Vincent is less outrageous with the pints. He becomes a bit more Meath. He’s funny, his guard is down. In The Stag’s Head, we bump into some people who belong to him and they seem quite normal and to like him a lot.
When he invites me to his, I accept. He unlocks the front door to his ground floor apartment and flicks on the lights. He has a home gym in his front room.
‘It’s styled after Eugen Sandow,’ he says as I check it out.
‘Who’s that?’
‘The Father of Bodybuilding.’
The barbell’s weights are iron balls. There’s a pull-up bar on the wall and a rickety-looking seated leg press machine near the window. In the corner, a red Everlast punch bag is hung, and it’s jarringly modern against everything else.
I follow him through to the kitchen. Empty iron pots and pans sit on top of a woodburning stove. Assorted china plates and cups fill a wooden dresser against the wall. Vincent offers me a sloe gin that he brewed himself.
I read a poem framed on the walclass="underline"
‘The Shortest and Sweetest of Songs’
by George MacDonald
Come
Home.
I drink some of the red-coloured gin and it’s harsh on my throat. Vincent comes closer to me. I swallow another mouthful and he takes my glass and puts it down, then leans in. He kisses me with passion and it’s not long before we fumble down the hall to his bedroom.
We strip in an ungainly way, and Vincent tears a condom wrapper with his teeth. I lie on the bed and he scuttles in beside me. He leans on one arm and tries to smooth the condom on with his free hand.
He grumbles and lies down, using both his hands. I wait.
‘I think this contraption is inside out,’ he says with a sigh. He throws it onto the floor.
I slow my breathing. ‘These things happen. Do you have any others?’
‘I do, yeah, but…’ he says and pauses, looks down.
I follow his eyes.
‘Blazes to this.’
His body is rigid with disappointment. I move closer, cuddle into him. I fall asleep with my head on his chest.
We try again in the morning and the sex is decent. I feel so relieved that my body is okay and it’s happened mostly without awkwardness.
He pets my hair. His eyes are green but have brown on the outer circle, his eyelashes are lengthy. His bed has the same lavender scent as his skin.
‘I read a book on hysterical paroxysm. Would you like to try?’
‘Sounds painful,’ I say. ‘What is it?’
‘It was an orgasm that women achieved by doctors trying to calm them down.’
‘Yeah?’
‘I saw some illustrations. You can tell me to stop at any time.’
‘Okay, give it a go so.’
He hits somewhere inside that makes me involuntarily shudder, my voice is faraway from the point I’m aware of, where he touches me. Is this my g-spot? My breath is hard and short and loud. I’m not sure I’ve ever felt anything as pleasurable.
I lie unmoving for about ten minutes after, except for trying to settle my breathing. I suddenly remember something, bolt out of the bed in one swift motion. ‘I better go to the bathroom.’
Though it’s unsexy to break the moment, a UTI for the following days is even more unappealing.
‘Second door on the right,’ he says.
I almost limp there. The bathroom’s checked black and white tiles are cool on my bare feet. My breathing echoes. I feel love-hormoned up.
I check my face in the mirror, clean the black make-up that’s bled under my eyes and swallow some of the minty paste in a container on the sink.
I take the first door on the left but it’s a wrong turn. This is not his bedroom.
It’s like walking into the Natural History Museum with the smell of cosmoline and framed butterfly displays. I gasp in horror at them. Every wall is covered. The butterflies have a little marker underneath saying their species’ common and Latin name and where they come from. The Sooty Cooper from Germany. The White Barred Charaxes from Mozambique.
In the centre of the room is a big mahogany desk with files and instruments. I wander around naked, looking at everything.
There’s a guidebook and a jar with a trapped yellow winged butterfly bumping into the glass as it tries to fly, to escape. A moment from a creepy old film drops into my mind, something I saw years ago. I can’t quite visualize it, it’s at the edge of my memory but has a disturbing feel to it. It was about a butterfly collector who murders the girl he caught when butterflies weren’t enough for him.
Is Vincent going to try to kill me? Ugh. I slept with him. This is why. This is why they say not to have sex with strangers. And Silence of the Lambs, doesn’t that have some butterfly psychopath too?
How am I going to make a quick getaway?
I go back to his bedroom and gather my clothes from the floor. I dress hastily. Vincent looks childlike as he naps. I feel a pang of connection towards him.
‘Something’s wrong?’ he asks, sleepy-mouthed.
‘No.’
‘Nat, was it me? Did I put pressure on you?’
‘No. No. I wanted it too.’
‘I can make you some breakfast? I have these delicious lychees from the Temple Bar markets.’
‘Vincent, I feel a bit funny.’
‘Why?’
‘I saw all the butterflies.’
‘And?’
‘Do you collect them or something?’
‘Is it a problem?’
‘Isn’t it murder?’
‘No. Not really.’ He sits up. ‘If the collection is created from a species that isn’t endangered, there’s no problem.’
‘It’s kind of murder.’
‘Natalie, insects are dynamic. I’m sustaining them. I wouldn’t harm them. I’ve been growing some alder buckthorn in my back garden to cultivate them.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I could sell them to collectors on the internet. And then I could opt out of things and survive financially. The appreciation of lepidoptera is my passion.’
Full-time butterfly murdering.
‘It’s all ethical. I swear.’
I slip on my ballerina pump shoes.
‘When you were younger, Nat, did you not go into the woods with a net, collecting?’ Vincent asks.
‘No. I watched MTV or went to the playground or visited friends.’
‘Town life. When I was a boy, and I’ve realized that I probably knew more about myself and the world when I was eight than now, twenty-seven years later, I’d go outside and sometimes I could see butterflies flying and glimmering in the sunshine like gold coins in the sky. We’d all these wildflowers and bushes growing abundantly around our farmhouse. Nature gifting us with beauty, ceaselessly.’
‘But you grow butterflies to kill them?’
‘Nowadays, where can we find this pure environmental awe amidst the concrete, the noise? Kids are hard-pressed to know much about nature outside of their classrooms. They can’t even climb trees without their parents filling in forms. And even then, they can’t be fucked.’
‘It makes me worried to think you kill things.’
‘Natalie, the thing you should be worried about is apathy. People don’t care about the destruction of our countryside. Of all our green areas being sold for property and roads. That’s the actual killing that’s going on. The killing of our environment. And these children now being raised hooked on screens and not knowing or giving a fuck about the natural world. What will happen when they become adults?’