Dan Rhodes - Anthropology
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I loved an anthropologist. She went to Mongolia to study the gays. At first she kept their culture at arms length, but eventually she decided that her fieldwork would benefit from assimilation. She worked hard to become as much like them as possible, and gradually she was accepted. After a while she ended our romance by letter. It breaks my heart to think of her herding those yaks in the freezing hills, the peak of her leather cap shielding her eyes from the driving wind, her wrist dangling away, and nothing but a handlebar moustache to keep her top lip warm.
My girlfriend died. We hadnt been together long, and I had felt indifferent towards her. She left me her ashes. What should I do with them? I asked her family.
She wanted you to decide. I really didnt care. You two were so in love; were leaving it up to you to choose her final resting place. They were incredibly compassionate, and the pressure was enormous. I found myself in a helicopter, scattering her over the meadow where she had ridden her pony as a girl. Her family watched, weeping their final goodbyes as the little grey flecks fell to earth.
My girlfriends pregnancy lasted over two years. Maybe the doctors right, I said. Maybe a baby isnt going to come. She wouldnt listen. She carried on buying nappies, teething rings, woolly hats and mittens, and little bits and pieces for the nursery. One afternoon I came home to find her cradling a bundle in her arms.
Look, she said. Its arrived. Its a boy, and its got your eyes.
Well done, I said. Congratulations.
And congratulations to you too. After all, you dont become a father every day.
I suppose not. But really its you thats done all the hard work.
My girlfriend is so beautiful that she has never had cause to develop any kind of personality. People are always wildly glad to see her, even though she does little more than sit around and smoke. Shes getting prettier, too. Last time she left the house she caused six car crashes, two coronaries, about thirty domestic disputes and an estimated six hundred unwanted and embarrassing erections. She seems to be quite indifferent to the havoc she causes. Im going to the shop for cigarettes, shell say, yawning with that succulent, glossy mouth. I suppose youd better call some ambulances or something.
I found my girlfriend smashing our two-year-olds toes with a rock. I told her to stop. What are you doing? I cried, above the babys agonised wails.
You wouldnt understand, she said, winding a bandage tightly around the crushed digits. Its a woman thing. Itll help her get a boyfriend.
But darling, dont you remember what the doctor told us? Its a boy baby.
Really? She looked surprised. Oh well. Men look nice with small feet too. I expect hell be gay, anyway. Hes got that look about him. See? I had to agree that she had a point.
My girlfriend used my going blind as an excuse to start dressing sloppily. In the days when I could see her, she had always looked immaculate in the latest cuts of the best designer labels. Now, her high heels have been replaced by trainers, her silk stockings and short skirts by jeans, and her smart blouses and figure-hugging jackets by baggy jumpers. I havent said anything yet, but its getting to the point where Im embarrassed to be seen with her as she gently holds my hand and guides me along, making sure I dont trip or bump into anything.
My girlfriend is so lovely that I cant help feeling sorry for all her ex-boyfriends. Im sure they must spend all their time thinking about her and wondering what she could be up to. So every month I send them a bulletin detailing all the pretty things she has said and done. Sometimes I enclose a discarded pair of tights, or the stub of an eyebrow pencil. I feel I should do everything I can to make up for them having lost a girl with such soft brown hair, and whose feet are so small you can hardly see them.
My girlfriend started charging me for sex. She said she had to think of her future, and anyway her friends did it so why shouldnt she? I didnt mind too much because her basic rates were very reasonable, although she always expected tips for extras. Once, as she was holding the banknotes Id given her up to the light to make sure they were real, I asked her if she ever went with anyone else for money. She was furious, and asked what kind of girl I thought she was. I said one with laughing eyes, and lovely long dark hair.
Unable to accept that Celestia was no more than a haphazard cluster of chemicals brought together by chance in a universe out of control, I started to believe. To give thanks for her pretty face and endearing ways, Ive started getting up early and taking her from door to door, with a sign around her neck that asks: Am I just chemicals? Look at her, I say to the bleary-eyed householders, and draw your own conclusion.
Sometimes they chase us away, but usually they just mumble, She looks like chemicals to me, and shut the door loudly in our faces.
Tabitha was declared a genius, and decided she needed more intellectual stimulation than I could provide. After weeks of searching, she found someone and brought him home. He looked far too handsome to be clever, but using words I could barely understand he told me I was history. The ravenous way Tabitha was kissing him suggested he had a point. She left me. For months Ive lived in the hope of him being a useless lover, but yesterday she sent a fax telling me how much more accomplished he is than me at licking, fondling and many other matters of intimacy.
Lulula got together with my friends girlfriends, and formed what they called The Girlfriend Club. They met regularly, and enjoyed themselves. We were delighted for them to be having so much fun, but were curious about what they got up to. They wouldnt tell us. Then one of the girls confessed in her sleep that these evenings were spent giggling, and looking at photographs of handsome, well-dressed men. Heartbroken, we implored them to disband. They wouldnt. Nowadays, whenever they get together we do as well, silently looking at pictures of their pretty faces as tears well up in our eyes.
My girlfriend left me, and Im coping very well. Sometimes its almost as though she hadnt run off with another man, and that shes still here with me. During the day I cope by imagining shes gone to the shop for some cheap cigarettes, and will be back at any moment, smiling with those lovely painted lips. When the shops shut, I cope by telling myself that my favourite picture of her is real. I spend my evenings at the piano, singing love songs to her photographed face, and occasionally licking the black keys because they remind me of her skin.
My girlfriend left me, and I started crying in my sleep. My nightly lament became so loud that my neighbours called the police. The press found out, and people came to stand outside my house to hear me call her name and moan. Television crews arrived, and soon a search was on to find the object of my misery. They tracked her to her new boyfriends house. I watched the coverage. People were saying they had expected her to be much more beautiful than she was, and that I should pull myself together and stop crying over such an ordinary girl.
Paris had her bicycle stolen, and was never the same again. I try to visit her every month. Usually she is drawing intently, crayon on paper, confused crisscrossing lines which resemble nothing I have ever seen. Thats lovely, Paris, I tell her. What is it?
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