Equal Opportunities Page 16

  It does seem a little strange that we have got this far without Eleanor saying a word about my chair, or the fact that I can’t walk. Even though it is, if anything, more relevant to her than it ever could be to Mary, what with her profession and everything. But she hasn’t mentioned it. That might be because we haven’t said much at all. We’ve got this far with nothing much more than smouldering glances and some frantic snogging.

  But she didn’t say a word when I transferred from the chair into this bed. And right now it’s almost like I’m not disabled at all. Well, except for the fact that I wouldn’t have known about this fantastic location otherwise.

  Eleanor is unpopping the poppers of her white uniform, occasionally slipping me a cheeky glance. She’s lovely. Being cute. Mary is never cute.

  ‘That must be the least sexy nurse’s uniform ever,’ I say as she shucks it down her body and steps out of the puddle of polyester.

  Eleanor giggles, actually giggles, and says, ‘I’m not a nurse.’

  ‘Yeah, I know.’

  ‘And anyway, I have got a real nurse’s uniform – well, not a real one but, you know, a dirty one. The sort you wear with white fishnet stockings and white stilettos.’

  ‘Really?’ I pull myself up with my arms so I am halfway to sitting, and give her a very interested look. ‘Well, you’ll have to show me that some time.’

  Eleanor just smiles and carries on taking off her white bra and then her matching white knickers. She leaves on her white hold-ups and sensible white clog-type shoes. This looks ridiculously sexy. My cock seems to pulse when I look at her. Eleanor is so white, so pale; she makes me think of marble statues of angels, with her fuzz of the lightest blonde hair and her princess-pale skin.

  While she was undressing I was doing likewise, squirming – far less prettily – out of my pants and T-shirt and shoving them on to the floor. I notice that all our clothes, other than my indigo jeans, are white. Weird.

  Eleanor walks towards me and stops by the jutting boniness of my left hipbone. She gestures towards my body and says, ‘May I?’ as if she is about to board the QE2 or something.

  ‘Be my guest.’

  Eleanor giggles again – it is slightly less endearing this time – and straddles me slowly. ‘I’ve never been on the top before,’ she says. But she doesn’t make a bad job of it, sliding herself down over me and wiggling her firm body in a way that creates delicious friction. I’m hard enough that she could take me right away if she wanted. But she leans forward and kisses me for a while first, nuzzling my neck and worrying my ear-lobe.

  So far, so textbook sexy, but I’m not going to get away so lightly. That little Jiminy Cricket on my shoulder is starting to chirrup. Pointing out the obvious. That this is so very wrong. And after that I can’t stop thinking about how wrong this is. And that makes me think about Mary. About how angry she would be if she found out. It makes me feel so bad at first that I almost tell Eleanor to stop. But then something happens. I stop feeling bad. I start feeling turned on.

  As gorgeous Eleanor bounces up and down on my cock, I find myself picturing Mary walking in on us. With a shout of anger she banishes Eleanor and turns her fury on me, lying there helpless in front of her, naked and hard. She barely speaks to me, her face full of rage. She pulls out a familiar pair of handcuffs and fixes my wrist to the top part of the frame of the bed/hammock and then takes a step away from me and watches me squirm.

  ‘Oh dear, oh dear,’ she mutters, pacing around me as I twist in the handcuffs to keep her in view. ‘Bad boy.’

  ‘Sorry –’ I begin but she whips in quick and puts a finger to my lips.

  ‘Oh no,’ she says, ‘it’s too late for that now.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’ I say, suddenly deliciously scared.

  ‘Well,’ Mary says, coming back over to the bed, so close that she’s almost looming over me, ‘if you really can’t keep it in your pants, then I’ll have to help you to behave.’

  Then she flips me over, something I guess she wouldn’t be able to do in real life, even if I weren’t cuffed. But this isn’t real life and so she does. And I’m suddenly more helpless, as a gag and a blindfold appear out of nowhere and are strapped around my face, but not before I catch a glimpse of Mary’s crotch and the enormous phallic object protruding from it.

  Then she’s on top of me, pressing against my back, hissing in my ear, ‘I guess Thomas wasn’t up to the job of fucking you, but I am.’

  Something hard and smooth nudges against me, opening me up. Fucking me. Too hard. Too fast. Too soon. I scream out because it hurts. It might be a good kind of hurt but I can hardly tell, the sensation is so intense, so big, so overwhelming, so real. But this isn’t real. Eleanor is real. Eleanor, up above me, right now.

  And it is at this moment that I find myself ragged with desire and tuning back in to Eleanor’s bounces and rolls. I find myself coming, hot and confusing, and just wrong. Not just the cheating-on-my-girlfriend wrong of earlier, but a weird, fucked-up kind of wrong. Wrong.

  When Eleanor has straightened up and dressed and has helped me back into my chair, she asks me what’s up. I don’t tell her. She asks me why I’m so quiet. Again, I don’t tell her. She probably thinks I’m feeling guilty about cheating on my girlfriend, which obviously I should be. But I’m not. I’m feeling more guilty about the way I just cheated on Eleanor. Thinking of Mary. Thinking of the weirdest kinked-out shit with Mary. While having beautiful, sweet, vanilla sex with a pretty girl like Eleanor.

  What’s wrong with me? What has Mary done to me?

  I should probably get all this worked out before I sleep with Eleanor again. If I even should sleep with Eleanor again.

  Or anyone for that matter.

  After a quick query that establishes Mary isn’t coming to the social club, Eleanor asks to come with me herself. I agree, avoiding telling her why Mary isn’t coming along today.

  The trouble is, I had decided I wasn’t going to go along myself. But now Eleanor is coming, I’m committed.

  As I roll in, Andy practically collars me with ‘So, no Mary?’

  ‘No,’ I say, instantly pissed off, ‘she didn’t really fancy it. Surprise, surprise.’

  ‘Well, good,’ says Andy, easily as snarly and snarky as I am, ‘because I don’t think she’s going to be welcome here any more.’ And then he looks up and says, ‘Hi, Eleanor.’ Almost as if he’s only just noticed her standing there.

  Eleanor furrows her pretty brow. ‘Mary?’ she says, ‘Mary’s your girlfriend, right?’

  I nod my head, guiltily.

  ‘So why …’ Eleanor looks from me to Andy and back again, ‘why isn’t Mary welcome here?’

  Andy laughs and it sounds nasty. Bitter. ‘Because,’ he says, with deliberate slowness, ‘she’s a devo. She’s only into David because he’s in a chair.’

  Eleanor gasps and says, ‘God, David …’ But then she stops and looks plainly horrified.

  ‘Don’t,’ I say, but she does anyway.

  ‘God, I mean, don’t you mind? She’s just into you because of…? Oh, god!’

  ‘Er, no,’ I mutter, answering a question that I don’t think Eleanor actually asked. ‘Um, I don’t know.’

  ‘God, well, what’ll happen when you’re walking again then?’

  I look from Eleanor to Andy. ‘When I…’

  But the words fail to come, because I feel like my brain has just exploded with things that just never occurred to me before. I really never thought…

  I swallow. I have to say something. ‘It wouldn’t make any difference.’ I say it so quickly that the words run together, because I know it isn’t true. Or at least I think it isn’t true.

  ‘Really?’ says Andy, ‘I wouldn’t be so sure, not the way she was talking the other day.’

  ‘Well, it’s not like that,’ I blurt. ‘Yeah, she’s into the fact I can’t walk, but she’s also into me. And if, I mean, when I walk, she’ll still want to be with me, because she loves me and I love her. And no
one…’ I’m looking at Andy, talking to Andy, but suddenly I remember that Eleanor is standing beside me.

  I look up at her and her mouth is open. She says something quietly. I can’t quite hear but it sounds like ‘You love her?’

  But I never said I didn’t.

  My brain is scrabbling for something to say to counteract what I’ve just done, but it’s too late and too fucked-up and all I can do is watch as Eleanor shakes her head at me, turns and runs from the room.

  ‘Oops,’ say Andy, ‘looks like you’re fucking up all over the place.’

  ‘Oh, fuck off!’ I say to him.

  I’m about to leave myself, maybe go home and spend the evening quietly screaming in a darkened room, when Andy says, ‘Ask Mary, ask her what she’ll do when you can walk again. Just ask her. For me.’

  What a wanker!

  Mary

  Despite everything, despite the fact that I’ve known for a week or so that my relationship is dying a slow death, I never had any plans for facing up to it. Why should I? Every relationship I’ve ever been in has just sort of fizzled out – until now.

  I arrive at David’s that evening, let myself in and head for his bedroom-cum-office. He’s at his computer, but he stops typing when I come in and gets right to it, opening the conversation with ‘We need to talk.’ But I still don’t twig that anything in particular is wrong. Or about to go wrong. Spectacularly wrong.

  ‘Sure,’ I say, and plonk myself down on the bed and wait for the talk to begin. And then end. So we can move on. To sex.

  ‘OK,’ says David, clearly expecting a slightly different reaction. ‘Um. Look. There’s something I need to tell you. Ask you about. Something that came up at physio today. And, well, I was wondering how you’d feel about it.’

  I go cold. Maybe I have a premonition or something. ‘What?’

  ‘Why do you think I go to physiotherapy?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Why do you think –?’

  ‘No, no,’ I interrupt him, ‘no, I heard you the first time. I just … What do you mean, why do you go? Gee, I don’t know, are there some sexy nurses there?’

  David goes rather pale when I say this. He looks annoyed. More annoyed. I could kick myself. This clearly isn’t the time for jokes.

  ‘I go because I’m going to walk. I’m going to walk again, Mary. You do realise that, don’t you?’

  I shake my head. I’m sort of smiling. I don’t know why. I shouldn’t be. ‘No,’ I say, very quietly. ‘No you aren’t. It’s been too long, David. Two years. You really aren’t.’ And when I say that I don’t know what I’m saying. I don’t know what I’m thinking.

  There’s a moment’s pause. David stares at me, hard, like he’s trying to see into my soul or something. And then he says, ‘Oh my god. I didn’t believe them. But this really is a deal-breaker for you, isn’t it?’

  Oh. My. God. I get it now. I realise what he’s getting at. And my heart sinks. Not this. Not now. ‘What? No! No. I mean yes, no, yes. I don’t know.’ I cover all bases in too-quick succession; it’s enough to make Vicky Pollard look decisive. ‘I don’t know if it’s like that. Not exactly …’ I lose my thread as I listen to myself, wondering if my babble will hold the answer to how I feel.

  So this is where this conversation happens. I had been wondering when it would turn up and whether it would mean the end of everything.

  I just don’t know. After my musings on Thomas I know for sure that I prefer this David – the disabled David of the now, rather than the able David of the past – but as for potential future Davids, I don’t know if it’s as simple and clear-cut as it might appear. I just don’t know if David’s disability is the all-important factor. The only important factor. I don’t know for sure if it’s a deal-breaker or not. All I can say is, ‘Get better then, if you are going to, and then I’ll have to see.’

  Because that’s the truth.

  He opens and closes his mouth, unable to speak. He is so hurt. When he does finally start to talk he’s so quiet. There’s hardly any voice there. And he’s got it all wrong. ‘I knew you liked me being helpless. I knew you liked having power over me. And, yes, I knew you liked the chair. But I don’t think I really realised that it was all about the chair. Only about the chair. But it is, isn’t it? You have just had a highly fulfilling one-month-long relationship with my wheelchair.’

  I don’t even want to process that right now. So I find another way to discuss this. ‘Did your physio say you were getting better?’

  ‘He said I might. I mean, nothing is guaranteed, but I’ve been improving. And, actually I’ve been improving more since…’

  But he doesn’t finish the sentence. Maybe at some other time we could have worked this one through, worked it out, but not now. Our relationship is too damaged to bear this conversation. Too broken.

  I stand up, pick up my coat, which I’d dropped on the floor, and start to put it on. ‘I’m sorry,’ I say, fastening the buttons so fast I fumble over most of them and end up taking twice as long. ‘I think I should go.’

  ‘Yes,’ he says.

  ‘I’d better go,’ I say, again.

  ‘Yes,’ he says, ‘I think you’d better.’

  And I leave.

  At home I find Carrie sitting on the sofa watching the first episode of a new reality TV show. It’s only just started and there’s currently an overexcited woman on screen shouting her way through the introduction of a series of social misfits and the kind of extroverts that I thought existed only in my nightmares. I sit down on the sofa and say nothing. I wait until the first ad break before I burst into stupid, embarrassing tears.

  David

  I’m pretty sure that the mess that calls itself my relationship with Mary Taylor was an episode in which I was more innocent victim than wrongdoer.

  The cold hard fact is, it wasn’t me that was kinky for some poor disabled boy, shagged him into confused submission and then walked out when I heard he might regain the use of his legs, was it? I’ve checked and it definitely wasn’t me that did that.

  So why am I sitting here, less than a week after the irretrievable breakdown, staring into the yawning abyss of a Sunday and being punished by having to spend the day having lunch with my mum, my odious wide-boy brother and his delightfully annoying girlfriend Trixie?

  Incidentally, I’m pretty sure that Trixie isn’t Trixie’s real name, but she wants to be a pop star so she probably thinks Trixie is a better bet than Sharon or Belinda or whatever her parents decided to call her. Which might make her sound quite interesting, but Trixie is not the type who you hang around with thinking, god, I’ll be able to say I knew her before she was famous. Far from it. Trixie’s being-a-pop-star campaign seems to consist mainly of lounging round living off Simon’s earnings and occasionally auditioning for some frighteningly awful telly talent show. Unfortunately for Trixie she never makes the screen as she isn’t good enough to get through to the next level, nor is she awful or weird enough to get in on the car-crash-viewing ticket. I would feel a bit sorry for her if she weren’t so stupid and loud and annoying.

  But the most annoying thing about Trixie, the scarily annoying factor, is the there-but-for-the-grace-of-god thing. See, when Simon and Trixie first got together a few years ago, before my accident, I thought that skinny blonde showbizzy Trixie was hot stuff. My type. It gives me shivers now to think about that.

  So I’m sitting there, listening to Trixie explaining, at length, how twenty-seven might seem over the hill but really it isn’t too late for her to hit the Big Time, just so long as she gets the right song at the right time, and has a killer hook/killer video combination like Kylie’s Can’t Get You out of My Head. Yeah. Right. Trixie has a merely passable singing voice and, whatever she might think, she is too old. I’ve got more chance of being the next Kylie than she has. It’s never going to happen.

  While I am busy not listening to her latest the-world-revolves-around-me tale of stardom lost, I keep glancing over at my brother’s hai
r, which is so full of gel it manages to be both slickly wet and dry and crispy. The harsh chemical rasp of the gel is so sharp in the central-heating-cranked-up-to-the-max-even-though-it-is-nearly-fucking-April air that I can practically taste it in the gravy.

  God, this is awful! Were my family always so awful? I haven’t spent much time with them while I’ve been with Mary. Were they so unbearable before? I find it hard to remember. I find it hard to remember much about my life before I met Mary.

  Just when it feels like I’m in the seventh circle of hell, knocking shoulders with Judas, mum says, ‘So how’s Mary? You should have brought her along so she could meet Simon and Trixie.’

  Imagine my horror as I feel a lump in my throat and my eyes start to prickle, and not because of Simon’s over-gelled hair. I’m having to fight not to start sobbing at the table.

  Both Simon and Trixie turn to me with full-on expectant what-the-cripple-has-a-girlfriend? beams on their faces. My heart sinks through the soles of my shoes and into the tastelessly patterned carpet.

  ‘Um.’

  Oh god. Just do it. Lance the boil. ‘Mary and I broke up.’

  ‘Oh, sweetheart!’ My mum sounds completely distraught. ‘What happened?’

  I’d love to tell my mum the truth here. I think the me that I was before I met Mary would have absolutely revelled in destroying my mum’s misguided vision of what a perfect woman Mary was. But I’ve changed. A bit. These days I decide against breaking my mum’s heart any more than I have to. What I actually say is, ‘Don’t know really, just didn’t work out.’

  ‘Hey, well, don’t worry, little brother. Her loss, eh?’ says Simon, probably spouting the same meaningless clichés as he does when he’s selling over-priced pads down in London town. Wanker.

  Luckily, my sad news gives me an excuse to leave lunch early and skive off back home. OK, I miss out on my mum’s pear crumble, but I also miss out the collective sympathies of my mum, a wannabe and a wanker, so fair deals.

  I think about calling Eleanor when I get home. But I don’t want to have to face the fall-out from the last time I saw her. So I don’t. I don’t call. Besides, what’s the best thing that could happen if I called Eleanor? I could end up having sex with her – and I don’t want to have sex with her any more. I’m pretty sure I’d end up thinking about Mary. And I’m trying not to think about Mary, as far as possible.