LOVE, AGGRESSION, BLINDNESS [draft]

‘Clinical observation shows not only that love is with unexpected regularity accompanied by hate (ambivalence), and not only that in human relationships hate is frequently a forerunner of love, but also that in a number of circumstances, hate changes into love and love into hate.’
Freud, S. New introductory lectures on Psychoanalysis. Translated by J Strachey. New York: W.W. Norton, 1964.


The first thing I did was reach up and touch where my left eye should have been. There was some tape and wadding, a bandage round the side of my head. My good eye swivelled about surveying the ward.
“Ah! You are back in the land of the living,” came a muffled voice from my blind side.
“Piss off?” I suggested convivially. Offended silence. A flat screen played out a National Geographic ™ Special on Aggression and Bonding in Rhesus Monkeys and I blink my good eye closed. I could feel the prick of tears on the inside of the lid and bit my top lip to hold them back. I had felt so alive with him. And now I didn’t know where he was or if he even lived.

All I knew was I'd blearily opened the door the night before and fumbled for the kitchen light. I’d been robbed: The floor was strewn with old newspapers and cornflakes packets, junk mail and itemised bills. But there was no broken glass or splintered doorframes. Stuff like that. It only took a moment to fathom it out. My paper recycle bag hanging from a hook by the kitchen door had split. I’d been loading it up for a week more than it could take. I never knew if the industrial sized guilt bins by the station would be over flowing. On any workday morning I might take the super abundance of bottles and stuff out with me and then find myself left with the fuckers, unable to punch them through the brush slots hearing them smash, crackle and pop on the waiting losers below. So, back to the flat and suddenly I’d be eight minutes late for work. So I’d put it off and put it off. The toilet and the rubbish shoot are quick and easy. It's the recycling that reminds me who I am. Part of who we are.
And then there was that meek little rat a tat tat on the door. Somehow Aaron had let himself into the block without buzzing up.
“Hey baby,” I mocked. “You sneak thief you. How did you get in?”
“Same way you’ll get in,” he winked.
“Jesus!” I thought. “He was smashed as me.” Out loud I blur, “I can’t fuck now, I’m fucking fucked. See?" and I look down at myself just to make sure. "Completely. Just look.” Spliff shuts me right down, but he comes on an animal. But I mean… an animal. I see him lurching forward and realise I have nowhere to hide. I can’t run. It's my home. I’m going to have to deal with it right now.
“Piss off Aaron,” I try.
“Aye,” he says with that dirty grin on his face. We’d already crashed around the municipal bins on the way home and even then a blow job was just about all I could take. What did he want now?
“Come on darlin’,” he grinned wider. “You know you want it.” It was grotesque.
“Fuck off!” I spat back but it was lame. I reeled round and caught a glimpse of the Jack D proud above the spices on the top shelf. It looked like a figurine of the Virgin Mary from St. Peter’s square, sold along with the poster of the blinking Jesus and biros with the heart on the end which lights up when you write.
"Put him off and put him out," came a voice of redemption. Failing that, maybe I could just pass out myself. Then he could do what he liked. I wish I'd just faked it and crashed down on the floor amongst the shite. But I didn't. No. I can feel the regret grabbing at me with it’s filthy green nails. But regret’s too late. Instead I grappled the freezer door and yanked it open.
“Ice,” I said. “Just a cheeky one Aaron.” And I chucked the tray across the kitchen to the draining board.
“You like that big JD don’t you.” I purr in my best porn voice.
“Baby...” he lassiviates but doesn't seem able to complete the sentence. I lurch across for the top shelf like it’s the saving grace. Now all I need are two glasses and the where with all to pour ourselves the knock out drop.
“Mmmm….” He says as I bend over fumbling for the glassware to civilise the moment. “Nice arse,” and yanks at my jeans. Christ all mighty. My pants are down. Now I wished I wore a belt like everyone else my age. I wish now that instead of handing him that heavy glass tumbler I’d given him the £200 I kept in Spartacus for rent and just asked him to leave. But he was my boyfriend. Was that it? I was trying to remember. Back then I still wasn’t sure.
“Fuck off off me will you you fucking fucker. Just fucking leave me alone.” I turn and punch him hard in the face.
“Just fuck off,” I repeat. But then I get it: a flash of blinding white light across my kitchen, crashing into a thousand shards again the walls. There is something searing up from my ear and down into my left eye like an endless corridor leading blindly off. I think I’m going to piss myself and grab at my jeans. Christ, I’m reeling. He fucking hit me. I try to blink and lucidity strikes: you know the kind, where things make real sense: drink, I think and yank my jeans up.
“Drink!” I say and flip the cork expertly across the room. I surprise myself at the dexterity. I notice I’m violently shaking, but have no idea just how bad things are. “Drink it!” I demand and slop some in his direction.
“Careful,” he replies, flicking a lighter in his left hand, “or I’ll burn you.”
It all seemed like baggage: Aaron, the drink, the dope, all the irrelevant hangers on. But deep down inside I knew that throw it away and I’d be left without a thing: a tidy kitchen with nothing in.
“Hey Aaron baby…” I pause a moment and it’s like the whole world is suspended animation, except that it's spinning. “I’ll do something ghastly with this bottle if you don’t shut the fuck up.” It was a joke but came out nasty. Maybe my cut up face added to the filth of my mouth. He lunged across the tiny kitchen to the sink and for a thankful moment I thought he had reached his nadir. I thought he was going to puke. I took a gulp of air and tried to blink again, but the left side of my face was numb. I could feel my right eyelid sliding up and down across the smooth of my eyeball. The next moment he’d wheeled round and was looking at me, a sharp blade held up in the kitchen neon.
“That’s my best knife,” I said flipping the JD round to make a club of it. Insane excitement rushed through me. I could feel the fluid running down like it was emptying itself into my armpit. In a moment I was soaked: Bourbon and blood.

And now I’m here and it was all I could remember. I don’t know where he was or if he lives. All I know was that I was stuck in this hostile place and for the first time in my life in love. A nurse stepped up to my good side.
“Where’s your friend?” she asks. “He was just here.”


Word 1322

THANK YOU FOR CALLING

“Look,” said Dr Walid Mohammed “I’ve performed more of these than you’ve had hot dinners, and not one complication.”
“Ok, ok,” said Peter Davinchy. “But I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for the crap service from that restaurant, so listen: I don’t want you lot here screwing things up even more.” Dr Mohammed could not decide whether the attitude was due to the patient’s pain, anger or simply because he was an ‘A’ grade arsehole.
“I’ve never had a complication. You’d be the first,” he repeated.
“Yeah. Right,” Davinchy replied. The consultation was over. The Doctor had already unstrangulated his hernia and pushed it partly back into place. Only a pressure bandage was holding it now. At 9am tomorrow he would open him up and position and attach the internal gauze. He would need to reduce the size of the hiatus in his lower abdomen. All men had them to allow the seminal vessel from the testicles to enter the abdominal cavity. Under pressure from the intestines or trauma they can split wider and wider and coiled chunks of gut can protrude. This one had started to go on the other side as well but the Doctor would not mention this until after the op. He knew this type of man. He would be demanding a double hernia operation, a non starter. It just wasn’t done and the Doctor could easily avoid the aggravation by just not mentioning it.
“You’re fine,” said the Doctor as he walked away from the bed. Part of him knew this comment would irritate the patient and he felt better for it. But it wasn’t the doc that really galled Davinchy, it was the restaurant.
In some ways it was the best meal he’d ever had, not least as it was so out of the blue. You never expect that much from a buffet. He didn’t. It’s canteen food usually. But firstly there were waiting staff so you never had to get up, and secondly there were three chef’s in the middle of it all, knocking it up fresh. At £85 a head, it was a bargain. He’d not eaten since breakfast so come midday he was starving and had kicked off of all things with a little pasta salad just to take the edge off. The abundance of roasted strips of red pepper and cream sauce in the salad had got his juices going. His friend Ben had been raving about the lunch buffet at the Tower Art’s Hotel for weeks. ‘T and A’ Ben called it, but then he was obsessed with sex. T and A: that’s ‘tits and arse’ in case you were wondering. Peter hadn’t seen his own appendage for years, not without the help of a mirror anyway and he didn’t use the hotel in ‘that way’. For him there were other compensations and food was most definitely one of them.
The place was an Aitkins diet wet dream. Davinchy worked through grilled king prawns, steak, broiled ham with onions, a pile of lamb chops and French fries. Food till the cows came home. He’d lost count. It just kept on coming. It was a kind of paradise. There was something about the feel of rich bloody juices trickling down the side of ones face that felt delicious. His body would sweat in response, his forehead, armpits and groin getting wetter with each mouthful. He was going to thank Ben for this discovery but that was before the agony had began.
“For the love of god,” he’d said later to Philomena. “There is absolutely no point in just splashing water on it. You’re just spreading the puke all over my carpet.” She was useless. She would have to go. And now here he was needing surgical intervention because of the incompetence of that restaurant. His lawyer would sort them out. Someone’s lawyer would. His own seemed not to understand the obvious case against them. The place had almost killed him for fuck sake. The Doctor had said as much.

Peter flipped his phone open and scrolled down the menu. His phone dialled and he hopped nimbly through the options at the other end till he was through to the matre de again.
“Davinchy,” he said.
“Ah yes. Mr Davinchy. I trust you are fully recovered? Would you like to place another booking?”
“No I fucking wouldn’t! I’m in hospital because of you, you prick. And don’t just hang up on me again you arsehole?”
“Thank you for calling. Goodbye,” cut in an automated voice at the other end before the line went dead. Davinchy narrowed his eyes and smiled a little.
“This,” he thought to himself, “is a war I am going to win.” And that’s how it was. He won his case against them. After all, he was the kind of man who always got what he wanted. Always got what he deserved.