Breakfast

Breakfast

          Mel woke up all by himself, but heard noises downstairs.

          He went to the toilet and had himself a good shit. When he finished he looked downward and to his left and shook his head sadly. He felt proud of the sadness. Otherwise he’d be pissed off, and he strongly disliked being pissed off. Still, he was going to have to address a matter that he really didn’t want to face. It was, at best, just unnecessary. He was, however, the sort of person who tended to find small things to be indicative of matters of serious principle.

          He fixed the toilet-paper roll, flushed, returned to the bedroom, pulled on his sweatpants, and made his way down the stairs.

          She kissed his cheek as she schlepped bowls of porridge and cups of coffee from the kitchen to the eating table in the lounge. His minimalist townhouse unit had neither dining room nor breakfast nook.

          She had no obvious, superficial ugliness, just a late-middle-aged woman of moderate, almost bland, appearance, a bit pouchy with the facial muscles, but at his age, Mel told himself, he had no call to be picky.

          It’d been more than a year since his previous failure.

          The kitchen looked wrong.

          Mel walked over to the kitchen bin and looked into it. He saw on the top of his own rubbish an almost-full tub of Olivetti Light, three empty, tightly capped bowls from Noodle Canteen that he used to store leftovers, some banana peels, a few folded paper towels, and a piece of aluminium foil that had been on the far end of the kitchen bench to cover the coffee plunger’s spout against flies. The kitchen bench was bare where the day before it had been the locale of his coffee and tea and miso service.

          He shook his head again slowly, put the marge back into the fridge, and walked into the lounge.

          ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘but I couldn’t find any honey or jam.’

          ‘Why are you sorry about that? It’s obvious that I don’t keep honey or jam in the pantry. I don’t apologise for that. I don’t have a sweet tooth myself and I wasn’t expecting any company for breakfast.’

          She giggled girlishly. ‘I put plenty of sugar on the porridge, though.’

          He closed his eyes tightly and took two deep breaths. He kept sugar in the pantry for when guests wanted in their tea or coffee.

          He opened his eyes to see her questioning look. ‘I do, however, apologise,’ he said.

          ‘What in heaven’s name do you have to apologise for?’

          He sipped his coffee. It was unbearably sweet and he involuntarily pulled a face.

          ‘What’s the matter, Mel?’ real concern in her voice. ‘Not enough sugar? You were all out of cream so I had to use some of that yucky soy milk.’ She opened her palms upward. ‘That’s all there was. Why do you have that crap in the fridge, anyway?’

          He took another deep breath and looked away. ‘I told you that I don’t have a sweet tooth. Should I repeat it again? I can’t stand sweet coffee, and I have soy milk because I prefer it to cow’s milk.’

          She leaned back and squinted at him. Then she shook her head.

          ‘Nah,’ she ruled decisively. ‘You don’t expect me to believe that, do you? I mean, really – nobody could actually like unsweetened coffee. That’s just an act that some people put on to impress other people – and nobody could possibly like soy milk. People just use it because it’s trendy or something. Well you don’t have to show off with food fads to impress me, Mel. You’ve already impressed me plenty.’ She blew him a kiss. ‘You just need me to set you right about a few things, take care of things for you, that’s all. No matter. You can’t help it, being a man, an all.’ She blew him another kiss.

          He took another deep breath and turned to look at her. ‘I really am deeply apologetic about having sex with you last night …’

          ‘Why? We’re old enough …’

          He held up a hand, palm outward. ‘Please let me finish. Please.’

          ‘I really don’t know what you’re on about. Last night was …’

          ‘SHUT THE FUCK UP! Let me finish, damn it!’ He stared her down. ‘Of course we’re old enough to have sex if we want to. That’s so fucking obvious that it’s an idiotic fucking thing to say. But age was a factor, in two ways. I’m old enough to have been desperate to have sex at least one more time before I die, so I didn’t think. A stiff prick is a lousy rationalist. The problem is that I’m also old enough to know better than to have sex with someone I barely know, since emotionally speaking there’s no such thing as safe sex.’

          ‘But it was wonderful, Mel …’

          ‘For you, maybe. I suppose. At least you say so. But at any rate now I owe you an explanation. Nobody likes explanations. You’re not gonna like hearing it and I’m not gonna like making it, but because we had sex and you seem to have enjoyed it I owe you one.’

          ‘You don’t owe me anything, Mel.’

          ‘Shit, do you argue about everything?’ Silence. ‘Okay. Whose home is this?’

          ‘What do you mean?’

          ‘It’s my home. It’s not just my house, which I can prove I’ve paid off and own freehold. It’s where I’ve lived for about ten years – night and day. Most of that time all by myself. Without company.’

          ‘That doesn’t …’

          ‘Shut UP!’ His impatience definitely showed on that one. He didn’t like that. ‘I have everything here the way I want it, either for a rational reason or because it’s my personal preference or I’m just used to it – it’s what suits me, d’you understand?’

          ‘Mel, I just …’

          ‘Why, for a petty example, do you think I put the toilet paper roll under the spindle rather than over?’

          ‘Well, I suppose just because you didn’t know any better.’

          ‘It didn’t occur to you to ask before changing it?’

          ‘No. Why should it? You had it wrong and I just fixed it.’ She was explaining something obvious to a small and somewhat dim child. ‘That’s all.’

          ‘What was wrong about it?’

          ‘It was under when it should’ve been over! I mean, really …’

          ‘Why should it have been over?’

          ‘It’s such a small thing, Mel …’

          ‘If it’s so fucking small, then, why did you change it?’

          ‘Because, small or not, I wanted it to be right.’

          ‘In other words, on a small-shit, makes-no-difference, fifty-fifty call you decided to impose your capricious preference on my home – on my life, without even bothering to ask me about it first, right?’

          ‘Mel …’ She was making a big show of sounding patient.

          ‘Why’d you toss an almost-full kilo of marge into the bin?’

          ‘Have you ever read the ingredients on that crap? It’s a chemical shitstorm! If you knew anything at all about being healthy you’d use good, pure butter!’

          He took a deep breath, then said, ‘Look at me. Look at my face. Go ahead.’ He waited a moment while she did so. ‘What’s the most obvious fact about me that it tells you?’

          She smiled. ‘That you’re an extremely good-looking man.’

          ‘No, that’s an opinion. What’s the most obvious fact?’

          ‘That you have a beard that’s starting to turn grey?’

          ‘The most obvious relevant facts are that I aint dead yet – and, as you noticed in regard to the colour of my beard, I’ve managed to stay alive for a relatively long time. My health is just fine for a man my age, by the way, and I’m old enough by now to know that nothing that I’m used to eating is killing me or making me sick.’

          ‘But …’

          ‘And where are my coffee and tea and miso things? Why aren’t they where I left them on the bench?’

          ‘I put them away. Where they belong.’ A touch of defiance here.

          ‘Where is away? And they belong where I left them.’

          ‘Mel, you can’t just leave things sitting out on the bench.’ Another explanation to a small, dim child.

          ‘Oh, but I can. And I do.’

          ‘Really, Mel, this is a lovely little place you have here, but I told myself right away that you need a woman’s touch.’

          ‘What sexist, misogynist crap!’

          ‘What?’

          ‘You’re telling me that all women are as insensitive and inconsiderate as you’ve been this morning? I don’t believe it! Even with my admittedly limited experience I know that that’s not true.’

          She just gaped at him. He wasn’t finished.

          ‘And you mindlessly took the banana peels from the bowl waiting to go out to the compost and dumped them in the kitchen bin. Why?’

          ‘I was just …’

          ‘You were just inviting insects and rotting smells into my kitchen, right?’

          ‘Mel, that’s …’

          ‘So I’m truly sorry I had sex with you before I found out how ill-suited we are to each other …’

          ‘But the sex was so good! Doesn’t it make you feel anything for me?’

          He looked away. This wasn’t going to be easy.

          ‘Sex is always good, more or less, I suppose. I’d gone without any for so long that I was willing to be craven – to be grateful for small favours, no matter how disappointing, no matter how much it was all about you and almost not at all about me.’

          ‘You’re pissed off because I wouldn’t suck your dick, right? Isn’t that sexist and misogynist crap? Wanting to humiliate me by making me get down on my knees!’

          He drew a deep breath and looked at her.

          ‘If you can just say that,’ he finally said, ‘as if it made any sense in the context of last night, after I’d sucked on your clit non-stop for – what was it? – twenty minutes, until you came, lying on my belly, not on my knees?’

          She smiled. ‘It was lovely, Mel. But  …’

          ‘I told myself that at least it was better than nothing, but now that you’ve shown yourself to be a domestic dominatrix overflowing with contempt for my core self …’

          ‘Mel, I was just trying to improve things for you. I didn’t mean any harm.’

          ‘I know you didn’t, but that really doesn’t matter. Now go.’

          ‘What?’

          ‘It’s not better than nothing. It’s worse than nothing. Just go.’

          ‘Should I …?’

          ‘No. Don’t call and don’t come back. Enough of this sadness. Just go. Take all your stuff with you so you don’t have to come back for it. Anything I find I’ll throw away. You should be able to appreciate that.’