Pippa Redmington Part Three

Click here to read Part One and Part Two

With all my errands like laundry, rubbish, tidying, groceries and the like done on Saturdays, I had nothing at all to do on Sundays but to think myself into depression. Well, that was usually the case but today Sammy’s boyfriend, Alan, was away on a stag party and Noreen’s fiancé chosen church on this particular Sunday was the office so lucky for me I had my girls, for once, to spent couples day with.

As soon as I was up, washed and dressed I flaked out of the apartment and skipped down Winthrop Street towards Scoozi’s restaurant for Sunday brunch.

“Here she is, the stranger” the girls were already seated and sipping.

“Hi girls, sorry I’m late again and excuse me but I take insult at the ‘stranger’ comment” I joyfully sat down and took a quick gawp at the menu, I had been here so many times by now I almost knew it off by heart.  “How is everyone?”

“Very good, my picture is on one of the Sunday papers today” Sammy gleamed.

“John is working twelve hours today, twelve hours like. I know I shouldn’t complain but still it’s not like he gets the overtime pay.”

Post college our career paths went in different directions. Noreen was a fully qualified accountant earning what I considered to be a fortune. Sammy was already the young  co-owner of a PR company called Daisy Flower PR and Event Management and then there was little ol’me who has had six meagre ‘no degree necessary’ jobs since graduating.

My mistake was that when I graduated six years ago with my honours degree the Celtic tiger was roaring loudly and that was when I should have gone after the €30,000 plus salary job but I wanted time to soul- search ( #firstworldproblem) so  I took  a job as a  dogsbody in my brother’s engineering company (now in liquidation) where I gained crucial experience in photocopying, stapling and making pots of coffee. A crippling fear that my paper cut hands would need to be eventually amputated forced me to move on but by this time the thing with Leman Brothers ( if I had paid more attention in college I might have understood this financial crash better ) had happened, the Celtic tiger was dead and buried and the job market was like a bloodbath so all I managed to get was an administrator role in an investment bank, then after six months of that I became bored and moved on to an IT support role, once I started saying ‘turn it off and turn it back on’ in my sleep I moved to GEI Motor Insurance a couple of  months ago. ( I must have been considered a success to have moved to so many jobs in a time when there were no jobs and unlike some of my peers have avoided that dreaded dole queue so far (quickly touches wood)). 

“I am sure you will make up for his twelve hour Sunday shift later on” Sammy winked. “Besides, when we are done here you can pop into him and give him a Sunday surprise. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge.”

Noreen took a sip of her mineral water and furrowed her brows.

“What’s wrong hon?” I asked. Noreen had been acting peculiar ever since that monstrosity of an engagement ring had been slipped on her finger.

“Noreen I was only joking” Sammy back-peddled.

“No guys it’s fine. Honestly. Let’s order” She smiled at the waiter and he approached.

“Guess who I met yesterday?” Sammy was giddy with excitement as soon as the waiter had taken our order.  

Sammy’s job involved organising a constant array of launches, fashion shows and promotions. This meant her face often ended up in the ‘uncorked’ pages of the Evening Echo and she was also a recurring face in the social pages of VIP magazine. She was constantly meeting a host of xpose worthy celebrities.

“Who?”

“Louis Walsh” she clapped excitably. Sammy was exquisitely beautiful, ridiculously beautiful even, think Cheryl Cole like beauty. There was never a strand out of place in her long flowing glossy auburn mane. She had an envious figure, one she worked hard to maintain. Her gym membership was recently replaced by sit-ups during ad-breaks of ‘Keeping up with the Kardashians’ and using Bachelor bean cans as weights. Her personal trainer had also been replaced by anybody who was willing to go jogging with her. For a recession busting babe she still looked stunning in her wrap around royal blue dress.

She was like a human equivalent of Heat magazine. Name a celebrity and Sammy Johnston could tell who they were dating, shagging, marrying and subsequently divorcing.

“Did you ask him if Jedward are available on the 28^th July, John and I still haven’t picked a band and as we are getting married during peak season we really need to find one soon.”

Noreen wasn’t only leaps ahead of me in her career. She was rocketing ahead of me in general adultness. She had taking the ultimate grown up by buying a house with John. She and him were together as long as a president’s term now. They were the most solid couple I knew. Collectively they were what I aspired to be one day, if I could find it in me to fall in love with a man that was actually available.

John was a final year finance student when we were freshers and now he and Noreen worked in the same company which he was a partner of, cue the killer hours. I always believed no couple could work and live together but Noreen and John had discounted that belief to be a myth. 

“I will actually work on having someone really good play at your wedding” Sammy promised. 

“Barry could do it” I suggested.

“He’s so in love with you” both girls gushed.

“Shut up, he is not. He’s just a friend.”

I tried to decipher the eyebrow semaphore that passed between them.

“Actually girls I am seeing someone at the moment. We’re not girlfriend / boyfriend or anything but we have been on quite a number of dates” I hadn’t exactly planned on telling them about Dave at that precise time but I had to do something to stop them from going down the dead end of Barry.

“Who is he?”

“What does he do?”

“Where did you meet him?”

“Do you really like him?”

“Girls, stop with the questions.”

“What kind of stuff are ye doing? Dinner, drinks, movies what?” Noreen ignored my request.

“His name is Dave and I will tell you more if it works out.”

“Oh my gosh, I am so excited about you having a man” at least my love life was more exciting than Louis Walsh to Sammy. Her second job over the last couple of years had been ‘matchmaker’, I had lost count of the number of men she had introduced me to as ‘my future husband’, she would have thrown me on a priest if it meant hooking me up with somebody. “I was thinking that I would have to buy you a vibrator for your next birthday unless you found someone.”

“Sammy, shut-up” Noreen hissed as she saw the waiter appear with our food.

“This looks savage” I dug into my pizza immediately. Noreen sat and stared at hers.

“Are you okay Noreen?”

“If I tell ye something, will you promise it stays between us.”

“Of course” I promised.

“Is it about the proposal again? Seriously Noreen you are just nit-picking” Sammy groaned.

Noreen was the type of woman that had always espoused a traditional view on commitment and marriage. From the day she started going out with John, she has been deafening our ears with plans of her dream wedding. We had her bridal dress memorized before John and she even celebrated their second anniversary, a romantic plush dress complimented with a lace corset, a tulle skirt and lots of luxurious fabric.

However her wedding dream was slightly dashed when John took the opportunity when she was cleaning the toilet to pop the question.

She had always told us that she couldn’t decide if she wanted to be asked under the twinkling lights of the Eiffel Tower, or on the Brooklyn Bridge at Midnight with the lights of New York City promising them a dream-come true lifestyle for the rest of their days.

 The only thing New York about the proposal was the baggy ‘I ♥ NY’ t-shirt she was wearing.

‘It was me that was on my knees for Gods sake’ she first complained about the proposal we were at the Alexandra Burke concert in the Marquee.

 “Well, cleaning seems to be the only thing you do these days, John probably couldn’t find a moment when you weren’t scrubbing something or other” Sammy responded.

Since Noreen bought her dream home with John over a year ago she had become an OCD cleanaholic, everything in the house had to be perfect and in place. Even the remote control was polished in Noreen’s house.

Noreen later bemoaned to me how she believed Sammy had been very dismissive about the whole thing; I sensed there was still something stirring under the surface between them over it.

“This isn’t about the proposal Sammy” Noreen chided.

“Sorry, go on” Sammy encouraged.

Noreen leant forward and hindered for us to do the same.

“John and I are not having sex.” 

“Oh” I sympathised.

“That’s normal though isn’t it when we have been together for so long?” 

“Sammy?” I turned my shocked gaze to my shell stoned friend.

“What do you mean you don’t have sex?”

Pippa Redmington (Part Two)

Click here to read part one of Pippa's adventures.   

I had phone in hand, thinking furiously. I changed my mind. I wasn’t ready yet to have my lips kissed clean and the prints wiped from my body.

I headed back into my bedroom, threw on a pair of jeans and a red long sleeved top, grabbed keys, phone, coinage, ciggies and left the apartment, hounded down the stairs and out my door onto Dunbar Street and walked up the few steps to George’s Quay.

I lived on my own in a small apartment and I couldn’t have loved my centralized city haven more that what I did. Living independently reminded me I was an adult, something I easily forgot at times despite the twenty seven years which sat on my shoulders. 

It was a chilly pre-summer night but my post sex glow meant I didn’t feel the cold.

I pushed open the door to the kebab shop which was nicely positioned directly below my apartment and ordered myself a large chicken kebab. A limited set of culinary skills meant I lived off a lot of these kebabs.

After coming out of the kebab shop I ate as I walked across Parliament Bridge, I wasn’t particularly going anywhere but I didn’t want to sit alone at home when life was happening outside. A small group of men walked towards me and cheekily asked if I wanted to join them for the night. I politely declined the offer, but flattered all the same.  

I ventured down South Mall, turning my gaze up to the night-time sky, it was romantically scattered with gold and silver glistening stars. Breathlessly beautiful.

I licked the creamy sauce off my lips and dabbed the area around my mouth, wiping away any remnants of food that may have been on my face.

There weren’t too many people around, this street was mainly home to offices and banks, during the day you would find many suited men and women bustling around here. A lone person was huddled over the ATM machine. Spread out multiples of people passed me, some on their own, others in twos and threes, several of them were probably on their way to enjoy one or two drinks at the nearby bar Electric or on their way to other establishments.

A couple proceeded before me. I contemplated the status of their relationship.

In love?

 They certainly appeared to be smitten with one another. Her slender and long body nuzzled tightly into his, leaving no space to pass between their two entities. They were obviously at some corporate event from their black tie attire but I suspected they left an indulgent dinner early in preference to indulge in each other. They stopped at the Imperial Hotel. He opened the door and allowed his lover to proceed into the hotel before him. It was then, with her turned to the side, that her true beauty was revealed to me. I stopped dead. She was indescribably stunning in a long flowing black dress that shimmered when she moved, her hair elegantly pinned back off her face to flaunt her flawless skin. The man slid his hand around her waist again and bent slightly so he could whisper something in her ear. His words caused a slow smile to spread across her face, a smile that lit her up once it came into its full extent.

She caught my stare. I quickly turned around and aired the impression I was waiting for somebody, scanning both sides of the street.

I couldn’t but not look again. I watched them through the closed glass doors as they walked hand in hand down the long corridor of the hotel. Then they suddenly left my sight.

It was funny, earlier tonight I had been making love to a man, a man I was secretly in love with, and now, here I was alone outside a hotel with midnight descending on me. I lit a cigarette and thought deeply. The cool air I hadn’t felt before suddenly whipped me.

I had fantastic friends, an unattainable lover and dating a guy who was besotted with me, so why then did it feel so horribly lonely here? 

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Why did God rest on the seventh day of making the world? He was depressed.

 I hated Sundays. It was the most depressing day of the week, not least because it was followed by Monday.

Though it was traditionally known as the Sabbath day, it had become the day for the bi-people somewhere in the crossover from the last century. Couples, no matter where you go on a Sunday, you are guaranteed to see an influx of them, it is as if the couple population of Ireland magically increases on this day and lone people, like me, are cruelly reminded that we are still single (or in my case the man I wish I was coupling with is doing his own coupling with someone else).

It was a welcome change not to be greeting the seventh day with a throbbing head and a throat as dry as razors. I lay in bed until the early afternoon indulgently reminiscing about the previous evening. Like the angelus he was here on the dot at seven.  We talked for a bit, snacked on whatever junk was in my cupboards and then followed a little bit of Britain’s got talent. When Simon Cowell started praising the acts instead of dragging them through a washing machine of unnecessary catty insults, we decided to skip into the bedroom. We kissed with frantic and ferocious energy, clothes were ripped and legs were spread wide. We did it once and then twice.  

I wondered what he might be doing today while I replayed our sexual antics and if he was doing it with Vanessa.

Thank God for small mercies that he didn’t live with her. Knowing he was in bed with her on a nightly basis would be unbearable, even more so than what it was already.

Click here for Part Three

Pippa Redmington ( Part One)

Allow me to introduce a new character to 'Michelle is in Wonderland' -  Pippa Redmington, a 27 year old who is discovering what love, sex and life is all about. This is her story in her own words.

I like sex. It sure as hell is complicated though. The technique is easy. It’s all the other baggage that goes with it which is the hard bit, no pun intended. 

Today we women, in theory, are supposed to be equal and liberated in all aspects of our lives. It is an era where no one should bat an eyelid at a female president, pilot or even a mechanic. We have become sexually liberated in a way that could never have been foreseen by our female ancestors.

Women simply do not lie on their backs anymore.

In Lilly Allen’s ode ‘It’s not fair’, it is evident that it is no longer enough to bring us chocolates and flowers. We will gladly take them but we rightly seek sexual satisfaction in our intimate relationships too.

Sex is everywhere. Open a magazine and you’ll likely see a drawing of a naked man and woman in a gymnastic type pose claiming to be demonstrating the ‘Sexual position of the week’ or else you might see female celebrities having no qualms in publicly admitting to processing certain sex toys which can satisfy their needs in times of singleton periods.

‘Sex and the city’ taught us that it should be normal to be openly discussing blow-jobs, hand jobs and whatever other types of jobs you know at brunch with your girlfriends.

Yet despite our sexual liberation few women, if any, can enjoy the same care-free casual sex like men can. I would like to meet a woman like the character of Samantha Jones with such a voracious appetite for sex and whose only apparent afterthought while sliding her legs back into her knickers is ‘Damn! That was a good fuck!’ I doubt she exits though. 

Is it only with a set of balls that a person can have emotion free sex?

Love is the feeling we women stereotypically believe ought to power sex. Men use love to get sex and women use sex to get love but what the hell is it?

True love, in my opinion, is impractical and felonious but this might be based on my own personal experience of love to date.

I believe in it though. I believe in that real consuming passionate love which feeds your soul. I believe in that love which gives laughter, breath and beauty to those who are lucky enough to find it. The bit I fall down on is the whole ‘Living happily ever after’ bit.

When I was a little girl I read all the classic fairy-tales. The story was the same in each of them. The prince rescued the damsel in distress, they fell madly in love and lived happily ever after. At twenty seven years of age am I too old to still believe in fairytales?

What really happened between the prince and Cinderella after he put the glass slipper on her? Did they really live happily ever after? Or did he just marry her for the sake of it and years down the line left poor Cinderella with a couple of sprogs and jetted off in the sunset with one of the ugly sisters in tow? Was Snow White really happy leaving Dopey, Sleepy, Bashful, and whatever the other four dwarfs were called, behind?

Did Sleeping Beauty even manage to stay awake to have her happily ever after? Why do we think the story is over when the princess finds her knight in shining armour? And if women are supposed to be so equal and liberated why do we feel the need to be rescued?

Women can espouse a traditional and idealism view on their ‘Prince Charming’.  We want to believe we’ll find our prince on the bus, in the bar next Saturday night or maybe he’ll be the man who helps us pick up the loose change we drop in Super-Valu while paying for the groceries.

Is it possible that the man I’m having an affair with could end up being my Prince Charming or is that too far fetching for even the most fanciful amongst us?

I want romance. I don’t know if it really exists outside a Hollywood written script but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want it.

The reason why I’m talking to you about sex and love is because I’m presently struggling to separate the two in my life. I’m struggling to separate the sexual feelings from the emotional feelings I have towards the man I am sleeping with.

Thirty minutes had swiftly passed by since he had left my bed, and my apartment. His scent, a blend of stale smoke and Calvin Klein, lingered on the sheets.

This was the worst part of the affair, when all the anticipation was over and when my head split into conflicting thoughts.

I tangled myself up in the bed sheets and inhaled his redolence

His lips always tasted of more and I couldn’t help but think how sweeter his lips might taste in a restaurant, or a bar, or on the street, in full view of everyone. I was unlikely to ever discover what effect an alternation of place may have on his lips, because his girlfriend might see us.

The thought of him doing what we had just done with her sent a bolt of jealously through me.

I should be thankful that he wasn’t married, yet, but it brought me no pleasure, I knew it would only be a matter of time despite the numerous times where he told me ‘it wasn’t working anymore’.

Each time he said “Pippa, I need to end it with Vanessa”, I knew he genuinely meant it but his words had no volume. 

In the beginning The Man and I were platonic friends. Then one night we unplatonically fell into bed together and subsequently our one night of passion stemmed into a one year secret relationship.

Vanessa, I find it so hard to speak her name, and him have been on and off for the last six years.

He could smoke, drink and wear the same pair of socks two days running but she was the only habit I wanted him to give up.

Of course I’m on a constant merry go around with the moral broom. Countless times I have obediently ended my illicit relationship but like a magic candle that resiliently persists on igniting after you circuitously blow air on it, the affair never really stops.

Like my smoking habit, I vow to give up at the start of every new month and week but fail miserably in my intentions. Unfortunately nicotine patches didn’t extend to curbing my love addiction. Like most smokers I wish I had never taking up the habit in the first place.

In a way The Man is my best friend, he’s the only person who knows everything about me (not one of my 275 Facebook friends knew how low I had stooped by getting involved with an unavailable man).

The only thing he didn’t know about me is how madly in love I was with him.

And it was that love which made me incapable of ending this stupid semseless thing between us.

There is one question which I have never asked, why is she is the girlfriend and I’m the bit on the side?  The possible answer scares me. 

For the moment, I’m literally clutching to whatever I can have with him.

I can hear you screaming at the page but please save your energy because I have had all the screaming matches with myself already, and still I continue a relationship with a man that is more than happy in having me only as his side dish.

I stretched out my hand from the sheets and retrieved the cup of green tea that was on my bedside locker. I had made it before he arrived, hence why it was now cold. I took one sip and winced. This green tea was part of a new health kick I was trying. I was drinking the horrendous drink as a substitute to wean myself off my caffeine addiction. The dire taste of my substitute made me have little hope in ever successfully kicking the habit. 

I dragged my naked self out from under the sheets, draped my dressing gown around me and moved into the sitting room and sat down on the window pane. I gazed out onto Cork City, the reflection of the street lights bounced off the River Lee. A scattering of people thundered along Parliament Street on their way to partake in the usual night antics and the steady flow of cars, most of which were taxis, zoomed past below my Georges Quay apartment window. The Holy Trinity Church stared back at me from across the river, no doubt justifiably judging me.

I toted up my options. I could text Sammy and Noreen, my two best friends, they would be in Reardans now, one of our usual haunts. They had no clue of my secret relationship. We were The Three Musketeers, friends since our college days where we in theory studied Commerce but it was really an introductory to sex, boys and drink. It was four years since we threw our graduation hats up into the air and we were still a tripod unit to this day. 

They didn’t know about The Man, the guilt dispersed evenly between my participation in the affair and keeping it secret from my best friends.

Understandably I had withdrawn a lot from them in the past while. The problem with secrets is that they can only stay secret for so long and I consciously knew the time was ticking on mine. A few glasses of wine now with Sammy and Noreen could ignite the bomb.

I could only imagine their response if they knew. It would be exactly my response if the shoe was on the other foot.

They would never understand the feelings I allowed myself to develop for such a man. I didn’t even understand it myself for God’s sakes. Both Sammy and Noreen were in committed relationships. What I was doing was the equivalent of sticking two fingers up to what should be considered sacred and intimate between two people. 

If Sammy and Noreen were to ever to find out about The Man it would have a detrimental effect on our friendship. I wouldn’t be dramatising if I was to say it would be the end of it. The thought of losing them over all of this made me feel violently sick but so too did the thought of losing The Man.

I decided against meeting the girls, they would only be asking me how dinner with my mother went, that was what I had told them I was doing earlier this evening. It scared me how easy a lie spluttered out of my mouth these days.

I knew I couldn’t stay in the apartment and dangerously wallow too far into my thoughts.

Dave popped into my head and I thought about asking him to call over.

Who is Dave, I hear you ask? Well this is where things become even more complicated in my life. Dave and I were dating (not sleeping together).

For the last few weeks we had been meeting once or twice a week for a drink or whatnot.

The Man didn’t know about him and needless to say Dave knew nothing about The Man. In a way Dave was like my green tea, a substitute for something stronger.

Dave was perfect, or at least he would be perfect if I wasn’t in love with someone else.

Click here for Part Two

When Boy Friend Scares Me!!!

‘You’d be more likely to run into a lion’s den than into a relationship’. Words are my life but he can take my love and knock me for six with them.

Is it true? Do I run away when someone tries to get inside me?

I know what I want when I look at the menu in a restaurant.  I know that I like scrambled eggs on Sunday mornings and I know that the man I’m willing to call me is the same one I’m sprinting away from like I just swallowed the ‘Run Fat Bitch Run’ book.  

I don’t know if I’m fucked up or completely normal.

I’m supposed to want a boyfriend and dream of marital bliss and yes sometimes I do but I can’t put my hand on my heart at this precise moment and say that I whole heartedly want the white dress and the shared mortgage repayments.

I rebel against labels. Single, gay, straight, married or whatever else you choose to call someone other than their name but if I had to resort to a definition of my love life then I’m single. Is there a man on the scene? A man I kiss sweetly? Yes and yes.

I’ve had my heart ripped apart and that doesn’t make me more special than anyone else because I think we’ve all been there but it does make me a little more cynical and the walls around me are a little studier.

And besides I’m very weird, I spent hours tapping words into my laptop every night, I am likely to whip a notebook out of my bag at bizarre occasions,  I don’t like eating  alone or at least without something to read, I was disappointed when I received a present of a car radio to replace the one that was being kept in place with a sausage stick and I love my 99 opel corsa which has a little bit of house paint on the bumper from the night I ‘accidently’ drove into the house.  See I’m very strange and if I was in a relationship I would have to let someone in on all that weirdness.

My life game has changed without me signing up to play in the first place, no longer do I talk  to my girlfriends about a boy one of us scored with last Friday night, we are talking about husbands and fiancés for godsakes and I’m still in the romantic situation I was years ago. I’m more limbo than libido. And while we are discussing wedding dresses – I’m thinking ‘where is my bridal gene?’  

But now I’ve a man who wants me to stand still for one moment, he has nothing to worry about though because I don’t want anyone else,  my eyes don’t light up for anyone else and he’s the only one I sing ‘Oh na na what’s my name' to and I don’t talk about him at all or analyze how he says hello which is all very surreal to me. But still I go into hibernation when the word boy is put before friend.  How do I know that I won’t want to be with someone else in a year’s time or even ten years time?

Falling in love involves losing control and if I break it can take a very long time for all the king’s horses and all the king’s men to put the pieces back together again.

The quote at the top of this blog ‘You think literature is something that can be found on the back of a Rice Krispie box and you think James Joyce is my neighbour but yet, you GET me. So why then do I keep on running away?’  are my own words and they describe somebody in my life.

I’m myself with very few people so when I’ve a man I can talk openly and frankly then he should be someone I can relax with instead of predicting the timing of my next heartbreak. He doesn’t have much time for books and yet the night Maeve Binchy died he was on the buzzer to me  because he just knew I would be in pieces after the loss of a woman who opened pathways for women like me who were born to write.  And yes he listened to a snotty tearful girl sprout out lines from ‘Circle of friends’ although it is very likely he left me hanging on the phone while he went off for a pint too.

I don’t need a bouquet of flowers or diamonds – I just need someone who knows what I’m about, is willing to accept that my mind is full of clutter and will drink a bottle Jack Daniels with me in an open field even when we are nearer to middle-age than age of consent.

So regardless of me fearing the relationship word or not knowing what label I want to put on certain people in my life, I know that when he said ‘You’d be more likely to run into a lion’s den than into a relationship’ to me, he clarified one thing for me and that is that I would run into the lion’s den to save his life without hesitation if I had to.

I may not know if I want him as my other half in my life but what I do know is that I don’t want him to leave my life. Sometimes if that’s all we know we are doing good.

‘Just go with it’ is what I guess I’m trying to say, we are all petrified.