Romance of the Hands

They no longer remember how they found each other. In this dark, pulsing universe there are no beginnings, just long, slow moments that roll them over like waves, an endless ebb and flow that keeps them constantly in motion. Their fingers touch and twist, curl and cling, seeking out every curve and crevice of each other, teasing out each sigh and surge and smile. Every ache and arch and press of desire is played out in miniature: she draws close only to pull away, playing lightly at the end of his fingertips’ reach; he hunts her down and she allows herself to be enfolded, enveloped, pulled out from her hiding places into the warmth of his palms. He holds her to his chest, heart faltering, murmuring a blessing as his lips brush her knuckles, the warmth of his breath raising the hairs on her skin. Then back to the dance: fingers entwined, tangled into an embrace that twists and shifts with the lights on the ceiling, pushing, clenching, stretching up and out and round until there is nothing but the light and the magnetic tug of skin on skin.

“Who are you?” he murmurs, surfacing for a moment to search for some coherence of vision, eyes snapping open, seeking her face.

She places her hand on his forehead in reply, folding eyelids down gently, drawing the curtain on their newborn intimacy.

With eyes closed, there is only this: the lights, the bar, the dancers disappear and they are left alone, absolved of all need for narratives or explanations, free to explore every crook and corner of each other. Her soul flutters on her fingertips: she presses it to his lips, lets him take her into his mouth, one finger at a time, his teeth closing round her like rings, cages, as she ventures in and then pulls away. He lays his hand like a web across her face, a blind man tracing temples, forehead, lips: Behold, thou art fair, my love; behold, thou art fair. She breathes him in, his sweat, his scent, holding it in her lungs before pouring it out, feeling the chill on her skin as he breathes it back again. They are twined together now, arms wound round like vines grown into each other, roots taken hold. Their sweat falls and shimmers in her mind’s eye like droplets of dew on some secret garden. Her teeth tug at his lips like the flesh of some fruit that will not yield its sweetness all at once, but mixes in something bitter, the sharp salt tang of blood on her tongue.

As dawn comes they make their way past stumbling dancers up onto the rooftop, where they lie on their backs, arms spread wide to the sun. Sunlight glows red through still-closed eyelids. The voices of others drift like birds high above, swooping down from time to time to be swatted away, threadbare iconoclasts intruding on their sanctuary. No words need be spoken: their fingers made their vows, traced the paths of desire like lovers in the dark, learning every inch of each other without making a sound. Now in the light they need only a touch to discover themselves to each other, the feel of each other’s skin grown so familiar in each lingering moment of this long night. Their feet find each other, toes clasping, soles pressed together as if in prayer, while above them green fronds stretch out across the sky, and when at last they find themselves alone, he draws her close, pulling her into his arms to face the morning hand in hand.

Black Jaguar

“Take a look at this”.

The guy waved me over. I’d been steadily sort of avoiding him for the whole trip, unsure whether or not he was one of those people I was supposed to know but had been too drunk to remember. Beer can in hand though: always a good sign. I was still half-cut from the night before. Been inflicting myself in the nicest way possible on the woman downstairs and her teenage daughter, but it was getting increasingly difficult to keep up appearances what with all those night me and their husband/father figure spent in girly bars in Patong.

A fellow drunk was more my scene. I wandered over to his side of the deck and stood next to him on the rail, watching the Singapore coast guard’s less-than-stellar attempt to come alongside.

“I could do a better job than that,” I opined, “And given current blood-alcohol levels that’s really not saying a lot”.

“Hell, so could I,” an American drawl came back, “And I’ve never driven a boat in my life”.

That answers that one then, I thought. At least I’m not supposed to remember you from last night.

We exchanged a bit of narrative: my sail to the equator, his golfing holiday; my life on the high seas, his days in the office. I began to feel the need to derail the conversation.

“I woke up in bed with someone twice my age this morning,” I commented.

“There’s hope for us all,” he said, or something to that effect.

We got onto tattoos, somewhat inevitably: how many have you got, the old get-your-tatts-out game. I pulled my shirt up a bit to show my backpiece, and he stuck his cold beer can against my back, hoping for the girly squeal that I wasn’t going to give him.

You got the wrong girl for that, mate, I thought. The guy I woke up with just put me to bed. You’re not getting any closer. One step forward, two steps back. One step forward, two steps back.

I’ve done this dance before.

But I gave him two kisses on the cheek, European style, in the spirit of drunken generosity. He tried for the lips, but I backed off, laughing.

There’s hope for you all, sure, but not all from me.

He shrugged: fair’s fair. It was worth a try.

Yeah, fair’s fair. It’s always worth a try.

The Singapore skyline came creeping up, and I started plotting the next phase of my escape: Indonesia to Phuket with no shoes and only a handful of soggy banknotes someone stuffed in my pocket shortly before I got thrown in the pool.

“I’ll give you a lift to the airport,” my new ally offered as we pulled into the ferry terminal.

“Alright,” I said, “See you on the other side of immigration, assuming they let me through”.

I played a little zigzag game with the barriers, smiling at the guards as they stared at my bare feet and feeling the universe still running with me: thank Dionysus, there was still enough alcohol in my veins to keep the world on my side.

On the other side of the gates my friend was nowhere to be seen: I was halfway to the taxi rank before he caught up with me.

“My car’s in the parking lot,” he said, “Follow me”.

“I’m sure my parents told me something about getting into cars with strange men,” I said as I followed.

“I’m not strange,” he replied. Pause. “Yeah, ok. You win that one”.

I just smiled. “Join the club”.

“You forgot your shoes,” he commented, pointing to my feet.

“Ah, they found a new home somewhere near the equator,” I replied, “They’re now an Indonesian fisherman’s pride and joy”.

We crossed the car park, me picking my way gingerly over sharp stones and wondering why they don’t make pavements smoother.

“That’s my car over there,” he said, pointing to a black jaguar sat shiny and imposing across the way.

I thought he was joking.

He pulled out the keys.

I slipped into the passenger seat, grinning. Yep, the universe was definitely still on my side.

There was barely a whisper as the engine fired up, and soon we were shooting through the streets of Singapore, en route to the airport and the next phase of my plan.

“Wow, silent running,” I commented as he put his foot down on the accelerator.

“Company car,” he replied, “I wouldn’t usually be so nice, but the airport’s pretty close. See?”

He pointed to a plane flying low overhead.

“I wonder if they sell beer at the terminal,” he mused.

I sat in silence for a while, watching the streets of Singapore roll by.

“Nice car,” I observed.

“Isn’t it?” he replied. “Watch this”.

He took his hands off the wheel and the car kept a perfect line, hugging the road, driving itself. Sitting on the cream leather seat I reflected on how easily one could be seduced from the path of eco-righteousness. But not this girl. Not today.

“Famous last words, isn’t it?” I said, “Look mom, no hands!”

“You may have a point there,” he replied, smiling and resting his hands back on the wheel.

The airport spun around in minutes and it was time to say some sort of goodbye.

“Do you have a business card or something?” I asked him.

He looked but couldn’t find one.

“Pen and paper?” I tried.

Again, no.

I pulled a blunt pencil out of my bag and tried sharpening it with my army knife, to little avail.

“Facebook?” I asked finally, figuring karma was already stacked against me ever seeing this guy again.

“Sure,” he said. I told him my name, suspecting he wouldn’t remember by the time he sobered up.

Our goodbyes said, I shook his hand and then opened the door, promising him a page or two in the story of my life, should I decide to write it.

Fair’s fair, after all.

Paper Lanterns

Against the dark
September evening
Paper lanterns
Made their own constellations,
Bearing up
Their weight of wishes
Wrapped up warm
And glowing still

Above our heads:
Wind-snatched and soaring,
Their magic spell
Cast bright and lonely.
From the dark
I watched you watching,
Held my breath
And wishes in.

No arms enclose
My morning's shivers,
Wading through
The fallen lanterns,
And lord I wish
I'd had the courage
To steal a kiss
Under the moon.

Wednesday's Child

She doesn't want narrative today. Slices of pure lyricism shortcut from brain to skin without waiting for the words to form, a free association of mind and body that will leave scars she won't want to explain.

You're supposed to have grown out of this girl, remember? You're supposed to be bigger than both of us now.

Feelings drift like blind men's fingers, seeking out every crack and wrinkle in the day, raw skin scraping on concrete and sand, bones aching with years-worth of cold. Sleeping on rocks and under bridges, it became second nature to make herself scarce whenever she was not welcome. She became adept at moving on.

But today is not one of those second nature days. Today she shuffles, stumbles on her own belatedness, the things she passed up, the things that pass her by. Knows that she still doesn't know anything. Wonders if wisdom is worth the price.

Just keep walking. Tears can form and spill and dry. No one will notice. Just keep your head down.

Or wipe it all clean. Lie down on the tracks. Fall asleep in the snow. Let your foot slip at the top of the ravine. Lean a little further over, spread out your arms, just let it all go.

What did I say to you last time, girl? Your life shouldn't hang on the colour of the sky.

And she knows that these little things shouldn't be so urgent, but sometimes a smile - or no smile, or silence - is all the difference it takes for the sun to come out in her head. And she knows that it was never going to be easy, but sometimes she just wants to let it all slide...

And I know I'll have to go find her again, sitting out on another parkbench in the cold, singing to herself as the light fades away and the bottle goes from half full to almost empty, and the blood dries, and the people skirt round her thinking she's crazy.

It will be me that holds her. Me that holds her in, holds up the mirror, makes her smile to see herself after all these years still running away from home. And me that takes her back to yet another bed instead of that parkbench, makes sure she brushes her teeth and changes out of her clothes, sets her alarm for another morning. Me that tucks her in at night, with the extra blanket she wouldn't fetch for herself, and sings her back to sleep at 1 a.m. after the ghost-trains wake her up with their howling.

And me at last who makes a tale of it all, when she doesn't want words and the songs dry up inside her, when she feels so hollow she could just blow away.

I am the guardian of my solitude. Tomorrow we’ll have a long way to go.

The rest is silence. For today.

Doll's House

It was like they were made for each other. From the moment he first entered the room they knew. Him: a young fitness coach with winning smile and a body tanned and toned to perfection. Her: an alluring older woman with Bambi blue eyes and a baby face to match. Ex-gymnast too – more flexible than girls half her age, with kids all grown up and finding their own wicked ways. They both knew it would happen sooner or later: it was practically inevitable as soon as their eyes met. Neither of them could have stopped it. It was a match made in some kind of heaven: Paul and...

“How do you spell Alaga anyway?”

The author’s cover as impartial third person narrator was blown by her sister’s voice coming up through the attic door. She was drafting a marriage certificate for the couple, putting the license back into licentiousness one might say. Trust her to choose just that moment for a meta-textual interjection.

Her Sunday school teacher would be proud. She'd been worrying a bit recently about what the dolls had been getting up to, in a flurry of cusp-of-pubescent anxiety carefully inculcated via slices of Anglican-hetero-marital propaganda consumed before bedtime with a glass of water. It was a good thing she hadn't worked out what Alaga's kids were up to yet: the author had a sneaking suspicion that Flower Fairies and Biker Mice wasn't exactly what the good Lord had intended, even if her younger brother hadn't yet objected to the partnerships (he wasn't too keen on Poppy eloping with Captain Planet, but that was another story).

She didn’t, of course, choose that moment. It turned out that both the author and her sister were in fact just literary constructs devised by a post-modernist with an ingrown vendetta against naturalism, deconstructing herself in a Cambridge lecture hall in the 'writer'’s imagination, itself a composite of the linguistic and cultural capital bequeathed to her by said Cambridge education, which was of course merely an escape from an Essexist Christian upbringing full of hardcore doll-on-doll action that the authors of Help! I’m Growing Up definitely wouldn’t have approved of.

The author shrugged, caught red-handed, and closed the invisible fourth wall, leaving the dolls locked in pre-coital-sans-genital limbo. Their virtue was maintained by the manufacturer’s instructions. Hers would take a little more work.

Ah well. Back to crucifying Tiny Tears.

Kinda Goodbye

It's a more-or-less morning:
The sun does its best to shine,
And maybe means no, but
It's a kinder goodbye.

Curled up on a bench
Guarding each other's solitude
You breathed me your blessing
And set me to fly.

Biting lips you were kissing
And feeling so old today,
The girl on the platform
Who's not going to cry,

Watch the city slip past me
For maybe the last time,
My heart dislocating
As I stare at the sky.

Blue sky, cold sky,
Tell me I looked good last night
Walking away from you
Following my yellow line.

Clouds are lifting:
Felt your death under your skin
Walking back into the fog, and
Telling me to shine.

I WAS HERE
These days were not a wink in time.
And maybe I can't wake you, but
The goddess is still on my side.

Hard-wired for the yellow
And no longer afraid of grey,
Curl up in dreams you won't remember
And sleep 'til sun stirs you again.

Portrait of the artist as a young cat

I first ran into her in a bar in Bangkok. She was perched on a bar stool, bottle of Leo in one paw, lazily chatting up the owner's girlfriend (a beautiful Siamese from Taiwan who made lounging across the counter look like a fine art). She didn't even look up when I sat down next to her: it was up to me to break the ice. The usual round of travellers' introductions ensued: name (quickly forgotten), country of origin, itinerary, manifesto. She pinned me down fast to some cold British town; I couldn't place her accent, her clipped and almost-flawless globish. She told me she'd been born there, in a disused bathroom on the third floor. Spent her early kittenhood doing the rounds, traipsing up and down stairs to the tune of her mother's tyrannical yowl. Keeping an eye, her mother used to say, though she never said what for. Her, she mostly just made eyes at the backpackers for whatever treats she could get out of them. She had a taste for sugar, and catnip when she could get it. And those eyes, Jesus, no wonder she got by ok: when she switched them on and turned them on you there was no way you could make a clean getaway. Electric blue. Yeah, she knew how to get by.

We spent the night knocking back bottles, talking poetry, music, drugs. That place was her cultural capital: she moved through it, fluid in her narrative element, throwing me titbits of stories along the way. The third floor, that was where she came most solidly into focus, sitting in the dark on the checker-board lino as she sparked up her eyes and told me about this artist that used to live there when she was a kitten. It was the pictures, she purred, as much as the paint fumes: she couldn't get enough of him being around. Used to wrap around his feet while he worked, share his 'nip when he had it and paint stories with him into the smoke. He was spoken for of course: a young German shepherd who'd chase her off whenever she was around and then pointedly go and lick his hands. But he always had time for her when the dog wasn't there. It was the pictures, she said, and I guess I believed it because of her eyes, the colours she could see.

At dawn we picked our way across crashed-out hippies on mattresses and up to the roof to watch the sun come up. She sang to me, some song I don't remember, then curled up on my chest and went quietly to sleep. I didn't have the heart to disturb her, so I lay there still until sleep caught up with me too. When I woke up she was nowhere to be found.

Next I heard she was living the life of Riley down in Phuket somewhere. Got picked up by some rich family and whisked off to the lap of luxury, or so the Siamese at the bar said, tail flicking gently in disapproval. What was a backstreet kitten like her doing down there anyway? What happened to the revolution?

I got her side of it months later, at a chance meeting in a bar in Sydney. I'd almost walked straight past her: she'd lost a bit of her spark by then, her eyes only running at half-power. It was pretty obvious she wasn't being fed. Told me this family had coddled her for a bit, given her a cushion to sleep on and tins of tuna when they remembered, but it was all for the kids' sake: they hadn't really planned on keeping her long. Besides, she wasn't good at being a house cat. She needed to be out and about, but they just wouldn't let her: doors and windows were always locked, and they were miles away from the backstreets and alleyways she'd been missing anyway. Sometimes she'd claw the furniture, she got so bored, and then she'd be in trouble and there'd be no tuna for a week.

For lack of anything better to do, she'd taken to doing a few laps of the pool now and then. Not in front of the humans, of course - she knew better than that - but one day one of the kids caught her at it, and that was game over far as the grown-ups were concerned. It just wasn't fitting behaviour for a cat, you know? They got rid of her and bought themselves a nice little well-bred neurotic Persian blue.

She found her way to the beach and lived there for a bit, making friends with the fishermen and curling up on the rocks once the sun had set. One day one of the guys smuggled her onto his boat for good luck, which suited her, she said: she'd always fancied running away to sea. The smell didn't bother her, except when she'd had a few too many the night before, and besides there were fish heads and guts every day. She couldn't complain, even if the other guys did give her that look from time to time, like what's a cat think she's doing on a boat anyway? She made herself useful catching rats, and after a while the guys got to like her, to think of her as part of the crew, more or less. Then this Chinese cook came aboard, and she figured it was time to move on. It was the looks he gave her, sharpening his knives. She didn't like what he was thinking.

She jumped ship in Tokyo and hung out there for a while: found a nice little spot in Odaiba where the police were pretty friendly. First morning there one of them woke her up. Didn't move her on or anything, just pointed her towards a bench in the sun and let her carry on sleeping. Gotta love the Japanese. She developed a taste for sashimi, soft pink flesh between her teeth. It's a fetish, she told me, licking her lips. Sends a shiver down your spine.

But Japan was too clean and clinical for her: like a ketamine dream, all the levels you slip through, floor after floor riding escalators in department stores you can't get out of, until you want to throw up just to see a stain, raw and visceral and real, on the floor. The men's eyes on her made her skin-creeping paranoid: all those glassy stares, internal CCTV. She kept her eyes switched off, wrapped her soul up tight, and snuck it out through customs somehow using the fake name she'd chosen for her hanko (外人霊 - gaijin rei - in case I wanted to know).

Figured she'd try her luck down under, but Sydney was tough: the toms were all testosteroned up and the water was way too cold for swimming, as she found out when she jumped ship to avoid border police somewhere along the Sydney-Hobart route. She spent her days stalking bats in the Botanic Gardens (possibilities of contracting lyssavirus notwithstanding) or singing for money under the conquistador helmets of the opera house, learnt to lie convincingly to bouncers about an evening's alcohol intake and mastered the art of the morning after.

She told me other things as well, that night in Sydney: confessional things dredged up from the bottom of a bottle of Victoria Bitter. It wasn't just the swimming thing, though that was part of it. She'd never been keen on sitting on people's laps, preferred a quick tickle behind the ears to an all-over-body stroke, and didn't tend to purr much at all - well, only when someone got things exactly right, and that usually took more training than she could be bothered to give them. She'd never felt quite at home in her fur: the way she walked or wagged her tail, the delicate little movements that were so, well, cat-like. She just didn't feel quite right being a cat, she confided finally, a good few beers down the line. There was just something so tame about it, so stay-at-home, sit-by-the-fire-looking-pretty, sneak out at night for your bit of excitement and always back by breakfast time if you want to keep being let back in. It all sort of started in her teens, when her mum had made her have her canines taken out. That settled it, far as everyone else was concerned. No more chasing cars or fetching sticks. Time to grow up into the cat she was born to be.

There were little tears in her eyes when I told her the same sort of thing had happened to me, and she nuzzled up to me right there in the bar in front of everyone, and followed me home after last orders. The bitemarks on my neck the next day made me smile every time I caught sight of them in the mirror, though trying to explain them to the wife wasn't a conversation I enjoyed having.

I lost track of her again for a while: got caught up in my own narratives, the politics of the personal, putting fists through windows to try and break back into a broken love bubble. Ended up hiding out on a riverboat with all the lonely people, the rest of the town's marriage refugees. One evening, just as I was about to turn in, I heard a patter of paws on the roof and an unmistakeable miaow. She poked her head through the hatch a few moments later, clambered in and sauntered over, a smug smile on her face, pockets full of sweets she'd shoplifted to keep herself in sugar. Somehow she'd managed to track me down.

We made a nest of sleeping bags and curled up together, swapping stories, sharing scents and colours, songs and shivers, until we were both warm and purring, slowly teasing out each other's souls from under fur and skin. The next morning she was gone, like a ghost, leaving only her scent and some hairs on the pillow, a muddy paw-print on the floor by the door. I rolled over, burrowing into the warm hollow her body had left, and breathed in her scent, knowing our paths would cross again some day. I don't tend to remember my dreams, but if I did I know that in them somewhere would be an unmistakeable miaow and a pair of electric blue eyes that glow in the dark.