The House

I walk towards a house, a house with a lot of memories and a lot of pain attached to those memories. Behind me in a leopard print suitcase that has already raised a few humorous comments from the friend that accompanies me on this walk, along the lines of 'I hope we don't get punched for being chavs thanks to your suitcase' and more of a similar ilk. I laugh but I'm secretly thinking 'you are wrong. Leopard print is the best' (because she is and it is. Burberry is chav maybe, leopard print is barmaids and b-movies). As we walk closer to the house the discussion becomes about where I was in my life the last time I walked this route and the events that have occured in my life subsequently.
'He broke my heart but then I got a clue'
'Yeah'
'Well, no, then I got an alcoholic who was married and THEN I got a clue'
'Well... yeah'
'But the point is I eventually got that clue'
'That's the important thing'
'After being destroyed completely I found that clue hidden under months of therapy. Tricksy clues'

And we laugh and it's all very jovial and haha, isn't my love life tragic, type stuff but under the laughter and the jokes is this very real 'ow, this all still hurts' feeling and this other 'oh my god I can finally at least pretend to joke about this stuff' that jostles for prominance. The current occupier of the house is one of the causes for the stabby heart feelings I'm experiencing but I'm not sure how I'm going to respond to the site of all the heartache I've dealt with there. Like some kind of muscle memory maybe I'll feel the feelings for the heartbreaker, or maybe those experiences still haunt the house like ghosts and it will just take me being in that time and space to awaken them into existing again at which point they will destroy me once and for all. Who knows? The other feeling I have is relief, relief he won't actually be there, relief I'm pleased he won't be there (which is more important in more complex ways), relief that the person who got her heart broken those many many moons ago no longer exists in this dimension. Where she went to, I'm not sure but she isn't me anymore. Where did she go to now I think of it? Does she still exist? Is she biding her time before making an impromptue return? Has she been assimilated into this current being? What happens to the past versions of ourselves, do they remain in the past? Are they accesible in the present? Do they inform the future?

We turn a corner and there is the house. Onwards and upwards is the only way to find out.

What you asked for.

This is where it starts and where it ends. This one moment. My hands cupping a mug of lukewarm green tea. Take a look around. Examine my face. This isn’t a moment I expected to signal any great changes. It was just another normal Sunday up until now.

The green tea denotes my attempt at another lifestyle change for the better, one that is ultimately doomed to failure (but I don’t know that at the time, infused as I am with a sense of purpose that I kid myself will last forever but ends up being three weeks – a personal best as it happens), sat in a big old green armchair that I got for free and cover with blankets to stop it grossing out any callers to my humble abode. Sat opposite is my friend, who is on a sofa that I also got for free and also covered in blankets but just because I hate the real colour of it and can’t afford/be bothered to have it reupholstered. My friend who, at this moment, cannot meet my eye, my friend who often treats me with a mixture of weary indifference and utter awe and loves me but doesn’t always know how to show it or even if she actually feels it because she’s just as fucked up as me, albeit in wildly varying ways.

It’s not a place in time and space that I expected to signal the dawn of something new and the crushing pain of something ending. But nonetheless, this, right here, is where it starts and where it ends.

A few days before I’d been sat in a pub. One of those proper pubs you know? Like, the sort of pub with an old man in the corner who never moves and judges the other patrons silently but steadily whilst continuously supping from his pint (which never seems to get empty and yet you never see him getting a refill), and there’s a dog that doesn’t belong to anyone that roams around just sniffing everything but is not too bothered about saying hello, and it’s got faded flowery wallpaper and still the carpets and seats feel a bit grimy with ash even though it’s been against the law to smoke in there for over a year now? A place like that yeah? That’s my favourite sort of pub. A pub with history and regulars and a dart’s league. Anyway, that’s where we all sat, me and my friends and some of their friends and a load of other people in groups who we didn’t know. All sat around a big screen watching a bunch of blokes running around kicking a ball and cheering and screaming when the ball happened to find itself at one end of the field and sighing and cursing when it found itself at the other. Everyone in that room wishing and praying for the same result ‘let us WIN’. But I was the only one who really wanted it. Who really needed it in fact. Ardent football fans may disagree with me on this point (and they’d have every right to) but I was the only one who knew the truth, who knew what was riding on this game, this was the game that would decide what happened with my heart now. I asked the universe to prove something to me. Something that I couldn’t put into words but I sent out truth probes from the bottom of my soul to the heavens above and asked for this one little thing; ‘let us win. If we win I’m finally free’.

So we all sat, these strangers and these friends and we all concentrated but I knew I was the only person in the room, in the country, that was concentrating that hard on making us win. Every bit of me focused. Every atom tingling with desire. Willing and begging the universe for just this one, small, tiny, favour: Make it so that I know I’m going to be ok. Just this one sign. That’s all.

I’ve done this kind of thing before but this was the first time I was asking for something massive from the universe and not something silly like getting text messages from inconsequential boys (although this was the first time I had learned of the powers of asking for things from the universe – it worked every time without fail – but I tried to only use it when I really had to as I knew it was the wrong application of these divine powers and knew the universe had to readdress its balance in some way every time I requested something from it). It seems strange that it had never occurred to me before to be asked to be set free. I guess, at that point, I didn’t know that freedom was all I really needed. I still liked the shackles he had on me in because it felt safe there - even if it didn’t make me happy; this was for everyone who has loved someone that doesn’t love quite as much or in quite the same way in return and let that destroy them a bit.

Back to the armchair and the green tea - I should have known then, in fact I kind of did know then but I didn’t know I knew if you get my meaning. Like, when you turn around suddenly and catch somebody staring at you but you consciously weren’t aware of it to begin with and couldn’t say in the spilt second between you looking round and catching the eye of a stranger exactly why you were looking around to begin with. I just knew what she was going to say before she said it. I’d been waiting to hear those words for the last two years. But she doesn’t come out and say it right away. We dance around it and flirt with it a bit. Normally my patience gets the better of me but this time, this time I’m happy to wait. I don’t want to take the red pill just yet.

Two weeks earlier from this moment, the bar where he and I first met had burnt down, which had some kind of beautiful poetic justice. I mean, it’s sad, I’m sorry to the people who owned it but come on; how often does the universe provide such tangible metaphors? It felt both jarring and yet extremely cathartic seeing that on the news and seemed another universe sign that things were ending or about to end. However, I was still floored when she stopped faffing around telling me boring stories about people at her work that I have no real vested interest in hearing about and said:

‘He… He has a girlfriend’.

Stop.
Tape.

Freeze Frame.

Stop.
Everything.

Right there, is where it ended.

'Oh'. Breathe. Just breathe. Act normal. ‘How long?’

‘Two weeks I think, Gary mentioned about it in the car last night but even he’s not sure’

I want to know how I can remove myself from this room, this situation, without anyone noticing. I will run away to France. Or Moscow, I’ve always wanted to go to Moscow. I just need to work out how to make my atoms travel there one-by-one with the power of my mind because I don’t think I can physically move any part of my body ever again. I want the atoms to sink into the chair I’m sat on, to melt away leaving no trace. Just, please God, don’t let anyone look at me. Don’t let them see my face etched with pain and betrayal. I don’t want anyone to know what I’m feeling right now.

‘Are you ok?’

‘Fine’

‘He’s a loser anyway. You wouldn’t want to be with him, you can do sooo much better!’ She rolls her eyes and bends forwards whilst saying the ‘so’ to emphasise the point. I laugh, thinly, and this seems as good a time as any for her to change the subject. She can’t cope with negative emotions and I am glad of it because I don’t want or need to discuss how my soul has been crushed any further. As soon as she finishes her tea, she leaves. I couldn’t tell you what else we discussed that day.

Time moves along, as it is wont to do, and so do I. I eventually begin moving limbs again. I even find myself chewing food occasionally – if only out of habit than any real hunger – I stand and walk. I go to work. I lie down on my bed and close my eyes for dreamless sleeps. Every minute of this is punctuated by the thought that ‘he isn’t mine anymore’. Sometimes this will have an angry exclamation point on the end of it. Other times it will be said sadly and quietly, ending with an ellipsis. Sporadically, normally in the morning as I remember to do things like brush my teeth or hair (I do not always remember to do these things. Or I do remember but choose not to due to the monumental effort it involves), it will be said with a question mark: ‘He isn’t mine anymore?’ Like I have to double-check it wasn’t just a horrible nightmare that was a little too real at the time and is now mixed up with other memories that actually happened.

I had only myself to blame. This was exactly what I asked for. We had won that stupid football game and so, it seemed, had I. The universe had set me free, it never occurred to me that freedom would mean falling into nothingness, but that was indeed exactly what I had asked for. Wishes can come true.

What we are Now - Part 1

The other night I dreamt of Anne Heche (of course. Of course you did. Who doesn’t dream of Anne Heche from time to time except for everyone but you?). We were on a boat, escaping to Mexico from the zombies who had taken a hold of America; it was made clear to me that it was my job to keep Anne happy – to keep her calm and stop her from losing her mind. I do not know why everyone was so concerned with Anne’s mental health when there were surely more pressing issues at hand (zombies! Boats! Mexico!) but they were. It was the job of up most importance to make sure Anne was alright and it was a job that was my responsibility. Everyone made that clear – I was the only one with the power to do this job well. Despite a couple of dodgy moments I fulfilled this task with aplomb just by listening and laughing and understanding. I woke up and had this very real, visceral reaction that went thusly: ‘what the fuck was that?’

Later: we sit in a mid-priced Italian chain restaurant. Somewhere that has wicker chairs and candles in wine bottles. It is the kind of establishment that just aches for upper middle-class snobbery to slobber all over it, all the while the peons enjoy their reasonably priced and delicious mushroom pizzas (or ‘pizza di mushroomi de la formaggio’ or some such faux Italian sounding schtick that makes the aforementioned upper middle classes snort with derision and the lower middle classes feel like they are eating something more special than, what is essentially, just a delicious mushroom pizza. I tend to deal with this dichotomy by employing all the middle-middle classness I have at my disposal: playing up the name when ordering with a fake/cute cute/fake Italian accent and putting a little pizzazz into the proceedings. Servers either find this charming and funny or think I’m a dick. It’s never easy to tell which way the wind will blow on that score. It’s usually the former – I have a habit; when I am in the right mood, of being able to charm just about anyone. It’s effortless when I can be bothered. Indeed, even in the rare cases I’ve convinced myself it’s the latter they’ll return to the table and place my latte down with a flourish of the hand and a notable accent on the ‘tey’ bit of the latte (dry humourists are always difficult to read but particularly when they are writing down drinks orders.) There is a table to our left full of the oddest selection of characters ever assembled to break bread together. Balloons and comedy sized badges indicate a 21^st birthday is being celebrated. On my 21^st birthday I was corralled into going to a rock/goth club (the antithesis of everything I stand for: black tulle mini skirts and black lipstick. I tried for a while to be big booted and heavily eye linered, a step or two away from the world of goth, but it never stuck. I enjoy sunlight and unicorns and daisies too much. Now I embrace the idea of actually looking nice rather than a fucking mess. For the most part anyway) with a bunch of people I didn’t know who were aquatinted with my mentor/best friend at the time. At the stroke of midnight which welcomed my anniversaire into existence I had one puff on a ‘proper’ cigarette (as opposed to the rollies I was taught to smoke) and spent the next hour being sick into the club toilets. Anyone who has ever been to a club, let alone a goth club, will tell you one thing and one thing alone: the last place on earth you want to spend upwards of 47 minutes is in the toilets of those types of establishments. The birthday boy (it may be girl) turns round as we shuffle into the wicker seats round our designated table and tries to engage us in conversation. We make a telepathic decision to engage as little as possible back. That is what we are now.

I sense the birthday boy/girl girl/boy is playing up to her/his ‘wacky’ persona. I too once thought my affected eccentricities were the only things that made me interesting: the smoking, the drinking, the drugs, the sex. All these things added shading and colour to what was otherwise dull and asinine. It was only later that I found out everyone adds these skills to their CV in order to make them more marketable for general consumption. All the things I tried to hide; my shyness, my lack of knowledge on carnal matters, my bizarre love of tidying and lists – these are the things I learned to like about myself and, because of this, these are things that matter. I tried on the hat entitled ‘crazy fuck up’ but it was never part of me, not a marker on my DNA, just an identity that a thousand others have tried at some point – to wildly differing degrees of success. Losing these attributes wasn’t so much me giving them up, I just shed a skin I never felt entirely comfortable with anyway. Had anyone told me this at 21 I would have told them to fuck right off. As I sit in the restaurant nodding sagely at the knowledge of what this youth will have to endure in their journey of self-actualisation to come – a patronizing sense of having seen it all before encompasses me and I experience a brief sensation of feeling ‘grown up’. This is how we know I will, sooner or later, get taught a lesson of my own.

The morning after the engagement party I wake up and finally, after 27 years, really truthfully understand the meaning of the word ‘hangover’. A throbbing pain in my frontal lobe threatens to bash my brains out from my skull and a queasiness makes its way from the bottom of my stomach up to my gullet. I manage to hang my head over the toilet just in the nick of time and watch as yellow liquid is expelled with great, passionate force into the bowl. None of this compares to the embarrassment radiating through every atom in my being. I wipe my hand across my mouth and slowly stand up, careful not to move my head around too much for fear of offending the great dragon of unending pain that has taken up residence within my skull cap (it subsides after 2 hours but takes 48 hours to pack its things and leave for good). I am finding breathing difficult now, not because of the alcohol poisoning which, after near on 10 months of celibate, straight edge living, is something I never thought I’d experience again but because I am having flashbacks of conversations from the night before. Holding James in my arms and telling him he’s not his dad and is good enough for my friend. A hug that bordered inappropriate but never crossed that border. I think it probably only looked that way to an outsider anyway, him and I knew there wasn’t anything sexual about this conversation but maybe that’s what everyone else freaked out about it. Anyway, today I am sure of one thing: I hate myself.

All I need

I can’t decide if it’s romantic or fucked up to be in love with someone that looks like a concentration camp survivor. Because I am, desperately. He – the one, my guy, Diego to my Frida, Satre to my Simone – he now weighs six and a half stone. This once attractive, sexy being now juts out all over. Skin stretched across bones making sitting down look painful and awkward (standing still looks worse). His cheeks are sunken, the bones in his face the only thing holding everything from falling in upon itself. A hole is open directly to his stomach which attaches to a bag which carries his shit around. All this and one fact remains: I still love him. You hear people say ‘I will love you no matter what, even when you’re old and grey and fat I will love you’ and you think yeah, right but the theory has been tested because I do. I just don’t know whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing.

She said ‘his sister rang, she can’t get to the hospital this evening so asked if I would go instead. You wanna come too?’

‘Do you really think he’ll want to see me?’

‘Of course!’

So we went. She drove. I hadn’t really moved from the sofa for two days. It had been a strange week. I had good days and bad days and the last month had been full exclusively of bad days. I couldn’t really remember a time when, if I wasn’t actually crying then I wasn’t on the verge of tears; I recognized that now would be a good time to pull myself together. Pulling myself together when needed (if only for an hour or two at a time) is one of my specialties. It must be part of the white, English, middle-class upbringing I’d received.

We walked the white, sterile hospital corridors. She seemed to know where she was going so I let her lead the way feeling a little like I was in a dream and was powerless to stop the unfolding events. We got to his room and I could see his knee. I knew it was him so I have no idea why I let her check at the nurses station his whereabouts. I was staring at his knee while she stood next to me and interrupted a gaggle of nurses (sterile of nurses?) to do so. One plus was that this was the first visit to see him I’d been on where I didn’t have a panic attack ten feet from entering the room.

We went in. I don’t know how well I hid my shock upon seeing his new appearance. Last time I’d visited he’d lost two stone, had a scruffy beard and looked like a Japanese P.O.W. Now he looked like an extra from an Austwitz documentary. People look like this in grainy black and white images not laid out in front of you in orange pajamas. Not the person you’d fantasied so many times about being married to (these thoughts were never entertained in the time you’d spent apart but interestingly, back when you were together, you’d never thought about the wedding ceremony. You just knew you wanted to be tied to this man forever. It was a love like nothing you’d ever experienced – for the first time in your life you were sure. You had never been sure before). Nothing that had happened over the last few months were expected. This was possibly the pinnacle of all that unexpectedness. But after that initial stomach punch shock, you adjusted. You could see him in there. It felt good to be in his company again.

Just before you went to leave (your friend had stepped away for a minute) he said ‘are you ok?’ The first time he had asked this question in god knows how many months. Instinctively you said ‘yes’ even though the answer was ‘no.’ ‘Are you sure?’ ‘Sure’ you said, smiling. This new concern from him about your wellbeing was surprising and, as such, unsettling. She returned. You said your goodbyes and left.

Ten minutes later a text message came through I would like to meet you again soon. Do you think (when I’m out of here) we could ‘see’ each other like before?

The answer he wants is ‘yes’, the answer you want is ‘yes’, the answer everyone else will want is ‘no’.

You fear that he still loves his ex-wife, that he will use you, that you are the only option available to him. You don’t want to be runner up. You worry that it will all be about him, that he needs to learn to want to live by and for himself; that last time you ended up having to live for both of you and it nearly destroyed you both. It’s really only the latter fears that have any weight. You know you were both utterly and unendingly in love with one another. You don’t know how you know but you know. You are sure of it.

For the first time in over a week you go to bed and tingle. Your atoms vibrate happy instead of sad. You don’t feel so lonely anymore. You remember the feeling that’s been missing - what you have been aching for. The intangible thing that can’t be put into words, that no-one else seems to quite get. It is being in love and knowing you are loved in return.

Today you went to see him and this six and a half stone fuckup smoked a cigarette in front of you. Nothing ever changes. Love is never enough.

Clemency

I didn't even notice her at first. Not really. I tended to just keep my head down, slice meat, smile at customers, nick the odd bit of cheese, go home. I wasn't terribly interested in the other faces that appeared in the corridors behind the 'Staff Only' signs. Or, maybe not wasn't interested, just didn't have the social skills to ingratiate myself with the other cast members of the business called 'Tescos'. I would often eat in the toilet if I wasn't able to wangle myself a later lunch spot as I couldn't be guaranteed a table by myself and the thought of walking in and having to ask someone if I could join them just horrified me. It's only now I realise this sort of behaviour is perhaps what stopped me from being the person that others would laugh and joke with and made me the person that they just occasionally smiled thinly at instead.

Her friend was the one to speak to me about a possible date. A lanky fair-haired guy whose name I couldn't remember even if I wanted to. 'Chris' might be right. He looks like the sort of guy that would be called Chris - smily and unassuming. 'Hi' he said. I looked round to check who he was talking to. 'It's Louise isn't it?' I nodded, slowly. 'Listen, my friend likes you' he said, forthrightly. 'Really?' I said, a hot flash of embarrassment rising from my throat all the way to the top of my head. 'Yeah. She wants to know if there's a chance you'd like her too...'. The way he phrased it confused me. I starred at him quizzically, looking for the punchline. He matched my stare with a smirk. 'Yeah there's a chance' I said after a beat too long of silence. 'Ok. I'll tell her'.

Her name was Chantelle Lily.

In later years this name would cause great amusement to those that heard it.

She sounds like she's from Eastenders!

But it never struck me as odd. That was just her name.

She came up to me after my shift ended and said, in a very matter-of-fact fashion 'my friend spoke to you earlier'. 'Yes' I replied, suddenly unsure what to do with my hands.
'I'm Chantelle by the way'
'Louise'
'Do you want my phone number?'
'Um... Ok. Sure'
In truth I was not sure I wanted her phone number, I wasn't entirely sure what was happening at all. My experience of these things at that exact point ran to a holiday romance with a Floridian magician who had groped my boobs but never kissed me and spoke loudly about his girlfriend to some other customers after I went back to his shop a couple of days post-boob grope, and little else. The idea that someone found me attractive was outlandish to say the least. To believe that this boyish looking girl with short black hair had developed a crush on me without me even doing anything, never speaking or joking with her, never smiling or making eye contact with her, just by being around and looking like me, was inconceivable. I didn't know how to act or what to say at the best of times but this was completely out of my field of knowledge. I felt something was shifting and it was out of my control but I wasn't sure how to stop it or if I even really wanted it stopped. She took my phone and inputted her number and then made me do the same.
'All done' she said 'are you working tomorrow?' I nodded meekly and made that sort of 'hey-whatcha-gonna-do-about-it?' self deprecating face I make when I sense I should be making light of something but I don't have the words to do so verbally. 'Yeah, me too. See you tomorrow then!' and with that she abruptly turned and went off to her posse of friends who had gathered outside. I felt flattered and worried and confused. Still unconvinced that someone, somewhere found me at all worthy of a phone number swap with the intention of... Well, with the intention of something I wasn't quite sure of.

As I pulled up to her house she was already waiting for me. Leaning against the gate with her arms folded. She visibly breathed a sigh of relief when she realised it was me in the old white Fiesta.
'Heya!' she singsonged as a way of greeting and bundled into the car in a ball of nervous energy.
'Hiya' I singsonged back in a voice that didn't seem to belong to me
'Where do you wanna go?'
'Dunno'
'Shall we just drive around for a bit?'
'Ok'

She looked at me in this way that meant I suddenly forgot how to drive. This chick was making me nervous.

When I'd recovered my (newly acquired) driving skills she babbled about working at Tesco's (she liked it - that set a warning bell off), about her eventual career aspirations ('prison guard' for the record. I was like, 'figures' and then immediately cursed my judgmental brain), her qualifications (on our second date she confessed she'd lied about having A-Levels 'I don't even know why I did and I've been worrying about it ever since!' It made my heart melt a little), her parents (both dead). She was acting almost as if she was at a job interview that she was desperate to be hired for. Curiouser and curiouser as far as I was concerned. I remained passive, giving little away (I rarely do) and tried to figure her out. Don't get me wrong, I liked her. A lot. What I'd perceived previously as angry energy as she stalked the Tesco canned goods aisle was utterly wrong. It was clear she projected this version of herself that was tough and unfriendly (albeit subconsciously I believe. But then orphaned lesbians probably have to learn a little self-protection don't you think?) but she was actually very sweet and warm and funny and more than a little goofy. However mixed up I was (oh Susie, when will you deign to share a plate of chips and a conversation about Courtney Love with me again?) I knew this girl just didn't fire me up the way certain boys and particular girls fired me up. She was no Susie, let's put it that way. Susie was red lipstick, ripped tights, and danger. This girl was... nice. A boner killer for anyone. When you're 17, nice is as good as bringing your mum on your date with you. (So why did you string her along Louise? Is it awful to admit that it was just because no-one else seemed interested?)

We stopped at the seaside.

'Are you out?' she enquired. 'Yes I am out at the seaside with you' I nearly responded until it struck me what she meant. The lesbian lingo was obviously not second nature to me as it was to her.
'Umm... Yes' I lied 'You?'
'Yeah, ages ago. Well, my friends have known for ages - don't think it was really a surprise to anyone!' she smiled a self-deprecating smile 'but didn't tell my nan till last year. She was cool with it though'
'Cool' I affirmed.

I felt very jealous in that moment; she was so comfortable with who she was. Susie was like that too. I lacked poise, my awkwardness showed up the cracks in my self-confidence. I wasn't sure how to get from where I was to where she was when I had no idea who or what I was in the first place. Not just with the sexuality thing but with everything. Susie stalked from room to room always looking amazing and never worrying about this stuff. The space she occupied always seemed filled whereas I only ever felt half there. Chantelle gave off that aura too, she seemed solid - not fat, I don't mean fat - but like all her atoms where sure of their placing. Mine were not. I sometimes felt like a ghost or an apparition - floating about the place without ever making an impact.

The waves were lapping at our feet as we walked along the shore. There is something lovely about never being far from the sea, it always feel like home and yet invites one to adventure. She stopped and turned to look at me. I could sense what was coming 'We should go' I said 'it's getting late'.

As I stopped outside her house she leaned in for a very chaste hug which I reciprocated.

'We should do this again soon' she said. I nodded and she got out of the car.

As I drove home the only face I could picture was Susie's. I knew Susie was not thinking about me.

Things Remain the Same

'You're the one I choose to drunk call at two-thirty in the morning. How does that make you feel?'

He doesn't say anything but I can hear him smiling widely down the phone. I soak this up for a minute and let the sober part of my brain take a mental snapshot of the moment. I want to be able to travel back to this point in time later on so I can properly examine how I feel. I note that right now it feels nice but awkward. Although we are obviously beaming at each other for a beat too long, I sense he's not entirely sure how to answer the question without incriminating either one of us. There still exists a mind field of emotion between us which we are constantly having to negotiate. One wrong step, at the wrong time, and I think both of us are aware that everything we've worked for up until this point could blow up in our faces. Still though, the fact remains that he's the one I want to drunk call at two-thirty in the morning. I feel myself glowing from the knowledge that we've now reached a point that I can call and he will answer and he will sound happy. He will sound like I've lit him up.

Two days later we go to the cinema. I'm hungover from two successive (though not entirely successful) nights of binge drinking. He actually came and rang the bell rather than beeping the car horn or texting to alert me of his presence (which is what I would have done). I open the door and immediately the dogs rush to greet him. They do this to everyone but he's the only one who turns around and starts pretending to run away like a girl whilst holding his hands above his head and squirming. This has the effect of confusing the dogs and making me laugh. Eventually we all bundle back inside and the dogs lie on their backs in front of him like the subservient whores I know them to be. He squats down to scratch their bellies and watches me while I put my coat on. I suddenly feel extremely shy. I've sort of let go of shy from my repertoire of versions of who I am. I'm the girl that last night ended up at an impromptu house party where I kinda, sorta knew one other person and yet spent all of five minutes talking to him and the rest of my time bonding with people I'd never met before. That's not the persona of a shy girl, yet he still manages to coax her out of me every now and again. Normally when I'm a combination of
- vulnerable after expressing something inadvertent the last time we spoke
- sober
- melancholy
- getting looked at like he's doing right now.

Even though at one time I knew him better than any other person on the entire planet I still find it difficult to interpret those looks. Even before our very first kiss when we were stood on a dirt track next to the creek, with the only light being twinkling stars and the moon showing where the ripples on the black water were, nuzzling each other's necks and hugging so tightly that I was worried he'd be able to feel how ill-fitting my bra was, as he took a step back and looked at me before everything changed (if only I'd have been conscious enough back then to realise exactly how much it would all change eventually) I had no real idea of what was running through his thoughts. I knew him completely and yet I never felt like I knew completely how he felt about me.

That was seven years ago but I guess although everything changed, there's still a lot that remains the same.

I shoo the dogs away as it's easier to expend energy concentrating on them rather than think of witty things to say to him. As we sit in the car my mind feels empty and I struggle to engage in normal conversation. Times like these I have no idea why he persists in agreeing to share the same space with me. I think back to how I was on the phone, I remember him laughing a lot, I certainly seemed to be erudite and funny but I start to fear this was an illusion cast upon me by the alcohol. However, he's more than ok to fill in any gaps left by my silences. Sometimes this frustrates me as I'll become more and more an audience member for his ever continuing stand-up routine that's occasionally punctuated by me saying 'do you want to hear my story or not?!' with him answering in the affirmative and then finding another joke or seven to shoehorn into the conversation (choice example: '... Sorry, you were telling me about your friend Danny. Is their surname Behr by any chance? Are they related to Yogi in any way?'). Yet I will remember to ask him about an anecdote that he starts telling at an inopportune moment as the BBFC screen comes up on the cinema screen, after the film has run its course and ends up just being about the fact that he managed to miss the last Ski Sunday.

I'm not sure what annoys me more. The fact that he won't let me talk or that he's funnier than I am.

I fear it's mostly the latter. The fact remains however, that he lights me up like no one else. Some things will always remain the same.

I did not choose him, he did not choose me

It doesn't seem right to say this to one's best friend but here it is; you are fucking retarded if you think he's changed.

He has changed! she chirped. Desperately wanting, needing to believe this lie is true.

If it's lies you want I can give them to you, I am just as masterful at deception as he.

He has changed, she asserts once again. Looking me directly in the eye this time in a challenging (yet futile) gesture.

The air thickens around us. I feel stuck to the spot but long to open the window and let in a fresh breeze. I'm suddenly scared of moving. The atmosphere is making movement difficult, it's too dense, too dark, too stifling.

We consider one another for a moment, drink in each other's gaze, try and put a spin on what the other is thinking. We are both saying to ourselves 'you are wrong, you are wrong, you are wrong' and directing this across the room - trying to penetrate the walls we've both built up with what we believe to be the truth. Walls that he and us created. Walls that seem strong enough to stand, unharmed, for a hundred years or more.

Eventually she speaks; he seemed different when I spoke to him. Like everything he'd been through had made him realise the stuff he needed to.

He's not different. He just knows what to say to persuade you of that. I think to myself.

Out loud I say, 'Ok'.

'Ok' she replies more forcefully. Emphasis on the 'kay' syllable.

This is obviously the way we must play it. We will both act out our parts impeccably, we will both say the lines we are meant to. We will never say a truly honest thing to one another again.

The Start.

It wasn't the first time he had tried this, the flirtation with another. Pushing to see how far he could go, how far he would go. He said 'I just need someone to hold me till I fall asleep' and she had acquiesced.

This was the beginning. The beginning they would go back to and talk about but it had in fact started a long time before that. Before either of them were able to acknowledge it. She realised now that she had been a child then. She had thought of him often in the intervening years but never like that, never as she had in the first few months of knowing him when the longing she felt would sometimes distract her from whatever she had been tasked with doing that day. He didn't know of course, no-one did. It was just another crush, to look back now she didn't really recognise the person she was then. That girl was too young, too inexperienced, too afraid of life.

He put his forehead to her forehead and tried to nuzzle at her cheek with his nose. She wriggled away, sensing the mood change of the room had finally come to fruition. Although it had seemed inevitable it was still a shock when he made this move, a signal that things were different now. She knew it should stop here. That she should get up and go away. Leave him to feel ashamed and embarrassed for putting her in this situation but she didn't. She stayed.

'I don't think this is a good idea' she had said. 'Let's have some more wine' he had suggested.

So they drank wine and sat looking at each other, their knees touching. 'I used to be in love with you' she said, matter-of-factly 'when we first met. I thought you were the most amazing creature I'd ever encountered'
'Why didn't you say something?' he enquired, genuinely mystified.
'You were married and I never believed you'd like me that way'
He shook his head, 'you could have saved me ages ago. We've wasted so much time'

She looked at him, trying to assess whether this was just something he was saying to wear her down or whether he really meant it. Either way, it was working.

He shook a cigarette out of the packet and lit it for her. Their fingers touched as he handed it over. They both knew that now, the evening had only one conclusion. They both stood outside of themselves watching as it reached this conclusion. He stroked a stray hair behind her ear. 'Let's lay down and go to sleep' he said.

That was the start.

Valerie on the doorstep

Valerie stood on the doorstep and sighed. A sudden urge to run very fast and very far came over her. She looked down at her hands and watched as they reflexively reached for the doorbell whilst her brain looked on in horror, ‘this is a bad idea! You’re going to regret this!’ it screamed, but it was too late. The doorbell had already been pushed.

She took a step back and attempted to regain some control over her breathing. She was aware that the t-shirt she was wearing depicted Marcy and Peppermint Patty saying ‘Never give your heart to a blockhead’. It seemed somewhat appropriate.

“If this was a movie this would be the framing shot” she thought.

The three hour drive over here had been a masturbatory fantasy in which she was cast as the lead in a tragic-romantic comedy. “This is the bit where the introductory credits would roll” she decided as she pushed a homemade mixtape into the car’s ancient tape deck and lit a cigarette up, pulling away from her preferred parking spot in the office’s car park. Earlier that day she’d been sat in that car whilst having her lunch trying really hard to concentrate on the book she was reading and getting nowhere. The same words were stroked by her eyes again and again and yet none of them managed to connect with her brain. Excitement and fear jostled for pole position in the assault of feelings she was being subjected to. She was going to see him. That boy, the one who six months earlier had said he loved her, that had said he thought of them belonging together and who had subsequently pretended like it had never happened. Six months on the consequences of this were going to be played out.

It had been a long time coming.

The drive itself had gone by in a blur. Valerie’s favourite songs fought for prominence over the sounds of her rattling engine. The sky had been full of vivid reds and burnt oranges, which were so bright they were literally stunning and had made it difficult to see as she drove determinedly toward the sunset. When beauty blinds is it time to turn back? she pondered. I can be such a dick when I want to be she countered.

The service station had appeared at the exact right moment on her travels. Her legs were starting to cramp up and she could feel a spot aching to burst it’s way to the surface of her skin that needed immediate attending to. You always have such good timing she told the spot. The spot did not reply, silence was its weapon.

She shook her legs as she unfolded herself out of the car and made her way, fighting against the drizzle, into the neon lit husk containing the usual amenities; toilets, fast food, slot machines, and massage chairs. She had yet to ever see anyone pay for these massage chair services but sometimes toyed with the idea of giving it a go herself – she would always immediately discard such a ridiculous notion: people could see you in those things.

The sun had set by the time she wandered back to her car (a run-down, beat up, wreck that still worked even though no-one thought it should) and continued the journey still thinking all this would make excellent montage material for the opening credits.

Eventually she pulled up to the kerb a little way away from his house and rechecked her make up, then rechecked her make up again. Now or never she told herself, unsure what was awaiting her at the end of the garden path she dawdled up to.

She stood on the doorstep and sighed. A sudden urge to run very fast and very far came over her. She looked down at her hands and watched as they reflexively reached for the doorbell whilst her brain looked on in horror, ‘this is a bad idea! You’re going to regret this!’ it screamed, but it was too late. The doorbell had already been pushed.

The door opened. She wavered a second before walking inside.

Fading Scars

You were you again the day after. You laughed and joked and we verbally sparred. We were the most 'us' we could be. It was glorious. The cuts all over your left wrist were still there and you insisted on displaying them like a medal of honour or something. Something you were strangely proud of. Look what I did. Look how sad I am. Here's the proof. You guys didn't believe me but see, here's where it shows. Little red lines like lots of little pen marks made in an ink war conducted on your wrist, like we played when we were kids. I rolled your jacket sleeve up because you said it hurt when the fabric made contact with those little red lines and you made a joke about being 'very Don Johnson'. I said you were more like Chandler Bing due to the 'using humour as a defense mechanism thing'. You laughed and agreed. Pop culture references abound, Jeff Goldblum impressions in play.

That night I lay there in your arms and waited for you to fall asleep (I know that once you do that gentle twitching thing you do that you're unlikely to be roused) and then slipped from out under the sheets and slid onto your cold floor in my pants and your t-shirt and I started to cry.

You're too in love with your misery to be with me.

We've spent countless hours asleep in one another's arms, fucking, laughing, fighting. None of that means anything to you.

As I write, weeks later, I've still got the scars and bruises on my legs from where we got too carried away that last time. That last time I saw you and I could still see a bit of you left, a bit of you not ravaged, a bit of you that still wanted saving. I hate that I chose to save myself instead.

I want those scars to fade. I want to forget.

I still want you.

Gamma Ray

I sit on my usual bench and watch as he crosses the courtyard. I have a cardboard cup filled with hot black coffee clutched between my hands. He looks hurried and distracted. At some point in the past I feel sure he would have felt me staring at him so intently and, just by a look, I would have been able to pull him off the course he seems very set on walking now and brought him over to me. This does not happen today. It seems both very right and very wrong that this is the case.

I tug at the collar of my jacket so that it is pulled up further around my neck (although it is summer the temperature demotes a much chillier time of year). As I do so I get a flashback of when things changed. There are some sentences that will do that to a relationship. One minute they are one thing, the next, something completely different.

‘I love you’ does that.

‘I slept with someone else’ does it too.

Then there is the sentence he said to me: ‘Today is the day my father died.’

We were lying on my bed. Sunlight was streaming through the window and falling across the upper part of his face (when I think of that summer this is how I always think of him; half in shade and half in the light).

I frowned slightly. This wasn’t the response I’d been expecting when pointing out that he didn’t seem his usual, affable self.

We lay there for a moment considering each other. Me resting on top of his chest and he with his left arm under his head propping him up slightly. Finally I quietly said; ‘how?’

‘He drunk himself to death. I was 16 when it happened.’ He shifted. The sunlight poured onto the pillow under his head as he reached for the cigarettes (I should clarify, my cigarettes. I paid for all the fripperies like these) on the nightstand. He drew two slowly out off the pack and offered me the extra. I kept my gaze steady and considered what to do or say next. In the absence of anything better I kissed him. I tried to use that kiss to give him back everything he’d lost, everything he’d never had. We’d been playing before and now it was real. He gave me a part of his past and I gave him a part of myself.

He reaches the double doors on the opposite side of the courtyard from where he started. I watch him disappear and take a sip of my coffee and wonder to myself how many other people know that today is the anniversary of when his father died.

Isabel

They stood resting their backs against the rough brick wall of the pub, smoking and resolutely not looking at one another.

The weight of things unsaid made the air around them feel heavy.

She stared down at her shoes. They were ratty old converse high tops and had tears running up between the material and the soles; along where the stitching had once held things neatly together. The red of her socks shone through the open wounds of her sneakers. She sucked hard on her cigarette and flicked the tip after every puff.

He turned to look at her. She didn’t seem that different. Her hair was now blond but it seemed to him that her hair had been different every time they were together. Red, black, pink, purple, short, long, curly, straight, in a ponytail, flowing down her back, waxed, in plaits; always something different and yet always unmistakably her.

She pulled her eyes up off the ground and slowly lifted them to meet his.

‘Do you love her?’ she asked. That wasn’t really the question. The question was ‘do you still love me?’ but that was not a question either one was capable of asking or answering.

‘She’s amazing. You would like her if you got to know her properly.’ She chewed the inside of her cheek and frowned at him. That wasn’t what she wanted to know.

‘Does she know you’re in love with Isabel?’

He hadn’t been expecting that. That was too honest and brutal. Their relationship had been based on pretending and projection. They had told one another personal details they had never told anyone else, they had discussed their feelings for one another in embarrassing depth, they had lain in bed stroking one another’s faces and not saying a word. The one thing they had never done is discuss how he felt about Isabel. It was a tacit agreement that this subject was off limits.

‘I’m not…’ His voice trailed off and he looked down at the pavement again, ‘she likes Isabel’.

‘That’s not what I asked’. She said this reasonably. There was even a hint of sympathy in her voice like she knew how hard this was for him. He had always said to her that he loved talking to her because she made him honest which made him realize things about himself that he otherwise wouldn’t. She would demurely drop her eyes, blush almost imperceptibly, and be unable to stop a smile creeping onto her face when he said these things. She knew honesty and her and him were all tied up in how he thought of himself and this was a subject that ruined all of that.

They returned to silence and to staring at her broken shoes. Nearby patrons of the pub were laughing and smoking and carrying on as if this was another normal Saturday night where people can laugh and smoke without consequence.

Finally he said simply, and without apology, ‘Isabel is my friend.’

She sighed and pushed herself off the wall so she was no longer leaning but stood up straight, defiant, finally strong enough to confront the things that lead them to this place where they could barely look at one another ‘I know that. I asked if your new girlfriend knows that you are in love with Isabel.’

He shook his head. It wasn’t a no, it was more a; I can’t answer that without having to then face a whole load of other questions that I never wanted to ask myself, or have anyone else ask me.

She shook her head in return but there was no malice there. She understood completely. She had always understood but now the pretending and projection was gone. Reality had replaced it. She could admit that she understood completely and had hoped he could now do the same. It seemed this wasn’t the case. She turned to leave, ‘are you coming?’

The stub of his cigarette had burned itself out. He looked at it for a moment and then flicked it away but stayed where he was: leaning against the rough wall of a pub, eyes down, shoulders slumped. She nodded ok and walked back into the light and warmth. He continued leaning.