‘A heart attack, I hope you mean?’
‘Yeah.’
This is so grimly tragi-comic and he’s so earnest that I have to make an effort not to laugh.
‘You know it could be psychosomatic?’ I say. ‘You think of her, and then you feel her sitting on you?’
‘I didn’t fancy her! She was, like, sixty! Ugh.’
‘No … I … OK.’
I’m going to copulate with someone who sincerely believes in ghosts, and doesn’t understand the word psychosomatic.
‘Other times, I’ve heard her walking about in here,’ Zack continues, on a Lore of Linda roll now, hands on hips, casting a suspicious look around the room.
‘How do you know it’s her?’ I say. ‘This is quite an old building. Could be any number of dead people?’
‘Because she had these shoes that made her sound like a clippy-cloppy goat. Heels. Brrr.’ Zack shudders.
‘I don’t believe in ghosts,’ I say.
‘I do. It’s only science,’ Zack says.
‘I’m fairly sure, whatever else it is, it’s not science.’
‘It is. Principle of physics, a form of energy cannot be destroyed, it can only change form, right?’
‘… Riiight?’
‘So when someone dies, where does their energy go? Into another form. Ghosts.’
‘Well, no, if you’re buried and decompose into the earth you’re worm food. That’s the transfer of energy. Into the soil.’
‘Worm food energy.’
‘Yes.’
‘What’s cremation then? What does that energy become?’
‘Fire?’
‘Woah …’ Zack pauses. ‘I still think there’s spirit energy. That has to go somewhere.’
This is pretty bad foreplay, it has to be said, and my worm energy is seriously on the wane.
I look at the recliner and wonder if Zack always brings women he meets in the bar up here to this seat. I’m grateful for the fact he starts some enthusiastic kissing so I can stop thinking.
I push him down on the cushions and straddle him, a knee either side of his legs, while he does some unpromisingly aggressive tit-squeezing, as if he’s assessing the freshness of fruit at a market. As if he’s Rick Stein with a couple of pomegranates at a souk in Fez. He’ll give them a sniff in a second.
I had forgotten how stressful sex with a new person is, the pressure to perform being a really sexy person who is naturally good at sex, a part-time erotica master. The stupid hair-tossing stuff and the arching of your back. As if there’s a panel watching you beyond a one-way mirror, appraising your performance and holding up paddle boards with their scores. It’s kind of inimical to enjoying yourself.
Sex is inherently ridiculous. You get better at it once you accept that. Really don’t want to be thinking of Ed quotes right now. What if … I imagine Zack is …
‘Oh, shit. I should’ve said,’ Zack says, looking suddenly worried, catching his breath, his large, hot hands clamped on my seventy-denier-clad thighs.
‘It’s OK,’ I say, smiling, moving my hair over one shoulder in a hopefully alluring way, ‘I have condoms.’
Hah, do you seriously think I’d leave that to you, and/or chance.
‘No,’ he says. ‘I don’t do hair.’
‘You don’t do what?’ I’d thought that move looked pretty good.
‘Hair,’ he says, and nods toward my black Lycra crotch, the hosiery stretched as taut as a trampoline.
‘… Hair down there?’
‘Yeah,’ Zack says. ‘Do you wax?’
… What? On earth? A pre-nup for pubes. Oh God, I feel ancient. I suddenly feel like there isn’t ten years between us, but generations. I have time travelled. I’m trying to shag my grandson.
‘No?’
‘Oh. Sorry, I shoulda said!’ Zack says, conversationally, like he’s explaining he meant to give me the shortcut directions to the supermarket. ‘I usually do say up front, on Tinder, but you know. You got in touch tonight. And I was, like, yeah, she’s hot.’
Zack pauses for my reaction. I gather I’m meant to think this is a major silver lining to this cloud. The silver lining, Zack, is how little I wanted to have sex with you anyway.
‘Only now I’ve thought, I didn’t say about the hair thing. Yeah sorry, like, no hair for me. I can’t do it.’
‘What, like … physically couldn’t get it up?’
‘Uh. Yeah? I guess. My friend who is into the … you know … Stepmom Porn likes it. But not for me.’
‘Stepmom Porn?!’
Zack’s eyes widen, conveying: wow, you really are antiquated, huh (and proving my point).
‘Jesus. Stepmoms. That’s one for his therapist.’
Zack may not be the sharpest but he’s caught the edge to my attitude easily enough. He eases me off his lap and as I stand up he says: ‘It’s nothing against you, OK, horses for courses. You do you.’
‘Yeah, looks like I’ll have to, huh.’
This is lost on Zack, who blinks.
‘But you’re … sex is sex. Wouldn’t you make do and get on with it?’ I say. ‘Where’s your Blitz spirit?’
My need to solve this riddle is fighting my need to not sound like I am desperate for him to get on with it, because I absolutely don’t want anything from him but answers.
Zack shrugs.
‘It is what it is. I’m grossed out by a bush. Like, some guys like blondes. Some guys like … guys.’
‘What would happen if you’d forgot to say and then saw pubes?’ I say. ‘Would you scream, as if I had the Ratatouille rat in my pants?’
‘To be honest, Eva, uh, I feel like you’re shaming me.’
‘You’re the one who called a screeching halt to sex based on my body, so I don’t think you’re one to talk about shaming.’
A pause.
‘Do you have hair?’ I say.
Zack shakes his head, elastic band slipping from his man bun as he does, and he re-ties it.
‘No, man, I have it all off. Clean as a whistle. Butthole too.’
He looks proud, as if this is a great personal achievement. As if he could list Whiskerless Anus under ‘What makes you right for this role’ on a CV.
There’s not many moments in my life I’ve managed to assert myself. Susie still talks in awe of the time I got bollocked for my cheese scones and told my Domestic Science teacher she was a complicit instrument of patriarchal control, like Serena Joy in The Handmaid’s Tale.
Mrs McNab called me a ‘smart arse’ and I said well I am smart and I have an arse so I’ll take it. Ten days of detentions, ten whole days.
I feel a similar rush of revolutionary fervour coming on at this rejection by Zack.
‘… And what’s women’s hair, dirty?’
‘Yeah, I mean, it’s hygiene, I guess. Also the look.’
‘How mental is it to say you don’t like the way women naturally look?’
‘Look, I get why you’re disappointed, now you’re turned on and all,’ Zack says. ‘If you’re that upset I could … I dunno. Play with your boobs or something.’