Flesh Wound

Nothing prepares you for this. Your father doesn't cover it when he gives you the big talk. The books are silent on the matter. No doctor comes on the television and tells you how to feel when you're standing by a big sash window in the early morning holding a mug of tea and looking out over the roofs of your small town, and when behind you in the warm double bed is your wife with another man, and when for four days the two of them have scarcely got out of the bed except to relieve themselves, and when your wife has ecstatically welcomed into her and over her so many squirts of the other man's semen that the place stinks, and when she has clearly had more pleasure with him in a matter of hours than with you for years, and when you don't know whether to love them for their joy and contentment or hate them for their cruelty and selfishness, and when you really don'thave recognisable feelings any more.

She will have brush-burns from his beard stubble. She will be so sore that she can hardly pee, and afraid she'll never walk again. Her inner lips will have bruised and swollen outwards like a trumpet, and she'll throb there, but she will have calculated that making love once more, then once more again, and again, will make her forget the extreme discomfort, even though she knows it will make it worse. She marks easily. She'll have little black and yellow bruises from her knees upwards, and on her upper arms where she's consented to be roughly handled. There may be faint toothmarks on her inner thighs and her breasts. Her tiny pink pearl, and her nipples, especially the left, will be too sensitive to be touched at all now, except at the last moments when anything goes. For days now she will have been oozing warm thin sperm through the bedsheet, through the undersheet, through the cover, making a huge map of Iceland on our mattress.

"Well, sit down then, you're blocking out the light" Cathy said. I smirked, and sank into the old armchair to one side of the window, nursing my tea. I looked over at Mark. He was slow to meet my eyes, but eventually glanced my way, then looked down at his white chest with its golden hair. "I think I ought to say something, but I don't know what to say," he half whispered, as if talking to himself. "Mark, don't say anything, OK?" I said. "None of us knows what to say. I don't think thereare any words for all this."

He nodded slowly. "I'm going home today."

"Yes, I thought so" I said. "You've drawn back the curtains. You've had a shave. You're listening to Radio 3. Everything points that way."

Now it'll be his turn to scream inside. Now he'll have to face the fact of the world outside this warm pungent room. Without looking, he'll feel her beside him buttoning up her nightdress with the deft fingers that were exploring his rectum as dawn broke, buttoning away the breasts that he covered with his hands, his saliva and his come, and he'll be ready to make love again, but know that it isn't going to happen, not today at least. He'll be sore too, so sore that this latest erection will bring tears to his eyes as it rips the battered purple head of his small but perfect penis from the nest of fine hair where it has been sticking since the last time. As the skin stretches, tiny granules of Cathy will fall from it as a fine powder on to his stomach. When he raises himself to get out of the bed, he'll find that his elbows have been rubbed raw.

I went into work, and managed to give an impersonation of a human being. It was a struggle. My mind was back in the house. Mark getting his things together and leaving. How they would kiss goodbye, what they would say. The idea of that kiss troubled me, stupidly. What Cathy would be thinking. Mainly that. She'd still be drunk with pleasure. Could she possibly make any rational decisions?

She couldn't. When I arrived home, as nervous as a kid on a first date but as worn out as an old man, neither of us knew what to say. We were shy with each other. We were so considerate, all our actions jerky and awkward. We talked about the news and the weather and the dog. At bedtime I noted without comment the fresh new bedlinen. We held each other close, and both cried in silence.

She shifted slightly, and winced.

"Ooh, my cunt. It's absolutely ruined."

I put my hand over it.

"I feel your pain" I said. She smirked.

We woke in the middle of the night, surprised to find we'd been asleep like that, our faces sore and the lights still on.

"You didn't . . ." I ventured, "you didn't pillow talk about me with him, did you?"

"Oh no," she said. "I wouldn't have had any of that."

That was something of a relief, at least.

"Anyway," she went on blithely, "we were too busy fucking."

It served me right. I managed a puffy smile down at her little face. Just before I clouted her with the pillow.

"That's OK, then" I said. "Are you all right?"

"No" she snorted. "But I'm here, aren't I?"

I reached for the switch, and sank into the darkness.