by Hannah Wood
I've decided to live lateral lives. Like parallel lines where nothing gets criss-crossed and twisted and complicated. It means I can have a boyfriend at home...who I love. A boyfriend is like a British student bank account overdraft facility. It's there for free, you don't have to work for it, you can extend the limit if you pretend you're responsible to the understanding employee on the end of the help line, AND it's always there as a back up- you have a ready-made excuse not to snog someone without telling them that you don't find them attractive. Ideal.
Not sure how to organize it, but it's a great plan for life.
I can go roller-skating with the boy I met on the BART when the trains were stopped for a medical emergency (must have been fate, even though I'm not sure I believe in it). When we changed trains he came and sat by me. YES. He had the cool of someone who has a girlfriend, but in the convulsions of a railway journey we skied the turquoise arc of a rainbow. Maybe it was the trusty beer goggles and the thick rush of pre- party cocaine (plus the neat Jack Daniels that us raggedy Londoners were swigging out of a brown paper bag) but we had a gap-between-records moment (hope I didn't breathe drunken breath in his face, also hope my eyes weren't rolling like Seb's were...). He had bed head hair too, and he looked like he sung in a rock band, and he said he would walk the roller coaster hills of San Francisco with me one night- all night. His voice was really gentle, like he was singing to a guitar. I'm hoping he lives in the city because I really want a romance behind one of those bay windows that are suspended in the sky. They always have wooden blinds and look like the mattress lies hot on the floor just out of sight. Then the days I'm not seeing him, (nb. must remember not to fall in love with him, yet...keep it casual at first...), I could sit on the clock tower steps with the girl in my class with the shielded eyes and let the 3 o clock sunlight give our folded- against-the- steps bodies a photograph sheen. That song "I can see clearly now the rain has gone" plays in my head when I think of her. Airless beats that sound like the smell of morning when you first step outside on a blue-sky day. In the hours I'm not with her talking about queer theory and getting excited about the world not meaning what its taken for granted to mean I could have that threesome I was offered as Lynn's "person she's in lust with." But then Lynn said she wanted to fuck Marco up the arse with a strap on, but only if he was gay- she wanted a gay guy to want her. I'd never thought about being able to fuck a guy before, it always seemed like the one thing that that was biologically impossible. It was the unspoken thing between me and Greg, the one thing I could never do for him, a way for him to deny he ever was ever truly involved with me...hmmm, revelation...I'd never though of that before, and, like everyone else, I've dedicated A LOT of time to thinking about sex. I thought I'd covered all bases. The more I think about it though the more 'normal' it becomes...that's always the way...Subversion gets dissolved by familiarity. DAMNIT! Hate the word normal. What a crap word. It's so absurdly normal. It's like a supermarket receipt; everyone gets it thrust upon them. How you treat the supermarket receipt says a lot I reckon. My mum folds it in her purse after unpacking the plastic bags then runs up stairs and uses it to balance her accounts. Some people check it there and then in case they've been charged 50p too much. Never understood that-what a waste of time. Some people feel like they ought to hold onto it out of guilt so put it somewhere (a pocket, in their desk draw) and never look at it again but build up a collection of worthless paper that they try and pretend isn't there but they're sure might be of importance one day. Something they can use at court as evidence for their case. Others leave it at the bottom of the trolley to be carried somewhere by the wind until it disintegrates in the rain. Others screw it up and throw it in the bin just before the automatic doors let them out of the world of 'buy one get one free' jubilated repeated faces. Anyway, back to Lynn... She could be my accomplice on a sleep absent weekend. We'd stay awake till we hallucinated and felt sides of ourselves we have never known (and might never know again) then we'd drink booze for breakfast, and I'd catch the bus back to my lateral lives. Where I could even touch lips with the young guy who talks like an over packed poem on speed. The guy I met on a Saturday night in the lonely hearts club of the library, where your ideal dates are the people who don't talk to you, but silently climb into time mottled pages and add their invisible fingerprints to the journey of a life on loan. I had a crush on him for that half an hour that he let me lead him around the campus when the heat had left and the mist was simmering around the tree trunks and the sky was salivating black ink. We seemed to salsa towards the life sciences building to check out the bone T-Rex, but the building locked us out. It didn't stop us though. We determinedly recited lines about the best minds of our generation and the children of our revolution and how people change the way you live life. He said the moon looked like a wonky compass hole in a black sheet of paper. Like the universe was a seven year old student's science homework. Perfect.
On to the next moment... One day I'm gonna meet eyes with someone in the Morrison lounge and hold the gaze to the point that it makes me nervous. Somehow, I haven't quite worked out how yet, I'll get them to follow me to a deserted section of the corridor and we'll kiss without ever having talked. If only...If fucking only... I could break out of the sticky cyber web of email communication with the man that's made me into my worst nightmare. I'm like a Mills and Boons female touching my hair and lips when I'm sat near him. DAMNIT! Like him far too much for my own good and for the good of my plan. And I just can't tellhis emails are too cloaked in metaphor and allusions to medieval texts that I've never read. I wish there weren't so many computers around, I feel like I'm hooked up to them by intravenous drip. I must check if he's send a message 20 times a day...every hour in the back of my mind I'm waiting for the heart flip when I see his name in my inbox. DAMNIT! I should be banned from computers, especially when I get drunk, that's it once you've clicked on the send button you can hardly chase down the horseman delivering the letter like you could in the old days. I think I love spontaneity...but somehow receiving someone's drunken professions at 8am in the morning when your stone cold sober is not seductive. 'Don't let the signifiers loose,' I should tattoo that on the back of my hand to remind me in states of intoxicated reasoning. ARGH! I want to play that song to him... I've been watching your world from a far. I've been trying to see who you are. And I've been secretly falling apart. You're strange and you're beautiful, to me. You're strange and you're beautiful. Everything else I have some control over. I can see it all plainly. Nicely organized parallel lines like a different flavoured sweet in the each of the different pockets of my suede jacket. He distracts me from my project. I want to be in an elevator with him. An elevator that's endless, a big one, like the one in the Doe library that's a silver planet. I'd lean into him and we'd slide up and down the inner veins of the building, behind the soft metal doors that sway open and close conspiratorially, like the lid of a treasure chest whose insides are dripping with glitter. We'd be in limbo, a capsuled moment that is hidden inside something bigger. A literal earth moving, stomach with elves dancing in it, breathlessness that no one can see.
But I mustn't get too involved. I mustn't let him change my plan. If I keep to the lateral lives it'll be nice and simple. I'll just check my email...