The Rachel Incident(43)
We’ve never talked about the kiss. I’ve thought about it, of course. Now that he was out, was kissing a woman the last taboo left? Was he saying goodbye to women, and to the notion of straightness altogether? Was it a strange way of saying thank you for coming with him to Fermoy? The most boring answer is probably the most true one: that he simply wanted to mark the last day where he lived with secrets.
16
AUGUST WAS A MONTH so wild that now we only refer to it as one thing: The Gaynaissance.
If you were a gay or bisexual man and you lived in Cork in August 2010, then trust me, my friend James fucked you.
Unsurprisingly, James’s coming-out changed very little. Most people were very gracious about it, and just nodded and congratulated him. Others did not behave so well, and ended up on our shit list because of it.
There is a certain personality type that is addicted to the concept of its own intellect. They are the people who insist they saw the twist in the movie coming, who always thought that the divorced couple were unhappy, that the female celebrity seemed crazy. They are also the people who always knew you were gay, and they can’t resist talking about it.
“I knew that,” Ben said.
“Well, now it’s official.” James was unfussed.
“I always knew,” Ben repeated, suggesting that he knew before James did.
“Checked the store cameras, did you?” James said smoothly, and Ben’s smug face turned shocked.
“You haven’t?” he said, his face white. “In the shop?”
“Oh sorry,” James answered. “I thought you knew.”
James was no longer contained to the few queer nights that the city had on offer. He was free range now, pressing bodies up against every smoking area in Cork, and taking some of them home. I slept in my own room much more, which wasn’t quite the death sentence it used to be. Having a boyfriend had been a domesticating influence. I now had clean sheets, flowers in a jam jar, pictures on the wall. I felt I was doing very well, for twenty-one.
We never fought, officially, about the boys he brought home. They were mostly earnest and sweet, made polite chit-chat with me in the morning, asked me about my bookshelves. But there were a few, and one in particular, who radiated a certain distaste for me, and for women generally. They thought of James as Juliet, and me as his flustered loyal nurse, calling him in from the balcony.
They tried, sometimes, to bully me a little bit. Jokes about fag hags, and the stupid things straight girls did. Veiled comments about my size, about how it must be nice that James and I were able to share clothes.
James never really came to my defence, but he didn’t entertain these comments either. He didn’t need to. Invariably, Lady Gaga would come on the iPod speaker and the two of us would dissolve into our own world, leaving whoever was with us on the fringes. We sang “bedroom ants” instead of “bad romance,” because it was summer and the whole house was riddled with them.
The poetry anthology that Deenie was putting together proved to be more work than she had expected, so I was over at the Harrington-Byrnes’ a lot. The anthology was separate from her day job, and to do with her father’s literary estate. It was the twentieth anniversary of his most famous collection, and she had commissioned “Ireland’s most exciting poets” to write a poem in response to his work.
“Ireland’s most exciting poets,” she said, “who will accept two hundred quid.”
It was a lot of busy work. Emailing agents, setting deadlines, chasing them, sending updates back to the publisher. She was glad to have me, and said so often.
“I don’t think I would have ever accepted if I didn’t have you,” she said. “Organising poets is like herding cats.”
She was grateful for me, bought pastries for my coming over, but didn’t appear to have any inclination to pay me more. I felt awkward about it. Surely, the internship was now over? I looked up what a publishing assistant did, and I ticked every box. I managed correspondence. I forwarded invoices to accountants. I wrangled spreadsheets. I had taught myself all kinds of Microsoft Excel tricks to keep up with the various deadlines, and surely that was worth more than fifty a week.
It was the summer of un-aired grievances. I was too anxious to tell Carey about London, too frightened to ask Deenie for a pay rise. James wasn’t the only one writing scripts. I wrote countless long ones in my head, all conversations that revealed me to be righteous and long suffering, and other people to be insensitive and cruel.
RACHEL
You sit here in your big house, with your lovely husband, and your glass kitchen, but you don’t see what’s in front of you! Me, the person who walks here, because she can’t afford to take the bus every day!
DEENIE
(Appalled) Rachel…I had no idea. Please. (Opens purse) Take my money.
I was terrified of appearing ungrateful, so instead I said nothing, and just became resentful. The first time she left me alone in her house I thought it was a magnanimous and very trusting gesture. She was meeting an author for lunch and didn’t have any qualms about leaving me alone with her things.
She should have had qualms. I sat still for twenty minutes to make sure she was really gone, and then I went nosing around. First, I just wanted to examine things. To turn over the trinkets of her life, and wonder how one could own both a George Foreman grill and a handwoven Nepalese rug. It was a life I wanted for myself, and still the standard by which I judge my own aesthetic choices: Would Deenie have this in her house?