The Consequence of Sorrow

An erotic dream shakes a man awake to see his current life through all the compromises he has made, and the past loves he has lost.

The Consequence of Sorrow

Maybe you have heard of Federico Piccoli? No? That is, perhaps surprisingly, the way we prefer it. He is considered, rightly in my humble opinion, to be the pinnacle of luxury men’s leather shoes. Less obvious, less glamorous than your usual high-end high street brands; more exclusive, more subtle and more expensive. If you do find us, and if you do choose to coat your feet in our shoes, I promise that your feet, and your life, will never be the same again. I’m not bragging " that is just what happens. It’s what happened to me.

More than twenty years ago I was renting a smaller than tiny bedsit on the Holloway road, a five"minute walk from Archway station. It was the start of my second year studying Art at Goldsmith’s University. I was young, and foolish, and full of such dreams.

On one side of my room was a single bed, a kitchen counter with a single electric stove, an always-wet sink and an array of not-fitting cupboards. On the other side was what I referred to without irony as my ‘work’, a bundle of abstract paintings in the style of Miro (he was, but is not now, my art hero).

My choice of university and subject taken was against my father’s wishes, a fair man who had correctly predicted that, although it was not difficult to presume as such, it would be a hard-earned waste of time and money and I was far better off concentrating my efforts on my strength, which was, strangely, mathematics, as this would almost guarantee a decent future income and allow me to paint at the weekends. But what kind of artistic teenager - a male one at that - would ever bend to such basic logic? So, supporting myself by summers spent stacking in a local supermarket, I found myself full of pride and ambition as a first year Art student at the prodigious Goldsmiths College!

As expected my first year was a slow disaster as I struggled to come to terms with the large leap in difference between good at school and good at University. I scrapped by with a low-third, my practical almost as bad as my theory. For all my love and loyalty I was hopeless. But, to either credit my stupidity or my dedication, after another supermarket summer, I returned the next year.

I was halfway through that term’s piece, a portrait of two lovers saying goodbye, their eyes not meeting, his on the floor, hers faraway remembering a happier time now long gone, their hands stretching but failing to meet, their touch falling short. I wanted to create a colossal feeling of sadness when lovers realise that their love alone is not enough to sustain such love, life and its merciless forces proving too strong. However, they could not acknowledge such failure, such horror, only bid farewell until a tomorrow that would never come. Remember, I was young. The painting’s fine sentiments were, alas, ruined by my clumsy hand: the man looked as if he was about to vomit, the girl, if she was indeed feminine, appeared to have suffered some accident which had tilted her head but not her face, her features appearing as if on a steep slope. My own failure to portray their failure made the day too heavy so I left for my customary long walk, down towards Camden, through Regents Park, and soon, before my body knew it, into and past Oxford Street.

It is normally in the midst of other plans that our real life finds its path. Poor, sad, and hungry, I stopped in a café off Regent’s street. Across from my table stood a small, dark shop with an Italian name and a clearly expensive display of men’s accessories. I stirred the dregs of a coffee I couldn’t afford and decided that things couldn’t be much worse than now and, before I knew it, I was entering that shop and smelling for the first time the scent of rich fresh leather. And money, real money, that too.

Once the sales assistant, a harshly handsome man, was certain I was not there to beg or steal, he did me the service of at least appearing to listen to my application and, apparently, wrote down my information, although, in hindsight, he could have been writing down his shopping list or composing a sonnet. As we were about to finish, in stormed the then manager, who proceeded to let loose a torrent of angry vowels at the sales assistant, and after a heated discussion both turned to me. Did I have sales experience, he asked in heavily accented English? I did. Had I a decent suit? I had, just. Was I good at Maths? I was. And to prove it the manager unleashed a series of stock entries from the accounts book that I was meant to mentally calculate in front of them.

After being clogged down by the subjective ambiguity of art for so long, it was a pleasure to let myself find the answers where they should be rather than where they could be. My mind felt as if it was swimming through clean water, the numbers coming to me like warmth. I was right. He tested me again, and again I was right.

The next day I returned in my only suit and I would keep returning for the next two decades, then as a minimum-wage shop assistant, now, in a variety of bespoke suits, as the national manager, and still, to this day, waking up waiting for that smell of new leather, and the look of enjoyable scandal on the face of a new customer as they part with their precious money on a gift for themselves that they will never regret.

As I walked home that first day I was astonished at how easy a dream can die. That was it. No more. I was done. I returned home and threw all my work into the outside bins, with yesterday’s food and last week’s waste. I was not sad, but instead amazed at how weak our deepest desires really are, and that, in all probability, we will all might find ourselves in the last place we would have looked. And find ourselves there smiling.

Last night I was awoken by the touch of my wife’s reaching hand on my back-turned shoulder. Suddenly alert, I spun over awaiting her semi-conscious embrace but she was gone, lost in her dream, and I was confronted instead with only her silent snores and her corpse-like mouth. And I thought, ‘How strange to be so surprised by such basic tenderness!’ And then I too was lost there, in the debris of my own dream, awake and a slave to my non-returning slumber.

I am normally a solidly regular sleeper so as I lay there I recalled the last night I had been unable to find rest, perhaps half a year ago. I had suffered " yes, no other word will do " an erotic dream of such sexual potency that it startled me from my sleep. I was breathless and damp. My penis had not been so forceful, so desperate, since my adolescence. It raged.

My mind had been watching myself prepare to perform oral-sex on what was assumed to be a previous, now long-forgotten colleague of mine. Although I knew it was her, I also knew it wasn’t: her face was different, more angular, more streamlined; her eyes narrow and accusing; the hair the same raven black but shorter, falling just below her shoulders as opposed to above her waist. I had never slept with her, never tried, nor seen more of her flesh than summertime calves and forearms, yet I was certain that this dreamt-body was also fraudulent: the breasts thinner and further apart, the n*****s too dark and slim for what I was sure was her reality.

All of this occurred only in my post-dream state, and, as we all know, may not have happened at all and is simply a safety system of my mind to protect itself from any uncomfortable truth. What is true, and is remembered to this night, is what gave me thoughts of such carnal ferocity. I remember that in the middle of her c**t " cleanly shaven, closely packed " was a slither of space where nothing was, a void into which I was about to enter, tongue first.

How could that image hold such power over me? To this day I do not know. But then, that night, I lay trembling, my heart a dancing beat, my whole being succumbed to, to, to what? Fear? - certainly. But more: a desire that verged on murderous and a heavier than lead question " Was it now, now it was all far too late, that my sexual self had awoken? No, not reborn, I was never, and had never wanted to be, a ladies’ man; my libido had always been on a leash. Tonight, 43 years old, I was like a teenage boy again, full of heat and hunger, sleeping next to a woman who had not slept with me for months, and, all cards on the table, may not ever again: a sad thing, but not so sad as it would be, for both of us, the best.

I left the bed stealthily, an act I was more than used to accomplishing after many nights of stupidly drinking anything after 10pm, and tiptoed, my c**k leading the way, to the bathroom.

Once there, I stood above the toilet and masturbated for all of five seconds before all my semen jumped into the toilet, my legs quivering, my mouth open and twisted. A quick yet thorough clean, a half flush with the lid closed and then I went to wash the guilt off my hands.

As the water whispered through my fingers, I looked into the mirror to see the man I had become. My hair was thin and high, my lines too deep to dismiss as simply fatigue, eyes that were more than tired, a mouth circled my colourless lips. No matter how I dressed reality up, the truth remained: I sold shoes, I was a shoe salesman. Gone, long dead, was the teenage artist living in poverty, living for art and the life it led. A wife and a house and a car and money and twenty years and the mute horror of finding that you don’t like where you belong. ‘How did I get here and is here a where I should be?’ Who has never asked themselves that question: who has ever heard the answer?

And it was at that exact moment that I realised I had gone past half-way, the scale had slipped, and there was now less of me when before there had been more. What I felt was not sympathy for myself but rather almost a hemorrhaging of love for my wife, and, as strange as it sounds, for all us poor humans, doomed to be forever ourselves, each of us shackled to the unavoidably tragic comedy of being anyone at all.

That night was different because, moments later, I was soon asleep. But tonight I’m still here, my wife and her soft hands on the other side of the bed, a whole world away. Is there anything sadder than a painter losing his painting? Yes - a marriage losing its love, a life losing its life. I remain awake. But dawn draws close; its sun frames the windows.