Footsucker

Eighteen

I went to Mike and Natasha’s house. They didn’t know that I’d split up with Catherine because I hadn’t told them. And even if they had known, they wouldn’t have seen it as a very significant event. They would have regarded it as an all too regular and ordinary occurrence in my life. The three of us were supposed to be going out for a cheap Italian meal, but Mike opened the door and said there’d been a change of plan.

‘Natasha’s not feeling so good,’ he said.

‘Nothing serious?’

‘No, no, but she says we should go without her.’

He was wearing his jacket and was all ready to set off. I never even stepped inside the house, never saw Natasha. We went without her but we didn’t get as far as the Italian restaurant. Mike wanted to stop for a beer on the way, at some dingy crowded pub that I’d never been to before, and it was obvious that he had some serious drinking to do. The occasional need for oblivion was one that I’d always understood, the more so since Catherine’s departure, though I didn’t know what had stirred the need in Mike. It was a long time before he got round to telling me. We’d had several pints, and had abandoned all hope of getting anything to eat, before Mike admitted there was anything wrong at all.

Finally he said, ‘It’s me and Natasha. Or rather, it’s just me.’

Mike and Natasha seemed perfectly happy together but it didn’t surprise me there might be problems; after all they were human, weren’t they?

‘It’s a big one,’ Mike continued. ‘A big, serious, potentially terminal kind of thing.’

‘Really?’ I said. I thought he must be exaggerating. Whatever the problem, I couldn’t imagine the two of them splitting up, and I couldn’t imagine the problem was anything like as important or as intractable as that which had driven Catherine and me apart.

Mike said, ‘You know the way I sometimes say let’s buy some drugs and pick up a couple of harlots?’

‘It’s one of your more endearing traits,’ I said.

‘Well, I did it.’

‘You did?’

‘Well, there was no cocaine involved and it was only one harlot.’

I expect I looked at him in some disbelief, but he obviously wasn’t making it up.

‘It was in Birmingham,’ he explained. ‘I was there on business. I was sitting at the hotel bar and so was she. We got talking and I bought her a drink and one thing led to another.’

I nodded. It seemed commonplace enough, though obviously it was a complete novelty in Mike’s life; in mine too for that matter.

‘Does Natasha know?’ I asked.

‘I haven’t told her but she knows something’s wrong. Do you think I should tell her?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘What good would it do?’

‘Confession. Good for the soul.’

‘Very bad for a marriage,’ I said.

‘How would you know? How would you know anything about marriage?’

He was right. I had no more right to comment on marriage than I thought Harold had to comment on love and loss.

‘I’m just taking an educated guess,’ I said.

He gave the matter some thought, then nodded to himself as though he’d decided I might know what I was talking about after all.

‘She wouldn’t understand,’ he said.

‘I think she’d understand perfectly, but that’s not necessarily a good thing,’ I said. ‘Besides, what’s to understand? You got drunk and did something you regret.’

He shook his head. ‘No, you don’t understand. I don’t regret it at all,’ he said. ‘It was the best fun I’ve ever had in my whole life. It was great. We did all sorts of things I’d never done before, really dirty stuff that Natasha would never do.’

‘Do I really need this much detail?’ I asked.

‘There was no love, no affection, no respect for the other person. It was dirty and cheap and disgusting and degrading. And I loved it. I absolutely loved it.’

‘Oh shit,’ I said.

‘And I want to do it again. I want to do it right now, and keep on doing it, every night of the week for the rest of my life.’

‘And where does Natasha fit in?’

‘That’s what I don’t know.’

‘You’re still in love with her?’

‘Of course I’m still in love with her. I care for her. I cherish her. I respect her. And that’s why our sex life is so fucking dull.’

‘Oh shit,’ I said.

‘Oh shit, indeed.’

We sat quietly amidst the noise and smoke of the pub, in a little pod of gloom. Confession had not been good for Mike, it had made him profoundly miserable. But he pulled himself together enough to get up, go to the bar and order a couple more numbing drinks. I was feeling miserable too, and no longer just because of Catherine. I felt sorry for Mike, even more so for Natasha. It wasn’t simply that I wanted them to be happy and together, it was more that Mike’s confession had been so depressingly, destructively sordid.

‘It’s OK,’ Mike said when he returned. ‘I’m not asking you to solve anything for me.’

‘Just as well.’

Mike took a big drink from his glass, then said, ‘Right, now it’s your turn.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I’ve shown you mine, now you show me yours.’

‘I’m not with you.’

‘You know what I mean. You’ve got some dark little secret, haven’t you? Natasha and I have always wondered about it. What is it you’re into? Pain? Little girls? Little boys?’

‘You don’t really think I’m into children?’

‘I don’t know what you’re into. So tell me.’

So I told him. I don’t know exactly why I did. I had no particular desire to be understood by Mike, and I didn’t feel that his confession had put any obligation on me. It had far more to do with what was going on in my own life. Maybe I was compensating. Maybe what I really wanted to do was pour my heart out over Catherine, and talking about my fetishism was just an easy way of avoiding the issue. Whatever the reason, I told him. Not in the kind of detail, nor with the kind of relish that I’d told Catherine on our first meeting, but I recounted my story as honestly as I knew how. I explained what I liked and what I did, though I said nothing at all about Catherine. Mike listened in a distracted way, staring into his beer, twisting the glass around in both hands. A look of puzzlement and mild amusement flickered across his face from time to time, and when I’d said all I was going to, he looked at me and said, ‘Bullshit.’

‘What?’

‘You don’t have to mess around with me,’ he said.

‘I’m not messing around.’

‘It’s a wind-up, isn’t it? You don’t really expect me to believe all that. You don’t expect me to take that crap seriously.’

‘Well, yes, I guess I do,’ I said feeling insulted and not at all defensive.

I think it wasn’t until then that he believed me at all. He really had found it inconceivable that anyone, least of all one of his friends, could feel the way I did about feet and shoes. It was a new idea, an undreamed of possibility. When he’d finally, reluctantly, taken it on board he said, ‘Well, that’s just pathetic.’

He started to laugh. It was sniggering, contemptuous, destructive laughter. I thought he was in danger of standing up and making an announcement to the whole pub about precisely how pathetic he thought I was.

‘You really are a pitiful specimen, aren’t you?’ he said.

‘Hey, Mike, you don’t have to like it.’

‘No, I bloody don’t.’

I couldn’t understand why he was so angry and affronted. What would he have done if I really had been into pain or little girls? Probably he could have accepted that more easily. Perhaps he’d expected something more dramatic, more ‘dirty’ and more in keeping with his own newly developed tastes. Perhaps he’d hoped that I was a kindred spirit. He gave me a look of definitive contempt and got up from his seat.

‘I’m going to find myself a good old-fashioned whore,’ he said. ‘That’s something you’d know nothing about.’

It was perfectly true at the time.