Stan Cattermole - Sexy Beast - The Intimate Adventures of an Ugly Man

And, as it happens, it was disgustingly pleasant. Stu’s wife, Carolyn, was lovely, Stu was charming alongside her, and—OK, I’ll say it—even the baby was inoffensive enough. I was enjoying myself.

Then the house telephone began to squeal. It was Stu’s sister. She was outside in a taxi, fuming angry. She’d had a big row with their parents. Stu huffed and puffed, apologised, excused himself, then went outside.

While he was out of the room, Carolyn said, ‘I don’t know if Stu’s mentioned Avril before…’ He hadn’t. ‘Well, just so you know, she’s in a wheelchair.’

‘Oh,’ I said. ‘That’s um…that’s great. Well, not great obviously. I mean, that’s fine. Which is to say, I’ve not got a problem with that. Obviously. I mean, why would I?’

Carolyn smirked at me and briefly limpened a wrist as if to put me at my ease.

I smirked back.

Avril was still in feisty mood when she whirred up to the table. Stu introduced us. Avril immediately picked up on my dithering over whether or not to shake her hand—she was used to it. I had already stood up and was wondering whether even that might be construed as a rather insensitive move. She held out her right arm. ‘Here,’ she said. ‘Shake my tiny hand.’ I laughed and did so, and even then it crossed my mind, the old adage about men liking women with small hands. But I thought better of sharing it. Instead I said, ‘Pleased to meet you. That reminds me of the E. E. Cummings poem.’ Then I immediately felt like such an obnoxious, idiotic, ham-fisted oaf. I blushed. But I’d started, so I had to finish. ‘Nobody,’ I quoted, ‘not even the rain,’ I continued, ‘has such small hands.’

Avril pulled a face. ‘What are you saying?’

I blushed some more. ‘I don’t know really. It’s a poem.’

‘I’ve got absolutely no idea what that means,’ she said.

‘Now play nice,’ said Carolyn.

Avril laughed. ‘No, I’m not being mean. I genuinely don’t understand. The rain doesn’t have hands. Or am I missing something?’ She looked at Stu, who shrugged unhelpfully. I wondered whether ‘Am I missing something?’ was a joke.

‘I don’t think it was meant to be taken literally,’ I offered.

‘You don’t think he wrote the poem about a deformed girl then?’ asked Avril.

I shook my head, then changed my mind. ‘Actually I think he did,’ I replied. ‘Yeah, I remember now. He definitely did. He wrote it about a girl with really tiny hands.’

Avril laughed again. ‘Marvellous,’ she said. ‘That’s marvellous.’ I drank some more wine, relieved.

At the end of the evening Avril and I were left alone. Stu and Carolyn were tidying up in the kitchen and making coffee.

‘You know the worst thing about my disability?’ Avril asked me, apropos of nothing.

‘Hold on a minute,’ I said. ‘Let me think.’

I thought. The answer that occurred to me was ‘Not getting enough sex?’, but I didn’t voice it, because I didn’t want to offend. So instead I said, ‘Swimming in circles?’, which was just unbelievably, unconscionably, excruciatingly dumb. But she laughed anyway, which was nice of her. ‘No,’ she said. ‘The worst thing about being in this chair, and having these fucked-up limbs…’—she had quite a fruity vocabulary, Avril—‘…is that most men tend not to think of me in terms of someone they might like to fuck.’

Perhaps over-enthusiastically I responded, ‘I know! That’s what I thought, I just didn’t like to say! But I do know exactly what you mean. I don’t know whether you’ve noticed, but I’m—well, I’m quite an ugly bloke.’

‘Oh, I dunno,’ she replied. ‘You’re no Tom Cruise, but you know, you’re not…’ She ran out.

‘That was a valiant effort,’ I said. ‘And it’s appreciated, really it is. But the fact is, I am a frighteningly ugly bloke, and I don’t mean to demean your condition when I say this, but ugliness, to this extent, is actually a kind of disability.’

‘Oh, come on ,’ she said.

‘It is!’ I squeaked.

‘How so?’ she asked.

‘In a way,’ I continued, ‘it’s actually worse. Because at least you have an excuse.’ She raised an eyebrow. Perhaps ‘excuse’ wasn’t the right word. Well, too late now. I moved on. ‘Let me explain. People look at me and their reaction is probably similar to the reaction they have when they look at you. They think, you’re just not in the running. No pun intended. You’re not someone they’d consider—whether for sex, for a job or, nine times out of ten, even for conversation…One of the reasons I work as a copywriter is because I can get a lot of work without having to turn up for an interview. Most of the jobs I get are on the strength of my writing. I don’t have to impress in person.’ I was getting into my stride now, the alcohol filling my mouth with words. ‘I’m pretty much good at everything I do—no arrogance intended—but I’ve never got a job I had to interview in person for. Even if I’ve been perfect for the job. And this is because I’m butt-fuck ugly.’

Avril laughed.

‘Yeah, laugh it up. At least you’ve got rights groups and laws looking out for you. Do you know it’s not even illegal to discriminate against ugly people?’

‘That’s a disgrace,’ she said. ‘Maybe you should start a campaign,’ she said.

‘Maybe I should,’ I said. ‘Maybe I will.’

I didn’t.

‘It’d be a complete waste of time though,’ she countered. ‘You’d still be discriminated against. Trust me. So where did you say you lived?’

The question took me by surprise. I hadn’t said any such thing. ‘Herne Hill,’ I told her. ‘Why?’

‘Just making conversation,’ she said. ‘Do you live alone?’ When I said that I did, she said, ‘Maybe you should invite me round for dinner this weekend then? I promise I won’t discriminate against you.’

‘OK,’ I said. ‘Maybe I will.’

I did.

So. That weekend, in an act of mutual desperation, I lost my virginity. Actually, that sounds terrible. It was an act of mutual attraction as much as anything. And, as I found out later, Avril wasn’t remotely desperate. It was just me. I had waited an awful long time for this moment, and when it finally happened, it was fun, and it was passionate, and although I didn’t realise it at the time, it was actually rather kinky. We got up to all kinds of shenanigans, and I’m not just talking flipper-play. Then, at half past midnight, she asked me to call her a cab.

‘Don’t you want to stay?’ I asked. ‘You’re welcome to stay.’

‘I’d like to,’ she said, ‘but my husband likes me home.’

‘Your…You’re married?’

‘Did I not mention that? I thought you knew.’

I didn’t know.

Avril had been married for six years. She and her husband had an open relationship. He was also, as she put it, ‘a spaz’, and he liked her to go off and have sex with other men. They would relive it together. It turned them both on. He knew she loved him. She knew he loved her.

Avril asked me if she thought it was weird, but before I could answer, she told me, ‘It’s not as weird as able-bodied men getting off on sleeping with disabled women, or blokes who can only get an erection if a woman has a stump or a flipper. Or wheels.’

I ended up seeing Avril once every couple of months or so for around two and a half years. Then I started to want more. I wanted a proper relationship. Not that a long-term affair with a lady in a wheelchair is somehow improper, but rather, I wanted to be in love.

Five years later, that’s still what I want. Now, however—thanks in part to my faithful companion, Pablo—I’m finally determined to do something about it.