The Three Halves of Martyn Manning-Chapter Sixteen: Aftermath/Recollection - Part Two

He
pressed “Confirm and Pay” and for a few minutes he felt good
about himself. He
hadn’t written a message or signed the card but surely she’d know they were from
him. They would show he was generous, appreciative, empathetic, or at least he
hoped they would. He hoped they wouldn’t come across as
patronising, paternal, maybe
even smug.
He had to admit he was feeling a little beneficent. But
then,
after
he’d dealt with a couple of mails an element of doubt began to
creep into his mind, and
when
he paused to analyse this doubt he realised it wasn’t about the flowers, at least, it wasn’t
about the discrete stand-alone action of sending the flowers in its
own right, but more about his reasons for doing it, or
not even the reasons, but the cause. The
ordering of the flowers had stirred memories, memories of all the
other times. Before the internet he
would have flicked through the yellow pages and made
phone
calls to local
florists.
He’d
always done it, all his adult
life,
that morning after the first time, even
when
that first time had been the most transitory and incompatible one-night stand. He
knew he did it and privately
he
knew why. He tried to tell himself he was just being a nice guy,
respectful, showing that not all men are bastards, even
showing gratitude, but
it worried him. In fact, being a nice guy was part of the problem. He
looked
back at his screen and tried
to re-focus
on a mail from his favourite client but he
soon
gave up again.
Why
couldn’t he be like other men? He
knew the deal, everybody knew the deal, you were bombarded with it
twenty-four hours a day by TV, newspapers, magazines, literature,
cinema, everything, you couldn’t escape it, it seeped into the
fibres of your being. And
then there were your mates, the
boys chatting down the pub over
pints and scratchings,
just being men. Everybody
knew, it
was an accepted fact and written in stone, men
weren’t like women.
Men didn’t
need an emotional connection. Men
could just do it and walk away as if nothing had happened. What
was that phrase? “The Three F’s - Find ‘Em, Fuck ‘Em, Forget
‘Em.” But
it wasn’t like that for him. It never had
been
like that for him. Something
did
happen,
ever
since he’d
first seen the
line of Elizabeth
Miller’s white
schoolgirl knickers when
he
was six and
she
was seven. They’d been climbing the
apple tree in her parents’ back garden and
she
went up first. He
followed closely behind and
when he
looked up there they were not four inches from his face. He could still see them now, washed
out and beginning to grey, the
tiny little holes in the gusset as
they reached the end of their life, probably only ever worn now
for
playing out. From
that moment everything changed. It was from that moment that women,
at
least some
women, some women in the right place at the right time, became fascinating,
intriguing,
enigmatic creatures,
creatures
he knew he would never and could never properly understand. He
wanted to know more about them and the
simple truth was that
he
craved an emotional connection with these other worldly beings. He
knew this and
he was on guard against it. He would approach a first time congress
with
his mental barricades in
place,
but it was hopeless, every single time his defences were cast aside
with contempt. He didn’t necessarily need an emotional connection
to enjoy sex. His issue was that the
act of physical union created an emotional union. Resistance
was futile. It was in his DNA.

And
that was why he sent flowers. He supposed he’d just have to admit
he wasn’t a real man.