This morning I snapped my eyes open right in the middle of a dream about my ex. We were staying in a house in Newcastle and, against our better judgment, decided to go for a nighttime walk. It was as though we were sheltered rich debutantes seeing the grimy working class city for the first time. We were terrified. We went into a shopping centre clutching tight to one another for protection from the danger that was all around. Sure enough, a youth started following me down an escalator asking for 80p. I told him I didn’t have it. I suspected I felt his hand in my pocket taking it anyway but he missed the tenner that was there. Then I picked him up and started complimenting him on his muscles and being generally friendly, to which he responded most positively and the danger seemed averted. But when we got to the bottom of the escalator my girlfriend was gone, disappeared somewhere into the shopping centre. I went looking for her frantically. Looped back to the point she must have last been, in case she came back. Finally went to where the women’s toilets were to see if she was in there. An elderly woman came out and told me that the men’s next door was closed and that she missed the sound of them talking and splashing. Then another woman was going in and I asked her to ask if [girlfriend’s name, first and last] was in there. I said she’d gotten scared and had run away. The woman went to ask but went in a different women’s toilets just around the corner, came back saying she wasn’t there. But what about the toilets in front of me?
I woke up then. I guess I’ll never know…
The last thing I did before I went to sleep – this was after watching High Fidelity and quite a lot of No Direction Home (I didn’t want to think) – was read some of my old blog. I went back to when we first got together, looking for clues, I guess. I read about when we lived in South Elmsall , which seems like a lifetime ago. Read about how I had that phase of thinking I wanted to run for mayor or otherwise do something good for the village of my birth. Was struck with wonder that I didn’t now remember any of that, and found solace in the reminder that memories fade. Sometimes I feel sad because it seems like I can’t forget anything and when things are bad I think they’ll always be there. In a lot of ways that’s generally true – but obviously not in all.
Anyways, that’s not what struck me about what I read: what struck me was reading about two instances in which I’d said “no” to something she wanted to do. The first was going to Morocco and the second was going for three days to a no doubt beautiful farm up in North Yorkshire . It makes me real sad to be reminded of that, in light of my realisation of how bad I got into that habit of saying. I can’t believe I didn’t do those things: especially the apple picking. We were pretty early into our relationship and it would have been awesome. Indeed, even at the time I rued it; I guess I stayed in South Elmsall cos I thought I had things that needed doing – but in the event all I did was have three days of feeling lost and miserable and not doing anything at all. Even then I knew where I should have been. She, of course, had a great time.
Money too, I suppose. The plans for things closer to home that I thought needed taking care of (turns out they probably didn’t). And the thought, perhaps, of the two times I’d already been to Morocco with previous girlfriends and how both those relationships had ended not long afterwards, despite the trips being good. Though I wouldn’t say that was the main reason.
Why did I keep saying “no” to things? Why did I not want to do the things she did? What measure of control or security was I exercising? I can’t believe I was so shit.
My heart is in pieces right now. Has been for days. I’ve cried my fuckin’ eyes out and I’ve realised and felt so much. The pain comes in overwhelming waves and I understand why some men lose it completely. What if I hadn’t had my training? Even now I want to rip things from the wall, destroy the entire contents of my flat, crash my fist into inanimate objects.
The feeling is glorious in some ways. To be human again. The sensation of warm salty tears streaming down my cheek. The power of the pain and the scientific curiosity that wonders where it comes from – like, physically, biologically, chemically, spiritually – and how it can be sparked by something so simple as the losing of a woman. For what purpose is it there? What is going on in my system that brings it home so magnificently? And all the realisations and resolutions and shame and regret.
It’s a 24/7 thing with me. The movies last night were my first respite in as long as I can remember. Even refereeing a football match yesterday morning I was on the verge, when I’m usually so present.
In so many ways, I’m grateful for it. And in so many others ways, I feel so absolutely desperate I could die.
The anger. The frustration. The arguments in my head. Bitterness and remorse and –
I was supposed to go out for pizza last night with Harry and his friends. I called him a little while beforehand to find out what the score was and, as I’d feared, he’d said there would be a big group of them. Maybe something intimate I could handle. But not eleven whooping students changing conversational topic every three seconds and doing everything they can to ensure nary a sentence goes past without some sort of joke in it. I said I’d see him soon – unable to decide or talk on the phone – and then went immediately to toss a coin and the coin said “stay home.” Then I sat down to type out a text to Harry to explain:
“H, I just had to toss a coin to confirm but to be honest I think a big crowd might be a bit much right now. Really appreciate the invite and please don’t let this put you off doing so again but my heart is in pieces. Tears ain’t cool. I know you understand. x”
I wasn’t feeling so much before I wrote that except general despondence. But as I tapped it out something hit me and I cried and cried and cried. I don’t know why. It was glorious to shudder so. It hurt like a bitch.
I’ve cried so much the last few days. But there’s been quite a lot of joy too, right in there amongst it…
Thursday was the last time I wrote and Thursday night my ex came over for dinner. Despite her being the catalyst for all my pain, it’s a million times better to be around her than not. I’d been longing to talk to her for days, and only writing it out instead had kept me sane. In fact, more than that, writing had been healing me, and teaching me. When I started writing Thursday morning I felt desperate and mad – but by the time I’d finished, and was then on to reading it through, it was mostly gone: scrolling back to the beginning to edit and correct I was amazed to note that the emotions I’d expressed seemed like a thing of the distant past. Another reason to love this writing. But, still, there’s nothing like saying it in person…
We talked. A lot of it was very joyful and pleasant and I felt so close to her again. As she ate I wished that we were physically closer, that she was sitting on my lap or something. She looked so cute, so adorable. I couldn’t believe there was ever a time when I didn’t find her attractive. Probably the dinner talk was easy and light. Talk about general things in life. Her wanting to move to Ireland and buy a van. My moving out of this flat. Then later on we lay on the floor in front of the fire with a cover over us and I expressed a good deal of the things I’d written about that day, plus many more besides. It was a really incredible night. There was no sex or even kissing, and that’s probably what helped make it so. Instead, we just shared. We talked for maybe six hours. Talked long beyond the time when she said she had to go. Said things that went way back, and I felt the process healing and exhilarating and good. Sure, I cried a lot, and felt intense pain and regret at times – but, really, the repression was far worse than the expression, despite appearances. There were moments when I wished all nights could be like that.
She listened. She talked too – I wasn’t no blathering conversation hog – and she said things that surprised me, that brought me new understandings. When I write out the contents of my own head I’m mostly only touching on what I already know, what’s inside me. And so, perhaps, expressing those things to her was never going to be the seat of my greatest learning, despite how obviously beneficial it was to push myself to share. Good for her, I hope. And good for myself.
I felt so close to her I could have swallowed her up. Never wanted to let her go. Imagined building a life in which we were always so intimate, no longer kept things back, shunned the fripperies of movie watching in bed when there were so many other matters of the soul we could have been attending to. Like I’ve said, despite the pain and the tears and all the rest of it – this is something I want to stress – it was ultimately exhilarating and joyous and, I guess, real. Something that life should be about. My shell and my guard were gone – how long had they been in place? – and I was tender and raw and open to the elements. Human, I suppose; a little while ago a friend from London had told me I seemed to have lost my humanity in the last year or so – well maybe now it was coming back. Why did it go? I don’t know, I –
Well, okay, there was that “trauma” I mentioned the other day not long after we got together, and maybe that had something to do with it, and the saying no, and the distance that grew between us, and the wanting to stay safe. I’d love to write about it here but I can’t. Maybe one day it’ll come out. And no doubt there’ll be tears then too.
God, it’s so long since I’ve cried like this! I’ve missed it, and wished so often that I could feel it – only schmaltzy Hollywood movies seem able to do the job, and then only in a very mild and brief way – but, wow, is it back with a vengeance! Crying and pain is feeling and being alive and being real. Expressing something. It hurts like buggery but it’s great in the aftermath and when you know that, even great in the moment. I love to cry in front of another. I feel no shame in bearing my soul. I would do it on front of the whole world if it helped even one person let down their guard.
Repression is killing us. Keeping it all inside. Are we not souls on a journey? Or merely wisecracking bodies killing time in between meals and facebook? And by that I mean: Christ! How frustrating to feel the magnificence of something real and open and honest and to then think back to those moments when it might have been just there beneath the surface but suppressed because it wasn’t the time, because life was moving too fast, because the company wasn’t right, because of being afraid of how one might come across, of making a scene, because no one is interested. And thus we learn to pretend and push down what we feel, and that becomes our habit, and we help create it more. I think back to –
Well here’s an example – something I wanted to save to write about another time but something which seems relevant in so many ways right now. Something I’d never shared either here or with anyone, but something I’ve thought about lots over the last few years. Something that every time I do think about I feel a massive pang of pain and regret, even though you’d probably tell me I shouldn’t. In many ways I guess I didn’t realise it was a big deal, despite how often I think of it – but when I shared it with Nicky the other night it seems that on some level it was. I fuckin’ cried when talking about that too. Quite a lot. Even though it wasn’t something that happened to me or…
I was at a party in London . I’d been making the effort to be sociable and gregarious – had probably had a shandy or two – and I was talking with this guy about various stuff, getting on really well. I guess we’d reached comedies and I was asking if he’d seen Snuff Box, pretty much my favourite comedy show now as well as then. I was describing some scenes to him. And for some reason which now seems entirely unimaginable I chose the one where Matt Berry is in a restaurant on a date and Rich Fulcher walks by, recognises him, and swears that he knows him from somewhere. Berry shrugs and Fulcher racks his brain – “organised softball? kickboxing?” – before joyously declaring, “I got it: you raped me!” He then describes it all happily to his laughing friend and a perplexed Berry before leaving with the words, “anyway, good to see you, give me a call sometime.” I guess when I first watched it the absurdity seemed humorous. Now the watching of it – and I generally flick past that one – is always tinged with bitter memories and regret.
At the party, standing by the oven, in a room full of people, late at night, with the beer flowing, I regale this scene, as anyone would, and in doing so I make one of the biggest mistakes of my life. As I reach the line that contains the r-word this guy’s girlfriend walks past, shoots us a look, and intently says, “what are you guys talking about?” The guy covers it up, explains it’s just a comedy show. She looks rattled and he does too. I know immediately that something’s gone wrong and I’ve a pretty good idea what it is. She’s suffered that and he knows about it and it’s something they’ve talked about, are maybe working through, and I’ve shoved it in their faces. They go off together to talk somewhere. I imagine they would have no idea that I’ve realised what I’ve done – who could be so sensitive in that environment? – but fact is, I am.
I guess that moment changed something in me. I realised something I hadn’t realised before – and something it appears not many other people do either. Certainly, for the students I know – mainly the guys – it’s a word that’s banded about with alarming ease. They talk about “facebook rape” and getting raped in football matches. Comedians stick it in their acts and one I used to love, Noel Fielding, seems obsessed with it, repeating it whenever possible, with glee on his face. I can’t understand it – but then there was also a time when it wouldn’t have occurred to me how damaging such behaviour can be. Now I can’t stand the word and the way people are using it in this modern world of ours.
I wonder…how many women in a Noel Fielding audience have suffered that crime and shrink and shirk when he begins his schtick? You only have to say the word, surely, and you’re transported back to another time and place. I know I am. So what are Noel and all these students and other comedians thinking? Or maybe they’re not thinking. Maybe they’ve never had sisters and girlfriends and mothers and daughters whose entire lives were changed because of some guy’s monstrous fleeting urge. But seems to me like there’s barely a woman I know who hasn’t been raped. The percentage must be huge. And in any given standup audience, or group of students, or TV crowd there is surely someone for whom that word strikes like daggers. It does for me.
I told Nicky that story about the moment in the party and I was amazed at the emotion that poured out of me. I guess I knew what my carelessness had done to someone and it hurt me to the bone. Though not as much as it would have hurt them, I suppose. I’ve been much more careful since then. And never encouraged it when I’ve heard it from others. Indeed, though I generally want to tell them why that word’s not funny, it was only the other day that I did so, round at Harry’s. I can’t say I went off on one in a massive way – but it was probably a bit of a social faux pas in a kitchen full of lighthearted student lads joshing about and doing whatever they could to raise a giggle. But, ya know, fuck it: I need to speak up about this more, people should have someone who can bring a bit of awareness to the things they’re saying, especially when they can cause such harm. Such unthinking in the world, in me…
And the weird thing is, there’s still a part of me that finds that sketch funny – though it’s a part that’s buried beneath a whole lot of regret and embarrassment and painful reminder. I’m such a contradiction sometimes…
I’ve mused of late as to why that word hurts the way it does. I’ve tried to apply logic and think about other words we use that could fall into the same bracket. We happily cry, “I could murder a sandwich!” without worrying whether anyone in the vicinity has lost a family member or friend to homicide. We laugh and joke about suicide, compare things to a “car crash”, probably a thousand and one things that could trigger anything but humour in a relevantly-effected innocent bystander. I recently watched The Dictator and right at the end Sacha Baron-Cohen asks his pregnant wife, “is it a boy or an abortion?” I’ve got to say, I found it pretty tasteless – but how much more so were I sitting there in a movie theatre with my partner perhaps a few days after her own termination? Sitting there in silence in the dark while a few hundred people around us laugh. My hand on hers tightens slightly but I’m too scared to turn my head, to say anything. We both know, is all, and the joke that may have been hilarious six months ago is now nothing but a dreadful reminder. And who to talk to about this? How to explain, later on, when our friends are slapping one another’s backs and retelling the whole thing why we’re just standing there holding one another and looking like crying?
This world, this world…
The multiple use of the word “murder”, I guess has been around a long time, and we know what it means. “I could murder a sandwich” conjures up images of someone literally stuffing one’s face. Would it be different, though, if someone said it to me the day after my father had been brutally killed? I don’t know, because I haven’t had that experience, therefore have no personal investment in the word. Likewise anything anyone would say about suicide or abortion or a sinking ship. But rape, I do, and I have no alternative images in my head – does anyone? – other than what it actually is: for someone, hell and suffering and a trauma they will never recover from and that will spread out to all they become intimately involved with. To me, that’s not really all that funny. To me, that’s something that more people should know.
But, anyways, I digress. I want to get back to Thursday night and to all those beautiful hours of talking and expression. I kind of wish I’d written about it sooner, perhaps when I remembered more, but I guess I didn’t have the energy. Lack of sleep and too much emotion. Too busy too, on Friday, and with yesterday’s reffing. And avoiding also. But no doubt I remember what needs remembering...
I’ll tell you one of the biggest things that sticks in my mind – and this was quite a long way into the conversation, long after I’d told her about all the things I wrote the other day, my regret at the saying no, my disbelief at my refusal to want to do things with her, the horrible realisation that I’d failed and fucked up and was determined to do better next time. It was when she was talking about how unhappy she was with her work when we lived together – I always knew that at the time, wished she would do something different, and I knew it impacted on our relationship – and she told me that she used to cry on the way there, cry on the way back. Sitting in her car with the tears streaming down her face. Desperately wanting something other than the long commute and the job she couldn’t stand. But all she ever told me at the time was that she liked driving. I never had a fucking clue.
I bawled my eyes out then. It wasn’t a massive revelation as far as she was concerned – she couldn’t believe she’d never told me – but for me it was huge. It hit me on multiple levels, all at once. It was the rushing out of my heart to her for her pain of old and the compassion I felt for that. It was the pain and the frustration of not being able to do it at the time, the knowing that I would been there for her. And it was something even bigger too – a double-header I’m not sure I know how to explain…
It hit me like a hammer. “I could have loved you,” I wailed, “if only you’d shown yourself to me.”
In a millisecond, the realisation of some truth lying deeper beneath all those months we’d lived. The shallowness of some of it. The lack of togetherness. The times I’d grow frustrated because she gave me stick for not spending more time with her but then when I did she just seemed to want to watch movies or talk about mushrooms. And all that while something real was going on, and something she revealed to me not. She was in frickin’ pain, man! She was having a massive crisis and didn’t have the nous or the braves or the ability to share it with the man she slept beside every single night and who she professed to love. I forgive her that because I understand it – her own upbringing, though placid and stable, had its own fairly major negative side-effects – but it broke my heart to learn of it.
I could have loved her. I could have loved her so much. But how can you love someone when they won’t even show themself to you? When they’re in hiding? When they’re not even being who they actually are?
I could have loved her, man. And all that time she was getting at me for not doing so. That was the second part of it. That was the whammy. It hit me like a hammer made of bricks. And I cried for that too.
It’s hard to explain. But what burst forth from me in that moment – my heart quite lurching in my chest – was this realisation that it wasn’t all me. Sure, a lot of it was – but this one – and this one was big – was something else. She used to make me feel so bad for not saying, “I love you.” I stopped saying it because I stopped feeling it. I blamed myself for not feeling it, and she blamed me too. It was a big part of why she left me. It was that and the lack of togetherness and intimacy and sharing. I didn’t give myself to her, she said. I held things back. I wasn’t vulnerable enough.
I didn’t fully believe it at the time. I talked about projection and I felt a lot of truth in that. But I believed it enough to wonder what the hell was wrong with me. Now, I don’t believe it at all. Now, I know it wasn’t true. She was the one holding back, wasn’t giving of herself, didn’t want to be vulnerable. She hid her true nature and the girl that slept beside me was an impostor, some body double of the one I’d fallen in love with. She cried and cried and couldn’t even bring herself to share the fact with me, never mind the actual tears. Somewhere down the line she’d learned that emotion and tears and vulnerability and goddamn realness, fer Chrissakes, was something you kept to yourself, and stuffed down inside, and masked over with a smile, keeping yourself busy, looking at movies.
In that moment, I cried for the truth of everything I’ve said above, and for the tonic and the balm that washed over that poor child mind of mine – the one that tells me I’m always the one in the wrong and the one that believes other people when they tell me the same. I get down on myself. I blame myself. And…it wasn’t me.
I could have loved her, but she wasn’t even there. Love is a connection and the connection was blocked. Love in a relationship takes effort and work. You’ve got to keep the connection open. You keep it open by sharing yourself. Sure, there were things I kept inside too – but then I wasn’t the one bemoaning the lack of togetherness and not doing a damn thing about it. Not the one who wasn’t looking at themselves first when they realised that they wanted something to change. It’s a lesson I learned long ago: that if you find yourself wanting something, or complaining about something, that’s a sign for you to do something about it. And the first thing to do when thinking another is behaving in a certain way that you don’t like is to look at yourself and see if just maybe you’re doing it too. Fix that, and you might fix the whole thing. Fix that, and you might just realise that the other person wasn’t even doing it in the first place. It’s planks and motes. It’s the law of projection, this world a mirror. It’s so incredibly vast in its depth of application it staggers me time after time after time…
We learned so much in all these discussions. I don’t blame her for the past because I don’t think there was anything she could have done about it. Maybe if I’d had a bit more smarts and pushed her more, gotten angry and raised my voice, brought a bit of emotion to the table. But we were both trying to be so ‘spiritual’ and good. Didn’t want to go base and resort to standard Yorkshire methods of bringing things out in the open. Though there’s certainly a time and a place for that sort of thing.
It’s all so sad when you look back and see all the things you could have done, how much better it could have been had you done them, and how it all turned to shit for the not doing of them. All that regret and then the corollary determination to not let it happen again. Tools for the future. And a plan of action for the next time, the next man, the next woman…
But lying there by that fire, and feeling so close, and all the intense emotions I’ve had the last few weeks, and the love and desire and adoration and longing I was now feeling for her – the pain of being away from her, of not speaking – the attraction I felt, and how pretty she looked – and her body, as always, but that goes without saying – and the memories of our amazing sex times – and with our arms wrapped around each other and tender kisses and the incredible sharing and the realisation of how switched on and amazing she is…
Well, what need for a next time? I mean, it fuckin’ tears me up that she had to sleep with another guy for me to get back in touch with my heart and my feelings and to stop being so fuckin’ cocky and above it all but – well, if that’s what it takes…
There were times I wanted to break things. Times I could see myself grabbing that gas fire and ripping it right off the wall, hurling it through the window. Destroying some furniture. But the only time I let that out – I know it’s not smart – was in the morning when I went to make her an egg sandwich. Things were light and fine. I hadn’t really slept much but mostly I was thinking how awesome everything was, what a truly wonderful evening. And then I cracked the eggshell and dropped the egg into the pan and suddenly something hit me – as it so often has of late – and my heart leapt once more and the tears sprang to my eyes and the voice in my head cried out, “I can’t believe I’ve fuckin’ lost her.” I smashed the empty eggshell into the ground and let out an anguished cry. I whirled around and saw a cup and wanted to wash it shatter on the wall. I didn’t though, ‘cos even in the moment I know what that means and what it means is you’ve got some sweeping up to do and one cup less. But the eggshell was good.
Maybe symbolic, too, being as I feel very much like a soul without a shell right now. I’m all goo. But how can an egg make its way in the world if it doesn’t have protection? Or maybe I’m just waiting for someone to come along and eat me…
Anyway, there was more from that night but I guess I’ve related pretty much everything I remember and that needs remembering. The only other thing was this sort of slowly dawning realisation that she was moving on. I mean, she talked about times she’d dream of me coming back to her, but in the way she said things it was always about someone else in the future, not me or her. “You’ll meet someone else and it’ll be better” rather than “we can be better,” her realisations of mistakes past never effecting her in the way they did me. To me it never felt like our relationship was over, just that it changed form. Things happen like that sometimes. In standard terms you’d say we were “together” when we lived together, when we were “boyfriend and girlfriend” – and yet in reality we’ve been much more “together” in recent weeks. Emotionally closer. More open and honest. Saying everything and having more fun and, on my part, enjoying her company more. What need for another unknown person who may or may not materialise from the mists of the future when there’s an amazing person right here next to you? But she’s nine years younger than me and got time on her side, hasn’t yet experienced the terrifying onset of age and the realisation that there might not be another, that it might not get better, and that all this chopping and changing may just be a one-way ticket to loneliness and childlessness and some horrible old-aged regret that you’ve fucked the whole thing up and traded possible happiness and stability for keeping your options open and the fantasy of a LA-based rockstar girlfriend some fucking how finding her way into your life and falling in love with you just because her lyrics match your thinking.
In a nutshell, she’s already moving on to the next. I should have fucking known. I should have realised from the way she was talking. But I guess I had hoped based on her wanting me in the past, and based on just how good it is when we spend time together. Based on Friday morning when after her egg sandwich we slowdanced to Alanis’s “Simple Together” and she burst into tears and we stood there both shuddering and crying holding one another while Alanis told her tale of how she thought it would be but she was sadly mistaken.
But why does it have to end this way?
Friday I decided to cycle up to Headingley and go to this community centre I’ve long heard of but never visited. It was Nicky, in fact, who had said I should go up there just that morning, in circumstances that were perhaps a little spooky and maybe even channelled, as has happened a few times with a few different people of late. So I went and checked it out and there was nothing there. Instead I decided to go sit in Costello’s with a cup of tea and maybe find a book to read. Costello’s is my favourite coffee shop in Headingley. Actually, it’s the only one I’ve been in, and then just thrice. Buying a cup of tea is something I hardly ever do – too tight; fail to see the point; not into people watching; have tea at home – but I figured it’s the kind of thing Nicky would do and there’s no better time to start living like the man I should have been with her than the present. I perused the bookshelf and the only thing that jumped out at me was Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity, which I’ve already read a couple of times (and seen the movie at least half a dozen). I settled down to read, starting at the bit where he leaves the funeral and Laura finds him lying in a muddy flowerbed in the rain. Obviously anyone who knows this book won’t fail to see the relevance of the words I absorbed. I read it right to the end.
That book, man: first time I read it was when I lived in Charlottesville back in ’98 aged just twenty-one. Wow, it spoke to me, and I remember giving it to Lauren and remember her saying how much it helped her understand men, understand me. There’s so much of fucking truth in that book. How crazily hard it is to live with the knowledge of your woman with another man. The weird saying no thing, even when you know it’s right. And all that stuff about keeping your options open and committing to nothing and living in dreams…
As I read I wanted to say “fuck it” to the stupid way I’ve been living. As I read I wanted to dismiss every idea I have of waiting for this perfect person to materialise and just get on with the task of growing older alongside someone who may not be perfect in the way goddamn Alanis Morissette or Mila Kunis or Heather Brooke [sic] are perfect – yes, I know they’re not – but is still frickin’ awesome and lovely and gorgeous and sexy, and has the potential to be all those things to a pretty much infinite degree and, yes, probably would go down on me in a theatre and make a really excellent mother. We learn together. I want to eat her all up. Our lovemaking is divine. What more could a guy want?
As I read I started making an altogether new plan, the desire growing to just lay it on the line, to say, I want you to move back in with me, to commit to six months of doing that and seeing if we can’t just apply all these things we’ve learned of late, be the people we know we can be, and if at the end of those six months things are still going well, I want you to marry me. Like Rob Fleming says, I’m tired of thinking about all this stuff. I just want to get on with the living.
I walked around Headingley and I looked at Leeds . I looked at coffee shops that I know she loves but I never went to. Saw signs for acoustic nights and open mics and wondered why I didn’t play them. Bumped into a nice guy I’ve bumped into three times now – once playing five-a-side, once outside my dad’s shop, and once by the Sainsbury’s – and he’s a musician and talks about playing places and gave me a CD of his solo acoustic stuff. I start to think of my dad’s shop and this snifter of a job that came to me the other day. The way that ever since I started writing again near the end of February – nearly fifty thousand words in less than ten days – I’ve become incredibly happy and not dissatisfied or bored at all with my life or my flat or the things I do. In fact, I don’t seem to have the time anymore. I love writing so much – even all this distraught stuff is such a buzz in the expressing and in the aftermath. I feel healed and good. I want to do it more and more. And I wonder, maybe everything’s okay here after all, despite the concrete and the lack of friends and the heartache I currently feel. Maybe I should just stay here – pay the new tenant some money to keep my flat – tend the garden my girlfriend so lovingly constructed and that I have mostly ignored but the other day sorted out and really enjoyed – and build that life together with her. She wants to go to Ireland , that’s fine with me. I’ll go too. I’m not bothered about where I live. All I want is love.
I guess I’m resolved. I want to put it to her. I’m due to go over to hers but I wonder how best to proceed so I ask the I Ching for some words of wisdom. In fact, I beseech it with spontaneous and true feeling. It’s been a long time since I so heartfeltingly begged the I Ching to provide me with some guidance. Perhaps that’s why I received it so clear:
6: Conflict
You are sincere and are being obstructed. A cautious halt halfway brings good fortune, going through to the end brings misfortune. It furthers one to see the great man. It does not further one to cross the great water. In all your transactions, carefully consider the beginning.
Changing lines:
1. While a conflict is in the incipient stage, the best thing to do is drop the issue. Especially when the adversary is stronger. It may come to a slight dispute, but in the end all goes well.
5. A dispute can be turned over to an arbiter who is powerful and just. If one is in the right, one attains great fortune.
So that couldn’t have been more useful. In a nutshell, it said calm down – and so strong must my faith in the I Ching have become that despite the tumult of emotions I was feeling in the hours leading up to that reading I pretty much instantly became relaxed and joyous and calm. A bit like some kind of Derren Brownian motion. Or the power that Mark has over Jeremy when he tells him to piss in the prayer bucket.
Also the mention of the great man – a wise one – an arbiter and counsellor – wow, how I wish I had one of those in my life. Maybe something like that would be good for us. Couples counselling, you know. Sounds kind of cheesy but I really wish I’d done that with Sophie, and maybe here too. We need help. We’re just bairns struggling around in the dark on our own. And the expression and sharing is so healing and binding and good. But there’s no one I know…
In any case, I chilled the shit out and felt resolved to let it slide rather than go steaming in there and being overwhelming and daft. Which I may well have turned out to be. In fact, I’m currently shaking my head at the re-reading of the first changing line and how I failed to abide by that. But then…it really wasn’t my fault. I wanted further guidance. I rolled some dice:
- Be chill
- Mention marriage
- Mention giving it another go
- Mention the I Ching reading
- Be natural
- Be emotional
Of course, the dice could have chosen 1 and I would have stuck with that and it would have gone no further. But it chose 3 and I was half-way to doing what I’d wanted to do in the first place. I rolled again:
- Just that
- Moving back in together
- Moving in to a specific place
- 6 months, then marriage
- Wait till end of night
- Be natural, keep counsel
The dice rolls 4 and I’m at exactly the place I was when reading High Fidelity. Funny that, that both random chance and my head had come up with the same course of action. But now I had the additional comfort of the I Ching counselling caution and not pushing things. I figured just lay it out at some point as what I’d been thinking about and was committed to making happen, but not get into any persuading or grand emotional display, explanation and reasons and all that jazz. A midway point between my natural style of giving everything and trying to win someone over and the I Ching’s coolness.
But did I push on through to the end? Did I attempt to cross the great water? Did I fail to drop the issue? Or did I halt halfway by not succumbing to demands and feelings?
I should also mention that, weirdly enough, just as I sat down to toss my first coins an old Rolling Stones song popped into my head. It came from out of nowhere. I certainly haven’t listened to it in a long, long time…
This could be the last time
This could be the last time
Maybe the last time
I don’t know
And I wondered about that and thought, well, is this the last time…for us? Something significant in those words…
I went on over. I was happy and chill. Took my guitar and strummed while she made herself some dinner (I’d already eaten) and it was all a stark contrast to my blubbering ways of before, all thanks to the I Ching.
We hung out. We talked. She told me she’d got her acceptance letter for a permaculture course in Ireland and was all excited about that. In my head, secret resolve to go live there with her if that’s what she wants. To be in the countryside and nature, as I’ve longed for some time. To do the course, even – why the hell not? – and be her man and support her in what she wants to do and stop being such a naysayer. We went up to her room and she read to me from a book about wild women and wolves that she loves, hinting at the depths inside her. I know there is so much more. Maybe that’s why I always got so cross at her superficiality and passiveness and platitudes: because I knew about those depths and that’s what I wanted to see.
But, I have doubts too. Something about the way she interacts with others, the way she speaks, and the kinds of people she interacts with. One of her roommates is stoned out of his gourd and barely intelligible. Another is a crazy lunatic pill popper. She tolerates them because she’s an angel but I just don’t have the capacity. She always thought I was arrogant and considered myself better than others. I don’t know the truth of that. Sometimes I do feel better than others – hell, I’m better than I used to be and a lot of others are like my past self – but mostly it’s just that I don’t want to associate with them. I like my own company and I like people who are together. I’m something of a misanthrope. I’ve got a writer’s demeanour (thinking that amazing Raymond Carver story, XXXXX) and I’ve a low tolerance level for too much chatter, smalltalk, noise. I’m an introvert. And, maybe, possibly, probably quite likely, I’m arrogant and egocentric and damaged by deepseated feelings of inadequacy and pretty much everything I do is driven by a psyche that went wrong at birth. Which is kind of sad.
In any case, I’m watching her and I’m thinking, but wait, could I really live with this woman for the rest of my days? Despite all the incredible feelings of recent weeks. Despite the longing to talk with her, be with her, the way when I am with her even two feet apart is too much, the delight and repose of being in her arms. The frickin’ amazing sex we have.
But what if that’s all it comes down to, sex? And even worse, what if this wanting to be with her is motivated by: a) not wanting her to be with anyone else, because she is so fricking amazing; and b) the fear that I’ll never again find a lover with such amazing breasts, with such an awesome body, and who uses it to such staggering effect? The way she kisses, the way she can come within thirty seconds of my being inside of her, the way she’s always up for it, the way she…
Is that devastatingly shallow? Or is it a symptom of something actually deeper and true and good? The only way I know how to understand these feelings of not wanting to let someone go, to keep them all for myself?
I was thinking the other day about how I always say I don’t what love is. She always wanted me to say it but I wouldn’t ‘cos I didn’t know what that meant. It occurred to me that just maybe I do know what love is – what it feels like – but that I don’t recognise whatever I’m feeling as love because no one’s explained it to me properly – and by that I mean, I never had any exposure to it in my earliest days. A bit like if you grew up in a family where colours were never named. You’d know what black was – but if an outsider asked you to hand them a black cup, you wouldn’t have a clue how to recognise it. I mean, they’d be able to explain it pretty simply and quickly – but then colour recognition is a damn site easier than love recognition. We pretty much all agree on what black is and just get on with it. But it doesn’t seem to me that there’s much agreement on what love is. Especially in this world of mine which is all jumbled up with half-cocked New Age ideas about letting go and unconditionality and acceptance.
You know what I realised the other day? You focus so hard on letting things go you just end up with nothing. You tell yourself you’re doing good, ‘cos that’s what some book said – and then one day you turn around and realise you’ve got fuck all and you wonder why everything went wrong. “But I let go of all the things I felt desire and attachment for!” you wail and moan, “how come I’m not happy?”
Stupid fuckin’ New Age ideas about how to find satisfaction. I’ll tell you the smartest thing you can ever learn to do – this comes from Conversations With God – is to “observe what’s so and do what works.” And I’ll tell you one thing that works and one thing that doesn’t: one thing that works is holding on to your loved ones and fighting for them and laying everything on the line for the love you have; and the thing that doesn’t is staying cool and calm and cross-legged while they walk out of your life and saying, that’s okay, accept everything, let go, I’ll just observe my breath and remain fine, let nothing steal my joy. Fuck that!
Man, I’ve been such an idiot in this life.
But back to the story…of laying on her bed in the dark…not the hugs and closeness of previous times – I feel her distancing me, pushing herself away – ever since she came back from Ireland really – but it’s light and easy and I’m thinking maybe we’ll have a game of Jenga and I can go home decent and uncrying and early – despite best intentions we generally always end up staying up until the early hours, for one reason or another – except there’s still the question of my decision from earlier and also the guidance of the dice. What to do about that? What would the I Ching say?
I toss a coin and shine my phone on it and it says to say it. So I do.
“Listen Nicky,” I say, “I’ve been thinking. I think you’re awesome and after everything that’s happened lately I’ve been thinking maybe we should give it another try. I want us to move in together again, to live together for six months” – this’ll take us up to the time she’s due to go to Ireland – “and then if it’s still going well at that point I think we should get married.” It seems wise. A trial period and then just going for it. Proper commitment. No more fannying around. No more one foot out the door, someone better around the corner, the ducking out when things get tough that we’ve both done.
Marriage keeps you together, keeps you working on it, that’s my idea.
“I don’t need an answer now,” I say, “I just wanted to say it, let you think about it.”
“I’m serious,” I say. At least, I think I’m serious.
I don’t want an answer. I’ve just dropped this on her and it’s surely too much.
Also, what if she said yes? I’d shit myself. I’d drop a load and freeze.
What if she said –
She answers.
She says something about wanting to be alone right now. About wanting to be alone when she goes to Ireland . She’s going for a year long course, starting in six months, and she’s already deciding that she wants to do all that alone. An attractive, twenty-eight year-old girl who but a few weeks ago was having sexual relationships with two guys in Leeds and would have had my babies and loves love as much as the rest of us?
I don’t buy it. I don’t believe it. I want to hold my tongue and I manage it on the whole but I can’t help but say, “saying you want to be alone is what you say to someone when you don’t want to be with them but don’t want to tell them.”
Who the fuck wants to be alone in this world? Who would want to deny themselves the love of a good and decent and sexy guy who’s standing right in front of them saying, I like you enough to want to spend the rest of my life with you, and give you children, and work my frickin’ ass off to overcome all the small and negative and unattractive tendencies I have inside myself? Unless they…
I didn’t see it at the time. Mainly it was just dawning on me that she didn’t want to be with me after all. Nine months we’ve been broken up and all that time I thought she wanted me. We’ve been sleeping together throughout. We’ve been more intimate and shared more than we ever did when we were together in an official capacity. The sex has been more mindblowing and frequent and loving. And especially just recently it seemed to me that we’d worked through so many of our past problems and emerged at a place that we should have probably been at a long time ago, and that place was good.
Hell, back at the end of last year there was a very slight pregnancy possibility and when I contemplated it I was totally ready to accept whatever came, and if she was pregnant to be her man, and to be the father of her child, and to grow old with her and marry her and create that little family that I’ve wanted for a long time now, just been too chicken shit to make it happen. I know what it means, in terms of giving up my freedom and giving up my rockstar girlfriend dreams – and those fantasies have such big hold over me that it’s not something I would give up so willingly – but I was ready with her. She did an I Ching about it and hers said peace. I did one and mine said whatever I said would be ignored so I didn’t say anything, just told her that and resolved to go with what she decided. She was saying she didn’t want to take the morning after pill, to put those hormones in her body. Was really cut up about that. I was ready and surrendered. But she took the pill anyway.
What was going on in her head was very different to mine…
The night before she went to Ireland we had ridiculous sex. I’ve been telling I love her for quite some time now. I feel it and I do. That whole thing with her and the other guy – like Hornby’s Rob and that massive creep Ian (Ray) – tore me apart but it brought me back in touch with my deeper, well-hidden longing. It sucked but it was worth it. She was reciprocal and I guess I thought she’d want it too. All that closeness and intimacy and sharing. But when she came back from Ireland she was different. Committed to not sleeping with me – and, for the first time, not giving in at the slightest ear nibble. A distance and a wall between us, at least physically. That was probably helpful in some ways – it helped the talking, helped my longing – but also indicative of something else, I guess, something I…
I could feel that she didn’t want me anymore. And laying it all on the line Friday night and getting that bullshit response brought it home. I trudged back to mine getting rained on with my head bowed to the Earth. All thoughts of staying in Leeds were washed away. The walking and the staring at the ground and the pain of the emptiness were magnificent. I wanted to just walk and walk forever, lost in a fuzz, like Forrest Gump and his post-Jenny mega-run. To sleep in the bushes. To be no one and nothing. The I Ching calm was gone and I was back to not sleeping and heartbreak and wishing I was dead and could smash things up. Saturday was awful, the games a real chore – men violently arguing over whose throwin it is when my heart’s in tatters – and then my inability to do the pizza thing with Harry. My head is once again full of anger and wants to go tell her to fuck herself – not for her answer or her choice or her rejection but for something more; for probably pissant and irrational things like wasting my time and leading me on and never really being committed and being too young to understand what that meant anyway. For always giving the impression os wanting something with me but when it comes down to it – for when the reality of true commitment is dropped on you – running a million miles. She only liked me because I’m hot and because I gave her orgasms. She’d ride me till she came and then maybe I wouldn’t and she’d say she felt bad and I’d say it was okay and then we’d sleep and it really was okay, I liked it that way but – not later on when I’m in my funk realising/imagining that I’ve been used. I want to say all these things to her but I never would because I know it’s just me being a cock and I don’t want to make her feel bad about herself and I don’t want to damage the possibility of us sleeping together again. Most likely she’s done nothing wrong but once more I’m calling her a bitch and thinking back to all these imagined slights. The way I’m now thirty-seven and I just haven’t got time to be a-wasting on flings and romances that go nowhere, I want children and someone who really fucking wants me like I feel I want her. I mean, it’s okay when you’re twenty-something and all you do is fall in love, have fun going out, get with someone for a year or two because they’re good in the sack or pretty or ‘cos you can’t think of anything else. None of it matters back then – but where I am at my age it’s all absolutely about will they make a good mother, could I live with them for twenty years, do I trust them enough to give myself to totally? I can’t waste any more time on things that don’t fulfil that. I don’t want to be starting again when the window of opportunity for family and everything else has passed. And for all this I hate her, and for more things too. I feel like an idiot. I feel like she was never really with me – and all that stuff about realising that she never even let me love her, how she didn’t show herself and then made me feel so terribly bad about it. Fuck fuck fuck.
But isn’t all attack a cry for help? And if it is then what am I crying out for here?
And what role does projection play? Because all throughout this there are things unsaid, and things that don’t make me look good. I don’t want to say them because – well, because, in all honesty, if she knew about them she’d realise what a massive hypocrite I am and perhaps stop sleeping with me. And maybe you, my beloved readers – the sexy girls amongst you – would want to stop sleeping with me too. Yes, that’s right, I admit: the only reason I hesitate to publish blog posts and keep taking them down and deleting them and cringe at my unavoidable confessions and wish I had a fuckin’ pseudonym is because I imagine one day we’ll meet and maybe go to bed and perhaps even fall in love and everything you’ve read here will come back to bite us in the ass. I wouldn’t want to know this stuff about you. And I wouldn’t want Nicky to know it either. True honesty is not knowing every little thing that’s going on inside my head: that’s the road to madness. But why am I so shamelessly compelled? This fuckin’ life of mine is mad…
My hypocrisy: the way I was carrying on with Laura last year, sleeping with them both sometimes ridiculously close together and trying to engineer the threesome that Laura had suggested. Dreaming of making us some ultra-modern free-love family – Rory and his two wives – with bairns all round and the joys of sharing things communally, building a life to inspire the world into new liberated ways of being. The truth that when I thought Nicky might be pregnant – I’d come inside her and in her sleep – the first time she ever talked in her sleep – she’d unbeknowingstly said, “now would be a good time to scoop those wiggly worms out of me” – one of my first desires was to rush over to Laura and get her pregnant too. Then how could they possibly back out? And how could I either? And the other girl I was cavorting with, even as recently as three weeks ago, when Nicky went to Ireland (Nicky was all I could think about during that, and I felt real bad about it) and then of course the date that I went on last week – though to call it even a date is perhaps an overstatement: it was two people who had flirted briefly having a nice chat over a cup of tea and then for various reasons – time constraints; her moving away; the age difference; no real desire – never went any further. So who’s the fuckin’ asshole and the bitch here anyways? Christ, I really need to sort my shit out before it’s too late. I’ve tried so hard to be liberated and free and do whatever occurred to me and investigate every goddamn nook and cranny in my poor addled mind – and all I’ve got is a mess of confusion and an inability to make it work with one single woman in this whole wide world. And believe me, I’ve been gifted a host of wonderful ones – but it’s always my wandering mind that blows it for me, thinking there’s something better around the corner. Same with Sophie, same with Laura, same with Nicky. I’ve got to stop. I’ve got to get some decent proper values like the ones just about everybody else believes in, whether they act that way or not. One woman for every man. Commit to that one and love her to bits and forget the rest. Stuff down all the desires and dreams you feel for other people. Maybe even get through and come out the other side a better and more decent person: there’s something I never tried.
Fuck, I’ve got to be better. If I can take all these things I’ve learned of late – if I can tap into that wellspring of love and adoration and simple humanity that I’ve discovered – I could be one hell of a man. There ain’t no human male any more affectionate than I am when I want to be. No man more loving or caring or able to listen. No man more willing to share his vulnerabilities and his feeling. No greater lover, as I consume your body with a passion unequalled, and want you more than anything else on Earth. If there’s another out there for me and I can do these things then she’s one lucky lady. I’m feeling like last chance saloon. I want someone’s children and the clock’s just about done ticking. I may be imagining that but that’s what I’m feeling. I don’t want to let another one slip…
Nicky, I could have done all this for you. We could have been healthy together, healing together, joyful together, made babies together. I would have got my ass into therapy and listened to you and done the things you said. I would have said yes to life, attempted to love your friends, been more outgoing and danced for you and let go of all sense of being someone who never lost their cool, if raising my voice and getting us into arguments was what it took to sort things out. I would have been one of those men who wants their women, and the love we shared would have grown and grown over the years to become the kind of love that I believe is real love – the love you don’t find in movies and in students’ romances but only in the gazes of old people and cancer wards. All this I believe I am ready to do – to attempt – to at least fucking try, or die in the effort – but…
But she doesn’t want me. Just as Sophie didn’t want me. Just as, in my self-pitying daze, it feels like nobody wants me.
I was thinking about Nicky’s answer to my proposal. The fleeting millisecond of panic in her eyes when she talked about wanting to be in Ireland on her own. The justifications that didn’t ring true. The way she had instigated the no sex thing upon her return, despite acknowledging the amazingness of that last night together. The texts she was reading in my very flat. I…
I sent her a message last night:
– Did you meet somebody in Ireland you’re interested in? Please be honest. x
A few hours later:
– Ok, in the spirit of openness, then yes I met a guy but nothing happened and I’m not planning on rushing into anything… x
Me (containing my emotion):
– Thanks. Thought so. x
Her:
Want to talk about it later? x
Me (defeated):
– Only if you do.
Her:
No, it’s ok for now. I’m still thinking about last night. x
And what do I do then? Fly into a rage probably. More “bitch!” and “go fuck yourself!” and, above everything else, “You liar, you Liar, you LIAR!” All in my head of course. Nothing new there – I’ve heard this record before. But, what the fuck, how can these women just sit there and spout this bullshit at you? I want to be alone? Get to fuck! No fucker wants to be alone and I’m not buying that and even though I say I don’t believe it – still thinking of her tears that morning as we slow-danced and the love we shared and that maybe it’s just a mask to cover the true feelings inside – she sticks by her story and says, well, she’ll think about it and talk to me later. But: get to fuck, I say! You’ve already been in Ireland and somewhere there you’ve met a nice guy and got chatting to him – maybe in a pub – and already you’re dreaming about how it might be when you move over there and perhaps the romance will bloom and you’ll one day be carrying his babies. Want to be alone my arse! Thinking about it my dick! You had me, you fucked me, you got me loving and wanting you, thinking about spending the rest of my days with you and – all this time, once again, LIAR LIAR LIAR.
All I ask is for a bit of honesty. I’m too sensitive to not pick up on these hidden things. It’s the price you pay for awareness (the reward – unbounded joy – certainly makes it worth it).
Still, do I give honesty myself? Sure, I guess so – when I’m asked a direct question.
And is it as straightforward as how I make it out above? Well how could it be, when my own inner-workings are so contradictory and frazzled and wishy-washy. I change my mind in an instant. I go from wanting to stay in Leeds and making it work with her to feeling utter relief that I’m leaving and aching to be as far away as possible. I want to marry her and the next moment I feel my rejection and want to never speak to her again. To change my phone number and my email and to banish the memory of her from my life forever. I want to adore her and then I want to hate her. And all the while I’m thinking of other women and going on impractical dates.
Fuck, why is life so complicated? Why all this madness in my head and in my surroundings? And any way out of it? Oh, to be a simple farmer with a simple farmer’s wife and to stop all these crazy machinations of pondering this woman, that woman, any woman, no woman. Fuck, I just want someone awesome who wants me too and will stop me from acting like a dick. I want to begin life. I haven’t gone anywhere with this in so many years. 3 years now since I was in Mexico making resolutions to find a wife – and Nicky the first girl I met upon my return. But off to Newcastle and Mauritius she went, and though I wanted to be there with her, and though she wanted me to be there with her too, we suppressed it for various retarded reasons and probably fucked up a lot of things in doing so. I cry for that also. More regrets and resolutions to do better in the future. More wishing to high heaven I could turn back the clock and live it all again. There is no way I want to miss another moment of opportunity. The realisation that life is not a game, that there’s no ‘replaying a level’ is growing stronger all the time. I need to tattoo the damn thing in my head: don’t hold back. Sieze everything you want. Follow every girl. Live every whim. You stay in bed and life passes you by. You fall in love and you don’t do a damn thing about it. What happened to the boy who flew to Canada on a dream with not a penny in his pocket? But where is the next fork in the road – I mean, show me, I’ll take it – because right now it feels like everything lies dead and ruined. I need something, Mother. Time is ticking. I want those things you say and those things I’ve felt in the last few weeks nestled in the bosom of my former lover – but where are they? Everything right now feels like I’ve blown it – and the only way I can see ahead is to blow it even more and go back to being mad – which all at once I want to say is what brought me here, and yet which I know is what gets me the good things too.
Rory follows the whim. Rory walks that road and reaches his goal. The only problem is that when he gets to the goal – arrives at the opportunity, wins the girl, lands the job – he fucks it up. The sheer weight of his latent tendencies and flaws. And the dumbass things that come out of his mouth. Everything has been given to me and I’ve shit all over it: university bursaries and frickin’ amazing women and homes and work and friends. I’ve got to be better. I can’t go on like this.
And now I’ve got to go play football. But let me just say, wowzers, I love my writing. I know the content and I imagine what you’ll be thinking but – yes, there’s much of heartache but right here in this moment I feel an exhilaration not a million dollars could buy you. I love these fingers, I love this brain! And I love the learning that life brings you, and the realisations, and all I hope, please God, is for another chance – and another, and another, and another, should it come to that.
We’ll get there one day, I swear.
Cheers!
…
It’s four hours later now and the football was awesome, all sliding around in the mud on a rain-soaked pitch (but not raining) playing at left-back, which is something I haven’t done in years. Loved it. Did well. And even came off with a smile on my face despite losing 5-1 – the opposition were a real good team – and getting into some lame argument with an idiot student whose only retort was to tell me what the score was over and over again. Makes me shake my head in wonder at the quality of our so-called “best and brightest”. Then again, the law boys always seem to be getting into fights in nightclubs – there’s a smart way to solve a conflict – so perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised.
Anyway, I was all buzzed up after that and realised that, wowie zowie, this morning’s massive write-a-thon had really done its job. I felt cured of Nicky. I felt like my thoughts had moved on once more, to a new layer of the onion, and that this layer spoke with a voice that said happy things like: it’s okay if she meets someone new, she deserves to be happy. Sure, I’ll miss the sex and feel some pangs of jealousy for a little while that someone else is getting it. But that all gets forgotten soon enough and I’m sure the next love I have will be awesome too.
In a nutshell, it’s all fine.
Now I’ve got a game of squash to go to and, perhaps foolishly, a movie to see with the ex. But she invited me and the coin said yes, and I don’t argue with the coin.
Wish me luck. xxx
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