Cinnamon Twigs (21 page)

             
‘You’re not getting out of this one with your gab!’ she scoffed. ‘I find it so funny how differently men shop. I love looking for bargains, searching through the aisles, seeing if there are any hidden gems.’

             
‘And most men just want to get the hell out of the shop.’

             
‘Why’s that, do you reckon?’

             
‘Because there are a bunch of crazy women who think they’re David Dickinson taking up the whole bloody place…’

             
‘
Touché
. A palpable hit, you poo-head!’

             
‘Have you seen
Dawn of the Dead
?’

             
‘No, I don’t think so. What’s it about?’

              ‘It’s a zombie film by George A. Romero. There’s a zombie epidemic and the survivors have to hide in a shopping mall. Inevitably the undead get in and shit goes down: people get dismembered, reanimated as zombies, they have to fight these extremely dodgy customers. The protagonist, Peter, contemplates suicide at the end of the movie but escapes in a helicopter…’

             
‘Right… So what?’ Lauren asked.

             
‘Well, most of us blokes feel like Peter when we go shopping.’

             
‘That was a beautiful story. Wish you’d given me the edited version though…’

             
The following days elapsed quickly. We were soon back at the airport, inhaling the cool night air for the last time.

             
‘This has been lush.’ Lauren beamed.

             
‘Even though we were brassic today?’

             
‘Hmm, we’re a bit skint at the moment, but that’s because you insisted on spending money all the time, and never haggled.’

             
I touched her cheek.

             
‘This is where it starts,’ I said. ‘We go back home as husband and wife. We have to look after each other.’

             
‘But of course.’

             
‘Love you, babe,’ I whispered in her ear.

             
When our plane took off, we gazed out of the window, my arm around her shoulder. The bright lights of the airport flashed ceaselessly, breaking through the night’s dark veil. The waves lingered on the shore as the plane passed over water. Our honeymoon had ended. Our new lives began together.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

Faliraki

I hadn’t been abroad much at that point in my life. My honeymoon was totally opposite to one of my more recent holidays, which had been with Michael a few years before. We’d gone on a ‘lads’ holiday’ - albeit with just the two of us - to Faliraki, in the Greek island of Rhodes. This little vacation had taken place before I met Lauren and after I’d broken up with Lisa, so we were two single young men, both extremely sexually frustrated at the time. I’d been
desperate to get into shape for the beach (we never made it to the beach
once
while there) and had cut my fat levels down to the lowest they’d been since I was a toddler. I looked toned but slightly lanky. Anyway, no idea why I’m commenting on what shape I was in. I guess it’s just one of the main things I remember. How hard Michael and I worked to get in the best shape possible for that holiday, mainly so we’d get laid. We were both desperate to loosen inhibitions, meet pretty girls and ‘get some shagging done,’ as Michael aptly put it. We’d been so excited at the prospect of getting past our horrible dry patches and sleeping in some wet patches.

             
‘We’ll have a girl each, every night we’re there I reckon, dude,’ he assured me as we arrived at the airport.

             
An ultra-competitive game of air hockey (we nearly killed a few people with the ballistic puck) in the airport and then a four hour long journey on the plane, during which Michael, being as sexually frustrated as he was, felt the urge to relieve himself in the toilets and then claim he’d joined the ‘Mile High Club.’

             
‘You’re fucking disgusting,’ I told him as he came back panting.

             
‘It’s just a tactical ready for tonight…’

             
‘Nice. Doesn’t count though.’

             
The night air was warm when we arrived, the scent of cigarette smoke delicious. We finally made it onto our coach after seeking the help of some very rude and ‘pignorant’ drivers; Michael let them know his opinion of them in a stream of innovative slurs. It was steadily approaching 1am and we desperately wanted to drop our stuff off at the hotel and ‘get on it’ at the nearest strip of clubs.

             
The hotel manager was a corpulent, tough looking Greek who showed us our understated room, number 238: one single bed and a visibly uncomfortable sofa beside the balcony, with tile flooring that burned your feet if you weren’t wearing flip-flops, plain white walls and a cheap television we never bothered watching.

             
‘Enjoy your stay.’ The manager smiled. His smile said ‘Welcome to my country’, his eyes said, ‘Don’t fuck around here, British’.

             
We changed into some fresh white shirts and three-quarter length jeans and ordered a taxi.

             
‘Don’t drink anything that’s not in a bottle,’ the driver recommended. ‘Stay away from the vodka. It’s dangerous here, boys - plus the bar staff generally don’t bother with measures, so avoid ordering doubles.’

             
‘Right,’ I said as we got out of the taxi. ‘Let’s get some triple fucking vodkas then!’

             
The first night hurt the bank. Spent seventy euros in total, which was more than double the amount of money I needed. We got dangerously drunk. It must have been the shittest club in Faliraki. We danced to cheesy music like the
Ghostbusters
theme and Dolly bloody Parton’s
9 to 5
. We loved house music, dance and trance. Hated cheese. But the double, triple, quadruple and sometimes even quintuple vodkas, which were indeed poured without any consideration for measures, deafened us to the anathematic music.

             
Streaks of light gilded the sky as we smoked cigarettes on the hotel balcony at 6am. I’ve got no idea what we talked about, or how we even got back to the hotel in the first place. The night was an indistinct album of flashbacks involving bouncers with arms like tree-trunks, a flirtatious barmaid who just wanted us to come back the next night, and our complete and utter failure to pull.

             
Michael puffed on a cigarette, leant forward and vomited all over the balcony floor.

             
‘That’s horrendous,’ I said. ‘We’ve got to clean that up!’

             
And then I vomited. Numerous times. Michael ran to the bathroom to get rid of the putrid vodka in his belly. I stumbled into our room, completely naked.

             
‘Hurry up in there!’ I knocked the bathroom door.

             
‘Fuck off, man.’

             
‘I need to spew again. Oh, shit!’

             
I ran back to the balcony, leant forward and projected a fine stream of chunder over the side (think green pea soup in
The Exorcist
). I looked down to see the manager covered in my vomit.

             
‘Ah, he won’t bother coming up. Happens all the time I suspect,’ I babbled.

             
A knock on the door. The corpulent manager barged in, snatched my towel to wipe the sick from his matted hair.

             
‘You come to my country and you be sick. Why you be sick?’ he growled.

             
‘Mate, nobody in this room has been sick.’

             
As I said those words, Michael made an unnecessarily loud retching noise. The manager pulled me over to the balcony, which resembled the orlop deck of the Titanic, if the Titanic had sunk in an ocean of spew.

             
‘You fucking lie to me, British! I will fuck you up. I call the police. You think you big man with your cock out, eh?’

             
Being drunk, I had to suppress an urge to punch this puissant prick. Fortunately, I apologized repeatedly and he fucked off after giving me the warning, ‘One more bad thing come from you and I kick you out of hotel! Clean up sick.’

             
I spent the rest of the morning vomiting while on the sofa, which would be my bed for the rest of the week. Michael had to clean everything up as I couldn’t move. It had been a bad start to the holiday, but at that age we were careless and ignorant. As long as we had fun nothing else mattered.

             
‘You’re not drinking tonight,’ Michael said. ‘We can’t risk you spewing over the balcony or pissing the manager off in any way again.’

             
‘Oh, piss off,’ I mumbled. ‘We’re getting on it.’

             
The next few nights were just as heavy. But the manager stayed away for a while, only showing his hatred for me with the odd scowl whenever I passed through the reception area. The heat was stifling in Rhodes that week, and we often caught sight of helicopters lifting giant buckets of water and traveling towards nearby forests. Our stinking hangovers meant we rarely went outside, residing instead in our stale vomit-scented room. So our tans weren’t great. We’d go to the pool area just as the heat died down and then force alcohol down our throats, join the club reps and various strangers united in the love for dance music and booze. 

             
We paid the club reps thirty euros for a free bar one night. The barman told us to calm down as we ordered ‘Zombie Flesh Eaters’ (a crazy concoction involving spirits we’d never heard of) at every opportunity.

             
‘Oh, come on, just pour the drinks!’

             
Playing drinking games with ‘Zombie Flesh Eaters’ was dodgy business. There must have been sixty of us in total, being guided by the reps to our final club destination after three hours of intense drinking. I remember turning around and seeing people drop like intoxicated flies.

             
‘Christ, people are fainting!’ I said to myself.

             
A hand helped me up from the dusty ground. A rep told me the next day I’d belly-flopped onto a parked moped. Michael and I discovered that night that sharing a room for a week (we often argued over whose turn it was to clean the dishes) and drinking too much alcohol meant we were at each other’s throats. Back at the tarnished balcony we had an argument (neither of us remembered what it was about the next day), which resulted in me throwing a chair at the wall. Michael had to sleep in a bed full of glass for the rest of the holiday due to the chair smashing a nearby lampshade.

             
‘Why did you throw a chair at the wall?’ he asked the next day.

             
‘It was either that or punch you. I had to vent my anger.’

             
‘Should have just punched me…’

             
We ignored the hole in the wall (about the size of a fifty pence coin) until the last day, when the manager came up with the troglodyte cleaning lady. Every morning this golem-like creature would shout as us: ‘Is not clean!’ On the last day she said nothing, so we knew something was amiss. She’d grassed us up to the manager.

             
‘There are clothes everywhere. You be sick on first night. Glass smashed. Hole in wall. We have to take wall out, put plasterboard in, paint over plasterboard. Will cost you much money.’

             
I was willing to pay ten euros for the broken lampshade. But the astronomical fee he wanted for the wall was well beyond my means. We had to share a tin of beans on the last day. That’s how skint we were. I rang my mother and learned that her bailing me out wasn’t an option.

             
‘They’re just trying to milk you for cash,’ Michael said. ‘They’ve used
Polyfilla
on most of the walls here and done a bad job.’

             
By some divine miracle there was a hardware store down the road. I’d had enough of the hotel staff referring to me as ‘Guy with charges’ so I used the very last euros in my wallet to buy
Polyfilla
, white paint and sandpaper.

             
‘Haha! You do good job. Wall looks better than ever before!’ The manager laughed as we showed him the wall I‘d spent four hours perfecting. ‘Well done, guy with charges!’

             
‘Told you I was the better sander,’ I snapped at Michael afterwards.

             
So yeah, Faliraki and my honeymoon were very different affairs. I found myself thinking back to that holiday, of my single life with Michael. Wondering at how much had changed. What I’d lost and gained since those days of carefree immaturity. Of course, neither of us got laid that week. I came close, got a girl to straddle me on the hotel sofa and everything, but I think she was put off by the scent of my sweaty feet and the rancid spew stains. We came back more sexually frustrated than ever. And I’d lost even more weight due to all the vomiting each night. My triceps and biceps combined were the same width as my pathetic forearms.

             
Part of me wished I could go back to that lifestyle, that freedom. But I embraced the fact I’d always remember those days with Michael, always have that horny juvenile Daniel tucked away in my mind, ready to recall with a smile. I had new memories to make with my wife, and though that ‘lads’ holiday’ and my honeymoon were totally opposite, it felt like a natural, inevitable progression. 

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

T
he In-laws and the Undiscovered Country

Sunlight lanced through the trees on the afternoon I first made my way to Salisbury. It wasn’t too long before Lauren and I got married - a matter of months - when I met the future in-laws. The train chugged. I gazed at the ever-changing cyclorama outside the window. Nervous. A flurry of thoughts, hypothetical situations in my head. Meeting your partner’s family and friends is a big step in a relationship and I had to make a good impression. The picture of charm and elegance. Life often felt like an acting performance.

             
That train journey is one of those cozy memories I have, soaked in a sense of romance that probably wasn’t really there, what with the piss-stained seats, minimal leg room and afternoon drunkards. Maybe I’m just an unreliable narrator. But I’m always reminded of Paolo Nutini’s lyrics, ‘Getting off the train to see a girl that’s sweeter than an apple picked from Adam’s tree. Oh glory be!’ when I look back.

             
What solidified my realization that Lauren wasn’t just another relationship steppingstone was how close I became with her family. Her mum, Renata, was a soft-spoken unassuming woman who loved a glass of wine. What a clichéd observer might call ‘salt of the Earth’ kind of person. She was drunk when I first met her. She staggered into Lauren’s room to greet me. Unfortunately I was caught in a difficult position as Lauren and I were, well, you know. Lauren sat on the bed in front of me, carefully concealing my private articles, and we got away with it.

             
‘I’m so glad she’s pissed. We’d have definitely been caught otherwise!’ she said, a flash of scarlet passing over her face.

             
Her dad, Richard, came from a rugby family. His brothers had played both league and union professionally for English clubs. Lauren’s one uncle had even played for Great Britain Lions in league. Rich had been a hooker in the early nineties (that’s a rugby position, incidentally). So we had plenty to talk about, with me being a devout Welsh rugby fan. Even if we supported rival union sides, England and Wales. He treated his daughter like a princess and she was spoilt rotten. Lauren, like myself, was an only child. I helped wean her from daddy’s wallet, even if it did take a number of years.

             
After months of not meeting any of Lauren’s family, other than her parents, I spent two days in a row with the rest of her relatives. The first day was at a Holy Communion for her little cousin. We traveled to Salisbury together with stinking hangovers. She’d had a night out in Bristol with the girls. I’d gone on a random one in Cardiff. I often felt compelled to get drunk when she was out to lessen any worries I’d have about her safety, which was ridiculous. I missed her cousin receiving the body of Christ because I needed to go for a hangover poo. The first time I’ve ever gone to the loo in a church. Felt like blasphemy. Didn’t help that a queue of kids hurried me through the process. The hangover became worse as we went back to her aunt’s house for post-Communion celebration. People filled the kitchen area, laughing, singing, giving Lauren and me nasty headaches. But I got to meet her uncles and talk about their rugby professions. Made a good impression, especially in the eyes of her aunty Trish, who took to me. Her dad’s side of the family were loud and boisterous. Great fun. We ate some wraps Trish had prepared, munched crisps and drank plenty of fizzy pop. It meant a lot to me to meet her family, slowly ingratiate myself, and eventually become a member.

             
I met Lauren’s mother’s side the next day at a barbecue. They were a lot quieter than her dad’s lot, but very friendly. I was invited to a stag do (Lauren didn’t let me go in the end) and her cousin’s wedding ceremony (I
did
go to that). It was nice to feel so welcomed. Lauren met my aunties shortly afterwards.              

             
When we got married, everything seemed solid in our relationship. Both our families embraced us as a couple. Lauren’s parents became my parents - they really did. I could talk for hours with them, have a great laugh at the pub with her dad. My biggest regret is not asking Rich for Lauren’s hand in marriage, but the circumstances made that difficult. The one thing that caused me a lot of stress was Lauren’s desire to go traveling. She’d loved the idea of it since visiting Cuba a couple of years before we met. She’d been saving for it since graduating. I couldn’t afford to go, and I was working my arse off to get a career at home. Plus she didn’t want me to join her, wanted to go with her friend from home, Natalie. She felt I’d be overprotective and hamper the experience. I had a tendency to be paranoid and the thought of her being gone for four to five months, meeting new people, possibly other men, drove me insane. A bit of
Google
research didn’t help with provocative wankers assuring me on discussion forums that she’d be ‘clunge plunged’ by some other bloke, or that the distance would tear us apart, she’d become someone else due to her experiences. I’d witnessed the difficulties of long distance through a few of my mates, but their relationships had survived. I wouldn’t dream of stopping Lauren from doing what she wanted. Resentment becomes poison for a couple. But it hurt that she wanted to get away, to leave me at home under the pissy grey clouds of Wales as she ventured off to Vietnam, South America and New Zealand. Fortunately we lived in a world of email, text messaging and
Skype
. I had to trust her, get on with my own life in her absence.