The Hungover Games by Sophie Heawood

The Hungover Games by Sophie Heawood

Author:Sophie Heawood [HEAWOOD, SOPHIE]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 2020-07-07T00:00:00+00:00


20

Orgasmic Birth: the dream

Diane came to an appointment at the hospital with me. There was a nutrition poster in the hallway and as we waited outside the room she glanced at it and then asked if I’d gone vegan yet, ‘because I know two people who’ve had babies in the past two years and they both went bloody vegan.’ I pointed out that I’d been vegan about fifteen years ago, back when I lived in that hippy Quaker commune in Bethnal Green I’d been in when she first met me. Diane was nothing like Lily–in fact, it was important that my two best friends never even crossed paths, such was the difference between them, so the continental landmass that also separated them really helped–and she loved taking the piss out of me at any opportunity.

Diane was Bethnal Green born and raised, a proper cockney, whereas all seventeen of us ponces who’d moved into the commune near her childhood block of flats were like amateur anthropologists every time we peered in the windows of the pie and mash shop. The commune had been on Bethnal Green Road itself, the very same street where Diane and her mum used to take their nan to Woolworths in her wheelchair because it made it easier for shoplifting purposes, as you could hide the bags of pick’n’mix in the wheelchair. My friendship with Diane was deeply improbable on many levels, but it was also more solid to us than the concept of God. And I was quite into God at times, and she was a Catholic.

‘Oh, Jesus Christ, the commune,’ she said, remembering, rolling her eyes with glee. ‘So you aren’t going to do it again because, what, you need more calories for the baby?’

‘Calories?’ I replied, ‘God no, I was the biggest I’ve ever been when I was a vegan. I lived on chips and Stella. Well, mung beans and chips and Stella.’ No, I didn’t think I was at much risk of wasting away, I just didn’t want to go down the road of obsessiveness, or focusing on all this purity stuff, or making lists of things I couldn’t have ever again. I had grown up vegetarian but even that didn’t appeal to me any more, even though I wasn’t wildly keen on meat either. I’d just had enough of being morally righteous in any direction to last a lifetime.

‘Tell me again about that guy who came to the commune,’ she said, and I knew she meant Jani. ‘Fuck’s sake, not here, Di,’ I replied, because we were in a doctor’s waiting room, and then she did her big panda eyes and begged me and I couldn’t take it any more, I was almost hysterical at the thought, so I said all right. Nobody seemed to be anywhere near us. I told her, again, about this guy who turned up at the commune unexpectedly one cold night. He was dropping in on a friend who lived there, but our eyes met and I thought he was just beautiful.



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