The computer room scene – below – has been rewritten a dozen times now: “Not explicit enough,” “Too coy,” “Doesn’t show his control over her clearly enough.” The final draft focuses more on the phone call itself and the raw eroticism of her experience, but striking that balance is tough. I’ve written before about the challenges of writing sex scenes, how difficult it is to avoid cheap porn tropes, purple prose, overused, clichéd adjectives, and awkward euphemisms. It’s easy to lose sight of the fact that sex is rooted in human emotion and sensory detail, or, in trying to avoid those pitfalls, end up with something entirely bland and clinical and just a description of the act. I think it’s better now, more instinctive and visceral. It would be interesting to rewrite the whole thing with them using mobile phones – they were only just appearing at this point in the 80s. Watching each other, not just listening, how erotic, what a turn on that would be. But, then, it was hand helds and imagination.
Getting the dialogue right is equally challenging and needed work. In the end, Ollie does much more ‘directing’ and that feels closer to the ways in which he uses sex and her developing obsession with it and him, to manipulate her throughout their whole relationship.
All the pieces of writing published here are drafts, scribblings, scraps. Sometimes they help with the process. But, there is a debate going on about the wisdom of that because of AI scraping. I could end up in a situation where chunks of my book could be used as the foundation for some AI inspired offering. Books with substantial AI-generated text (more than 25% AI text) capture nearly a third of new bestseller slots in self-published genre categories and the earnings of non AI using authors are facing dilution because of the the massive volume of new releases. So, to keep posting here or not? Something to think about.
I let Mike drive. I drift in and out of sleep to the soundtrack of him chuntering on about what we’ll need to do and he hopes Pothole – everyone tries to avoid him – isn’t on shift because he is a total muppet and, ‘Fucking hell, how did Ollie ever manage to pull a tasty piece like Maryellen, he’s such an ugly little git.’ In my half-awake, half-asleep state, I am curdling with self-loathing about the night before, being fooled yet again by Ollie and his lies, taken in by yet another game, an ace in his selfish, egocentric deck of control cards, the shuffle producing another glittery diamond that was so dazzling I forgot what an utter cunt he is.
I want to smack my head against the dashboard, smack, smack, smack until my forehead cracks and blood runs out and the pain shuts down the peep show playing in my head.
I can’t get rid of the imprint on the inside of my eyelids of Maryellen being revealed like a magician’s assistant in a disappearing trick. But, worse, worse, I can’t clear the images of everything he will have done to her, her head thrown back and him pushing in to her ….. It should be ME! ME! ME! I want to scour every inch of my skin until it bleeds to obliterate his touch, his smell, bleach the memories until they are a white canvas of nothingness.
Bastard, bastard, bastard!
The utter fucking, fucking bastard
He’s done it again
‘Liz, LIZ! Are we going to see Colin or straight to the computer room. I need to know which junction to take.’
Mike shouting brings me round.
‘Computer room. I’ll phone Colin.’ He has been paging me every 10 minutes with increasingly frantic demands to PHONE ME NOW!
I know it is going to be an all-nighter as soon as I get there. Simon is holed up in the console room outside the machine room looking bleak and exhausted.
‘Going to take hours to sort this fucking mess out Liz. Charlie’s lot have sorted the system stuff, but we’re going to have to reload all the databases. Any ideas about where we should start?’
In among the debris of anger and hurt, of misery, it makes me feel better that actually I do. I start explaining to him and Mike exactly what needs to happen.
We have banned people from coming in every five minutes to ask if we have fixed the problem and have agreed that all updates will go to Colin who will let whoever needs to know, know. Constant phone calls and interruptions will just slow the process up.
When the phone rings about 2 in the morning, we assume it is Colin and I say to Simon,
‘Your turn.’
Whoever it is, it isn’t Colin. He puts his hand over the mouthpiece.
‘It’s that arsehole Ollie, he wants to speak to you. He’s seriously pissed, I mean seriously pissed’
‘Tell him to fuck off.’
‘Liz says fuck off Ollie.’ He puts the phone down.
‘What does he want?’ asks Simon.
‘He’s gone all corporate now, thinks he should have his sticky fingers in everything.’ And everyone, I think but don’t say.
Half an hour later the phone goes again. Simon and Mike are at the back of the computer room with one of the operators waving tapes about. I know there is an argument going on about the wrong ones being brought out of storage and I think this might be Charlie. Of course it’s not, it’s Ollie and he is slurring badly.
‘Lovely Lizzie, why won’t you speak to me?’
In my head I see the glorious Maryellen and his fingerprints fluorescing off her. I think of Birgitta and that I am nowhere near their scale of loveliness. I don’t feel lovely. I feel grubby and tired and tarnished and weary with stumbling about in the darkness of the forest of his inventions.
‘Ollie, I’m busy, we are having a pretty shit time here and I don’t have time for you and your games. Shouldn’t you be fucking your new playmate.’
‘She’s not you Lizzie, she can’t do what you do. Do you know where I am and what I am doing, do you remember Paris?’
I know exactly what he is doing though not where he is, some hotel somewhere, probably not alone. He is sitting or lying with his prick in his hand and probably a fag and drink if he could manage all three at the same time, though someone may be holding at least one of them for him. How could I forget Paris?
‘Ollie, stop it. I need you to leave me alone.’
‘Can’t do that Lizzie, can’t do that, you know I can’t. What are you wearing?’
‘Exactly what I was when I saw you this morning.’
‘No, no you’re not.’
Up to a point, he is right. I have taken off the jacket; the expensive silk blouse is pulled out from inside my skirt and I have taken off my shoes and tights and my knickers though I couldn’t exactly explain why. I am walking round barefoot. The carpet in the console room is industrial and cheap and is making my feet itchy and sore, a penance for my stupidity, a mortification of my weak and foolish flesh.
‘Put your finger inside yourself Lizzie’.
‘Ollie, no, I can’t.’
‘Just do it Lizzie.’
Impossible to explain how easily he could un-couple me from reality, it was just like an on/off switch. Reality on, magic word Lizzie, click, reality off. Simon and Mike are still at the back of the machine room changing the tapes on the tape decks, there is still some dispute going on. There was just me in the green half-light being created by the system consoles and the hum of them. The office outside is in complete darkness. I am cocooned in a dark, warm space with just the treacle voice whispering to me.
‘Come on Lizzie. Come on Lizzie.’
So I do it because he has told me to and because half of me wants to and because his voice is worming and curling its way in to my head and turning my body inside out and he has used the secret word that unlocks everything.
‘How does it feel?’
‘Forgotten already Ollie.’
‘No, no I haven’t but I want you to tell me’.
I can’t, because even though I can see Simon and Mike are busy and won’t be coming back immediately, I’ m aware they might suddenly interrupt.
Ollie is on a speaker phone and there is a slightly disembodied, echoey quality to his voice. I am sitting on the edge of the chair hunched over the desk, the phone pressed to my ear slippery with sweat. The thread that binds us is tensing and tugging and vibrating. I can hear his hand and the slickety slick of the movement and match my rhythm to his. Apart from the sounds we are making and our breathing becoming more rapid there is an intense silence, everything outside us on mute.
We come at the same time. I hear the slight gasp and him saying,
‘Lizzie.’
I remember the first time he called me that in the ladies toilet in the office outside Winchester. How did I get from there to here? He has pushed my boundaries so far and so often that they are virtually non-existent. I have no defences. I feel certain that if I turn round now and look out of the window of the console room that I will see the forest, that it has completely surrounded me and that there is no escape.
I have bitten my lips so hard they are bruised. I think of other bruises, some on the outside some on the inside.
‘Go and play with your new toy Ollie. Leave me alone.’
The need to punish him is becoming more and more acute, but how can you can punish someone without a soul, who lives in the dark wood and eats little girls like me for breakfast.
‘There’s no one like you Lizzie, listen, no listen, no honestly, there is no one like you.’
I put the phone down because Simon is coming back waving a tape and I need to focus.
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