Written in Ink
My favourite present, this Christmas, was one I received a few weeks before. It sometimes seems as though I measure out my life in coffee spoons, but in truth it is defined by other things, including fountain pens, starting with the black and green regulation school Parkers. It took me about two days, at the age of seven, to irretrievably cross my nib and reduce my left-handed attempts to writing in ink to a smudged mess, until my father taught me how to curve my hand above my writing, and bought me a far more beautiful silver Waterman. I have a an old mug full of obsolete pens, and used to have drawers full of spare nibs and cartridges and pots of ink (and blotting paper – does that even exist anymore?)
My pen is deep pink enamel and silver: it’s an object of beauty, and instantly recognizable as being the one I would have chosen, although I didn’t choose it. Apart from the fact that is so indisputably my taste that people automatically pick it up an hand it to me when it is left lying on a table, one of the things that gives it value is the inscription on the side: an anodyne nickname for me, in common use, which has another, deeper meaning in this context.
If a fetish is something without which sexual satisfaction cannot be achieved, then mine is not truly a fetish, but more of an obsession. There are various things we look in for a partner which may have no bearing on sexual performance, but which are an integral part of the whole mental process of attraction.
Some of this is down to the attraction of opposites: because I am so profoundly unmusical, but love music, I have a little quickening of the pulse when it comes to men with musical ability; because I can draw and paint, but can’t even focus a self-focusing digital camera, I sidle a little closer to men who can frame life through a lens. The rest of it is down to basic compatibility: what use to me is a man who cannot write, or express himself through words, or who does not read, or who does not share my love of stationery? How could I ever get it on with a man who wouldn’t want to stand in the aisles, surrounded by office supplies, getting turned on by watching me fondle the post-it notes?
You think I jest, but I don’t. Somewhere in my old emails is a feverish September exchange about the mutual thrill of receiving new stationery supplies, and gasping enquiries as to the precise nature of the other’s stapler, culminating in rabid fantasizing about supply cupboards, and being covered in an avalanche of single-lined notebooks at the moment of climax (OK, I may have made that last bit up, but I’m feeling quite excited now). You can keep your fantasies of crashing waves on writhing bodies on silver-sanded beaches – all I need to get me heated is someone mentioning a filing cabinet.
It wasn’t that everything I received this Christmas wasn’t bought with love and care, and just what I wanted. It’s just that nothing outshines my pen.
