Read Online For Everyone Concerned by Damien Wilkins - Free Book Online
Authors: Damien Wilkins
Ads: Link
he’s gay he has less tolerance? But then there’sthe guy at the next table—sixties, hard to imagine him in bed with another man—who says in a loud voice directed at the mother, I’d have been knocked from here to kingdom come. I’d be dead by now.
Our neighbour hasn’t put curtains in his new bedroom, though he’s moved in down there. The walls are lined but the place still smells of clay. Sometimes at night, when I’m taking the recycling down, or carrying a tool up from the basement, sometimes I just want to be out of the house for a moment—everyone steps into the night, don’t say it’s just men hiding from the mothers of their children screaming in their baths, soap in their eyes—I see his girlfriend laying out her clothes on their bed for the next day’s work. It’s very exciting. Her—what is it—thoughtfulness? The composing— the blouse, the skirt. She is already wearing her white dressing-gown. She puts a version of herself down on the bed, looks at it, then changes the blouse or the skirt.
Once she told us, when our child was about to be born, she couldn’t imagine something growing inside her. ‘I’d feel too full .’
My father smacked us. I remember curling under a shrub at the side of our house and crying. He lies down on the floor and our daughter tells him she wants to look in his mouth. ‘It’s all right,’ she says, ‘you’ve beena good girl.’ He cries out because she’s kneeling on his chest.
When he knows she’s coming to visit, he shaves. He combs his hair! His combs were always dirty— who would clean a comb? He used to chase my sister around the dining-table after she’d wound him up, the noise so great—her screams and his thunder—you could shout with joy and not be heard.
divorce
I used to go to a dentist who believed, wrongly I think, that his profession should make use of the so-called fifth wall. This is the wall that comes into view as one is lowered, always disconcertingly, into the not-quite-lying position in the dentist’s chair. Outside this profession we understand this wall to be, in fact, the ceiling. But since we are staring at it, the space provides a viewing area and therefore things can be stuck on it.
Personally I’ve never thought this was a good idea since any potential calming effect is quickly cancelled by the certain knowledge that the ceiling is a very odd place to stick pictures; the world we feel is not occurring in the usual places, and with my mouth full of someone else’s hands, this seems hardly a useful distraction. This illustrated ‘sky’ also has an unpleasantside effect in that it can make you feel as though the ceiling is coming closer to you. Surely when I went into the dentist’s, you think to yourself, I only had the one terror and now I find I have several.
At first there were pictures from magazines: the Swiss Alps, a beach at sunset, an English meadow with horses. Later these were replaced by my dentist’s holiday snapshots: the Swiss Alps with my dentist in the foreground; my dentist at the beach; my dentist’s children riding horses or generally having a great time.
Now my ex-dentist was a nice man, and a skilled professional. And when one looked, from the not-quite-lying position, at these images on the fifth wall of his surgery, one was witnessing an effort at rapport. Also the provision of conversation starters. Had I been to the Alps? Had I ever been sunburnt? My dentist on holiday was proof of a life rather than just a set of fingers, or a close-up pair of eyes over the mask. He was sharing—his ceiling was a horizontal intimacy. Admirable—and yes, a bit galling and hard to take. Not just because I had paid for these holidays. I had a sudden nostalgia for the magazine photos.
In the end, you see, I could do nothing with the life up there. Indeed these harmless holiday snapshots were curiously bullying. I resented not just my placement but theirs as well.
I should say that he is
Our neighbour hasn’t put curtains in his new bedroom, though he’s moved in down there. The walls are lined but the place still smells of clay. Sometimes at night, when I’m taking the recycling down, or carrying a tool up from the basement, sometimes I just want to be out of the house for a moment—everyone steps into the night, don’t say it’s just men hiding from the mothers of their children screaming in their baths, soap in their eyes—I see his girlfriend laying out her clothes on their bed for the next day’s work. It’s very exciting. Her—what is it—thoughtfulness? The composing— the blouse, the skirt. She is already wearing her white dressing-gown. She puts a version of herself down on the bed, looks at it, then changes the blouse or the skirt.
Once she told us, when our child was about to be born, she couldn’t imagine something growing inside her. ‘I’d feel too full .’
My father smacked us. I remember curling under a shrub at the side of our house and crying. He lies down on the floor and our daughter tells him she wants to look in his mouth. ‘It’s all right,’ she says, ‘you’ve beena good girl.’ He cries out because she’s kneeling on his chest.
When he knows she’s coming to visit, he shaves. He combs his hair! His combs were always dirty— who would clean a comb? He used to chase my sister around the dining-table after she’d wound him up, the noise so great—her screams and his thunder—you could shout with joy and not be heard.
divorce
I used to go to a dentist who believed, wrongly I think, that his profession should make use of the so-called fifth wall. This is the wall that comes into view as one is lowered, always disconcertingly, into the not-quite-lying position in the dentist’s chair. Outside this profession we understand this wall to be, in fact, the ceiling. But since we are staring at it, the space provides a viewing area and therefore things can be stuck on it.
Personally I’ve never thought this was a good idea since any potential calming effect is quickly cancelled by the certain knowledge that the ceiling is a very odd place to stick pictures; the world we feel is not occurring in the usual places, and with my mouth full of someone else’s hands, this seems hardly a useful distraction. This illustrated ‘sky’ also has an unpleasantside effect in that it can make you feel as though the ceiling is coming closer to you. Surely when I went into the dentist’s, you think to yourself, I only had the one terror and now I find I have several.
At first there were pictures from magazines: the Swiss Alps, a beach at sunset, an English meadow with horses. Later these were replaced by my dentist’s holiday snapshots: the Swiss Alps with my dentist in the foreground; my dentist at the beach; my dentist’s children riding horses or generally having a great time.
Now my ex-dentist was a nice man, and a skilled professional. And when one looked, from the not-quite-lying position, at these images on the fifth wall of his surgery, one was witnessing an effort at rapport. Also the provision of conversation starters. Had I been to the Alps? Had I ever been sunburnt? My dentist on holiday was proof of a life rather than just a set of fingers, or a close-up pair of eyes over the mask. He was sharing—his ceiling was a horizontal intimacy. Admirable—and yes, a bit galling and hard to take. Not just because I had paid for these holidays. I had a sudden nostalgia for the magazine photos.
In the end, you see, I could do nothing with the life up there. Indeed these harmless holiday snapshots were curiously bullying. I resented not just my placement but theirs as well.
I should say that he is
Similar Books
