LITMIR.BIZ

       2

      At approximately 3pm on 15th November 2000, in room 107 of The Swan Hotel in Swindon, I lost my virginity. I’d been wearing three-inch heels and an oversized suit-jacket, too much make-up for a teenager and black cotton knickers bought in a pack of five from BHS by my mum. I’d known Matthew had booked a hotel room and I’d lied to my mother about going to the cinema with a friend, but I still padded to the bathroom, self-conscious about my nakedness, and looked in the mirror with surprise. As I peed, I wondered what I had thought usually happened when a sixth-former allowed a sexagenarian to spend £150 on a plush suite that would only be used for an afternoon. Had I thought we would simply continue what we had been doing in his top room? Had I imagined his hands and mouth would always work eagerly to please me without his belt-buckle ever budging? Had I believed we could stay in the no-man’s-land of technically doing nothing wrong? Had I hoped the past few months contained mere digressions that I could take or leave when the mood struck and walk away with my purity intact?

      Perhaps I had. It wasn’t as if my bookshelves, teachers or friends could provide a precedent; it wasn’t as if there were any rules. But I’d responded to his green candle, hadn’t I? I wasn’t totally naive: I’d known what he’d wanted. But I hadn’t thought about this while clipping my bra and brushing my teeth this morning. I hadn’t said goodbye to my mum thinking that the next time I saw her I’d be, what, a woman? I’d thought of my Bunbury: I’d concentrated on not overlabouring my lies but making them seem natural. I’d wondered how easy it was going to be to walk nonchalantly towards the bus stop, then dart off onto North Street and slip unobserved into Matthew’s waiting passenger seat. I’d deliberated over whether to hide my heels in my handbag and change into them while crouched in his car, or to risk my mother’s disapproving comments about unsuitable footwear for the cinema and just leave the house in them anyway. But I hadn’t thought about what it would be like to be in a hotel room with Matthew, about his penis actually sliding inside me, about his body on top of mine, about whether it would hurt or whether I might have forgotten my pill even though I hadn’t once since I’d been put on it for period pains in Year 10, about all that advice in sex education classes to use condoms even if you’re taking contraceptives because you’re not protected from STIs that make your pussy resemble an erupting volcano. With the innocence of a teenager who has spent countless Maths classes giggling with friends and ex-best-friends over code-words for body parts and rumours that the girl at the back puts out for the price of a chocolate bar, I hadn’t thought we’d actually do it.

      I didn’t bleed and I didn’t cry. I didn’t even see his thing. Matthew approached it technically, disappearing into the bathroom and returning in his shirt and underpants, smelling like talcum powder, before undressing me and laying me on the duvet. Next, he rifled through his briefcase and pulled out a bottle of Johnson’s Baby Oil, placed it neatly on the bedside table. Then, climbing delicately onto the bed, he fixed his eyes on mine.

      ‘Do you love me?’ His demanding tone surprised me and I nodded meekly, letting only a nervous breath escape my lips.

      ‘Yes, I can see the love-light in your eyes.’

      And in a few minutes it was over. Matthew offered me a box of tissues to clean the stickiness from between my thighs and pulled his trousers back on.

      After I returned from the bathroom, we lay on top of the duvet for a while, me naked, him clothed. I wanted to appear mature, but my head was reeling with excitement and disappointment: Was that it? Is that what everyone whispers about in school? Am I different now? Will they be able to tell? Will my mother know? Will I remember this as special? Matthew withdrew his arm from around my stomach and walked to the dressing table to fetch his cigars. I pulled my knees up to my chest and hugged myself.

      ‘What are you doing?’ He turned back in amusement and horror.

      ‘Nothing. Just thinking.’

      ‘That’s what women do to get pregnant you know – lie back like that. You’re not trying to trap me, are you?’

      ‘What? No!’ I blushed and sat up straight, embarrassed that I’d let my ignorance show.

      ‘I was just thinking about Meursault,’ I said, defaulting to literature as a safe topic where we might speak as equals and forget the mundane realities of his grey hair and my smooth skin.

      ‘Hmm?’

      ‘He’s the hero of existentialism, the man who refused to play the game, let alone abide by the rules, and he highlights all that’s wrong with the world – all that makes this an impossible place for poets and Uncles to live in – but do you think he ever experienced love? Isn’t half the point of the novel that he doesn’t feel any passions, doesn’t understand the motivations of those around him or why laws must dictate x and y? He’s basically just an ordinary man: neither an Uncle nor a sheep. He sticks his head above the parapet, but not for any of the reasons that writers and lovers and you and I do.’

      ‘True. But he’s just a character. The point is that Camus was feeling all those things and rebelling through his creation.’ Matthew sat back against the headboard, a slight smile curling his lips.

      ‘But Camus didn’t actually challenge the law and expectations; he didn’t kill anyone and face punishment but not even experience it as punishment. For most of his life, he played society’s games and persona’d like the rest of us.’

      ‘So, you wanted him to martyr himself for a world that wouldn’t care?’

      ‘No, but it’s just, who should we celebrate? Camus or Meursault? Camus’s creation of Meursault almost serves to highlight how thoroughly trapped he himself was by the bullshit of the world.’

      ‘Hence why we have to Bunbury,’ he winked at me, exhaling a cloud of smoky air.

      ‘But, I want to know if any Uncles ever find the ideal, ever manage to live fully. That has to be the ideal, right? Otherwise what’s the point? Why would we continue? We should all wander into rivers with stones in our pockets or stick our heads in ovens. Because a little bit of poetry is not enough. This escape, being here, being with you is my reality and the rest is just gross, you know that? It makes me cry at night. And if I thought it was going to always be like this, I don’t know what I’d do. Sometimes I think I’d rather die on a happy note – that’s when I’d consider suicide, after the most ecstatic moment of my life, because the thought of falling after being so high would be totally unbearable.’

      Matthew smiled at me and I knew I’d redeemed myself. We were no longer in a plush hotel room with a Bible in the drawer and a disapproving receptionist downstairs; we didn’t have to leave in a couple of hours and drive back home to face parents and wives, neighbours and peers; instead we were sitting on a cloud with Virginia Woolf and Edgar Allan Poe, sipping tea with Simone de Beauvoir and Marcel Proust. And on this cloud, Matthew’s leathery

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