My Sunday Rest

There's a dildo living at the bottom of my bedside table draw. It has been living there for a long time, and I seldom take it out. It is average size, the usual shape, but I’ve never been very fond of its slippery texture, like that of a used condom. I’ve never been very fond of its colour either. My dildo is bright purple, looks like a penis from outer space. I know this is a totally arbitrary association of ideas, but that’s the way it feels. And I don’t have many fantasies about creatures from other planets. Sometimes I see it more as a complement for a toy I don’t have: the disproportionate member of a Buzz Lightyear. To be honest, this idea doesn’t turn me on either.

Leaving aside concerns about the colour, the great thing about it is that it can vibrate. It can keep the precision and the rhythm like nothing else. It can do all the work while you just go deeper into your fantasies. And just with the help of two small batteries which, unfortunately, last Sunday had run out.
It wasn’t really a big deal, I mean the fact that the dildo wouldn’t work, I can usually do without it, but, somehow, I had already planted a seed in my brain: the idea of using it. It was like, for instance, when I’m cooking couscous and I imagine it will have zucchini in it. Even if I don’t usually use it so therefore I know it’s not necessary, if I have imagined it, I can leave the couscous and run with the apron under my coat to get one zucchini from the greengrocer’s. Something similar happened with the dildo on Sunday. I had imagined the evening would be funnier with it, and I just thought going out for five minutes to get some batteries would be worth it.

I put on my jeans, my trainers, and a coat and I buttoned it up to hide the fact that I was not wearing a bra. I tied my hair back in a ponytail; took the keys and my purse and ran downstairs. When I got outside, the silence, the isolation, the shop doors closed and that Sunday sensation made me realize that it was, indeed, Sunday. No problem. There’s plenty of convenience stores around, they are everywhere, they sell a wide variety of things, they will have batteries.

Course they will.

I just have to walk a few meters to get to the closest shop, open as usual, with the manager sitting back in a chair, watching a Bollywood film. It’s what he always does, at any time, no matter when you go, sitting in the same position without any alteration. He must be in his early forties; his skin is dark brown, and because of the poor light of the shop you are always surprised to see his eyes floating in the darkness. He doesn’t say or do anything, just stares at you for a moment, like a cat that mistrusts the visitors. Sometimes he lets his beard grow out, but he looks hotter when he doesn’t. I’ve never seen him smiling, though I know he must be able to. I know he must be able of lots of things, but it feels like he’s saving all the emotions for later, collecting them for the right time and place; but you can feel them, beating, holding their breath behind his eyes, about to explode but still waiting.

When I got into the shop he averted his eyes from the telly and raised his head with a quick movement to say hello. I said hello and went in. I slowly walked along the only shop corridor. He sells plungers, baked beans, drawing pins, rubber rings. He must have batteries. But the corridor ended and I had to retrace my steps sceptically. “They must be with the sweets, behind the counter”, I said to myself, so I asked him:

“Do you sell batteries?"

“No. No batteries.”-he answered without taking his eyes of the screen.

“No batteries?” I repeated instinctively. Because I couldn’t believe it. It would have been so reasonable and perfect that he would have had batteries. It’s like when you love someone who doesn’t love you; your first thought tends to be that the feeling must be hidden somewhere inside them, very deep, it’s just they can’t see it. I have a quick look behind him but there’s only chocolate bars and chewing gum.
I was about to leave the shop when I heard him asking behind my back
“What kind of batteries do you need?”

I was thunderstruck. I felt he knew everything about me and the dildo, but how could he? I looked at myself to check if there was something that was giving me away. Obviously, there was nothing. Suddenly I remembered he keeps an iron stick under the counter, to protect himself from hypothetical thieves. He showed it to me once, I don’t know why, as if he had felt like telling me a secret. That day I tried to look very impressed but I felt sorry for him and I don’t think I could hide it.
“Just batteries. Small ones, I guess.”

"Go to the shop on the corner, they will have batteries there."

“Right. Thank you.”
And I disappeared from the shop feeling ridiculously embarrassed, as if I had been caught stealing something. It would have made much more sense to go to the shop he had indicated to me on the first place. They sell cell phones, watches, calculators… that sort of thing; but I never thought it would be open on a Sunday. The man that runs that shop always wears a white coat, like a doctor or a chemist. He also wears a pair of big specs with tinted lenses. When I went into the shop I saw him sitting in front of his computer. He looked serious, focused. Immediately he raised his head to say:

“Can I help you?”
I tried to find a couple of eyes behind those glasses but without success.

“Yeah. I need some batteries. Small batteries.”

“Small?” I sensed in his tone of voice a subtle recrimination for my lack of rigor.

“Yeah. Like this.” And I showed him with my fingers the rough size of the batteries I need.
I must admit it wasn’t very accurate but, what the hell? How many different kinds of small batteries exist?
He stood up and sighed and walked slowly up to a shelf. He mostly devotes his life to selling phone cards and calculators, but with that coat and that efficient air he looks like he works on the particle accelerator, and I respect him more for that.

“Like this?” he said showing me a for pack of batteries that would work for my tv remote.

“No, smaller.”
He looked at the batteries in his hand and suddenly I heard the question coming from his mouth, without prior warning.

“What are they for?”

Jesus Christ.
No time to feel sorry for myself. Think. Fast. Say anything. Anything.

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”
He clearly didn't’t believe what I was saying. Tomorrow all the neighbourhood will know I’m a slapper. Soon they will burn me at the stake.

“No. Somebody else asked me to buy them. But I don’t know what they are for.”
I tried to look convincing. I think I did fine.

“Well, I don’t have any smaller batteries, unless you want watch batteries.”

When I got out of the shop I was carrying a little plastic bag with four batteries for my remote control and a waterproof radio for the shower. I didn’t need them, but I was trying really hard to do something about that emptiness I felt.
I got home; left my shopping on the kitchen table and only then did I wake up to the fact that I wouldn’t be able to use my dildo. But thereupon I opened the fridge and I realized there was a zucchini, and that was my salvation for it meant I could cook couscous.
A proper one.

The slow learner

Getting on the metro looks like an easy thing to do, but the truth is you have to learn how to do it. I used to know how, then I forgot, and afterwards I had to learn how to do it again. I didn’t have any other choice, although some people say that, whatever you do, you’re making a choice because you always have, at least, two possibilities between which you can choose.
I thought about this idea the day before I started working in the office where I still work, because I realised I would have to learn again how to travel on the metro. No other way to get to the office occurred to me, because it’s too far to get there by bicycle, or on foot or even by bus. So I suppose the other possibility consisted of renouncing that job and trying to find something around the area where I live, which would have opened a new range of possibilities: from sweeping the streets to part-timing at the bakers’. Taking this into account, I guess I can safely state that, in the end, I did choose the metro, strange as it still seems to me.

The night before I started working in the office, I hardly slept a wink, so worried was I about being out of practice. But as with most unpleasant things in life, all you have to do is train yourself hard, in other words: do it again and again until you get sick of complaining and start doing it mechanically, until you lose any trace of synchronicity between your acts and your thoughts. From the moment I open my eyes one minute before the alarm clock rings, until I am under the ground sitting next to a dozing stranger, there is a sort of blackout. I know there has been a shower, a coffee, and a Kiss, because that’s what there always is. But I am not making those little decisions. The only decision I make is to let things happen, as they happen for everybody else on the metro.

It’s my first day on the underground for a long time, and I know I’m not choosing to have a man sitting next to me and trying to catch some phrases from the book I’m reading. I’m sure I don’t choose that he suddenly says:

“I don’t have any memory at all. I can read a sentence and the next second I don’t remember what I’ve just read.”

There is a code on the metro that states that someone with a book in their hands doesn’t want to be disturbed, they are not available for a chat, the book is a screen, a protection, a paper shield, a message meaning “Leave me alone.” Everybody knows that. And when someone dares to break the rules it could be for two reasons: he’s a nutter or he’s not a regular metro traveller. It just takes me the time to look him in the eye to know today I’ve got the nutter.

“That’s a pity.” –I say with a small forced smile, and get on with my book, trying to forget his shady look.After five seconds he replies:

“Why do you think this happens to me?”

It couldn’t be that easy. I answer “Well, I don’t know”, but by then I’ve assumed I’m gonna be having a conversation with a loony all the way to the office, which is not a great way to start my brand new life as a metro traveller. But all I can do is give up, close the book, resign myself.

He’s quite young, and stout, and his eyes are of a scary deep black. Is the kind of scruffy-looking guy whose greasy hair makes him look as if he had been licked by an enormous tongue. He takes things easy, and pauses like a couple of minutes between sentences. Maybe he’s a thoughtful nutter, or just a slow one. Or maybe, as happens to him with books, he forgets sentences before he says them, and has to wait until they come into his head again and say them straight away.

“Maybe it’s my hard disk. Could that be the reason? Do you think my hard disk could be full?”

“It certainly could. Yes. Definitely.”

There’s just three stops left. I’ve resolved I’m gonna get through this unharmed.

“It’s the same with faces. I never remember a face.”

I nod.

He talks.

“I wouldn’t recognize you if I saw you in an hour.”

I try to look worried about it, but I think that’s great news.

We cover the last part of my trip in total silence. And when my stop comes I stand up, say goodbye to him and, for a moment, I have the feeling he doesn’t know who I am. When I get off the metro and walk down the corridor I can hardly feel the hollow beat of my heart because of the rush, and the rabble, and I know this is gonna be tough. I say to myself “you should quit now, it’s easier while it’s still painful”, because soon this sharp pain will become just an occasional sorrow that will strike me when I least expect it. I know that, from now on, this feeling that I’m living somebody else’s life will walk me home every day, and I’ll shut the door in its face until next morning, when I’ll go downstairs, open the door, and feel it fall on my shoulders, like a robe I won’t be able to take off easily. I’ll walk to the metro and carefully pick my seat, next to a bored secretary, a smelly drunk, a builder carrying macaroni in a plastic box… the possibilities are endless, because you always have at least two possibilities between which you can choose. I guess it takes a little more practice to feel grateful for that.