Disordered Desires by Kathryn Lane The morning after throwing up into the cat litter tray again I tore down Kay's photos from my wall once more, for about the 20th time. As Fraggle howled and glared reproachfully at me, unwilling to go near my drunken residue in her toilet, I read Kay's message to me on last years birthday card: ``If our friendship dies then I will be fucking black and moody for the rest of my life, ie, it would be truly foul. My tension is dispelled as soon as I see you, and things subsequently are ace!" I guess this was an apology and a sort of declaration of love, or at least the closest I was ever going to get from her. I started to crumple the card in my hand but gave it a reprieve yet again and instead shut it away in a draw with all her letters and other mementoes of this 2-year long soap opera. I'd first met Kay when I started work at the East London Hospital in Whitechapel. We seemed to have a lot in common, she was 25, short, blonde, slim, a very cool and calculating personality, giving nothing away. I thought she was very attractive but didn't risk any stronger feelings as she was so obviously straight, with a partner of several years, and flirting with the guys in the office. But I was wrong about this, god was I wrong. We got on very well, going out on the piss every week. Her relationship was heading through a bad patch -- indeed this bad patch seemed to consist of the last four of the five years they'd been together -- and she welcomed any excuse to put off going back to his flat in Dulwich. She was looking for support and advice, but my experience of men was pretty limited in a way, and I'd never lived with a guy, so mostly all I could do for her was hold her and get her drunk. I didn't understand how she could stay with, or say she loved, someone who was often cold and hostile towards her, who expected her to accommodate herself to his life and plans, and who had become very overweight and physically unhealthy. When I met him even his fingers were bulbous with fat, it made my skin crawl to think of her being fucked by him. I began to realise that I did fancy her a lot, and was basically terrified of this. Despite so many years of unrequited longings for women, I still had no clue how to get a relationship with one. Yet sometimes I thought she was flirting with me, I caught her staring as we waited in the lunchtime hospital cafe queue, her eyes lingering on mine as we talked crap in the office. Was I reading her signals right? Just what was going on here? Then one night we both got totally stoned on vodka and Stella. She teased me about fancying Ajay, my extremely butch boss, and being a closet dyke but I guessed she didn't really believe it. I told her she was well out of order and she backed down: ``Sorry if I rattled your tree a bit, you like meat and two veg I know, especially wrapped in a crispy uniform, but maybe you should give the other a go, just to see what it's like, eh?" ``And what about you?" I demanded, grabbing her as she laughed at my defensive reaction, ``I've seen you staring at women, don't try and deny it!" ``Yeah, Louisa, you know, she was my girlfriend last year. Beautiful body but completely screwed up in the head, I couldn't take it after a while. Don't tell Dave about this, will you!" I was stunned, it hadn't occurred to me that she would be more experienced than me, I thought at most she was `curious' but wouldn't go though with anything if I did show an interest in her -- not a game I wanted to get into, too hurtful. Fortified by masses of alcohol, somehow I ended up in bed with her in her flat, Dave was away, and I hardly knew what to do or which bits to start with. I stroked her beautiful breasts and nipples with my hands and then licked and suckled them with my tongue. The teats were huge, like button mushrooms, they felt perfect between my lips. She lay back, arms behind her head, smiling slightly in apparent pleasure, just letting me work on her -- this was to become the usual pattern of our lovemaking, alas. I closed my eyes as I went down on her, tongue sliding along the inner lips then circling the clit. She guided me as I caressed and worshipped her body until she was shuddering uncontrollably in a long climax. Then at last she gripped me and held me tight and kissed me. Afterwards I was disappointed in a way -- it hadn't been so very different from sex with a guy, not more emotionally close or anything. But her body was as beautiful as any man's -- I stared fascinated at the ice-cream cones of her small boobs, caressing them with my lips until she finally passed into sleep. Beside her fragile small body I felt like some huge ungainly bloke, a kind of protective feeling that was strange but kinda sweet. After the Stella night things went crazy and I totally thought I'd lost a good buddy and indeed things weren't right for a while. We carried on going out together but now I didn't have a clue what was going to happen at the end of the night. We slept together again a couple of weeks later -- this time Dave was home, so she waited until he was asleep before slipping out of his bed and into the spare room to kip down with me. Not much happened, I was afraid of making too much noise in case he heard as he was just next door, but managed to make her cum again burying my tongue in her bits as she squatted on my mouth for what seemed like hours. 20 minutes before his alarm was due to go off she slipped back into bed with him, and he seemed none the wiser. When we slept together I felt totally loved and accepted, every aspect of her body was beautiful to me, her soft skin, the curves of her breasts and hips, her smell ... However at other times I felt completely rejected when she rushed home to Dave at the end of the night, leaving me to wander miserably back alone to my maggot, dog shit and mad woman infested pig sty in Kilburn. She admitted she was afraid of being seen as a dyke, the pressure of being seen as `abnormal', but I sensed also she had no idea of how to deal with women in relationships, having been so used to manipulating men by her sexuality and beauty. Dave didn't seem to be aware of her many infidelities or that we had shagged in his bed, but was quite jealous of her time, getting nasty with her whenever she went out with me instead of him. They moved to Brighton as Kay was starting a computing course there, and Dave went too, probably to make sure she didn't stray too far. I was also trying to escape from Kilburn -- felt like I was living in the twilight zone and had to get out to preserve my sanity. Found myself a new place to live, a flat in a house owned by a bi bloke, Alan, in trendy Clapham, expensive but I was just so pissed off with sharing and people stealing my food, and didn't want to end up in some squalid bedsit again. After New Year Kay phoned me up, Dave was away and it was like she was asking me to come and see her simply to keep her company. I was a bit pissed off and said what I'd been feeling, that she only wanted me when he wasn't around -- that she wasn't willing to consider my needs and feelings. Still went down to Brighton the next day though, and had a great time boozing, sitting on the stony deserted beach with multiple cans of beer, flicking through porno mags back in her flat and then standing at the windows flashing our boobs at the builders on the house opposite, the usual stuff. Went back to the beach in the evening with a fresh `slab' of beer cans, trying to spy on the gay guys cottaging under the West pier, but it was too cold for even these blokes to get their tackle out, alas. Kay started to worry me, talking about how guilty she felt screwing around behind Dave's back and how devastated he'd be if he found out, how devoted he was to her really. This didn't sound like the most encouraging lead-up to the night of passion I'd been hoping for. ``There's about 18 things I'll have to tell Dave if I'm going to be honest with him," she said, fearfully. ``Just make sure I'm the last on the list!" I protested, frowning at her as she huddled up on the cold sand, the grey waves reflecting lurid orange light from the promenade shops. This contrast of nature and artifice made me very depressed for some reason, I longed to be on a Pacific reef somewhere, miles away from anyone else, just the two of us together in the wilderness. By midnight was so pissed I was nearly paralytic, she was almost dragging me back to the flat. She undressed me and put me in the bath and washed me, cos I was basically incapable of doing anything for myself -- felt very caring and nice, but no sex. Slept together in boxers and t-shirts, I reached out for her during the night and she held my hand, but I wanted her hands in more interesting places ... By Easter we'd been `together' for nearly a year, in our own strange fashion. But she sounded more frightened than ever about her gay side. She claimed she still wanted to be friends but couldn't cope with all the ``weird shit" between us, ie, the sex, even though, I reminded her, she'd initiated this in the first place. Very pissed off, went out with my booze-buddy Andrea and got totally plastered, trying to submerge these bad thoughts in a sea of alcohol. Spent the next day throwing up at regular intervals and couldn't remember how I'd got home at all. Got offered the chance to move to Australia by Mak, a guy I'd met at `Disfigurement Support', who was getting a job over there. Very keen, as I'd lived there for a year after my dad kicked me out of home at 18, and loved the way of life out there, the freedom, the endless sun and booze. Kay was very unhappy about the thought of me disappearing; without me around she would just be stuck alone in her miserable relationship with Dave. Emotionally our relationship was like a perpetual honeymoon, we always managed to patch up an argument afterwards, but I wondered where it was going. I often felt she was happier if I didn't initiate the frustrating fumbling that was our version of lesbian sex. One time when we slept together she built a barrier of cuddly toys and spare pillows between us in bed, as a joke, she claimed, but I knew it really wasn't at some level. Kay phoned me up a couple of days later in tears -- Dave had hit her after one of their incessant arguments, she didn't know whether to leave him or not. She came round, to stay, I assumed, and I tried to console her but she was scared to let me touch her at all. When we got back from the pub at 11pm I went straight into my room as usual to change. ``What are you doing?" she asked suspiciously. ``Just changing into shorts, is that ok?" ``I guess I can trust you," she laughed doubtfully. Then she phoned Dave and made a pathetic apology to him for running away -- he threatened her that he would chuck her out for good if she didn't come back immediately: ``If you don't, then you'll find you can't get into the flat at all." I was silently urging her to tell him to go to hell, but he put down the phone on her and she sobbed despairingly. I started preparing a separate bed for her when she decided she'd rather catch the last train home back to her violent and obnoxious partner, even though it was an hour-plus journey with god-knows what drunken weirdos around. Really made me feel valued. Mak was interviewed for his job in Oz and got it, so now that option was open. Made it clear to Kay that I was seriously thinking of going, and this seemed to make her much more attentive, dropping in after work or inviting me out to lunch. She now worked near Battersea bridge as a temp, so was only a 20 minute walk away. Though she might as well have been in Inverness for all I'd seen of her before this sudden change of heart. She even reached the point of suggesting that she spend one or two nights a week with me and the rest of the time with Dave -- typical bi, wanting the best of both worlds ... But I knew this wouldn't work, I'd always been very monogamous in all my relationships (even if several happened at the same time) and wanted to be her only lover, not just a secondary partner. Plus Dave would completely flip if he realised what was going on. She stayed over again at the weekend, no sex but some nice drunken cuddles once the light was out. Long discussion in the morning -- she'd clearly begun to finally think more seriously about our `thing', prompted by my impending move to the other side of the world. She pointed out the very coy, girly way I always talked on the phone when telling dad I had a new man, as if begging for approval from him, but that I never told him about her, or acknowledged the relationship to anyone else either. ``I don't want to be seen as a freak," I said, a bit defensively, ``I love you cos of who you are, not cos of what gender you are, that is totally irrelevant." ``But you haven't even told your sister, it's as if you pretend it doesn't exist." ``How can I claim to anyone that we are together when a) you're not living with me but with your boyfriend, and b) even when we do plan to do things together, you keep letting me down? They would think I was totally naive or deluded, maybe I am anyway to carry on like this, in hope ..." I felt I couldn't make any assumptions about this relationship at all, I knew any I did make would be quickly disappointed by her behaviour. She sat up and stared at me, Alan had already gone out to work and it was a bright cold winters day outside. The cat had nested on the bed between us and had just let out a fart as she slept, oblivious to the emotional discussion being conducted across her. ``But you keep telling me, even forcing it on me, that you screw around all the time, with loads of men and women, whenever you get horny you basically go for it without even a thought of me!" ``But I am loyal to you, in spirit," I protested, stroking her soft blonde hair as she looked doubtfully at me, ``you are the only one in my heart even when I'm going down on a knobbly monster dick or sucking a 52H boob ...". Over the next couple of months I went through the medicals and clearances necessary for the Aussie visas, just doing temping as a secretary while we waited for these to come through. I'd got in touch with a couple of girls in Oz through the internet and it sounded like Sydney was still dyke heaven. Could hardly wait for things to come through and make my escape. Helped Kay and Dave with their move back to London, Dave simply sat and watched us most of the time, not helping at all as we hauled boxes and furniture around, claiming he couldn't 'cos of a bad back. He was even heavier now -- 20 stone. The last time I saw Kay she said the relationship with him was back on track, but behind her show of confidence was a mass of fear. She broke down and begged me not to go, playing on my worries about Mak's agenda. But I'd decided I was going to abandon him anyway as soon as we got to Oz. She promised she would change, but I knew she felt what she felt and I couldn't alter it, that'd she'd never leave Dave for me. I'd spent the last two years of my life on a continual roller-coaster of infatuation and despair, hoping, futilely, that she would change, and this had to be the end. My genitals were surging again just from the contact of her warm soft body as we cuddled, but I was wary of putting too much faith in this automatic physical reaction anymore. Perhaps sex is just some illusion of connection, an intimacy that can never be actually attained ... The day before the flight I wrote a final letter to her: ``Kay, I don't think this letter is a good idea yet I can't not do it -- maybe I just won't send it!! To lay the cards on the table mate is to say that I am totally in love with you. If I had just one wish it would be to spend the rest of my life with you -- where we live, what we do, how rich or how poor we are are all irrelevant to me -- all that matters to me is that we would be together and that you were happy! The last thing I want to do is to add more stresses to your complicated life but I have been going crazy thinking about all of this all the time. I wouldn't want you to see me as a straw to grasp and use and then discard when you've changed your mind or when I don't serve a purpose anymore, I don't have much self respect but I have enough to know that I don't deserve that. I would have liked to live with you as a mate, (if that was what you wanted), to share a dingy bedsit in Brixton or a flat in Brighton. To have a laugh, get drunk, run around naked, find jobs, pay the bills, whinge and cry and make cakes, just how it has been I guess. You love Dave and you have six years of history together and he is a successful guy and I fully understand why it is very stressful to even consider leaving him. Most of me thinks that you shouldn't, most of me thinks you should stay with Dave and I should be the one who leaves, I am responsible for stirring things up in your head and making things difficult for you and him -- once I go to Oz then maybe we can all get on with our lives and live happily ever after! I have absolutely nothing to offer you Kay, no money, no security, no home, no prospects, no history, no opportunities, NO DICK! For those reasons I think you should, and see why you do stay where you are. I guess all I could offer is my love and in this world all that that carries is uncertainties and pain. I hope we can still be friends after this, I'll stand by you no matter what mate, what ever you decide or end up doing, whether you stay with Dave, or you go it alone, or you meet someone else or run away and join the Foreign Legion -- I'll always be there for you. Maxie" As I boarded the plane, looking out one last time at the grey chill Spring evening, at England, I knew she'd be on the phone as soon as I got to Oz, begging me to come back ... Live couples fucking   to see more about this author click here

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