Read by Ben Farrow & Louisa Gummer
I don’t sleep that well any more. I wake up a lot. I used to sleep like suspended animation. I got my straight eight every night, as regular as the seasons coming around. Before, when I was young, I hardly slept at all because I didn’t have to. Maybe one or two hours a night, and that was enough. Now I lie there for an hour and a half or two hours or three just staring at the ceiling or watching the lights of airplanes cross the sky. And when I do go to sleep I wake up because I have to go to the toilet or I think I hear something. It’s never anything though. The house is as quiet as a fucking tomb. So I lie there awake again, watching the numbers turn over on the clock, thinking how they’re turning over on me, tick tick tick tick tick ... Lying there in the dark with a head full of dark thoughts.
When I was young death was all around, but I never took it seriously. Life was a game and Death was the opponent, but it was the kind the boxers call a tomato can. Some has-been or never-was who’d give you a match, really just a sparring partner, someone you knew you could beat. Walk the plank? Why not! A sword fight? No problem at all! Now when I wake up I’m terrified of everything. I lie there and sometimes I almost tremble. And the most frightening thing is her lying there beside me like this..., like the blob from the first movie Steve McQueen made, a big amorphous malevolent shape in the dark. Even asleep she seems to be demanding, wanting something. If I knew what she wanted maybe it wouldn’t be so scary, but I don’t. It’s just this insatiable pull, like gravity at the edge of a precipice. You know that old movie, Little Caesar? Edward G Robinson plays a gangster named Rocco in it. He works his way up through the criminal hierarchy till he’s the top of the pile, but is he satisfied? No, he isn’t. One day one of his men comes to him and says, “Rocco, you wanted money and now you’ve got lots of money. You wanted dames, and now you’ve got plenty of great-looking dames. So what do you want now?” And Rocco says, “More! I want more!” That’s what she’s like. Only she never says it. There’s just this look, just this feeling that never goes away. So I lie there at night like someone stewing in Not Good Enough, like my skin is being boiled off in a steaming vat of You’re A Fuck-up, like her never-ending disappointment is slowly eating my soul. And you know what I think about at those times? I think about a lot of things, of course. I used to have an exciting life. So occasionally I think about the Lost Boys and wonder what they’re doing now, but I’ve got a pretty good idea. A couple of years ago, one night when I couldn’t sleep, I got up and went in the other room and Googled one of them and came up with a phone number and rang it. He turned out to be a fucking motivational speaker. He makes a living giving talks to Lion’s Clubs and community groups. Talk about a Lost Boy. After talking to him I was so depressed I nearly went into the bathroom and slit my wrists. I would have done, except I couldn’t face myself in the mirror. It was that bad.
But you know what I think about mostly? The only thing that sometimes gets me back to sleep when things are really bad and I’m lying there next to the Great Black Hole? I think about Tinkerbell. She was probably the only woman who ever loved me for who I was. She was beautiful, and sexy, always flitting around in that little strapless thing she wore. Those legs. That arse. But we never actually got around to, like, sex. It was out there like the carrot on the end of the stick or the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, but we never got to it. I always thought we would. But then Wendy came along, and.… I don’t know, it just never happened. Anyway, that’s what I think about. What it would have been like with her. With her everything wasn’t talk talk talk and ‘why don’t you do this’ and ‘if you’d only do that’. We didn’t need to talk. We knew. And I’m sure if we’d ever gotten around to it, around to really doing it, it would have been like the fireworks on Guy Fawkes Night. At least that’s how it seems to me when I’m trying to go to sleep. But maybe that’s just a bedtime story I tell myself, a myth. When you grow up you realize that most of what you thought would happen was just stories made up to get you through the days. For all I know Tinkerbell is fat and spends her evenings watching reality TV and eating prefab pizzas. Maybe she lives on a Peckham housing estate with three shrieking kids and a husband who’s a hairdresser. That’s what happens to your dreams when you grow up. It’s a fucking wonder kids are so eager to do it. Sometimes I think I should get a sign like the ones people carry in protest marches and station myself outside the school down the road. “Turn back! It’s not what you think! Save yourselves!”
That crocodile, the one that was always chasing Hook, the one that had swallowed the clock.… He wasn’t just chasing Hook. He was chasing me as well. A crocodile that ticks like a clock, that’s got to be the most obvious metaphor in literature, but I never saw it. Hell, I didn’t even know what a metaphor was. I didn’t even care. To me it was just an oversized reptile that would show up like the Hand Of God to rescue me when Hook had me backed into a corner. I loved the crocodile. But after Wendy came along and I let her talk me into coming back with her, the crocodile had me. She was the crocodile. Tick tick tick tick tick.…
It must be four o’clock now. It feels like I’ve been awake all night. And in the morning I’ve got to work. Lost boys? That’s me. Dead man walking.
*
He used to make me laugh all the time. He didn’t have to do anything but look at me. He had such potential then. He could have been anything he wanted. If you can make people like you, you’ve got them. All most people want is someone they like who likes them in turn. He could have been even a bigger success than my father. My father didn’t have half his charm, but he worked at it, he remembered people, remembered their names and the names of their wives and children. He made notes when no one was looking, and before he went out he’d look at them and memorize them; then if he saw somebody he would say, “Hello John. Good to see you. How are Mary and the girls?” And they thought they were his special friends, so he became their special friend, and when they did business they did it with him. He didn’t have half Peter’s natural charm. Peter could have bottled it and sold it. Everybody loved him. All he had to do was smile at you and you were hooked. People remembered him and told their friends about him. He had this aura. And what did he do with it? Nothing. Nothing. With him there was this big flash of charisma, and then a void. Like a beautifully wrapped Christmas present with nothing inside. And after people got past the initial impression they all saw it. “Of course Peter’s very nice, but.…” Their voices would sort of trail away. Because he was all front. All packaging. A haircut. A hollow man.
I thought I could change that. I was sure I could. All that potential.... So when he screwed up or faded in the finish, I stuck by him. I convinced my parents to take him in. I married him. But no matter how hard I tried, it was like pushing string. He would never actually do anything. He would never be serious, never take hold of an opportunity. He went through jobs like he was trying on shoes. No. No. Not that one either.... I persuaded him to go and talk to a career counselor. I even went with him. But he wouldn’t even take that seriously. Cost us a hundred pounds, and he acted like it was a game. He laughed and answered questions with riddles and jokes as if he was a guest on a talk show. And after a few minutes the career counselor was laughing too. But I still had to pay the money! A hundred pounds I’d earned in a job I never wanted, a job that barely kept us afloat. And every time I brought up having children he would change the subject or leave the room saying he had to go do something. The time just kept slipping by and slipping by.
At first I was sure it would change. Then I began to think the problem was me. But finally I realized that the only thing wrong with me was that I’d made one wrong decision. Just one. That was all it took though. It’s strange how you can’t see things till it’s too late. Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, as the poem says. But at the time, you only see one. And yet when you look back it’s always plain where things began to slip. With enough thought you can probably recall the exact moment, some little exchange that at the time seemed to be about nothing at all. But you can only see this looking backwards. It’s as if you’re driving down a motorway with the windscreen covered and all you can see is what’s in your rearview mirror. Everything is backwards, and small, and moving away into the distance.
When I realized what that moment was for me it was like I’d seen a dead relative in a dream. It was after I’d been captured. I was being held belowdecks, and Captain Hook came down to check on me.… Usually Mr Smee was with him or Starkey or Bill Jukes, but this time he came alone. I was tied to a chair, my hands were tied behind me, and my dress was torn, the shoulder of it had caught on something and torn and it was open there, my bare shoulder. He came down and asked if I was comfortable. I was so angry I didn’t even answer, I just glared at him. And he just kept looking at me. All those years later, I finally realized that there had been a look in his eye as if he was seeing me for the first time. There was this... desire. At the time he seemed impossibly old. He had that mustache and had lost his hand and was the captain of his own pirate ship. But really he was only about fifteen years older than I was. That doesn’t seem like so much anymore. If I’d been just a little older or if I hadn’t been so blinded by infatuation.… But Peter had convinced me that Captain Hook was a horrible villain. Of course in Peter’s eyes anyone who is successful must be a villain. Responsibility? Actually accomplishing anything? That must be evil. It took me ten years to realize that Captain Hook was everything I wanted Peter to be. Capable, respected, hard-working, and yet still dashing, even gallant. After I realized that, every time we’d have sex I’d shut my eyes and imagine the cold steel of that beautiful hook against my skin. Sometimes I’d imagine myself still tied to that chair. For a while it worked. But eventually it just wasn’t worth the trouble. I just didn’t have the energy.
Now my doctor prescribes 40mg Stilnoct. I take one of those little tan tablets every night when I brush my teeth. Half an hour later I just disappear until the next morning. It’s made me put on a little weight, but I think I still look alright. Anyway, who’s looking these days?
His and hers by Kurt Tidmore was read by Ben Farrow and Louisa Gummer at the Liars' League Honour & Obey event on 10 July 2010 at The Phoenix, Cavendish Sq., London
Kurt Tidmore is a former construction worker, printer’s assistant, tortilla manufacturer, illustrator, long-distance bicyclist, technical photographer, ice-plant worker, paid scientific guinea pig, salesman, dishwasher, cooking magazine editor, jazz musician, tour guide, dark-room technician, truck driver, and radio disc-jockey. Born in Texas, lives now in Ireland.
Ben Farrow trained at Webber Douglas and Middlesex University. Most recently he supplied the voices of the Lion, Tin Man and Munchkins for the BBC production of Over The Rainbow.
Louisa Gummer trained at Mountview. TV includes EastEnders (BBC1); The Sitcom Trials (ITV), and various commercials and independent films. Theatre includes Girls’ Night (UK No1 Tour); Heart (Brockley Jack); The Sitcom Trials (Edinburgh 2004 & Tour). Louisa is also voice-over artist.
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