Filth

Carole Again

I like to go out. I don’t really mind being here at Mum’s but she can be very demanding. Still, we all have our crosses to bear. The big problem is that Mum’s never really accepted Bruce. She’s a bit strange at times. It’s a funny thing to say about your own mum but it’s true. I hate being up here but it’ll just make it all the more exciting when Bruce and I finally get back together.

Stacey’s getting me down as well. She’s at a funny age.

I remember when I first met Bruce. My sister Shirley was seeing this guy who was on the force. Don, I think he was called. We met him at a pub at the West End and he introduced Bruce as this guy who was up from London where he was in the Met. Bruce and I had both just come out of pretty bad relationships so the pair of us were a little guarded, even though when I first saw him I thought, mmm hmmm. Well, we had a few too many and we ended up back at Don’s. It was strange the way Bruce was looking at me in the taxi, I could just feel something happening, I could feel that we would become lovers. When he spoke to me, his dark eyes blazing . . . I could feel myself going . . . god, I just want to touch myself all over when I think about it.

But no. I restrain myself and I decide to go out.

The street is cold and grey, like so many streets in so many towns in this country. This wind surges through you, lowering your temperature until you’re too numbed to realise how sick and uncomfortable it’s made you. And the people: nosey, predatory, always ready to revel in the misfortune of others. One man is looking at me. I know the type. A sleazy middle-aged guy who doesn’t do it with his wife any more.

Repressed people; you have to pity them more than anything else. I know, because I was like that before I met Bruce. I still am in lots of ways, although he’s brought me out of myself. Bruce realised that I had to come out of myself, needed, even in spite of myself, to come out of myself. That was what our sex club was about.

Bruce knows that our wee games and flirtations only serve to strengthen a true love, by making it confront its true nature, making it feel the depths and heights of itself.

He did it for me, and it worked.

I’m a different person now.

A better person.