Boyfriend in a Dress. Louise Kean

alcoholic beverage of choice to handle the situation. But it would be rude of me to swig straight from the bottle lying on the floor, and I certainly don’t think I should offer anything to Charlie. I have never seen him actually afraid, but there is no doubt that he is scared. I am too. I can’t move towards him, I have no idea how he will react. My veins feel taut, about to snap.

      ‘Charlie, is it coke? A trip? How much have you done? Should I call a doctor?’ I say, still whispering.

      ‘Charlie? Charlie!’ I raise my voice slightly. ‘Charlie, can you hear me?’

      I take a step towards him, and then stop in my tracks as I see his lips moving, mouthing words neither of us can hear.

      ‘What?’ I ask quietly.

      ‘It’s not … drugs … but … I can’t … move.’

      The tears are flowing now, down his face, and his eyes shift to focus on me, imploring me through the blue and the brown, to do something, to grab him, or hit him, or something. But this is an alien situation for me, I don’t know whether to grab his tongue, or guide his limbs, or bandage splints to the sides of his legs. Or should I just keep him completely stationary? Maybe his neck is broken – you aren’t supposed to move the injured, I remember that from some ancient first aid lesson years ago. I should cover him with a blanket, and call an ambulance. First I need to be sure what he has taken, otherwise I am effectively shopping him to the police.

      ‘Charlie, can you move your toes, can you move at all? Your hands are shaking, I mean, they’re moving. Did you fall? Have you banged your head, or your back, or ..’

      ‘No.’

      Twisting his head down, moving for the first time, he looks at his hands, brings them up to his head, and rests his face in them. He can move – he is not paralysed. I don’t need to call an ambulance or make the splints. I hear him start to sob. Blond strands of hair, mixed with a white powder, hang stiff with sweat round his eyes. I am still standing ten feet away, staring at him, blankly. He is crying slowly, gently. This boy who became a man with me, who does nothing softly these days – not lovemaking, not talking, not breathing – is crying, gently. My impulse is to hold him, but I don’t know how any more – we haven’t held each other for a long time, like we cared. I take a tentative step forwards, and when he doesn’t react with some kind of animal instinct karate lunge, I step over the bags and move swiftly to the couch, sitting awkwardly on the end. I reach out for one of his hands and he takes it, and for a while we sit quite still. I get a little bored as I realize there is probably nothing wrong with Charlie that is not self- or stupidity-induced, and I feel my lack of patience rise up my throat. I stare out of the window for something to do, as he cries onto my now soggy hand. It is still so hot outside, as the sun makes its way down but seems desperate not to leave. I look directly at it until it hurts my eyes, and I have to close them.

      My mind wanders and I picture myself saying what I was going to say to Charlie tonight as he clutches my hand tightly, and I look back at him. He says something, but I can’t hear.

      ‘What?’ This time I say it with a little less patience. He has ruined my day with his silliness. He’s got pissed at work or something similarly stupid and is now feeling sorry for himself, and I don’t get to say what all of a sudden seems the most important thing in the world to say. After weeks, months of delaying it, I feel I am ready, mostly because there is no possible way I can do it. It’s some false bravado on my part.

      ‘Something’s happened,’ he says gravely. I can see that. I just don’t want to know what it is yet I suppose, what folly has brought this little pantomime on.

      ‘It’s fine. We’ll talk about it later.’ I hear myself, speaking in clichés, but this whole situation dictates them. I don’t know how to react to this other than through somebody else’s words. If they were good enough for somebody else, before me, in a difficult place, and a strange time, they are fine for now. I have nothing to say to him now.

      

      Here’s what I was going to say.

      ‘Charlie, I think it’s time we stopped seeing each other. I think it’s time we stopped mucking about. Neither of us is getting any younger, and you don’t like me any more, and you’ve changed from the person I liked. It’s not enough. We have nothing in common other than America, history, sex. I don’t think we should be together any more.’

      That is what I had planned to say, later that night if the sun had gone down and left a chill, and I had mustered up the courage, and not been bothered about ruining my sunny day. I had worked it all out in my head. For something that was supposed to mean so little, I had been surprisingly nervous. I had rehearsed it enough to have it almost word-perfect. I’d pictured the various outcomes as well. The first was Charlie completely nonchalant, shrugging his shoulders and brightly asking for one last shag, for the road. The second was Charlie mildly unsettled that I am ending it before him, and getting a bit arsey, telling me he was going to do the same thing but he was too bored to care, which is a possibility, and one that I have convinced myself I could live with. The final version was a devastated Charlie, telling me he has loved me all along, and he doesn’t know what has gone wrong, clutching onto me and begging to give it another try. I don’t know why I even entertain this one, but entertain it I do. Quite a few times actually. I’m not sure if it makes me happy or sad. Whether I want it to happen to give some meaning to the whole mess of the last year, or to prove that I have always meant something to him after all. I could console myself with the fact that I am uncontrollably loveable, and even he who seems now to care so little, and who has slept with half of London in the last six months, can’t bear to be without me. This last version is more a cushion than the truth.

      And you may ask why now and not six months ago when he started being unfaithful on a regular basis? Or even before that, last year, the year before, as we drifted apart and failed to talk about things any more, why not then? What has triggered me to break the routine? And why has Charlie picked today to fall apart? Had he sensed it somehow, and is just putting on this bizarre act to throw me off course, to get me to feel sorry for him and drop my guard so he can spring up, save face, and finish it quick before I can get the words out first. I change my mind – we will talk now. I’ll make sure for certain he’s not falling into a coma or something equally as awful, and then I’ll do it.

      I lean forward and whisper in his ear,

      ‘What have you done? What’s wrong with you? You look … weird.’ I search for a better word.

      ‘You seem ill, Charlie – I’ve never seen you like this.’

      There is no response, he just carries on staring at the floor, almost vacantly, like a victim of something he can’t put into words. He is almost absent, from the room, from himself, the only sign that he is alive now are the tears trickling slowly down the sides of his nose, mingling eventually with the blood sliding from the cut at the side of his eye and meeting in a small puddle, via his sideburn, on my hand. The eye itself, his blue eye, blackens by the second, growing more purple, more bruised, more swollen.

      I try to whisper again, but my voice becomes a little more strained, a little more frustrated with every word.

      ‘Charlie, please, tell me what’s wrong. Have you been in a fight? Has something happened at work? Have you lost a deal? Just tell me if you’re sick or not!’ I raise my voice.

      And still no response, nothing. I feel my temper rising, and I make little effort to control it.

      ‘Charlie, the least you can tell me, the very least, is why the hell you are wearing my dress!’

       What Charlie Has to Say for Himself

      Charlie just sits there, staring at the floor, clutching onto my hand, lean football muscles that regained some of their polish when he started going to his work gym a couple of years ago, now bursting out of a terrible, cheap blue Lycra dress that I bought last summer when I had split