Fear and Loving in the Suburbs

My memory of the whole day is patchy. My brain was working fine – but it was only capable of engaging totally with the present. Very little of what happened has been transferred to my memory. It existed only then and I cannot recover it except as isolated moments. And so I am afraid that is how I will have to retell it.

The party started as I imagined it might – in the garden, in the sunshine, in the pool. Someone took up a position near the barbeque and chatting to the people that were drawn to him by the smell of meat and the attraction of the authority that is naturally bestowed by a pair of tongs. Tight groups of girls sat cross legged chatting and boys spread out around the garden playing games with balls.

Soon someone arrived with a DJ deck and speakers so big that a person could hide inside them, and the energy picked up with the volume. All across the huge garden people had hidden themselves in the shade under the trees or tucked themselves behind bushes. Occasionally people would appear and slip their tanned bodies into the pool and dry off by dancing.

At some stage of the afternoon (though I cannot be sure of the time) a tall, shy man appeared at the door. His hair was bound up in a purple scarf and his long legs laced into converse trainers. The effect of his arrival on the people in the garden was like that of throwing breadcrumbs on to a duck pond. Without saying a word he attracted the attention of the whole gathering until all the breadcrumbs were gone and then people drifted back towards the lawn.

I sought refuge in the kitchen. Kitchens always make me feel safe – they play such a huge role in the function of a home and there is very little sense of hierarchy in them. I found others there – hiding from the noise and the madness of the garden. They were a strange pair: the blond genius and beautiful Dutchman. The blond could not contain his thoughts inside his head so that his entire interior monologue was escaping out his mouth as he narrated his experiences. I didn’t have to contribute much to the conversation (he was quite willing to guess my answers and talk for me too), so I just tried to hold his gaze through his pale eyelashes. The Dutchman, in a struggle to decide which language he should talk in, completely lost the power of speech. His English had switched off and his Dutch was useless. He was only capable of small, strained noises that might have turned into sentences; until we told him to stop trying.

My body melted in to the sofa: my chin locked into my hand and my legs tucked underneath me. My eyes were still free to roam though, and slide from side to side following sound or movement.

When my limbs woke up and I was able to move again the sun had set and it was dark outside. My clothes were damp from my wet swimming suit and I felt suddenly cold and shy. Even the comfort of the sleeves of the shirt I found where I had stowed it under a chair didn’t smooth away the goosebumps on my arms. I had reached the liminal stage of my day: I either leave now or I get myself a drink and throw myself back in. I stayed.

I tried to join in some drumming and then I stood behind the DJ decks; I danced sometimes and talked sometimes and now and then I went back to the kitchen. I know there was one point where I locked myself into the loo with a glass of lemonade and drank it slowly by myself.

Then somehow I found myself down in the wine cellar where the air is chilled looking at dusty bottles might be worth more than me. And down there around a round table I think I made some proper friends. Alcohol has a wonderful way of rubbing off inhibition like it was old paint or dirty fingerprints and leaving you standing smiling and like a shiny new penny.

Not long later, whilst lying in the dew, there was some collective decision to find somewhere softer inside to sleep. And I crept under a blanket until the next day.