Monday 17 November 2008

The morality bubble



It was a long walk, in the drizzle, from Heather’s hotel room. I’m not sure why I stayed so long, lost in myths aroused by the sweet touches of her soft, warm lips.
Whatever, I stayed until the trains and buses had all gone to bed, and I had to follow the lights of streetlamps and shop windows back home.
Heather was of a curious morality. She had no fears in inviting me back to her hotel life; this little bubble she’d constructed which consisted of four walls, a bed and room service. It seemed that, within this bubble we could do what we wanted; say what we’d always wanted to.
But after minutes turned to hours, and kissing to caressing, and clothes started to be discarded and entangled upon the floor; suddenly the bubble that Heather had constructed around the room, retracted quite violently so that it seemed to cover only her body. Her hands removed my hands from the edges of the bubble and we were soon staring at each other from different sides of an iridescent film.
Heather said she didn’t want to cheat on her man, Jules. It seemed that kissing was one thing, quite separate to cheating, and as long as things didn’t get too wild inside her bubble then the moral equilibrium was preserved. Presumably, in some hotel room in Kent, Jules was ‘just kissing’ someone too.
I thought about pointing out how ridiculous this whole situation was. Pointing out that she obviously didn’t feel that much for Jules, otherwise she wouldn’t be here with me. But for some reason I simply acquiesced. We kissed a little more and then we replaced the few clothes we’d shed and I stood and pondered the night, from her hotel window, and how dreadful it would be to leave here and make my way home.
Still, I had to leave.
It’s funny; I don’t remember seeing another soul on the dank journey of that night. No other loser sloshing through puddles, his mind muddled by such curious morality.
I do remember halting, though, in front of a strange shop; its one window illuminated to show its strange display. And there I smiled grimly to see a troupe of hands, severed from myriad shop dummies, and all covered with beautiful and expensive leather gloves.
Perhaps, I mused, had my own hands been encased in such delightful bubbles, they would not have been so easily turned away.
I stood for a moment, grinning incredulously at the strange window, before turning on my heels towards home. And I think I kicked the stars out of every puddle more, I saw that night.

3 comments:

bha said...

Cheers Paul - Novel is going well. Now that the month is half gone, I've decided I want to write about 3 times what I've got, so I might just be feverishly jumping into that!

Jaquanda Rae said...

Thanks for the sweet comments. I love your work, myself. Funnily, when I just looked at the photo with the gloves, I blinked...I wondered if I was looking at dildos, lmao.

Nice story.

Sucharita Sarkar said...

Unlike Jaquanda, I was clueless about the display till you decoded it.

Morality is a dicey-Hydra, a soapy-slithery issue, esp. in a country like India, where you have your own morality, juxtaposed with your other morality (outside the bubble, so to say) and then you have the morality imposed by SOCIETY (comprising parents, relations and neighbours...all the 'everyones' in "what will everyone say?").