The Forecourt

‘I don’t love you anymore.’ It escaped her lips and hovered between them. The weight of the words she had often thought but never said made the small car even smaller and made the distance between them seem even wider.

‘Is that why you brought me out here?’ He stared straight ahead, his mouth set in a hard line. She stared at his lips and remembered a time when they traced their way across her throat, as if discovering secrets, buried in her neck.

She remembered the first time he had put his lips to hers, clumsy, hurried and shy. They had been so young, so unsure, like fawns learning how to walk for the first time. She remembered a time when she would look as his lips moved and while he spoke to her she would think to herself; if he doesn’t kiss me now, I might die. It was almost unimaginable, as she sat in the beat up old fiesta, that they had gone from there to here in only nine short years.

She stared out the window at the old petrol station. The sign was crumbling so that it was almost unreadable, the paint was peeling revealing years of color changes as the station changed hands, the once pristine tarmac of the forecourt was now overgrown with weeds. Care. That’s what it was lacking, someone to care for it, to invest in it, to believe that there was a future in it. The similarities between the destitution of their meeting place and the destitution of their relationship was not lost on her.

‘Do you remember the first day we met?’ She looked at him as he stared angrily straight ahead. She continued earnestly, wanting him to remember, needing him to remember, ‘You were what? Eighteen? You were stood right over there?’ She pointed to the remnants of the second pump on the forecourt. ‘You were wearing a blue shirt and jeans, and I thought; who the hell is that?’ She laughed at the memory of it, of falling in love at first sight at seventeen.

She was lost in the memory and jumped when he spoke, ‘You jumped out of your Da’s car, all legs and elbows, this skinny girl,’ His expression softened and he almost smiled, ‘You picked up the diesel pump, it was only when I should to you that you realised the mistake.’ He looked out the window at the shadow of their relationship as it lingered briefly on the forecourt.

She saw herself as she was then, smiling at the memory of the seventeen year old girl far too concerned with impressing the boy in front of her than potentially recking her father’s car engine. ‘It’s hard to believe we were ever that young,’ she sighed.

‘Yeah,’ He snapped, the bitterness returning to his voice, ‘Time flies when you’re having fun.’

She went to place her hand on his, but thought better of it, she stuffed her hands into the pockets of her coat so they wouldn’t betray her. ‘It was fun.’ She whispered.

‘Just not anymore right?’ He looked at her, the question both accusing and pleading. He sagged slightly in his seat, defeated, ‘At least not for you.’

‘Don’t put this all on me.’ She was losing patience with his poor me act. He had a short memory, and clearly he didn’t remember his own cruelty over the past years.

‘It’s you that wants to end it though.’ His voice rising slightly with the righteous anger he now felt, ‘So I think I’m entitled to attribute blame to someone.’

‘Oh yeah, because nothing is ever your fault.’ She was losing it now. ‘You can be such a fucking child sometimes.’ She didn’t want it to be like this, she didn’t want them shouting at each other in the car, but now she couldn’t stop. ‘It’s like you don’t even remember the last six months!’

‘It’s like you don’t remember the eight years before it.’ He bit back. ‘You can’t just drag me out here, and then say your ending it because ‘you don’t love me anymore’ what the fuck is that?’ He was shouting now, banging his hand against the steering wheel, ‘What about my feelings? What about the fact that I still love you?’ She looked out the window. ‘Don’t ignore me.’ He grabbed her chin and turned her to face him, ‘I said, I still love you.’

She pushed his hand away as her eyes filled with tears. She didn’t know what she had expected, but a declaration of love was not it. ‘No you don’t. You’re just saying that because you don’t want to admit that this is over. That it’s been over now for awhile. It’s just about time one of us admits it.’

He took her hand gently, ‘It’s not over.’ He leaned gently over the gearbox, pushing his face against hers, ‘It’s not over.’ He whispered again, and then he kissed her.

It was like being thrown through a time machine. Before she knew what was happening she was kissing him back, leaning her body into his, pressing herself against him as he returned the pressure. As her sense caught up with her hormones, she pulled away.

He looked quizzically at her and then moved towards her again. She placed a hand on his chest and shook her head wordlessly. He slumped back in his seat. She traced the edges of her mouth, tingling with the pressure of him, they were swollen already and it made her remember the early days, when they would simply spend hours and hours kissing.

‘We need to end this now.’ She settled her shaking breath, ‘It’s over. I’m done. I just can’t... I can’t do this anymore.’ She looked at him, he had returned to staring out at the forecourt. ‘Are you listening to me?’ she reached out a hand to place on his shoulder, he snapped back around and she left her hand, momentarily stretched across the car. Gently, she brought her hand to his face, tracing the structure she had once loved so much, ‘I did love you. Once. For a very long time.’

He grimaced, ‘I loved you too. I still do.’

She brought her head against his. ‘I know. But it’s not enough.’

Their eyes were both filling with tears, and she knew almost immediately that if she didn’t get out soon, they would be sitting here in nine years, trying to leave each other all over again. She knew, that he could tell himself that he was still in love with her, but he wasn’t. He was in love with the ghost that hovered between them that spoke to love and future and happiness, but it was just a ghost, there was nothing true about it, it was just the lingering feelings of a relationship that died long long ago.

‘At least we’ll always have the forecourt.’ She smiled and so did he, through a haze of sadness they said goodbye, to each other and to the young lovers on the forecourt.

The Model

Marianne stood in the small back room, waiting. She could hear the rumblings next door, chairs scraping, papers rustling, muted laughter and chitchat.  She was nervous. Very nervous. She took a deep breath and down on one of the unstacked tables. This was obviously where they stored the extra furniture from the main hall. She slid further onto the table so her legs were swinging, placing her hands behind her she leaned back, taking more deep breaths she gazed up at the ceiling. The white paint was peeling off, slowly revealing the yellow watermarks, signalling damp, or perhaps just an overflow from a bathroom upstairs. It was a depressing room, that smelt faintly of old sandwiches and dust. Her fingers lightly traced the carvings in the cheap wood of the table. Still staring at the ceiling she moved her fingers along the outline of the etchings. ‘Em woz ere 06’ and ‘Tom luvs Steph C 4eva’, it made her sad. Not just the poor grammar and spelling, it was the futility of the effort. Teenagers, she presumed, unless their teachers were sneaking into the hall to carve their own names, always so obsessed with inscribing their own personal histories. 

It was odd really, teenagers by their nature were temperamental, always moving, always changing and progressing, they believed that everything would stay the same ‘4eva’ that their friends would always be their friends, that Mum and Dad would always be pricks, that they would remain with the boy or girl they loved, until the end of time. Yet, they documented it like someone on the brink of losing their memories, annotating every minute piece of information. It was as if they were in public denial that things would change, but privately they knew that the days would go in the blink of an eye, the way they had for all the adults that came before. Marianna thought briefly of her own teenage years, of the thousands and thousands of photographs taken, she took more photographs in the two years between sixteen and eighteen than she had in the last six years of adulthood. Marianne wondered what exactly that said about her, and her life now.

There was a knock on the internal door. That was her cue to get ready. Her little trip into the psyche of teenagers had done little to calm her nerves. It would be good for her, she knew that. It would be challenging, of course it would, but she needed to do it, if only to prove that she could. Mark had asked her to attend once or twice before, he told her she was interesting, that the group would enjoy her presence, that they would learn a lot from her. She had hushed him, embarrassed at the flattery and what he was asking her to do. Then it had all changed. In the blink of an eye, something she would never consider doing, became important. It was important for her to reclaim it for herself. She had taken  so much, and had so much taken, that she needed a portion of it back. She needed to keep something for herself. She needed to know she could still be something even if only in the shadow of what she had been. So she had approached Mark, and asked could she take part, even though she had changed. He was delighted and more then happy to offer up his group to her. Now, after six weeks, she was here. It was the moment of truth. She knew that she could just slip out the other door, Mark would be disappointed, but she had asked him not to tell anyone she was coming, just in case she backed out last minute.

Marianne took another deep breath. You’re here now she thought to herself. You might as well get as far as you can and then see what happens. You can do this. She pushed herself off the table and lifted her heavy rucksack onto the table. She removed the robe, the hair brush, the small makeup bag and mirror. She started by brushing her hair, usually she wore it down but Mark had asked for it up. She took the simple black hair bobbin and slipped it onto her left wrist. She glided the brush from root to tip, again and again. She wanted a high ponytail so she tipped her body at the waist and furiously began brushing the underside of her head. It hurt, when she was rough with the underside of her hair, and she could feel the tender smaller strand pulling apart from the scalp as she ran the brush, pulling it into a shape she wanted. Next she turned her attention to the clothes she was wearing. Mark had advised her to wear something light and easy. A sundress he had suggested. She had no sundresses. She always wore as many layers as possible, like an armor protecting her from the outside. She removed her jumper first, tugging it over her head and stuffing it back into the rucksack. She contemplated pulling the shirt off over her head as well, but she new it would snag, and in true fashion she would panic when she found herself blinded and trapped by her own head. She slowly began unbuttoning the small buttons, her large fingers slipped on the small buttons, but still she continued, the tremor in her hands increased steadily with each new button she opened. When it was open she could see the curve over her stomach, hidden from view by the white camisole she wore underneath, she gently slipped the shirt from off her shoulders and pushed it into the rucksack. She reached down to her jeans and popped the button, pausing for a second to slide the zip she wiggled her hips out of the jeans until they were in a heap around her ankles.

Marianne stood completely still with her eyes closed. She stood in her camisole, bra and panties. She knew they had to come off as well, but she needed just one minute to regain her composure. She wanted to cry. She looked around the room, blurred through the rising tears in her eyes. How many times she wondered had young girls stood in this same room, semi naked, with would-be lovers, running their hands under and over uniforms, tearing jumpers and skirts in an effort to reach adolescent nirvana. Maybe not that many she acknowledged, her own school days had been decidedly sexless, yet if she listened to the sex stories of her friends, everyone was at it. Marianne almost smiled, as in life, she thought, the truth lies somewhere between the two. Marianne slid back onto the table. It was uncomfortable now. The table cold against her thighs, the edge digging into the soft flesh. She kept her eyes averted from her body as she pulled the camisole over her head. She reached behind her back, fumbling with the catch of her bra and finally unhooking it. She closed her eyes as she felt the weight of her breasts without her bra. She had always been ashamed of the feeling, as if it betrayed something inside her, something weak and base, something other. She stood once more and hooked her thumbs in her panties, pulling them down and off. She bundled them quickly in with the bra and camisole and whipped the dressing gown around her. Pulling the sash tightly around her, her breath was forced from her lungs, the burning feeling calmed her, made her feel real.

Suddenly, as she stood there in her dressing gown, waiting for Mark to knock again, Marianne dissolved into tears. She bit her knuckle to stifle the sobs escaping from her chest. She felt a hole in her heart that she thought had been filled rip open again, dragging up feelings of pain and suffering, at her own hands and someone else’s. It had been four years since she had seen her own body naked. Four years. She knew it was a long time, perhaps too long. She felt disconnected from it, like she was stuck on a busy train sharing an intimate space with a stranger. She knew that her form was a part of her, she knew that it and her mind were linked in ways she didn’t even understand. Yet, it was easier to pretend that she was above it. That the base passions of the body, were nothing compared to the cerebral thoughts of her mind. She distanced herself from it. She distanced herself because the body felt pain. It was weak, it would let people abuse it, even when she lifted her own hand against herself her body did nothing to stop it. Her body betrayed her in ways she would never imagine, in getting older, getting fatter, weaker. The strange hands that ran over it, spreading heat and passion throughout the molecules that made up her being, once they were gone she was left with her mind, a mind that would gift her with shame for letting such things take place. Her mind punished her, not just for allowing it, but for enjoying it.

The loathing she felt for herself had brought her to many a dark place. She had denied herself many things, most notably the type of love that she afforded to everyone else. It was hard for her, to love herself willingly, to believe herself worthy of love, especially as those who were supposed to love her often didn’t. So she surrounded herself in her armor, laughed at jokes at her expense, reduced her self esteem to a puddle at the end of anonymous men’s beds and most seriously she had taken out her loathing on herself. It was always her fault, it was an irrational belief that there was something inherently wrong in what she was, who she was. There was a need inside her to seek validation from outside of herself, and when she received none, she purged and punished. She denied herself the very essence of self-love; respect. The memories of the things that she had done often left her like this, huddled on the floor, sobbing silently, filled with fear and remorse.

As she rose from the floor she reminded herself of the teenagers. She once again traced her fingers along the etchings, hoping that they would endow her with a love of life, something she had been missing since she stopped taking photos. She took her nail file from her make-up bag and carved into the table, a message for herself and for anyone who found themselves in this room, like her, lost and unsure, so that they would know that once there was a woman who went from hating herself, to waiting for a knock on a door. That knock, would change her. It would see her walk from this room and strip all her armor off,to leave herself naked in front of strangers who would agonise over every pencil stroke as they traced her form and shaded her in. They would take her form, and they would see something in her that she had yet to see in herself; a person. She hoped to see in their eyes a recognition that she was here, that she was real and that she was worthy of some sort of life.

The knock came and with one last look at the table, she left the little room, with the peeling ceiling and ‘Em woz ere 06’ and ‘Tom luvs Steph C 4eva’, engraved on the table, and her own mark; ‘You are here’. A reminder to those who would seek it, that no matter what, you exist. You are something. Someone. You are worthy.