Jennifer's Stockings

I'm afraid I live in a keepsake-free world. My parents and grandparents have not seen fit to pass anything down to me save varying degrees of love and disappointment, and a rickety compliment of genes. A large square jaw for example, has been handed down the male side of my family like a slab of beef for three generations. I keep it fenced off behind a beard, where it cannot harm people.

Jennifer was a woman I met in the year before I left the country. She was tall, almost matching me for height in her heels. She had a funny way of walking: a defensive strut that reversed the usual tits-out/tummy-in/ass-out elongated 'S' of walking womanhood. Jennifer would fold her shoulders around the front of her rib-cage - hiding her breasts, and then lean way back, cantilevering her pelvis forward and scrunching her butt away into nothing. Her chin she would bury into the hollow of her throat; her eyes tucked away behind double fortress walls of fringe and brow. When she walked, if you were squinting from a distance, you'd be reminded of a heron poised to strike.

I met her through a dating agency, when times were lean and I was meaner; a voicemail service for the chronically shy. You wouldn't believe some of the replies I would get to my insufferably chirpy extrapolations around the theme of: "Hi, I'm J., I'm a twenty-five year old guy, so-so tall with long dark hair and a winning etc., with a degree in advanced blah, hoping to meet an outgoing woman for x, y and z." Some of the women's voices would shake so much the phone would tremble as I listened to them stutter through soap-opera couplets and Cosmopolitan manifestos of self. Jennifer in comparison, was cool, collected, and creditably calm.

We met in a suitably chique cinema bar, where the drinks aspired to be expensive, but never quite got there, and the films were always, always in black and white. And French. Or Scandanavian. Or Russian. Or all three. It did its job, lending us coolness by proxy. Hunched up and raincoated, crouched over our drinks, we attempted to smolder.

She: "Oh, I've never been here before." (Bullshit).
He: "Me neither, I've always wondered what it was like inside." (Bullshit).

He: "Did you like the film..?" (You chose it, you'd better).
She: "Yeah... It was very moving... Imagery compelling." (it was so long my butt hurts from sitting).

She: "So, you're an artist..?" (I think you're a sponger).
He: "That's right." (I am a sponger).

But still, despite the appalling dialogue and a lack of discernable plot, there was enough chemistry between the actors for the studio to green-light a sequel. We agreed to see eachother again.

I don't know about you, but I like scummy pubs: Raucous, smoky, labyrinthine and snug - any romance to be had must be carved out of the air with a trowel. You must sit close, you must lean in closer still - pouring breathey-drunk words half-heard into eachother's ears - enclosed, enfolded in a little coccoon of hormonal fug. As the bell for drinking-up ding-dongs, we kiss triumphantly, our faces flushed from the success of winnowing out a little love against such odds, in such an unlikely place.

As we stagger out into the night, neither of us I suspect, remember anything much of what was said, though in contrast we remember sparklingly well the slick feel of lip on lip and the sherry-sweet mingling of our cocktailed spit. We hold eachother's bodies tight as we weave through the throngs on alcohol-autopilot to my place, always my place.

Thank God for Mincabs.

Home now, giggly fumbles on the stairs. The clinking of glassware; the gurgles of emptied liquor-bottles - the scents of sticky Banana liquer, and some weird minty shit that got found under the table after a party and stuck in a drawer. Anything to repair the alcoholic shield-wall of anti-reality we've so painstakingly constructed. Candles, of course. And music. Slow dance groping. And bed. And skin, and sweat, and legs and arms and in the way and there we go and is that nice and owch that hurts and whoops it fell out and is that okay and hang on a minute and not like that and oh well okay and is that good oh god it is oh god it is and ohhhhhhhhhh.

You get our drift. You've probably been there. All porn films look the same after a while.

The biggest surprise for us both was in the morning. We actually didn't feel too bad. We didn't hate eachother. A bit blurry round the edges perhaps, a little tired - but we could speak, and our laughs still worked, and when we looked inside for where our regret would usually be, our chagrin, our shame - we came up empty. Worth a communal smile. I got Alka-Seltzer, hot buttered toast and tea, and she remained blissfully naked, save for her stockings, rolled-up and rucked-up down to her knees.

And when Jennifer left, she gave her stockings to me; a tip perhaps, for services rendered.

...Continued...