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When Tiffany masturbates these days, she doesn’t have Jake in mind. His constant working late and her constant dealing with the children have no room in her sex dreams. She had met Ada at her new escape route: a weekly book club. “Are you serious?” Jake had asked incredulously when she told him. “I haven’t seen you read anything in, well, never, really.” Tiffany knew he was right. “That isn’t the point.” “Then what is?”

That I need to be away from you. That I need time just for myself. That I will freak out if I have to wipe another butt while you are out at the office late at night. That I would rather read the most boring of books than sit next to you on the couch watching TV while waiting for Luke’s regular and familiar wailing at night. What she answered was “Everybody is allowed to have a hobby. Yours is apparently your job these days, so good for you. But I’ll be gone every Wednesday night so you had better be here.” If she noticed a flicker of guilt in Jake’s eyes she gracefully ignored it and ordered the first book to read online.

At the book club at the grandly looking café, everybody seemed relaxed and friendly. Whether by accident or on purpose Tiffany couldn’t figure out, but the group ended up being all women. Ada sat next to her the first two meetings and brought her a cup of coffee the third. “You look like you could need that,” she had explained, and Tiffany had blushed. “Do I look that horrid?” “Not at all, just tired. I figured you’re having a rough couple of weeks?” Tiffany swallowed and then nodded. Biting her lip she looked down trying very hard not to start crying. Here, in front of strangers with good lives. Here at the book club, where she hadn’t even mentioned her children and just introduced herself as “Tiffany.” Ada wasn’t fooled. She squeezed Tiffany’s arm and only said these six words: “It is going to be alright.” After the club Ada asked Tiffany if she wanted to get a drink, and she did. Anything but home.

At the bar the lights were dimmed just enough for Tiffany to hide the bags under her eyes and her flushed cheeks. But Ada didn’t inquire anymore. Instead, she downed the whiskey and talked.

“I was in a difficult marriage, too. It’s been several years now. We even went to therapy but in the end it didn’t work out. I guess we didn’t love each other enough. Maybe she cheated on me, I don’t know. When I met Mariella, I felt like this time was going to be different. We were in a relationship for three years before we broke it off. Sometimes it just doesn’t work out, right?” Tiffany looked Ada into the eyes, for the first time? “Mariella?” Ada nodded. “Yes. She was with me for such a long time, it felt like I didn’t know how to go on. But on I went. And it turned out okay.” Ada ordered another round, both alcohol and Ada’s soothing voice relaxing Tiffany into sinking into her chair and sighing noisily. “Ada, that is a sad story,” she says, and Ada laughed at her. “Isn’t it? But look at me now! She couldn’t take everything away from me. The question is: will you let him take everything away from you?” Too surprised to be upset at this accusation, Tiffany first shrugged, then raised her glass and shook her head. “No, I won’t.” Ada smiled, satisfied. “Atta girl!” Their glasses clinked together in that dark pitched tone only whiskey tumblers can produce.

The book club? A safe place. An hour or so of thinking adult thoughts. Of reading sentences longer than one line. Of not making animal noises. Of drinking hard liquor afterward and somehow, suddenly, Tiffany dressed up for the club and put on jewelry. The first time, a  blouse showing off her cleavage, once. The next time the skirt was slightly shorter than necessary. The third time at the bar, Ada reached over to get more peanuts and happened to graze against Tiffany’s left breast for a second. She stopped mid-air: 21, 22. Two more seconds and she’s gone. It took Tiffany the whole night to realize that the shiver she had felt that second came from her lower body. She hadn’t felt it since giving birth to Luke: the thought hit her with too much force. This long? Seriously, this long?

The place had never been mentioned in any guidebook, not even local ones. Not on the bicycle maps with elevation markers and blue-green infrastructure symbols. You’d have to turn right behind the sea of shrubs next to a sand dune that really is just remnants of the kindergarten’s sandboxes. Discarded after Chernobyl blew radioactive particles all over Europe, spoiling sandboxes for an entire generation of 1980s toddlers.

Termites have invaded the sand dune and grabbed what they could. This close to our place, it seems everybody carries more than their weight on their shoulders. Leaving the low scrubs behind, you’ll walk deeper into the green. Slowly, trees grow taller, fuller, and foliage thickens. Leaves fall onto the ground while still pulsing with thick juice.

Jake looks up. “Are you dreaming? I asked you something!” Julie complains.

“Sorry, what?”

“I asked, are you up for some pizza?” The group has apparently decided to get even more food into their bulging stomachs. Pete especially seems to have been eating a lot these days. Jake strokes his own T-shirt and feels proud of the hours he spends at the gym. Anything but letting yourself go. In college Pete had taken care of himself as well. With wrestling, sure, but also exercised and shaved and didn’t offend Jake with flabby skin. Jake would never have licked Pete’s stomach as hairy and pudgy as it is now. “Sure, pizza, sounds good,” he finally answers and Julie dials a number on her cell. Jake stares at Pete’s hand clutching the beer bottle. If it were up to Pete, this would be “the writer’s” hand. Jake gets bored just looking at the hand, never mind the writing. All Pete does is write, secretly, then show it to Jake who has to tell him it’s great just to move on with his life. Pete doesn’t go to bed with his secretary, even though Jake has strongly advised him to. He sometimes makes this pathetic, sorrowful face at Jake and becomes all nostalgic. Nostalgia is poisonous and contagious. Jake cannot afford to look back too much or he will have a hard time dealing with the present. Dan says something funny and everybody laughs and Jake goes looking for the bathroom for a moment of silence.

Thursday nights at the citizen’s recreational center. The large auditorium is painfully unsuitable for their small group of readers. Their voices leave traces in the air whenever one of them speaks up to read a passage aloud. Eleanor dreads these reading moments and cannot wait for the kindergarten group to graduate and leave them their room.

Eleanor reads. During drawn-out meetings. On the bus. At the laundromat. In bed and on the couch and at her breakfast table. One reason: because she can. Because nobody can stop her, like her parents did in those power struggles over cereal and cold milk. Another reason: because what else is out there? The office and its coffee bar with colleagues? The theater filled with insensitive bastards coughing and laughing during a movie? A dysfunctional relationship with old parents, arrogant sisters and grumpy ex-lovers? A third reason: The book club. It makes sense to join a book club if one likes to read. Indeed, it made sense at the time, when they were still meeting at a coffeeshop and had lattes and Eleanor’s arm touched Adaline’s if they happened to sit next to each other. Then some people complained about the expenses and the group ended up here. No matter how close Eleanor aims to sit to Adaline, the venue is too big and she can now barely remember how Adaline’s soft skin and tiny hairs felt on Eleanor’s forearm.

On Thursday mornings she showers, makes tea and gets the good clothes from the cupboard. The good underwear in grey and with black lace. The pressed pants with rolled-up cuffs. The low cut top and the shiny ballet flats. Eleanor eats, packs lunch, checks her email, does her hair and make-up and sighs deeply at the thought of eight hours in my chair before book club. She sighs deeply at the thought of Adaline’s dark curls and deep laugh. Eleanor locks the door,greets the ancient Mr. Winters (please, Mr. Winters, do not die while I am away, preferably even less when I am at home) and walks briskly to the bus station. Traffic is a nightmare in London, so Eleanor has enough time to finish the book they’ll be discussing tonight. She always has enough time to read.

An excerpt from “The Bookclub”, courtesy oh my and elphyon

The women of the human resources department were well-dressed and professionally made up. They giggled a lot more than during the day. Jake had generously applied perfume to mask the smell of a long day in IT, among humans and machines. He was ready to get going. “So, getting married, huh?” he mischievously asked Enid. He had to be one of the group tonight. Had to be let in among the inside jokes and friendly gestures. She did ask him to come along, after all. “Yep. You know what it’s like!” Jake thought about that for a minute. He was married, this much was true. But Enid was in her thirties, not bad looking and in a good financial position. Her groom, well, he was likely not bad himself. They were getting married because they wanted to. Had he wanted to? “I know,” he said and she squeezed his arm. He had not wanted to. He had done the responsible thing. And he loved Tiffany, after all. Tonight he was going to do the responsible thing by calling her up, telling her where he was going and asking her to not wait up.

The air was stiff and smoky inside the club, the noise deafening. He had thought it to be a strip club catering exclusively to women, Chippendale style. He was surprised at the number of men there. In groups. Alone. Drinking and watching. Enid shrieked with delight at the sight of a dancer throwing his pants onto the floor.

So that’s what a gay strip club looked like. Jake felt the bass pump through his arteries and messing with his heart’s rhythm. A lanky youth in a washed out Springsteen T-shirt stood too close to him. He screamed something that Jake couldn’t quite make out. “What?” The guy moved even closer and put his hand on Jake’s shoulder while yelling “I said, pretty good song, right?” Jake nodded although he hadn’t paid attention to the song and wasn’t really a music aficionado anyway. “I’m Steven. You?” the kid yelled again. Jake turned and looked for his companions. The women had congregated around a table where alcohol and lap dances were served, not necessarily in that order. They had moved fast. None were looking at him. He eyed the man in front of him. His red hair was appealing, his body a little too slim and young. Pete had been more muscular. Jake wondered if the kid would be agile. If he would feel lean under Jake’s touch. “I’m John,” he lied. They stared at each other for a moment, then Steven said he had driven here and his car was right outside. Jake said he wanted to watch some dances first, he had paid a substantial amount to get in here after all. Steven shrugged and leaned his head to the left. “The offer stands, John,” he replied and went back to the bar. Jake ordered a whiskey and sat down next to Theodora who was in a better mood than he had ever seen her before.

“You’ve fucking cheated!” Out of breath, sweat pouring out of every pore, Nika pants and curses. “And you’re bleeding.” Cooly, matter-of-factly Robin points at Nika’s forehead. When she touches her head, her fingers feel something warm and sticky. She stares at her red hand for a while before wiping it off on her running shorts. “I can’t believe you cheated to win.” Robin shrugs and says he didn’t. “I was simply faster than you. Plus you fell on the gravel path. Geez, Nika, you are bleeding all over your hair. Should have trained more, I guess.” Robin walks off. An orderly puts her hand on Nika’s arm and asks if she is ok. A white towel is pressed to Nika’s forehead, a cup of water handed to her.

After meeting Joshua at the video game release party where I went with my friend, he hardly waited to email me. I was flattered and intrigued. I was looking for friends in a large, lonely town where I felt all I did was work and the beach took forever to get to through the traffic. Yes, I was happy to be there, but I was also anxious to get to know more: the air, some people, salty popcorn. I had things to do but I was weary of actually doing them. So of course I jumped on board and enjoyed getting to know him, this funny small man with the glasses and the impeccable video gaming skills. Mine were no match so I hardly tried and proposed pizza instead. He wanted to know about me and what I did and liked, and when I told him, it turned out he was a runner, too. So we set this date, this every Tuesday night running companionship program. It always took me the entire week to get over the humiliation of how fast he was and how slow I. He never said a word and must not have received a good workout out of this, but he always asked for more and although I can barely talk while running I acted like a goddamn conversationalist.

Getting to know him meant listening to him incessantly talk about his best friend Zach, apparently an unrelenting source of comraderie and good times. “You really should meet him some time,” he told me and I answered with “sounds like it.” Still, I was surprised when Joshua called me up on day and asked me to accompany him to Zach’s party this coming Friday. One actor was unlikely enough to know, now meeting a bunch of them at a party seemed unreal and not very enticing. Through my friends I had come to know a few animation artists and their actress girlfriends, who were always struggling actresses but always just on the verge of making it. But I relented and said “why not?” and wondered what to wear.

At the wooden table, the seller confided in her. “You know, I was always wordy, always a talker. Was reprimanded for it, even back then. Not like today, of course. But I knew I could get in trouble for it, so I learned to keep my mouth shut. Now the question is, are you aware of the risks you’re taking with buying? And most importantly, do you have the money?” She nodded to both. She contemplated showing him the bundle of notes in her pocket, but if he was going to run with it she’d be screwed. Also, he could rob her in here however he wanted as well. No point. He held up a little snow globe-like glass. Inside, tiny small paper cuts were flying around in an unidentifiable liquid. They reminded her of the pieces inside fortune cookies, back from when there had been sentences on these rather than pictures and then nothing but gibberish. “How does it work?” she asked, with her coarse voice she found so ugly. They had told her it was ugly. “You shake, you take. One out, that is. It opens at the bottom. Put the paper on your tongue after reading it out loud and that word is a part of you. Or again, maybe, depends on how much your parents spoke with you in your childhood. You might have a bigger storage of words already. So, show me the money.” She paid and carefully held the snow globe in both hands. The salesman accompanied her to the door, motioning for her to hide the globe under her jacket. “No way in hell do you tell anyone you got this from me, you hear me? I will know you told them and I will come and get you for that.” His tone was threatening, but his face was not. It was fearful. She nodded again, managed to mumble “thank you” before the door was shut in her face. Her cheeks were flushed as she walked towards the main road and back to her apartment.