Daily Archives: 17 July, 2009

A truly English meal out.

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OK then. Just one more post for now, since it is about last night.

We decided on Indian. We’ve been there before but I wasn’t so impressed last time and less so this time. But that’s not what I need to talk about at all.

We talked without really talking.

How was the flat hunting going?

How are you getting on where you’re living?

How’s work?

They were the subjects. As part of the answers there were things like, ‘a friend who lives on that street came with me’.

What friend? A colleague? No. But no explanation. An explanation is not needed – I know already or, at least, I guess but I bet I’m right since the things that I do, actually, know lead to a guess that will be, pretty much, spot on.

And, whereas it still has the power to wound, it is only a little now, like a pin prick compared to a stab with a bread knife.

The flat-hunting story continues. I ask questions, just as I am supposed to. He asks me questions just as he is supposed to.

We do the things we are supposed to with no feeling, no desire (and I don’t mean for each other but, rather, no desire to make a wave or really enquire or, be involved).

The conversation could be wrapped up in one of those typical English conversations:

Hello! How are you?
Fine, thanks, and you?
Oh can’t complain, you know.
Well, goodbye then.
Goodbye.

The end.

Of course, it went on much longer than that. But nothing was ever really said. I wanted to tell him of Ico; of the fact that Best Mate is coming over for some more time as she’s feeling much better; of my potential few days with the boys at a friend’s place in Rome.

Instead I said nothing. Partly because I now want some secrets from him, as he now has from me and as he thought he had from me but didn’t, so much, over 6 months ago and partly because I didn’t want him to tell me of things that he has done or is going to do that mean I am permanently excluded from parts of his life that I hadn’t been before – just like he is already excluded from parts of my life.

We could never get those back even if we wanted to.

He did tell me of the holiday plans that he doesn’t want to do; that he says he won’t do. I don’t enquire as to what he will do instead but stick to the simple things that I know about him such as ‘and when will you tell them that you won’t be going? The day before?’, smiling and laughing but without smiling and laughing at all because this is ritual and, after 20 years, I can do it without thinking, without feeling, without anything. Not that I expect anything amazing after 20 years. I’m not that deluded. Nor am I sad for that either. It’s the way it is and what can be expected. No surprises after all that time.

I notice he looks thinner still but that at least the moustache has gone, which is better. And I tell him so. He tells me the story of why it went and I am bored within the first couple of words since it is all irrelevant and as irrelevant as me telling him in the first place but at least mine was only a sentence.

I joke that, as his ‘mother’ and ‘father’ have phoned him during the meal, the holiday with them will make them all like a little family. He knows me too. He knows I am joking and taking the piss. We laugh as we should; as is required. We probably both know what we are doing.

We talk a little about FfI, complaining about the same things about her. United in our complaints but not really caring what the other has to go through, knowing that the other doesn’t have to go through this if they didn’t really want to.

The samosas were crap. The main course was decidedly average. The house wine expensive, as I pointed out just after he had ordered it, but we only drank half a litre in the end anyway, probably because neither of us wanted to extend out this nothingness when no possible good could come of it.

It wasn’t pretty but it could have been much worse. It did, however, feel more like we were in a Mike Leigh play (such as Abigail’s Party) and had the same ‘cringe factor’.

I didn’t go with the thought that it would be any better but I think I was prepared for most possibilities. This, though, left an empty feel.

Prices seem to have dropped for flats and it seems he will end up with a bigger flat than mine. I feel a little jealous but, at the same time, know I could have done no different and still love my flat anyway. And I do hope that he is happy with whatever he finds.

We shall see each other on Tuesday when certain things will be finalised. The Final Question still, after all this bloody time, hangs there. I can tell no one. I am alone in this, again, as always, as we all are, really.  I want to tell someone but they will only try and give me good advice – which I already know anyway and which will change nothing.

Those ties that bind are thin now and about to break. I can still see the things in him that I like and love but they are not mine now to ‘have and to hold’ – not that they ever were nor ever could be, really. To think that is so is a delusion.

And where is that bloody Knight in shining armour when you need him?

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Everybody wants me to be
What they want me to be

Easy – The Commodores

It was playing on the radio this morning and, you know, it’s not a love song but an ‘end of love’ song which fact I didn’t realise until now.

—o—

I remember, oh, twenty+ years ago, trying to explain to M (my partner of about 8 or 9 years standing at the time) that what I wanted him to be or, what I really wanted (which may not have been the same thing) was my Knight in shining armour, riding into view on a perfect white horse and coming to save me from this situation; take me away to a quiet place where none of the people in my life nor the problems that were associated with them, could touch me. And keep me there, safe, calm, at peace, fighting off those who would seek to destroy me or have me be what they wanted me to be – which was not me at all.

And now, with the weather here about to break, from the calm stillness and stifling heat (although I prefer it, as you may know), we shall probably get violent storms and much rain and wind and ‘cold’.

Conversely, finally, the storms in me may have passed already (I hope) and a calmness may have been restored. In the end, I was wrong and I was right.

I was wrong about the Knight in shining armour – he just doesn’t exist .- and that’s because, as in the lyrics above, the ‘Everybody’ does, in fact, include myself, or, maybe, is only myself. So, that’s what I wanted, then? I wanted someone to save me from myself; to take me away from the turmoil that was, in reality, not really outside of me, but inside of me.

And, I wonder, what does that look like from the outside? Looking back over the past few days (when it all came to a head), I can see that I was, in a way, a crazed madman, desperately searching for a way out of the madness, staring eyes, wild hair, head turning this way and that, but quickly and without measure.

And just like a madman, as I reach out to grab something/someone, with those staring, wild eyes and contorted features and wild hair, wanting help, seeing in someone/something the thing that I want or, maybe, the thing that I think I have found after this search that seems to have been going on for ever, they turn away, as any sane person would or reel back in horror at the wild thing in front of them, grasping and grabbing.

And so, the time that I mentioned, with M, he wasn’t the Knight (how could he ever be?) and then, as the madness continued, I found some respite (but it was not respite at all just a continuing of the madness) in my affair with a married colleague, AA, of which I am not proud, but we were travelling away a lot, together, and it just sort of happened and went on for a while, which seemed like an eternity and the emotions were all mixed up and high and intense, between us and inside of me and, then, finally, I dropped him because I found V and I left him, probably, perplexed as to what had happened and why the sudden change and I told him:

‘I’ve found someone else’

as if that was the reason. It wasn’t the reason at all. It was a coincidence. What had happened was that I had come to a place of calm or near calm and V happened to be there at the time. Not that the madness had quite finished but it petered out, like a slowly dying thing, flapping it’s wings but weaker and weaker, gasping for breath but each breath becoming shallower until I became, again, this person who seemed in control, who was content and at peace.

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At the top of this blog I used to have a sentence that included something like:

I came here to find the passion and, here, it is all around me and still it doesn’t touch me

Well, in these last few weeks and last few days, I certainly found some sort of passion. It touched me alright. It made me ‘touched’ as we would say. I lost my way, briefly calmed and sated by my afternoon with Ico and written about here but, by then my madness was at it’s height, and so I can only hope that the wild, raging madman didn’t scare him too much with the aftermath of the afternoon as it is a place that I would rather be and a place that I value so highly but not a place in which I can live, since living is about so much more than talking and walking and being with a friend, unfortunately. But it is somewhere I can visit (hopefully, if he permits me) to get away from the actual process of living which, is not ‘living’ at all but ‘existing’ and ‘surviving’ and, perhaps, a place, an oasis, in which I can relax and be ‘myself'; that is – my real self.

And, so, I have reached this calm this morning. It came to me because I realised that I was doing the stupid, crazy, wild thing with the grabbing and clutching, expecting someone else to pull me out of this mess that I had created and, in the process, probably, scaring them and achieving the very opposite of what I needed and desired. And the ‘passion’ was found, in a way, as I have, in fact found it before, a few times – but I just can’t handle it; it’s just too much for my mind.

And so, I shall stop writing, for a bit and recuperate some of the energy I have been using in this madness and concentrate, maybe, on some things that need to be done to do the living that is not living but surviving and being ‘normal’ (and here, I was going to write ‘whatever the hell that may be’ but I know what that is – it is the ‘not rocking the boat’, the ‘doing the right thing (at least by everybody else’s standards – ‘everybody’ being those other ‘normal’ people)’ and ‘behaving myself in a proper manner’ – proper by the standards of society, that is).

And, maybe, this time it was not the physical presence of a real lover but the dream of the other night that allowed me to rapidly move to this new calm? Since it was all so real and so perfect, without being too perfect so as to be unreal. However, if he is out there for real, now is the time to step forward and make yourself known.

I am ready, finally.