From A Magical Man

That day, Mikael had with him potato salad (with apple, cornichons, dill, garlic confit and fried smoked pork) and a thick bone-in pork chop. On the side a few tomatoes, a sprinkle of rocket leaves and a jar of cherries. Dark, juicy cherries I was hoping would dribble over his chin and down onto his t-shirt, leaving behind moist stains.

I thought of the rind on the pork chop, how it oozed when I fried it. That was exactly how I was feeling. Like fat melting in a frying pan. The unhealthy, decadent bit – repulsive for some – but the bit that held the flavour. I learned when I was little that you don’t cut off the fat. You don’t cut off the repulsive bit, you gorge on it, you let yourself bite into it and rip it off. Because otherwise what’s the point? Food becomes sustenance and not pleasure, and to willingly forsake pleasure is to forsake life.

That’s what I was thinking, for I knew what was to come. Mikael was on his way home from work and my pulse was already high. My blood was pumping hard, making me tense and widening my veins.

I was wearing my hair down, unwashed and unbrushed, that’s how Mikael liked it best. He didn’t like it when it was clean and smooth, when it smelled of shampoo. What he wanted most was to push his nose down onto my greasy scalp and move his fingers through my naturally grubby hair.

What was I wearing? Cycling shorts? Probably. A t-shirt. No bra. Knickers? Maybe. The point was for me to look as unfussy as possible. Almost caught out in my everydayness. That’s how we wanted it. It was the act: everything was supposed to appear natural, as though it had just happened by chance. As though neither of us was ready.

(And we weren’t.)

Mikael banged on the door – that unmistakeable banging, not a million miles from the sound produced when his hips met my buttocks. I shuffled towards the door, that was part of the game too – not appearing too eager. It mustn’t happen too quickly. A gentle and surprised expression on my face. Wide eyes. Oh, what are you doing here?

He stepped right inside. Work bag down on the hall rug. The empty lunchbox was peeping out of the top. I waited impatiently as he took off his shoes. It felt like an eternity. His procedure in the hallway, taking his things off before he could pay me his full attention, felt like it lasted a decade of my life. I could hardly bear it.

‘Jeez, you’re in such a stress,’ he said.

‘Hurry up,’ I said.

‘Are we in a hurry?’

‘Yes, we most certainly are.’

I pressed my nose up against his damp t-shirt, between his shoulder blades, inhaled the smell. He was drenched. Sweat and wet cotton. Exhaust fumes. Dust. Dirty old furniture. Packing tape. Removal boxes. A musty blanket in the van.

‘Lift your arm up,’ I said.

Mikael held one arm up above his head and I thrust my face into his armpit; my insides roared. A raging waterfall, a forest fire, an elephant on heat, confined to the zoo.

‘How was your lunch?’ I asked.

‘Sick. It was sick,’ said Mikael.

‘How sick?’

‘You wanna know how sick it was?’

‘Yeah. Tell me how sick it was.’

‘Man… Dragon was drooling. I’m not kidding, like, the saliva was just bursting out of his mouth. They all gathered round me while I was eating. Man, they were like excited dogs, y’know. They’re just smelling meat and food and they’re drawn to it with eyes all wild and glazed over. The way you’re looking at me now, that’s how the lads are when I get my lunchbox out. But today it was even more sick. The chop. They were dying, I’m telling you. Like what their mams cooked when they were small. They were randy like? Followed my every move as I ate. And when I was sat there chewing the bone clean… I almost didn’t think they’d survive. It was totally sacred. Like… yeah, it was such a crazy intense atmosphere.’

I slipped my hand in under Mikael’s top, the hairs were all moist, his small nipples cold and wet. The rest of him: warm.

‘How good was it?’ I asked.

‘So fucking good,’ said Mikael.

‘Did they say anything?’

‘Yeah. Like, with the bone, when they were all into it, like really deep inside themselves somehow, you know what it’s like, all the lads are eating their sandwiches or pasta or whatever the hell it is, and Johnny… d’you know what he said?’

‘No?’

‘He said: There’s no girl like your girl. And Dragon was all like: I wish my wife were like that. And Tobias told me I’d gone and got myself the world’s best bird.’

Mikael had never said that kind of thing before. The familiar game was now entering unexplored territory.

‘Did they really say that?’ I asked.

‘Yeah, yeah. Yes! That’s what they said.’

Mikael took a firm hold of my face, squeezed my cheeks and kissed me all over, fierce and fast, but still tenderly, childlike. I giggled and then I felt the tip of his tongue against my bottom lip. The warmth, the wetness, the saliva. My legs went all limp. All I could think about was being Mikael’s girl. Even the guys at work knew. They knew just as well as I did what was going on. That Mikael and I loved each other, that we were together, that he and I were something utterly electric, indescribable and yet predestined, that this was passion and chemistry in a way you can only understand if you really understand it, which you can’t if you haven’t experienced it – and who actually has?

Not many people at all.

I myself knew nothing about it before Mikael. I had no idea what it’s like when another person makes your insides melt, turn to molten glass, red-hot mortal danger, just flowing and boiling and gleaming, and how it becomes cyclical, fuelling the heat in each other, constantly melting down again, existing in an incessantly incandescent sphere. And how at the same time you’re faced with a new horror – that the fire will die out. The soul will stop burning. The smoke will rise towards the skies and vanish in the wind.

With my love for Mikael a new kind of fear had nestled its way into my life. I was so afraid the whole time, afraid that he would disappear, that I would lose him – and right there, on that day with the lunchbox, I believed for a second that my fear was unfounded. That I could relax. I did relax.

I sat up on the draining board and wrapped my legs around Mikael’s waist, gripped him with my thighs, imagined him trapped there – wishful thinking, there was no position in which I would have the physical strength needed to do that – and grabbed hold of his shoulders. Looked into his eyes. He was happy. He smiled. He was so beautiful. The most beautiful thing I knew. The most beautiful thing in the whole world, to sink into his nebulous eyes.

Lustful eyes that made him look moronic. I loved it, loved seeing him that way; I loved him.

The presence of Mikael’s heart, feeling it throbbing against the inside of my thigh, via his penis, felt like having your hair washed at the salon. My body turned just as floppy. He touched my clitoris like it was a speck of dirt on the kitchen table. One where you have to wet your finger first and then carefully rub it away. He stuck two fingers inside me – it sounded like when children play with slime.

‘Talk more about me being your girl,’ I said.

‘What?’ said Mikael.

‘Yeah, like Johnny said. There’s no girl like your girl.’

The nebulous look in his eyes disappeared. He was immediately alert, wide awake, on his guard; like a sleeping dog that suddenly hears a suspicious noise from the street.

‘What is it?’ I asked.

‘Well, you’re sort of my bird, so yeah, or whatever you wanna call it, but like…’

‘What do you mean?’

‘But like, I’ll be going away at some point. You know that. So we’re not together in that way, like.’

I slid down from the draining board. There was a jumper hanging over one of the kitchen chairs and I pulled it on. I pulled my hair up in a ponytail. I wanted to cover myself up. A gallon of water had been poured out over the fire.

‘What’s up?’ said Mikael.

‘Are you out of your mind, or what?’ I said.

‘What you on about?’

‘What do you think it is we’re doing? If it’s not being together?’

I walked out of the kitchen, heavy on my heels, a demonstrative walk – what the hell did Mikael want, what the hell was he playing at, what was he even thinking – and I sat down on the sofa in the living room. Mikael came up beside me, looking like he was lost. His feet were searching for the floor.

‘I don’t know what I’m supposed to do now,’ said Mikael.

‘We see each other, like, every day, you’re here all the time, we talk all the time,’ I said.

‘Yeah.’

‘I don’t get it.’

‘I don’t want to be together with someone in that way. It won’t work. I can’t do it. Intimacy isn’t for me. It just turns shit. My brain is fucked. I’ve done all of that. I’m going away anyway. You know that. I’ve told you everything about myself. I can’t be with anyone. I just ruin everything. It doesn’t work out,’ said Mikael.

‘But we are, undeniably, together in that way?’ I said.

‘Yeah, but.’

Mikael sat down next to me on the sofa, his scent was overwhelming me, his warmth, his presence, it was pulling on me, tugging on my skin, a bubbling numbness in my body as soon as I had him close. What was I playing at? What was he playing at? His thighs spread out. He sat with his legs sprawled out. Those wonderful thighs. I wanted him to squeeze my head tightly between them, deform me so I looked like a blowfish, a little pig, a newborn rat that hasn’t opened its eyes yet. I wanted Mikael to grab hold of me and press my arms down against the sofa so hard that I would almost, just almost, feel scared.

I knew he would do anything I asked of him just to be let off the hook, to be rid of what was jarring between us now. On the windowsill was my watering can; I got up, snatched hold of it and went out to the kitchen to fill it with water. I watered my plants. Mikael stayed put on the sofa. He was wearing his work shorts, but no top. His chest was slowly moving up and down, heavily somehow, as he breathed. He stared straight ahead. His gaze, so mirthful before, was now completely empty.

‘Sorry,’ said Mikael.

‘It hurts when you say things like that,’ I said.

‘I know.’

I set down the watering can. What was it I knew in that very moment? That it was pointless? That I didn’t have the strength? That my resistance had been obliterated long ago? That I was just playing? That he was lying? That he didn’t mean what he said?

The truth is: I knew nothing, I simply gave up. I straddled Mikael’s lap. My hands in his hair. His face between my breasts. His warm breath. His eyes, inflamed with psoriasis, his scalp flaky in places. I kissed his forehead. He pulled me in close, his calloused hand pushing against the small of my back. I felt his hairy belly move as he breathed.

I no longer knew who I was, or who he was, or what it was that we had together. The atmosphere was like in a chapel when the family are about to see their dead relative for the last time. Reverential, laden, sorrowful, a large dose of love hovering around, drifting in the air, not knowing where it should land or where it belongs. As though the love that belonged to the deceased has to be rehomed, has to find its place in someone new, has to be handed out and divvied up between those left behind.

All our love was flying freely in the room, neither of us knew who should take what, but it was there, like a tarpaulin heavy with rainwater that somebody would have to tend to and empty.

I sucked on Mikael’s ear. He pinched my bottom.

‘But I do love you,’ I said.

‘I know,’ Mikael said.

He left me, albeit slowly and reluctantly. There were so many words on our way out into the hall. He couldn’t stop talking, although it was obvious I wasn’t listening. All the while he held my hand. Gripped it, almost too hard, I could see it turning white. We were both sad, his eyes were so infinitely doleful, his curly hair hung heavy, as though the mood had rubbed off on his locks.

Mikael used the shoehorn to get his trainers on; he was just as careless in his movements as when he gripped my hand. The shoehorn snapped, broke in the middle. All that was left were two dead plastic sticks.

‘Bollocks,’ said Mikael.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ I said.

‘Fucking plastic tat.’

‘It’s fine. Really. Not a problem.’

‘Sorry.’

As soon as he left I went into the kitchen and washed up the lunchbox he’d put on the draining board. Everything that had beguiled me about it disappeared down the plughole. It was only a lunchbox. A piece of hard plastic used for storage. Nothing more.

But did I understand, truly, deep down within myself, any of this?

Yes and no.

There and then I knew everything I needed to know, but I didn’t acknowledge it.