Short story · Solo
For twenty years Mark has looked after everything and everyone except himself. Then he moves into a one-bedroom flat with bare walls – and finds a parcel he doesn’t quite know what to do with.
The last box was labelled KITCHEN – MISC, and neither of them could remember what misc meant.
Claire put it down on the hall floor and blew a strand of hair out of her face. She was three years older than Mark and had carried as many boxes as he had, which she had pointed out on every landing up to the third floor. Now she stood with her hands on her hips and looked around: a one-bedroom flat with freshly sanded floorboards, a balcony overlooking the courtyard, no curtains, a mattress still in its plastic.
‘It’s nice,’ she said. ‘It’s actually nice, Mark.’
‘It’s empty.’
‘That’s not the same thing.’
He was forty-two and had been divorced for eight months. The marriage hadn’t ended in a row but in a kind of mutual weariness, like two people carrying the same sofa who both suddenly realise that neither of them knows where it’s meant to go. He worked as an operations engineer at a water treatment works, a man who knew exactly which valves to turn when something went wrong, and for fourteen years he had run a household the same way: bills, MOTs, birthdays, blocked drains. Somewhere along the way he had stopped asking himself what he actually wanted for dinner.
Claire rummaged in her tote bag and brought out a parcel wrapped in grey paper with a far-too-big red ribbon.
‘Housewarming present,’ she said. ‘You open it after I’ve gone. And I never, ever want to hear a word about it.’
‘What is it?’
‘A joke.’ She pulled on her jacket. ‘Mostly a joke.’
She hugged him at the door, for a long time, the way only big sisters do – a bit too hard and with a pat on the back at the end, as if to say that’s enough now. Then she was gone, and he heard her footsteps fade down the stairs and the front door of the building bang shut.
He sat down on a packing box and pulled at the ribbon.
Inside was something that looked like a large torch in gold-coloured plastic, and a folded card. He read the card first.
You’ve looked after everyone else for twenty years. Have a laugh now. Then you can think about what I mean. C x
He turned the torch over, read the writing on the packaging and burst out laughing so loudly that it echoed between the bare walls. A Fleshlight. Stamina Training Unit. He laughed until he had to wipe his eyes, and then he sat quietly for a while with it in his lap and felt strangely moved, which was the most absurd thing of all.
He put it back in the box and put the box on the top shelf of the wardrobe, behind his winter coat.
For the next few weeks he lived like a man in a hotel. He ate standing at the kitchen worktop. He showered in four minutes. He slept on the mattress, which was finally allowed out of its plastic, and he fell asleep with his phone on his chest and woke when it slid onto the floor.
It was a Tuesday in October, with rain that had kept up since lunchtime, when he caught himself masturbating in the shower while thinking about a spare part that needed ordering for work. He turned off the water halfway through. Stood there dripping.
It had been like that for a long time, he realised. Not just alone – in the marriage too, those last few years. Sex had become something you squeezed in. A thing you ticked off before you fell asleep, quickly and efficiently, like the washing-up. He couldn’t remember the last time he had done something slowly because it felt good, and not because it was a task.
He remembered the beginning, when he and Rachel were new to each other and could spend a whole Sunday in bed with the curtains drawn, having breakfast at three in the afternoon and dozing off again. At some point that had disappeared, without either of them noticing when. Jobs had come along, and a mortgage, and a house that needed a new roof, and love had shrunk to something you did in the margins, between the last email and the alarm clock. He didn’t blame her. He had helped shrink it.
The odd thing was that he had thought that was just how it went. That desire was for younger people, or for people with more time, and that a man his age should be grateful for what there was and not ask for more. But standing there in the cold shower, with soap still in his hair, he felt for the first time in ages something resembling anger. Not at Rachel. At himself, for having settled for so long for just getting it over with.
He dried himself, pulled on a pair of joggers and went and opened the wardrobe.
The gold case was heavier than it looked. Two screw caps, one at each end. He read the leaflet in the packaging twice, the way he read every set of instructions, with the same seriousness he had given the manual for a new pump. It was only to be used with water-based lube. The sleeve should be rinsed in lukewarm water afterwards and left to dry properly. The rear cap controlled the suction – screwed on fully it went tight, loosened a little it got softer.
And then the name. Stamina. Endurance. He had always thought the word was about enduring, gritting your teeth. Now, standing in the silent flat with the rain against the window, he wondered whether it could mean something else. Staying put. Not being in a hurry to leave.
He decided to do it properly. If he was going to do it at all.
He made the bed with clean sheets – he had actually bought a bed in the end, with an oak headboard he didn’t need but liked. He switched on the lamp in the corner and turned off the ceiling light. He got out a towel and the bottle of water-based lube he had bought online and then felt slightly embarrassed about when the parcel arrived. He left his phone in the hall, face down. It felt ridiculous and solemn at the same time, like laying the table for a guest who never comes.
Then he showered again, and this time he took his time. He let the hot water run over the back of his neck until his shoulders dropped. He soaped himself slowly and noticed things he hadn’t thought about in ages: that the skin on the inside of his arm was softer than he’d thought, that it tickled when he ran his hand over his ribs, that he still liked the smell of his own soap.
In the bedroom the air was cool against his warm skin. He lay on his back on top of the duvet and just lay there for a while, naked, listening to the rain and to his own breathing. He touched himself with no goal in mind. His chest. His stomach. The insides of his thighs. It took a while for his body to understand that it wasn’t meant to rush anywhere, and once it did, desire came slowly, like heat from a radiator that has only just been switched on.
He unscrewed the front cap. The sleeve inside was pale pink and soft and gave when he pressed it with his finger. He poured lube into the opening and onto himself, and it was cold, and he laughed at himself for flinching. He warmed it in his hand for a while before carrying on.
The first time he sank into it, he lost his breath.
It was tight. It was snug and soft and full of little round nubs that closed around him all the way, evenly, without a break, and he lay perfectly still and felt himself throbbing. He had expected something mechanical. This wasn’t mechanical. It was almost too much, and his first impulse was the old one: quick, quick, get it done.
He didn’t.
He drew out, as slowly as he had gone in, and felt every single nub let go of him one by one. Then in again. Out. He found a rhythm so slow it was barely a rhythm, more like breathing. The sound was soft and wet and he liked it, liked that it was his own and didn’t need to be anything else.
When he screwed the rear cap on fully, it suddenly got tighter. Every time he drew back, the sleeve held on, sucked after him, and he groaned out loud in the empty flat and heard it bounce off the walls and didn’t care. He loosened the cap half a turn again and it softened. He played with it for a while – tight, soft, tight – like a dial on an amplifier, until he found something in between that made his hips lift of their own accord.
He was close after a few minutes. His body knew exactly what it wanted, it had done this a thousand times, and he felt the tension gathering at the base of his spine.
He stopped.
He lay there with the sleeve around him, motionless, and breathed. His heart was pounding. It was almost agonising, and at the same time something in him was smiling. He let his hand rest on his stomach. Counted his breaths. Listened to the rain, which had got heavier, and to a neighbour flushing somewhere in the building. When it had settled enough he began again. Slower than before.
He did it three times. The second time he got so close he had to bite his lip, and the third time it was as if his whole body had grown more sensitive, as if each stop had laid a new layer of desire on top of the last. His skin was damp. He had kicked off the duvet. He was moving with his whole body now, his hips meeting his hand, and he wasn’t thinking about spare parts or bills or anyone else at all – only about the warm tightness and the fact that he had time. All the time he wanted.
When he finally let it happen, it wasn’t the way he remembered. It started a long way off and came closer in waves, and when it reached him it lifted his back off the mattress and drew a sound out of him he didn’t recognise. It lasted longer than usual. It ran through his thighs and out to his fingertips, and afterwards he lay with his mouth open, staring up at the ceiling and laughing, low and surprised, like a man who has found money in an old jacket.
He lay there until the sweat began to cool. Then he went into the bathroom, took the sleeve out of the case and rinsed it in lukewarm water, turning it back and forth under the stream, shook it out and stood it on a clean towel on the bathroom shelf to dry. He did it carefully, the way he did everything, but without hurrying. There was something almost tender about it.
The week after, he bought curtains. Dark green, heavy ones, which he had stood weighing up in a shop for twenty minutes before realising there was no right answer and that he could just choose the ones he liked. He hung them up on the Sunday and stood for a long time watching the light fall through them.
In the evening he cooked. Nothing fancy – baked fish, potatoes, a salad – but he laid the table by the window with a plate and a glass and a lit lantern, and he sat down and ate slowly, and nobody saw him do it. It was a strange kind of freedom. He caught himself chewing while he watched the rain in the chestnut tree in the courtyard, and he realised he hadn’t done that in a very long time. Just eaten. Without thinking about the next thing at the same time.
It was as if something had been turned inside him, a valve that had been closed for so long he had forgotten it was there.
Later, when the washing-up was put away, he got out his phone and opened a dating app he had downloaded two months ago and never dared use. He read the question at the top of the empty profile, ‘What makes you happy?’, and sat for a long time with his thumb hovering over the keyboard.
Then he typed: ‘Taking my time.’
He read it once more, smiled, and left it.
He didn’t need to send anything tonight. There was no hurry.
Short story · Solo
Nine years ended without anyone doing anything wrong. Now Laura has a flat that smells of paint, a sulking fig tree and a parcel waiting on the kitchen worktop while the rain lashes the window.
Short story · Couples
Kate and Tom have been together for fourteen years and still find it easier to laugh in bed than almost anyone they know. Tonight they’re opening the parcel they bought together three weeks ago.
Short story · Couples
Lucy and James have been together for nine years and know almost everything about each other. Almost. A dinner in a foreign city, a little magnet under her dress and a word that means stop.
