Louise Kean - Boyfriend in a Dress

But their frustration, or restraint, or choice, or whatever it is, has had a knock-on effect. They managed to get to me at a particularly vulnerable stage in my mental and emotional development, and even though I personally have chosen to pursue a life where sex is allowed, I still feel guilty about doing it the first time, the next time, too many times with too many people, not loving the one I’m with. I can’t help feeling that if only somebody had p-p-picked up these penguins once or twice, I’d have a much healthier sexual mindset now.

And even though I can admit that, with regard to this particular incident, the incident in question, the sex itself isn’t the only thing I have to feel guilty about, and that there are feelings and emotional repercussions that weigh just as heavily on my mind, it is still a big part of my guilt. No need to hide the truth from everybody, including my mother, but most importantly, Charlie. I could have been so much happier. But I can’t change it now. This is me.

You wouldn’t know to look at me that I am so terribly mixed-up – my hair is long, my eyes are brown. I burn first, then tan. I stand five feet seven in bare feet. I look perfectly normal, perfectly average. I don’t know my vital statistics. This is the measure of me, I suppose.

I like ordinary things: red wine, whisky goes down smoothly, Martinis the most. Lychee Martinis are my favourite – swollen with vodka like a juicy alcohol eyeball.

I like to go dancing, any kind. I have a few drinks and do stupid things. Once at a summer barbecue in the garden of one of my friend’s houses, as we all fought the chill and the need to go inside at nine p.m., I tried to do a front roll over a piece of plastic cord that had been hung between a tree branch and some guttering as a makeshift washing line. We had been drinking since three. It was positioned over paving stones nearly two metres off the ground. I got halfway over and the cord snapped. I fell face down onto the paving, and chipped my front tooth. I still have a lump on the back of my head from that one, which I should probably get checked out. The tooth got fixed the next day obviously; you can see that.

I wake up early the next day, another wild warm day when you feel like big things are supposed to happen. The sky is bright blue, even at eight in the morning, dusted with fairy-tale clouds, and the air already smells of cut grass – the community servicers have been out early – and I fight the urge to have ice cream for breakfast.

I wake up on my own. I spend the first twenty minutes breathing in the heat and the sun and the silence. The phone doesn’t ring, I am left alone, the way it should be on a day like this. Everybody is praying for something to happen to their lives, to whisk them away on the sunshine express to a much better time.

Instead of ice cream, I light a cigarette, and hang over my balcony which overlooks the communal gardens that nobody uses, in case they have to sit twenty feet from somebody they don’t know. A breeze creeps up, and everything sways, including me. A spider stuck in the middle of its cobweb rocks to and fro, and seems to enjoy it, and the hairs on my arms search up for the sun. I feel it, where I always feel it, in the small of my back, and the heat closes my eyes, and I dream, standing. I breathe warm air, think I hear music somewhere, not here. It is a small bliss. It is a beautiful day. I know something should happen today. It makes me feel giddy. I should do something. This thought snaps me back to reality, and the moment is gone.

‘I don’t want to go to fucking work,’ I complain to myself, in a staccato voice, accentuating every word, as if somebody, God, maybe, might hear me and say ‘that’s ok, you don’t have to – take your passport and run away!’ It doesn’t happen, nobody says anything to me, and I sigh, facing the inevitable, and move back into my flat to get dressed.

The doorbell buzzes while I am pulling on yesterday’s jeans, having the age-old footwear debate in my head as I look at my strappy sandals sitting prettily next to my starting-to-reek trainers: longer legs, or still being able to walk by lunchtime?

‘Package for you,’ my intercom says.

‘I’m coming down.’

I button up my shirt as I run down the stairs. The delivery boy is waiting by the door – a kid really, maybe five years younger than me, but a world away. He looks like he has fun in the evenings. He likes his job in that it gives him no hassle, but it is the evenings that are his. A young black guy, good-looking and charming. He smiles, I smile back.

‘Do you need me to sign for it?’

‘Nah, it’s fine.’

He walks off as I shut the door, saunters back to his van. He looks like he gets a lot of sex. He looks like he has them queuing up. You can tell he is good in bed, in a young excitable way.

I thought my parcel would be from the book club, but it’s not. It’s the organic meat my father keeps ordering for me and having sent directly to my house. He is worried about contaminants, about what they put into beef these days. If I refuse to become a vegan, like my dad, he is going to keep ordering me ‘clean cow’ as Charlie calls it, which just makes me want to chuck it straight in the bin. Somewhere deep inside of me I know I don’t want to eat meat any more. If Charlie calls our bacon sandwich ‘pig’ I retch. I can’t eat the animal, and hear or say the animal’s name at the same time. Unfortunately I just really like the taste. It’s yet another issue I’m avoiding, I know, but today isn’t a day for confrontations, especially with myself. I just put the meat in the fridge, in the knowledge that it will probably have gone bad, organic or not, by the time I get around to cooking for myself in my own flat. Cooking for one demands minimal effort, and therefore the use of either the toaster or the microwave, and I don’t think I can put steak in either of them. Of course I don’t know for sure.

My neighbours are out now, going to work, going to the shops. I say good morning to a couple of them, the older ones. I smile at the young guy who has moved into the flat on the first floor. He is tall and broad and looks like he does a lot of sport. He is wearing a suit, which puts me off slightly, and swings a gym bag by his side. He will work out today, at the gym at work, with the other City boys, but in his own little world, picturing his muscles expanding with every bench press. I can picture his lungs, clean and clear, the little hairs swaying, not tarred and blackened like the anti-smoking programmes show me mine will be by now. He’ll sweat a lot, maybe get a little red in the face, exactly the look he’d have after sex; not that I know.

Walking is only ever a pleasure for me on a day like today, with the sun out and sensible trainers on my feet. Today is a day to smile. The man on the fruit and veg stall by the station makes a remark about melons, which I choose to ignore, my bubble will not be burst this early at least, if at all on a day like today. If I could just wander around all day, in my comfortable footwear, getting a tan, smiling to myself and not having to talk to anybody I know, it would be heaven. But I have to go to work. And even if I manage to make it through the political minefield that has become making TV programmes for a living, it won’t last. Tonight I am going over to Charlie’s, and I will cook for us both, and sit out on his much bigger balcony – with a glass of wine afterwards. It’s amazing how easy it is to ignore a problem. You just don’t say it, and it doesn’t matter. I’ve done it for years.

I was going to do something. I decided, somewhere in my sleep, to talk to Charlie about us, but on waking, today doesn’t seem to be the right day. I just want to enjoy it. I want the entire day to go without a hitch, without a raised voice or argument. Maybe I’ll leave it and talk to him next week. I’ve been seeing Charlie for nearly six years. I met him in America, but we are both British. It’s not working out. It’s more than a bad patch …