My bedroom in the flat is pretty incredible.
The main bedroom, my room, has panoramic views of the sea from the six, double-glazed sash windows. ‘Triple aspect’ I think it was called in the agency description. Triple aspect, three views of the sea, three chances to see the expanse of water while reclining in this king-size bed. I’ve made up the bed, I have unpacked my clothes, stashed my bags and cases at the bottom of the double wardrobes.
Now I’m doing what I do wherever I live: putting up my photos.
One of the first photos I have pressed on to the wall is from 1996. I am with Seth and Dylan. We are in the bar, in the booth where we were sitting when Seth first came over. I’m in between them, they’ve both got their arms around me, and I’m overwhelmed because I’ve never had so much male attention in my life. Under that photo I have scrawled:
With Seth & Dylan, Xmas 1996, Uni Bar. Mistletoe madness!!
Another photo:
With Dylan & Seth, Xmas party 1998, Liverpool (end of term party) Dylan has his arm slung casually over my shoulder, Seth is standing beside us but a little apart, as though not really wanting to be there. I have my hand on his forearm, trying to draw him into the photo.
And another:
With Dylan, July 1999, Graduation Day
Dylan and I have our gowns on, I have a mortarboard, he doesn’t. We’ve got our heads close together and are grinning at the camera. I’m looking pensive because Mum is off camera glaring at me.
With Mum & Dad, July 1999, Gradation Day
I’m in between Mum and Dad, grinning at the camera. Dad has plucked my black mortar board off my head and plonked it on his. He’d originally gone to put it on Mum’s head but the look she fired stopped him. Seth had taken the photo but had only stopped by to say goodbye before he went off with his family.
With Seth, March 2003, Party at Seth’s House (everyone’s invited)
Seth was standing in the kitchen of his house, putting together a buffet for the party he was having. He turned and sort of smiled at the camera, just as I shouted, ‘Say cheese’. I was staying with him at that time. I’d had a row with Mum that escalated into me sofa surfing for a few weeks with various friends and acquaintances. I was always careful not to stay for more than two days – three at the very maximum, so as not to wear out my welcome. The last sofa I washed up on was Seth’s, a grey-black Muji put-me-up job that was easy to fold out and surprisingly comfortable – no metal bars or buttons in the wrong places. Dad had been on the phone almost daily trying to mediate between Mum and me but I wasn’t ready to go back, especially since whenever I tried to leave, Seth kept telling me to stay and he never made a move on me, not once. That night he was having a party and it’d be the first time I would have seen Dylan in nearly a year. I was so excited that I didn’t even mind when my cousin Nancy gate-crashed.
In my hand I hold the final photo from that sequence. There were others, of course, over the years, but those were the most significant, those were the ones that made it to the wall every time, move after move. And in my hand I hold the final one, the one that came after we got together. In it, it’s the start of a new year, January 2004, I am sitting on his sofa, wearing his T-shirt, my hand in my very messy hair, beaming at the man taking the photo because we were finally together. I was finally happy.
With Seth, New Year’s Eve 2003
I sat on the sofa I used to sleep on those weeks back in February and March when I stayed at his house, while Seth sat across the room at the dining table, warily watching me. Usually, he sat next to me, often I put my legs across his lap and he would rub my feet while we talked. But tonight, he’d been carefully avoiding being close to me. We ate dinner at opposite ends of the table and even cooking in his tiny kitchen had him keeping me at a noticeable distance.
I’d made all the right noises about the food, which was as delicious as I said it was, I’d drunk his wine and savoured it. I’d bought the bottle of expensive bubbly that was chilling on the first shelf of his small fridge, waiting for the chimes of Big Ben on telly. We’d talked, laughed, argued good-naturedly about the things we always debated over.
All the while, the clock was ticking down towards the end of the year. We were in the final hours of 2003 and I couldn’t wait to see the back of it. It’d been one disaster after another, one lot of bad news after another, one falling out after another. When Seth had asked me over to his for dinner and to see in the New Year with him I’d jumped at the chance. I was looking forward to a quiet, uneventful end to this year and a respectful calm beginning to the next. It wasn’t turning out like that, though, with Seth’s pensive demeanour, which swirled around the room like invisible but choking smoke.
He’d never been like this in all the years I’d known him. Maybe it was because I hadn’t called him much in the months since I’d left his sofa and had gone back to live with my parents, possibly he was feeling slighted that we’d gone from talking every night for hours to speaking once a fortnight.
‘Have I upset you?’ I asked him.
Seth shook his head, his face was cagey and his body was hyper-vigilant as he replied: ‘No.’
‘I’m sorry I haven’t been in touch more,’ I said. ‘It’s my training – it’s taken over everything. I have to work doubly hard at everything because I’m not at all arty so even though I can see the designs up here,’ I pointed to my head, ‘I can’t get them to look like they should on paper. The finished items are exactly what I saw, but the drawings don’t work. I’ve been a bit consumed. I’m sorry for making you a casualty of that.’
‘You’ve nothing to apologise for.’ He sat back in the wooden-framed chair, stretched his legs out.
‘Have I ruined your chance to go out on New Year by accepting your invitation? Did you want a big night out?’
‘New Year is for people who don’t go out the rest of the year,’ he said.
‘That’s a bit harsh! I love New Year, usually. This year’s just been a bit rubbish and I want to see a quiet end to it and to put it out of its misery, so to speak.’
‘Come on,’ he cajoled, ‘it’s true. If you went out and enjoyed yourself the rest of the year you wouldn’t need to make such a big deal of nights like New Year’s Eve.’
‘Or maybe you simply want to see in the start of another twelve months in style?’
‘Maybe.’
‘Why are you sitting over there, Seth? What’s going on?’
‘I like it here. It’s by the stereo.’
‘Put a tune on then.’
He reached out his long fingers and pressed the square silver button with the green triangle. A whirr, an almost imperceptible click and the room was filled with Public Enemy’s ‘Welcome To The Terrordome’.
I stood up, determined to alter the course of this evening, get him to engage with me on some level. If I wanted to sit under the critical eye of someone who didn’t know how to talk to me, I’d have stayed at home with my mother just as she’d practically ordered me to. I held out my hand to him. ‘Care to dance?’ I asked him. This wasn’t dancing music, but needs must.
‘How long have you known me?’ he replied. ‘You know I don’t dance.’
‘All right, let me see what’s so great about that seat of yours,’ I replied and moved towards him. He visibly tensed as though the idea of me being any closer was a horror he couldn’t run fast enough from.
That stopped me in my tracks. ‘Shall I leave?’ I asked in frustration. I still had a chance to get home to the cream soda and Christmas After Eights before the chimes sounded so I could end the year as it started – with my parents.
‘I don’t want you to leave and there’s really nothing wrong. I’m having a good time.’
You don’t look like it, I thought.
I moved closer and he slowly slid up in his seat until he was fully upright. His eyes didn’t leave my face as I approached him. I accepted then what was ‘wrong’. I’d hoped I was mistaken, that I’d imagined it. The problem, of course, was he wanted to have sex with me. And he probably hated feeling like that when we were ‘just friends’, so he was keeping his distance until these feelings passed, just like a fleeting obsession with a pop band passed and you wondered what on Earth you were thinking. Seth knew, as well as I did, that sex would mean the end of our friendship. We couldn’t go back to being mates if we went to bed together – we’d have to be together for the duration or not see each other again.
‘About this seat,’ I began. I slid carefully on to his lap until I was fully on top of him and we were face-to-face, my legs either side of his. ‘I quite like it too.’ Slowly, I took off my cream jumper, revealing my black bra underneath. ‘Looks like I’ll have to fight you for it.’
His breathing slowed and deepened, every muscle of his face was tense as though he was concentrating on staring into my eyes, trying to ignore how hard he’d become when I sat on him, while not wanting to stare at my breasts and my imperfect body on display to him. Seth suddenly smelt of a deep and startling desire, far more potent than I expected. When I pulled back a fraction, unsettled a little by how strongly he seemed to want this, his hands came up to rest on my back, then smoothed their way up and down my body.
As his fingers caressed my back, I reached for the top button of his jeans and suddenly his hands were on mine, stopping me from opening him up. I looked at him, his hazel-green eyes held mine.
‘If we do this,’ he said, keeping his hands in place, ‘will it mean something to you?’
I knew what he was alluding to: in college and afterwards, I’d slept with quite a few people, more than a few of them were his friends from our wider group. To him, to anyone who wasn’t me and wasn’t privy to my mind and my heart, it must have seemed that none of it meant anything. To him, to anyone else, it must have seemed that I had sex and walked away without so much as a backward glance. ‘Se—’ I began.
‘Cos this would mean everything to me,’ he interrupted.
I paused properly then. Everything? I thought. He wants me that much? Me? I knew he fancied me but this seemed extreme. ‘Everything?’ I asked.
His face, topped with brown hair that he’d had shaved off to a grade one, was open and unwavering as he looked at me. ‘I’ve waited nearly eight years for you, so yes, it’d mean everything.’
Of course it meant something. Sex always meant something to me but with him … Did he honestly think I would have risked rejection, our friendship, for nothing? That in eight years of knowing him I hadn’t at least thought about it? It wasn’t simply Dylan’s objection that had put me off, it was the thought of wrecking what we had and losing him as a friend. I bent my head and carefully placed my lips on the smooth soft bow of his pink mouth. ‘It means something to me,’ I replied before I kissed him.
Seth immediately kissed me back, pressing his lips on to mine, our tongues meeting before slowly intertwining. The kisses grew deeper, more urgent, more desperate. Suddenly, almost painfully, I wanted him. I ached for him between my legs, in the cavity of my chest, along the veins of my body. The longing for him was so fierce my breathing came in short bursts, I found it hard to keep air in my body.
‘There are condoms in the bedroom,’ he murmured between the urgent kisses.
I pulled away, looked him over again. ‘We don’t need condoms,’ I wanted to say. I always wanted to say that in the moments leading up to full sex. The temptation to be reckless, do something dangerous, personify stupidity for those few minutes, was powerful, instinctive. It was like a bright pink neon sign flashing in my head: Have unprotected sex … and end up paying for it for the rest of your life.
Unprotected sex with a virtual stranger was probably the reason I existed at all. I wanted to do it so I could validate my existence, prove that my being here wasn’t the worst thing in the world to happen. Like I said: reckless, dangerous, stupid. But that instinct was almost overwhelming with Seth, I’d never felt it so strongly. I wanted nothing more than to be as unsafe as possible with him because he’d always been my point of safety.
‘Have you changed your mind?’ Seth asked when I didn’t respond to his suggestion we move to the bedroom. ‘Cos that’s fine.’
Seth was here. My here. When I avoided looking backwards because the past was too painful to remember, and when I avoided looking forwards because the future was too terrifying to contemplate, I lived in the here. And here was where Seth was, too. He’d always been in my here. He was in my here and he would be in the future with me, and he would help me navigate the past if I wanted him to. Emotionally, Seth was here, in the same place that I was, at the same time. He was my here, and he was what love was all about. I could suddenly see that this wasn’t about sex, it was about everything I’d ever wanted being on offer with this man. ‘I haven’t changed my mind,’ I told him, the smile on my face even wider than it had been before. He grinned back at me.
Three days later he took that photo of me sitting on his sofa, grinning because I was with him at last. Giddy with excitement and joy and slight disbelief, underneath I wrote: With Seth, finally!! January 2004.
That moment the photo has frozen, preserved in a two-dimensional frame, is so clear, so vivid in my mind, I am almost there again. I can feel beneath me the material of the sofabed I’d slept on for six weeks. I can remember the effervescent excitement whizzing through my veins that bubbled up on my face as that smile. Then there was the touch of him, on my skin, on my lips, in my hair, inside my body. Tingles trilled through me every time another memory from those three days of being together wended through my mind. I am almost there, telling him the next morning that I didn’t really want to go home. Him asking me if I was saying that because it was what he wanted to hear. Me asking him why I’d say that if it wasn’t the truth. Him saying, ‘Because you’ve never shown any interest in me beyond the effect it had on Dylan.’
‘That’s not entirely true, and you know I stopped feeling anything like that for Dylan a while back.’
‘Maybe, but you’d also slept with a lot of my friends.’
‘Does that bother you?’ I replied.
‘Not any more. At the time I never understood why it was them and never me. I liked you so much and I made it so obvious, and you never even looked in my direction.’
‘You never tried it on, that’s why.’
‘All those guys tried it on with you, that’s why?’
‘Yeah, of course. I didn’t sleep with all of them, no matter what they told others. But I was never going to make the first move – not if there was even the slightest chance of being rejected.’ I’d been rejected from the moment I was born, from before I was born, probably. I avoided as much as possible being rejected as an adult – someone had to want me first before I would even think about wanting them. Except for Dylan.
‘But you tried it on with me last night,’ Seth said. ‘I’m not imagining it, you made the first move.’
‘Yes, I felt that much for you, I risked rejection.’
‘So, all this really is about me?’
‘Only you. These have been some of the best hours of my life. I’ve felt so wanted. So adored. You seem to understand me without me having to justify or qualify anything I say, or without having to censor myself … And I can’t believe I just said that aloud. Please don’t ever repeat that. Pretend I never said that.’
‘Too late, Smitty, I heard you loud and clear.’
I need to stop remembering. I need to not do this now. On my bed is a large cardboard box decorated in hand-coloured butterflies that I’ve had since I was a baby and that I keep all my special photos in. The ones I can’t put up because they’re too painful to look at every day but are too precious to throw away because they’re an important part of who I am.
I place the With Seth, finally!! picture in the butterfly box. I properly regard all the other photos tacked to my wall to form the tessellated wallpaper of my life, the collage of the people and times that make up who I am.
I always carry an instant camera to take photos of the people I make jewellery for, to capture on film things I see that inspire me, images I love. Yes, it’s easier – cheaper – to take photos on my phone, but there’s no feeling like holding a photo in your hand. Photographs are like crystallised moments of your history that you can’t simply swipe on from to find the better shot, to seek a version that’s more palatable to your sensibilities. Photos are the ultimate reality call as to how perfect or flawed you can be at any given moment in time.
These photos I put up wherever I live are like the crystallised elements of who I was, how I became who I am. There I am: with Seth. With Mum. With my niece Sienna. With Dad. With my cousin Nancy. With Dylan. With Karina, my former boss. With Primrose, Ayo and Clyde, my housemates in college. With all these people who made me feel real, relevant, as if I belong somewhere.
I continue to stare at the photos and see for the first time how many there are that say the same thing: With Seth. With Seth. With Seth. With Seth. With Seth. He’s everywhere. For nearly twenty years of my life he has been in my photos, been in my reality. For nearly two decades my life has been about this one person.
My fingers pluck the photo of me and Seth and Dylan, Xmas 1996, off the wall. I place it into the butterfly box on my bed. Next I remove With Seth on the last day of exams. Then comes down With Seth after studying all night. Then With Seth, the town hall in Vilnius (Lithuania), is removed … And With Seth before our cancelled engagement party … And Seth the Starfish in new bed in our new flat!!! Then Me with Seth, new bed in new flat. Then Me & Seth & Lottie – finally finished the campervan refurb. There are so many. So many. And I have to take them all down; I have to remove all these reminders and memories.
When I have finished editing him out, my wall of pictures is like Swiss cheese – there are holes everywhere. Now Seth has come down, I have to take her, my cousin Nancy, down, too. More holes, more Swiss cheesing of my life. And if I take her down, I have to take down Sienna, her daughter. And I have to take down Dylan because he is where it all began. And if I take down Dylan, there will be very few photos left. My life will be decimated.
I sit down on my bed, the firm mattress does not sag or give at all under my weight. The wallpaper made of photos has now become a latticework of photos – tenuously linked by my handwriting beneath or on the back of the pictures.
I know what I have to do. It’s absolutely obvious. I have to start again. Totally. People say all the time that something is completely devastated, as though anything can ever be partially devastated. My life has been devastated, I can’t partially reflect that on my wall.
I’m on my feet again, new purpose in my movements: I have to take it all down; I have to devastate everything and start again. That’s what the rest of me has done, so why not my visual history, too?