Almost as soon as I became ill, I got a new boyfriend. He presented me with a comfy armchair and I accepted. He was dull and predicable, a replica of my father. He liked to feed me but he couldn’t cook. He liked to be with me but he had nothing to say. He liked to give but he always took more.
Oh gurgling machine.
I’d have liked a different kind of boyfriend. One who moved, for example. One who touched me and didn’t just stick it in me and suck and drip and turn my arm to noisy lumps. But I couldn’t have a different kind of boyfriend. I probably never would. What would I say? ‘Not Monday, Wednesday, Friday or Sunday, Jim (for example), I’ll be busy then.’
‘We could have dinner after,’ he might suggest, and I’d have to say, ‘But where/what kind? ’Cause there’s all sorts of shit I can’t eat now. Like bananas. If I eat a banana I’ll probably die, but then I’ll probably die anyways.’
‘What about a walk?’
‘I’d love to, Jim, but I’m exhausted, like all the time.’
‘What about we watch a movie on one of the days in between?’
‘Nup. I’ll be too busy drinking gallons of water and feeling like crap, and anyways I’m yellow. Do you really want a yellow girlfriend?’
Bye bye, Jim (for example).
I named my new boyfriend Alfred. He looked like an Alfred. A square white robot with wires, some very red, some less so. Sometimes I imagined him talking to me and it was always with a deep Alfred-like voice (Now, now, Georgina, you know you should stay still.) Alfred who sucked me out and filled me up again and would do so till I died, or till someone else died first, a very special someone, with a limited Gucci-bag-kidney like mine, the type you see in the ‘Get her style’ section of magazines, carried by a B-grade celeb who joined a waiting list and paid thousands to just get that damned bag in order to improve her standing.
It was more boring than visiting one of Dad’s housewives for coffee or reading a full non-fiction book or listening to Dad read his pre-proposal for an outline of a short film. He read it to us when we were ten. Fifteen minutes had never been more excruciating. What was it about again? All I remember is a leaf. It was a not very interesting brown.
I couldn’t even smoke in there. Had to use foul nicotine chewing gum that made me hiccup.
The doctor in Edinburgh gave me a leaflet when he had told me I needed Alfred. On the front of the leaflet, a woman was sitting in a chair like mine smiling happily as if it was the best place in the world to be. ‘You should try this!’ her smile said from the glossy page. ‘You should try it now! Even if it’s very expensive!’ The woman was at least forty. Perhaps for her it was fun, compared with fighting face lines and ordering toilet paper in bulk. But I was sixteen. I had parties to go to, drugs to take, countries to see, love to fall in. I bet the woman on the brochure didn’t even have the disease. I bet when they wrapped the photo shoot she said, ‘Thanks, Maxie!’ whisked the plug from her unpunctured arm and went out shopping while eating a banana. Wish they’d have asked me to pose for it. I’d have done the Vicky and then the middle finger and then the loser sign and then scowled, ‘They are all liars! This is fuckin’ dreadful, I hate it and so will you!’
Some say boredom enhances creativity. Sickly children go on to direct Oscar-winning films and pen Booker-winning books. I didn’t give a fuck about writing books or directing films. I wanted to go down the offie and then to Club Boho. I wanted to shag someone again. Would Alfred really be the love of my life? That’s it, that’s it, right there, Alfred, yes.
There is something very unsexy about depending on someone. If I pulled him out, I’d regret it. So I wouldn’t. I’d semi-decline there, four times a week, four hours a go, and be thankful for Alfred while hating the very sight of him. For most people, I supposed, this is what marriage is like.
I’d try hard not to look at Alfred, scouring the people-filled room instead. There’s:
EVIE. She is fifty-two. Too old for her name. She has short bright red hair, probably a hangover from her art-teaching days. Her granddaughter bought her a portable DVD player and she watches BBC adaptations of Catherine Cookson novels on it. I can hear the dreary dark rain through her earphones.
JIMMY. He’s forty. He’s heard a rumour he’s next to go. He rubs his phone as an expectant mother rubs her bursting nine-month belly.
PEGGY. She’s very old. I don’t know how old. Being here doesn’t seem to worry her. Even though she knows she’s never getting a new one. I expect she sits still at home in the same way. Here, at least, she has SAMUEL to talk to.
He’s around thirty-eight. He gets angry when people get the call inexplicably before him. He shouts at nurses, things like: ‘What is the system? How can this be? Did he use his connections? Did he pay?’
Samuel was talking about RON, forty-nine. He was very rich. Knew people. How come it only took three months for him to be whisked away and inserted with a red lump of life?
And, of course, there’s Kay, sitting beside me, reading her books, taking notes carefully and optimistically, as if one day she will actually finish school, graduate, be a physiotherapist. As if.
*
‘Georgie, how you feeling?’ Like clockwork, my father had arrived. Looking at his eyes evoked the same feelings as looking at Alfred. So I didn’t.
‘Bored,’ I said, staring blankly over his shoulder.
‘I brought your iPod. Put some new tunes on.’ He paused, sat down, fidgeted. ‘Georgie, I’m going away for a few days.’
‘Oh?’ I didn’t believe him. He sometimes made grand gestures at a change of routine (We’ll go to Ireland for the weekend … We never did … never got further than Arran … I need to get out of this job … Didn’t. I’m going to write a horror film, starting next week … Never did … Let’s play badminton Thursdays, as a family … Yeah, yeah).
He paused. ‘I’m going to find your mother.’
I may have flinched a little, but within seconds my default ‘whatever’ had taken control again. Like he would get off his arse and do something meaningful. Like I didn’t know him too well. He’d go home after the visit, put on the telly, drink too much wine and forget all about it.
I had a coping strategy. I wasn’t going to think about any of it any more. I wasn’t going to worry about my blood and how dirty it was and where it came from, and who it came from, any more. After Dad left, I decided to go out and find a boy. His name would not be Alfred.
*
‘What colour would you say I am?’ I asked a boy who went by the name of Eddie. As usual, I felt tired and nauseous, but I was on a mission.
‘I dunno. Normal.’
‘You’re a smooth talker, Eddie.’
‘Pink, then, like very nice roses.’
That was better. Eddie had a job and a flat. I wasn’t interested in either.
My attempt to fall in love with him went something like this (before I list the events, let me just tell you outright that it failed):
Eddie and I drink too much beer in a pub in the Southside then get a taxi into a club in the town, where we drink too much vodka.
Eddie dances badly, but likes the way I dance. He holds me by the hips, hooks one leg through mine and tries to rub me with the top of his quad.
Eddie says we should get out of here.
In the taxi, Eddie puts his hand under my shirt and feels my nipple. I’m so tired. I don’t like having my nipples felt. Tweak tweak pinch, like ow, like why?
We arrive at his flat in Shawlands and, still determined to fall in love, I follow him up a paint-peely close and into the hall, which has three bikes in it.
What do you like about me? I ask him and he says it’s my tits.
In the bedroom, Eddie undresses. He’s very thin and white. I can see at least two ribs. He has either shaved his pubic hair or he’s eleven. His penis looks like a nose.
What first attracted you to me? I ask him. It was your tits, he says, pulling my bra over my head without bothering to unclip it and catching my top lip for a moment along the way.
He pops one of what he likes about me in his mouth. I feel sick. I don’t like how he’s gnawing at me. What am I? A breastfeeding mother? Unlatch, I say, so he does, a little taken aback, before heading towards the lower region, taking my jeans and pants down, kneeling.
Am I actually going to vomit? I don’t like how he’s lapping at me. When you spotted me on the dance floor did you think I was beautiful? I ask, but his mouth is too busy to say more than Mmm hmm.
Eddie is very quick at what he does next. Jack rabbit bang bang bang and he’s so thin I can hardly feel him on top and he sighs and slides off and says Ah! and lights a fag and I say Well? And he says Well what? And I say What was it that attracted you to me? And he says God, haven’t we done enough talking already? And oh I need the bathroom now but it’s already coming out as I say I’m never going to fall in love with you, Eddie.