by Michael O'Mahony
(09/01/04)

Fitz has never been one for multi-tasking. Lying across my bed trying to both watch a horror movie on TV and roll the most pathetic joint ever constructed, her attention has definitely wandered from what I feel is an important conversation.

"You're talking bollocks," I say, though I don't really mean it. I'm just looking for a reaction. Fitz lets it slide. I take another hit of Jack Daniel's, let it burn my throat and warm my stomach. I tap one nylon-clad leg with the bottle and she reaches back for it without turning around.

"You have an ambition," she says, gesturing at the television with my lighter as though she's addressing the zombies shambling their way across the screen. "There's light at the end of your tunnel." I watch her light the joint and take a huge pull. She props herself on an elbow to take a drink, offering me several seconds viewing of stocking-tops, pale thighs, and black underwear.

"Theoretical light," I say. "It's an act of faith."

"But you have that faith." Fitz sits up, her face all triumphant sincerity. "You have desire and belief. It's why you get up in the morning. What I'm asking is, why do I?"

This is a key scene in the theatre of Fitz. I should now offer an expression denoting new understanding, perhaps even shock. Two things make this difficult. First, were I to stare soulfully into her eyes at this point, I'd be unable to stop my gaze flickering to the TV, where the raving undead are forcibly removing a man's arm. Second, Fitz is probably too drunk or high or caught in the moment to care that the hem of her skirt has ridden way up on her thighs. I'd cheerfully lose a limb for a downward glance right now.

I save this awkward moment by allowing a pained expression to cross my features, and then the slightest of smiles at my own ingenuity.

I called Gillian Fitzgerald a fake in the female toilets on an unbelievably hot day in the summer of 1995. Gillian spat on me and then burst into tears. This was where the soap opera began, back when everybody cared and everything mattered. We were sixteen. Everybody loved Gillian. That same everybody failed to acknowledge my existence on a daily basis.

My clumsy attempts to comfort her led to us slipping out of school and walking the streets with no particular destination in mind. Gillian opened up, told me how much she hated everything and how hollow she felt. Then -- back in those days when I didn't second-guess every word -- I did likewise.

We walked and talked and listened until we were too tired to do anything except stumble back to her house, where we lay in companionable silence, listening to Alice In Chains and feeling a thickness in the atmosphere that was new to us both.

"Do you love him?" I ask her. We're lying side-by-side now, staring at the ceiling.

"I'd have told you by now if I did." She giggles for no discernible reason and passes me what's left of the joint.

"Why, do you love me?"

"I've loved you for ten years," she says.

I suck at the joint, still damp from her mouth, staring up at the cracks and cobwebs that decorate the ceiling.

"I always end up back here," she says. "Telling you things you already know."

"I like hearing your voice. I like having you here. I think about you when you're gone."

"Do you love me?"

"I'm obsessed with you," I say, and that gets us both giggling.

"Fitz and Me," she says, just as laughter gives way to silence.

"What?"

"That should be the name of the soap opera."

"Why?"

"You're the writer. You can make thoughts into something linear. I've never been able to."

"Plus you get to be the focus."

"Yeah. Me through your eyes. I like the way you see me."

"I like the way I see you."

Silence again, stretching into minutes. I smoke the joint until it burns my fingers, listening to Fitz breathe, remembering. "I wonder how we got like this," I say. "I used to lie in bed beside you and try to time my breathing so it matched yours. You always fell asleep so easily. I wanted to steal that. I wanted oblivion and dreams with endings."

"Talk," she says.

"We looked for someone to catch us as we fell. You wanted someone to stop you burning and cutting yourself and I wanted someone to stop me drinking. Always someone to be a hero to our victim.

"Now we're adults. We're post-modern and post-Millennium and, I guess, post-feeling. We got tired of being victims. We don't look for a hand to stop us falling. We look for one to hold when we hit bottom."

Fitz laces her fingers through mine and gives my hand a squeeze. Then she says, "Roll credits."

"Fitz," I say. "That's darker than a carload of arseholes." This reminds us that we're high, and we giggle helplessly on cue.

What I remember more than anything else was that Gillian had missed a button on her blouse. For hours I could concentrate on nothing save that little mistake, that wonderful gap through which I caught glimpses of her pale skin and the pristine cotton whiteness of her bra.

Then a moment of pure horror. Talking about some band, she caught one of my furtive glances and looked down at herself.

"What?" she asked.

"Nothing," I said, feeling my face burn.

"Oh," said Gillian. "Shit."

So began our first uncomfortable silence. I stared at anything that wasn't her, unable to speak or think.

"Ben," she said finally.

"Yeah?"

"Look at me."

"I can't."

"Just look at me, okay?"

And I did, because not looking at Gillian was something I was really bad at. "I'm sorry," I said.

Gillian held my eyes, smiling, enjoying how embarrassed I was. "Don't be sorry," she said. "We're all friends here."

And then Gillian undid the rest of the buttons.

Five frantic minutes later I'd lost my virginity beneath her, feeling awkward and ridiculous, babbling about protection and apologising and telling her how fantastic she was. She gently placed a hand over my mouth.

"I want to do that again," Gillian said. "But slower."

Fitz is bent over the basin when I walk into the bathroom, rinsing out her mouth. When she straightens up, toothpaste is smeared to one side of her mouth like a peppermint scar.

"Expecting to get laid?" I say.

"Better safe than sorry."

"I like the taste of whiskey and weed."

"Me too. Now I'll taste it on you."

Fitz's hair has pink streaks in it now, but it's still blonde, still neatly parted, still falling perfectly straight to frame her face, curling slightly inward just below her jawline. She's the owner of the sea-green eyes I stared into at the moment of my first assisted orgasm, and of a button nose she had pierced on the same day she dared me to have my eyebrow done, of a wide sensual mouth that sometimes springs into my mind when I'm with other girls.

She could be posing now, a rare sight. A good photo, I think: Fitz side-on, looking at the camera with mischief in her eyes, that stripe of toothpaste painting her skin like a promise.

She's pale, Fitz. Likes her clothes to strike a contrast. She's wearing a black studded choker and a sheer black blouse with a black bra, a black studded belt holding up a tartan miniskirt over black stockings and black panties. And of course, black boots. Big black fetish boots with silver buckles.

Fitz bent over, a skinny punk girl with tits too big for her frame, pushing out her rear so the hem of her skirt almost clears her stockings.

"Something on your mind, partner?" she enquires.

This comprehensive analysis of Fitz, from speculating on her beauty to being dragged into the gutter, has taken maybe ten seconds. More than enough time to get me hard. More than enough time for her to notice.

"Just don't move," I say.

I lift her face to mine and kiss the side of her mouth, licking the toothpaste away. I move behind her and she looks in the mirror, where we stare at each other as I put my hands up her skirt and smooth the soft, warm skin of her hips.

"You get up in the morning," I murmur into her ear, "because you're too rare to do otherwise. A world without Fitz is empty. Pointless."

Her face colours, maybe at my words or maybe at the hand smoothing the crotch of her panties, fingers pushing down between her thighs to feel the shape and heat of her sex. "You're a fucking liar," she says. "But a good one."

"You think I don't want you?"

I push her panties aside and she smiles when I touch her, closes her eyes and pushes back against me when I slide one finger into her, my thumb finding the swollen bud of her clit, working softly back and forth over it.

"You're feeding my ego," she says. "This is just masturbation."

I grin. Sometimes I forget how smart she is.

Fitz moves her hips in time to my caresses. Her breathing steepens and there's a whispered moan in there once in a while.

"I want to get laid," she says. "With you."

"What about him?"

"You care how I feel about him?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

I put my hand between her shoulder blades, push her down a little further. I take a half-step into her body, let my finger slip out of her and press my cock to her sex, letting it rest there, loving the way she tenses.

"I don't care who you sleep with. I just get bothered by the thought of you caring about someone else."

"I like being in the dark with you. I like listening to music with you, being intimate. I like how you can make me come and then say things that make me feel penetrated all over again."

"I bore you. You're used to me. Your words, Fitz."

"You can't surprise me like you used to. But you never disappoint me."

"But we're fake sometimes. We're false. I know when you do it and you know when I do it."

"I like that. I like how we spar. We both know the score."

I push my cock a little way in, withdraw, and let my slick flesh slide against hers, up to the junction of her labia. She stiffens when I touch her clit.

"Bastard," she mutters, but she's smiling.

"I can stop, if that's what you want."

Fitz laughs a little, her face shining with sweat.

"Fuck you," she says.

"Fuck you, okay? Fuck you, Ben."

Gillian was ugly then, her face screwed up with hatred, mascara tears cutting lines down her face.

"Great," I said. "Gillian's crying. Want me to go and get your dad? I'm sure he'll give you a hug and some extra pocket money."

We'd been having our little fling for seven or eight months. We were in Gillian's bedroom having our first real argument, an argument I'd started by questioning her right to her unhappiness, an argument that had escalated until she was an incoherent mess and I was filled with a cold fury unlike any I had ever experienced.

"How can you?" she whispered, and the plea made me feel a little nauseous. I wanted to hold her. I wanted to hit her.

"How can I? How the fuck can you? You have everything. Anything you want as soon as you ask for it. You're beautiful and smart and your base is a family that worships you and friends that idolise you. Your base is love and acceptance and solvency. This is down for you. This is falling. This is like some fucking...experiment.

"What the fuck do you know about what I feel? Ever hear your dad beat the shit out of your mum? Ever watch the man that fucking created you fuck himself up so badly that cancer seemed like a mercy? Ever watch your mother trying to cope with life by sleeping with every guy that came within touching distance?

"You know how that is? You know how it feels when you can't sleep because the way you struggle and shout in your dreams makes everyone worry about you? Everything I hate is out of my reach."

We stared at each other for a long time, Gillian with her make-up ruined and her chest heaving beneath a Radiohead t-shirt that belonged to me, while I struggled with the realisation that I was about to cry for the first time in five years. I hadn't even cried at my dad's funeral.

When she spoke, her voice was cold. "Your self-pity is exceeded only by your arrogance," she said.

That was the moment she won my heart, when she cut through all the barriers I'd surrounded myself with. In the end, beyond all the bullshit and the anger and the masks we wear to protect ourselves from pain, I agreed with her. I remember flinching. Gillian took a step forward, making a challenge of her proximity, fighting me more than anyone had ever bothered to fight me before. I could feel the heat of my tears on my face. I had no words to explain the frustration and anger that pulsed in my stomach.

"What, you want me to feel sorry for you?" she asked.

I laughed. "You want what I feel," I said. "And the closest you can get is having me inside you. I was right about you. Fake."

I saw Gillian break just as I had. She swung her arm to slap my face. I caught her wrist before either of us really knew what was happening, twisted her arm up behind her back and pulled her to me.

She yelped in shock and pain and I covered her mouth with my own. Her free hand pushed at my chest even as I felt her tongue pushing roughly between my lips, her hips tilted upward to flatten her belly and crotch against mine.

I said something I don't recall, and Gillian slapped the side of my face hard enough to leave a furious heat in my skin. I shoved her away and she fell awkwardly onto the bed, her eyes wide and glistening, her face dark with excitement or anger. I was on her in seconds, forcing her down with my weight. I pulled the t-shirt up over her head, leaving it wrapped around her elbows as I pinned her wrists with one hand, reaching down with the other to strip off her panties.

She fought me. She clenched the muscles in her thighs so that I had to force my way between them. Her breath came in hiccups. But she never voiced the cry that would have bought her parents running.

I wrestled my jeans open with a hand that shook uncontrollably, released my cock and entered her in a single motion. I pressed harder on her wrists and kissed her again as I began to fuck her, feeling her thighs grip my waist, her ankles crossing at the small of my back, her heels pushing against me as if to urge me on. She bit me so hard that I gasped, tasting blood. I felt her nails dig into the back of my hand, piercing my skin.

We went to a place I doubt I'll ever visit again, a place where my blood pulsed with such force that I could hear it inside my head and actually feel it in my cock each time I buried myself inside her, reverberating against the flesh that surrounded me. Each time I pulled away the friction sent electric tendrils lashing up through my insides to empty my lungs and force fresh sweat from my skin.

When Gillian came she whispered "Oh, my God," against my mouth. She was holding her breath and trembling, her back arched so that she was pressed tightly against me. Moments passed, Gillian shaking as though in the throes of some attack, until finally the breath exploded out of her and she fell back, staring like she'd never seen me before.

"Fuck," she breathed. "Oh, my...fuck."

I pulled the t-shirt off her arms and threw it aside, glimpsing the angry crimson marks on her wrists. The blood she'd drawn from my mouth and the back of my hand painted her lips and patterned her naked skin.

I slid my arms beneath her thighs and lifted her legs onto my shoulders, bringing my weight down again until her knees were almost touching her breasts. I brought my own knees up underneath me and pushed my cock further into her, almost bending her double beneath me. She smiled, watching as I began to move in her again.

I was exhausted. The beauty of Gillian's orgasm and my shock at the wounds we'd inflicted on one another had stolen my anger and left only the cresting wave of my lust. I said her name and she nodded.

"Come on," she said. "Come for me."

My vision swam. My skin prickled with sweat. There was an ache in my stomach and balls that grew each time I pushed into her until I felt sick with it. My climax was growing, spreading through my body until it found its centre in the pit of my stomach and then my cock. It took my breath and the last of my strength in one final moment of such bliss and release that all I could do was fall bonelessly into her embrace, gasping into her neck as I emptied myself inside her.

"Ben?" she said.

This was later, though I'm not sure how much later. I may have slept a little. My hands and my lip throbbed, but it wasn't pain. I felt anaesthetised.

"Mmm?"

"I love you," she said.

"Love you too, Fitz," I said, picking up on a nickname she'd had at school without really thinking about it.

I never called her Gillian again.

After we fuck in the bathroom, Fitz takes a shower and I lie on my bed and listen to The Clash, sipping the last of the Jack Daniel's in darkness. She slips back into the room, warm and damp and naked when she lays beside me.

"Ultimately," she says, "all you have is yourself. That's what you're resigned to."

I nod but say nothing, a little self-pity lump working its way into my throat.

"What if your faith's unfounded? What if this is it?"

"Some days, this is enough," I say. "Others, it's not even close."

"I don't believe in anything," she says. "That scares me."

"I believe I can make something of the things in my head, Fitz, but I don't believe I will."

"Why not?"

"I'm not driven like I used to be. It's just easier to smoke and drink and think about what I might do if I could ever pull my shit together. I used to think I could blind the world. Then I got older and I thought the world would probably beat me. Then I realised I wasn't a kid anymore and that I'd probably do what most people do and just...fade. You can scream as loud as you like, Fitz, but it doesn't mean a whole hell of a lot when everyone else in the world is doing the exact same thing."

She knows I'm smiling, I feel sure of that.

"And my arrogance," I say, "is exceeded only by my self-pity."

"Remember when you caught me stubbing cigarettes out on my arm?" she asks. "You called me a fucking moron."

"How could I forget?"

"I couldn't do it after that. Every time I thought about it I remembered you coming out with this girly shriek and shaking your arm like it was on fire."

"It hurt."

"You did it on purpose."

"No comment."

"Did you ever think that a world without you in it might be void and empty and pointless?"

"You're feeding my ego," I say. "That's just masturbation."

She flattens her hand on my stomach, slides it down to grip the base of my cock and then make a warm fist around my shaft as it stiffens.

"That was a genuine and sincere compliment, partner. This is masturbation."

"Why don't we belong together?"

"Because we're both full of shit. Because we're bad for each other." She sighs. "Because the day we actually stay together is the day we hold hands and wait for the impact."

"I'll hold you to that."

Fitz rolls over and straddles me, takes me into her familiar heat, her hands pressing down on my chest.

It's pitch-black in my room, darker than, say, a carload of arseholes. I can feel her but not see her. Which is a reversal of sorts, I suppose.

"Roll credits," I say.

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