There’s a memory in there somewhere of seeing Nicky on maybe Wednesday night. Was that the night that…? Oh yeah! I was at home and all full of emotions and feeling kind of restless and I did an I Ching that said “it furthers to have somewhere to go” and – this is all after I’d sent her a text seeing if she could hang out but she was busy with homework and I said, well how about if I just sit there with you? – to which no reply just yet – and so I thought, well, to hell with it, I’ll bike down the train station just for a simple hug and a smile given how overly-emotional I’ve been and then leave it at that. Sort of romantic thing I would’ve done years ago before I got into habits like “staying in the house.” So I gets on my bike – this bike has literally NO BRAKES (I’ve disconnected them both because the wheels don’t match) – and set off down the hill into town. This is a good thing I’m doing. I’m moving. I’ve somewhere to go instead of sitting in my kitchen staring out the window and feeling frantic.
BUT – no sooner do I get a tiny little ways down the hill than I see her there cycling up it chatting with another guy on a bike. I whirl around. No, they’re not cycling, they’re talking. They’ve stopped. He must have caught her up and they’re having a chinwag. Except – where’s she going? Cos she’s not going to mine, is she? No, she’s going the same place this guy is, to the hippy house on the next street over, to pick up a plant. I get a funny feeling. I wait for the guy to go on and get it all confirmed. I start feeling anxious and angry and sick and fuming. She’s avoiding me! She’s cycling right by my house and ignoring my texts and leaving me in my hell while –
“Are you avoiding me?” I say.
She looks away. She doesn’t know what to say. She mutters something that doesn’t sound quite like the truth and –
Well, there it is. I’m not proud. I feel retarded. But the violence finally came out. I picked up my bike and raised it up over my head and flung it down onto the street. Immediately I know that’s dumb but, oh well, we’ve started now so we might as well carry on, even though the energy has passed. I do it twice more. I want it to explode into pieces but all it’s doing is getting bent. Even as I’m smashing it the second and third time I know I’m just going through the motions, wondering how bad it’ll be and whether I can fix it. And also that I probably look ridiculous.
Nicky is freaked out. I feel totally normal, if a little dumb. I have to reassure her that I’m not crazy. She looks frightened of me. I feel even dumber still.
Somewhere I’ve probably got the idea that it’s a good thing to show your woman the sheer strength of the emotions you feel for her by breaking something.
I now believe that’s wrong.
Anyway, I assuage her fears that I’ve lost my trolley and she kindly accompanies me up to mine and we chat and – well, first thing it turns out is she hadn’t even checked her phone yet since I’d sent my messages about hanging out so I guess she wasn’t quite avoiding me as much as I thought. Actually, she says, she would have been up for the hanging out.
D’oh, I realise, I’ve destroyed my poor bent-ass bike for nothing. Not just fool or double fool but now triple fool.
And on we go, and there’s more sharing and realisations and talking about the stuff I’d been writing about and me wanting her and her not wanting me and all the rest of it, blah blah blah.
Perhaps it’s good that I’ve left it a while and can’t now remember the specifics of what we talked about. Except –
Except – oh yeah, I think some of the stuff I shared was about how I’d that morning been reading my old blog entries from when we were first together – looking for clues (have I written this before? feels a lot like déjà vu) – and, wow, it really blew my mind. Like, first of all, I know she’d read a few and it was dumb stuff about some of the doubts I was having – I’ll always have doubts – and that wasn’t good for her. Probably turned her off from my blog and made it something that came between us. Probably I was wrong in writing that stuff there in the first place (“windows and walls” again) and I should learn from that (though obviously aren’t, given as I’m posting this here). But, thing was, when I read back my entries of old what I was struck by was how positive I was about her and the lovely things I’d said. I wished she was there to read that stuff. I wished she knew the truth of my feelings. My blog wasn’t an evil stepchild that only hated her – it was, like me, merely a child who had mixed feelings but actually most of them were good except she’d only come in the room and seen me when I was doing something naughty. If that makes any sense.
More than that, though, was – wow! This one was a big one. One thing that had come up in recent discussions was her saying that she turned off me more than a little when I said I didn’t want to have children. I said I didn’t say that and she said I did; said I’d said something like, “no men want babies.”
“Ah,” I said, “I remember that. That was just me spouting off on one of my theories. But what I said was that men didn’t want babies, they wanted children, and that’s what I wanted too. I mean, I know you’ve got to have a baby to have a child but…well, doesn’t that make sense? Women find babies cute and lovable and I guess that’s nature’s way of keeping the species going. But men are more into children, I think, once they can do stuff and talk and interact more with the world. Seems only natural to me.
“The other thing,” I said, “is that…well, yes, probably I was testing you or pushing you away or trying to create some future security for me against having to change fifty percent of the nappies. I dunno, I guess I just figured…if it was more you who said you wanted a baby I could get out of that stuff. I mean, I believe in division of labour, right down the middle, and want to do my part, just that I don’t believe in, you know, fifty percent of everything. I could see myself as working and bringing home the bacon and, sure, changing nappies. But a baby wants its mum, right? I…
“I was probably trying to push you away too.” I bowed my head. Talked a little lower. Felt ashamed. “Truth is, I was scared. Scared of babies. Scared of adult responsibility. I guess some part of me felt that if I pushed you away I could postpone that for a little while longer. It was getting too close. Finding me in my home. I did want children with you, I just…damn! It’s like I’ve realised how hard I worked to push away the things I really wanted, killed them with my mad intellectual justifications because I was so scared. My writing. Love. Reading. You. Our future happiness. I was scared and I was afraid and I papered over it with rationalisations. Fuck! I’m so, so sorry. I feel like such an idiot. I…
“I was reading some old journal entries this morning and I saw it so, so clearly. It was so clear it was like a bad joke! But at the time I had no idea. Like…there was this one entry where I first talk about a dream I’ve had where a bear’s been trying to eat me. That reminds me of being on my vision quest in Colorado and how John Milton told me one should always relax into everything situation and how back then I had this dream where I did that and just let the bear eat me – but in this one I was running away frantic trying to escape but never could. And then after that I think I talk about having sex with you and how we really out to be more careful – and then from there into babies and all the reasons not to have them. Just stupid ideas really. To top it off, I end up saying though that actually I’d have tons of them if I was like a millionaire and money wasn’t an issue. It was so clear! The juxtaposition of all the different segments, me just thinking it was unrelated at the time. But to read it now…the fear that I can’t relax into. The fear made explicit by linking it to sex and possible pregnancy. And then the suppression of that fear by my own stupid mind – so frickin’ smart! – coming with all feasible rationalisations to explain away the thing I’m afraid of. And then ending it all by revealing the root of the whole fear anyway, which is just about money. My tightness. My worry that I won’t be able to provide.
“I want kids, God knows I do, I just…I just got afraid. I…”
Fuck. I’m typing this up now and the tears are coming to my eyes again. My foolish mad head. How goddamned smart it is. How I could wax lyrical about all these things with her – lovemaking, kissing, reading, movies, doing stuff – and make my reluctance to get involved in them sound so reasonable. What the fuck was I thinking!? How did I get so lost in this avoidance of adult life and responsibility? Of real life, to put it in its nutshell. And to so coldheartedly kill the things I want the most.
Fear and love: two sides of the same coin. I fear most the things I feel the most passion for. And right now my passion if all for her.
It all comes out. Nine months we’ve been broken up and it all comes out. I thought I didn’t like her. I thought I was glad when she went away. I was so fuckin’ wrong…
Another realisation, stemming from one of my last blog entries: the way I reported how in my conversation with the sports department girls they’d said, “well you’re here seemingly trying to figure things out with your ex – but all you’ve really talked about is these two North American girls from years ago. That should be a sign of something.”
“You’re right,” I smiled, “I guess that means I can banish her from my head and go off on mad adventures chasing romantic dreams and being the true me: yeah!”
And I get all excited and giddy by that and start plotting foolhardy trips across the border once again. Except…
Except what’s the truth of this? It’s a truth I’ve never considered until just this last week. ‘Cos, yeah, in my stories to friends and young people and in this blog and quite often in my head I hark back to that goddamned woman on that frickin’ New Mexico highway and think on her – and even in those gleeful conversations right when I’m trying to figure out things with Nicky – but yet the actual truth of my mind and my heart, the moment I get done once more rehashing those old tales and getting people geed up on stories of magic and delight, is that all I can think about is Nicky. That I want her. That I’m devastated that I’ve lost her. That I want to cry every time I think about her not wanting to be with me, despite the obvious love and attraction and goodness we share. I know she loves me. I know she gives into it occasionally. I know we could be awesome together…
That’s the truth of my heart. I think about her 24/7. I can’t sleep and I’m lovesick and heartbroken and spending time with her is the only thing that cures it. She’s the only number I want on my phone. The name I long to see every time a text comes through. The only girl I want to hold. Those others…I only think about when I’m getting excited by a story. I love telling stories. I’ve got stories to tell and I’m good at it. But I want my actual life to be something real now, something true.
That’s a good realisation. Those fuckin’ stories, man. Just ‘cos I get excited telling them it doesn’t mean I have to go chase the girl. There’s something else going on there. My head seeking to live in Hollywood romantic dreams. An avoidance of reality. The attention I get from my audience. There wonder at my mad deeds of years past. But that’s all. The whole rest of the time, it’s her I want, and only her. The truth of me is not my stories but the overwhelming passion of my heart, which wants only Nicky.
Fuckin’ stories. Maybe this is just another story. And signs, man: I try and live my life on signs and signs are good in their place. I’ve seen a few newspaper headlines that have really struck me lately. But…well, here’s another great realisation I’ve had – for all this time I’ve been walking around thinking, fer fuck’s sake, just give me a sign, tell me who’s the one, please stop wasting my time. And you see this girl’s name or that girl’s name or no girl’s name and –
Well here’s the realisation right here: that what fuckin’ greater sign could there be than that night I came home around my birthday and she was stood there cooking and I just felt so grateful and happy and put my arm around her and the whole thing was so fuckin’ natural that all that time apart must surely have been some weird bad dream and thank fuck it was over? Except, did I see the sign? Did I fuck? And so instead I had to find out about her fucking some other guy and then even after that was mended lose her completely ‘cos she found something hopeful though, if it’s anything like my hopeful little things, probably completely empty on her holiday to Ireland, and it wasn’t until then that I got the message.
And all the goddamn time I was looking for fuckin’ newspaper advertisements landing in my lap saying something spookily relevant like, “Nicky: She’s The One. Just Ask Her To Be With You Again And Everything Will Be Okay.”
But the sign was right there in my heart and in my actions. All those months since we’ve broken up of wanting to spend time together, of sleeping together. The way we’d gotten closer. Fuck, we were probably more in love and closer and spent more time together that whole time than ninety of the standardly dating couples in the world. For someone who is supposed to be so aware I sure do have some pretty might blindspots at times.
Signs. A good lesson there. No more looking for messages in car license plates. Just pay attention to myself and the things I genuinely want and the passion I feel in my heart. Fuckin’ modern-day slant on Buddhism says “kill your passions” but – wow, that’s a sentiment I want to kill so fuckin’ bad I want to kill it twice. I want my passion. I want my humanity. And, boy, do I have it now…
So Wednesday I went completely mental and destroyed that bike and then we talked again my realisations and emotions and felt close and held one another and she stayed way longer than she intended to – not out of pity or pressure but because she genuinely wants to stay with me – and then on Thursday I think I got a bit needy in some text messages and decided I’d better kill that part of me (need is not attractive, and one needs to balance the requirements of sharing and being emotional and showing want between being a total fuckin’ wet lettuce dribbling get him off of me sap of a man) and – well, surprisingly after that she texted me Friday and asked me if I wanted to go to Ossett to pick up a van she’d bought off eBay. Coin is tossed and coin says “yes” and off we go.
To what do I owe this pleasure? God knows. But it’s an opportunity to try and be normal and friendly and – well, coin says yes so who needs to think about it?
We train to Dewsbury. We bike in the rain and she gets cross at the weather and the lack of signs and swears and makes noises – and though those things used to bother me, they bother me no more. I just find them amusing. Sort of adorable human quirks. Just like what my friend Harry always used to try and tell me when I moaned about her habits: “it’s the things you hate in the beginning that you end up coming to love.”
Well, I’m not so sure about that but God only knows those things that used to drive me up the wall have stopped doing so now. What I’d give to have her in my arms every night twiddling her hair or maybe even saying “sorry?” to half the things I’ve said even though she’s heard me perfectly well. Yeah, she wasn’t perfect. But it occurs to me that maybe I just found those things annoying for another reason. Maybe being annoyed at her for wanting a deeper connection. And now we have it…
We make Ossett. She buys the van. I’ve asked if maybe we can pop by my mum’s house. She hasn’t replied to my last email and I’m thinking maybe she’s not quite ready for an actual meeting, possibly a bit of fear. But if I show her my harmless and humble new self, with a smile, she’ll see it’s all good. Or, rather, show her husband, ‘cos I’m pretty sure mum’s at work and he maybe isn’t. But he’s a good chap and we’ve always got on well and he’ll be able to relay the news: Rory’s nice and happy and relaxed about everything: there’s nothing to be afraid of.
He’s home. Nicky comes in. We have a real good chat the three of us and I love having her there with me being adult and talking about stuff. I feel proud of her and her career. Of how smart and sociable and friendly she is. Again, it doesn’t feel like we’re not together. The last time I saw my mum was the day Nicky and I met up again in 2011 on her return from Mauritius. There’s a link there. She’s part of the story. It was all good.
Back to Nicky’s in the van. Probably at her house a bit later I get emotional when she sings me a song on the guitar: it’s about a young girl who can’t be tamed and goes this way and that and ends up drunk and sleeping rough when maybe she should have just stayed with the guy who’s singing it. I think of her and her move to Ireland and this chap over there and their fledgling internet romance (as I imagine it) – we all know where that usually goes – and of how I’m right here and so ridiculously in love with her and the magic we have and how similar our visions of life are and how I know she’s in love with me but, goddamnit, she’s keeping it a damn sight well hidden. You think that maybe it’s obvious that it will come out just because I’ve come to realise everything and she wanted me in the past and even right now I’m about the only person she seems to want to spend time with and I know she loves me but –
You know what: that’s the movies eh? And in real life we often make the stupid lame choices ‘cos one thing they don’t teach you in movies is just how strong and deep a person’s fear can be. And I should know.
Anyway, she lends me her bike for a few days. She’s off for the weekend to a family get together and I cry inside when I hear her sister’s fiancé will be there – they’ve been together a lot less time than Nicky and I – and, goddamn, I’m missing out on life every which way I turn. She even offers me – why would she do this!? – to drive up there and, I don’t know, maybe I’d like the scenery.
“What, you mean you leave me there when you arrive and I stand looking forlornly like the ghost at the feast and then go trudging off into the darkness while you and all your family and your sister’s boyfriend who I know is a nice boy but doesn’t even know her a fiftieth as well as we know each other rejoice in gladness around hearty candles and spreads and I’m in a tent weeping alone in the raining Yorkshire night?”
Well obviously I didn’t say that but you know what I mean. And I did say something that intimated that. And also said, no.
God, I’ve got to have a little pride left somewhere. What I feel I want to say is, Nicky: you’ve won. You wanted me and I didn’t want you and you felt hurt. But now the tables have reversed and I’m hopelessly in love with you once more and sharing everything and giving everything and…well, I have to wonder sometimes whether there isn’t a power thing going on? She’s grown strong, like a superhero who feeds off weak male emotions. She’s got me round her finger. There’s nothing I can do. I’m at her every beck and call and she’s giving me just enough hope to keep me dangling. Resolutions to dangle no more – to be strong; to say “fuck you”; to go off and fling it up elsewhere and heal my heart in the arms of another and – but I don’t want that. And she wins. She wins hands down. I give in.
Realisations. Realisations of why this is all coming now, after the times she did want me, did want me to open up, even though I felt nothing yet it always must have been there. But we kept seeing each other and kept sleeping together and it was like…I was the donkey and instead of leading me with a carrot on a stick she just kept coming to where I was sitting and feeding me carrot after carrot and I never noticed I had to do anything to earn them. I had my carrots and I was eating them. And then one day she stopped – I realised she could move on – and suddenly I felt the absence of those carrots and realised how bloody much I liked them. And snapped out of my carrot-induced daze I came to and looked around and realised I was a big fuckin’ ass. I’d grown fat and lazy. I hadn’t gone anywhere. I wanted my carrots back.
I feel like maybe I should try and stop giving her carrots too. That’s the advice I get from others. I’m just not sure I have it in me. My every urge is to do all I can to try and save this relationship from going the way of all the others in my past. I don’t want to let it slide. I’m too old to not realise the preciousness of what we have, and of how it could just slide away. People are fuckin’ stupid. I know that because I’m a person and I’ve been plenty fuckin’ stupid in the past.
A further realisation: on leaving her house that day. Her sister and her fiancé, both Jehovah’s Witnesses somewhat younger than Nicky herself are going to get married and live happily ever after and they don’t know each other at all. But they’ll make that commitment and learn about each other – and have hard times, and have good times – and they’ll stick with it through thick and thin. They won’t duck out when the going gets tough. They won’t think, oh well, plenty more fish in the sea. Man, times like this I wish I had some religious conviction to bring some desperately needed structure to my life. But we free-floaters and free-thinkers think for ourselves and float on and where the hell does that all lead? I don’t want to float anymore. I don’t want to drift. I want to be with someone: I want to commit! That’s where the growth is and the richness and the humanity of life.
I want to do it with this girl. I love her so much now. I think her so beautiful. All the times we’ve shared and how intently we look at one another. It can’t be true that she doesn’t want to be with me. It just can’t...
She hasn’t been physical with me since the morning she went to Ireland and we had our beautiful mad sex. She’s kept me at arm’s length and she’s done it well (save one extremely passionate kiss one night she stayed over a few weeks back). Sure, she hugs me still and the hugs are great, and kisses my cheek, but…well, when we left her place on our respective bikes that Friday – me to mine, her to her blissful family gathering that I should goddamn have been at – she held me and gave me a big long smacker right on my lips.
“I just wanted to do that,” she said.
I did it back. We did it again. It wasn’t tongues. It wasn’t some farewell kiss that we’ve maybe tried once before but obviously wasn’t. But it was beautiful and awesome and lovely. And maybe something more than a juicy dangling carrot or a hook in my cheek or something other than more of her power over me. She still has feelings for me, I’m convinced of it. It’s so weird to know that, and to see how well we get on, and to observe us seemingly walking in the opposite direction. I watched some Jeremy Kyle yesterday and shook my head at the mad couples on there – all abusive and doing crazy things and sleeping around and who the hell knows whose baby’s whose – and then I looked at us and realised how mad we were being in our own way. What the fuck would Jeremy Kyle make of this situation? Sitting down at the foot of the chairs having listened to twenty goddamn hours of going over every little thing and then –
“Let me stop you there,” he says. “Number one, we’ve run out of camera film and the audience have long been bored to death and gone home. Number two, I’m looking at you two and all I see is two people who get on really well, have a great time together, laugh a lot and share intimacies better than anyone I’ve ever even heard of and – well, let me put it this way” – turning to me – “do you love her? Are you attracted to her? Do you like her? Do you want to be with her?”
“Yes,” I say, puzzled at the question, nodding my head.
“And you?” he says to Nicky, “do you love him and find him attractive and like him and all that other stuff?”
“Yes,” she says. “I do.”
“Well then,” he flummoxes, exasperated and grey, “what’s the fuckin’ problem? You’ve got something here millions would give anything for and you don’t even know it. Go be together. Get wed. Make beautiful children and get on with it. You don’t know how lucky you are.”
He’s right, I know. But I also know she’s afraid. Afraid I’ll hurt her again. Afraid I’ll go mad and start thinking of stupid fantasy women in distant lands. Afraid I’ll shut down. Afraid…
Afraid probably of things I don’t even know about. She thought I didn’t want children and that put something between us. But she never questioned me about that, just listened and thought it meant something and got the wrong end of the stick. No wonder the distance grew between us: it wasn’t all my fault. Sure, I talked my crap – but, fer God’s sake, why didn’t she talk back to me? Why didn’t she find out what was really going on in something so important as that? But that’s her cross and I understand and, man, I just hope I get a chance to help her with it. I’m good at speaking up when I put my mind to it and shake off my laziness. I’m a different man to the man I was three months ago; it’s not just me that says that.
But do second chances only exist in movies, like that cheesy Jennifer Aniston one I watched on Sunday afternoon while over at a friends and thinking some lame TV would be an antidote to my ever-thinking head? Or…
I saw her again yesterday. I’d been over at Laura’s all weekend, from Saturday night to Monday afternoon, but no funny business. We said we were more like brother and sister. I told Nicky and looked momentarily in her eye for signs of jealousy or the kind of panic that hit me when I found out about her and her little fling but there was nothing there. Still, when she talked about her family weekend the hope sprang somewhat: some little realisation about the importance of family and being around children and even opening up a little to her mum about situation and telling her mum how I’m wanting her back and her mum crying over that, Nicky’s heart maybe whispering to her that perhaps I’m a decent guy after all and this just might work. All those things I’ve talked and thought about: the preciousness of other people and family life being where it’s really at as far as learning love goes, not some dumbass pseudo-spiritual idea about finding it on your own. I mean, did I even mention yet that other realisation about how that whole classic New Age thing about how you have to be complete in yourself and if you’re not you’ll just be two half-people coming together to make one is complete and utter ass-shite? No? Well it is: fuck that. You look at Nicky and me and you see how easy it is for two people who are more or less complete and quite individualistic to just drift apart and not say the difficult thing for wanting to maintain that individualism. But, thing is, we complement each other, and things she’s good at I’m not and vice versa. Sure, on the one hand that could create dependency and inability should the relationship break down and leave us then as individuals – but on the other what you’ve got if, done well, is a fully-functioning team – and, more than that, an opportunity to develop in oneself what one finds in the other. She’s good at doing and I love that because it inspires me to do more. I’m good at speaking up and that’s something she wants to learn. You see how it works. It’s not two half-people at all. It’s just the whole purpose for existence.
And so, yesterday, she comes over to my flat, ostensibly to pick up kitchen stuff, but we never got onto that. Instead, we talked really jovially and animated and we were getting on great. I was cooking for her and then I started dancing ‘cos I really wanted to show her that I had some moves and she loves dancing and it pisses me off that I held that back from her. So I danced a bit in the kitchen and she didn’t laugh at me (Perlilly did; maybe that’s what put me off) and then I stuck on some tunes – Kula Shaker’s ‘K’; great album – and turned it up and after demonstrating one song to her she joined me and we danced together for like an hour. I’ve never danced with a girl in my life. But she’s so accepting and wonderful. She just encourages everything. We danced funky and crazy and groovy and also incredibly saucily. I mean, like bump and grind and hands all over each other and her even reaching down and purposefully brushing my semi-erect penis a few times. The steam was off the charts. Her long body looked and felt amazing. But I left her boobs alone and though our faces were close and lips brushed skin on occasion I decided not to go for it. I could have done, I know, and would have succeeded. She was hot to trot. She was steaming too. It was sexier than anything I’ve seen in my life. But I held back. I wanted it to be a withdrawing of the carrot. I wanted it to make her want me in a deeper way. But maybe it doesn’t work like that with girls. Maybe I should have gone with it and let the chips fall where they may. Maybe that’s what I’ll do if there’s a next time.
Instead, when the hour was up – after freeform chanting-chanting to The Orb – we ate roast veggies and then cuddled and just before she went home there were a few more strong mutual kisses on lips and I said, “you’d better go.” Normally I’d be keeping her there for as long as I could, never wanting her to leave. I mean, it felt weird that she was leaving, after such a wonderful night – leaving the flat we shared and not climbing so naturally into our same old bed and curling up with me, her man – but…oh well: I told you humans weren’t bright.
Fuck me, I want her. I’m so glad I’ve busted out of my funk and become the man again that I should have always been. I’ve got so much to offer someone. So much love in my heart. Maybe too much, and that’s why I keep it hidden under lock and key. It scares people away maybe. Too much love will kill you and all that. And maybe now she’s seen the reality of my love she’ll be scared away too. Or maybe she’ll come to her senses and realise that we could make something incredible together, just as I have done. Or maybe it’s none of the above and it’s all just my own personal growth and we will indeed go our separate ways and on to other people or to nobody at all. Only time will tell.
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