Husband Honey

Failing at failing and other delicious paradoxes

Mango

It’s cosy under the duvet covers.

They don’t like to sleep facing each other. She cuddles up to the radiator, her muffled snores emanating from deep within the pillow. He lies near her, sprawled, a human’s width away; one arm draped over the edge of the bed, mouth ever so slightly open. A right pair of gorms, they are.

He sleeps soundly when she’s near. He doesn’t mind if the duvet falls away to expose his bare skin. He falls so deeply under the heavy blanket of slumber that he rarely feels the cold. If he does, she’ll be there to lay a warm hand across his chest; to play absent-mindedly with the soft fuzz that ever so slightly resembles Batman’s mark. She’ll tangle her fingers into his soft curls and, with warm breath, traces kisses over his cheek.

The sun rises and the shadows bend from East to North to West.

They stir. Once wakefulness resumes, they banish the distance between them. Palm to palm. Cheek to shoulder. Hip to hip. 

His beard grazes her neck. Electricity courses through limbs and lips and her heart quickens in shameless pleasure. They chuckle over something or nothing and she feigns offence. His hold tightens and they playfully struggle. He soothes her once more with a graze of the neck. She falls in on herself; limp like a bad souffle. He gently molds her into his frame and mumbled sighs caress her ear. 

‘This is nice,’ she yawns, sleepily.

‘I’m going to put a mango up your chuff.’

She’s facing away from him, but she can easily picture the mischievous grin that has just spread itself across his face like warm butter.

‘You’re easily the most horrific person I’ve ever met, you know that?’ she smiles.

‘I know. I’m also going to open up an umbrella inside you. To see if it’s bad luck.’

The playful struggle resumes and she laughs wildly. 

‘Let me go, you dirty pervert.’

‘Nope. I like winding you up. I also like how you persistently seem to believe that you’re stronger than me, when we’ve seen on many occasions that that simply isn’t the case.’

She smiles in fair agreement and relaxes her grip. He gathers her up in his arms and rests his cheek in the crook of her neck. 

They chuckle at one another, both knowing that the next ludicrous obscenity is about to punctuate the otherwise perfectly romantic atmosphere.

Mango up the chuff or not, at that moment she knows.

She just knows.

Why I am Still Single: Reason #9

The crisp winter air bites at my rosy cheeks and I curse being a smoker during these cold months. My fingers stiffen as the cold spreads to my bones and my friend and I reminisce about the warmth of the pub, as though it were a lifetime ago that we’d been there.

Minutes pass before a sympathetic barman joins us outside to activate the heat lamps. A flicked switch, a blast of heat and suddenly we’re all bathed in scarlet light. A combination of his easy smile and my general gratitude for the fluidity returning to my fingers leaves me with a different kind of warm feeling. He’s handsome and I’m far too easily disarmed by kind eyes and a lovely smile.

Having never been what (dull) society would describe as a ‘normal’ woman, I can’t really begin to know how a normal woman should behave around a handsome man, therefore it’s difficult to explain why I did… what I did… next.

“Rob… look,” I turn to my friend, positioning myself underneath one of the the crimson heat lamps and stretching out as though reclining upon an imaginary deck chair. “Okay, what am I? Go on, guess. What am I?”

“I have no idea. You look insane.”

“Go onnn. Guess.”

“Really, really don’t know.”

“I’M A LIZARD! In a tank. Like with the red light and… no?”

Rob palms his own face and laughs at me. Or with me. Or just generally near me.

The handsome barman raises and eyebrow and smirks, before heading back inside.

That was funny, right? I’M FUNNY.

2011


I gained a degree and surpassed everyone’s expectations, shared three different houses with ten different people, went commando, ate so much bacon, broke into a building just to see the view from the rooftop, got kicked in the head at Live Lounge, kissed strangers, kissed friends, kissed Phill Jupitus, heard Rob proclaim the average human to have 206 teeth, ended up in A&E for being clumsy (twice), stood up and presented ideas to ITV and the BBC, consistently made sure the queen could breathe, braided James’ hair into his beard, performed in a Bare Knuckle Productions play, loved and grieved in equal measure, and finally, found the breastplate stretcher. 

Thank you to those who picked me up, dusted me off, fed me ice cream and stroked my hair when things went tits up. You’re all BAMFs and I love you more than I love Brendan Blake and his barely hominoid, milk-fed gimp.

Happy New Year.

Silly

Him:

“Why do you look sad? No sad face.”

Me:

Nuzzling into his chest and mumbling incoherently.

“If Robert Baratheon could only come back and save everyone then nobody would die and everyone would be alive and we could all have a big chicken.”

Him: Chuckling at my idiocy.

“You’re lovely and silly. Face. Now. Kiss my face.”

The Definition of Romance

I’m at work and butterflies intermittently swarm within my stomach. It’s ridiculous but I can’t help it. I know he’s coming over after both of our shifts end and I count the minutes with bated anticipation. For a fledgeling couple we’ve dealt with things far beyond anything we ever expected to have to, but something pulls us inexorably back together. There’s something very beautiful, frightening and inexplicable between us and I can’t wait to see him again.

I scuttle home after my shift ends and flop exhaustedly upon my bed. I decide I’ll just rest my eyes for a moment and then I’ll get back up, straighten out my bedroom, smooth out my hair and apply a lick of eyeliner. When I see his dark silhouette against the melting gold of the morning sunrise I’ll open the door, drape my arms around him and gently bite his lower lip. He’ll guide us both back into the house, still fixed in a jigsaw kiss and allow a hand to creep across my lower back. I’ll lead him to the garden and we’ll watch the smoke unfurl from each others’ mouths; hands entwined, fingers kissed. Upstairs we’ll peel away our clothes and crawl under blankets, tessellating ourselves leg to lip. I’ll entangle my fingers into his hair and breathe him in. He’ll offer the nook of his neck to my cheek and we’ll drift off in no time at all. We’ll sleep until noon and I won’t have nightmares. 

I was woken at 7:00am by the irregular tapping of pebbles at my window. I sat bolt upright, my face streaked with pink pillow marks, still in my work uniform with hair so wild it could only have been described as ‘Irish’. Clamouring for my phone, I was met with five missed calls and two texts. Oh God. Oh shitting God God God. My keys. WHERE ARE MY KEYS? The pebble taps came steadily as I ransacked my room before hammering down the stairs and fumbling awkwardly with the front door. Our gazes locked and he smirked in his stupidly handsome way. 

Then we laughed.

He pulled me into a tight embrace and playfully encouraged me to congratulate him upon his incredibly romantic if not slightly disorientating method of capturing my attention from sleep. Admittedly, it was a little bit lovely. It is, however, difficult to romanticise the reason we were up and about at such an ungodly hour. GOOD MORNING, GUM CLINIC.

It’s something we had joked about in the past; he said it would be a bonding experience and we could make a day of it. It became a reality not so long later, after I had been horrified to learn that my lover had never been for an STI check-up. I practically frog-marched him down there. Oddly enough, we did sort of make a day of it. We laughed and joked our way through the waiting room, musing over who’d picked up which diseases under which circumstances and how many we might potentially recognise as people we’d slept with in the waiting room. Incidentally, Him 1 - 0 Me. The tart. 

“Do you think if I come here several times they’ll give me a loyalty card and I’ll get a free coffee at the end?”

“I think they’re more likely to offer you a free vasectomy.”

We held hands and he peppered my forehead with kisses. He did sudoku. I read for a while. He doodled on the back of a Metro and taught me about the Latin cases: nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, ablative, and vocative. He talked about how his favourite Latin word was “bellum” because when you recited it within the appropriate cases it sounded funny. To me it just sounded like “plumplumplumplumplum”. He scrawled the word “vaginae” and tossed the paper aside for the education of some other poor soul who was waiting to be poked, scratched and scraped.

After the doctor had seen me, I checked my Twitter, laughing at the abundance of Snoop-Dogg-is-in-my-hometown tweets. I texted him from the consultation room.

“Snoop Dogg is tweeting about Albany Fish Bar. Today is a good day.”

“Are you sat in stirrups and tweeting?”

“No…”

I’d rather spend the whole morning being tested for STIs with him than spend a single moment with any other man.

If you believe that romance is dead, then you’ve clearly never learned to define it yourself.

Why I am Still Single: Reason #8

So I’m working as a waitress in a cocktail bar. That much is true.

A young man enters. He’s handsome with oatmeal-blonde hair and an easy, unassuming smile. I barely disguise my delight at the sight of him and we exchange warm pleasantries. This isn’t the first time we’ve met; the bartender-customer dynamic is newly sculpted, fortified with discussions of neurological disorders in medieval history, our both having lived in the States, Cuba Libres and the fact that he looks quite a bit like Draco Malfoy. Unable to contain this information, I mention the Slytherin comparison to him and he muses jovially that he’s also been likened to Daniel Radcliffe. He’s just lovely. Intelligent, polite, witty and, visually, a hybrid of the men that dominated my childhood fantasies.

I cock my head to one side and study him carefully for a moment before murmuring, “Good God, you are the bastard love-child of Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy.”

Based on the look I received immediately after this utterance I can only presume that I forgot to adjust my expression from sexual-hunger-pouncing-imminent to amusement-mingled-with-surprise. 

He takes a long sip of his drink and diverts his eyes away.

I scold myself for being bad at faces.