Storie

This begins with a woman walking. Not a man (too liable to lapse into some sort of male-narcissist fantasy). She’s walking through…what? An airport? It’s generic, sure, but maybe that’s okay—modern, antiseptic, public and vacant at the same time. Anonymous. Don’t worry about it; change it later if necessary. What matters is the woman. Tall, slim (maybe even skinny). Not some standard beauty…why are 90% of women in books beautiful, or is it just that the reader assumes that they are? I’m thinking something like Bob Dylan as played by that very famous Australian actress whose name I’ve somehow forgotten. Kate? No…Cate. Cate Blanchett. She’s dressed like Patti Smith on the front cover of Horses. Or how I think Patti Smith is dressed on the front cover of Horses: jeans, white shirt, black waistcoat. And dark glasses, too. She looks chic—a little bit intimidating…unapproachable. She’s just walking through an arrivals lounge, having recently disembarked. She’s going to collect her luggage. Actually, she’s already collected her luggage (don’t want to have to think of metaphors to describe those conveyor belt things). She has some stylish-looking bag on wheels. Or is that lame? It doesn’t matter. Here’s an idea: the bag isn’t really hers—it’s been swapped, without her knowing, for a look-alike. And all the things in it have been replaced with identical replicas. Not sure what the significance of that is, but it’ll come to light later. Maybe she has some sort of scar. That might be good; make her seem tough, but with an undercurrent of vulnerability. How about if she has a brother who’s schizophrenic, and one day, when she was about fifteen, she woke up in the middle of the night to find that he was trying to cut off her lips with a pair of kitchen scissors. Because he loved her—he had some sort of fantasy that her mouth was this beautiful flower that he couldn’t be without. So, he made the first cut and she woke up and fought him off, and now she has this strange scar on her upper lip—it’s twisted slightly because it didn’t heal back quite right. Or would she just have got cosmetic surgery? Maybe it was too expensive? Or maybe she just didn’t want it. Yeah, that’s good: the scar is a reminder of something. It doesn’t matter what; that’ll come later. God, now I want to meet this woman. Could I put myself in the story? Some sort of meta-fiction thing? Or maybe conceal myself; I could use an assumed name: my dad’s first name and my mum’s maiden name. So, does the woman make contact? Why would I approach her? That’s not something I’d ever do. Maybe she sees me and remarks on something…I could be wearing something. But what? A Nazi armband? That would attract attention, but wouldn’t someone else have picked me up on that already? There’s no way I would’ve got into an airport wearing a Nazi armband. Okay, so maybe we know each other from the past: she sees me, browsing a magazine (the New Statesman or something), and says “Geraint? Geraint Howard?” And maybe I don’t remember her. Or is that self-indulgent? No, there could be a good reason for it; it could be symbolic in a really meaningful way. Maybe this is happening in Africa. Not a war-torn part; perhaps Botswana…I think that’s pretty civilised (remember to try not to be racist). She’s probably doing something charitable. Maybe she’s a doctor. I’m just passing through. One thing’s for sure: there will be intrigue. Possibly I will sleep with her. Or maybe that’s tacky…then again, I could go ahead and sleep with her, but do it in an ironic way. Maybe I could sleep with a whole lot of women in an ironic way. In fact, that could be the premise: I go around Africa having sarcastic sex with women and they all get pregnant with babies that don’t believe in themselves. They just lie there—all indifferent. And then maybe I have to euthanise them, but in a way that makes me look really heroic. I could shed a single tear for each one, and collect them (the tears) in a crystal decanter, which I fire into space at the end. So the final scene consists of me shooting my tears into space and pointedly not crying; the closing line will be “His eyes followed the rocket’s triumphant ascent [+some more visual details]; this time, they were dry.” And then “The Man in Me” by Bob Dylan will start playing and the screen will fade to black. Except it’s not a movie. Maybe I’ll just write that that stuff happens. In italics.