Eimear McBride - The Lesser Bohemians

Alright Eily, that was good work. What are you doing this evening? Rehearsing til eight. Well, make sure you go straight home afterwards, get some dinner, then some rest. The Emotion Memory opens doors it’s important to shut again properly, do you understand? I do.

But there are two shades of light. First, the strip above my head. Second, the flashing Tell Tell. All these years of hiding in case she’d be upset when it’s only what happened to you. Good. Good decision.

Wait until eight.

Phone in the canteen, now it’s quiet. Go dial the O O Three Five Three Sevenone Eightfivefoureightone.

Hi Mammy. Yes. Yes I’m good. How are you? That’s great but listen, I want to tell you something about, remember at Easter? Who we met in the street? Yeah. Him. Look, the reason I was offish was No I didn’t notice that. Really? You seemed fine with him I Really? I always thought you two got along. You were always so friendly when he dropped me off or whenever we went over to the farm. Okay yes I sort of remember that, you always keeping me on your knee when he was around. No, sure I was only five or six, how could I know it was to protect yourself? Really? Every time? Then that was a good idea alright no I suppose that makes sense He’d never try it on in front of a child.

*

Step back. Step back from the phone and fall into somewhere else. No. Stick pences in. Try. Dial again. Wait. The So and So hotel and can I have this room and please and thanks. Ring and ring. Please pick up. Ring and ring. Please be there. Ring and ring. Ring and ring. Ring and ring. No answer. Ring and Ring. Ring off

Hey, you alright? Looking a bit peaky. I’m fine I just Coming down to this party? I did an Emotion Memory earlier, I’m supposed to go home. Nah, fuck that, no one ever does, besides our phone’s cut off so you won’t be able to speak to loverboy anyway, come on, come on! We’ll have a laugh! And look take that. I couldn’t. You could, a little bit of something fast’ll cheer you right up, you’ll see. So rub my mascara and take the wrap. Thanks. No worries, go powder your nose and I’ll see you down there, okay?

Look at her look at her look at you. What a fucking mess. All these years and little did you know, you were always by yourself. Snuff it then in the changing room. Tiptoe back out through Room One. Down the road, then giddy-up. Rubbed to the gums and, barely seconds along, I am running crystal clear.

I’ll get them in, I say, heading up the stairs. Where music bangs full. Moving the bodies. Greetings Earthlings. Hang over the bar. Vodka. Double. Please. Going for it tonight? And I give the barman my best granule beam. Knock it back, hardly rasping. Another? Yes please. Another? Flatmate waving at me, dancing like a dick. So I get him a pint just as the blood lifts. And the eyes laugh. See you later. I hope so, he says. Then make through the crowd with today’s poison hue getting killed off. Pulled there, says the flatmate as I get beside. Look back to a smile from. Maybe I might have. But pushing with music. Bodies going around. Skirt life and flirt life. We are common enough now. Then steal forward to knowing what I’ve wondered in the past. She knew. Not exactly. But. She knew what he was like and gave you to him and slip. Vodka quick licking in the midst of going up. Footing almost to the top. Waiting to. Waiting. To. And. Hear. The voice going Once a shagger. What? Loose every string. Go out in the smoke. Owl-eyed in this. In the junkyards and fuckyards of pick over prey. For some. For him, not me. Yet. Rest in their many arms. Twist my skin. Being young here because I am. Because all these days I have felt enough. And all this living hurts me so much. Get in behind my eyes. Colours of dark. In out of reason. Pull forward til I. Crave for him but the switch switches until, stretched and weepy, I see through my skin to the turquoise best of. A body overcome. I understand what he did. Magnificent, somehow. To give in. Wreck yourself so completely. The beauty of it. I can see past. Put my head in my noose. I want to kill myself or I want to go home. Enough of that! Flatmate steers gentswardly. Little Noseful. So, in my leeway, grant myself this. Then fall speckle-beaked down in through the night. My dominion. Reaching up through myself. Alight in this darkness. The lure of distress. I see it. I see. Him, standing somewhere with a stranger on her knees and. What part left person and what machine? I understand better now, amid this journey into what I am. Just the body of a woman looked at by the body of a man. And I catch the eyes. And I go over there. He’d sleep with me. This much I’ve learned. Forget that cunt, whispers the flatmate Come clubbing with us instead. But I stub out my cigarette and open myself to all that.

Alright Bright Eyes? Yeah, finished your shift at the bar? Sure. Fox-brown eyes nip up me, and down. Join me, one on the house? Alright then. T-shirt riding as he reaches across. A line of hair to his navel that I touch. Not shy then? Not any more. So we play at talking about how he talks. His American accent. How long he’s been here. Where he’s going tomorrow. Amsterdam. To do? Whatever, everything I can. I understand. And that I could fuck him. If I wanted. I might. For who’s to say what really happened with that girl that night? And today’s lesson is all pasts are adrift. So freckly and Irish, he says, dotting my dots, right the way down to where I could still stop. Anyway, I say I should go. No, you should definitely stay. Why’s that? Because, I think, he says It’s shagging time now, don’t you?

Somewhere above we walk in the black. Below the pub, shutting itself. All the sirens of north London going off this Friday night. Up here they weep in through the brick. Good to know life still goes on without me in it. And so it is, in the dark I get kissed. For that is the point. Until the mouth aches. Until the eyes roll back in my head and I won’t know it’s not him or care who it is. There is no preferring. Shoes off. Falling over his bags. Pulling up my. Pulling down my. Tattoo I can’t read and touch him and know how. Get on the bed. In by the nets and. Knickers right off and. Suffer his fingers. Breasts get what they get. All this familiar, already breeding contempt. Turn the eye elsewhere to make the body work right. Yet he pins me and in any man I wanted that. Is he thinking of me? Not of me doing this. Keep back from that. Make clean breaks. She knows how, at least. But the thought of him still gets me up towards off. You really are disgusting but you’ve come this far so Go on through. Find the shape of the fuck. Put on the past if you have to. Who cares what happens? He can dig in me all he wants. Proper and large. Until he is not. Then kneeling up Give me your mouth. Which I don’t but then why not? It’s the same all of it, when not with him. Why should I not be that again? Why did you even pretend to survive? Become yourself and hate yourself in the act. Gives what he wants for as long as he asks. When even that is not enough, watch him, above you, do it himself. Swearing things that make you laugh. Making ridiculous faces but strange to know though if this was him what would I not do to help, to bring him further on? This man I have no interest in. There’ll be no investigating the pleasure of this one. Leave him to investigate it himself — which he does to between my breasts. Then comes, like someone spat. Rubbing it in — he likes that. Smears my face. Fuck’s sake, get off. You love it, he says. Wipe my face on his blanket and know this cannot ever not be. Roll over. Watch his dirty feet. Hear the sound of piss and That was pretty good, wasn’t it? I close my eyes. I wish I was home but I’m so wrecked. Then. From nowhere. Crash down or. Pass out. You might die, if you’re lucky. Reviscerate, if you’re not. Stay as far as you can though from waking up. It is all you have left of free.