Their whole relationship starts to look like a cruel kind of trap – a trying to be with someone else that’s only really an addiction. Exquisite pleasure, exquisite kindness, their best, best selves, then he doesn’t turn up, he forgets he’s supposed to, she worries, she lends him money, waits for him, lends him more money. Then at the campsite, he suddenly turns to her, his arms stretched out like a child’s: “Nor, help me – I’m freaking out.” This kind of stuff happens for months. They go on holiday to the beach, in Tasmania: he won’t plan properly, he won’t pack anything (“Oh shit,” he croaks, “we don’t need mosquito coils, all that shit.”), she has to do everything, and when they finally get to the beach he plunges on ahead in his stolen thongs, not even talking to her. He behaves towards me, then, with tenderness, holds me when I’m half asleep, he says my name and looks into my face.īut Nora finds out slowly that this kindness and tenderness can’t last, can’t survive, because it doesn’t have enough to do with everyday life, everyday jobs, all the more boring things that really test if you can be together. It’s that when we fuck, or can be together quietly sometimes, we touch each other. Nobody knows what I get out of Javo, or out of knowing him. “Wait, oh wait,” he whispered, and I waited, and he started again with the slow and steady rolling under me, his mad crooked face very sweet in front of my eyes I felt the thin bones in his shoulders, and my heart dissolved to see him change away from abruptness to this kindness. … the way it happened was, that we began to stroke each other, and to kiss, and after a long, long time of slow, gentle touching and pausing, and kissing like an idle game that turned serious (he held my head hard with his two hands, we kissed and kissed) I rolled on to him and we fucked ever so gently. In the fucking – in that care, that pleasure – both of them find their too-much falls away, and they become the best and kindest selves they can be: In Monkey Grip, when Nora and Javo fuck, he can call off his self-absorption, and go to her properly, really be with her, give to her without trying for too much for himself. Helen Garner’s classic 1977 novel broke the usual social agreement about what can and can’t be said
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