ideal life.

it starts in the morning. i am asleep in bed. the room is all white linen and bright white light. the bed is low to the floor and there is a floor to ceiling window on the left hand side. i wake up slowly and stretch. my toes brush against the legs of the man in the bed with me. he lies on his front buried in the sheets, black hair poking out.

i get up quietly and put on some clothes, no shoes. the plain wood floorboards are hot under the sunlight. i make my way down the first flight of stairs. out the front door. its early and it is Sunday , everyone with half a brain is still in bed recovering. on the corner is the tiny shop that smells eternally of curry and parsley.

one Sunday guardian, twenty camel lights and two oranges later i am back at my door. it’s neon blue, something i thought would be cool at the time, but everyone hates. bah.

in my living room, there are bookshelves reaching up the high ceilings. a dark grand piano with more books on it. i haven’t played years, but he insisted it come with him when he moved in. piles and piles of notebooks on the desk next to it, covered in my weird black chicken scratch that no one can read. half a dozen black pens and various ink stains that will never come out of the wood.

i sit cross-legged on the floor in front of the long white couch. there is a ritual to reading the Sunday papers you know. i take every section out and lay them on the right, fanned out like a deck of cards. the ashtray goes on top of them, then the oranges. i have to spread the paper out like a small boy from the 50s with a comic, as i’ve never been able to do that foldy broadsheet professional bollocks.

oranges and cigarettes and current affairs. then i hear him get out of bed up on the third floor. he’ll be standing at the mirror on the dresser right now. convinced he looks like an old man more and more every day. we drank an obscene amount of red wine last night so he probably looks worse than he should.

ive got half an orange in one hand and crush the last of my cigarette out with the other. he gets to the front room. he wears a white shirt, open. the one with the massive collar that i mock him so for. skinny spiders legs that he hates and i love.

he collapses into the couch and stretches his foot out to tickle my exposed back with his toes. i look back at him over my shoulder, orange still in hand.

To My Famous Lover’s Wife

What does it feel like to know that I am in love with your husband? Better yet, that he is in love with me? That same man who dressed you in white and laid a rose on your mouth when he took your virginity on your wedding night? He told me about that once, with the air of someone embarrassed by the excesses and naiveté of youth. Told me as I dragged my nails across that tattoo on his right arm. Dragged on a cigarette. I do believe I laughed at your clichéd teenage attempt at romanticism.

How long have you known about me now? Have you held onto this secret nugget of doubt for months, hoping that your overactive imagination and stagnated social skills have created this all in your overtired mind? How long have you been collecting little clues here and there? A hushed midnight phone call here, a missed appointment there. It all adds up eventually. You should have acted sooner you know, he really thought you had no idea. He gave you less credit than even I did. By waiting though, you do realise that you’ve given him enough time to become totally unable to live without me. Who could blame him?

How do you come to terms with the fact that he is now naked and pale with his one leg escaping the sharp white cotton edge of my bed, as if he were at home in your familial nest. As if any minute now one of your gross little sticky brats will come in, and ruin my idea. Disgusting little children, I am glad I will never have to see them. Little jam paws and no discipline. Raised by one who thinks nannies are the height of parenting. How proud you must be. I imagine they’ll grow up to be fantastically awful people. Your son will womanise, drive a poor man’s sports car and snort cheap cocaine in an awful London club with a D-List celebrity. Your daughter a half naked tit model with a bad nose job and a gleam in her eye. Can you not just see it now!

Do you ever just sit and watch him. I guess you don’t have the time for that anymore. Have you ever drawn the same conclusion about that contrast of his black hair against the sheets, in that it is the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen. Long alien limbed, I find it infinitely amusing how his legs are too long for my wonderful bed. Doesn’t he have the most amazing wrists! How can you not have spent hours taking in every fucking part of him in fractal detail. I acknowledge my own urge to run my tongue across every inch of his skin. Get down on my knees and inspect every hair, every cut and wrinkle on him.

Did you ever sit across him, silhouetted in bright London window, in nothing but your favourite high heels, and trace the shape of his eyes in thick black kohl. Rolled dice around your mouth ringed with wet wanton red. Did he ever chase you under tables and over chairs all to do simply awful things to you. Got you wound up so tight the sweat on the small of your back felt like lead, and that there was a fist slowly twisting in your stomach. It must have been years since you felt that way. When did you last kiss him on the mouth. When did you last come? Have you ever lifted that heavy gold cross from his chest with strong white pearls of teeth, and watched him watch your mouth around that most holy false relic aware of every second of your lips on that metal.

I’ll bet you think I’m lying. That no man would touch me the way they do you. You being the pretty one. The fancy one. The centre of attention one. Thinking that there are no angles and hipbones and legs draped over back of chairs in my world. Just because no one fawns over me and takes my picture with wet white lighting. You probably don’t even know, that I know about the way his eyebrow arches when he gets embarrassed. Do you think I’ve never witnessed the way his bottom lip turns out like that when he smokes a cigarette?

You must think about me a lot. Where did he meet me. When did he first fuck me. Fuck me. Does your mind even let you use words like fuck? You probably call it making love or something equally as stale. I bet you’ve never been FUCKED in your whole life. Maybe that one time, the only time you were drunk, and even then you probably don’t remember much except swearing never to drink wine again the next morning. You probably wonder how I am so young, yet have a mind like mine. You never thought children could be so very devious. Stealing him like that. Stealing! I think the fact you thought he was yours in the first place was the root of your problems my dear. No one owns anything.

There was probably a time he would write songs about you. Sad songs about love, happy songs about your death. Now he just wishes you’d go away and stop bothering him. I’d hate to be that resented. It must come as a shock. Once a cheater always a cheater I hear you shout! Of course he will do the same to me one day, the only difference being I do not care. I love him right now, or for the next five minutes. You don’t see me walking down an isle and sacrificing my hips to give him children though, do you? I am the fix for now until the next young high breasted sharp eyed chain smoking writer-girl comes along. The difference between you and I is that I, never trusted your husband. He is deceitful and suspicious and everything that is good in the world.

He asked me today if I hate you. I had to pause for a long while before admitting that I don’t give enough thought about you, to hate you. At the most, I wonder how you became so bitter. But then, I look at you from the outside. Who knows, you may have been just like me years ago, before the bitter bitch shell smacked down over you. You may have laughed and drank red wine till it made your teeth black, and smoked a million roll ups on after another until your fingers never quite get their color back. You maybe snorted a thousand different drugs and stayed up for three days straight discussing Camus and Dorothy Parker with people you do not know. Perhaps you’ve slept with boys and girls and everyone in between after so many parties and after so much gin that you stopped counting after the first embarrassing milestone. So much excess that you feel like a parody of yourself. Then again, perhaps not.

You may not have lived, but at least you’re still thin.

I don’t really feel bad about you two. I definitely don’t feel sorry for your children. Maybe that makes me a fucking bitch, but the way I see it, the further they are away from me the better. Of course I find it amusing to hear about him coming home to you, being the doting father. Bringing gifts back from the business tour with tales of hardship and rock and roll. Of course I missed you. I love you. I love you. Do you feel sick to see him touch your daughter’s hair like that. Ask your son about his new gadget toy. Act interested and loving. Do you not just see him every goddamn second screwing someone else? Can you not see his face twisted and sweating, those dark brows heading south, mouth formed into another’s name? Don’t you see his lip at my breast, hand and mouth devouring more than either could alone.

If I were you I wouldn’t be able to stand it. I would want to scream at him, tear at his eyes with my Korean manicured nails. How dare he do this after all I’ve DONE for him. Your beautiful children, your beautiful home, everything you’ve built together. What will people think. Your brother is going to kill him. Your sister will cry for you, tell you he’s a rotten bastard fuckwit, but all the while, some secret part of her will be burning white with bitter happiness. You always got the best things you know.


Like they say, it’s always the quiet ones you should look out for.