All These Hours
While Ava naps, I sit with a pot of tea, glaring at the canvas. I’ve taken down the simple horizon I painted last week, and placed it paint-side to the wall. The new canvas stares back at me, empty. Paints crack in their tubs, creating deep crevices of darkening colour.
Painting is impossible today. My brain is stuck in a loop, replaying memories. Obsessed, deranged, I pretend to look for something profound, or some clue to unravel or explain away my mistakes, inadequacies and faults.
What I’m really doing is asking myself for permission.
Act 1
Scene: Dilapidated student house – night, 16 years ago
Jennifer: 19 years old, too tall, and in her try-hard punk phase.
Hair: short, spiky, dyed blue-black.
Eyes: rimmed with black eyeliner which is swept up in a thick arc at the outer corner in an attempt to look like Siouxsie Sioux from the Banshees.
All of it’s war paint, a protective layer, and is nothing like the ‘come hither’ makeup of other girls her age. Jennifer sees the world with brutal clarity: tough, unfathomable, cruel, indecent. She hides behind a constructed image and skulks away. She wants someone to follow her, and ask her why she’s hiding.
No one ever does.
The man Jennifer is in love with, Alexander, is dating one of those Come Hither girls: Kerry.
Alexander: short, Czech, vodka-drinking alpha-male. Or so he appears. Jennifer has known him since they were both six years old, so she can recognise his war paint, just as he can see hers.
It’s very inconvenient for Jennifer to be in love with Alexander, after all he’s dating Kerry.
Kerry: petite private school girl with perfect skin, perfect diction and unsnagged tights.
Jennifer, Alexander and Come Hither Kerry are at a party. Kerry sits on Alexander’s lap and doesn’t look too big for him. He loops her long, sleek hair around his finger like it’s precious silk. He whispers in her ear and makes her smile.
Colette sees what’s going on; she’s followed Jennifer’s gaze, and she figured it out ages ago, anyway.
Colette: stirrer, manipulative as hell, although she’d never admit it, and Jennifer’s best friend.
Colette bundles the group together: Jennifer, Alexander, Kerry, Mike and Simon, and takes them outside for a cone. She might have Jennifer’s interests at heart, but her methods are cruel and unusual.
Sitting in the banana lounges in the backyard of some distant friend’s house, overlooking the dried out swimming pool, and passing around a cone, Colette starts up The Game.
‘Let’s play The Game! Jen and Alex Are Perfect For Each Other Except… We haven’t done that in ages!’
‘Nooo!’ Jennifer says, weary and embarrassed.
Lying back in a self-assured, casual pose and with Colette on his lap, Mike says, ‘Yes! I’ll start. Jen and Alexander are perfect for each other except...he has to stand on a crate to kiss her!’
Mike: Colette’s boyfriend, borderline sociopath, gigolo.
Everyone except Alexander, Kerry and Jennifer laughs.
‘Don’t you mean a ladder!’
That is either seriously amusing, or the weed is really good. Tears begin to run down their faces. Kerry is subdued and sullen. Who can blame her? Colette and the others are being arseholes. Jennifer almost feels sorry for Kerry.
‘Jen and Alex would be perfect for each other except they would argue about everything…all the time!’ says Simon.
Simon: normally very nervous and sweet but tonight rendered childish by overindulgence.
‘This game never gets tired,’ says Alexander. He stands, takes Kerry’s hand and walks back inside.
And that is the end of that.
The rest of them drift back inside where the music is loud enough to cause brain contusions and the atmosphere is accented by little corners of smoke. Glasses and bottles are on every surface like a modern art depiction of excessive disarray. Bodies are close, limbs entangled, intimacies on display everywhere. Colette and Mike have found a not-quite-dark corner to be indiscreet in. Alexander and Kerry are nowhere to be seen and Simon is mixing complicated drinks in the kitchen, chatting to a handsome stranger.
Above the music, a door slams and Kerry emerges, teary and puffy but somehow still sophisticated and beautiful. She runs for the front door and in a screech of expensive tyres, she’s gone.
Jennifer waits for Alexander to race out after her, but he doesn’t. She wanders aimlessly around the unfamiliar house, expecting to find him tearful and bereft and despite it all, wanting to console him. But he’s nowhere.
She thinks, I’m coming down and everything looks stupid and ugly and pointless. She heads for the backyard to be morbid in private. All that remains in the empty pool are sharp salt stalagmites growing on the little blue tiles, pointing up at the stars. An orb weaver spins a web in the tangled garden. From nowhere a pair of arms fold around her waist, a flop of silky fringe tickles the back of her neck, and Alexander sighs into her ear, ‘JenJen, will we ever get it together?’
And in those few words, with Alexander’s arms around her and his body pressing into hers, what she hears is: I choose you. I choose you.
Jennifer knows she is fooling herself. He is in pain and confused. Kerry has probably told him she’s had enough of his stupid friends and their idea of fun.
But. Finally, finally, someone has followed her and it’s too much to ignore.
She turns to him and although she doesn’t want to, she picks a fight. It’s the only way she knows how to talk to Alexander.
‘Something tells me you and Kerry have already “got it together”, more times than I care to think about. Anyway, it’s not the getting together that’s the problem, it’s the staying together.’
In the process of her little speech she’s extracted herself from his arms, managed to make herself angry at him, and ruined a perfectly perfect moment that could have turned into a romantic moment.
‘Are you deliberately misunderstanding me? Since when is “get it together” a euphemism for sex? And why are we even talking about sex? And Kerry? I was talking about you and me.’
‘Clearly not a topic at all related to sex.’
‘Clearly.’
What is that she detects in his voice? Bitterness? Distaste? Sadness? Regret? She can’t tell.
‘So did Kerry finally get sick of us all? I wouldn’t blame her if she did.’
‘It’s not about “us”, it’s about her and me. It’s just not working.’
‘You might think it’s not about “us”, but it is. We are vultures. Carnivorous. Ruthless. Kerry was the weakest link. Only the strongest survive and earn our friendship.’
‘You might be right about that,’ he sighs.
‘Oh, look at that, something we can agree on,’ Jennifer says sourly.
‘JenJen, why do we do this?’
‘Do what?’
‘Pick fights with each other.’
‘You’re fun to fight with. You bite back.’
Alexander takes a step towards her, his hands held up.
‘What about a peace offering? I don’t want to fight with you tonight.’
Jennifer feels like snarling, I’m not a replacement! You can’t come to me for comfort when your girlfriend walks out on you.
Instead, she says, ‘Peace offering? Exactly what is on the table?’
‘Sometimes I want us to be...different...kinder. I care about you, JenJen. Can’t we have both? Can’t we challenge each other and...I don’t know...love each other too?’
Jennifer wants to kiss him right now, there is nothing in the world that matters more. Not a damn thing. This is the grand moment she’s been waiting for. I’m going to do it, she thinks. She takes a step and hears a sharp gasp from behind Alexander.
Kerry.
Alexander turns to her and drops his arms. Jennifer flees making a much noisier and less stylish exit than Kerry did, in her backfiring Corona.
The sun has set and it’s dark in my studio. Hours have passed and I’m still staring at the canvas, only now it’s not blank. I’ve painted Alexander’s face. I stand up and put my fingers to the wet paint on his lips, drag them down and smear his chin, which I’ve painted with exaggerated lines that make his intractability look more like my own. I put my paint-wet fingertips to my lips and send him a kiss.