A bit of a disjointed this one. A bit of accelerant to make me fit for tonight's soirée at the house of The Girl Who Only Wears Secondhand Clothes. She was a bit cagey on the phone the other day (having an affair with a lecturer in her department?) and I don't get on with people who play their cards close to their chests, so I hope we won't just talk around things. I'll sever our connection if she stops being interesting.
Our men-only book group the other night was a lot more open. I draped the little purple Christmas tree lights over the fireplace and lit the tea lights. R was talking about his girfriend of two years-ish, and comparing her to his ex-wife. "It's like having a sister, but with outbursts of carnal activity." It was my choice for next time so I have set everyone to read The Feast of the Goat by Mario Vargas Llosa, a thinly disguised novel about the repression, torture and bonhomie under Trujillo's dictatorship in the Dominican Republic; like Dorfman's Death and the Maiden, mainly (I thought) a story of how our self-flattering moral view of ourselves depends on the social conditions in which we can publicise it.
I took the rent round, just missing Seriouscrush, who was on her way up the street. She's still very attractive, even from several yards away, from behind. No-one wears what she calls "estuary colours" like her. Her greeny-grey (cord?) skirt to just below her knee, her thick fawn coloured tights, and an assymetrically-cut top angling down across her waist.
Kirsty came back from her weekend away with her fellah, in a beautiful dress, which cost five pounds. Inch wide shoulder straps, straight cut above the tits, a summery lilac flowery pattern, slightly in at the waist, straight and tight across her hips, before flaring out with box pleats starting at the top of her thighs. Pure cotton, probably, from the creases.
Trina tells me often that she loves me. I don't think I've ever been "in love". I've never had that overwhelming combination of physical, emotional and intellectual connection that the word seems to signify. I don't feel "in love" with Trina, since I wouldn't know what I'm agreeing to in saying that. It's just something that works, in practice. When I'm with her, it's a competition between competing desires: one, for sex--I want to be on her, in her, all over her; another, to talk--we talk and talk and talk, and even mid tit-fondle she sometimes makes me pause; and I also have half an eye on the strewn wine and food: I could never get close to a teetotaller or someone who only drinks infrequently.
I am bored with the Olympics. Melanie (youngest daughter) made me laugh today when we were watching some horses prissily prancing their way through a wood in Sussex. Affecting a posh accent, she said "'What do you like about horse riding?' 'That there's no common people in it'." As I left, all three of them were playing cricket in the street, with a coat hanger stuck in a jumper as the wickets.
