SWEET THINGS

When I was six years old, I developed a cancerous tumour which resulted in me having to lose my right eye. It was a relatively small tumour, but it was so close to the optic nerve that any kind of radiation therapy would have destroyed the sight in my eye anyway.
I was young and resilient. At that age you take things with an innocent acceptance. It never held me back and I never felt challenged or impaired.

They fitted an artificial eye. An ocular prosthesis which matched my real eye perfectly.
It remained fixed in one position. A static, lightless torch. This was the only thing that offered a clue to me having a false eye.
But of course, at school, as soon as one person found out about it, it wasn’t long before everyone knew. The bullies took advantage of my situation. They nicknamed me “Popeye” and when congregated as a gang would shout insults, push me around, or empty the contents of my rucksack onto the playground tarmac. And so I developed relationships with the kids of a gentler nature. I chose my friends carefully and as a result became part of a close knit group of individuals.
We were not academics but, equally, we were not stupid. We were considered ‘alternative’, a fair description considering our shared love of things not so mainstream.
We loved art more than science, poetry more than current affairs and music more than sport.
We fitted no other category of social group within the school. We were pretty much ignored by the studious academics, taunted by the bullies, and we instilled a mixed emotion within the ‘dunces’…part intrigue, part fear. We, in return, felt no affinity towards any of them. We had nothing in common. They were the ‘normals’, we were ‘arts and crafts’.

Alice was a part of this small group of friends.
We had all known each other practically since the age of eleven and the start of secondary education. Although close and, some would say, insular, there were still healthy sub-divisions within the group, just as normal, socio-expectations and natural selections dictate. People aligning themselves and developing deeper relationships with particular individuals more than others.
The strongest relationship of all was the one between Alice and myself. We were drawn together like magnets. We understood each other, could read each other.
It was Alice who first welcomed me into this circle of friends.
I was being subjected to a bullying session. I knew how to ride it out: keep calm, say nothing, let it pass and then move on.
The bullies were in the process of sharing my sandwich lunch amongst themselves when Alice appeared, as if stepping from a cloud.
She wasn’t the tallest of girls by any means and she was of average build. She had pretty features which were framed by mousey, tussled hair. Her gait was quite aggressive in a manner, or at least confident. I had seen her around school on a few occasions and always thought that she was a tomboy.

She was feisty and spirited. She walked right into the centre of this band of thugs and started pushing at them, each one stumbling back into the one behind. They swore at her and she swore back. They tried to close in but Alice stood strong and defiant. Eventually the gang dispersed and walked away, murmuring disgruntled asides and comments of “girls” and “Popeye”.
I stood still, zipping my rucksack closed.

“Don’t mention it” said Alice
“I could have handled it myself”
“Yea, it looked like it”
I turned and started towards the school building. Alice walked calmly after me.
“You know” said Alice, “the more you let them get away with it the more they will bully you”
“I didn’t need your help” I said, not bothering to look back.
“But I still gave it to you anyway, free of charge”
“I know the way to handle bullies” I retorted, sounding more annoyed than I actually was.
“Well then, maybe I just showed you a different way”
And that was the beginning of Alice and me. Her pretty face, her stubborn, Yet beguiling nature, her whole demeanor just put my heart into rhythm. I think I loved her from that day. And I’ve felt her heart beating within my very own rib cage, in perfect rhythm to mine, ever since.


The first time we made love, as in real love and not just the natural hugging and kissing or the touching, feeling and exploring that drives teenage hormones wild and introduces us to the dizzy mists of entry level affection, was in 1974. We had both just turned sixteen. David Bowie had just released his Diamond Dogs album, which I had bought with my birthday money.
We both adored Bowie, even to the extent of having identical haircuts copied directly from the man himself. We made for a spectacular sight when walking down the road together. Hand in hand, dressed identical and both with flaming red spiked hair. These were great times of flamboyant dress, of glitter and feathers, of high waistband baggy trousers, platform shoes and tank tops. A time of hot summers, Chopper bikes and twinkly, tinselly Christmases. Of sexual liberation, make-up for men and androgynous Rock Gods.

We were in Alice’s room at her parents house. We had smoked a marijuana joint, hanging our heads out of Alice’s bedroom window.
Her parents had given her free reign to decorate her room how she liked. Alice had made large scatter cushions and bean bags. The quilt on her bed she had also made from rags of old clothing and scrap material that her mother would otherwise have thrown out.
She had used a paint on the walls that was essentially white but which imbued a subtle hint of lilac. Posters of heroes of the time, from rock stars to revolutionaries; Lennon, Marley, Che Guevara, were blue tacked in a random order over the walls.
In one corner stood an artists easel, in the other an acoustic guitar, and from the ceiling rose hung a red tinted light bulb which flooded the room with a fiery warm glow.
We loved it there. We felt safe. And we spent a lot of time there together, our involvement with the other members of our group diminishing the deeper our relationship became.

We lay in each others arms, nicely stoned and lightly discussing how we could freeze time to make moments like that last longer.
Alice had been given a small stereo record player for her birthday and I had brought my copy of Diamond Dogs around, which we played continually. We both agreed that our favourite track was a song called “Sweet Thing”, and we would decipher the lyrics and try to relate the sentiments to ourselves. It was ‘our’ song and it was while this track was playing that Alice and I started to kiss. Gently at first, just the lightest brushing of lips that gradually intensified, becoming fuller and more passionate…mouths opening and tongues pushing out, licking and exploring.
Alice gently bit onto my bottom lip which sent electric pulses soaring through me. Darting lightening strikes that burst into my heart and veined to my manhood…
“Boys, boys
It’s a sweet thing.”

…and our hands worked feverishly at each others clothes, pulling off matching t-shirts and jeans, kicking off identical - apart from size - monkey boots into the corner of the room, and removing each others underwear. With my clumsy naivety Alice had to help me with her bra.

“Boys, boys
It’s a sweet thing
Sweet thing”

She pulled me onto her and between her open legs. I kissed her full on her mouth and then trailed kisses across her cheek, gently nibbling down her neck, across her shoulder and down to her breasts.
I pushed forward as Alice reached down, took me in her hand and guided me into her.
We found our own rhythm without even realizing that we had fallen into sync with the beautiful refrains of “Sweet Thing”. We pushed against each other, Alice wrapping her slender legs around me and pulling me deeper into her. I felt as if we were melting, merging into a single entity. I felt as if we were becoming one.
We climaxed together, an emotional, physical and spiritual explosion. Fireworks and flash images, trembling and juddering of muscle, flesh and bone, my head flushed with a pure, unadorned, and such a very beautiful confusion. And David Bowie’s words, blasting out from the stereo speakers, seemed to bolster, enhance and cement all of these fantastic feelings. Alice and me had become one.

“Is it nice in your snow storm, freezing your brain?
Do you think that your face looks the same?
Then let it be, it's all I ever wanted
It's a street with a deal, and a taste
It's got claws, it's got me, it’s got you”

*****

Some years later Alice and I bought an apartment in London overlooking the Thames. We had never been apart for more than a few days.
When choosing universities in our late teens the two of us opted for Brighton. We were fortunate that our individual chosen subjects were both taught there, but the unsettling thought of us being separated through higher education was the determining factor in our decisions.
We shared a student flat and we still dressed the same and wore our hair the same. Once again we became semi isolated from the more normal set of students. We needed no one else anyway and, if we were both honest about things, we did enjoy being looked on as curiosities.
We worked hard and encouraged each other in our studies and endeavors, eventually earning first class degree’s.
I became an architect, Alice became a furniture designer.
I asked her, if I were to build us a house would she make it a home?
She said yes.
We became successful within our own careers, Alice even being commissioned to design furniture for an Egyptian Prince.
We were affluent, we were respected, we were in demand, and we were happy.
The intensity of love that we felt for each other never waned. We lived as one. We worked from home whenever possible. We socialized together at all times and, whereas some couples might get bored of such a situation, we thrived on each others presence.
We tried for a baby many times but without success. We both underwent tests and we learned that Alice could not conceive due to an ovulatory disorder. This didn’t phase us too much.
We sighed, and we cried, and then we got on with our lives.

Our apartment was part of a newly constructed block that was the result of a design project that I had worked on. The building accommodated mainly a Yuppie demographic, the rags to riches financial advisors, mortgage brokers and money traders, but it also housed a couple of artists whose subjective genius had recently been discovered, and a retired sitcom actor, a film score composer, and Alice and me.
Typically, I left the interior to Alice and she filled it with her own designs.
She made us a home.

Alice had to go away. She had been offered a commission, through recommendation, to re-design a private clinic interior in Switzerland. She would be away for three weeks.
The thought of it made me sink. I wanted to abandon my own project and go with her to Switzerland, but I was working to a deadline that was nearly up.
Alice reassured me that it would be okay.
“It’s only three weeks”
“Three weeks too long” I mumbled back, slumped on one of our dining chairs like a moody school boy, and somehow feeling that the prospect of this separation was concerning her less than it was me. “What will I do for three weeks without you?”
Alice walked over to me and, straddling her legs, sat on my lap facing me.
“What you will do, my love, is get stuck into your work, live well, and wait for me to return”
And then she kissed me and, taking me by the hand, lead me to our bed.

I heeded Alice’s instructions. I made fine progress with my project, designing an arts centre that was to be built on the South Bank. I exercised each morning upon waking up. One hundred press ups, one hundred sit ups, one hundred star jumps. I ate three healthy meals per day, slept for a minimum of eight hours per night. And I waited for Alice.
The times when I was not busying myself were the worst times. Like, when trying to get to sleep. When all the busy-ness of daily business had left my head and the one constant that was, that is, and always will remain, fills the mental void left by the dealt with mundanity.
The thought of Alice. I missed her terribly.

One night, I had a dream. I dreamt that Alice and me had, somehow, morphed…shape shifted. We now looked identical although we neither resembled her or me. We had both re-formed and had taken on the physical attributes of our hero.
We wore the same fire red hair styles that we had in our youth. That in itself was not strange. The strange thing was that we had assumed the entire physical appearance of David Bowie. From head to toe. The stick thin body, the almost feminine beauty of his face, high cheek bones and thin jaw line. Right down to the uneven front teeth that he sported back in 1974.
Our eyes searched and scanned each others face and body, but our expressions were not ones of bemusement or confusion. Our faces merely expressed tender and sensitive inquisitiveness.
In my dream, I was aware, and I felt that Alice was aware, that we had changed physically.
In my dream, David Bowie whispered to me, with Alice’s voice,
“It’s because we are one”
I remember feeling an intense flush of love wash over my sleeping body. I awoke with a beaming smile.

Three weeks passed in bouts of speed and slowness, anticipation and frustration.
Alice returned home and we held onto each other for what seemed like an hour. Light tears of joy dampened our eyes, and we kissed and we made love.
Later that day we made sandwiches and opened a bottle of red wine and we sat opposite each other at the breakfast bar.
Alice looked straight at me and smiled,
“Did you miss me?”
“Like air” I said, reaching out to rest my hand on hers.
“And me you”
Alice continued to smile, her happy warm expression made me want to lean over the breakfast bar and kiss her. But I was just as content to sit and study her beautiful face.
“It’s because we are one” she said, and all the time her eyes burned into mine. Pupils like a cloudless night sky, drawing me into them as if I were falling into a deep precipice where weight, time, and things of a physical nature cannot exist. A place of spirit, of deep emotions, of the most heartfelt love.
“Can you see it?” asked Alice.
My mind was slightly jumbled,
“You mean, that we are one?” I replied clumsily.
Alice’s eyes narrowed slightly
“No…look. Can you see it?”
I was becoming more confused. I was feeling heady, as if a patch of cloud were momentarily blocking the rays of the sun.
“Can you see it?” repeated Alice.
My eyes darted around, taking in her features, her hair, her neck, all in quick time and rapid succession. My mind began to clear. I registered every aspect of her familiar beauty. Can I see what? What am I looking for?
And then, like a transition from one film scene to another, it became obvious. A moment of realization. The kind that, when it hits you, makes your heart thump. The thing that Alice was prompting me to look for revealed itself before me.
Alice let her gaze slide away from my eyes, concentrating her line of vision towards our touching hands. I watched her slowly peer down and I saw her pupil dilate as it re-focused.
And when this moment of realization had come to me my heart burned and tears filled my eyes.
The air closed in. We were cocooned in a tight bubble of atmosphere. All things outside of this invisible bubble, all things seen and all things heard became distorted, out of focus and muffled.

Only Alice’s right eye had moved. Her left eye had remained static, looking straight ahead at me…like a static lightless torch.
“We are one” she said,
“And now, when we sit opposite, like we are now, and we look into each others eyes, as we are now, our healthy, working eyes shall look deep within each other…into our very hearts…into our very souls. And although our other eyes shall see nothing, they will still reflect each others image. This is my gift to you. It is your gift to me”

“We are one” I said
“We are one” repeated Alice.