Extracts

Acts of Desperation, by Megan Nolan

A blistering anti-romance about the seductive destruction of trying to find self-worth in the gaze of another, from one of the most exciting new voices in fiction.

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Nobody who was like that, who looked like that, lived in Dublin, or Ireland, I thought. Nobody so beautiful could live with us.

April 2012

Dublin

The first time I saw him, I pitied him terribly.

I looked around to see where the drinks were, I was thirsty, and that’s when it began.

He was standing in the gallery by a sculpture, a grotesque thing. It was pink and seemed to approximate some version of a mutated human ear.

He was deep in conversation with someone and gestured towards it vehemently as he spoke. I realised that it wasn’t the first time I’d seen him.

I’d sat across from him once in the Rathmines Library and had been struck, then as now, by him being the most beautiful man I had ever seen. We had exchanged a long glance.

I had been with someone else then, and even if I hadn’t, I had never approached a man in my life, not like that. I thought about him afterwards, and assumed he must have been passing through. Nobody who was like that, who looked like that, lived in Dublin, or Ireland, I thought. Nobody so beautiful could live with us.

Now he stood not ten feet away from me and I took him in again.

Although he didn’t seem particularly happy, he seemed undeniably whole, as though his world was contained within himself.

Ciaran was that downy, darkening blond of a baby just leaving its infancy.

He had large grey eyes, a crooked Roman nose, and a perfect cherubic mouth burning neatly beneath. The mouth was implausibly rosy and twisted a little, as though petulant, or always about to laugh. He was very tall and had the bad posture of someone who became so tall early and tried to hide it.

His hands were fine and disproportionately large, even taking into account the long limbs they were attached to. His bones seemed somehow more delicate than anyone else’s. The features of his face were lovely too, but it was the way he was structured that made you lose your bearings first. The way his cheekbones were so high that they made his eyes cruel, the way his long fingers grasped purposefully at the air as he spoke, as though arranging decorations.

The thing to understand about Ciaran is not only that he was exceptionally beautiful, but that there was an immense stillness radiating from his body. The stillness was beneath every gesture, his glances, his laughs. He sought nothing from his surroundings.

In that kind of room, around art, where the person you are talking to is always looking over your shoulder for a curator, it was especially striking. Although he didn’t seem particularly happy, he seemed undeniably whole, as though his world was contained within himself.

Is it possible to love someone without knowing them, by sight?

How can I describe what happened to me without the word love?

I stood in that gallery and felt not only sexual attraction (which I was aware of, dimly, as background noise) but what I can only describe as grave and troubling pity.

By this I don’t mean that I felt myself to be above him. For almost our entire life together I would consider Ciaran to be better than me in both essential and superficial ways.

By pity, what I mean is that just by looking at him I felt an acute tenderness for his condition: his being human. In that moment the basic affection and sorrow I feel for any human person was intensified to such a degree I could not breathe.

Ciaran was not the first beautiful man I slept with, or the first man I had obsessive feelings for, but he was the first man I worshipped.

Even now, even after all that took place between us, I still can feel how moved I am by him.

Ciaran was not the first beautiful man I slept with, or the first man I had obsessive feelings for, but he was the first man I worshipped. His body would become a site of prayer for me, a place where I could forget about my own living flesh and be only with his. It was a thing of total pleasure, total beauty.

Do you think I am unaware of calling his body a place, a thing? Do you think I am unaware of what it is to be a woman speaking this way about a man’s body? What do I know about the body of a man –and can any single one of them deserve or need a moment more of praise?

What must it feel like to be beautiful but also invisible whenever you choose to be? To be a beautiful man?

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