Andres Neuman - Talking to Ourselves

Are there places where they name women’s orgasms? Where they say I’m drowning, I’m dissolving, I’m unravelling, I’m irradiating?

I asked Ezequiel which verb he liked best. He replied: That depends, Professor. When I’m on top, venirme . When I’m underneath, llegar . If I pick you up, acabar . From behind, correrme . When you blow me, terminar . When I’m outside you, irme . It depends.

Unable to sleep. At seven o’clock I gave up and got out of bed to see the sunrise. It felt like it rose too quickly. Everything happens more quickly than it ought to in summer.

I went out. It was hot. I waited for the shops to open. Standing in front of doors. Like an addict. I bought a lot of food for the day after tomorrow. Chicken, turkey, veal, low fat cheese (so as to feel less guilty), fruit yogurt (Lito hates the plain, sugar-free ones I eat), Coke (caffeine-free, of course, otherwise there is no getting the little angel to bed), good red wine, oranges, grapefruit, legumes for Mario (he needs lots of iron), vegetables for me, sweets for everyone. Then I found a see-through bra and knickers with suspenders. I’ll wear that tonight.

I call and call, but they don’t answer. Every time this happens, I imagine Mario knows everything and is silently punishing me. Last night I dreamt he found Ezequiel hitchhiking on the motorway. He gave him a lift in the truck. And the two of them went off and left me on my own.

Lito doesn’t reply to my messages. Mario doesn’t call, and neither does Ezequiel. I have taken two aspirins and an antidepressant. And have drunk two cups of strong coffee. I find it impossible to read. I feel horny. I think a lot about jumping out of the window. I want my husband and my son to come home now and not to come home. I want this house to return to normal and I will never be normal again. I don’t want to see Ezequiel any more. I want to call Ezequiel and tell him to fuck me hard. I want him to hurt me. I want him to love me. I don’t care what Ezequiel does. I would never fall in love with him. I hope he falls in love with me. I want to throw myself out of the window. I want to cause pain. Some of these things are true.

Work, work. That’s all I know how to do. You have to be very sad to hate holidays. You are so responsible, people tell me. They can go to hell. I look for things to be responsible for because I can’t be responsible for myself. Sometimes I think I don’t deserve to be a mother. Sometimes I think I had a child in order to stop myself from jumping out of the window. Sometimes I think I should have been the one who got ill. Sometimes I think about being fucked hard. Women who know what they want never want anything interesting.

Hallelujah, they called, hallelujah. They are fine. Everything is fine. I am weeping. Lito is eating salads. Mario sounds normal. Nothing is awry. They are arriving tomorrow. So soon. Everything will go back to how it was. I’m going to leave the house spotless. I’m going to prepare a wonderful dinner for them. I’m going to read for a while. I’m going to text Ezequiel.

Message answered. Everything is as it should be. His place at ten. I like 10. It’s a nice number. It looks like a whip taking aim at a backside. It’s our last night. The night. The world is wonderful, terrible.

… a question only kids ask themselves for real, and then we sick people ask it again: is it okay to lie? is it okay to be lied to? a healthy grown-up won’t even give it a thought, the answer seems obvious, right? we learn to tell lies the same way we learn to talk, they teach us how to talk and then how to be quiet, I don’t know, like when you play football, for example, first you kick the ball and then, unless you’re stupid, you learn to not kick it, to move around tricking the other players, kids lie too, of course, I lied all the time when I was a kid, but, what I’m saying is, until you get to a certain age, you think it’s wrong, that is the difference, I don’t think we grown-ups are any worse, you know? every kid contains the beginnings of a possible son of a bitch, this much I know, it’s just that kids, and perhaps we adults are to blame for this, start by dividing the world into good and evil, truth and lies, the only time it’s okay for them to lie is when they’re playing, then it’s allowed, so kids become grown-ups when they play, sort of the opposite of us parents, we play so we can be kids again, well, and then you grow up, and you lie and are lied to, and it isn’t wrong, until one day, when you’re sick, you begin to worry again about lies, you worry about them every time you talk to the doctors, your wife, your family, it’s not a moral question, it’s, I don’t know, something physical, deep down you’re scared stiff of the truth, but the idea of dying with a lie scares you even more, lies help us to carry on living, don’t they? and when you know you aren’t going to carry on, you feel they’re no use anymore, do you know what I mean?

Why am I talking about this? ah, the weather thing, these painkillers make me half dopey, when you started doing the weather thing it made me laugh, you should have seen yourself, you were staring hard at the road, doing something with your finger on the windscreen, pulling faces, and soon after you told me the sky had changed, to begin with I played along because I thought it was a game, then, I’m not sure when, I started to realize you were serious, and besides you were so thrilled, from then on, I tell you, son, I spent the whole journey asking myself, do I tell him or not? bah, best not, I thought, he’ll find out for himself, but I don’t know if you’d convinced yourself, or if it was a coincidence, or what, because you kept saying you’d guessed right, as a game I found it amusing, but as an expectation it was sad, if when you finally saw that the weather did as it pleased, that neither you nor I nor Pedro could do anything to change it, wouldn’t you feel, I don’t know, terribly small? anyhow, maybe it’s foolish and by now you don’t even remember, but I didn’t want to fall asleep today without telling you this.

From here, as soon as I open my eyes, I see the sky, as if I were in a plane, a very slow-moving plane, and you know what it looks like? the dawn, I mean? an insult, that’s what it looks like to me, when I was young I was a night owl, I liked doing things while everyone was asleep, I felt untouchable, as you get older you become a lark, you start to worry about being late for things, night owls think they’re stealing a march on everything, but the moment they wake up they’re already running late, since I got sick I don’t like the morning so much, it’s, I don’t know, too loaded with expectations, and the silence of the night scares me, I prefer the afternoon now, it’s less demanding, so I’m watching the sun go down, and I start to wonder, you see, where, where the hell does beauty come from? not from things, that’s for sure, I look at the tea tray, for instance, a grey plastic tray, slightly battered, with that curved edge things that are made to be stacked have, covered in scratches from cutlery, the knife marks, one next to the other, remind me of an electrocardiogram, the clusters of dots from the forks, close up, are like dice pips, and suddenly this tray turns into a thi — hold on, someone’s knocking on the door.