This commemorates the beginning of Trash Romance November, all trash all the time! Enjoy, cross you legs, say a prayer if you need too ; )
The Beginning of the End
To describe what sex was like with Justin, in a word, would be dutiful. I jokingly referred to it as hate sex, because I hated it. But so much else was right, 99.9% perfect. But that 0.1% ended up being essential and its absence fatal. I was with Justin for 6 years.
I had an affair during my time with Justin, a relationship within a relationship.
Mick was my friend long before I met Justin. Only physically for a very short time, we were both cowards, always in love with each other but to scared to do anything about it. Both afraid of being alone, we were personalities that needed people.
He was beautiful, dark eyes, dark hair, and fair skin, tall and cheeky. He had a childishness about him that I loved, we would sit in crowded smoky pubs together, not touching each other but talking about what we would do if we could. He would giggle and his shoulders would rise and fall, a mischievous grin spread across his face and you see the devil in his eyes. You could physically feel the sexual tension between us. I became adept at wearing tight jeans and crossing my legs in his company, making myself orgasm publicly.
Justin never made me feel like that. Never. So many nights, eyes closed tight, physically with Justin but mentally with Mick.
I had just met Justin and perhaps I needed someone to slow me down, my lifestyle was heady, self-destructive and unsustainable. Justin was a roadblock.
Mick came to the beach house, that I rented with two girls, as he usually did. He hadn’t met Justin before. We went for a walk to get cigarettes and I said,
“So, do you like him?”
“Who? That dude, who is he.”
“That’s my new beau! He’s really cool. Do you like him?”
“That guy is your boyfriend?” His shoulders dropped and he stopped walking.
We walked the rest of the way with an air of discomfort. It was late and we were walking through a park on the way back from the service station.
Sit with me, he said. Can I kiss you?
To this day, I wish I had said yes. I don’t know what difference it would have made to where I
am and who I am today, maybe a lot, maybe none. But I wish I had said yes.
Mick was in a long-term relationship with a girl named Jill and it was on the rocks. Jill knew this. Our friendship had developed on the back of the fact that he hated being at home and we both hated being at University. He was always at the beach house. He was failing law and I was failing communications.
Both over privileged, we had what seemed like mountains of disposable income and even more time. Mooching in cafes all day, hanging out in antique stores and galleries, listening to records.
Jill rang me one night, a desperate woman. She loved him and a little like Justin and I they were 99.9% perfect and 0.1% doomed. She was beautiful but she wasn’t very bright, Mick would refer to her as a little “I” intellectual. She screamed at me down the telephone, not pausing for breath or to even make any sense, she cried and she begged and she pleaded with me to leave him alone. What she didn’t realise was that I had no control over Mick, I didn’t demand he spend so much time with me, it was his choice.
I wish I had said yes that night. I hadn’t known Justin that long, I could have gone back and said goodbye to Justin, taken Mick to bed and never let him go.
There were many reasons I said no, moral high ground, emotional immaturity, a desire not to hurt Jill or Justin. But mainly fear that if we ended up together, one day I would be the crazed bitch screaming down someone’s telephone.
Someone did take Mick up on his offer, however, about a year later. Her name was Alice.
The story goes that Jill came back from work early and Alice and Mick had been having a covert affair for some months. Alice, naked, had to run out the back of their terrace house, she
would later show me the scratches from getting stuck in a lantana bush trying to escape. Mick had been busted. But he wanted to be busted. It was his get out of jail free card. Like a bad romantic drama Jill threw all of Micks possessions off the veranda and into the gutter.
In a strange perverted way Mick and I continued our unrequited romance as part of a team of four. Alice and Mick, Saffron and Justin. We would do dinner, have regular weekend drinks, and bump into each other in town and exchange pleasantries. Alice would confide in me about her concerns about her new relationship with Mick. I was Judas. I would listen, smile, and reassure her that Mick loved her and only her.
When I was 9 months old my dad had me in his arms in a greengrocer near our house on the central coast of NSW. Dad would always tell me this story.
An elderly woman came up to him, as people do, to play with the cute little baby. Dad describes her as pagan looking. Apparently she wore her hair grey, long and wild. She had a long flowing dress with flowers on it and so many beads around her neck that Dad said she jingled when she walked. She greeted my young father with a smile and walked around behind him to cradle my little fingers and look at my face. I was told that she recoiled in horror and wouldn’t touch me, she looked at my dad with genuine fear, was physically trembling and left him with a warning, “ be careful with that one, that child has the devil in her eyes.”
Dad found it terribly amusing and thought the woman mad.
I have always known that she was right. The only thing that saves a person with the devil in their eyes is their propensity for polar emotions. Extremes. When this type of person hates they are the capable of inflicting the most sinister pain and feel little if no remorse, they are as comfortable telling lies as they are the truth and they can rationalise the most incredible selfishness. But when they love, they are capable of bringing more joy and passion than one can even put words to.
I loved Mick.
We knew we were living a lie, but we were both liars. Liars are comfortable living lies. It was only when he got drunk that he could take no more. He was jealous, he would tell me, of Justin and of my friendship with Alice. Perhaps it was too close for comfort. He stormed out of my birthday party one year and I told Justin and Alice not to worry, I would bring him back. I ran down the street after him,
“I can’t stand this,” he screamed, always so much passion in all of our exchanges.
“Come back, its my birthday, please don’t leave me on my birthday.” I am Judas, no regard for Alice, all about me.
“No Saffron,”
bluntly delivered, “I’m getting out of here, I can’t do this anymore, I can’t!”
He turned to walk away and I grabbed his arm. In a crowded city street I kissed him. Four years after he first asked me too. We were 100m from the hotel where all our friends and respective partners were. I didn’t care! I didn’t care if anyone saw us! I didn’t care if all of them saw us! I almost wish someone had! He smiled at me, I remember his eyes clear as day, and after four long years he got what he wanted. He was almost shocked.
“Did you just do what I think you did?” He managed.
“Shit, oh shit, shit,” was all I could say as I realised I had opened Pandora’s box and I knew what I had started.
“Stop swearing at me,” and he put his hand on my cheek, pulled me to him and kissed me again.
I remember how he felt. He said he would take a walk and come back to the party. He loved me too.
I went home with Justin and had hate sex, but with more enthusiasm and my eyes tightly closed. I had just turned 23.
...to be continued
