The Curtain Falls

The day you find yourself licking cake crumbs off a CD case you know it’s gone too far. When you get to the point where you’re leaving pieces of cake on top of objects that make a good plate substitute because using a plate would mean walking seventeen steps into your kitchen but that just seems too much effort… That’s what the experts call ‘rock bottom’ right?

I can’t believe I managed to find myself back here. It took me a year to really stop being this person. This person is a bit of a dick, I don’t like her but most of all… I can’t believe that even though I’ve changed, that I’d banished all thoughts of all him (well, mostly, kinda, I guess) all he had to do was speak a few clichéd declarations of adoration and I fucking fell right back in. The worst part is that I keep hoping he’s going to pull through for me. That’s just what every female really wants in the end, for that one guy to just do the right thing. To say all the stuff they’ve always suspected that he felt but was never grown up enough to admit. When they do that, it’s supposed to be the end of the story. The curtain falls, the house lights come up. It’s done. The audience walks away with a profound sense of relief that, in spite of this crazy mixed world fucking with everything good that, sometimes, love can win through. We can find our ‘person’ and we can be happy.

But no. He tells me he loves me, that we belong to each other, that he’s never met anyone that he feels this connected to and I’m expected to just carry on like nothing happened.

I don’t know. I think I know but when it comes down to it. I just don’t know.

It occurred to me, whilst sat around with two couple friends in a restaurant the other day that I don’t even want a relationship. Not really.

So why am I obsessing? Because that is what you do. It’s my lifeblood, my purpose. I obsess. And it has the tendency to suck the fun out of every little thing in my life, making me a great addition to any party: ‘Hey look! It’s the Fun-Sucker! Just in the nick of time! Please analyse all the depraved and shambolic behaviour people here are entering into! Quick! Before they really start to enjoy themselves!’

So, the restaurant. Two couples. Alice and Mark. Elle and Paul. I hadn’t even been sat down for more than 5 minutes (as I recall, I might not even had time to get round to taking my scarf off yet) when it starts. The attack. This is something that I, for whatever reason, never mentally prepare myself for even though I know it’ll be as inevitable as at least one member of a boy band being revealed as gay at some point in their career. I wasn’t even talking to Mark. I was telling Elle I had found a great track to end my next radio show on (ok, when I say ‘great track’ please be aware I mean it in the teenage-idiom which is loosely translated as ‘rubbish track that everyone remembers and therefore has great affection for and so will love it’). Anyway, as I’m telling Elle this, this tiny piece of information about what I’ve been up to today ‘Well funny you should ask Elle but I’ve been unearthing some fab music to play to the masses, starting with DJ Yoda and ending with PJ & Duncan’ when Mark, out of nowhere says ‘I listened to your show the other week. You sounded really awkward’. I didn’t really disguise my face falling very well. Unfortunately for him this little opinion piece was a bit ill-judged, timing wise.

‘Well thanks’ I smile. Whilst having visions of stabbing him in the eye with my butter knife.

Everyone else is quiet. Alice’s face looks at me mortified. Eyes wide, mouth open, with the horror of middle-class embarrassment.

‘I’m just giving you some constructive criticism’ he says.

‘Sure, thanks for that. I’ll take it under advisement’ when what I really want to say ‘Sorry Mark, I forget. How much radio presenting experience have you notched up? I don’t know why I haven’t before enquired what the renowned expert; the Mr Miagi of radio thinks about MY show. I feel so foolish’     

Of course, that wouldn’t really work as I hadn’t even asked his opinion in the first place. I wasn’t even asking what Elle thought. I was just describing a mundane event that had happened in my mundane day and Mark took it upon himself, at the very earliest opportunity (very earliest) to proffer his wisdom and in-depth analysis about how shit I am at my job.

This is what it is to be happily single and somewhat successful (if you are measuring success in the number of university radio shows a person has and how much freelance journalism work they get. The answers being: One and nearly enough to pay the bills… although more often than not it’s the office temp jobs that have to do that).

But we move past this. I don’t make a scene. I ignore the impulse to punch him in the face. Mostly because he is bigger than me.

Mark is a hairy, good-looking, broad-shouldered chap. He looks like he could be the charismatic drug dealer in a generic late-90s indie flick. Curly hair, mocking grin, a temperament that almost successfully hides his inferiority complex (at least to those individuals who don’t know what to look for). I think he’s attempting the persona of a devil-may-care, stoic, occasionally witty individual. Really, the fact that he doesn’t say a lot – and what he DOES say is usually sarcastic or mocking, means to me that he’s painfully shy. Of course, I could be wrong. But when am I ever wrong? I like Mark, despite his bristley-ness with me and his constant need to put me in my place he’s actually an okay guy. His sarcastic comments can make me laugh, even when they are directed at me. We have a lot in common when it comes to pop culture (although I fear my knowledge is better and more varied than his own which doesn’t add to relations between us in a positive way). As a man on his own terms, he’s fine. As boyfriend-to-Alice he makes her happy (which as her friend is all that really concerns me). As boyfriend-of-Alice he hates me. Which is less fine.

Next to Mark we have Alice. She’s one of my closest and oldest friends, hence the fact I am seen by Mark as a considerable threat to their relationship. Happy single girls (for the moment just accept that to all-intents-and-purposes being single is not the problem. It’s the not-being-with-the-person-I-love that’s causing me grief) are the enemy as well as the intriguing creature to males in long-term relationships. Alice is a trainee solicitor. She couldn’t look or act any more middle-class if she tried. She gives of the air of a primary school teacher (knee high boots, knee length skirts, sensible jumpers – often in beige, a heavy fringe that at first glance may evoke the feeling of a sixties swinger but on reflection only adds to the illusion of her angelic nature; especially when the rest of her hair has been pulled back into a nice, sensible pony tail – which is often). However, appearances can be deceptive. She is actually highly opinionated and witty, and oftentimes a bit dangerous. Doing exciting things, taking drugs, saying confrontational stuff – just for the fun of it. There are too few people in the world who live their life on this premise. Alice was the one who encouraged me to go after the unrequited-love man, and even accompanied me on my first trip to see him after he and I had shared that fateful love-at-second-sight experience. She has invited me out tonight to help take my mind off ‘things’. Her advice to forgetting about my love is to ‘fuck as many men as it takes for you to stop thinking about him’. She may in fact have a good point. It has worked before and will more than likely work again but this time, I just don’t feel like it. Like I say, this isn’t like me at all.

Sitting, demurely next to Alice is Elle (I was the last one to arrive, maybe they felt I could be distracted by men-by-proxy by arranging the table seatings so I’m parked inbetween the Chuckle Brothers here). She’s nice. Nice nice nice. She says nice things. She has nice hair and nice manners and speaks quietly, if at all. She’s not a knock-out stunna but neither would you be forced to make comparisons to the Elephant Man. Her clothes choices suggest she might be more interesting than her personality would imply. Weird band t-shirts, studded belts, converse trainers, jackets with badges on the lapel. All the staples of the boy-in-a-guitar-band. I’ve known her seven years and have never seen her without one or all of these items of clothing upon her person. I’ve also never heard her enthuse about any of these bands she advertises on herself. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing (there’s nothing worse than a pretentious music-geek, ala me) or a bad thing (she’s being an incredible poser). I get the feeling Elle is slightly in awe of me. Everything I do or say is ‘amazing’ ‘awesome’ ‘so cool’ and try as I might to kid myself that these things are true I know in my heart of hearts that they are not.

Elle’s boyfriend is Paul. Paul is…  well, you know how I said I like Mark as a man on his own terms? I probably cannot say the same about Paul. Everything he says sounds like a sneer, not directed at anyone but it’s a northern-accented-sneer nonetheless. Whenever he does engage in a conversation his forehead furrows and he sort of puts his head to one side like he has to really struggle to get a sentence out to someone he hates so much. And I’m not saying this is directed towards me, he’s like it with everyone. Even Elle. I have no idea why she is with him. He has a tidy, nondescript appearance. Short hair that is so-close-to-ginger-you’d-think-it-was-ginger-but-don’t-say-that-to-his-face-cos-he-reckons-it’s-strawberry-blonde-actually. Medium build. Medium height. You could meet him seventeen times and have trouble identifying him in a line up.

Until he spoke. Then you’d remember the sneer.

Paul offers me wine and tries to get a sneaky peak down my top as he is reaching over to fetch the bottle from the centre of the table. I internally shudder. Without even thinking I pull up my dress at the front a little.

‘What are you doing?’ asks Mark accusingly. ‘I saw you playing with your breasts out of the corner of my eye’.

I mimic the motion of bouncing my boobs up and down with my hands and declare that this will be the next lesson I learn tonight: ‘don’t play with myself at the table. Got it’.

Alice gives him a pointed look and tells him maybe his attention would be better focused on somewhere other than my chest area. Which chides Mark but has an undercurrent warning directed at me to ‘stop trying to entrap my boyfriend with your womanly wiles’. This is the downside of single life. Even the most logical female has that little territorial voice whispering bad-angel thoughts that ‘this bitch better lay off my man or I’ll ‘ave her’. This is why I hate going out with couples. If you talk too much to the girl then the guy thinks you’re rude. If you talk – or even look – too much at the guy then you’re a boyfriend stealing hussy who can’t be trusted. Despite all the social awkwardness in her novels none of Jane Austen’s literary characters ever had to put up with any of this shit. Blur summed it up very succinctly with the title of one of their albums: Modern life is rubbish.

The rest of the evening passes without too much sniping or leering until we get to the point of the evening where the waitress is enquiring who wants coffee. All of us having piped up before she reached the table who is having coffee/cappacino/latte I take it upon myself to order for everyone. Alice comments that she likes how I took charge of the situation. Mark then asks if I always ‘like to take charge of the situation’.

A fairly innocuous comment?

Let me tell you about Dave.

Dave is a friend of Mark’s flatmate. One, fairly debauched evening that I embarked on, lead me to handing over my phone number to this man. That was my first mistake. At the time I had just started dating a guy that I knew was eventually going to break my heart so one week after we had slept together for the first time I arranged to ‘go out’ with Dave. The logic behind this was that if I fucked up the relationship first then I won! Yay for me! That was my second mistake.

Dave is not my type. He had badly dyed blonde hair that didn’t look like it had been washed or even brushed in weeks. He had a slightly craggy face, hooded eyes, and a general washed out appearance. I’m guessing this was due to his years and years of heavy drug use (I use the catch-all term ‘drugs’ as he did literally seemed to have done all of them, all at once probably). There is rough and ready and then there is just rough. He fell into the second category. He did have a lovely south Irish accent going for him but that’s probably not the best reason in the world to decide to have sex with somebody. At least not in the long term. So there we have it, an Irish drug dealing lunatic (I later found out he is actually signed off from ‘work’ for his mental health problems) what else did I mean to mention… Oh yes. We may (may) have indulged in some light sado-masichism that night. Nothing brutal but, you know how it is. You meet a man, you arrange to meet up a week later in an effort to fuck up your potentially good budding new relationship before it even really has a chance to grow, and then you let some guy whip you a bit. It’s happened to us all right? Right?

So anyway, I became paranoid that this experience; my one foray into the realms of kinky sex, was being alluded to by Mark. I didn’t know he knew but to what else might he be referring to?

I did what all sensible middle-class girls do. Ignored him and gulped the remains of my glass of Rioja down.

The entire meal was over before 10pm. This is the other thing I don’t understand about couples. I rarely go out for proper restaurant eating meals with single pals (most of them operate under some form of eating disorder to one extent or another) but when we do you drink at LEAST an aperitif, one bottle of wine each, a liqueur coffee, stumble out to the pub and carry on drinking until one member of your party is sick on their shoes. Not tonight Matthew. Tonight we are normal and boring and act like people on rubbish sitcoms in the 80s who still have hold of all their faculties after the meal having all sat at the same side of the table so the camera can get everyone’s faces in. In my jim-jams by 1030. This is what it is to go out with couples.

So the boy.

It was a break from the mundane. Myself and two friends just decided to visit another mutual friend who lived in Cardiff. We are the road trip queens. Sort of like the guys from Pricilla Queen of the Desert but not transvestite men and wearing considerably less sequins and feathers.

Anyway.

Road trips for us are things that are meticulously planned out. Not in the route planning or the gas mileage but in mix tapes and outfits. We will do just about anything if it involves making a mix tape and getting a new outfit (hence my brief and ill-advised foray into the world of being a gym bunny). This is what road trips mean to girls like us. It is the slightly competitive nature in us all that fuels it. I, being a good ten-years younger than the other two means youth sometimes plays to my advantage:

‘I haven’t heard this band before’

‘Oh yeah, they’re sort of new but they broke up before anyone ever really knew they existed’

And sometimes does not:

‘Don’t you love the Soup Dragons?’

‘Who?’

‘Fuck me! You’re kidding?! I thought you liked music?’

I don’t always understand one hundred per cent why these two are my friends.

I met Luce seven years ago. She was my assistant manager in the music shop I had found myself working in after a particularly bad breakup with the only man I have ever loved (well, up till now) and subsequent drop-out of art school in a Rob Gordon-esque fashion.

She was my saviour.

Even before we spoke I held her up as the coolest person I’d ever been in the same room with.

I used to shop in that store all the time. I would wear band tee shirts and badges that I thought might catch her attention so we could strike up a conversation and become bestest best friends.

It never worked.  

She was always too engrossed or too short with me or just plain disinterested. I never made an impression on her the whole time. She’d stand in front of the counter sometimes, thumbs inserted into her back pockets, chest forward (not in a slutty way, in an aggressive – almost cowboy shoot out way), chin tilted down and her dyed-black hair falling into her eyes while she made sarcastic comments to some other guy stood on the serving side of the counter about how little work he was doing. The guy never seemed to mind. The guys there would change depending on the time and what day it was but you always knew one thing: they were in love with her as much as me. Maybe love is the wrong word. I suppose I mean something more akin to ‘awe’. They were in awe of her.

And so they should be. She’s quite an imposing individual. Not with her body, she’s fairly lithe and of average height, but with her personality. On first meeting she can be, well, one of about three characters:

-          If you look like her ‘type’ of person then she will be charming and friendly and smiley and chatty.

-          If you look like someone that knows nothing about her preferred genres of music then she will be polite but a little short with you. They’ll be no jokes or smiles, unless she is laughing at you.

-          If you come across as arrogant she will do everything short of physically pushing you away and out of her eye line.

So you better hope you fall into the first category.

For some bizarre and unexpected reason when I first started working there I was lucky enough to do just that.

Let me just get something clear. I’ve never been the cool girl or the popular girl. I’ve oftentimes been the ‘funny’ girl or the ‘smart’ girl but despite what TV, movies and literature would tell us - the funny, smart girl rarely wins out in the end (I think this is because a lot of the time the funny smart girl is the one who ends up writing these things in the first place. It’s what we do). Also, in those sorts of scenarios the funny smart girl also has beauty working in her favour. I’m not about to draw any comparisons between myself and the elephant man but I’m also not going to be entering any ‘High Street Honeyz’ competitions any time soon.

So, this is a very long-winded way of saying that I was not used to being treated as the new cool popular girl. And yet this is how Luce treated me.

For the first year of our friendship I was almost her apprentice. This of course gave the relationship a somewhat unbalanced quality. Which was fine for both us, I got to hang out with the coolest person I’d ever met. She got to be worshipped by someone.

However, things change. Invariably, things always change.

We had got to the point now where I was an almost entirely different person to who I had been when we first met and Luce was still pretty much the same. This is the sort of situation that can make-or-break a relationship and my falling in love with this boy brought things to a definite head.

We set off for Cardiff an hour or so later than intended (as is always the way when the three of us make any plans).

Motorway driving never holds much allure for most people but I love it. Except for that split second when your accelerator foot goes from being comfy to crampy. And you know there’s nowt you can do about it except for plough on, deal with it and keep going. Maybe turn up the Girls Aloud Greatest Hits CD and try and keep your mind off the discomfort with a sing-a-long burst to ‘Love Machine’.

But then, that’s just me.

On this day it was Luce’s turn at the wheel. Star was next to her wittering away about the problems she was having with her older brother. Oh what it is the be the youngest child, all the benefits and none of the responsibilities. Not that I’m bitter. However, four younger step-siblings and one younger brother can warp your view on these things over the years. I stared out the window and then rolled another cigarette. Something about driving makes me smoke even more than I already do. I think it’s because, in situations like these where you are just watching the world go by it makes you feel like you are in one of those linking bits in films and TV shows where the protagonist is shown to be going through their inner turmoil by taking a drive, wearing a scowl, and holding a smoke.

I watch way more TV than is necessarily healthy.

This was my second time in Cardiff. The first time had been about a year after me and Luce first became friends. It was a big deal to be invited to stay in Cardiff. I knew this for a fact. We stayed with Luce’s best-mate-since-she-was-four-years-old. Luce did not introduce just anyone to this man. This makes it sounds like I’m her girlfriend and he’s her dad. Well, intense friendships between straight single girls ARE like romantic entanglements. Just without much of the classic roses-and-chocolates romance. Or any sex. I think this is just the way people are. We need to need somebody. This is why friends often get left behind when a woman gets a new fella. She has someone to fill the gap that her friends were there for.

Due to all of this I was extremely nervous. This was also back when I didn’t speak to anyone unless I could be certain it would resolutely be one-to-one and no other bugger was listening in. Even then I found it really hard to be myself in front of people. I have trouble sometimes remembering that that person was in fact the same human being that I am now. When I think of myself back then, back when I was pathologically shy, it seems like some girl I sort of knew but wasn’t all that close to. A second cousin maybe, (that would explain why we looked so similar). So, in effect, my memory of lover boy was not particularly crystal clear. We had sat in the same pub, round the same table, I remember thinking he was sweetly geeky looking (one of my two distinct types – the other being hairy, grumpy, and chubby) but neither one of us had made a lasting impression on the other. I don’t think.

Thus, it was fated to be ‘love at second sight’.

I had only really come out of my shell thanks to the guy I had dated and subsequently fucked everything up with by sleeping with Irish. He was called Ian. Ian is not a name one tends to associate with a man in his mid-twenties. Ian was lovely (and of the hairy/chubby genre to which I am often partial). Only about as tall as I am which made things awkward on our first proper encounter. Sad to say our introduction to one another had been through the internet. Not a dating site. Well, not an official dating site. He had come across my profile on myspace. One thing lead to another. We found we both enjoyed the banter that comes with discussing our geek passions; Buffy the Vampire Slayer (both), Ford Capri’s (him), brand new items of stationary (me), TV detectives (both). A meeting was inevitable.   

It so happened that for various reasons I could not meet him as soon as I had hoped. A wedding one weekend, a trip to London the next, no-one to accompany me a third (I can be impetuous but I’m not fucking stupid). Fate seemed to be telling me to STAY AWAY in three foot high neon lettering.

That only made it all the sweeter when we did set eyes on one other for the first time.

As we approached the toll bridge (you have to pay to get in but it’s free to leave. Take that you English scum!) the rain started really hammering down which gave the whole experience a kind of bleak post-apocalptic feel. The bridge is like something out of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis already without all the dramatic metaphorical weather. Just as soon as it all started it stopped. Cardiff heralded our arrival with burst of sunbeams escaping through the cracking clouds above. I love and loathe the smell of the air after a rainstorm. The freshness of the water coming down mixes with a mustiness that lays dormant in the roads and pavements and grass until dampened. It feels like everything has been rinsed but not given a thorough scrub, just a cursory clean. Maybe it’s that I can’t stand a job half done.

I’ve always been like that. I think, in essence that’s why I can never leave a relationship until I’m certain that every aspect of it is completely destroyed. That I have done everything in my power to make sure there’s no going back. It’s a great system. It means I never actually have to fully commit to anyone.

This is what I did with John.

John was the first man I loved.

I say ‘man’, we were really still children despite being way past the age of consent and blessed with maturity beyond our years. We just didn’t have the life smarts that you need to be a fully functioning human being.

We had actually been at school together although I never spoke to him back then. It was on our first day of college that we were introduced by a mutual friend (someone that I’ve never seen since and I’ll be shocked to the core if she hasn’t come out as a rampant lesbian by now). He knew me. Everyone from that school had known me. I was the ‘new girl’ from the start of Year 9. Everyone always knows the new girl. This always pits her at a distinct disadvantage. Some people rise to the challenge and use their notoriety to their advantage. They are the sort of girls that know what it takes to fit in. They are blessed with an innate knowledge of what the social rules are. They know that you get your school skirt from New Look, not the official schoolwear outlet. They understand that getting up three hours before school starts to groom yourself is a necessary sacrifice if you want to look good. They get what all the sexual slang words mean and even when they don’t can laugh convincingly enough so that you think that they do. They are just really cool.

I was not that girl.

I did not come fully equipped with all the knowledge it takes to be popular. The knowledge that no one ever explicitly expresses but you HAVE to know if you want to not be mocked.

I would love to go back and explain some of those rules to my 14 year old self but sadly a DeLorean and a crazy haired scientist friend have thus far eluded me so it’s not really an option at this point.

So John knew me. He knew that I was the weird oddball. The chubby shy girl that, when she wasn’t being deliberately avoided, was pointed out as being the weird chubby shy oddball girl. But that was ok with John. Because John was the weird oddball guy. Sensitive and quiet and skinny and riddled with acne.

Kids like us rarely catch a break in a school environment. It’s just not how these places work.

So on the first day of college we were able to reinvent ourselves to some extent.   

I wonder now if that’s why I found Joe so intimidating.

To be continued…