Romance Meets Death Read online

slightly maudlin. Everyone who looked at me these days was attached. “I must give the appearance of someone who shags and runs, leaving no trace. I’m not sure I like that.” I pouted for effect. “In fact, that’s probably why I make such huge gestures. I must be angry about something.”

  Simon sighed. At this moment, he cared about me more than anyone else. Shame it wouldn’t last, it never did. He wouldn’t feel like that if he had me, we had established this long ago. “You’re an attractive woman, kitten. Something about your eyes and your hair. The other day when you were rootling around in the vegetable patch….They can’t help it. You shouldn’t punish them for it.”

  “You are very kind, but if I am giving the impression of robust and available lust, it is high time I changed my look to one of crazed vulnerability.” Oh God, this meant losing a lot more weight and giving up the element of errant spankability. How tiresome. I suppose it had to come sooner or later. I do quite like eating though, especially when frustrated, which is pretty much all the time since I took to a life of creative erotomania.

  I realised that I almost incited rejection. It had been going on for years. Why didn’t single people look at me anymore? One person I had ‘chased’ had actually left his girlfriend (wonders will never cease!) Rather than actually talking about it, he had made anonymous phone calls from all over the city for about three years. In return, determined to get something out of these pointless non-encounters, I wrote to him. Sometimes funny, sometimes boring, always affectionate. I modified the twelve days of Christmas for him, in cigarette papers, miniatures of alcohol, and took it to him so that he could reject me, laughing on the doorstep. I sent him exotic blue flowers. He only once identified himself by telephone, to my mother, and demanded that I worship him. As it turned out, he had been sparing me his drug problem. It was a beautiful, doomed non-relationship. I gifted him a box, and made several carpets for him, to a reasonably good standard.

  Then there was the saxophone player. His carpet was of a good design. It was just as he played, daring, imaginative but with bum notes here and there and a few timing issues. He was very beautiful, with blonde curly hair and a large top hat. I gave him a large photograph, which cost a lot, but not as much as spending 5 weeks in a bar watching him play, fending off 21 year old after 21 year old at the tender age of 31. It really would be more convenient if my creative sexuality was more physical, for when prolonged they just come across as taking the piss. He was actually single. All stare and no action, that’s me. In my memory I particularly enjoyed the superficiality of this one. We would have looked wonderful together, and that was all there was to it. Woodland elves with shabby glamour. I added rosebuds to my curls.

  Then there was the Professor, who was unaware that I worshipped from afar. He was a small Jewish American, who brushed his hair like Hitler and glowered at everyone to such an extent that I surmised that he was soft as putty. He initially thought I was stupid and hated him, but I persistently mirrored his fear, and achieved a real smile from him eventually. The ‘bloody my nose’ school of lecturing.

  The Footballer, again ridiculously young, who wanted children and had my eyes. I liked him because he was spirited and a natural, effortless leader. I sang to him every day, which probably varied in quality, knowing me.

  I am a noisy freak of nature, a wilful egotist, and I communicate way too much and too freely.

  My gift making weirdness does not stop at men. I have made and designed many gifts also for women. The contrast between the genders is interesting. I do not, by and large, trust women. My family is at the root of that, but I have chosen career paths largely to avoid them and as a result have no inclination to ask anyone’s opinion about my decisions, unless they happen to affect them.

  The non-relationships may not seem very sane, but I do get joy out of the roughness of the wool and hessian, and the wounds on my hands when I have been working too hard. The self-destructive cough and crippling shuffle from sitting for too long. It is akin to the pain of loss when the occasional sexual relationships end, but far better, because you are left with your creations and your own development.

  What do the encounters with me do to my muses? I imagine it too is relegated to an amusing half remembered story eventually. I am happy to snatch a wisp of immortality. Life is so very bleak. Colour is precious. I only ever meet people through work these days, because I do not get out, so I have to grab the inspirational chances when I get them. Maybe one day it really will be the duck of my dreams. I suspect it of being in-built, the ending. Romance meets death, and I give birth to another creative project that will take me out of, the scene for several years, which means I don’t get hurt, and neither does anyone else. Maybe someday someone will call my bluff, and then I will be too busy making them happy in an extended and imaginative variety of ways.

  www.inadisguise.com 2014