"Now just remember Jack you're here because it provides you with a safe platform and environment for you to be honest about your feelings."
"Oh."
"You sound surprised Jack."
"Well yes I am rather."
"Would you like to share with us why that is exactly Jack?"
"Well I thought I was here because my darling wife threatened to take a pair of scissors to my wardrobe as an aperitif to her main course which in her words would be to cut my Jacobs off in my sleep and hand them to me on a plate come the morning if I didn't attend today. So yes Meredith, I am a little bit surprised."
"Now tell me just for clarification purposes Jack, what are jacobs?"
"Are you for real? Is it not obvious?"
"No Jack I'm sorry I'm not familiar with your vernacular."
"My what?"
"Your vernacular Jack."
"Yeah I heard what you said I just don't know what it means. Do you add a dollar to the bill for everytime you say Jack by the way?"
"I'm sensing a lot of built up anger and frustration from you Jack. Would you like to share your feelings with us about that?"
"Fuck me. No, not really right now. No, I lie. Maybe try talking English so that we can all understand you. So I can understand you. We're not all PHD students you know who have happened to have swallowed a sodding dictionary on the way in here today."
"Just for clarification purposes Jack I'm not a student and that certification hanging to your left, that's a doctorate."
"It's a fucking liberty to be able to charge a couple of hundred dollars an hour is what it is."
"Maybe you'd like to explore the origins of where your open hostility comes from Jack?"
"I know the fucking answer to that already, it's her threatening to hack off my balls and serve them on a plate and you charging me christ knows how much to he here and your condescending fucking nasally tone bullshit."
"OK Jack so let me get this straight in my head, Jacobs are your testicles. Is that your pet name for them?"
"Is this a wind up? Am I being filmed? Is some idiot going to jump out from behind a door with a microphone and go 'SURRRPRRIIIISSSE JACK' and I have to resist with every ounce of willpower not to smash his smug little face in and pretend to laugh."
"No Jack this is a place to…"
"Provide a safe space for blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Yeah. I heard you the first time. Jacobs crackers, rhymes with knackers. A man's balls, his bollocks, his cajones, my cajones! You know if this was England…"
Jack suddenly realised that he didn't know where he was about to go with the rest of the sentence and remembering this wasn't England had decided to shut up. On a subconscious level perhaps he was desperate to reveal the truth but the conscious level applied the brakes on his tongue stopping it dead in its tracks. He sensibly surmised for the sake of his cajones that remaining quiet was actually the far better option at that moment. He didn't need a spade to dig a hole; he could use his mouth just as effectively.
"Catherine would you like to interject right now and share how you're feeling for us?"
'Yes Catherine I'd love for you to share how you're feeling about all this right now given it was your grand idea.' Jack thought it, but didn't dare say it out loud. He had more than an inkling of what was about to come already. Maybe best not to poke the bear and provoke it even more before it launched its attack. Instead he concentrated on thinking about what exactly led them both into this room. He couldn't remember what he'd said exactly to provoke her but he certainly remembered what came next and why afterwards neither side was prepared to give an inch.
“Must you always be such a pedant?”
“Me? That was me being merely pedantic. You know, entry level pedantry.”
“OMG Jack must you always be a complete and utter dick?
“Swearings not big and it's not clever Catherine.”
“Bit like that tiny cock of yours that barely hangs between your legs then!" And to emphasise the point she raises her hand, turns it into a fist and waggles her little finger at him.
“I don't remember hearing you complaining before.”
“That's because I was faking it you moron… oh and don't be telling me I'm not any good in bed either because you never once had to go finish yourself off in the bathroom.”
Safe to say if the finger wagging hadn't hurt that last line left a slap around the face as good as any wet fish could have landed.
So that's was the catalyst that started the war of attrition that flitted between complete silence and walking in and out of rooms to avoid each other to scenes bordering on the Iran / Pakistan conflict with both sides threatening to start a war to end all wars if that's what the other side really wanted. In the end it was the intervention of mutual friends who suggested going to seek professional help. This being America they'd of course been themselves and couldn't recommend the woman highly enough. 'Worth every cent and dollar they said.' If they'd meant it or just tried to justify the cost to themselves through gritted teeth it was hard to tell.
"You want me to take the advice of your friends who can't even spell words correctly and use a z instead of an s?" He deliberately used the zed rather than the zee.
"Do you want to come home one day and find I've taken a pair of scissors to all your clothes or worse, slice your balls off during the night and hand them to you on a plate in the morning?"
To be fair Jack was quite attached to his balls and the look on Catherine's face suggested she had given the matter some serious consideration. Maybe going would shut her up or at the very least appease her and get her off his case for a couple of days. For a moment he wanted to point out that he'd most certainly feel his balls having been hacked off during the night, negating the handing of them to him on a plate in the morning. Was she expecting a surprised look on his face? Like what the fuck, how are my balls now on a plate in front of me? How did you cut them off without me noticing in my sleep. You're such a genius. Americans he found didn't really follow irony or sarcasm that well. Some things just become all the more painful said if only because you've had to stop to explain them in great detail. It's like the joke you found funny until you had to explain the punchline to.
Jack's mind often wandered back to the shores of England. There he didn't have to be anyone else but himself. None of him and his mates had a pot to piss in growing up. If one of 'em had a result, they all had a result. Win a few quid on the nags or the dogs and you'd be sticking your best shirt on, quick spray of some knock off aftershave which fell off the back of a van and off down the Roxy to give it a bit of ‘ello darlin, don't you look lovely tonight,’ and see if you could score yourself a little feel round the back of the club after the lights went up. Life was much simpler back then. Sure they were competitive as mates but it wasn't about trying to own the biggest apartment or newest car, who had the biggest salary and who had the greatest healthcare cover. Sure the NHS is shit but you didn't have to pay through your arse to use it. America as far as he'd managed to ascertain was a dick swinging competition 24/7 and frankly it now drove him to despair.
Back home when you went to the cafe round the corner you knew when Maureen was having a shit day cause she'd sling the plate at ya and if she'd forgotten something you had to be fucking brave or a real Muppet to go and ask for it. Not like America where you'd go for breakfast where some wannabe actress was busy trying to make ends meet while some old greasy bastard was ogling her tits and she was having to make out like it was the best day ever and she was so happy in her job and to see the slimy fucking toe rags sat in front of day after day. Then they'd clock off and go to audition after audition where a richer type of sleazy bastards would ogle their tits some more. Maybe make some false promises if they did them a little favour. You know wink, wink, nudge, nudge darlin'. He wished he could tell them all - just be more like Mo. But if they did they'd be out of a job and have to move back home and admit they never made it. He wouldn't have minded if they'd dropped the pretence with him. He never pretended to be happy back to them so why did they have to perform like a monkey for him. 'Sit down love, take a weight off and stop pretending you're happy to see me. I know you're not and I'm ok with that. I'm like the English weather me, mostly fucking miserable but occasionally I've been known to brighten up for a couple of days."
At a push he even missed those rubber eggs Mo dished up that were so bad that some mornings you could have probably rolled them into a ball and played one bounce catch between each other. He missed being able to have baked beans and a full English even though he didn't like baked beans so he'd scrape them onto Kenny's plate even though that meant having to suffer his awful flatulence later on that day. That familiar parp trumpeting sound coupled with the 'better out than in,' statement in triumph as he'd watch all the boys quickly cover their mouths and noses with t-shirts and flee the vicinity. Kenny's arse on a bad day was far more effective than Mustard gas had been during the second World War at quickly repelling people from a space either enclosed or outside. Kenny of course revelled in it all. To Catherine, Kenny would never be considered for a guest list at a dinner party.
He missed his Nan. The way she'd slip him a couple of quid as a kid with instructions not to tell his mum. Later on in life he'd take her down to Upton Park when he could afford to, dressed in her claret and blue scarf that she'd had since way before he was even born. That scarf could tell some tales if it could talk, of a Bobby Moore, Trevor Brooking, Hurst, Peters and the rest. Bobby was always her favourite though. Met him a few times in local boozers she said, always the gentleman, wiped his hand clean before he shook the Queen's hand when we won the World Cup, did you know that boy?
Yes Nan. You told me.
Propa gentleman he was boy.
Yes Nan. You told me.
He found it funny when she would complain about modern footballers kissing and hugging each other when they scored. Not exactly politically correct his old Nan, brought up in a different generation. Are they all woolly woofters boy? They didn't do that in my day. Bobby wouldn't have been kissing the boys, he had his pick of all the women in East London.
Yes Nan. You told me.
Shall we get pie and mash on the way home boy?
Corr smashing idea Nan.
You didn't get pie and mash in America and … the pancakes were shit that they served up at breakfast. You can get your eggs done twenty different ways but cracking a couple into a jug, whacking in some flour, milk, splash of water and a pinch of salt was too hard a task.
Catherine knew she still loved Jack deep inside. He wasn't like any of the boys from back home. That was half the problem though he was still a boy and all her friends were dating or married to men. That hadn't stopped her from saying yes to his impromptu drunken marriage proposal where he'd gotten down on one knee and used a haribo ring in lieu of the real thing mind. Tiffany's would have been better but she knew what Jack earned in a year and would have been worried he'd stolen the ring had it not been from a dollar bag of kids sweets. Her friends men, they all had grown up jobs with proper job titles. They didn't get up at 5am on a Saturday morning to go sit in a dive bar for two hours to go and watch West Ham lose again and then come back in a huff and go back to bed and sleep the latest round of disappointment off. Jack did have one thing going for him though, she knew he wasn't banging his PA behind her back because he didn't have a PA. Actually no that probably wasn't strictly true because she was like an unpaid PA at times making sure he made his deadlines, sent out the invoices that generated revenue to keep a roof over their heads and most important of all hassling for them to be paid when Jack took the view that it wasn't very British to hound people for monies owed. She knew as an American that whilst they liked to boast about their wealth, settling debts was another matter entirely. She actually liked the way when they first met that Jack would tease her constantly. There was no pretence to him. You just took him how you found him. He wasn't pretending to be someone that he wasn't. You had to take him at face value, for better or for worse as she had now done. He made her laugh. She liked the way he sidled up to her the first night they'd met at a bar. There was no fancy chat up line. He just went "alwite darlin' little tip for ya, don't eat the bar nuts, the blokes around 'ere are dirty little bastards and don't wash their hands after they've shaken their stick. Y'know what I mean?" Gave her a cheeky wink and just walked off and didn't talk to her again for the rest of the night even though she waited. At the end of the night the bar emptied and Jack was outside 'sponging a Taylor,' as he would have called it and she walked up to him and called him an idiot. "Easy tiger, what's got your goat?"
"You! You didn't come back, you idiot."
"Oh my bad. See I had you marked as one of their modern birds who didn't want idiots like me hassling them at the bar with some cheesy dick bullshit chat up line. Figured if you were interested you'd shift your derriere in my general direction and well if you didn't then I've not ruined your night. Don't be lemon though it doesn't suit ya. You look far prettier when you smile."
"Do you come with a translator?" That propa tickled him.
"You'll be alwite luv. 'Ere you got an eyeliner pen?"
"Why, do you want to bring out the blue in your eyes?"
"Fuck me am I that transparent? Yes I do darlin’. My old mum always said she could read me like an open book."
This at least she understood and still unsure why she opens her compact and hands him an eyeliner pen. "Gis us your arm then."
'My arm?"
"Yeah your arm. An arm is the same thing in America ain't t it? Long thing with a hand and fingers at the end." He extends his arm and shakes his fingers out just to ensure they are both on the same page. She's not sure why but she finds herself obliging and he writes a phone number down her arm. She looks down at what he's written, clocks it's a phone number and tells him "You could have put your digits in my phone you know."
"Well you know what they say only mad dogs and Englishman go out in the midday sun."
"Wait what's that got to do with writing your number down my arm?"
"Thought it sounded better than me saying I'm like a dog pissing on you marking its territory. To be fair no other geezer is going to bother you when you're going home with a big phone number written down your arm is he?" She hated to admit it but he had a good point.
"Oh.. my.. gawd… you're awful."
"But I like you," he says in a rather camp overture. She looks worried as you would be when someone from out of town suddenly goes camper than a row of tents.
"Dick Emery. It was his catch phrase. My old nan loved him. He'd go - ooooh you are awful but I like you… No? Jesus don't know why I bleeding bother with you yanks, all these cultural references just fly over your Barnet like concorde. Oh by the way that's not my number either, that's my flatmates so if you were think of sending over some dirty pics, whilst he'd love it I'm sure, I'd never be any the wiser." She just shakes her head and laughs but she's not really sure why any of that is funny.
"OK duly noted. So I should what? Tell him to pass a message onto you to call me? Anyways, what sort of person doesn't have a mobile phone?"
"Yeah something like that will do. Well this might surprise you but as they say In the old Western film's - you ain't around from these parts are you boy. Kind of makes it hard to get a contract and I don't want to buy a burner cause if I get stopped by the old bill and searched. They might claim I'm a drug dealer and I'm far too pretty to go to jail. I also get a bit too nervous around your old bill. I'd been 'ere two days and this copper stops me and goes you OK Sir? I've clocked his gun and instantly gone woaaahhhh and stuck both hands up like and went fuck me that ain't a water pistol is it? Fucker just laughs and says you can put your hands down Sir and I'm like nope I've seen the movies I'm keeping em where you can see them. Anyways long story short he goes well America ain't like the movies son and I go well to be fair it is like the movies cause all the old bill carry guns which they don't around our Manor but they do take fucking liberties so if its all the same to you I'll just keep my hands up until you're done with me."
She doubles over laughing. "That's so funny."
"Yeah well I had a stain in my boxer shorts that might disagree with you on that score."
That right there was the story of how they'd met and despite him not calling back for a week which had annoyed her greatly, they'd dated ever since and things had been great the first couple of years and they'd tied the knot because they were in love and to be fair it also gave him a green card but they didn't do it for that reason even though a lot of whispers behind backs suggested otherwise. He made an effort with her friends and family. He started saying all the missing letters in his words when he spoke although when he got excited, usually about the soccer or football as he insisted on it being called, the London boy in him rose back to the surface. He would happily concede soccer was an English term and not an American one if you really pushed him on the matter but that would then result in a two hour accompanying diatribe about the West Ham way and she'd leaned that the hard way.
She couldn't put the exact moment it happened but he seemed to have changed slowly; became more distant, less responsive, something was missing in him and he wouldn't admit it. All the things she'd loved about him at first now started to grate at her. The teasing wasn't as funny anymore. His lack of ambition riled her. This being America everyone she knew offered an opinion on Jack whether she wanted to hear it or not. In America you never had to ask for an opinion, they were offered freely like the smiles from waitresses serving you your morning coffee trying to pretend you were the most important person in the world. After a while if she was being honest with herself she'd started to listen to what was being said and it was tainting her view of him probably unfairly. Maybe she just needed him to grow up that bit more. She'd suggested going to see someone because she wanted it to work. He knew how to get under her skin and push her buttons and would do it deliberately as a defence mechanism to avoid having a grown up conversation. She wasn't perfect, she'd fly off the handle at him, sometimes more in annoyance at herself that she couldn't get him to be honest and open up rather than it being something necessarily he'd said or done. Yes, she'd hold her hands up and admit that she had gotten drunk with the girls and one of them had told her about the time she'd found out an ex boyfriend had cheated on her and she cut all his clothes up and then emptied the contents of several trash cans in his pride and joy Mercedes Benz and she'd thought the clothes part sounded a good threat to get him to go to therapy and thrown in the bit about cutting off his balls to show she was deadly serious. That's what six Manhattans do to a girl. They make you a little bit loco.
"Catherine, take your time. I want you to let Jack know exactly how you're feeling and Jack I want you to respect Catherine by listening to her and let her finish."
Catherine turned to Jack and looked into this deep blue eyes that would indeed have been accentuated by a black eyeliner. "Jack. If you promise to tell me what's really going on in that head of yours then we never have to come here again. I love you but I need you to let the walls down and for you to let me in."
"OK."
"Really?"
"Yeah OK but don't get angry when I say what I'm about to say next."
"OK I promise."
"What's that thing you girls do with the finger?"
"What a pinky promise?"
"Yeah that's the one. Do you pinky promise?"
"Sure Jack," and she holds up the same little finger she'd accused Jack's manhood of resembling not so many weeks ago which had proved one of the catalysts for them both now being here being charged a fortune for this nonsense intervention and he loops his finger around hers, turns his head towards the third party still in the room and with a deadpan face says "Fuck off Meredith," unlocks his finger, stands up and starts to walk for the door. Without looking back he adds "and don't be apologising for my venacuwotsits either Catherine."
She takes one look at Meredith's chin now resting somewhat close to the floor looking completely aghast. "Thank you for your time. You did a great job!" And she smiles awkwardly and gives two thumbs up and like every great waitress in America adds for good measure as patrons are leaving the establishment "have a great day," and she bolt's for the door which Jack is holding open waiting for her. For the piece de resistance he flicks Meredith the bird, then moves his hand down to Catherines, interlocks his fingers with hers and gives her hand a squeeze. "We'll work it out babe," he tells her and she squeezes it back.
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