve whirls away and, in her haste to retreat, misses a step down, trips and falls onto the wet grass on her hands and knees. A hush falls over the crowd. She takes a moment before trying to stand up. Someone goes over to help her. I’m too angry for sympathy, condemned to being a silhouette. A voice in my head repeats ‘it’s over’ again and again until I want to cleave my head open to release the pressure of the words.

I see a waitress out of the corner of my eye and click my fingers for a refill.

The rest of the night is a blur with missing snatches. I rebel against chaste, caring, maddening Eve by drinking enough to fell a large horse and behave as astonishingly badly as I know I can get away with. Ordinary people expect the more famous of us to be a bit strange, go a bit far, be a bit outrageous. What would Warhol be without his paranoia, Hunter S. Thompson without his Quaaludes, Johnny Cash without his philandering? We Somebodies are not expected to walk the line.

I remember skinny-dipping at midnight with some of the guests, including Frank from Football and the bar lady with the black fingernails and great tits. I steal watery touches of the pretty brunette I met on the dance floor and kiss her wet skin. I pin her up against the side of the pool with her legs around my waist and we make out like teenagers while I furtively stroke her clit. I can tell she wants me to fuck her, so I switch off the pool light for the five minutes it takes. I cover her mouth with one hand and pull her towards me with the other. I am so pent up from the encounter with Eve that I have an explosive orgasm. The girl giggles and purrs and I get out of the water.

Cut to Sifiso slapping me on the back again, smiling like a charcoal Cheshire cat and smoking a cigar. Cut to seeing the twins at the chocolate fountain and suggesting we take it into the bedroom. Cut to watching Francina dance to Abba. Cut to when the last stragglers and I are at the bar, watching the sunrise and drinking screwdrivers with freshly-squeezed orange juice. A waiter brings in egg and bacon rolls with HP sauce and hot chips drenched in vinegar. I meet a guy from Texas who speaks like a cowboy and a tall fish-eyed woman, dressed head-to-toe in black, who chain-smokes like Bette Davis. We talk about things that seem important at 5am: plastic surgery, designer sneakers, upcycling, the petrol price, Malema, Gadaffi, chicken roasted on a beer can, and no one wonders why the others are standing in a stranger’s garden, drinking drinks they no longer need speaking to people they will never see again. No one wonders why this seems like a better idea than going home or what that says about the people doing it.

Cut to me realising the party is over, giving the faux butler the responsibility of ushering the last hangers-on out the door, and going to my bedroom where I hope to find the chocolate twins but actually find a cold, empty bed.

“Writing is utter solitude, the descent into the cold abyss of oneself.”

There is a pleasure and pain in writing that is, ironically, difficult to put into words. When you are struggling to tap into the force it can feel like you will never get there again, that the muse has abandoned you, for bad behaviour, or just for kicks (muses have distorted senses of humour) and, if this happens enough, you can end up throwing your laptop out of the window and swearing off writing for life. And then one day – when far away from pen and paper, on the M1 highway or at a dinner party – something will come to you which you know is good, you know is original and fresh and important. You end up in the emergency lane, hazard lights flashing, ransacking the cubby-hole for something, anything, to write with, or the guest bathroom, scratching down sentences on double ply with borrowed eyeliner while other guests knock down the door. Divine dictation. The feeling that comes with it, intimate and sexy, pen on paper like lips on skin, a heat that starts in your pelvis and travels upwards, outwards, not so much a bolt as a current. You are turned on: physically, psychologically, spiritually. Nothing beats this feeling. Well, very few things beat this feeling.