The Room

I begin,

looking, (she is) nearsighted, like a newborn. Hair—no, the hair’s not important, but the eyes are, the eyes are important.

I look outside the window, see two strange stars in the Milky Way, unexpectedly hot and covered in ash. This is not what she is looking at, obviously. It’s what I’m looking at. She is looking out at the roof tiles, studying the slanting afternoon light. She finds the impression of the sunlight on the roof tiles quite particular, quite beautiful, and it inspires in her an ache, the kind one might experience when one’s entire body is racked with fever, a fever-ache, heavy and consuming, and she can’t decide what might satisfy this ache, possibly codeine or ice cream or a walk or a nap or a shot of dark rum with lime and sugar syrup, or possibly just really horny sex, but she doesn’t know which because her senses are hitting her up with this aimless ache: all of her best wants hurtling at her, meteoric.

Eyes to the sun, and it begins.

It began when I saw a hand being cut off—she did not see this; I did. It’s the same as: note, thought, phenomenon, interruption. The light-craving may also manifest as horror. And still she sits, serenely, contemplating the roof, the tiles, the light, the way the light falls across the tiles, slant, contemplating the numinous and the beauty and the everyday, and the sadness of it, and the horror, because beauty fades, beauty is a heart in flames, and those stars, those two strange stars which I see, long for, unexpectedly hot and covered in ash. I want them. I don’t want them. I want knowledge of them. But, poetry-knowledge (scientists are poets too, if only accidentally).

These stars, they have been described as ‘freaks’(!). The artist’s impression on my laptop screen resembles a pair of lilac orbs colliding in a turquoise sea. They could be sea creatures, but they are stars. At the point of collision (cohesion?) there is a bright white flash of light. Apparently, these stars might be a rare phenomenon known as a stellar merger, which is where one star, made from helium, eats the other star, made from carbon and oxygen, or vice versa. Star cannibalism. Maybe they arefreaks, freak-stars! Or: a perfect match? Two strange stars in the Milky Way are unexpectedly hot and covered in ash. And how hot is unexpectedly hot? How hot is too hot for a star? How hot is a star, anyway? How does one very hot star eat another very hot star? Does one star sear itself onto the other star, as in branding, as in cauterisation; or is it more gooey, more molten, more submissive than that?

Listening, to the sound of my eyelids click as they open and shut, the sound of blood singing in my ears. The vessels in my head fluoresce into: a brilliant headache. I unfurl it like a flower.

(She only waits for sensation to overwhelm her. It’s exhausting to constantly have to exist in the ‘I’. I this and I that. I want this or I feel this or I think that. It’s exhausting.)

She is in the room, sitting on the bed, with her knees propped up. On a small table to her left there is a picture in a frame of her standing next to a man, her head tilted coyly towards his shoulder, his arm braided around her waist. They are standing in a wood, a carpet of bluebells stretches out behind them. Her laptop is open next to her. On the screen there is a picture, an artist’s impression of two stars colliding in space. To her right, there is a window which looks out onto the garden, a sloping slate roof below. It is south-facing. Every so often she rests her left cheek against her knees and rubs it with a small, repetitive, chafing action. Her cheek is reddened.

I should say, I should tell you, I am always in the room. It’s everything. It’s where everything happens and has happened and will happen. It is past, present, future. Even when I leave the room, I am here. I would always be in here (unless I was dead, of course!). He is always here, too, whether he is in the room or not. But he is usually not in the room, he tends to avoid entering it for ‘reasons’.

Yesterday, she went for a walk. It was a warm spring day and the wood anemones were out. He insisted, since it was a such nice day. I reluctantly agreed, leaving the room is hard. I forgot to take my glasses with me. Silly! I could barely see a thing. I crouched down next to a patch of wood anemones so I could study their delicately-veined hoods more closely. I watched the pious nodding wimples, how they trembled gently in the earth as it held them. I thought, It won’t be long now, till the bluebells come. I tripped over the roots of ancient horse chestnuts, snarled fingers prowling the earth. There was so much to see! I lost my eyes there, I literally lost my eyes to that forest. I was glad to get back to the room though. Always glad to be back there. Later, when he brought up my dinner, he said, So what did you get up to today? He said this through the door as he set the tray down outside after rapping sharply and clearing his throat somewhat emphatically to ensure he would be heard. I could tell by the overly-casual tone he employed, by the insertion of the ‘so’ at the start of the question, that I should respond in a manner pedestrian, run-of-the-mill, derivative; in other words: something that would not cause the shuttered look to fall, hands pressed to his temples. So I did not say all that, about the losing of the eyes and the finger roots and the pious wimples. I just said: I went for a walk. Because that is what she would have said, and that is what he wanted to hear, and, after all, that was also true.

She picks up a paperback book from the bedside table and flicks through the pages, one-handed. She stops at a particular page, a particular underlined passage, sliding the cover back on itself. She takes out her phone, holds it up to the page, swipes upwards over the screen, taps on an icon, presses the home button firmly, all with the pad of her thumb. The phone makes a clunking sound, like an analogue camera. She throws the book down. It scuds off the bed, falls to the floor. She holds the phone out in front of her towards the window, level with her eye line. She squints.

You see, I had the intention of photographing the roof tiles, but the light is wrong now, it’s bad, the sky woolly and pith-like. The slate tiles look bland and dirty. They look like ordinary slate tiles. Everything has lost its magic now the sun has absconded. If only I could peel it open, the sky, let the sun drip over me, like the juice from a navel orange. If only! I suppose I could describe the room to you instead. How should I describe it? Is it beautiful? It is not. In fact, I would say it is very ordinary. As Sophia Jansen says in Good Morning, Midnight, all rooms are the same anyway, all rooms are a place to hide from the wolves outside (four walls, a door, a window, etcetera etcetera…) A room is a room is a room. A room is layers of time. A room is a multiple exposure. Many things happened to Sophia in that room: she ate, drank, got drunk, made herself up, slept, had sex, got married, got pregnant, lost her baby, was threatened, beaten, raped, possibly (on that matter I can never quite be sure). Not all of these things actually happened in the room, however, they also all happened in the room. Sophia Jansen was a drunk. I believe Jean Rhys liked a drink too. Maybe she was drunk when she wrote that, about the wolves. Oh, these frail, frail women! They should drink less, eat more. Put some flesh on their bones. I imagine them to be so very thin and bird-like, her bones; I imagine you could quite easily snap one of Sophia Jansen’s wrists clean in two. It wouldn’t take much. Clamp the hand back on itself. Firm pressure applied with the thumb. Or a Tae kwon do move would do just as well. It’d be like snapping a breadstick in half. Perhaps that’s why she was so alluring to men, those men who then so eagerly discarded her—too willing to be absolutely, utterly, God-forsakenly ruined. Men really do like a good bit of something substantial, yes, a bit of substance, a bit of purchase, something with a bit of give and bite—but! But. I have digressed. We should get back to the room. What should I tell you about it? I suppose I could tell you about the size of it, at least: small, twelve foot by twelve foot, perfectly square, but for a boarded up chimney breast; I could tell you about the Laura Ashley wallpaper, the wide stripes of lemon and cream, the Bridget Riley prints on the walls, the absolute dizzying exquisiteness of them (he doesn’t like to look at them, says they make him feel seasick); the wrought iron bed frame in the centre, the stripped pine floorboards, the old camping blanket I throw over myself when it’s cold, and the desk in the corner, an old-fashioned school desk with an inkwell and a flippy lid. I do not write at this desk, however, I only write in bed, for no other particular reason than I prefer to write in bed, it’s more comfortable, and I like my bed very much. Clinomania is the overwhelming desire to stay in bed, a clinical psychiatric term coined in the 1890s. Clino is a little-used root word in English which comes from the Greek word to lean, slant or recline—but why mania and not philia? I always wondered about that. At what point does an excess of desire become pathology?

When I read Giovanni’s Room, I understood that desire is never steadfast, only love is steadfast, and many people do not know how to love, only desire, which is a great tragedy. But love! Love. It is, also, unfortunately, entirely illusory. Only desire is real. Only desire is pure in the chemical sense; crack-pure. When Baldwin described the room, I began to feel immediately claustrophobic and stressed, as if I were stuck in a cage pulsing with the violence of male eroticism. A squalid place. Myroom, her room (our room!) is angular and tidy and it makes me feel safe. When I leave it for the world ‘out there’ (with the wolves) it is always with me, the dimensions of it worn into my neural pathways, like desire lines.

He doesn’t come in here too often any more. As I said: this is my space, our space, he respects that. He usually leaves the food and beverages outside on a tray. He is careful to include condiments: salt, pepper, mustard, hot sauce—he knows I like each mouthful to be bursting with flavour. He looks after me. I don’t necessarily require looking after, but I suppose it makes him feel useful; I suppose I inspire protective feelings, I am so very helpless in other ways. Almost like a child. He says that sometimes: You’re like a small child, he says. You’re so needy. But most days she eats and drinks well. Too well, one might say. She writes. She reads. She naps. She goes to the bathroom. She washes. Some days she goes for a walk, alone. It’s a life. Those silly little walks… He used to come with me, but nowadays there’s always some excuse, some reason, so she goes alone, which is fine by me. Yes. Yes. It’s fine by us.

I never watch television—there’s no television in the room. My laptop is connected to the internet for one hour each day, after lunch, so that I can watch ASMR videos and do research. I’m not allowed to go on it for longer than that because I will do what he calls ‘doom-scrolling’ (I can’t stop myself!) and then I will become over-stimulated and generally impossible and the panic will bear down in waves and he will have to calm me down and possibly even speak to the doctor, which he hates doing.

Occasionally we share a bed (his bed, upstairs, not this bed, our bed). Even more occasionally, we have sex. I always ensure that we both shower immediately afterwards and then I change the sheets. Sometimes, after we have had sex he wants to hold me for a while and I can feel his bony legs, like stiff hairy rods. I can feel his flinty little knee caps pressing against the soft marshes of my thighs. I can feel his damp breath on my neck. And the way his arms wrap themselves around me, like tentacles. I worry he might squeeze too hard. He might squeeze so hard I pop! I know, I know, it’s ridiculous. A ridiculous thought.

Two strange stars in the Milky Way are unexpectedly hot and covered in ash.

I think I will write something, about these two strange stars. Or maybe I’ll just think about them for a while longer.

This morning, she wrote a poem entitled ‘ASMR transcript for brain melt effect’. ASMR stands for: Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response. The poem consisted of a list of things she likes to listen to being gently tapped, scratched or crackled, which elicit within her an intensely sedative sensory response. It begins with a tingling at the crown of her skull and plunges through her centre, in the manner of an apple being cored. My favourite ASMR trigger is the crystal gem sheet and glass rod. He even bought me an actual crystal gem sheet from Hobbycraft. It was part of a card making set. He thought I could create the effect for myself, but it wasn’t the same, you really need a microphone. You need specialist equipment. Besides, my nails are rubbish. Bitten to the quick. You need good nails to do ASMR properly.

She begins to type and words appear on her laptop screen:

An astrophile is someone who loves the stars.

Yes, I think the stars could be an interesting/beneficial thing to love. I am trying to remember what it feels like to be touched. I ask him to prepare my food and beverages so they’re piping hot; nuclear, in fact. I stuff the hot chunks of food into my mouth, they scald my tongue, throat. He tells me I look a bit chubby these days. My eyes are getting worse. I can’t even see the photograph on my bedside table anymore without my glasses. His face is all blurry. The roof tiles are mere smudges. I’m trying to remember… I’m trying to remember how he used to touch me. I’m practically myopic! He tells me I should eat less. Portion control, he says, in his cautionary voice. If I become obese, it will put a strain on my heart. My heart, in flames. But he is no longer in the room. He hasn’t been in the room for some time now. Always some excuse. And I’m always hungry. So hungry. I think about the stars. I think about them. Those two scorched freaks. I think about them, when I touch myself.

She thinks, It won’t be long now, till the bluebells come.