It was Chaya’s last day today. She seemed happy. We finished early again, at about two. She’ll be back again in December. She’s gone home to Colombo, Sri Lanka, for a while. Joseph didn’t get to say goodbye to her, which he regretted. Chaya was funny. Everyone liked her. I liked her life story. It was amazing. I’ve known her for the past year, and she’d return home every once in a while for a couple of months and then return and have amazing tales to tell. Listening to her made me want to travel for the rest of my life, or never leave home again, I wasn’t sure which.
Last time I saw her, her house in Colombo had been looted and razed to the ground in the middle of the night and she'd fled with her children. Her husband was a communist sympathiser and an anti-communist group raided her house. That was last year.
Just recently: she went back to attend her father’s 80th birthday party. A huge party had been planned with family turning up from all over the world. The day before his birthday, he died. He was poisoned. Chaya was as well, but after two months in an Indian spiritual retreat, she recovered. Her ex-husband had poisoned both of them with black magic. One night, Chaya awoke from her sleep to find her bed teaming with hundreds of maggots, placed there by her ex. There were remains of human ash, a sure sign of a curse. Her fridge had holes in it, and she could smell human ash everywhere. Her ex wants Chaya’s property (she owns a lot in Colombo) and by killing her father and Chaya, he would have been entitled to it. She tells me everything in such a casual, matter of fact way:
‘Yes, me and my father had a curse put on us. A type of voodoo curse. Maggots appeared from nowhere. My father died, I nearly died too. But I went to a spiritual retreat in India and survived. This was last week.’
She’s amazing. I told her I needed some of her spirituality. She told me I needed Jesus (Chaya’s a Catholic – she goes on pilgrimages all over the world with Brigit, who also works here); I wasn’t so sure. Chaya used to edit anti-government magazines with her husband in Colombo.
Chaya always smells of soap. She’s large with short, straight black hair and a soft voice. She sometimes wears glasses and must be in her late-forties. When I went back to work about a month back, Chaya was there and I told her I needed some spiritual guidance. She lent me a book. It was a short book, but it was boring and took me ages to read it. There was strange advice on how to end a sexual relationship: rub eggs on your genitals. Things like that. Baths of beer. Incense. I wasn’t really into it. I wanted Chaya to do something for me. Chaya says she’s a psychic, and yes, she feels negative attacks from me. Like pin pricks.
(2000, London)
Showing posts with label Five Women. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Five Women. Show all posts
Saturday, July 24, 2010
Five women: #2. Leticia (Mexico)
There’s a European sensibility about her and I can’t believe she’s from Mexico. I still don’t believe it and tell her she must be from Spain. I mean she must be. She laughs loud. Her skin is light. I admired her for her bold use of Geneva (a font). We met in the Slug and Lettuce, just as empty as when Ruby worked here, three years ago was it? But it’s a Monday, it’s freezing and windy. I hadn’t seen her for months, and even then, when I had seen her, I had spoken maybe fifteen minutes with her total. In that time I had asked her if I could live and work with her in Mexico, and she had said yes. I thought no more about it, but I had a phone number and a day when she’d be back from Europe, Israel and Egypt. I couldn’t remember if I liked her or not. In fact, when first meeting her at college, I remember not only finding her ugly, but also annoying, with a grating laugh and a loud, unnecessary voice. I’m glad that my first impressions are always, absolutely always, completely and utterly, wrong.
There’s a European sensibility about her. I phoned her at 6:05pm on Monday 30th October. Before I phoned her I thought: I’m going to phone her once. If she’s not in, fine, I’ll forget the whole thing. I don’t even know her. I thought: even if she is in and I do talk to her, I’ll play it cool, maybe I won’t even mention Mexico, maybe I’ll just ask her about her trip. Anyway she’s probably forgotten, or thought it was a joke. I had. I mean, I thought it was a joke, just something to talk about and flirt about in college. I had also forgotten, until I remembered how I was getting nowhere in London, not doing what I wanted to be doing, or thought what I wanted to be doing.
The phone rang.
A man answered. I’ve never, ever, said her name before. She had written it down for me, but I’d never pronounced it. I’m bad with names, especially foreign ones. I ask for Leticia. The man says, ‘Who?’ I say it again, with a different intonation. The male voice says no. I ask him when she’ll be back. He says maybe in a few hours. Then he asks who it is, and I tell him my name and business. There’s a pause. I hear his voice off phone, and a female voice. Then the man says: ‘She’s just come in the door’. Then it’s Leticia’s voice.
Considering it’s the first time we’ve spoken on the phone, and turns out to be the longest time we’ve ever spoken, we do pretty well. Not only do I ask her about Mexico but I ask her if she wants to meet. I’m expecting her to say no, and I think to myself, if she says no, then I’m going to forget her and Mexico. I’m figuring her to say no because this is her penultimate night in London, and she must have plans with friends.
Leticia says, ‘We could meet now.’
I don’t know why, but my heart rises.
I say, ‘Err...’
‘If you’re not busy.’
She has to be nice, I mean she has to be a nice person. I had a feeling about her, if only because I know she had a feeling about me. That’s good enough for me. I don’t know what I want. Let everyone else decide for me. I’ll go along with it, I’m sure it’ll be all right. We agree to meet halfway, in the Slug and Lettuce, on the corner of the High Street, opposite the church, besides the Thames.
‘In fifteen minutes?’ She asks.
‘What, are you going to run there?’
Why can’t I just be nice?
‘No, I...’ She stumbles.
‘Fifteen minutes is fine, I was joking.’
‘Okay.’
‘Okay.’
I smoke a cigarette, then I run there. I get there first. I hate this pub. I don’t know if we’re going to get on. Maybe we won’t. Then I’ll forget about Mexico. I have a Kronenberg and stand at the bar. The barmaid looks at me. She can fuck herself, loser. Then Leticia comes in, flustered in a bright red anorak.
We kiss on the cheeks and I decide she has a European demeanor and must be from Spain, not Mexico. She was in Spain yesterday. Whenever I kiss on the cheeks, if feels like slow motion. Her skin is soft yet firm, but light, for a Mexican.
She looks completely different from when I saw her last, four months ago, at the end of college party, at my house. She had made a lovely lemon cheesecake and worn a bright turquoise long coat. Now she was different. She looked lovely, I mean she definitely looked the lovely side of average. Maybe we were both average. What’s wrong with me? Here I am contemplating moving to Mexico, living and working there, starting a completely new life, but all I’m really thinking about is sex with Leticia, who I hardly know, and she must be a lot younger than me, and why would a Mexican woman fancy me? I mean, nothing romantic has ever occurred between us, and she wouldn’t be inviting me to Mexico because she fancies me, I mean that would be stupid. I mean, that’s how I think. I mean, I would travel eight thousand miles for a shag. I would.
We sit and talk for two hours (almost) without a pause. I make her laugh. She makes me laugh. And she’s just so goddamn nice.
And she’s different from when I saw her last with her cheesecake. Her hair is wavier (her hair has more waves. Before it had been straighter). She’s definitely sexier, and what the hell’s wrong with me, but we’re talking about Mexico and all I’m thinking about is kissing her. Then all I’m thinking about is us lying naked together in a hut in a Mexican village with a bottle beside the bed and music coming from somewhere else as the sun rises, there, just beyond the desert, and birds waking up. What the hell’s wrong with me? I’m thinking about how she smells naked, after sex. Warm, motherish, fresh, her sweat like melted sugar.
Leticia is wearing a black v-neck sweater and a necklace with a large cross on it. Her hair is wavy(ish), her eyes are big and they sparkle, and her lips are big. Fuck Mexico, we’ve got London. Fuck London, there’s a world out there. Or is there?
Then her three South American flatmates turn up. They’re all going to the cinema. Leticia asks me if I want to come along. I’d rather stay and drink, but she’s not a big drinker, she’s young, and maybe average, but extremely nice. Memento’s on, I’d been wanting to see it for a while. I know the South American’s won’t like it, it’s a cruel choice really, I mean I know the film’s going to be convoluted, difficult to understand with a fragmented narrative. I tell them this, and we all go and see it. I like it, a lot, but I don’t think the South Americans do. Leticia says, ‘It was...different’, which is a fair answer. It was different, but in a good way. It sounded like Leticia meant it in a bad way. Well, anyway, what’s the point of seeing What Lies Beneath on your penultimate night in London?
Leticia’s found it hard making English friends here. She’s made lots of South American friends, but no English ones, which is her main regret, having been here one and a half years. I like her. I mean I like anyone who likes me (if they like me, they can’t be bad, I figure). She never had a boyfriend here, she never got a good job, she never made any English friends. She regrets this, but has a sneaking suspicion that English people are boring. I ask her if she thinks I’m boring. ‘I don’t know. I don’t know what you do.’ I told her what I’d done at the weekend (it had been a roller coaster of a weekend, a definite one off, consisting of two parties, various pubs and bars, meeting an unprecedented amount of beautiful and intelligent people, as well as playing chess with a chef and an annoying drunk lass from Leeds). Her typical weekend in Mexico would consist of movies, bars, friends, maybe rollerblading (whatever that is). I guess, all over the world, weekends are weekends and we all do the same things (just with different people). Apart from the rollerblading.
After the film we stand around awkwardly for a while. I go to the cash point, pay back Leticia’s flat mate (from Venezuela) for the ticket, and they all leave (all her flat mates leave, not her). Then things really get awkward. It’s just me and Leticia.
We are left outside the cinema alone. The wind is blowing and it’s freezing. It feels like my most romantic moment since I’ve been back in London (coming up to two years now). It is. I feel like a teenager who’d just taken a girl to the cinema. I was and I had. Then the outside cinema lights went out. We’re alone in the (our) darkness, except for her eyes shining at me in the wind. We say not a word to each other. We just look at each other. I thought I was going to collapse. If the truth be known, we will never see each other again. We were meant to kiss now, I mean it was written, now, now, it was just so obvious (it would have been a cliché), but natural, a kiss that might have changed our destinies (excuse me if I’m hyperbolising), but I saw no point, and didn’t, and went on my way, went home, turned on the Mac, launched Photoshop, and forgot about her.
But no, of course I didn’t forget her. I stayed up till four and imagined all avenues with her, from the kiss that didn’t happen to living and working with her in Guadalajara, the second largest city in Mexico. I even imagined trips to the desert, and popping up to see Ruby in New Orleans. I imagined the sun, and speaking Spanish, and marrying Leticia, and having a gun, and taking Lomo photos, and kick boxing in the desert, and writing lots and drinking lots. But fuck it, I can’t be bothered.
But.
But. The girl knows her QuarkXPress, she does Ti Quan Do in Mexico, she likes movies, she makes a good lemon cheesecake. A man can’t have everything, but this seems like more than enough. And she’s nice. I like nice people. I mean, that sounds obvious, but it’s not. I mean I can’t be bothered with cool people, beautiful people, popular people, interesting, smart or intelligent people. I’m not bothered about a sense of humour or success or wealth. Just give me a nice person and I’m fine.
This is who thinks I should go to Mexico: Leticia (!), Richard, Pedro, Chayane, Rebecca, Daniel, Bianca, Sonia.
Richard: ‘Don’t be afraid of change, be afraid of no change.’ He says I’m young, free, single, what’s holding me back?
Mexican proverb: ‘Poor Mexico, so far from God, so close to the United States.’
Why the hell didn’t I kiss her?
Her grandparents are French and Spanish, hence her light skin and her hair which isn’t black. Her flat mate has olive skin and black hair. ‘Is that how I should look?’ joked Leticia. ‘Yes!’ I exclaimed. Her great grandparents are pure Indian. She has a photo of her great grandfather wearing a sombrero, dressed in a blanket with belts of bullets over his shoulders and a big moustache. ‘He looks funny’, she said.
(2000, London)
There’s a European sensibility about her. I phoned her at 6:05pm on Monday 30th October. Before I phoned her I thought: I’m going to phone her once. If she’s not in, fine, I’ll forget the whole thing. I don’t even know her. I thought: even if she is in and I do talk to her, I’ll play it cool, maybe I won’t even mention Mexico, maybe I’ll just ask her about her trip. Anyway she’s probably forgotten, or thought it was a joke. I had. I mean, I thought it was a joke, just something to talk about and flirt about in college. I had also forgotten, until I remembered how I was getting nowhere in London, not doing what I wanted to be doing, or thought what I wanted to be doing.
The phone rang.
A man answered. I’ve never, ever, said her name before. She had written it down for me, but I’d never pronounced it. I’m bad with names, especially foreign ones. I ask for Leticia. The man says, ‘Who?’ I say it again, with a different intonation. The male voice says no. I ask him when she’ll be back. He says maybe in a few hours. Then he asks who it is, and I tell him my name and business. There’s a pause. I hear his voice off phone, and a female voice. Then the man says: ‘She’s just come in the door’. Then it’s Leticia’s voice.
Considering it’s the first time we’ve spoken on the phone, and turns out to be the longest time we’ve ever spoken, we do pretty well. Not only do I ask her about Mexico but I ask her if she wants to meet. I’m expecting her to say no, and I think to myself, if she says no, then I’m going to forget her and Mexico. I’m figuring her to say no because this is her penultimate night in London, and she must have plans with friends.
Leticia says, ‘We could meet now.’
I don’t know why, but my heart rises.
I say, ‘Err...’
‘If you’re not busy.’
She has to be nice, I mean she has to be a nice person. I had a feeling about her, if only because I know she had a feeling about me. That’s good enough for me. I don’t know what I want. Let everyone else decide for me. I’ll go along with it, I’m sure it’ll be all right. We agree to meet halfway, in the Slug and Lettuce, on the corner of the High Street, opposite the church, besides the Thames.
‘In fifteen minutes?’ She asks.
‘What, are you going to run there?’
Why can’t I just be nice?
‘No, I...’ She stumbles.
‘Fifteen minutes is fine, I was joking.’
‘Okay.’
‘Okay.’
I smoke a cigarette, then I run there. I get there first. I hate this pub. I don’t know if we’re going to get on. Maybe we won’t. Then I’ll forget about Mexico. I have a Kronenberg and stand at the bar. The barmaid looks at me. She can fuck herself, loser. Then Leticia comes in, flustered in a bright red anorak.
We kiss on the cheeks and I decide she has a European demeanor and must be from Spain, not Mexico. She was in Spain yesterday. Whenever I kiss on the cheeks, if feels like slow motion. Her skin is soft yet firm, but light, for a Mexican.
She looks completely different from when I saw her last, four months ago, at the end of college party, at my house. She had made a lovely lemon cheesecake and worn a bright turquoise long coat. Now she was different. She looked lovely, I mean she definitely looked the lovely side of average. Maybe we were both average. What’s wrong with me? Here I am contemplating moving to Mexico, living and working there, starting a completely new life, but all I’m really thinking about is sex with Leticia, who I hardly know, and she must be a lot younger than me, and why would a Mexican woman fancy me? I mean, nothing romantic has ever occurred between us, and she wouldn’t be inviting me to Mexico because she fancies me, I mean that would be stupid. I mean, that’s how I think. I mean, I would travel eight thousand miles for a shag. I would.
We sit and talk for two hours (almost) without a pause. I make her laugh. She makes me laugh. And she’s just so goddamn nice.
And she’s different from when I saw her last with her cheesecake. Her hair is wavier (her hair has more waves. Before it had been straighter). She’s definitely sexier, and what the hell’s wrong with me, but we’re talking about Mexico and all I’m thinking about is kissing her. Then all I’m thinking about is us lying naked together in a hut in a Mexican village with a bottle beside the bed and music coming from somewhere else as the sun rises, there, just beyond the desert, and birds waking up. What the hell’s wrong with me? I’m thinking about how she smells naked, after sex. Warm, motherish, fresh, her sweat like melted sugar.
Leticia is wearing a black v-neck sweater and a necklace with a large cross on it. Her hair is wavy(ish), her eyes are big and they sparkle, and her lips are big. Fuck Mexico, we’ve got London. Fuck London, there’s a world out there. Or is there?
Then her three South American flatmates turn up. They’re all going to the cinema. Leticia asks me if I want to come along. I’d rather stay and drink, but she’s not a big drinker, she’s young, and maybe average, but extremely nice. Memento’s on, I’d been wanting to see it for a while. I know the South American’s won’t like it, it’s a cruel choice really, I mean I know the film’s going to be convoluted, difficult to understand with a fragmented narrative. I tell them this, and we all go and see it. I like it, a lot, but I don’t think the South Americans do. Leticia says, ‘It was...different’, which is a fair answer. It was different, but in a good way. It sounded like Leticia meant it in a bad way. Well, anyway, what’s the point of seeing What Lies Beneath on your penultimate night in London?
Leticia’s found it hard making English friends here. She’s made lots of South American friends, but no English ones, which is her main regret, having been here one and a half years. I like her. I mean I like anyone who likes me (if they like me, they can’t be bad, I figure). She never had a boyfriend here, she never got a good job, she never made any English friends. She regrets this, but has a sneaking suspicion that English people are boring. I ask her if she thinks I’m boring. ‘I don’t know. I don’t know what you do.’ I told her what I’d done at the weekend (it had been a roller coaster of a weekend, a definite one off, consisting of two parties, various pubs and bars, meeting an unprecedented amount of beautiful and intelligent people, as well as playing chess with a chef and an annoying drunk lass from Leeds). Her typical weekend in Mexico would consist of movies, bars, friends, maybe rollerblading (whatever that is). I guess, all over the world, weekends are weekends and we all do the same things (just with different people). Apart from the rollerblading.
After the film we stand around awkwardly for a while. I go to the cash point, pay back Leticia’s flat mate (from Venezuela) for the ticket, and they all leave (all her flat mates leave, not her). Then things really get awkward. It’s just me and Leticia.
We are left outside the cinema alone. The wind is blowing and it’s freezing. It feels like my most romantic moment since I’ve been back in London (coming up to two years now). It is. I feel like a teenager who’d just taken a girl to the cinema. I was and I had. Then the outside cinema lights went out. We’re alone in the (our) darkness, except for her eyes shining at me in the wind. We say not a word to each other. We just look at each other. I thought I was going to collapse. If the truth be known, we will never see each other again. We were meant to kiss now, I mean it was written, now, now, it was just so obvious (it would have been a cliché), but natural, a kiss that might have changed our destinies (excuse me if I’m hyperbolising), but I saw no point, and didn’t, and went on my way, went home, turned on the Mac, launched Photoshop, and forgot about her.
But no, of course I didn’t forget her. I stayed up till four and imagined all avenues with her, from the kiss that didn’t happen to living and working with her in Guadalajara, the second largest city in Mexico. I even imagined trips to the desert, and popping up to see Ruby in New Orleans. I imagined the sun, and speaking Spanish, and marrying Leticia, and having a gun, and taking Lomo photos, and kick boxing in the desert, and writing lots and drinking lots. But fuck it, I can’t be bothered.
But.
But. The girl knows her QuarkXPress, she does Ti Quan Do in Mexico, she likes movies, she makes a good lemon cheesecake. A man can’t have everything, but this seems like more than enough. And she’s nice. I like nice people. I mean, that sounds obvious, but it’s not. I mean I can’t be bothered with cool people, beautiful people, popular people, interesting, smart or intelligent people. I’m not bothered about a sense of humour or success or wealth. Just give me a nice person and I’m fine.
This is who thinks I should go to Mexico: Leticia (!), Richard, Pedro, Chayane, Rebecca, Daniel, Bianca, Sonia.
Richard: ‘Don’t be afraid of change, be afraid of no change.’ He says I’m young, free, single, what’s holding me back?
Mexican proverb: ‘Poor Mexico, so far from God, so close to the United States.’
Why the hell didn’t I kiss her?
Her grandparents are French and Spanish, hence her light skin and her hair which isn’t black. Her flat mate has olive skin and black hair. ‘Is that how I should look?’ joked Leticia. ‘Yes!’ I exclaimed. Her great grandparents are pure Indian. She has a photo of her great grandfather wearing a sombrero, dressed in a blanket with belts of bullets over his shoulders and a big moustache. ‘He looks funny’, she said.
(2000, London)
Friday, July 23, 2010
Five women: #3. Olivia (Columbia)
Her beauty seems to have been lost by a matter of months, not years. I love her bulk, her tiredness and her haggardness. She’s from Columbia, though you wouldn’t have guessed. She’s married, but needs to have an affair, perhaps. She always looks tired, as if she’s been in London too long, married too long, spent too long on Photoshop.
(2000, London)
(2000, London)
Five women: #4. Sandra (Devon)
I can’t stand her every single habit. I can’t even look her in the eyes now. When she drinks tea she slurps. When she smokes a cigarette she exhales loudly. When she eats she chomps. When she laughs it sounds ridiculous, like a joke laugh, loud and offensive. Like an annoying persons laugh. She never hears me. ‘Sorry?’ she says, about twenty times an hour. She even breathes too loudly. We are always in each others way. When she kisses her boyfriend they both make disgusting kissing noises. I wonder if he realises he’s taken on all her bad habits. But he loves her, and love is blind. Is hate?
(2000, London)
(2000, London)
Thursday, July 22, 2010
Five women: #5. Gemma (Hounslow)
Short, slim, pale, blonde, lives in Hounslow, not my type, parents from Cornwall, maybe working class or lower-middle, a bit of intelligence and culture (she’s just read The God of Small Things), a piercing through her tongue (I see her playing with it and it makes me queasy), feisty, bored, finished university recently (pharmaceutical chemistry), wants to be a forensic scientist (I do too!), may do her Masters next year, quiet, cheeky; me and her, apart from Michael (who doesn’t count; he may as well be), Eng (Malaysian – though to everyone else he says Singapore, twenty-three, can’t understand a word of his English and I practice my kick boxing and smattering of Indonesian on him) and Sarah (blonde, early thirties, a bimbo but not a pretty one but certainly one of the most stupid, empty ones I’ve met, just past her prime, doesn’t know what to say; Hugo and I were discussing theatre – Shakespeare to Orton via Wilde – we attempt to bring Sarah into the conversation, she says Starlight Express and we ignore her) are the only two under the age of fifty-five, and that’s our only bond (along with hating our jobs), and it’s enough (to form a relationship of some kind, even if it just involves piss-taking, joking, drawing pictures on the ‘dead filing’ folders – gravestones, knives, a dead mouse, a gun, plays on words – loving the smell of the black permanent marker, and the screeching sound of it, and surly, sexy looks I’m not quite sure what the meaning of is). I don’t know, I’m starting to like her.
(2000, London)
(2000, London)
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