The rooftop quickly fills up, dating couples mostly. Glamorous women with hair and nail extensions, full makeup and scanty dresses; men with groomed beards, obvious intentions, business expense accounts. These people smudge up against each other.
“I love meeting new people,” I tell him, giddy, drunk, high.
“I have such respect for people who do,” he replies. He moves closer to me, bends to close the gap between us, so I can hear him clearly. I feel his breath on my cheek, and it blows my sense away. There is nothing but sex all around us. New and perfect. Old and established. Burnt-out, burning bright, angry, pitiful, grateful, unclassifiable.
“There are so many people. I feel the ache of being only one of them and want to be more,” I tell Daan. It is a dramatic thing to say. Something to do with my father’s death, or maybe the hash. Both. A combination. Chicken and egg.
“What do you mean?” He looks interested. I am interesting for the first time in a long time. Maybe ever.
“Well, the problem with being only one person is you can disappear. You can be snuffed out.”
“That’s a sad thought.”
I shrug but decide not to tell him about my father. How I am entitled to have sad thoughts, this day above all days. I am thinking about mortality, about the meaning of it all. Why are we here?
“Do you fancy another drink?” he asks.
I do, and I feel entitled to another drink. Several. Too many. We talk, he has a lot of interesting stories. He comes from money, made through fiber optics and oil. He doesn’t impart this information in a crass way, simply through dribs and drabs, asides to the main tale he is telling, and yet I know he is trying to impress me. I’m flattered he’s bothering.
“We had to take a helicopter or else I would have missed my mother’s birthday bash. She would never have forgiven me, but I was in such a hurry I left her gift on the helipad, so I am a bad son anyway!”
“The Heinekens are old family friends. They are very down-to-earth, really, like everyone else, but their parties never run dry.”
He sparkles. We laugh. At some point, he puts his hands on my throat, tips my head up to his, bends down. I kiss him. A man that I’ve only just met. Who I know nothing about. I’m not usually a fan of public displays of affection. I expect it to feel strange, wrong. It doesn’t. It feels absolutely safe. Correct.
We have sex in the disabled loo in the basement of the bar. It sounds seedy. Awful. I suppose it is, but it doesn’t feel awful. It is the right sort of bad. His hands are clumsy, unwieldy, ill-fitting. I like the strangeness. I like the fact he doesn’t know how to please me, and we’ll have to learn, or I’ll leave unsatisfied and maybe that will be for the best. I’d be lying if I said it was great sex from the get-go. To begin with it is good sex, made interesting because it is so wrong, so dangerous. But then something slips or jumps, and it becomes great. The orgasm he pulls from me heats my belly and then rolls through my limbs, chasing the alcohol that has already seeped into every part of my body. The desire will ultimately settle in my mind, the most dangerous place of all. He leaves me feeling light, rather than weighed down, which is good. But I also feel flimsy, rather than substantial. If that is a red flag, I ignore it.
Afterward, I pull up my knickers, mop up the desire. I have never done anything like this before and I wait for the embarrassment （mine）， the dismissal （his）。 My mind gallops, planning, plotting. Preparing. Modern dating is a minefield. There is ghosting and haunting, being benched, bread-crumbed and kitten-fished. Countless different ways for people to hurt one another. These are the new ways, or at least the new names—the old ways are still very much in existence too. Lies, deceit, rejection, regret. I don’t want to get involved with all of that. It has been years since I started up any sort of a relationship. A man like Daan—handsome, young, tall, confident, wealthy—will have a pick of women. I can’t risk my peace of mind. He will be trouble. I should simply walk away right now. I really should.
He offers to get me another drink. I watch him head toward the bar. He effortlessly cuts swathes through the crowds; people part for him. Men glance nervously upward, clocking his height, women glance appreciatively, noting his beauty. I like it but I’m afraid of it. I could just slip away now. I can’t flatter myself that he’ll be too worried. Most likely, he’ll just pass the drink to the next pretty, willing woman. Why is he even spending time with me? Novelty? There are so many beautiful, brilliant, younger women to pick from. Yes, I am drunk, but somehow some deep reserve of self-preservation has kicked in, and I know that giving him a way to get into my life, my head, my heart would be ruinous. I will get hurt.
He returns, hands me a glass of champagne. “How can I reach you?”
It’s flattering. A man wanting to see you again after you’ve shagged him is not to be taken for granted. It’s tempting to trust him but impossible.
“You can give me your email, I’ll contact you,” I say.
“Email?” He seems amused. “Not my number or my Insta?”
“Your email.” I like the thought that that ball is in my court. I can contact him if I want to at any point although I’m not planning to. I must leave this here. One illicit night, on the back of an incredible shock. A treat. A holiday from work, my mother, all my responsibilities. Not to be excused but perhaps possible to explain. I’ve got away with it. I should count myself lucky. I should leave well alone.
11
Kai
But I don’t leave well alone. I can’t. I get home and expect to be able to compartmentalize the incident, consign it to a deep crevasse in my mind. Left alone, not disturbed, not disturbing. I tell myself it was just a flirtation. Exciting, electrifying. Isolated, contained. Nowhere to go. No future. A man like that would simply play with me. Let me down. It is not worth the risk, the inevitable heartbreak. But my real life conspires to be as hard and dull as possible so that he glistens and glitters all the more brightly. There is the funeral to attend. On hearing news of my father’s death my mother slips further into decline. She’s needy, angry, regretful. Days are lost to cleaning cat sick off the bed, sorting out dark and light wash loads, ploughing through towers of ironing, pairing socks, picking up dry cleaning, paying bills, shopping, cooking, cleaning, answering to my boss, managing my team, each one with their own spider’s web of demands and desires. Domestic and professional responsibilities threaten to overwhelm and bring little joy. He was joyful. The ball is in my court and I pick it up, serve a volley right over the net by setting up a new nonwork email account and emailing him.
Is there a feeling like it? When the small envelope icon bounces onto your screen and suddenly it’s as though his fingers are on you again, in you again? We swap increasingly flirty emails, dozens every day. I wonder whether he is sending dozens of emails to dozens of women. Probably, but as I’m not planning on meeting up with the man, not allowing him in, it doesn’t matter. It’s just a game, a distraction. It is flattering, being rediscovered—reinvented even. We don’t speak. Our communication is confined to email. He tells me he works mostly from the offices in Amsterdam, that he is in London only once a month or so. I receive this news with relief. See, this man could not have a proper relationship with me. He is like all the men in my history, aloof, unattainable, unreachable. He tells me when he will next be in the UK. He writes that he’d like to see me again.