'The Thing Is...' #FreewriteMadness / #NaNoWriMo: Day Seven

Here is my latest bout of writing for the seventh day of the #FreewriteMadness / #NaNoWriMo challenge! To get some background on this particular instalment of Mark and Sarah's story, check out my previous post, The Gallery. Some of the text in this post was written before November, so I have italicised that text and excluded it from my total word count for the day.

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Immgrum

The Thing Is...

Sarah doesn’t move away from the train station at once. She remains rooted by the entrance, looking up at the steel grey November skies. The sun is beginning to set, and overhead, an aeroplane is flying, dipping in and out of view between the clouds. She stands and watches it go – the lights just about visible through the haze of darkening sky – before ducking into the crowd of people making their way up and down Pearse Street. Shivering, she pulls her coat nearer to her body. She needs to buy gloves soon – the pair that she wore last winter are threadbare and she keeps forgetting to pick up new ones.

Fighting her way through the crowds, being buffeted this way and that, Sarah keeps her head down, steeling herself against the wind, until she finally stands at the gate of Mark’s apartment block. Her hands are numb. She tries her best to unclench her right fist, but can barely move her index finger – barely unpeel one knuckle from the next – in order to jab at the button.

The tinny, crackling intercom. His voice.

‘Hello?’

‘Hey, Mark.’

‘Sarah! Hey. I’ll buzz you in now…’

The lock clicks and Sarah pushes the door open and goes to climb the stairs. Number nineteen, number nineteen …. there it is. She knocks on the door, and he quickly answers it.

‘Sarah.’ He goes to hug her, then recoils slightly. ‘Shit, you’re freezing!’

‘I know. Oh, it’s so good to walk into somewhere warm…’

‘Sit down, sit down,’ he urges her. ‘I made us this vegetable stir fry thing … found the recipe online, so I hope it isn’t a complete disaster. I put in some courgettes and kidney beans … you like courgettes, right?’

‘Yep.’

‘I like them too. I often cut them into little slices and fry them with a bit of cinnamon.’

Her head whirls around and she stares incredulously at him. ‘Cinnamon?! With courgettes?’

‘Yep.’

‘That’s a strange combination.’

‘Ah yeah. People always think I’m a fucking weirdo for that, but … what can I say?’ He shrugs and laughs. ‘That’s just me. Oh, and I got some Zinfandel too. You like that, right?’

She smiles softly at him. The ingredients for the stir fry are strewn all over the kitchen counter – evidence of what must have been his frenzied efforts to get it right – and he is brandishing the bottle of Zinfandel with such pride. He really did try his best with the meal, she can tell.

‘I do. Thanks so much, Mark. Really. Can I do anything to help?’

‘Hmm.’ He pauses in his stirring for a moment to glance around the room, his forehead furrowed. ‘Could you set the table, maybe? The cutlery is in the drawer by the fridge, the plates are in that cabinet over there – sorry, I got home late from work, so I’m not quite finished with everything yet. I’ve been rushing around trying to get stuff done…’

‘No problem.’ She fetches the cutlery and looks back at him, her heart almost fit to burst with appreciation. ’I love the smell of that stir fry – it’s amazing – but there was no need to go to all this effort. Really. I would have been happy enough with takeaway – just spending time with you is the most important thing to me.’

‘Takeaway?! Ah, no. That wouldn’t have been good enough at all.’ He glances at her a little shyly. ’I’m trying to impress you here.’

‘Well,’ Sarah replies quietly, ‘mission accomplished.’ She puts down the cutlery, walks back in the direction of the stove, holds him tightly and begins to kiss him. The kisses are longer, deeper, more passionate than any they have shared so far: he immediately responds to her with great enthusiasm, and after a minute or so, she feels something shift in his pelvic region. Though this causes her a slight frisson of anxiety, she doesn’t move away. If this were happening with anyone but him, she would be terrified out of her wits, but their conversation the other night has put her at ease. She knows that he is aware of her situation – her boundaries and her limits – and she trusts him.

When they finally break apart, it takes him a few moments to open his eyes, and when he does, he looks dazed. She smiles mischievously and boops him on the nose. ‘Hi.’

‘Hi,’ he says hoarsely, then has to shake his head before turning back to the stir fry. ‘Right, well … I need to clear my head a bit after that, to be perfectly honest … I’ll get some water.’

She laughs and goes back to setting the table.

The meal passes by in amiable conversation about their work, their families, how their week has been so far … Sarah isn’t sure how to bring up the events of the gallery visit, or what was said. She waits until later on in the evening, when the meal has been finished, the dishes cleared away, and they’re sitting on the sofa drinking the Zinfandel.

‘Mark,’ she begins, after a brief lull in the conversation, ‘I just wanted to say, I’m so sorry for the way I behaved the other night. Spouting all that crap at you…’

He shakes his head and smiles gently at her. ’There’s no need to apologise, Sarah. Really. It’s okay if you have some fears, or if there’s anything you would like to ask me … I’m not going to flip out.’

‘Still, I wish I hadn’t acted the way I did. I shouldn’t have gotten so drunk!’

‘Don’t worry about it,’ he reassures her. ‘So … did you have anything you wanted to ask me?’

She is silent for a moment as she sips her Zinfandel – reflecting on that question. ‘I guess … I just want to understand you a little better,’ she explains eventually. ‘When did you first know you were bi, for example?’

‘Oh, I was twenty-one. I know lots of people who say they knew from a very young age, but for me … honestly, it wasn’t like that at all. As a teenager, I only ever liked girls. But during my second year of college, I had a friend who I initially thought was just … you know, somebody whose company I enjoyed. I loved hanging out with him and joking … one night, a group of us were out at a bar – me and this guy were talking, just messing around – and I don’t know what exactly we were talking about now, but … at one point, things got quiet for a moment and, well … I wanted to kiss him.’

‘Oh, I see. And ... did you?’

‘Oh, fuck, no. I was a little pissed at the time, but sober enough to know that kissing him would be the worst idea ever. But I really, really wanted to. I couldn’t deny that to myself, and it left me … shocked. I’d never been so shocked in my entire life. I started avoiding my friend – just distancing myself from him a bit – because I was so embarrassed. Well … I don’t know if “embarrassed” is the right word, really. He didn’t know anything about it, so … I was ashamed. Yeah. I was really ashamed of myself. It makes me sad to think about that now. I’d only ever seen myself as straight, so the incident really shook me.’

‘Oh, Mark.’ Sarah squeezes his arm sympathetically. It feels good to be talking openly about all this. She is glad to be asking questions and addressing her insecurities directly, instead of what she had been doing before the visit to the gallery: acting as though she had no doubts or fears whatsoever, and being afraid to admit the truth, for fear of offending him. ‘What did you do? How did you learn to stop being ashamed?’

‘It took a long time. I buried the whole incident for a few years, to be honest. Or at least, I tried to. But it was like … like the floodgates had been opened. I began to notice, every now and then, that I’d be drawn to certain guys in a way that felt like it could be something more than friendship. I drove myself mad: wondering whether I’d gone through my entire life feeling this way but never realising it, whether I was actually gay and all the times I had been attracted to girls – and the relationships I’d had – suddenly meant nothing. Or if I was just making it all up and it was all in my head, and really, I was straight after all … that was a theory I clung to a lot!’

For a few seconds they sit in silence, just listening to the vague noises of the traffic outside and a sudden shower of rain falling against the window.

‘Then I met my ex – that guy you saw – who I ended up going out with for nearly two years. It took me a long time to let myself admit how I felt when I met him. I just went back and forth so many times: was I gay? Was I straight? Did I have to put myself in a particular box? It helped a lot that my ex was bi too, and he was so open and not ashamed of who he was … I learned a lot from him.’

‘Why did you guys break up?’

He shrugs. ‘Usual reasons, I guess. We grew apart, we found we had less and less to say to each other as time went on, he wanted different things than I did – he loves to travel and go out – but me … I just don’t feel as drawn to that kind of thing.’

‘So … you’re not secretly hankering to get back with him?’ Sarah says this lightly – jokingly – but can’t entirely conceal the fact that she is expressing a slight yet genuine fear.

‘No.’

‘And … I definitely don’t have to worry about all the competition out there? There are so many good-looking guys … amazing women…’

Mark pulls her closer to him and kisses her forehead. She loves it when he does that: even now, she can feel a warm glow spread over her – a sense of being deeply cherished and protected. ’You’re not in competition with anyone, Sarah,’ he tells her firmly. ‘You’re really not.’

‘That’s all I wanted to hear.’

She leans against Mark’s chest for a minute as he strokes her hair, then looks up at his face. His own candour has made her want to be open with him too.

‘Mark?’

‘Yeah?’

Sarah hesitates before speaking again. What if he rejects her over what she's about to say? What if he finds it impossible to understand? ‘So … um, I know I told you I’ve never had sex the other night, but the thing is … there’s a little more to it than that.’ She sits up and stares intently at him, feeling increasingly anxious. ‘Um … do you know the term asexual?’

‘I do.’

‘I … um, a couple of years ago, I felt this huge need to understand why I’m so … weird. Why I just don’t get the way everyone makes such a big deal out of sex, when I’ve never felt that way in my life. I can never just randomly fantasise about it. I never … you know, see some random guy in the street and think about what I’d like to do to him! But so many of my friends do. With you, though … I’m starting to feel something. It’s been pretty slow to develop, but it is there now. I enjoy our kisses and our cuddles and the whole feeling of physical contact with you. I always knew that I could kind of see myself being intimate with somebody, if I knew them well enough. If I felt really comfortable with them. But I never met someone who felt … right.’

Mark beams. ‘You feel comfortable with me?’

‘I do.’

He squeezes her hand. ’I … I’m honoured to hear that, Sarah. I really am.’

‘Um … listen, I just wanted to ask you … I’m not ready for sex yet, I’ll have to work up to that, but … I would love to just lie beside you and cuddle tonight. I’ve never done that with anyone – it feels like a big step for me – but I’d love to try it now.’
‘So would I.’

‘Thank you.’ She lowers her head, suddenly feeling extremely bashful. ‘There is a word that describes the way I am. Demisexual. A couple of years ago, I began to really look into the whole asexual spectrum, and when I read that word – learned more about it – it felt right. Having that term to describe how I was feeling made such a difference – even though it was just to myself, nobody else. I’ve never told anybody about it. When it comes to people I’d like to go out with, I’ve only ever been drawn to guys, so I just thought … well, anyone looking at me would just think: “oh, there’s a totally normal straight girl.” What’s the point in talking about it?’

Mark gently lifts her chin, so that she is looking at him once more. She's surprised to see that he is a little misty-eyed right now. ’Thank you,’ he says softly, ‘for telling me that. The fact that you’ve never told anyone else about this, but you have said it to me … I find it hard to describe how happy that makes me.’

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There we have it: 1,858 new words! When added to the 753 words I wrote earlier today, this brings my daily total to 2,611: my highest daily total so far! 😍 Must go update my #FreewriteMadness form and NaNoWriMo tally now.

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