Tin Man by Sarah Winman

Author:Sarah Winman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Headline
Published: 2017-03-20T04:00:00+00:00

Michael

November 1989

I don’t know the day, the days have become irrelevant. G’s sight has failed, and I’ve become his eyes. When he howls in the night I don’t let go of him. The virus has entered his brain. Yesterday, he laughed when he pissed against the bedroom door.

A doctor suggested I write to make sense of the world around me. There is no sense, I said, abruptly.

Witnessing the agony of others, he continued, the bewilderment of others. What do you think this has done to you?

I took my time with this absurd question.

I’m not so fun any more, I said.

He wasn’t really a doctor doctor but a psychiatrist who works with the dying. I’m not dying, it must be said. Not yet, anyway. I have a visualisation tape and the cheery American voice tells me my body is full of light and lurve and I believe it. I’m so full of light and love, in fact, I can hardly do my trousers up. There’s a line of fat around my belly that wasn’t there a few weeks ago, and my abs used to be harder, too, more defined. If I was describing myself, I’d say this body has seen better days.

I’m thirty-nine years old, nearly forty. Does this bother me? I say it quickly when people ask, so it probably does. I don’t smoke any more, nor do I take drugs (apart from the occasional co-codamol that I stockpiled after G went on to IV). I used to be good-looking – this isn’t vanity speaking, I was actually told that a lot – but I’m not sure I am any more. People do still look at me and I get the odd suggestion at times (sometimes very odd), so maybe I still have something. Men liked to fuck me and liked me to fuck them. I had my standards. I dropped them on occasion, but generally I’ve been consistent. I liked short-term lovers or my own company. I’ve had really good lovers – inventive, exciting – but I was never one myself. I was a 7 max. I was the fantasy that rarely delivered. The slight hint of melancholy as they zipped up their trousers. I think I was a bit selfish. Or lazy. A 7, max. That was me.

My penis looks wistful, but it may be the light. In fact, I’m sure it was bigger once. But I was skinny and skinny men always look as if their cocks are big. It’s all just proportion really, and I’ve seen enough to know. Anyway, it’s been bigger and that’s because I’m teetering on the abyss of impotence and that ache, that throbbing – whatever you want to call it – well, it’s gone. And that’s OK. I like reflexology now because it helps me sleep.

Enough for today. The medication alarm has gone off and I need to check on him. I call him G because he never liked his name. He’s not my boyfriend any more. He’s twenty-six and alone.

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