At the pathetic dissolution of his last relationship he chastised himself for deigning to bother with a girl who was not Iris Murdoch. Or Camille Paglia. Or you.
He liked your play. It wasn't brilliant. It won a minor award and got staged in a provincial town to decent reviews, and it wasn't brilliant. It was crippled, it was heart-felt. The latter invariably trumps the former. You were not afraid and you were scared shitless. Vulnerable and disarming. Words are treacherous like that, the little bastards.
Putting yourself in your heroine's clothes to get viciously stripped later on spelled masochism. And boy, did that work. He got off on watching you get off on debasing yourself. A guerilla centrefold of a girl in a pretty 32-letter wordsuit staged and shot against a raw verbal palette. Dogme 95 for the literati. No artificial lighting. CGI strictly verboten. He underlined all the times you used "naked". (Three.) You place them skillfully and sparingly, like explosives in an underground parking lot.
Your play wasn't brilliant and yet he had read it more times than it warranted, in a not altogether futile attempt to hunt down and wrestle fractured hints of who you really are from between the lines, always on the lookout for tensions and anxieties, writerly tics, reconstructing the bits that made you smile, shift your thighs nervously, press your lips together, clench your small sweaty fists, put on an evil half-grin you regretted nobody would see.
He smiled at how you twisted your jaw in the photo to conceal the zit blazing proudly from beneath the thick layer of foundation. In an interview you downplayed having slaved on some shitty TV series for truckloads of money. No shame in that really. We all do this from time to time. Some of us do it all the time. We are all prostitutes. You like money, obviously. You choose the dresses that end up wrapping your halcyon thighs wisely and apply that make-up with care and attention. (The eyeliner could be a bit subtler, though.) You come across a bit spoilt. You go to spas and, as he heard you mention offhandedly — though not offhandedly enough — have your bikini-line waxed by a professional. You like being pampered. You are a social animal. You flirt all the time; though, to his dismay, with everybody. You lubricate your conversations properly. You act cleverer than you are — and do it well. (He always acts dumber — much easier.) You are still plenty clever though, way too clever to be poor, not to mention way too attractive. No, scratch that. Beautiful. You will never have to endure hardship. Not in this world, anyway. Later, I'm not so sure, but for now you're safe. Good for you, he thought, surprised how mild the obligatory caress of envy was. Then you mentioned you'd just moved in with your boyfriend. A proper playwright, you said with a hint of enforced irony and thinly disguised pride. He'd seen his plays. They were proper all right. And utter shit.
He was glad he could lend you his Extras DVDs, and you gave him your number so he could call you to retrieve them. He never did, though. (Or did he?)
He offered to lend you his Glamorama (Knopf hardcover, first edition, major crush), bookmark-shaped love letter included. "Susan Goldman, who has cervical cancer, is partly thankful as she braces herself but changes her mind as she's sprayed with burning jet fuel." underlined in pink pencil. It's one of his favourites, heavy, hardcore. It's not easy to untangle, a bit like life, he'd quip in a sagely tone, and just as fascinating and cruel and heartless. He likes his books heavy and hardcore. He likes his books tough and alienating and unreadable and exotic and brilliant. He likes them feisty. You tried to pretend you could read English, and he told you not to worry, he'd translate it for you. And fetch it on a silver platter, if need be. You told him you struggled to quit smoking and he almost said: "It doesn't bother me". He almost said: "I'll start, if you want me to". He almost said: "Teach me instead". He almost said: "Let me breathe your smoke".
He told you his novel got rejected by every decent publishing house out there. You asked what it was about. Sadism. Love. Everything. You. But in the end he just weakly said "Life", to which you flashed an encouraging little smile, a private one, just for him, and he thought — not without amazement — it was still worth writing 300-odd pages for that alone.
That night he masturbated furiously and the orgasm structured around your clothed boyish hips was rubbery and angry and weak and somehow triumphant. He drifted to sleep feeling ludicrous and redeemed.
Bear with me now. Here comes the tricky part.
I am you. You are him. Does that make things any simpler? Didn't think so.