Joolz Denby > Quotes

“I smelt him, smelt Johnny; for a second I thought - what? That he was there, was with me, that he wasn't...But I realised it was his perfume, the one I'd had made specially for him by an artisan perfumer in New York, his own custom-made one-off blend. It had been hideously expensive but I hadn't cared as long as it had pleased him. It was all intense essential oils, layer upon layer of labdanum, patchouli, vanilla, vetiver, ambrette, frankincense, myrrh, amber, Bulgarian rose absolute, Oud wood - the list was endless and beautiful, like a scented prayer. The woman had said some of the ingredients would keep their fragrance for a hundred years, would never die. Like me, he'd said, like us. I'd put some drops of the heavy dark oil on a couple of cotton wool pads and put them in the box when we got it, now the fragrance - strange, narcotic, archaic - filled the room like his ghost, embracing me in memories.”
― Joolz Denby, Wild Thing

“To be honest? I'd thought myself above them. What a nasty little counter-culture snob I was. There they were, doing their fucking best, trying to have a life, trying to bring up their children decently, struggling to make the payments on the little house, wondering where their youth had gone, where love had gone, what was to become of them and all I could do was be a snotty, judgmental cow. But it was no good. I couldn't be like them. I'd seen too much, done too much that was outside anything they knew. I wasn't better than them, but I was different. We had no point of contact other than work. Even then, they disapproved of my attitude, my ways of dealing with the clients. Many's the time I'd ground my teeth as Andrea or Fran had taken the piss out of some hapless, useless, illiterate get they were assigned to; being funny at the expense of their stupidity, their complete inability to deal with straight society. Sure, I knew it was partly a defence mechanism; they did it because it was laugh or scream, and we were always told it wasn't good to let the clients get too close. But all too often - not always, but enough times to make me seethe with irritation - there was an ingrained, self-serving elitism in there too. Who'd see it better than me? They sealed themselves up in their white-collar world like chrysalides and waited for some kind of reward for being good girls and boys, for playing the game, being a bit of a cut above the messy rest - a reward that didn't exist, would never come and that they would only realise was a lie when it was far too late.
Now I would be one of the Others, the clients, the ones who stood outside in the cold and, shivering, looked in at the lighted windows of reason and middle-class respectability. I would be another colossal fuck-up, another dinner party story. But my sin was all the greater because I'd wilfully defected from the right side to the hopelessly, eternally wrong side. I was not only a screw-up, I was a traitor.”
― Joolz Denby, Wild Thing

“¿Qué hice para que papá se fuera? ¿Qué hice para que dejara de quererme?
¿Por qué nunca escribió ni llamó? ¿Por qué nunca más quiso volver a verme? De niña la guillotina del abandono me martirizaba. Ni envió tarjetas de cumpleaños, ni telefoneó por Navidad ni nada. Todos los años esperaba que pasara algo, sin decirle nada a nadie, con todo mi corazón, al mismo tiempo que me maldecía entre dientes por albergar esperanza, porque cuando al final no ocurría nada, era peor si había mantenido la ilusión y me había convencido de que ese sería el cumpleaños en el que por fin papá escribiría. Si tenía esperanza y buscaba presagios en las cosas - el cartero retrasándose diez minutos, un espléndido día de abril o una buena nota en un examen - el dolor que sentía al ver que no ocurría nada se hacía insoportable. Por tanto es mejor vivir sin esperar nada más que decepción. Así luego el daño no es tanto.”
― Joolz Denby, Billie Morgan

“Empecé a considerar la idea de dejarme morir, ¿Quién iba a echarme de menos? Nadie. ¿Quién iba a llorar mi pérdida? Quizá mamá y Jen, aunque solo durante un par de días, pero nadie más; además, se tenían la una a la otra. Yo solamente era una gota insignificante en un vasto y agitado océano de seres humanos, ¿Qué más daba si yo vivía o moría?”
― Joolz Denby, Billie Morgan

“No conmigo. Yo no merecía su amor. Ni el de nadie. Era algo que me atormentaba, me enfurecía y me hacía comportarme como una loca.”
― Joolz Denby, Billie Morgan

“Es la única manera que me queda de demostrarles que los quiero, a todos, incluso a los que ya solo viven en mi corazón. Porque los quiero, eso puedo asegurarlo, los quiero mucho. Sí, incluso a mamá y a Micky y a Jen... Puede que ellos ya no me quieran; pero eso no importa, ahora lo sé. Ya veis, todo cuanto he hecho, lo he hecho por amor. Eso es lo horrible... Y lo hermoso. Todo por amor; y yo que pensaba que el amor siempre servía para arreglarlo todo. Pero no es así como funciona, no puedes esperar una recompensa cuando amas a alguien. Papá lo sabía bien, creo, algo que al final acabó con él.
Pero como se suele decir, que tú ames a alguien no implica que ese alguien te vaya a querer a ti, no significa que estén en deuda contigo. Uno siente lo que siente, y eso es lo bonito; el amor que uno siente es la propia recompensa”
― Joolz Denby, Billie Morgan