Juliet creeps into my room while I make sure the front door is locked. It’s been a boozy night, and so I can’t remember how she knows which room is mine. I find it a bit strange that she would know which door it is, as we haven’t done this for months, and the last time was the first time.
I take a few seconds at the mirror in the hallway before following her in. My face looks fake, too dry and angular to be human. I stare into my eyes but that scares me even more, the pupils dilating and constricting at differing times and the icy blue iris looks like a colour from what was the future in the seventies. I straighten my hair and clear my throat. My voice has a habit of getting stuck in a high pitch if I don’t, and it unsettles me that I can sound so entirely unlike myself.
I turn the hallway light off and walk into my room; a mess of clothes and empty cans surround the two islands that are the bed and the desk. Juliet sits on the bed, leaning on her forearms in a sickly seductive manner. Her smile is managing to reach from ear to ear without showing any teeth, and the only light source is a desk-lamp that lights her from the side, accentuating a shadow the bridge of her nose casts over one eye. She pats the bed beside her as if this is romantic and clichés can be overlooked. She’s still holding the smile and I tell her I’ll come over in a second.
I open up my laptop to put some music on but the only songs that really grab me are things that don’t set any of the right moods. I really want to listen to Adam Green or The Birthday Party but I know she won’t get it, so I put on the last LCD Soundsystem album. She stills asks what it is, so I just tell her and don’t go into it. I really wish she would leave. I am already tired of this dance.
I sit on the bed next to her, and she starts playing with my hand. She’s sucking my fingers and looking up at me from where she’s lying. This is all about as sexy as a car crash it’s so blunt, and I sort of hate myself for liking it on a physical level. I go to get some drinks, remembering I have a bottle of wine that’ll hopefully put her over the edge. She doesn’t let go of my hand until the last moment, and I have to make a smile that suggests this is what I want.
Now I’m in the kitchen with two clean cups and half a bottle of white wine and I’m annoyed that this is not what I want. I know I should, she’s sort of beautiful in the right light, if her fringe covers the scar on her forehead. I left the nightclub to the smiling faces of men I don’t know who seemed happy for me so why do I feel like this? I shake it off. I’m going back in there with a positive attitude, and after a couple of mouthfuls of wine in the kitchen I head back in. She’s sort of beautiful I repeat in my head. She’s sort of beautiful.
I walk in with the two mugs of white wine and I don’t spot her at first because she’s under the duvet. I take a swig and ask what she’s doing, in a light-hearted way. She just smiles. I don’t know what to do so I hand her one of the mugs and go to sit at the desk. Staring at the floor to avoid the day-to-day shrapnel I spot her black dress, her blue cardigan, pink pieces of underwear. My stomach jumps a little bit, but that might be from the wine. The stomach jump is not an entirely unpleasant thing.
‘Lock the door,’ she whispers.
‘I’m going to have a cigarette and sort out some music, okay?’
‘Okay. But then get in.’
I search the song titles I’m scrolling through for an answer to this situation, but the only one I see is ‘Frozen In Time’ and that doesn’t help at all. I realise we aren’t talking much at all and she’s interpreting that as sexual tension, so I ask what she wants to listen to. She says ‘something upbeat’ and winks which is probably the most disgusting thing I’ve seen a woman do that wasn’t on the internet. It’s probably about two years since I had romantic sex, and while I didn’t expect it from Juliet I did think she would want it. I may have read too much into it, but the combination of ‘something upbeat’ and a wink means this is going to be filthy, treating each other’s bodies as climbing frames. I just put the computer on shuffle and hope nothing too depressing comes on.
I take off my shoes and cardigan and climb under the sheets, the sickly pallor of her naked body sparkling in the low lighting. It’s a single bed so we lie too close for comfort and she goes for my belt. She giggles, saying that it’s unfair how dressed I am compared to her. I push her hands away, smiling so she isn’t offended and pour us both some more wine. I drain half the mug in one move.
‘So how was your day?’ I ask, smiling slightly so she finds it cute rather than delaying.
‘Good….good.’ She goes for the belt again.
Earlier on we’d talked for about an hour, and that had been fine. I bought us drinks and we seemed to get along, so I don’t know why I’m now so against this. She just isn’t relationship material. I don’t know how I can explain why I know that, but I always did I think; even before the taxi journey back here. Now in my bed she’s proving it, having said roughly twenty words in the half hour we’ve been back. She couldn’t even suggest a band for fear that I wouldn’t like them, or wouldn’t have their music.
On top of this I have more than a slight suspicion that she’d describe me to her friends as ‘quirky’ or ‘weird.’ I think people use those words when they have such parochial attitudes that anyone who isn’t exactly like them is an oddball, and that’s unfair. What’s more unfair is me assuming this of her, I suddenly think.
‘What do you want from this?’ I ask, fairly terrified of any response.
‘You.’
‘No, I mean in the long term, like do you really think we suit each other?’
‘Yeah. I think so. My friends think you’re interesting.’
‘Which friends? Is ‘interesting’ another word for ‘weird’?’
I am careful not to show any annoyance. I can sense I’m being unreasonable, but it doesn’t make me want her.
‘It probably is, yeah. But why does it matter? They like you. I like you.’
I suddenly feel awful and realise that although it would be easier to go through with this, I can’t. She’s kind, and while I hate kindness as a virtue the same way I hate ‘nice’ as an adjective, another one-night stand with Juliet would be damning evidence towards me being hateful. I don’t have a clue why I’ve brought her back here. I’m really drunk now and I keep nearly falling out of the bed avoiding touching any intimate part of Juliet, but I’m determined not to give in.
‘This is what you want now Juliet but in the morning we’ll both feel awful.’ I sigh.
‘I don’t think so. Look, this is what I want to happen. I don’t know why you don’t. We’ve done it before so why not again?’
‘Because I know that I will never introduce you to my parents.’ I laugh a little, and quickly hush myself because I realise how mean that broken sentence is.
‘What do you mean?’ She’s quieter now, and stealing the covers, visibly realising she is naked in bed with a man who doesn’t want that.
‘I mean, nothing will happen. Nothing good will happen here. This is a disaster.’
She sits up unaware that she’s revealing her breasts, leans on her knees holding her head. The sight is kind of tragic. She looks really good naked but it can’t be about that, even when I’m this drunk.
‘Well let’s just sleep here tonight. Is that okay? I just want to sleep in this bed with you tonight.’
I kiss her on the cheek and say that’s fine. It’s strange but fine. She’s not angry enough for me to be comfortable. I go to turn the lamp off and finish her drink for her, followed by mine, and then I take my jeans off and climb in next to her. She pulls one of my arms over her and I hold her as I fall asleep, feeling sorry for her.
As I drift off she’s shaking, probably crying, but I’m too far under to wake myself up and comfort her. Even my dream is drunk, and a series of images precede anything resembling a storyline: a bike, Juliet naked in a park, some candles, a Catherine wheel. I’m on a swing, and Juliet is walking towards me naked, waving her finger as if saying ‘no no no.’ She’s wearing knee-high socks and I seem to get higher on the swing the closer she gets to me. I look down and I’m wearing shorts and a vest, a primary school P.E kit, and she’s still coming closer – so close now that I’m afraid I might kick her in the face. I can’t stop the swing and it’s getting higher and faster and she’s getting closer and just before my feet touch her face, I wake up.
I wake up, and through glued-shut eyes and warped physical awareness I realise that Juliet is now on top of me. She’s looking down at me straight-faced, and I’m kind of terrified but at the same time blasé. We’re holding eye contact as she pushes herself on and off of me, and I feel my face closing up. I have no idea what to do.
She really is sort of beautiful up there, I think. By now it’s the early morning, about half past four, and the sun is pushing through my thin curtains, casting her thin but feminine frame in monochrome. Am I being raped? Women usually say it is impossible to rape a man, because he has to want it to be able to penetrate. I disagree. Yet while I’m thinking about the legality of this unwanted act, it is carrying on and I am stuck for an answer.
‘Am I wearing a condom?’ is all I manage.
‘No.’
‘Are you on the pill or anything like that?’
‘No.’
At this I lift her from under the arms and put her down beside me, asking her what she was doing. For some reason my tongue refuses to be as angry as my mind is. She starts punching me in that way girls do, with the side of the fist rather than knuckles. She’s hitting me constantly, in a marching rhythm, switching arms when one lands itself somewhere on my anatomy.
‘What were you doing?’ I inquire after wrestling hold of her arms. She doesn’t reply. She spits at me, but it hits the pillow.
‘What are you doing?’ I ask with gaining disbelief at what I have awoken to. She kicks out at my torso, manages to kick me to the floor where I hit my head on one of the mugs and start to dream almost immediately.
The swing scenario has returned, and this time I realise that the rhythm of swinging is similar to the rhythm that Juliet crashed down and pushed up off and on me. I am aware that this dream is signalling me being fucked again, like when you experience pain from something in a dream and you wake up in a painful circumstance. This time I can’t wake up and I think that the mug must’ve killed me or knocked me unconscious and Juliet is fucking me as I lie there on the floor, helpless to do anything.
She is sort of beautiful.
WHAT TO DO NOW?