No more Mr Nice Guy?

Monday morning and it’s my first morning off from the bikes in nearly two weeks. Plus not got any refereeing scheduled for the evening so I guess that’s what you call a day off. Been pretty mental with the physical exercise lately but to tell the truth I’m loving it. Wednesday night I do the Barwick game and cycle seven miles each way to get there – mad crazy head winds on the way back, barely moving at times – and then Friday after work play tennis with Nextdoor Nick followed by squash with Harry (won 3-0, 3-0). Saturday’s reffin’ is accompanied by another dozen miles on the bike and then Sunday I wake up early to cycle out to ref a game in Bramhope – ‘nother eight uphill miles – before cycling back down to ref some students at Weetwood. Pretty goddamned hungry by then – it’s four o’clock – but my rush to buy samosas before squash – yes, really – is thwarted after I realise I’ve left my phone in the changing rooms and have to bike three miles back up the hill to get it. No time for food before meeting Harry once again – but already I’ve decided none of this matters – the hunger, the fatigue, the aching legs, the millions of hours of exertion already in the days preceding – and that I’m now going to become “Super Rory” and kick some 21-year-old ass. I summon up the energy. I’m playing awesome and barely sweating or breathing while poor young Harry is panting and dripping. It’s another six games to love for me and my dear young friend the one to throw in the towel. I want to play more. I could go all night.

It’s like my dad says: “tha’s got to blow thee own trumpet sometimes son; no other bugger’s gonna do it for thee.”

And also: you ever see those Super Dry hoodies and t-shirts and sometimes think it says, “Super Rory”?

But enough trumpet blowing: one mustn’t forget humility and that there’s more important things in life than being able to move one’s legs lots, even when one’s legs are so magnificent to behold. I was lying on my bed the other day comparing them to Laura’s. Her feet were so small next to my size elevens. Her hairless skin so smooth and unblemished by muscles and scars. Mine looked like weapons; enormous clubs of meat you could wield and beat people with. Hers were like swans’ wings, glasses of children’s milk. Something soft and delicate. Both sets wonderful.

But there I go, more trumpet blowing…

So Laura came over on Thursday. Always nice to spend time with her but I guess since I haven’t expressed all the things I was thinking about over the last few weeks I’ve reached a bit of a bottleneck in my conversation and things have become a little stilted. I’m wont to experience that as her being not interesting enough – projection, of course – and that puts me off and makes me question the whole thing. And maybe I’m right to. And maybe it’s been good these last few weeks to spend time together and not get involved in love making and heavy heavy relationship chatter and just experience one another more clearly. Maybe I don’t need her after all…

She spends the night and it’s another platonic one and then in between work and tennis Friday Nicky comes over and it’s the first time I’ve seen her in maybe three weeks. We chat a little bit. I try and say some of the things I’ve been thinking about without being too negative towards her and she cries when I try and explain my, “I’m done with you” of the other week and says it’s hard ‘cos she still has feelings and I feel my own twinges too. It’s weird to feel things with her but know she’s wrong, and to feel so little with Laura but think she’s right. Am I being silly for being so influenced by my feelings and in looking for feelings that are strong? I mean, how did people make choices in the good old days?

In any case, I’m not making much sense. Truth is, I can’t remember what we talked about. But I do remember how we left it: Nicky mentioned some dance thing happening Saturday and asked me if I wanted to go and I thought, yeah, that sounds good. I said to send me the address. And then I went off to my various sports and refereeing shenanigans and got home twenty-four hours later and waited and…

No message. I could have called her but I wanted to see what she would do. I got in the bath. Eight thirty. Nine o’clock. Ten o’clock. I text her to say something non-pissy like, everything okay? you haven’t had an accident have you? And she replies with, no, why would you think that? I say, just couldn’t think of any other reason why you wouldn’t contact me about the dance thing and she says, oh, yeah, I just got done with the first part of that, probably won’t go to the second part. And there it is all over again…

All those months of not inviting me to things. All those times shunning me and stirring my feelings of rejection. And another example of something worse than a non-invite: the promised invite that never comes.

I tells ya, if she had been wanting to play games with my head as some sort of female revenge mission she couldn’t have played it any better. I’m rocketed right back to how I felt that devious lying unsleeping night in February and my head is once more filled with the ways I feel she’s let me down.

I was happy, you know, the three weeks we didn’t have any contact. But two hours in her company and once more she’s fucking with my head.

I’ve had enough, I think. I’ve got to stop this shit. I’m too goddamn nice. I forgive too easily. I’m cursed by always trying to see my part in it and understand and accept theirs.

I’ve refereed a game Saturday and been watched by an assessor and at half-time he says, you’re a good ref Rory but you’re too nice. You talk to the players too much. You need to be more badass. It’s like playing a role, being an actor. It doesn’t mean you have to become a complete wanker – but sometimes it can be good to pretend that’s what you are. Players need boundaries, need to know where they stand – and need to be told, sometimes, to fuck off. You can’t treat them all as sensible human beings. You’ll serve the game more by doing that. And the players and yourself too.

And second-half, I change my stance, and things are better all round. No more mass confrontations. A few yellow cards to calm everyone down. Not getting involved with people who aren’t seeing straight, just waving them away and saying, I’m not interested, get on with it.

Being a little bit badass. Which nobody minds.

And at the end of the game all the moaners and complainers shake my hand and say, good ref, one of the best we’ve had all season, and I shake my head and think, how can they say that after the grief they’ve just given me? But one guy even admits that he agreed with my decisions, just moaned to get under my skin.

Lessons, lessons…I’ll remember that one and use it to strengthen my duck’s back.

And parallels everywhere, of course…

She calls me a few times and I ignore it. Sleep pretty well and hope the opposite’s true for her, recalling that horrible sleepless night a few months back. She texts me in the morning and says she’s sorry and doesn’t want to be enemies. I say we’re not enemies but how much more should I take? She texts again and says she’s really sorry and sees she hasn’t been mindful of me or my feelings and should have been. Great truth in that: and what my peed-off mind wants to say is, see, she thinks only of herself, she’s selfish, that girl (with parallels in her lovemaking). I text her a few of the things I’ve found hurtful and deceitful and how even young promiscuous Harry’s been thinking she’s not been treating me well. Then I say I’m going out and not to text me back and that I’ll let her know when I’m good to talk. Being badass, I guess. Throwing up boundaries. Protecting myself.

Like I said, seems like I’m just better off without her.

And, like with the footballers, it seems like it serves everyone better every now and then to be a bit stronger and a bit less forgiving…

“Morning,” she wrote, an hour or so ago, “you’re probably busy but wondered if you wanted to have lunch on me. I owe you an apology and I realised where it’s all been coming from.”

So in ninety minutes I go and see what’s what. An apology and some revelations and a bit of understanding would be nice. And then, probably, time to call an end to this chapter. Opening the door to her just brings me stresses and headaches. Keeping her at arm’s length allows me to concentrate on my own life and joys. I felt awesome yesterday cycling around knowing that she wouldn’t be texting me or calling me and that I’d shoved her out of my head and my heart. I’d gotten my self back, just as I had the last few weeks before seeing her, and my self is pretty cool. It sings while it cycles speedily down country roads. It digs everything and marvels at the beauty of Yorkshire and shouts to the world and life, “I love you, you’re fantastic!” It likes being me.

…

I think that’s all the news this week. Elsewhere in the world the media got all excited about Maggie Thatcher’s funeral and a bomb in Boston, which pissed me off no end. I mean, personal tragedy aside, what’s it matter to everyone else? I fixed me up a little old radio from the fifties not too long ago and have this habit now of switching it on when I’m down in the kitchen making egg sandwiches or preparing tea – but, by God, the whole thing’s so weird and boring! All those silly voices chattering away. Phone-ins and pointless opinions from members of the public. Who cares? It’s all so dull. And then just ‘cos some nice white English-speaking cousins of ours get blown up it’s like the whole world’s got to stop turning and pay attention. But you know what? On the same day some thirty-odd people got blown up in the Middle East somewhere – probably nice working day-to-day souls also – and that hardly merited a mention. And you know what it says to me? (And yes, by God, I acknowledge it must frickin’ suck to be in the middle of it, to be family and friends, but we’re several thousand miles away.) It says that a nice white American life is worth a million times more than an anonymous Middle Eastern life and I think that’s bullshit. Allthose personal tragedies and acts of deranged cruelty are heartbreaking – but why the news has to go so overboard when it affects America is beyond me.

I think the radio’ll have to go for a Burton. It’s been pretty shortlived but I just can’t see the benefit, all those endless hours of spouted and shouted words, all that gloom and ceaselessly repeated chattering. Though it does sometimes help, of course, to put one’s own troubles into perspective. Like the lady who lost her arm in the 7/7 bombings who called in to talk about that and says, you know, you have to accept it, you get used to it, you move on and can’t let it spoil your happiness. She loses her arm and she giggles about it ‘cos there’s nothing you can do. And look at the way I am over losing a girlfriend!

It does put it into perspective – for a little while, at least. But then I start to think, well, one shouldn’t really compare oneself with other people so much, for whatever you’re struggling with is real for you no matter how trifling in the grand scheme of things. Plus: the death of a loved or the loss of a limb is pretty final and I guess you do have to accept it – but the loss of a girlfriend, the breakdown of a relationship…isn’t necessarily the end, and there’s things that could be done, perhaps – a call to action – decisions to be made – things to figure out.

I do hope you understand what I mean by that.