Utter Prattle

Jane's Boyfriends

2012-02-08T21:49:00.005Z

Jane lived her life through her boyfriends. She could not state something important from her past without also attaching some reference to the guy in her life. All first-year university references were coloured in first semester by Paul, and then in second semester by Declan. The summer post-university was Chris, the year she lived in Paris it was Michel, the winter she had short hair it was Mike, the first few months after she bought her condo it was Chris II, and so on. It was a sort of romantic way to order her life, depending on the severity of the break-up and the degree of attachment. Paul, Declan and Mike were hard times for her. Michel was just embarrassing. Chris and Chris II had still not been resolved as either good or bad. And the future was yet unmade by any all-consuming connection.

Paul was buck-toothed and lanky, and if he had nothing between his ears, he always had earphones around them. He shared an English class with Jane, and though she effected not to notice, he had no idea she existed until he saw her at a Sloan concert. For him, this was the reference point to their brief, juvenile relationship. For her it was that he was the first person she’d ever gone out with. After an exciting, if confusing month of going to improv shows and bad slasher films with Paul, making out with him in her car, snogging him for six hours in one night and not letting him inch his way up her shirt or down her pants, Jane, swollen and smug, asked him, “What does this mean?” The air, previously crackling with what Jane thought a most palpable kind of electricity, went dead, like a dropped mic. Paul stepped away from her and simply stared, and then it took her two months and lots of driving around until she was ready, fiercely ready, to move on.

She started her second semester in a sad shambles, the first semester ruined by Paul taint. Her classes, the entire campus, was a danger-zone of Paul nostalgia and Paul potential. She didn’t luxuriate in the buffeteria in hopes of seeing him gangle in. She avoided the common study room but resented the isolation of her regular carrel in the library. She hated her wide-legged white Gap chinos that she wore in their first “hang out” and despised her big, geeky backpack, which was the same brand as his. She was a ball of misery, of negativity, of reproach. A girl who shied away from the things she loved because of why she loved them.

So it was in this spirit of avoidance that she met Declan. And her second semester was thus given its referential adjunct.

Jane was at a freshman’s club night at The Pit, a charmless, cavernous warehouse by the bus station, famous for its drinks specials. “Wear a tank top, drinks all night for $1.00! Ladys only!” read one sticky sign. Jane was with her friends Carey and Leanne, and they were all wearing tank tops, in fact, and multi-colour wristbands and glitter. In a misguided attempt at a Sex and The City Look, Jane had even borrowed her Grandmother’s mink coat to go with her ensemble. Instead the effect was more of a child playing dress up or a prostitute dressed in handouts. Jane didn’t mind. She’d had too many rye and cokes and something distressingly blue to mind much of anything, so when she staggered out of the club to get some fresh air and instead covered the side of the building in an amazing technicolour spleen coat, and found that someone was helping her back into the club and saying he’d find her friends and get her coat, she numbly went along, unable to really compute anything that was going on.

This someone, of course, was Declan. She remembered very little of him the next morning. She had insisted on taking the bus home instead of letting him drive her, because she hardly knew him. His reply was to say that the people on the bus were total strangers who she didn’t know at all, so hardly was much, much better. So she got into his car, with Leanne and Carey in the back seat, and the next thing she knew was she was in her bed, in her pyjamas, and her stomach was doing flips and dives, outpaced only by the spinning of the room.

Take Away

2011-08-14T21:41:00.003+01:00

Sean was on his way out of the flat when Tristan called out that the takeaway that night was on him, and handed him a twenty pound note. So when Sean shouldered his way onto the crowded train, he was smiling, thinking about beef in black bean sauce, prawn crackers and sweet and sour chicken. His smile disappeared when he got off the train at Dalston, and the low, shabby, glass-fronted gallery came into view.

He worked at Butcher’s gallery only because his aunt owned it. Sean had taken some photography classes at university but did not consider himself a photographer, but he did consider himself more of a photographer than many of the self-styled “artists” who exhibited in the tiny, chemical-smelling space just off the high street. Geoff and Phillippa weren’t there, so Sean, technically only an intern, got out his keys and opened it up for the day.

Sean had lived in London for six months. He came from Toronto, and he had most of a film degree from Ryerson University. But he had had “problems”, perhaps even a “breakdown”, and his parents thought he should take a working holiday and get some experience in his aunt’s gallery. When he first moved to London he stayed in his aunt and uncle’s spare bedroom in their house in Streatham. But soon he felt like he was living with his parents again, and without really telling them, moved into a flat-share with some other guys in Crystal Palace. He didn’t know where Crystal Palace was when he answered the ad, he just knew it sounded sort of fanciful and wicked, and that the room was cheap. When he got there he saw immediately that it was better than Streatham, cool even. There were pubs, a good book shop, leafy avenues and dinosaur statues. But it was only when he got to the flat that he realized he was going to be much, much happier. Tristan and James were sitting in bean bag chairs in the lounge talking about Tarkovsky, and there was a balcony housing white plastic chairs and a decaying wicker table. Sean paid them in cash on the first night.

When he said he was a “gallery assistant” he thought people probably thought it was more glamorous than it sounded. He was basically a very sexy-sounding dogsbody. But when he told people that, they thought he was being modest, or worse, thought that that in itself was cool. At a party a week after he moved in with Tristan and James he met a girl named Debbie who made him feel robustly interesting, even the next morning, and again the next afternoon, so when he was buying a ticket to Edinburgh to go and see her in a Fringe play he thought that he was actually interesting. But when he arrived in Edinburgh and went to a show in a trailer and got tired of waiting for her to arrive at the pub, and instead met some Turkish guys and wound up spending the day drunk at Stirling Castle, Sean realized he wasn’t interesting, he just kind of sounded it.

At ten past eleven the buzzer sounded and Sean let Geoff in. Geoff was an intern too, but he pretended he wasn’t, and often told Sean what to do. Geoff lived in a house down the street from the gallery with about nine other people and went to ironic bingos and had friends with moustaches. Sean only learned that “twat” was an easy colloquialism to apply to people without really being offensive when he described Geoff to James. But a few weeks later, after drinking a bottle of wine at an open evening at the gallery, Sean and Geoff had made out. Sean went home that night with wine on his breath and cigarette smoke in his hair and a lot on his mind, but when he came to work the next day, Geoff told him “not to worry about it.” Sean was annoyed. He wasn’t worried. But Geoff had made it sound like Sean was annoying him when he said it, and that was what made Sean angry. Geoff was forever saying things like that, like he was above everything, always, and that it was Sean or Phillippa who were creating a problem.

Phillippa was the only actual staff member at the gallery. She was really very nice. She was efficient, and plain-looking, and had been a curator for another gallery, and didn’t consider herself an artist, wasn’t dating an artist, and somehow conveyed that she mostly hated artists, but she was plainly passionate, and knew a lot about, art.

There was a scruffy-looking man with a shopping trolley looking at the latest exhibit, and Sean whispered to Geoff “You didn’t tell me your dad was visiting!” Geoff turned to him and said “That’s not my dad,” and walked away from him as if he’d just told him something so pointless and boring that it was barely worth responding to. Sean knew that Geoff had no sense of humour (though you would never know it by the way he was always talking about things being so funny) but he also suspected that he was kind of dumb. He was just thinking about how to test this when Phillippa came in, apologised for being late, and said that Sean’s Aunt was coming in that afternoon to meet with an agent. This news gave him pause. He liked his aunt, but always felt shifty in her broad-shouldered, heavily perfumed presence. He felt he would be blamed for something, found wanting, found out. He didn’t know why he felt this way, but the feeling of it was all-consuming, and had become so huge that Sean had given heed to it and all but ran from her house to move into the flat in Crystal Palace. But she always hugged him, gave him money, and was generally very good to him. He didn’t know why this made him panic. His parents said they wouldn’t come and visit, not unless he wanted them to.

“Would you like me to send you on an errand?” Sean liked Phillippa. She made him feel calm. Sean suspected she knew he did not want to see his aunt. When she said that the errand was to deliver some large frames to the storage space in Brick Lane, he was very happy. This was a suitably important, suitably time-consuming errand. But of course Geoff was going with him, because Sean couldn’t carry them on his own. Geoff waited upstairs whilst Sean and Phillippa went to the basement office to get the frames, and complained when they went back for a second set. And though he wouldn’t stoop to wearing a protective coat or gloves, he sighed when a chalky line was left on his jumper, and when they got to the junction at Old Street, he threw the frames down and said that this errand was bullshit. He had been carrying them stupidly, all jumbled up in a mess, with his arms around them in an angular, wooden embrace. Sean just repositioned his own frames and kept walking. When he got to the storehouse, he let himself in and went up the stairs. He didn’t care if Geoff was locked out. He kind of hoped he was. Geoff wouldn’t have keys. Not that he couldn’t be trusted with them, he just couldn’t be bothered with them. Keys were for other people to open doors for him with. People like Sean. When Sean got to the bottom of the stairs, Geoff was hammering on the door. Sean opened the wide wooden door, and saw Geoff’s face behind the piled-high frames, and took a corner of a black shellacked frame, pulled it back, and slammed it into Geoff’s mouth. He then grabbed hold of it again, as Geoff was just standing there stupidly, and smashed it against him again. The sound was wet and hard at the same time, a crunchy jarring. He was about to do it again, but Geoff was against the wall, shouting, and the dropping frames were making an unwelcome noise. Geoff was blubbering and holding his bloody mouth, his sweater stained down the front, so Sean grabbed hold of it, twisting the sweater upwards, and stuffed it into Geoff’s mouth, until he felt something snap. He took his hand away, and was interested to see that it wasn’t bloody. Geoff had slid to the floor, crying openly and fearfully, tears falling down his cheeks, his mouth a sloppy red line. Sean wiped some spittle from his hand, and walked out.

When he got out to the street, he wondered how far it was to walk to Liverpool Street Station. Not far, he remembered, not far.

A brief, non-fiction request

2011-04-20T20:14:00.003+01:00

As this blog is a writing experiment allowing me to play with different styles and basically just keep my creative juices flowing, it's all been quite good fun. I've received a lot of great feedback and have thoroughly enjoyed doing this. It sounds less crazy if you've got voices in your head if you take the time to write down what they are saying.

I'd like to ask that anyone who visits this blog and has enjoyed one or more of the stories here if you could take the time to vote on the right (beneath my profile) on who you'd like to hear from again. I'm just interested to see what has worked for people. I know which pieces are my favourite, but equally, I know that just because I feel the story is well-written and interesting doesn't mean you do. Also, it may be that that story is particularly well-contained and doesn't need a re-visit. Either way, I'd like to hear from you. Or it all may be hateful rubbish that makes you wish you'd never laid eyes on this blog and that you'll never enjoy reading for pleasure ever again, for which I apologize. I really have no idea who most of you readers are, and can only assume if you've enjoyed this stuff that you'll come back.

Thank you for reading.

Carmody

A Diary

2011-04-15T11:33:00.002+01:00

April 14th, Chailey House

A most frustrating day. Donald B left the East gate, nearest the road, open and the valuers from Kent’s got in. Joan, suspecting nothing, allowed them into the main hall, where they immediately set to on all of the items I hadn’t wished them to see. Father’s death has really been much more vexing than it ought to have been. Dreadful outcome. Much lost. But at least some of the duties will thus be swept away.

NB I MUST let Joan in on these affairs!

April 20th, The City

Up with the sun this morning and had a refreshing swim at the gym. Felt remarkably energetic, much more so for my athleticism being appreciated by languid nymph on lifeguard duty. I shall have to investigate. Most of the girls they employ here are of the limpid sow variety, all sexuality but no attraction.

Invigorated mood briefly jarred by sight of my in tray on my desk. A two day working week is insufficient. I shall have to commit to more days in the office.

April 22nd, the City

A meeting about infrastructure. I felt a dullard. I find my eyes glaze over when the gee-whizzers come at me with charts and graphs and find myself wishing I had a catapult. What fun! Perhaps something to look into for Chailey. Must speak to Donald R.

May 1st, Chailey House

A lovely weekend. Took Joan and the car out to the seaside, picnicked, and napped in the sun. Bathed. Joan was lovely, all flushed cheeks and windswept hair. Free from worries, at least for the now.

May 2nd, The City

A dark portent. Anonymous phone calls warning of “something to come.” Grabbed Phillip in the outer office, asked his advice. He had terrible trouble with a girl a few years back. Paid off the family, but she kept coming back. Said she loved him, a likely story. He sensibly advised that I do nothing. Not until we knew who we were dealing with. It could be any of recent dozens. Received another call this afternoon, this time no one spoke. How long until she materializes and we can get the whole bloody thing out of the way?

In-tray as towering as ever.

May 4th, The City

Anxious call from Donald B. Said someone had been seen at Chailey, “skulking about” and neighbours had rung. Has this thing really got this far? Am I now to be harmed as well as out of pocket?

Later

False alarm. “Intruder” was yet another Kent’s valuer, sticking price tags on things. Cheered myself by taking Amelia, the temp, back to my rooms for Ugandan relations. A vulgar girl, but willing. Shiny blond hair. Most delightful.

Homecoming

2011-03-16T21:26:00.003Z

A writer has moved into the little house on the south end of Main Street. I saw a U-Haul van parked there over the weekend and thought it must be the girl they mentioned in the paper. A young woman. The granddaughter of someone or other. I like when there’s new people in town, but I wonder what they expect to find here. Cheap house prices maybe. I’ll find out all about her tomorrow morning at the hotel, no doubt. Nobody escapes Coffee Row.

When my dad came here to homestead people just called him English, because he was from England. Gateshead, somewhere in the north of the country. They call me English now too, but only as a kind of joke. There was a gay fellow who came across the line from Billings and bought up a farm near Hellfire Creek and he’s The American. We’re quite the multicultural bunch.

I go into town for coffee nearly every day, and when I don’t, I can be sure someone will comment on it. You can’t do much without everybody noticing. The other morning I picked up George Goodyear on the Reserve Road in my truck, hauled his bike into the back and dropped him off at The Red and White, and that afternoon when I come home there’s a phone message asking about it. People just know what you’re up to.

The young lady might be writing a book or something in the peace and quiet, though having a house on Main Street wouldn’t be anybody’s idea of quiet, at least not during the day. Right off the stockyards and Case dealership. Get the odd escaped cow. Might make for interesting scenery. But I don’t know what she’d find to write about.

There’s certainly lots of talk, though. Tongues were wagging about that stupid business with the UFOs a few months ago. It was a big to-do. Mic Thierriault, who isn’t a master cattleman by anyone’s estimation, goes out into his south pasture and finds a dead bloated cow with its eyes and other parts missing. To you and me, she died of natural causes, struck by lightning, bloat, whatever. To Mic Thierriault, it’s aliens. Phones the CBC before he phones the vet. Vet knows what the rest of us knows that the first thing to go is the eyes and the ass. Soft parts, easy to get at. To Mic Thierriault they’re incision marks, if you can believe it. Says the cuts were clean, not jagged like coyote bites or crow pecks. So the vet has to go all the way down there and take pictures, write up a report and deal with the CBC reporters who took it up. Damn thing made the news in Swift Current and Regina. It all died down pretty quickly, but old Mic wasn’t able to live it down once the reporters left town. Not that people are mean to him, they’ll tell him to his face he shouldn’t have made such a fool of himself, and not like he was a pillar of society, but Christ.

Every now and then someone new moves here and adds a bit of excitement, or at least variety, to the daily gossip. The last young lady to move into town (that wasn’t from here and just come back) was the minister, Pastor Lynette, from the United Church. Coffee Row was full of talk about the nice young woman and her pretty roommate who moved into the Manse, admiring the economy of their choice to live together. Of course if anyone was ever to go for a visit, they’d find it was a one bedroom house.

But I don’t know what a writer would find interesting here. Still, there might be lots to write about if she keeps her ear to the ground, as they say. Rodeo’s in June and we have a parade and demolition derby July 1st. Always a story there, but you’ve got to look hard.

King of Shaves

2011-02-09T19:33:00.005Z

Angus had an ingrown hair on the back of his neck that looked like a pimple. He knew it was an ingrown hair because it was at the very base of his hairline, near where he had started to shave the back of his neck. There was hair encroachment. It needed to be nipped in the bud. He hoped the people at work didn’t think it was a pimple, but he knew they did. He already started to make up jokes, imagining what his coworkers were saying about him behind his (pimple-free) back:

“I wonder if Angus has ever been to Pimplona, Spain,” he has that jerk, Phil Turner asking. Faithless Lauren is imagined laughing at this. (Angus drifts, momentarily, from his angry assumptions and imagines her reclined across a chaise longue, covered only in a silk sheet. He smiles, then remembers he is angry.)

“Or if he’s ever read ‘The Scarlet Pimplenel'”, laughs Jeremy, as if he’s one to talk.

“Hey, hey, how about if he watches Homer Pimpleson every night” brays Sherry, the swivel-eyed head of legal. (“That’s not even a good one, the bitch” Angus thinks to himself with a satisfied smile.)

Angus interrupts his reverie, which has now quite broken down into his colleagues and co-workers dancing around him in a human chain, chanting “Pimple! Pimple! Pimple!” in order to make a phone call. Once he has done this (he was querying a fact with an interviewee, she was not in, he left a message,) he finds Paul sweeping toward his desk, a look of calculated unconcern on his face.

“Look, I really don’t know what you want to do about it, but we must file something on this for Tuesday.” Paul began every sentence with ”look”, as if the issue in question had already been dealt with extensively, and frankly, he was getting tired of having to talk about it. This time it was about phone-hacking and new revelations from the Met that it was ramping up its investigations. Angus’s face was growing hot. Paul was staring at Angus’s neck and rubbing his own face thoughtfully.

“Hmmm,” was all he said, before silkily gliding off into the office interior.

Angus dutifully typed up a thoughtful, well-written and in no way rushed or distracted piece summing up the phone-hacking scandal so far and sent it to the subs. As he worked, he felt his hand constantly going to the place just above his shirt collar where the offending red bump lie. He felt it was slightly bristly, like a wart he had when he was fourteen. Teenage Angus had made the mistake of cutting the wart off with his penknife, but it promptly grew back, sprouting two alarming black hairs. Remembering this, Angus briefly imagined himself a thing of horror, hanging in chains in a dungeon somewhere, then as the nightmarish ape from Poe’s story, swinging from a chandelier at a glossy party.

He got up to get a cup of coffee and some fresh air. Along the way, he passed Lauren at her desk, her lovely hair tied up on her head. Inevitably, she called out to him, but he walked past, intent on minimizing the damage his neck eruption had caused. He would talk to her tomorrow. It would be gone tomorrow.

Outside, he felt better. Once the caffeine was coursing through his veins, his head felt clearer. “I’m being ridiculous. It’s just an ingrown hair. A blemish! It’s really rather funny!” But when Angus tried to smile to support his mental upturn, he found he could not. Because he knew he would immediately go into the men’s toilets and begin to go at it with the tweezers until it was much, much worse. So instead of laughing, he ended up shouting “It’s a fucking buboe!” sending the woman standing next to him at the coffee stall up the street without her coffee, and causing a scattering of heretofore contented pigeons.

Back in the office, Angus was not at his desk. He was in the men's room, carefully applying a bandage to the offending inflamed flesh. He smiled to himself in the mirror, shaking his head at the simplicity of such a genius solution.

When he got back to his desk, Lauren was there. “Where were you going? I was calling you,” she said.

“This? Oh I just cut myself shaving” Angus replied, laughing and laughing and laughing.

Terry

2011-01-27T13:08:00.003Z

Another day, another thick manila envelope. I live my life these days hearing a loud thwack from my front door downstairs. Who are these people? Too often I know the answer: typically bored housewives, angst-y loners and earnest swots looking for approval. I was a combination of the last two, and god help me if I become the first.

I’ve taught at the college for six years now. The old adage does sometimes apply, but I find my writing is somewhat inspired by my teaching. Teaching is a loose word. I’ll use editing. They come in groups of ten per term, and we do round table discussions. But today is the deadline for submissions for consideration for the class, and I am awash in painful prose.

A typical entry is overwritten, broadly thematic and largely autobiographical. Sometimes I’ll get science fiction, which can be incredibly rewarding to read, but mostly, in this form, seems more an excuse for hilarious pornography than anything else. Some, from the first category, are angry screeds not-so-subliminally directed at their husbands. An example:

Belinda waited at the table, her porcelain skin dewy with youth and tears. He was late again. The lamb tagine would congeal, just like their marriage. She strode swiftly out of the kitchen, casting off her apron, and approached the barn. Sven was there, forking hay. His back muscles rippled. Soon she was in his arms, forgetting Alan. Never, never again.

There’s a lot of laughter in my office. But some of the stuff is painful to read for different reasons. Some of the work is really really good. But this is often the writing that comes to my house, not for consideration for the class, not even as a “please send to your publisher” but as sad cries for approval. I read these stories/manuscripts with a heavy heart, and remember my own struggles to acknowledge that I wanted, with all of my heart, to be a writer and that nothing else, ever, would make me as happy.

I am too young to have done the Left Bank writer-in-exile routine, but I did migrate to Toronto in the 70’s and found myself friendless, penurious and bereft of time and energy to write. I was home again in a year, living in a rented bungalow with an aggrieved pothead, poor in motivation but rich in conspiracy theories about why he couldn’t find work. It was there, in my damp, crowded but pleasantly bright little room that I banged out my first novel. Flushed with pride and brimming with confidence, I submitted it to agent after agent before sharing the manuscript with my roommate.

“It’s too long. Cut out all the scenes with the buddy, and forget the sub-plot involving the canola-growing season. It’s fucking boring.”

I was furious. I assured him that professional opinion would be different. I stormed out, beetling away in my little car. But the professionals were largely silent. The one letter I received, ten weeks after mailing the expensive mss repeatedly, was kind, but echoed my roommate’s criticisims. But to my surprise, a second letter appeared, agreeing to take me on. Within the year, a publisher was found. I was a writer.

Now, 16 years and five books on, I’ve done well. I’ve had the GG, the G and the B. Even some regional stuff, like the “Coquihalla Librarians’ Guild” prize, and “Land of Living Skies Award for Best Novel.” I put those up in my office too. The students seem impressed. I'm impressed, too. I just hope I can do it all again.

Sophia

2011-01-21T15:07:00.003Z

I try to look on the sunny side of life. “Try looking on the sunny side of life” my mother used to say to me. But some days are harder than others. Like today, for example. Today I was yelled at, jostled, shoved and ignored. A typical day, but I try to see the good in it.

I often look to my students for a good mood, but they always disappoint me. Today, I told Leo that his playing was as limp as his poutsaki. He is my nephew, so I figure I can be honest with him. But lo and behold, a scolding telephone message from his mother an hour later. Another student, a very pretty girl with a wonderful playing style asks me why I don’t perform anymore. I told her it was because there was more money to be made teaching expensive little princesses. Of course I shouldn’t have said that, but what the hell. “You shouldn’t have said that” is what I told myself.

I never married, which may be a surprise to you. My father always said I had a pretty face but I was like a stick, with a personality to match. “You’re like a stick”, he would say, “with a personality to match.” I had several love affairs, but nobody ever stepped up to the plate. Batter out! Play ball!

When I’m playing, I daydream. Mostly I dream I have a lot of money and that I live in one of those houses where there are so many rooms that many of them just become a jumble of meaningless items. I would have an art collection of renown, but lots of flashy, worthless junk too. If I was rich, I’d be showy.

On the last lessons before Christmas, I always like to give the kids sweets. One year, for a joke, I gave them healthy things, like rutabaga and corn. And then at the Christmas concert some mother actually said she preferred that. Like it was serious. Some people.

I do really like my teaching, but not always my students. Even when I played for money I still taught. My own teacher used to rap my knuckles with a ruler when my wrist would fall. I never had it so good. My technique is now perfect. Forget all those wishy-washy Japanese styles with their “listening based learning.” You want to learn how to play the piano? Play the piano.

Sometimes I think I’d like to take all of my money and just spend it on something extravagant, like a boat in the Mediterranean. I could just play my boat piano and sit in the sunshine. But then I know that I’d miss my students and the few friends who have made it through the meat grinder. I would be miserable without those things. “You would be miserable without those things,” I tell myself.

Sarah

2011-01-19T14:36:00.003Z

When I was 21 I had an affair with my professor. I had taken his class and giggled with the other girls over him and his clever lectures. I imagined endless trysts on a storm-blackened moor, his letters full of longing for me, our passions ignited over spirited arguments. When his eyes would meet mine during classes, I inwardly dared him to look away first, which he always did. I felt very young and unbeguiling. But gradually it was me who was looking away, a churning sea in the pit of my stomach.

I met him over lunch. I was wearing an over-sized sweater and black jeans. My hair was messy and pushed back. I wore glasses, but no makeup. He was dressed in clothes which were a young man’s idea of what a young university professor should wear. Sandy-coloured cords, a tucked- in plaid shirt, matching brown belt, sensible shoes. I died at the sight of him.

I sat at a large empty table nearest the windows, and tried to look out on the campus scenes just outside. I heard the tray settle on to the table and still did not look. I felt gauche and transparent. It was only when he said my name that I turned around. And he was there. My stomach swam, my face was on fire. I knew. He knew.

We talked about very banal things that day. We always talked about very banal things. To cut it short, I asked him to give me a ride home. He spoke very quickly, and agreed, and we all but raced to his little white car parked behind the building. We did not speak the entire ride, but once we got to my apartment and I got out of the car, I knew he would follow me. I did not look at him as we climbed the steps. I did not look at him when I fumbled, shakes ravaging my hands, for my keys in my backpack. I did not look at him when I made a bee line for my bedroom and felt his hands on my waist.

It was frenetic, staccato coupling. He let loose with compliments, advice and confessions afterward. I shrank and was quiet. He began a searching conversation which I did not engage in. He receded quickly, pulling his arms out from under me in a swift, broken circle. He was angry. I was silent.

I watched every detail of him while he dressed. His curly hair, his small waist, his watery eyes. I ached with loving him. His look was so guileless.

But I felt so old.

Wayne

2011-01-18T15:25:00.003Z

Though I am by no means an animal lover, I do have a special affinity for those unknowable beasts that stalk the earth and allow us the pleasure of their company. I mean, of course, cats. I count 4 among my permanent feline friends, but of course the neighbourhood is full of many more, and I happily allow them the use of my garden.

Strangely it was Lydia who introduced me to cats as a pleasure rather than a nuisance, a distinction I think she would find upsetting. She hated cats. Detested them. She was the one with the spray hose or the broom rushing out at all hours to clear the garden of them, but it was once she was in hospital, in palliative care, that she softened a bit, and let the RSPCA people bring a cat round to her room. It was there that I found that it was quite relaxing to just sit in a chair, stroking a cat, letting its purrs take away the stresses of pinging machines, the bleakness of life and the sour smell of the ward.

Lydia and I were both teachers, and it was in the staffroom that she suggested I give up teaching with her and open up a stall at the Farmer’s Market. She had been doing it for years on a Saturday and knew me as a keen gardener. She never admitted that she had something else on her mind, but the twinkle in her eye whenever we had our frequent chats told of something different.

It was absolutely horrible at first because Helen would not understand and give in. I said that I would be at market in town on Wednesday and Saturdays, then all round the county during the rest of the week. Helen withheld her courgettes, but all the rest of the garden was my work, so I picked it clean and left, taking only my wheelbarrow and a spade that used to be my mother’s.

When I arrived at Lydia’s, of course, Bill opened the door and expressed surprise at my being there. Of course he knew that Lydia and I worked together, but did not know of our deeper connection and friendship. Vexingly, Lydia had also expressed surpise at what she called my “visit”, but soon enough let me in to have a cup of tea.

Those days at the market stalls were the happiest of my life. The sunshine, the fresh smells, the feeling of community and all that time travelling with Lydia can never be repeated. My heart quickens at these memories. They are the best I shall ever have. The fact that Bill remained a bothersome shadow takes the shine off a bit, but Lydia did not wish to disrupt her marriage for the sake of what she called “our friendship.” I was willing to wait, but we discussed it no further.

The stall was a great success, and I had managed to build up my own garden after leaving the one I shared with Helen and after Bill made it clear that I was not allowed to stay on as “guest” any longer. But after Lydia had gone I never felt the same passion for it. It was a very low time for me. I had arrived at the funeral, prepared to deliver Lydia’s eulogy, only to find that Bill was reading it, and putting on a show of great emotion. No one from the school seemed to know why I was so upset, and I didn’t feel I could share with Lydia’s children what Lydia and I really had.

That winter I drove out to the cattery on Shields Road and picked myself out a robust ginger Tom as my first companion. He was boon company and I found that I wanted more of the same, so within a month I was back at the shelter. This is where Heidi, a frail tabby came into my life, soon followed by George, an elderly fellow with alarming yellow eyes. Magda rounds out the company, a sizable Queen with protective instincts.

I am known as the “Cat Man’ around here. I would prefer “Tybalt, Prince of Cats,” but I realize that is just the old English teacher in me being dramatic and pretentious. I often laugh at the life I now lead, it was not what I imagined.

But mostly what I imagine is what Lydia would think, and if she would be ready to love me now.

Maxine

2011-01-17T19:56:00.000Z

I asked my boyfriend to marry me in January of last year, and when he said yes I could have died from happiness. We went to the registry office in Barnet, which is not as romantic as the Chelsea or Marylebone office, of course, but just as good for what we wanted to do, and then had a big party at our local pub. EVERYONE was there. Even Stephen’s boss, Kathleen, who I assumed didn’t like me. She brought us a lovely vase and a bottle of wine.

I felt a bit cheeky registering at John Lewis when we weren’t having a proper wedding, but I really, really wanted all the nice things that people who have proper weddings get, so I registered. Stephen says it was greedy, but who luxuriates every morning in his 300 thread-count terry dressing gown from Ralph Lauren? My personal favourite thing was the dining table and chairs that ten friends chipped in to buy. I put it on there and just crossed my fingers.

It made me sad that Stephen’s family weren’t there, but they would have felt out of place among all of the gifts and suits and dresses. They sent us a beautiful napery set, but the table cloth, place mats and napkins are all the same pattern, so I don’t know when I’ll put them out. Stephen wants us to save to bring his mother over for a visit. I’ve never met her, but I feel like that’s a bad idea. He said she has very old-fashioned views about marriage and keeps asking him when we will have children. I should just be so happy about having Stephen as a husband that all will be forgiven and forgotten, but I can’t help but worry about what having her in the flat for a few weeks would be like. After Stephen goes off to work we’ll have nothing but each other and that isn’t very appealing. Maybe I can ask if she would mind staying with Stephen’s uncle in Bethnal Green.

When Stephen and I met, I knew it was love, but he said he needed more time. My parents liked him right away because when my dad joked that Stephen was only marrying me to stay in the country Stephen laughed and said “Just wait until we have children, they’ll never get me!” I thought that was a good sign.

So now when I joke with him that we’ll need a bigger flat and should get a bigger mortgage to have all these children and keep his mother happy, he becomes very serious and says there are too many things that I don’t seem to understand. Which I totally accept. After all, what’s to worry if you’ve got a wonderful husband and gorgeous corner couch to lie on all day?

Kevin

2011-01-17T19:45:00.000Z

My grandfather was from Tallinn. He came to the UK in the 1930s. Family lore has it that he arrived from France with a bunch of Bulgarians in the back of a wine truck, but my grandmother always insisted that he was more respectable than that and emigrated legitimately. He went to work writing a novel the second day after he arrived, but when it was finished, nobody would publish it. Not because it was in Estonian, it wasn’t, it was in English, but because there was some seriously hard-core sex going on it. Seriously. He used to laugh when he told my dad this, but turns out it’s true. I read it when I was about 20 and I’ll never forget it. Made me see my grandmother in a whole new light. My dad never read it, I think, because he was afraid of maybe seeing a side to Grandfather that was more like him. My dad’s a writer, but he always likes to see himself as some kind of wild man, a man without a past, so he distances himself from my grandparents. He even changed his surname. When I asked him what could possibly be more punk rock than an Estonian surname, he didn’t have an answer. So Anthony Kask became Anthony Dean sometime in the mid-1970s.

I changed my name back when I was 18 and could legally do it. When I sent away to the Deed Poll people there was a sort of hushed awe in the house. My mum, I think, was pleased that I was embracing family history. My brother was annoyed that he didn’t think of it first, and my dad was totally furious. I remember him saying that I should take that extra step, if I want to be so different, and change my name to my maternal grandmother’s name, if I find the patriarchy so crushing. But it wasn’t like that, and I tried to not make it a big deal, because I knew he’d be upset. I just wanted a connection to my grandfather. I never met him. My grandmother says I look like him, but that he was loud and impolite like my dad.

The only picture we have of him is of the day he and Gran got married. He’s smoking a cigarette and looking right at the camera. My dad always said it looks like he’s accusing the viewer of something. I always wondered about that.

Kara

2011-01-17T19:42:00.000Z

I hardly ever go out anymore. I used to go out a lot. A lot, a lot. But now I’m a bit hefty and feel like there’s little to no point because everyone will be staring at me comparing me to how thin I was four years ago. I try to say that nobody who hadn’t met me four or more years ago would ever know the difference, and that all they’d see is a medium-attractive girl with full hips and maybe a big belly, but still, I can’t face it. I feel as if they could see that I’m supposed to be a stone lighter but am not.

I think about my weight all the time, every day. When I drove to my mum’s at the weekend I picked trousers and a shirt that wouldn’t make my belly stick out when I was sitting down, so that I looked okay on the drive, even though there was no one driving with me. When I got there, I felt as if I had to say I was on a diet , even though I’m not, because it seemed like I should say it. But I ate two full pieces of quiche and had coffee with milk and sugar afterwards. I knew my mum was watching me as I ate and wishing that I wouldn’t put so much sugar in my coffee. But she doesn’t say anything and neither do I.

I spend a lot on clothes because they make me feel attractive, and I obsess over what clothes make me look thinner. But often when I go to work I see other women who weigh less than me strutting their stuff and I feel like a cream puff, a wodge of hard cheese, a lump of fat. Last week I came home and tore off the silk tie from a crepe shirt I was wearing because it tied above my belly fat and made me look monstrous. I’d ruined the shirt, but I just pressed it with an iron and put it back in the closet. It was too expensive to throw away.

There was a newspaper article recently about how a size 12 is a woman’s ideal weight, but I’m a fat slob and nobody’s ideal, so they don’t know what they were talking about.