Re: THE SEDUCTION
Posted by:
lg (---.ca.charter.com)
Date: March 14, 2022 12:53PM
The Seduction
--Eileen McAuley
After the party, early Sunday morning,
He led her to the quiet bricks of the Birkenhead docks.
Far past the silver stream of the traffic through the city,
Far from the blind windows of the tower blocks.
He sat in the darkness, leather jacket creaking madly,
He spat in the river, fumbled in a bag.
He handed her the vodka, and she knocked it back like water,
She giggled, drunk and nervous, and he muttered ‘little slag’.
She had met him at the party, and he’d danced with her all night,
He’d told her about football; Sammy Lee and Ian Rush,
She had nodded, quite enchanted, and her eyes were wide and bright
As he enthused about the Milk Cup, and the next McGuigan fight.
As he brought her more drinks, so she fell in love
With his eyes as blue as iodine,
With the fingers that stroked her neck and thighs
And the kisses that tasted of nicotine.
Then: ‘I’ll take you to the river where I spend my afternoons,
When I should be t school, or eating me dinner.
Where I go, by meself, with me dad’s magazines
And a bag filled with shimmering, sweet paint thinner.’
So she followed him there, all high white shoes,
All wide blue eyes, and bottles of vodka.
And sat in the dark, her head rolling forward
Towards the frightening scum on the water.
And talked about school, in a disjointed way:
About O Levels she’d be sitting in June
She chattered on, and stared at the water,
The Mersey, green as a septic wound.
Then, when he swiftly contrived to kiss her
His kiss was scented by Listerine
And she stifled a giggle, reminded of numerous
Stories from teenage magazines…..
When she discovered she was three months gone
She sobbed in the cool, locked darkness of her room
And she ripped up all he My Guy and her Jackie photo-comics
Until they were just bright paper, like confetti, strewn
On the carpet. And on that day, she broke her heels
Of her high white shoes (as she flung them at the wall).
And realised, for once, that she was truly truly frightened
But more than that, cheated by the promise of it all.
For where, now, was he summer of her sixteenth year?
Full of glitzy fashion features, and stories of romance?
Where a stranger could lead you to bright worlds,
And how would you know, if you never took a chance?
Full of glossy horoscopes, and glamour with a stammer;
Full of fresh fruit diets – how did she feel betrayed?
Now, with a softly rounded belly, she was sickened every morning
By stupid stupid promises only tacitly made.
Where were the glossy photographs of summer,
Day trips to Blackpool, jumping all the rides?
And where, now, were the pink smiling faces in the picture:
Three girls paddling in the grey and frothy tide?
So she cried that he had missed all the innocence around her
And all the parties where you meet the boy next door,
Where you walk hand in hand, in an acne’d wonderland,
With a glass of lager-shandy, on a carpeted floor.
But, then again, better to be smoking scented drugs
Or festering, invisibly unemployed.
Better to destroy your life in modern man-made ways
Than to fall into this despicable, feminine void.
Better to starve yourself, like a sick precocious child
Than to walk through town with a belly huge and ripe.
And better, now, to turn away, move away, fade away,
Than to have the neighbours whisper that ‘you always looked the type’.
Les
Post Edited (03-14-05 12:56)