Gita’s house. Gita’s room.
Your room’s so big, I say.
It’s the old drawing room, Gita says.
I don’t even know what a drawing room is, I say
The best room in the house – where they’d bring guests to impress them, Gita says. Victorian England was all about the tiny social gradations.
It’s so cold, I say. It’s going to take ages for it to warm up, I say.
Gita, throwing over a quilt. Wrap yourself in this.
There was a charity that made quilts for us when I was in the home, I say. I loved mine. I don’t know what happened to it.
God, Donny – your life, Gita says.
Gita, stuffing the firebox with balled-up paper from her desk. Lighting the fire.
Who was that Russian author who burnt his manuscript to keep warm?, I ask. Grossman, wasn’t it?
I don’t think the world’s going to miss a print out of my maunderings, Gita says.
You should burn some of your sitting on the fence books, now you’ve gone full blown European, I say. Fucking Rorty. Fucking Habermas. There are certain books you should have on your bookshelf, Ganymede would say, and certain books you shouldn’t …
Admiring Gita’s Chinese screens. Admiring her scarves and silks. Admiring the peacock feathers in a jar. The various objets d’art. The rails of clothes …
I love all your stuff, I say. This is, like, a real home.
Are you taking the piss?, Gita says.
You should design interiors, I say. There’s got to be money in it. For Russian oligarchs in London, or something.
You are taking the piss, Gita says. You despise the domestic. You think it’s all bourgeois. That Deleuze and Guattari, or whoever, wouldn’t like it. I know what you guys are like. You’d prefer to be anarcho-nomads, or something …
Monkey always says she’s not going to settle anywhere, I say. She’s just waiting for the revolution. She wants to be on her toes … But I don’t think that … You’ve made a home in Manchester. You’ve found all this cool stuff.
It’s flea-market stuff, Gita says. Vintage stuff.
I love all your … ojets d’art.
They’re not art. I hate art, Gita says. Everything here is functional.
Functional and beautiful, I say.
You don’t have to choose between the two, Gita says.
I can’t believe you’ve made a home in Manchester, I say. Typical lesbian desire to set up home in the void …
Inspecting Gita’s bookshelves.
Djuna Barnes ... Elizabeth Bowen … All this modernist stuff, I say. It’s classy ... I like the thought of you reading long novels. I like that someone’s reading these things ... Nice to think civilization kind of survives in people like you.
Gita, putting on music.
Of course it’s classical music, I say. It would have to be classical music. I think it’s great someone listens to classical music. It’s like it’s 1905, or something. This si the stuff they play at the dentist’s, to calm you down. It’s what they pipe outside shops to move teenager delinquents on …
And this is, like classical classical music, I say. Like, Mozart, or something. It’s not even all fracturedly modernist. It’s not even discordant. It's not something Adorno would write about. It's mellifluous. Serene. Untouched by it all. The sort of thing the SS would have listened to in their spare time …
Stop channelling the other guys, Donny, Gita says. It’s tedious.
Gita, pouring wine.
And it would have to be wine, I say. I’ll bet you have the best wine …
Don’t go all faux lower class on me, little orphan Donny. You know what wine is.
Jean Genet, in a Gallimard edition, face down by Gita’s futon.
Imagine, you actually read French, I say. You can just pick up and read a French novel without a dictionary. ou’re so fucking classy ... You should fall in love with someone who loves Jean Genet ... You could read Notre-Dame-des-Fleurs, or whatever to one another, in French.
Gita, lightning candles.
One day ... one day, I’d like to write a book, I say.
And what would you book be about?, Gita asks.
I'd like to write the last book, I say. The book into which everything would disappear. That destroyed the world, in its own way. Like the photographic negative of life. And it would be bound with black sandpaper so it would scratch the other books next to it.
You’re not convincing, Donny, Gita says. You’d like to think you’re the prince of gnostic darkness, but you’re just sweet and kind. If you could see your own face. You’re always smiling, did you know that? You always have this half-smile on your face … Like you’re lightly laughing at everything. At yourself.
Okay, I’ll tell you what I’ll write about. I say. Gita Mukherjee and her Chinese screen and her antique washstand and her peacock feathers and her Indian miniatures and the infinite expanse of her floorboards in her freezing drawing room slash bedroom. I’m write about her full length mirror and her chamber music and her wine and her Jean Genet …
I’m glad I got you away from the others, Donny, Gita says. The others can be trying.
I’m glad to be here, I say. I’m still fucking freezing, though.
Get into bed, if you like, Gita says.
Gita’s futon. Under the duvet. Under layers of blankets.
Gita, climbing in next to me.
I warn you - I’m a couple of glasses of wine away from making a pass at you, I say.
That wouldn’t be a good thing, Gita says.
Why not?, I say. Why – really – not?
Maybe our wires are getting crossed, Donny. We’re not compatible.
Sure – we should repel each other, like two opposite magnets, I say. But we don’t, do we?
Don’t you see – this might be a chance, I say.
A chance for what?, Gita asks.
For the same not to be the same, I say. For one day not to follow another. For the inevitable not to be inevitable. For fate not to be fate. For cog not to be locked into cog ... Wouldn’t you like to think that we’re on the brink of something? That something’s about to happen?
You sound like Ismail, Gita says.
Let’s get drunk, I say. Let’s let the drink decide.
Let’s not, Gita says. I’m tired of … blundering into things … You’re not what I need, Donny. And you don’t know what you want.
Why does it have to be so complicated?
Because it is complicated. Because life’s complicated. Because one thing doesn’t follow from another. Not for us. Not for people like us … Anyway, it would just ruin everything. And I don’t want things to be ruined ... We wouldn’t know how to look at each other in the morning.
Drink some more and maybe we’ll like each other, I say. Seriously – why can’t things just work out?
Nothing works out, Donny. Not like that … I’m sick of mid-twenties style relationships. Where no one knows what they want. Where friendship becomes love and love becomes … what? That’s your twenties, right – trying out romance. Getting it wrong. Because there’s still time for fuck ups, supposedly. Because it’s not got all urgent yet.
You apparently get very self-reflexive in your mid-twenties, I say. Talking about being in your mid-twenties is a sign of being in your mid-twenties …
See, we’re all so clever, aren’t we?, Gita says. We’re clever about everything … God, I don’t even want to talk about this stuff. There’s too much talk. We’re filling up the world with talk … The world’s confusing enough, I don’t want to be confused with you, Donny Friendships are … delicate. They could just end. Be broken. One minute you’re really close, the next …
So this isn’t the part in the move when we kiss?, I say.
No, Gita says. No!
Laughing.
We shouldn’t just play with our lives, Gita says. We shouldn’t play with the flame of life. We can’t just go from lover to lover …
Ganymede does, I say.
Ganymede’s a slut, Gita says.
More wine.
It’s all okay for you because you’ll have an actual girlfriend – one day, at least, I say. Whereas I’ll have … I don’t know that.
Come on – everyone has romances, Gita says. Human beings come in pairs.
Have you ever even had a proper relationship?, I ask.
No … not really, Gita says.
What about Russell?, I ask.
Russell doesn’t count, Gita says. Russell was last heterosexual hurrah … Look, I came to Manchester to find out what I was. What I wanted. And then I got waylaid …
Didn’t we all, I say.
How about you – have you ever had a proper relationship?, Gita asks.
Like, where you live with each other and stuff?, I say. No.
Or even where someone calls you’re their boyfriend or partner or whatever …
Shaking my head.
Don’t you think we ought to have had one by now?, Gita asks.
Maybe, I say.
I think we like failing at romance, Gita says. Maybe that’s what we have in common.
Maybe we just want to be outside romance for a bit, I say. Just … contemplating the possibility of romance rather than doing anything. It’s a postgraduate thing ... It’s just like we’re outside of real life, contemplating the possibility of real life …
More wine.
I’ve always thought it’d be simple when you meet the right person, Gita says. Everything would just be easy.
She’s probably set out to find you already, your life-partner, I say. Your lover to come. She’s probably dreaming of you right now. And maybe you’ll dream of her tonight …
What’s she like, Donny?
Someone older, I say. Someone who knows how to treat you. Who takes you out to all the cool eateries. Who’ll take you on mini-breaks on foreign holidays. Who’ll buy you outfits.
I’ll buy my own outfits, Gita says.
See, you’re basically pre-Relationship, capital R, I say. You’ll only make sense in your Relationship. And everything prior to that will have been the before times. This have been, like, a waiting period of uncertainty and confusion. But you’ll bloom. You’ll come into yourself.
What about you, Donny?, Gita says. You’ll find someone. You’ll shack up with some fella. You need to be looked after, too.
Never mind me, I say. I’m used to this cruel old world.
What do you want, Donny?, Gita asks. In your heart of hearts?
You, maybe, I say.
Stop it, Gita says. Come on – tell me. We’re drunk … You can say anything …
How am I supposed to know what … I … want?, I ask. Maybe I’m not even gay. Like I’m not even straight. I’m not even anything ... It could be a children’s home thing. You come out of care not knowing who you are, or what you want, or what you like. You haven’t even got a voice, because you were never allowed to use it.
I don’t know what to say, Donny. That’s so sad.
Read me some Jean Genet to me, I say. Translate it as you go.
Gita, reading:
I want to fulfil myself in one of the rarest of destinies. I have only a … faint notion of what it will be. One evening I shall … appear there in the palm of your hand quiet and pure like a glass … [Gita: statue? Statuette?] You will see me. Around there will be nothing left.
Is that how they wrote, in the old days?, I ask. God I’m drunk …