PARO — an extract

I met David Keegan a few years ago, in my first year of college, the same way I’ve met most of the people in my social circle: through friends of friends, at a club, in the smoking area, at three in the morning in the queue for wedges in Gay Spar, at a coffee shop, at a pub, another pub, no not that one, the other one, on the Powerscourt steps, at someone’s shitty house in Glasnevin. They blur together. I’ve misplaced so much of my life. Dave and I were at this club on Bachelor’s Walk his friend Niamh’s boyfriend Rob was DJing at. He played nothing but Aphex Twin for his whole set interspersed with his own arrhythmic record scratching. Dave wore these banjaxed Converse and had one tiny hoop earring in his left ear, along with a gammy eye, which I found endearing. Its profound ugliness made him significantly more attractive, in that it made me feel better. Like: you’re not so special. You’ve got a gammy eye and shitty shoes. Me? I’ve nice shoes, and two eyes that point in whatever direction I want, whenever I want. Lisa took to calling him Sleepy Dave, which made me weirdly ashamed, as if I were being held personally responsible for his eye being so fucked up like that.

He was fine to chat to that first night. It wasn’t as if there were hordes of men waiting to talk to me. I laughed at his vulgar innuendos and made jokes about my pussy and my tits to prove I wasn’t one of those uptight girls who got pissed off about stuff constantly. He must have genuinely thought I was so chill. Too bad chill is a myth. It was sweet at times, though - him breaking out all this quasi-existentialist shit for me, really plumbing the depths of his soul, pontificating to me about Bojack Horseman. He was like, so basically, this show, like, its entire ethos, you know, its whole message is that you have to live in the moment. Like that’s the entire premise of the ethos of the show, we only get one life and so we need to just live it and just go with our natural human impulses, you know, just say fuck it and do whatever we want all the time, ‘cause tomorrow we could die. Like so it’s insane to me that we all aren’t just riding each other constantly. 

I couldn’t decide if I detested him or if I wanted to take him inside me, shove him all the way up into my womb, let him percolate in there and come out again, renewed and reborn. Then maybe I could say I’d contributed something positive to the world. I thought it might be nice to fall in love, to keep someone around to remind me of the things I liked in case I ever forgot. He let me talk about a fight I’d been having with Lisa and didn’t get offended when I said I couldn’t understand David Lynch movies, like most boys with small hoop earrings did in college. He asked if I’d ever read Slavoj Zizek and what permanent traumas I thought my parents had inflicted on me growing up. He was impressed that I listened to Sun Kil Moon. He said he’d never met a girl who liked Mark Kozelek before. I said: yeah, neither has Mark Kozelek. He laughed like he was surprised I’d managed to make him laugh. 

He put his hand on my knee under the table. That’s my knee, I said, looking at my knee. Yeah, he said, looking at his hand on my knee. It was warm in the smoking area and his hand was warm and alive, and my knee, in some way, probably felt warm and alive to him too, which was reassuring. It confirmed all these suspicions I’d been having that I was, in fact, a human being. I felt briefly useful, like a vital member of society. 

You live on Leeson Street, don’t you?

Yeah, he said.

Is it nice there?

He grinned like this was an incredible thing to say. It’s alright.        Just alright?

He grinned again like I was absolutely knocking his socks off.

He’d have sex with me until something else cropped up. There was always an excuse, a reason not to get further involved. He’d disappear for weeks then reappear as if nothing was wrong and have sex with me again for a week or two, then disappear again. The classic millennial dilemma. Every book and TV show talks about relationships like this and I’m always like, boo hoo. Who cares about this girl and all the boys she resents for sleeping with her? The answer is no one cares about that girl. I’d let him ride me whenever it was convenient for him, cry and mope and drink too much when he took it away from me, then continue to think: yes, this is good, pain is what it means to be alive. It was unclear if my desire for a more substantial relationship was pathological or normal, though my acceptance of it through the years infuriated Lisa and Eimear. They said, there’s nothing wrong with casual sex, but you clearly want something else. You don’t need to keep fucking him to prove you’re chill. 

But I did. And he kept disappearing and reappearing whenever he wanted, and I kept telling myself it was a good thing. It’s nice to be with someone you’ve known for a while. Dating apps are like panopticons, and I’m disgusted with myself for finding the men so disposable. Men with rich interior lives just as nuanced and boring as mine, reduced to a series of pixels and a Spotify anthem and their height listed on their bio along with, if I’m lucky, a quote from some shitty TV show; Peep Show apparently being the zenith of comedy for those fortunate enough to have been blessed with no personality. I hate having the kind of personality people have to warn others about: That’s just Ingrid! That’s what she’s like! Always having to meticulously curate myself online to trick some poor punter into spending time with me talking about bullshit. If I sound jaded, it’s because I am. I’d like to be in love provided I could do it with zero disruption to my day-to-day life, and in such a way that I’d never be confronted with the crippling realisation that you can never truly, really, deeply, know another person. But maybe there’s no such thing as love. Maybe there’s just sex with boys who call you when they’re bored and hate when you call them, and bitching about people you haven’t seen or even thought about in years, and not understanding the point of Mulholland Drive, and your stupid little job and your dead dog’s ashes in a box by the fireplace in your family home. Dust in a bag in a box in a house in a village in a country in a world that creeps closer to extinction every day. So, whatever. I send a text to Dave. The text is an ellipsis and a question mark. I figure I may as well get my hole while I wait for my inevitable demise.

He replies two hours later with a high-heel emoji. I send him back the Easter Island head emoji and he says: urs or mine? Riding me is an elaborate joke to him, and I either go along with it because it’s a joke to me too or because I want him to think it’s a joke to me too. Regardless, sex with him is becoming an arduous odyssey of self-reflection, which is why I need to be drunk before I do it these days. Tonight it’s four of those cans of pink gin and tonics followed by the dregs of vodka Jessie’s forgotten about in the kitchen press. Fading out on the couch, getting heavy with the booze. Mondays are Jessie and Michael’s Dungeons & Dragons nights, so I like to make myself scarce. All of Michael’s melter friends from Computer Science crawl out of the woodwork and smoke weed for hours without ever offering me any. They let the smoke drift slowly out of their mouths like they’re in the Mafia - or, more likely, a tragic school shooter-type club. They’re active contributors to several subreddits and none of their shoes have intact soles. Whenever they get together their different bodily odours commingle into something fetid and disquietingly evil. Jessie doesn’t seem to have her own friends. She’s a boyfriend girl. Fair play to her. She’s doing a master’s in Children’s Literature and hates me because I shatter her little fantasy of playing house with Michael. It’s a mystery how she got so old before her time. She’s the oldest twenty-four year old I know.

Are you going out? she asks, putting tortilla chips in a bowl.

No. Well, yeah.

Oh.

I’m going to Dave’s.

You’re predrinking for the ride?

I’m relaxing, I correct. This is how I relax.

Alright, she says, heading down the hall. You do you.

I open my laptop and search Kit’s name. There’s an Irish Times article, a Guardian list. There’s Stinging Fly prose behind a paywall, some early poetry. I find a story she wrote for the Dublin Review two years ago. She was my age when it was published. I read it and then read it again. I read it so many times. I mouth the sentences to the empty room, hoping maybe she’ll manifest, like Bloody Mary, and gouge my eyes out. Thank you, I’d say. Thank you, Kit, thank you.  The story’s about two people on a phone call. The people are joyless and talk about their opinions a lot and once had sex with each other. Both characters are psychologically inert but also inexplicably tormented by their own respective brilliance. When I read it, it makes me feel like I, too, am brilliant. Like I too could go and call someone right now, someone who’d had sex with me and maybe lost touch with me, but still had never managed to quite entirely forget about me; someone who’d answer the phone at three in the morning and be ready to have a good-natured verbal sparring match with me, some lightly sardonic-but-not-too-sardonic repartee with me, me in this scenario being a perfectly normal girl like anyone else, yet for some reason in possession of a sort of preternatural beauty at once repulsive and captivating - you know, the sort of beauty that only sounds alluring because it doesn’t actually exist in real life. It makes me feel like there are vast collections of treasures beneath the surface of myself; that these treasures will reveal themselves only if I call someone right now, only if I open up and let myself be seen, really seen, whatever that even means. But of course I won’t call anyone, because there’s no one like that to call. So Sleepy Dave will have to do. 

He smiles shyly when he opens the door. 

Hi.

Hi, he says, moving to let me through. You hungry?

I’m starving, but I don’t want to risk sobering up too soon so I just say nope.

Ah, he says. I’m pretty hungry. I might order onion rings.

Gross. Okay. 

He closes the front door and then just stands there. I can hear Kev’s voice from the front room, and another voice, a girl’s I don’t recognise. Dave’s looking at my lips now, and my stomach lurches violently as I lean in to kiss him, his hand snaking around and squeezing my ass. His skin is soft and his hair smells like coconuts and it makes me feel sick. He breaks the kiss and chuckles quietly to himself.

You can wait in my room if you want. And I’ll order food.

Alright, I say. 

Sure you don’t want anything?

Nah, I ate. Do you’ve any beer though?

I think we have some, like, Smirnoff Ice.

Wow, I laugh. I haven’t drank Smirnoff Ice since I was, like, fourteen.

Hey, he frowns. It’s nice.

Little bitch juice.

You want some or not?

Yeah, go on.

Grand. You head upstairs. I’ll grab it for you.

Dave doesn’t like me talking to his friends, presumably because I’m a ghoulish, shameful secret that must be hidden at all costs. Our trysts are ego-boosting and soul-destroying. I like the idea that he keeps coming back to me for sex despite it being social suicide. Upstairs in his room I thumb through a hardback copy of Henry Miller’s Sexus, pick up a dog-eared Norton Anthology. Dave likes talking about big ideas so he can think of himself as the kind of person who has big ideas, in much the same way that he likes having sex with me so he can think of himself as the kind of person who has sex with girls. Whenever I complain about this to Lisa and the others they tell me I’m also using Dave, for my masochistic self-sabotage, or whatever it is, this twisted game of chicken I’m playing with myself. Lisa loves talking hoop. I try not to think about why I keep having sex with Dave when it seems to hurt my feelings so much. It’s fun to have something to wallow about. It justifies my self-pity. Plus the sex is pretty good, provided I’ve had enough to drink.

Dave returns a few minutes later and sits on the bed beside me. He hands me a glass.

It’s on the way, he says. The food.

I take a sip of the Smirnoff Ice. So, I say. Here we are.

He abruptly starts kissing me. Startled, I spill some of the drink on the carpet. He pulls back.

Sorry, he says. Want to watch Netflix or something?

No, I say. I mean, I want to have sex.

Okay, whoa. At least wait til I’ve eaten.

You just… took me by surprise there.

He leans in to kiss me again. 

Is this okay? he whispers against my mouth.

Yeah.

We lie down on our sides, my leg up around his torso. I get embarrassed about it and move it back down. He smiles and pats my thigh. Get that back up there, he says. He rolls on his back and I straddle him now. I kiss his neck and he sighs. I like these moments when there are few opportunities for miscommunication, when I can simply kiss him and forget about how mystifying he is to me, and I to him, presumably. Dave unclasps my bra with one hand under my shirt, looking at me as if I’m meant to be impressed.

I’ve been practicing, he smirks.

With who?

The doorbell rings and I roll off him as he bounds down the stairs to get his food. He comes up munching and offers me an onion ring. I wince as it slides down my throat. It’s dark outside and the traffic’s loud and I feel so fat and oppressed. When he finishes the onion rings he clambers over to me, shoves his hands under my top, and starts kneading my boobs like he’s checking for lumps. I feel unwieldy in his arms. He lifts off my top and I lift off his and we kiss and we kiss and we kiss. My hand moves down his thigh. He laughs. I copy whatever he does. He gets on top. We’re in our underwear now. I instinctively try to cover up my stomach with my arms, but he holds them back and says, relax, I think you’re hot. Well, good for you. But where does that leave me? Now our underwear is gone all of a sudden, and then for some reason I’m on top and he’s pulled a condom seemingly out of thin air, and he says yeah? And I say yeah, and then we’re having sex, I suppose. I mean, technically. All the ingredients required for sex are currently present, and sometimes it’s nice but sometimes I’m so self-conscious; he keeps whispering shit Ingrid you’re so hot and I keep saying I’m sorry, I’m sorry and he’s like what are you sorry for why do you keep saying sorry and I’m like I don’t know, because I don’t know. And then we’re finished, and he slaps me on the ass like a newborn baby, then motions for me to cuddle with him. I lie down in the crook of his arm.

I just realised, I, like, never look at you after, he says.

Oh, I say. Be my guest.

He turns to me in the dark and looks at me, and I look back.

I hate the way boys look at you after sex. Their eyes go all gooey and they look at you like you’re not even a person anymore, like you’re being remade right in front of them into someone false; someone beautiful, someone who never simultaneously shit and pissed herself at Lisa’s New Year’s Eve party, never drank a shoulder of Bacardi and threw a traffic cone at the Pearse Street Garda Station on a dare. He looks at you and it makes you feel safe, which is terrible, because that implies that you previously felt unsafe, that you now only feel safe because of him, that he provided something that was missing. And nothing was missing. And every time he disappears you have to re-learn how to be alone again.

You’re very pretty, he whispers.

Shut the fuck up, I say, turning my back to him.

I wake in the night and become drowsily aware of a vague pressure between my legs, which quickly becomes a very alert awareness of Dave’s hand down there, in my vagina, rubbing at me. It is an appalling realisation. In my dreams I’d been at Kit’s house on Ailesbury Road, at a book club meeting, making salient points about Raymond Carver and stroking Freddie’s hand, looking down at my fingers, thin and nimble like Kit’s. But now, you know, this. When Dave sees I’m awake he does this overdramatic little pornstar groan. His breath is sulphuric and every time I try to angle my face away from him he kisses me. I think he thinks it’s a game. He whispers, you like that? Not particularly, no. What it reminds me of is when we were in Junior Infants and used to play with modelling clay. I laugh, not because I find it amusing or endearing, but more so because I literally can’t believe this situation has the audacity of happening to me. Me, the protagonist of life, lying under him in the dark whispering yeah I like it, yeah that’s good, that’s grand, it’s fine, it’s already happening, you know? Squirming in a way I hope looks orgasmic or at the very least present, involved even, because what else is there to do? It’s three in the morning and I’m so far from home. I don’t understand how I’ve become so anodyne, so listless. He rolls on his back and presents his crotch as though it’s some sort of prize. I’d like to do something big. Make a permanent stain on my life. Bite off his dick and push him away and burn down his fancy apartment. But life rushes at you and there’s never enough time to decide. So I kiss down his neck and chest, because maybe this is the decision. Maybe this is me getting my rocks off, liberating myself. The funny thing about it is I still feel like I’ve opted into this, that I was an idiot to think this wouldn’t happen, that despite all the evidence everywhere saying I don’t deserve this, I actually do deserve this, because I’m the only one in control of my actions. I can say no. I have free will. He’s not threatening me or pressuring me, and it wouldn’t even matter if I said no. He’d understand. I just don’t ever know how to say no. Besides, maybe I should just relax. Maybe this is just the trade-off for wanting to feel like someone thinks you’re a person - the sad reality obviously being that no one will ever actually think you’re a person, they’ll only ever think you’re so hot, you’re so tight, you’re so wet, oh yeah you like that don’t you, you’re so horny aren’t you? Yeah, grand, okay, I am whatever you say I am.

As I’m going down on him I’m suddenly struck by the realisation that so many girls I know have a story like this, meaning that ultimately this whole story is really a story about nothing, and literally no one cares, because this is how it’s always been and will always be, and if we hated it that much we would’ve grown up and done something about it by now; that on some deep, subconscious level we must have wanted this, must have chosen this, and if we’re doing it because we’ve chosen it then nothing bad has even happened. So stop complaining. I don’t know which is worse: the idea that something unspeakable has happened to us; or the idea that we are all collectively hysterical, angry for no discernible reason, angry at simple concepts we’ve overcomplicated and hyperintellectualised, angry for the sake of being angry. Now everything is warped and I laugh again despite myself because his body is reflected as though in a funhouse mirror, all of his features disproportionate and uncanny in a Freudian way; but I give in to the cognitive dissonance and swallow then pull away from him sharply, wiping my mouth with the palm of my hand, realising not the enormity of what I’ve just done but rather the complete and total insignificance of it, wiping the palm of my hand on his bedsheet while he sighs and says goodnight, finally content, and I say goodnight then lie with my back to him and stare at the wall while I wait and wait and wait for sleep to come, which eventually, of course, it does. And this time the dream is pure fog-grey oblivion, which is fine, because I reckon that’s all I deserve.