Milkman

So they beat him up. And it was for his behaviour that they beat him up, not for the irritation of guns, for wearing a balaclava when everybody knew who he was anyway; not for threatening me either, a woman, one of their soul sisters. No. It was for being a man and coming into the Ladies unannounced. He had shown disrespect, been dismissive of female fragilities and delicacies and sensibilities, had shown no courtesy, displayed no chivalry, no gallantry, no honour. It was that he had no manners basically. If he chose to walk in on them while they were applying lipstick, adjusting hair, sharing secrets, changing sanitary towels, then so be it, there would be consequences. And here they were, those consequences, happening now.

Of course there was the big one, the biggest reason for not marrying the right spouse. If you married that one, the one you loved and desired and who loved and desired you back, with the union proving true and good and replete with the most fulfilling happiness, well, what if this wonderful spouse didn’t fall out of love with you, or you with them, and neither of you either, got killed in the political problems? All those joyful evers and infinites? Are you sure, really, really sure, you could cope with the prospect of that? The community decided that no, it couldn’t. Great and sustained happiness was far too much to ask of it. That was why marrying in doubt, marrying in guilt, marrying in regret, in fear, in despair, in blame, also in terrible self-sacrifice was pretty much the unspoken matrimonial requisite here.

See? Stalker-type behaviour, referring to himself now too, in the first person plural whereas not long before he’d been a normal first person singular like everybody else.

With me too, he was uncalculated, transparent, free from deception, always was what he was, with none of that coolness, that withholding, that design, those hurtful, sometimes clever, always mean, manipulations. No conniving. No games-playing. He didn’t do it, didn’t care for it, had no interest in it. ‘Those are crazy things,’ he’d say, brushing aside flank movements as protections for his heart. Strong therefore. Chaste too. Uncorrupted in the little things, which held fast for the bigger things. That was singular. That was why I was attracted to him.

to be pulled into the momentum.

was the convention not to admit it, not to accept detail for this type of detail would mean choice and choice would mean responsibility and what if we failed in our responsibility?

Then again, I knew all along it wouldn’t be over. With these sorts of things you have to take each day, each person, each reprisal, at a time.

a recklessness, an abandonment, a rejection of me by me – had returned to me. I was going to die anyway, wouldn’t live long anyway, any day now I’d be dead, all the time, violently murdered – and that, I now understand, gave a certain edge. It offered a different perspective, a freeing-up of the fear option.

I came to understand how much I’d been closed down, how much I’d been thwarted into a carefully constructed nothingness by that man. Also by the community, by the very mental atmosphere, that minutiae of invasion.

I didn’t know what ma meant by my knowledge of the world. My knowledge of the world consisted of fucking hell, fucking hell, fucking hell, which didn’t lend itself to detail, the detail really being those words themselves.