I don't like him any more. First it was those Miles from This Life-esque eyes, and possibly something in his hair (not, not some big globby of something, just the way his hair looks.) and then there was his childish good looks, and sweet smile. He had a bit of a babyface. But when I think of him eating that sandwich, euhhhh, and it erased everything. His mouth looked like a camel's trying to suck on a sugar cube. Today I don't tremble like I did yesterday. Maybe I'm just getting used to the fact that he's just a systems man. His nose is wrong.
I don't need to flick my hair anymore, or smile. That green shirt is pretty vile. OK, it's not that bad, but hey it rhymed. And the guy knows how to put paper in a printer - wow!! OK, office interest over. Time to do some work.
That's the last time I make an effort. My eyebrows hurt because I pulled them out this morning! And I have a headache - no, a brain tumour. Maybe it's because I need water or food or sugar or something, or perhaps it's just that my hair is tied back too tightly.
I smiled at him 2 days later. He's not that bad. He just walked by in a pink shirt - I could take it or leave it. Wouldn't jump into bed with him. Might think about it, or get exceedingly drunk in order to forget about it the next day, but nah, I don't think so.
I haven't been this much in love since Alistair Adams and the pre-pubescent crush in 1981.
I tried imagining him with dreadlocks, and then thought about the thought of him not washing his hair for ages, and stopped. The guy in the garage across the road with dreadlocks had them tied up so that the ends were pointing forwards, and he had a bit of a bun thing going on. Mechanics? There's just something about the oil. But hey, I didn't need that, I'm madly in love, or lurve, as you tend to put it when you're denying the L word. Being in love and denying it simultaneously is a very difficult task, it's like I don't want to be too pushy or sloppy and lovey dovey, as this is not what men want, and on the other hand, you don't want to be too off hand and too deliberately avoiding the issue, cos you never know, one day men might change the rules, and want that sappy soppy stuff. But I loved him despite the fact that I didn't have to confirmingly check every five minutes, or say it when I was bored, or couldn't think of anything better to say. It was love, and no oil drenched blue overalled, spanner holding mechanic could make me change my mind.
For an older man, he wasn't too bad looking, especially considering he was twice her age. He had a certain charm and wit that you didn't get on younger men. Don't know about the gentlemanliness, because he'd never had the opportunity to open a door for her, but he was cute. Nuf said. He wasn't the kind of guy you'd look at twice, but because she had looked at him twice, well, more than twice, kind of a lot, he'd developed this attractiveness that he would never have had, had he not been seen by her so much.
He sat across the room from her, and she could just see him out of the corner of her eye over her monitor. He was always dressed smartly, and smiled at her as she came into the office each day. Wasn't much to constitute a relationship on, but hey, it worked in her head, so why couldn't it work in reality?
She just imagined him coming in one day and telling her that he’d upset his wife by calling her name out in the middle of the night. He’d come up with some lame excuse to tell Juliet – his wife, like she needed to give him some information on a certain project they’d been working on together, and in his dream she hadn’t. But in reality, he’d actually dreamt of her appearing at his flat dressed in a pure white negligee, and after feeding him some food, she’d started sucking on his fingers, and he just trembled like a first-timer, an immature, in-experienced teenager. Of course they’d end up doing it on the sofa, her somehow managing to stay in that negligee. The morning would come, and they wouldn’t want to spoil their special friendship, or let his wife find out, so it would just be erased from their memories, until the next time they got stuck in a lift together.
"You need to get out of that stripy shirt and into my arms" she thought. Sweet dreams were made of this, you couldn't deny it, dreams were made up of bizarre attractions in the dark. Not that it was dark now, when she could still see him, right in front of her. Blondey greying hair, balding on top, but that didn't bother her. One of her friends had gone out with a 40 year old when she was 19 or something. Nothing bad had happened to them, except for the split up. But he was married, and there was nothing doing about that.
What did he see in her? Apart from the hair. Everyone went for her hair. She was the kind of girl that blokes opened doors for, and stood in awe as she walked in the room. She had a waistline that Barbie would kill for, and legs that co-ordinated with her arms. She walked like she owned the world, and the air that we all breathed, and so we should feel grateful to her for letting us breath. Her healthy tan would someday give her cancer we hoped, and her high heeled shoes would one day trip her up and make her fall flat on her face, ideally in a pile of mud, while dressed in a white dress.
But no, she strode across the room like a powerful eagle using her feminine guiles and beauty, along with a bit of feministic instinct to wangle her way in and out of any situation without a blunder or a stumble. Her eyes fixed on her next target.... Him. James didn't stand a chance against the influence of this woman, and before he knew it, and without even needing to use one syllabled words, he had found himself with a date for the night, and apparently he was taking her to Gino's, for dinner and wine and a fun time, but his head had no recollection of agreeing to this, and the massive bill that was inevitable at Gino's. Fun time? Where did he get that impression from? What had she said that made him think he was in for a fun time? Had she offered him definite sex? Sex on a plate? No questions asked, just get on with it and know there was a reward at the end of a saucy meal at Gino's? No. Was she going to dance the night away, flirting with every man who laid eyes on her? Most probably.
How had he got himself into this? His credit card was already reaching its maximum level, and he'd only asked for an increase in his credit limit two weeks ago. He'd turned down a weekend with his best friend in Bath, as he didn't have the money for the train let alone a boozey night out. And Rebecca from Finance had asked if he would like to go to the cinema with her, and he'd turned that offer down too. But he hadn't been able to turn Her down, her with the lips the colour of fresh Wimbledon strawberries, and hair like a shampoo advert.
Why him? Why now? Why couldn't she have waited till pay day?
She couldn't have an affair with her boss. That would be suicidal. But still there she stood waiting patiently in her strappy sandles and off the shoulder little black dress. Waiting for him to get off the phone to his wife. She sat swaying gently in the swivel chair, swinging her knees from side to side, lightly humming to herself some song she'd heard on the radio while getting dressed. Her toes tapped to a distant drum beat that no one could hear but her. He smiled at her over the edge of the telephone receiver. An almost smarmy smile that was covered in glycerine and as sickly sweet as honey sandwiches. Couldn't she see that she was being used?
He put down the phone and pulled himself out of his soft seat. The office had been empty since the clock had stuck 6pm. Everyone had better things to do that hang around their office all night. But here she was, 7pm, still in her boss' office, hoping for promotion. This was their second date. Not that he called them dates. He'd call them appointments if he could. She was doubling as a sales man from Bristol trying to flog computers or something, well, that was what he told his wife.
She had had enough of having second thoughts, and decided that there was no turning back now. As he approached her, she stood up confidently in her tight sadles, turned on her salesman charm and won him for the night. Profits soared.
I flicked the nose of the world and held it under till it drowned.
I kicked it in the face and pushed it to the ground
I strangled it with twisted cable till it could 'ug' no more.
And then I went and slammed its face in the door
Chorus:
The world deserved what it had coming to it
For treating me like shit
And once it was suffering like I have been
It could see what it had done to me
I fed the world stewed prunes, to see if it liked it too.
Then I pointed it to the 'ladies' to see the mess in the loos
I stabbed it in the eyes with the chewed end of my pen
And then I chopped off its fingers all of them one to ten
I poisoned the world with an ickle bottle of arsenic
I stuck my fingers down its throat to make it feel sick
I slit the wrists of the world and let the blood drip
And slowly with a blunt knife, severed its lips
The world was now splattered in blood and not a pretty sight
I ceased my savage brutality and stopped the fight
The world could now appologise for all that it had done
And I felt much better cos it had all been such fun
Her eyes always looked as if she had been crying, and yet, she was probably as happy as Larry inside. Who was this Larry person anyway, and was he hairy and scary? Her eyeliner and mascara made her eyes look small and gave the impression she was full of woe and the world may topple over and crush her very very soon.
Stood in three-quarter length trousers, and white top, decorated with breakfast, she was the office wallflower. She was the new girl.
But you could see her in Ibiza in a bikini dancing, arms flailing, laughing with people she knew. Her face was long and her cheekbones high, as she munched her way through a jam coated slice of toast.
She overacted naively when told something, waving her arms about like she really honestly couldn't believe what she'd just been told. And other times, her mouth would form an 'O' of shock when she realised there were things she hadn't done yet. Her long straight hair crept down her back, and she checked if her fingers smelt of the prawn cocktail flavoured crisps she had just neatly munched.
He’d mentioned handcuffs briefly in conversation, and she just envisioned it. Four poster bed, with black wrought iron corner posts, virginal white bedspread, with her hands roughly cuffed to the top two posts in tight fake metal handcuffs. She didn’t even fancy him. He was quite scary. And he was far too young. He looked far too young to know anything about bondage and PVC, but there he was, 21, long blonde hair, and each time she looked at him, she could only get the image of the bed, and him being in the room somewhere as she struggled.
She didn’t want him, but he made excellent fantasy material. The sort of thoughts she didn’t know if it was immoral to think, but figured it was just going on in her head, and she wasn’t really doing it, so it wasn’t really real, and she wasn’t doing anything she shouldn’t.
He wore a silver chain around his neck, and his tongue was pierced, which could prove interesting in a fantasy. His hair was tied back in a pony tail which brushed the top of his back, and unveiled his soft white neck. But take him out of the setting in which she was familiar with him, and take him to that room, where the handcuffs scraped at her skin slightly, and he was shirtless, in tight PVC trousers, his earrings glinting in the near darkness. He had these big eyes, which could probably alternate between being those of a scared wild creature and those of a savage animal.
She feared that if he brushed past her she might tremble and blush.
I sat at my desk wondering what I'd seen in him anyway. He was old. He had greying hair. He was married or gay or something anyway - they usually were. He'd settled into his job easily, and now lounged back in the lazy repose of a chameleon on a soft cushy green leaf. Of course, his green leaf swivelled and he only blended in with his surroundings because of his green shirt.
A Yukka plant stuck out of his head, well that was the perspective I had. I couldn't wait for the following week when he'd be gone. On holiday somewhere in Spain he'd said. Somewhere on a beach in Spain, with the sun shining down on him, he'd top up his non-existant tan, dance the night away with some woman in a bikini covering her like a lace doilley, and not covering the important parts, or some man with a deep tan, muscles up to his armpits and the singing ability of Barry Manilow, and be so drunk he would never realise it. Or perhaps he was too old for that. Maybe he'd just lounge on a lounger by the pool, while his 3 minature clones splashed annoying the other hotel residents. Either way, he'd be out of my hair soon.
He annoyingly offered to make a coffee. I'd get over him at some stage.
He was so sweet. He had this cute smile, and a giggle of soft mousey hair. He made her laugh, and that was all she needed to fall for him. He was so cute she just wanted to bundle him up and take him home to meet her parents, then mother him and smother him till he could no longer breath, and would only let him go if he promised he loved her. Love was most definately a scary thing for him, and with the chlostrophobic way she wanted him, he could see that it wouldn't be long before he'd have to start two timing her. He had this tendency to do that. Once a girl started getting clingy, he didn't have the heart to dump her, and wanted to make sure that he had got the right girl before he finally got round to dumping her, so when things started looking bleak, the started looking around for something new.
His newness came in the form of a blonde bossy girl at work - she had had her claws in every guy at the office's back except his to date. She'd even gone out with James, his mate, but he'd got abandonned at a club, and she never called him. Sounded just like what he needed. He'd heard that she wasn't the kind of girl that guys asked out, as she had the habit of beating them to it, but this time he was determined to ask her out and get accepted.
He would deal with Serina later.
His arms branched through his sleeveless T-shirt, a blue vein matching the cloth of his clothing snaked up his forearm. His green eyes stood out on his stark white skin, yet his soft pink lips and shaved armpits peeking out every now and then from the side of his rounded arms made her look at him and wonder. His hair tied back in a low pony tail, like a tapered waterfall, splashing on rocks at the base. She wanted to run her fingers through the mass of curls, or smooth her hand over his ghostly skin, but they had too much in common to afford a mistake like that.
Sleek. That's a word she'd use to describe him. The red logo on the back of his t-shirt caught her eye every time he walked across the room. He now had his back to her, sitting at his monitor, tapping away with a goblin grin she couldn't see.
He carefully folded a piece of paper that had been lying on his desk for the last 2 hours, and meaningfully placed it into a black cardboard box with minature writing scrawled on it, followed by a CD Rom that had mysteriously appeared out of nowhere. She just liked the shape of his arms as he leant on his desk.
A thin film of moss green sludge was lying on top of the vent on the ceiling of the ladies toilet. It looked as if it may slip down and land with a ‘squidge’ sound on the cold linoleum floor, if the air conditioning got turned up any higher. The light whirr of a distant fan or possibly even the air conditioning was the only sound, as double doors protected the toilets from the world outside. It enabled you to know when someone was entering or leaving the room, as the doors squeaked slightly then clanged on their hinges. The lady on the picture on the front of the outside door probably shuddered each time she saw someone coming towards her for fear of the wobbling starting again.
The air was getting tighter in the confines of the cubicle. It was clubbing together to form larger molecules that refused to be breathed in. She gasped and gripped her stomach as she sat leaning forward on the black-seated toilet. She’d had to wait to be alone. People had inconsiderately come into the ladies while she was in agony, and wanting to shout out loud, or at least moan. However, it seemed she had picked the rush hour in the ladies, so she held her breath and tried to be as silent as possible. She didn’t know if she wanted to be seated on the toilet or bent over it. She was hot. She’d already taken off her shirt, and remained in a small vest top. Sweat dripped from her forehead in a very unwomanly manner.
If anyone had seen her, they would have thought her close to death. Her dark skin had whitened if that was possible. She felt dizzy, and the tiny spots on the roof tiles were doing nothing to improve her disposition. This hadn’t happened to her since she was 18. Maybe it was a once every 10 years thing, now that she was approaching 28, it was time for another session of faintness and sickness. Now she was alone, she didn’t want to scream in pain, just a nauseous feeling overcame her, and she changed her position, so that she was bent over the bowl. She hadn’t eaten enough for breakfast to be sick – she’d had an apple and that was it. How could she possibly be sick, but no, here it came, that feeling that someone had wrenched a plunger into her stomach and pumped it, and now everything, including her bowels was going to come out. But as she opened her mouth, expecting a torrent, only a scratch down her throat seemed to appear, but nothing of substance. She tried standing upright, but this had the wrong effect, and soon she was leaning over again, with a head-rush to join the sickness.
An over acidic compilation of tea and sour apple emitted in a pale green splurge, which only lasted a couple of seconds, as there wasn’t enough in her stomach to expel any more. She cleared her throat to remove any excess bile. A trickle of dribble had made it’s way out of the corner of her mouth and down her chin. Dragging out half a roll of toilet paper, she pulled the scrunched up ball of tissue to her mouth and wiped it clean. She felt cold.
She knew she wasn’t pregnant, as a) it wasn’t morning and b) she hadn’t had sex in an awful long time. She put it down to being the wrong time of the month, and that once every 10 years she’d have a really bad wrong time of the month when her stomach begged to be ripped out, and her head left her body and started dancing the fandango on ice. It was just one of those things, but she was glad when it was over, and she still looked bad enough to be allowed to go home early from work.
That was all I needed an 18 year old clinging on to him. I mean, 18? I’m going to be 10 years older than her next year. God that makes me feel old. How do you compete with a nubile teenager? I mean I’m nearly 30 for Christ’s sake. Ahhhh and being blasphemous too!!
He’ gone a bit quiet now he’s with her. He didn’t radiate in the meeting we just came out of. Not that I object, he probably just hasn’t had time to warm up yet today, or he’s still stunned that he’s with someone despite saying that he wasn’t going to, but did afterall. I never actually saw what it was I saw in him. Something younger, that’s probably what. I mean 21, that’s like a whole generation younger. It’s like he missed the 70s completely, I only caught a snippet, but it was enough to make me older and wiser. And why? Why did I feel like this, when he means nothing to me… Oh Vienna!! Ahhhhh out of italic, feels good. I need a cup of tea.
I needed a haircut, or a deep pore cleanse or something just to give me a boost for the day. My arms were killing from the torture I endured with Cindy Crawford the previous night. Cindy was on video, I was on the floor. And flowers. What was with flowers today. That was like the 2nd bouquet I’d seen now – one had just been carried in by a girl across the office from me, and the other had been sitting in a bucket in the ladies toilet. Was love in bloom or something?
Younger men. Was it a phase that older women went through? How long did it last for? When would we see sense or rationality again? It wasn’t even a crush, he was just a substitute for a billion other bundles of testosterone lurching around the office. I mean 21 was like the youngest guy I got off with when I was 25, and I felt old then. What was up with me?
He worked great in my dreams, but I knew that it would all fall apart if I ever even tried to bring it into reality. I think I think of him as being a completely different person. I think he may have a couple of cells of maturity in him when I day dream. He may even have a bit of respect for women and sensitivity locked in there when he’s in my head, whereas in reality, God knows what he’s like.
I mean, I used to take the piss out of my friend for going out with someone a year younger than her. I used to be older man woman – I slept with a 48 year old for heaven’s sake. I can’t suddenly want a younger man. Nearly said woman there – that would have been even more Freudian!! A 48 year old verses a 21 year old. If you’d asked me 2 years ago, I would have gone for the older version, but, I’m kind of in a new model kind of mood. Not that I’d do anything about it, just the way my mind is thinking at the mo.
Was it completely unhealthy to do this? To lead a double life, where my head thought one thing, and my body retaliated and did the sensible one? I mean, I’m like ecstatically happy in reality, but finding out that he had someone else kind of knocked my mental world off balance for a second.
Part of me wanted to take my brain out and scrape it clean of any thoughts of him, and carry on being friends without the When Sally met Harry philosophy that men and women can not be friends because the sex thing always gets in the way. He didn’t even know what I was thinking, so I didn’t have that out there feeling I’d had after I told Andrew that I fancied him.
Another attempt at romantic trash
Eyes wondering across the open-plan office, Sarah's attention landed on the back of Rick's neck. He was sat at his desk, on the other side of the room, diagaonal from her, beyond the pillars, near to a pink duck someone had on their monitor. His dark hairline ended, leaving a stripe of pale pink flesh before disolving into a grey t-shirt. Rick's gelled hair stood up in small spikes on his head, and his arms were poised for typing emails. She felt a burning sensation in her stomach that she knew wasn't indigestion, but that tingly feeling she got when she was turned on.
Her mind started wondering off to yesterday's events. She'd gone outside the office block for a cigarette with Rick around eleven in the morning. They'd stood under the covered car park. He poised himself, resting on a yellow metal post that seperated the parking spaces, she had leant a short distance from him against the cool wall. It was a scorching day - Sarah had started falling asleep at her desk, and was grateful when Rick had come over to go out for a cigarette, so she could get some fresh air.
Rick had been wearing his white T-shirt with red sleeves - Sarah had never before bothered to pay attention to what he was wearing, and she'd worked with him for nearly a year, but now, now it was different. His dark blue jeans fit loosley around his bum, mainly because he had a small and firm arse.
He'd been quiet in the lift on the way down from the 5th floor, which made a change. Sarah had asked what was the matter. He said he couldn't really tell her. She was about to let it lie, when she suddenly blurted out "Why?"
"It's about ....you." He mumbled.
Intregued, she wanted to know more. He could see that he wasn't going to get let off lightly now he'd said that it was about her, so he explained, "Look, this is going to sound corney and it's not a pick up line or anything, but I had a dream about you last night."
She'd heard that before as a line - it was corney, but it wasn't necessarily a corney dream. Rick, although he was single, and constantly going on about the fact that he was smitten by some woman or the other that he met in a nightclub, would never think of her in that way. He went for red-heads to start with, and her long brown hair didn't really fit in with his type.
Rick stood up, half a cigarette hanging from his mouth. His blue eyes looking straight at her, he walked towards her. "You're not going to want to hear this," he warned her. He could see from her eyes that she was too involved now for him not to go through with it. "OK, I don't know exactly where we were or anything, but I think it was outside somewhere and I was... kissing you.... and you were kissing me back....and I just woke up really out of breath and hot."
"Hot? or Hot?" She'd wanted to ask, but the words were stuck in her throat.
He went into overflow on the explaination. "I wasn't going to say anything, but then I found that whenever I came over to talk to you in the office, I just couldn't look you in the eye, so I'm sorry, but I had to say something. I know it's terrible to burden other people with insignificant dreams, but I had to." Without realising it, Rick had walked right up to Sarah and was now only centimeters away from her body.
Mike, Sarah's boyfriend was over in Germany, "on business" with a group of immature lads with whom he worked, and she missed him terribly, mainly because she hadn't had sex in over a week now. Sarah had never thought of Rick as anything more than a colleague and friend - he'd been there for her when Mike had gone away to a stag weekend in Amsterdam, and took her out for a drink to take her mind off it, even though she'd just gone on and on about Mike all night. Rick probably just wanted to tell her about the dream and get it out of his system, probably had no intention of re-enacting it in real life. Or did he?
Rick was right in front of her now, his cigarette stub still smoldering in his hand. Saying nothing, he just leant forward a tiny bit more, and their noses almost touched. His spare hand reached up to her shoulder, and his lips met with hers. At first an alarm bell was ringing in her head saying "Mike!! Mike!!! What about Mike?!!", but after Rick's tongue probed between her lips, her body had disabled the alarm and was telling her just to go with it.
Rick's cigarette dropped to the floor, and his hand snaked its way around her waist, as he pulled her in closer. His body pressed up against her, and his lips kissed harder. The hand on her shoulder made it's way down to meet her hand, then clutched it and pushed it up against the wall above her head.
Her head had gone unconcious, yet her body was loving every moment of it. It was so wrong, yet felt so right. Her head forgot completely about Mike, and she just wanted to enjoy every second with Rick.
His body was tight up against Sarah's. Until now, her arms had been strapped to her sides, but now she wanted to touch him, to feel and hold him closer to her. She wanted his touch, and felt her whole body being taken over with lust and trembling as his fingers stroked her back and tangled themselves in her hair.
Footsteps echoed at the entrance to the carpark, grabbing her hand she pulled her towards a darker corner of the carpark, alongside someone's metalic blue Golf GTI. Shaking like petrified rabbits in a lorry's headlights, they froze, and watched one of their colleagues hop into their car.
"We'd better get back in. I've got a meeting with Sophie in half an hour," he whispered.
Silently and reluctantly, she nodded and followed him back to the lift.
Sarah leant back in her swivel chair and remembered the lift ride.
I miss him sometimes, but not in the same way I used to miss Phillip. I used to miss Phillip with a passion when he wasn't in work. Then he got a girlfriend and I just gave up. I think I miss he romance of what Jason is in my head, and without him around to see, it becomes more and more difficult to place him in my fantasies, and eventually that man in Vienice putting his coat round my shoulders as I stand in a long sleevless dress watching the sun set probably isn't even him anymore, just an imaginary person, just someone who is way more romantic and way more irrisistable than he ever could be. Besides, I'm not even me in my fantasies, I'm this thing thing who can walk in heels and looks smart casual in a trouser suit, rather than looking ready to go to an interview. I think I'm over him now.
