Day 62: Coming in or going out

Paul stood in the doorway of the living room. He had made it this far, but could go no further. His mother was watching Holby City with the sound up loud, a can of Dark Fruits on the coffee table beside her.

"You coming in or going out?" she called.

He was doing neither.

He'd been over it in his head, over and over, for the last three hours. But he could not, now it came to it, go all the way. He could not say it.

It was different to when you had it straight in your head. It was now and it was horrendous. His tongue felt fat in his mouth. He was dizzy. It was like he was down inside something that was wide and lashing above him. He decided to escape back up to his room.

But he couldn't come downstairs, stand in the doorway, then go back up. That would be weird. So instead he went into the front room and pretended to be studying the street out of the bay window.

"Is it bins tonight?" he asked. "I feel like it's blue bins tonight. I can't see any of the neighbours' bins. But maybe they haven't taken them out yet. I was coming downstairs and I just thought, is it blue bins tonight?"

His mum didn't look up from the screen. "Blues on Monday, moron."

"Oh, of course. Well that's good. It's almost full already, with those magazines from tidying my room and everything. I just didn't want us to forget."

"I'm glad you finally got rid of those lads mags, Paul. They're basically porn. They give you unrealistic ideas about women. You don't want to grow up like that."

Paul swallowed. It was as if God was listening, giving him his chance. It was now.

"Mum..." he began.

"I know, I know, it's gross when I talk like that. I won't say no more."

Paul could hear his heart beating. He sat and listened to his heart beating. He sat and listened and sat and listened, and slowly felt the moment slip away.

On Holby City one of the doctors was having an affair with one of the surgeons and the doctor's husband had just found out. Paul's mum drained her Dark Fruits and shook the can.

"Be a darl and get your poor old mam another cider," she said.

It was her evening off. She wasn't back in the factory while midday tomorrow.

Paul decided it would help to leave the room and gather his resources. He went to the kitchen, opened the fridge, stood looking inside. He gazed at the half cauliflower, the bag of wet carrots, the crusting remains of the pasta bake from the night before. It was just Paul and his mum. She meant everything to him.

He pulled a can off the ring pull and took it back into the front room.

She mussed his hair.

He sat down next to her and looked ahead. On the telly the doctor's husband was yelling and the doctor was crying. Paul looked at the wall.

He swallowed.

He couldn't tell her.

What would the other women at the factory say? He knew how their sons all talked at school, the words they used. They had to get it from somewhere. His mum found it hard enough at work as it was. She wasn't good at making friends. He didn't want to make it harder.

But by the same token she was the most important person in the world to him. How could he not tell her?

"This show is dumb," he said.

"Shh."

"It's not... people aren't like this. Relationships aren't like this."

"You'd know, Casanova!"

He stared ahead. The room opened before him. The walls were going to swallow him. His tongue was enormous. His forehead prickled. Everything was thudding. Everything was exactly as it was.

"Mum," he said. "I threw the magazines out because I didn't need them. I didn't want them. They were just... I felt I should have them. But they weren't... what I wanted."

On Holby City the doctor's husband was the one now crying. He cried and while sobbing he said he couldn't believe that the doctor had lied to him. The doctor replied tearfully that it was their relationship that had been a lie, it bad been a lie from the start and she couldn't live that lie any longer.

Paul's mum was watching the drama. She was listening to Paul, but not hearing.

"I'm glad you didn't want them," she said.

"The thing is, Mum... the thing is... they weren't for me. Maybe other magazines, but not those."

His mum turned to him. "Paul," she said. "It's OK. I understand."

Paul looked at his mum.

"You don't have to be ashamed," she said. "I won't judge you."

The air was alive in front of Paul's face. The air was electric.

"You don't have to make excuses," his mum said. "Don't worry what I said before. It's completely natural for you to enjoy looking at a bit of bush." She let out a long cackle. "You're a healthy boy. There's nowt wrong with it."

But that was almost precisely the problem.

Paul let his breath out a long, long way. He let his shoulders sag. He couldn't say it. How could you say it?

On the television the husband wrestled with the doctor fiercely and the two crashed through the apartment, into the bookcase, around the dresser, through the balcony doors, over the railing, and down to the street below, the lie they had been living finally having engulfed them both.

The credits played, and then the news, and then Paul went back upstairs.

- - -

So that was a writing prompt called Idiomatic. It involved creating a scene based on an idiom -- in this case "Beat around the bush" -- which scene had to also contain the literal use of one of the figurative words from the phrase -- so here it was the word "bush".

I didn't get there, I don't feel, it didn't quite come together. But it was fun trying, and it's 03:30 now after a long shift and I have to put this up and go to bed. Back on the open tomorrow, for my sins. TTFN