The Beginner's Guide to Living (6 page)

“This is my room,” she says. It's green, the color of grass in countries where it always rains; in the middle of the room is a double bed, the duvet spilling across the floor. “Should've cleaned up,” she says, smiling, and takes off her dress, straight over her head. “Is this okay?”

I nod and touch her stomach, drawing my finger across it until it rests in her belly button. She draws me in and, hips locked, we fall onto the bed. She's small and so alive beneath me as we seek out each other's mouths again.

“Take your jeans off,” she says, undoing her bra. “Everything. Don't worry, I've got condoms.”

I roll over onto my back and take off my jeans and my shirt, kicking my shoes off as I go. I hesitate when I get to my boxers and for a moment I think,
She's too good at this, I'm obviously not the first,
like the moment should be less perfect if we're not both virgins and pure. But this isn't about purity.

We get under the duvet, her skin against my stomach, both of us naked. As she rolls on the condom, I shudder, and I think I should tell her I've never done this before. I don't dare touch her, my hands are so moist, but she traces my fingers along her stomach, her hair tangling in a finger, hers, mine. My tongue slides into her mouth, and with her other hand, she guides me in between her legs. She gasps and I wonder if I've hurt her.

“Taryn?”

“I'm okay,” she says, her finger resting on my mouth. She draws my head into her neck as I move in and out of her, my body, my breath, seeking out their rhythm, and I realize I'm having sex. For the first time. Having sex with Taryn, the girl I didn't even dare kiss as I came in the door. I am inside her, but it's like she's inside me, as if we've always been like this, naked and held in this green room. And then I get that feeling, one that I know even if I've only experienced it on my own before. I won't last long. Oh God, if only … and then I'm done, failing to stifle a groan that surprises me it's so loud. She must think I'm such a fool, but, man, it feels great.

“You okay?” she asks, her breath dawdling in my ear.

“Yeah, it was…”

I have a whole world of things I want to declare to her but I don't know words that can live up to the task. Is it possible for her to taste my pleasure as well as my pain?

“Shall we stay like this forever?” she whispers.

Her weight pushes the air out of my lungs. “If only we could.”

EROSOPHY

D
REAM.

She's sitting on me, naked. Stomach to stomach. Her ginger-blond hair tumbles down my back. But as I pull her away to look at her eyes, I realize that in place of her face is my own.

*   *   *

I see her in every girl who has long hair and graceful fingers, who wears dresses that stop above the knee. I see her in the jar of marmalade on the kitchen table over breakfast. Even when Adam says, “I can't believe you, Will,” I hear her voice in the word
believe
.

“Will?”

“Yes, Dad.”

“Adam's asked you twice to pass the orange juice.”

Adam leers over the table. “Get a grip.”

Dad frowns at Adam. “I'll be working late again. Will you boys be all right for dinner?”

“I'm meeting some people in Brunswick Street, so you're on your own, Will. As if that'll make any difference.”

“I could come home early if you prefer?” suggests Dad.

“I'll be fine,” I say, dipping my spoon into my cornflakes which have already gone soggy. I push the bowl away. “I've got some work to do myself.”

“Good,” says Dad. “Those exams aren't far off.”

“Yeah, don't go flunking, Will, just because…”

Dad turns away. Adam raises an eyebrow at me. Prick. This morning his eyes are more green than hazel and, as much as I hate it, even they remind me of her.

*   *   *

Eros. It's Greek for the part of love that involves a passionate, intense desire. Sounds about right. Nobody's home yet, so there's no chance of anyone coming in while I've got this stuff on the screen. I can imagine what Adam would say.

It's about the Greek philosopher Plato who said we look for the kind of beauty that reminds us of the ideal, or Form as he called it, in the people we love. I take a bite of my jam sandwich—as I am on my own tonight I couldn't be bothered making dinner. Plato said that what we desire in those we love is some level of perfection that we don't see in ourselves. They fill us with the belief that the world could be a better place.

The world certainly seems much improved today. When I woke up this morning I felt a presence, as if I was no longer alone. I also felt a strong desire to piss.

I scroll farther down the page and find this quote I like. It's from Socrates, Plato's teacher. I write it down in my notebook. A smear of jam not unlike a heart is in the corner of the page.
Love is of necessity a philosopher, thirsting for wisdom as for all forms of beauty … a something immortal in mortality
.

Did I fall in love with Taryn because of what happened to Mom? Maybe Adam's got a point, I am morbid, although it does make sense,
something immortal in mortality
. Oh, for Christ's sake, Will, shut up! What I want: I want her here with me, right now, naked or otherwise. I want to know what she thinks about me when I'm not with her, to walk my fingers up her spine. To listen to her heart beneath her dress, to hear her laugh so truly it enters my bones.

I need to be the
most
something, anything, she's ever known.

I key in Taryn's number—I didn't put it into the memory of our home phone in case Adam saw it. Anyway, I already know it by heart. I almost hang up when I hear her voice; she sounds altered over the phone.

“It's Will. How are you?”

“I'm fine. Except I can't eat.”

“What's wrong? Are you sick?”

“Well, yes, I guess I am.” I hear the smile in her voice and get what she means.

“I keep forgetting things,” I say. “I forgot to screw the lid back on the marmalade this morning and Dad picked it up and it smashed on the floor.”

“I couldn't eat dinner. Mom's worried I'm anorexic, but I think Dad's worked it out.”

I want to ask her if she's ever felt like this about anyone before, but I'm not ready for the answer. “Is this normal?”

“Is normal what you want?”

“No. When can I see you?”

“See me? Is that all you want to do?”

“Not all.”

The thought of her and I'm all body parts, a mass of urges. Her voice sounds so close, I can hear the static of her breathing.

“So, what are we going to do now?” she sighs.

The front door closes. Shit, must be Adam. “Listen, my brother's just got home and I don't want him to know.”

“Sure. Can't wait to see you.”

“Me too…” I whisper, but she's already gone.

*   *   *

Dad and Adam are in the living room dissecting the late news. Outside the moon's so clear, but my room's jagged with shadows. I collapse on my bed and undo my zipper. As I think of Taryn, the tang of her skin, the way she tore off her dress, I can feel it all the way up my spine, my butt muscles tightening, a twinge in the small of my back, my breath pacing toward the finish, harder, faster, my whole body coiling in on itself as I throw my other hand across the bed to seek her out. But there's nothing there. Only my own muffled voice.

*   *   *

There's this legend from Plato about love. It says that once man had four hands and four feet, and one head with two faces that looked in opposite directions, and a round body. But mankind was strong and challenged the gods. This angered them, and Zeus decided that to weaken mankind he would cut them in half.

After the division the two parts of man, each desiring his other half, came together, and throwing their arms about one another, entwined in mutual embraces …

So ancient is the desire of one another which is implanted in us, reuniting our original nature, seeking to make one of two, and to heal the state of man.

I go to send Taryn this quote from Plato, but instead I send her one from a Russian playwright called Anton Chekhov. It says:
Perhaps the feelings that we experience when we are in love represent a normal state. Being in love shows a person who he should be.
And I send a photo I took in our garden, of a bush my mother planted last spring.

Beautiful. White jasmine is the Hindu symbol for love and commitment. Did you know that?

♥ Taryn

No, I didn't.

Or maybe I did.

Memory.

I am fifteen and at the movie theater with my mother. Dad didn't come—he doesn't like movies, they give him a headache. Mom sees me looking at a blond girl. The lights go dim. She leans over with her box of M&M's, pours some into my hand, and whispers, “She's cute.” I blush, but I don't think she can see that in the dark. “I remember,” she says, “the first time I was really in love. It was like waking up.” We both eat M&M's till the box is empty. When we leave the theater, the girl has already gone.

KNOW THYSELF

“S
O,
W
ILL.
W
HAT DO YOU WANT TO DO WITH YOUR LIFE?”

Adam's stabbing at his peas. Since Dad's defaulted even on his minimalist level of parenting, I think Adam feels he should step up. My first instinct: tell him to get lost. When I was five, I was going to be a volcanologist, spend my days dodging pyroclastic flows and collecting igneous rocks, but now my future seems as full of holes as pumice. Before Mom died, there was this loose agreement about me going to university and studying math—Dad liked it because he thought I might end up working in finance like him, but I was thinking more about the theory of it, going beyond to where things blur. Quantum stuff. I remember Mom laughing, saying, “I want to know God's thoughts; the rest are details.” She said it was a quote from Einstein, and after that it was all settled—Will's future off the agenda. But now …

“Well?”

Adam's moved on to his steak. I could ask him the same question, what he wants to do with his one, outrageously short life, but something about the way he's peeling a piece of sinew away from the meat stops me. Anyway, a month ago, if someone had said I'd be tracking down philosophers and having sex, I would have told them they'd got the wrong guy.

*   *   *

Imagine you're in the middle of the city, sitting on the concrete steps opposite the railway station, where the backpackers and office workers hang out. They're all sunning themselves and eating their lunch, when this guy comes up to you. He's kind of stubby with a fat gut and a squashed nose, and he sits down next to you on the step—let's even imagine that he's wearing a toga. He throws the dust-rimmed end of it over his shoulder, leans closer, and asks, “Is war bad?”

“Of course it is,” you say, moving away along the step a bit. (I reckon he'd smell like damp sheep.) “People get killed.”

“People get killed crossing the street. Is crossing the street bad?”

“That's different,” you say. “That's an accident.”

“So war's bad because people kill other people on purpose?” he says, shading his balding head.

“Well, yes.”

“Is there ever a case when it's okay to kill somebody on purpose? When it might even serve some good?”

Your sandwich is curling at the edges, so you figure you might as well show him you can give as good as you get. “Sure, when the person has done something really bad. Someone like Hitler, for example. The world would've been better off if someone had put a bullet to his head.”

“Anybody?”

“Well, yeah, he was so bloody evil.”

“So it's all right to take a gun to someone's head if you believe them to be evil?”

“Sure, as long as that person really is bad. Everybody knew what Hitler was up to. How could anyone have not wanted him dead?”

“Plenty of people believed what Hitler was doing was good.”

At this point you're wondering what a guy in a toga would know about World War II.

“But to get back to your argument—so long as many people accept that what someone is doing is bad, it's okay to kill them? Is that not what we ask soldiers to do? To destroy a perceived evil on our behalf?”

“So you believe war is a good thing?”

“I'm not saying that. I'm merely trying to get you to think clearly about your own beliefs. Enjoy your lunch.”

By now, you're wondering who the bastard works for—whether he's a market researcher or some pro-war nut—though he's sown a seed of a thought,
Maybe the whole war issue isn't so clear-cut
.

You look around to see where he's got to. He's hassling some Japanese backpacker three steps up and she's starting to blush. Maybe her English isn't that good. Maybe where she comes from it's strange to be harassed by balding men wearing togas while you're eating your lunch. But that's what Socrates did. Hung around public squares in Athens interrogating strangers to help them work out what they believed, and how to know themselves truly. Got him into shitloads of trouble, but I like it—a rebel philosopher.