Beneath the Blonde Read Free Page B

puppy on a string and he felt the warmth of Mariella’s welcome quickly turn to a more politically correct animosity. Waking Alex with the coffee, Greg told him that Mariella was back.
    “Are those ‘wimmin’ with her?”
    “Yep.”
    Alex grabbed his coffee and growled. “Fuck it.”
    Greg shook his head, “Nah, they’re all right. They’re just not very …”
    “Nice?”
    “Chatty.”
    “Yeah, well it’s my fucking kitchen, man, and they’re always bloody here.”
    “Is Mariella …?”
    “I dunno. Not yet anyway. Oh fuck it, why me?”
    “Why you what?”
    “Why do all my fucking girlfriends become lesbians?”
    Greg laughed, “Only one of your girlfriends has become gay, and you knew Hannah was more or less a dyke when you started going out with her.”
    “So why’d she go out with me then?”
    “Last fling? Sad and desperate? Just to persuade herself of what she wouldn’t be missing?”
    “Bitch.”
    “Nah. Just confused. It’s the
zeitgeist.”
    “The what?”
    Greg picked up the bongos and started drumming while Alex rolled another joint. He explained, “Sign of the times. It’s trendy for girls. The girls we know anyway. Look at Mariella, I mean she’s probably more or less straight.”
    “Oh, she’s more, believe me.”
    “Ok, but if most of her women friends are gay, and it’s not as if she really knows that many other people in London anyway, she’s bound to get a bit curious. And you know … they’re women. They’re girls. They’re nicer, softer, cleaner—all that shit. I’d be a lesbian if I was a girl.”
    Alex snarled, “Not if the lesbians you knew were those lesbians.”
    “Yeah, well, maybe I could do without the barbed-wire tattoo on the face …”
    “And the fucking dogs everywhere.”
    Greg drummed faster, Alex holding the joint for him so he didn’t have to move his hands from the rhythm. “That’s not the point. These specific lesbians aren’t the point. I know some lesbians who don’t have tattoos or dogs.”
    “You do?”
    “Yeah. There’s a girl in my photography class. And she doesn’t live in Brixton either.”
    “Well, she must have got lost.”
    Greg stopped drumming. “You’re deliberately being a wanker now. My point is that when you say all dykes are ugly or nasty or whatever …”
    “I didn’t.”
    “No, but you implied it. And that’s just the same as when they say all men are crap or all men are slobs—which, come to think of it, is probably true …”
    “Fuck off, you might be, but I did my washing this morning. And I’ll be ironing tonight.”
    “Or all men are liars …”
    “Or all men are rapists?”
    “Maybe that’s stretching the analogy a little too far, but you know what I mean. You know, all Irish are thick?”
    Alex stood up and started pacing the small roof area, looking down at the square he’d lived in for the past four years, once a haven for squatters of all kinds, now slowly reverting to “society” as the housing associations and coops bought up the properties and normalized them. He sat on the edge of the roof and looked back at Greg. “Yeah, all right. Of course I know what you mean. And I also know that this is my house. I found it. I opened it, I got the electricity and water put on, I cleared the garden, I fixed the roof, I put in the windows and when Mariella brings that bloody Autumn round here …”
    “Autumn?”
    “Yeah. Her girlfriend’s called Evechild.”
    “Oh.”
    “See? Anyway, the problem is, I don’t exactly end up feeling that this Englishman’s home is his castle.”
    “Fair point. Even for an Irishman. Pub?”
    “In a minute. I just want to finish this.” Alex looked around for his notepad, Greg pointed it out under the several empty cans of beer.
    “I did it for you. Edited the poem. It’s finished.”
    “You bastard. That’s private.”
    “People who get stoned as much as you do should never attempt to keep things private, they fall asleep too fucking much. It’s