some children and their children

Mentor: I think I know the allusion.

Man: You would of course. Anyway, more on Eveline anon. Finally there's Zelda's third child, Christopher, the last of the brace of three from her first marriage. When I moved in, Zelda had not long returned from a cheapie trip to Europe - to get away from her family, as she described it. I'm not sure what the arrangement was with Lola, who would've been rather young to be left alone. I didn't want to inquire too deeply into all that. Now, I'm sorry to introduce so many names here, but there are more. Zelda not only had four kids but also two grandkids when I first met her, to which have been added an extra five since my advent. Esther, the Christian, had a six year old child, Andrew, out of a disastrous relationship. The father chose to deny paternity, and when it was proven in the usual way, he disappeared, never to be seen again. When I arrived on the scene, Esther was in a relationship with an odd handsome wannabe writer, excruciatingly untalented. He'd had a book self-published at some expense, and its awfulness made him a laughing-stock. As someone about to have my own book published, in more traditional and 'legitimate' fashion, I naturally kept him at arm's length, which was easy enough given my solitary disposition. Their relationship was very volatile, due to both characters' characters. No doubt it would've died the death, but Esther fell pregnant again. Actually, this may have been the event that doomed the relationship or brought it to a quicker conclusion, for the handsome bad writer insisted that Esther had deliberately fallen pregnant [and others in the family, most notably Eveline, had their strong suspicions]. I tell you all this as a taste of the dramas I’d dropped myself into, through Zelda, the mother hen as she called herself. It was all very fascinating. I tried to keep out of the various controversies, but with the Esther case, yes I had my own suspicions, as Esther was the traditionalist of the family, after getting over her youthful flights. Christianity was clearly part of that tradition which also involved marriage, family, home ownership, the whole shebang. She was very much into catching her man. It might have seemed manipulative, but it was also sad in its desperation. In any case, if she'd wanted to entrap, it didn't work, and Esther was soon left, single and struggling, with a hyperactive seven-year-old and a baby girl, and a perennially precarious housing situation. 

And then there was Eveline, also a single mum when I arrived, with a daughter of six or seven months. This little girl, Sophie, was the product of a liaison between Eveline and a Greek medical student who turned out to have severe psychological problems. The relationship had already foundered by the time I came along, though they still used each other for sex on a semi-regular basis. Eveline worked casually as a nurse, struggling to make ends meet, and like her older sister, moving from house to house in the rental market. 

Mentor: But she wasn't a Christian.           

introducing zelda and eveline

Mentor: So, you're in a period of readjustment.

Man: Well, that's for sure. You see, my wife became my best friend. Or rather, she became my best friend, then my wife, then my best friend again, but she wanted still to be my wife, but it was too painful for her I suppose. And there was a lot to complicate matters. Like, her daughter.

Mentor: Her daughter.

Man: Yes, her daughter is key. My wife has three daughters in fact. And one son. By two previous marriages. I don't know if you can imagine a single forty-year old man, rather detached and isolated in the world, an avoider of other people largely, completely estranged from his family, suddenly finding himself in a relationship with a woman almost a decade his senior, with three children in their twenties and a youngest daughter around fourteen, a teenage runaway whose vacant room I'd moved into. And these children all popping in and out regularly, with their friends and boyfriends and domestic dramas and pregnancies and sibling spats. It was instant storyville. My journal was working overtime. And perhaps I was more enamoured of this new environment than I was of my new partner, though she was the eye of the storm, if you will. The initial generator of all this family activity. 

Mentor: So you took an interest in one the daughters?

Man: Well, yes I did, but it's a long story. Okay, there I was, having moved into this house as just an ordinary tenant, a lodger. Anxious from the start because I knew my landlady, a friend of a friend, had a romantic interest in me. An attractive older woman whose sullen youngest daughter resembled Lolita, and was even halfnicknamed such by her amused elders. But I was no Humbert Humbert and my future wife was certainly no Charlotte Haze. No, at the beginning my sexual focus was very much on Charlotte - I mean, sorry on my future wife. Let's call her Zelda. That's the name of my grandmother, actually. Who died in childbirth at twenty-six. Besides, Zelda’s youngest, whom I’ll call Lola, wasn’t much in the picture. She only turned up now and again to collect something and flounce off again. Her bust bustin out all over. Zelda’s eldest child, a troubled soul upon whom I shall bestow a pleasant biblical name, Esther, was when I first met her a still newly minted Christian, though she has since confided to me that she always felt the spirit move within her. She too had been a teenage runaway, lost for some years in the ways of wickedness, but in recent times she has managed to support her youngest sister in returning to the right path and accepting the lord into her heart. But I mean not to mock her nor anyone, she is as complex and unfathomable as we all are, and she has a good heart, a liberal nature and all her mother's pragmatism. Zelda's second child is the daughter in question. Let us call her - not Bertha, nor Beryl, nor Bridget. No, I shall call her Eveline. I doubt she'll like that, nor know the allusion.  

reality bites

Man: Yes, I suppose I wanted someone like myself, only smarter, though not too much smarter, and more beautiful - they could be infinitely more beautiful, I didn't mind that at all - and more outgoing, someone who could drag me outside of myself and bring me to the party. Someone who could draw out my best features, because of course inside my shy self was a brilliant wit and raconteur, a genius of language, an incisive, streetwise analyst, all that stuff. Someone who wasn't possessive either - I imagined us, this couple, to be great friends at the heart of a whole host of great friends, and we wouldn't be monogamous but we would be loyal to each other...

Mentor: You had this fantasy as a kid?

Man: By my teen years, yes. It was ridiculously far from my life as it was at the time. In fact I've never really come close to it. The closest I came, and it was still far, was around the time my first and only book came out, eleven years ago. The launch party, that was the closest to a taste of what might have been. Not that anything dramatic happened, just a lot of friendly, smart, happy people with myself and my wife at the centre. 

Mentor: So what happened? Why weren't you able to build on that?

Man: Well, I wasn't able to get my second book published, that was the first problem. But there were so many other things. My wife, who was several years older than myself, and a constant sufferer from chronic fatigue syndrome, and a woman of great practical knowledge and common sense and wit and sensitivity, was not, for all that, anything like the fantasy figure I'd too long contemplated - she was fundamentally monogamous for one thing, and I felt kind of trapped, and guilty. I knew she felt more strongly toward me than I felt toward her, but what we all fall for in another is never quite that other, but some version of ourselves that we want that other to be. I think that's why she fell for me, and to tell the truth I never really fell for her, I just drifted into acquiescing in the relationship, with a mixture of strong affection and guilt. Even marriage - I never wanted to marry, but I new she wanted it, she asked me to marry her but I refused. Then I asked her to marry me, to please her, because she'd been so kind and supportive to me, and my sexual relationship with her had been gentle and healing, after so many years in the sexual desert. It wasn't the great fantasy I'd yearned for but it was so so much better than nothing.

Mentor: And how is that relationship now?

Man: Well, we separated some years ago, but up until recently we maintained a close friendship. Then a few weeks ago she told me she wanted to see much less of me, and she informed various people by email that she was reverting to her maiden name - which I don't think she should ever have given up. 

fantasy pros and cons

Mentor: What about the present?

 

Man: The present? Well, obviously my present-day sex life is non-existent. Now, of course, I have the excuse of being middle-aged or beyond, and being borderline obese. In earlier times I blamed shyness and poverty. Of course, keeping sex in the head, and being fascinated with one's mind, can take its toll on the body. Neglect, disinterest. Your expectation of having something real happening, something that gives you more satisfaction than your fantasies, is so low that you can easily just let yourself go. Take that outré tub of lard, the Divine Marquis. 

 

Mentor: Yet Sade engaged in plenty of real, violent sex, in spite of his obesity, did he not?

Man: Nowhere near as much as he wrote about. And his writings were doubtless only a fraction of his fantasies. Nevertheless he did impose himself on others sexually, you're right about that. He argued that he had the right to use anybody as an object of his sexual pleasure, and that this was somehow natural, which of course is bullshit. You don't see too many animals fucking other animals to death, or whipping them to within an inch of their lives while masturbating feverishly, that's confined to humans, and very few of them. I've never had the gall to behave that way - not being one of the landed gentry.

 

Mentor: So you're content to continue with sex in the head?

 

Man: Certainly not. I'm very unhappy about it, but I see no obvious solution. 

 

Mentor: There are obvious solutions though, aren't there?

 

Man: You mean, going out and meeting women? Singles bars and that sort of thing? Are there really such things as singles bars by the way? If there are I'd be tempted to go to them, or I would've been before I got old and fat. 

 

Mentor: You’re not so old and fat, and there are many other ways to meet women. Special interest groups…

 

Man: Weight-watchers? Actually, I wonder if they have any sex addict meet-ups around town? No, I’m serious.

 

Mentor: Do you consider yourself a sex addict?

 

Man: Is it possible to be a celibate sex addict?

 

Mentor: Addicted to masturbation, yes, of course. 

Man: Well, I don't think I'm addicted to masturbation, frankly, I can do without it if I have to.

 

Of course, I never have to, so I don't. Do without, I mean.

 

Mentor: May I ask what you think about when you masturbate? 

 

Man: Better to ask who I think about. 

 

Mentor: Are you fixated on a particular person?

 

Man: At the moment, yes. It's not always that way, but it often is.

 

Mentor: Well I won't ask you about her. 

 

Man: Why not?

 

Mentor: It's more or less a given that a man becomes obsessed with a woman because he can't have her. So feeding the obsession isn't helpful. Let's talk about the kind of woman that attracts you in general.

 

Man: Very clever. But I will talk about her, I'll get there somehow. As to generalities, yes, let me take you back again, to my teen years, when I first thought about and fantasised about this.... 

skin and mind

Mentor: Just say whatever comes to mind - about love or sex or desire.

Man: Well, if you're not getting much in the way of sex, you tend to overvalue it.

Mentor: What about the Pope? I presume he doesn't get much sex. You think that holds true for him?

Man: Mmmm. I don't know. You're right to puncture my claim though. I watched a program once about a mathematical genius. He was homeless. He spent his life dossing down at the homes of other mathematicians, travelling around the country like that - in the USA I think - and collaborating with these other mathematicians to write papers. He had a record number of mathematical papers with his name on them. That was his life, pure mathematics. No sex whatsoever. It almost brings tears to my eyes, such innocence, if that's what it is. I can't recall a time when I didn't think of others sexually. It was happening even before I knew about sex. 

Mentor: How do you mean?

Man: I mean, I thought of girls, I thought of boys, and my penis got bigger and stiffer and defied gravity, but I didn't know a penis was for anything other than peeing. 

Mentor: So tell me about those early thoughts.

Man: I was drawn to kids with beautiful skin, it didn't matter whether they were male or female - it matters now incidentally, nowadays I'm exclusively heterosexual. I loved the look of it, their skin, its tautness over bone, its softness at the cheeks, the fine hair on arms. I loved the feel of it when we played together, the warmth of it, the shifting tones under different lights. I would stretch out in my bed and imagine the sheets were my playmates' skin. I wanted to hold them, to cuddle them, to lie with them skin to skin, just barely touching, or not, like breath. Actually they weren't my playmates, most of them. They were kids I wanted to be my playmates. 

Mentor: How old were you when you had these thoughts?

Man: Oh these are thoroughly unreliable memories, if not downright lies. No, not lies, but you know how time distorts. In other words, I can't answer that question.

Mentor: How did you feel about thinking this way? Did you feel guilty?

Man: Deliciously guilty no doubt. I do remember the intensity of the feeling at times, thinking how fantastic to be alive and to give yourself up to these sensations. They made me think of my amazing mind, how it can take something experienced and bring it back to life through memory and imagination, give it an even more extended, more intense life than it originally had. The mind - they call it the problem of consciousness - that was probably the first intellectual concept I grappled with - though of course, the mind wasn't a problem to me, more of a wonder. They should call it the wonder of consciousness. It was a great haven for me. My external life has always tended to pale in comparison.