Dissolving LTRs and knowing

Well jeez.. I thought, upon listening to my friend tell the latest sad tale in the pub.  I wonder if I’m more messed up from my general dearth of serious long term relationships, or if are they by having them and screwing them up so royally?  Realising this was a self-involved moment happening inside my head, I refocused on what he was saying.

It seems that there’s a time between the ages of, say, 25 and 35 when shit has to get real in long term relationships (LTRs).  Females invariably take the lead in wanting to reproduce and men get scared.  They either grasp the nettle and realise this woman probably / definitely is the one.  Or they don’t.  Confidence can falter at these crunch decision times; paralysing fear isn’t uncommon.  When one party doesn’t know or has cause to doubt, all the cards can come crashing down.

Over the past few months I’ve learned that two couples who I and most of the world considered to be solid couples of a good number of years, were actually no longer couples at all.  Yes they lived together, maybe even slept in the same bed from time to time and who knows what else, had been going out for around ten years previously; but in their heads at least, they were no longer a couple.

Case One is the captain sensible of our school friendship group, one of these guys who always seemed to glide pretty effortlessly through life, education, a career and love.  As far back as school he was pegged as the guy who could be depended on to get married and settle down first.  They got a mortgage together reasonably early, then nothing else happened.  She was awkward to be around.  Nice enough, but flighty and unpredictable.  “ISSUES” almost imperceptibly stamped above her sunken defensive eyes.  After a year or so living together under the pretence that all was rosy, they’re now fumbling off in separate directions.

Case Two was only revealed to me yesterday in the pub.  He is possibly the most hypersensitive and indecisive guy I know, whilst being handsome, clever, able and acidly funny – happy to dish out but rarely take.  They also got together young: he in his early 20s, her in her mid 20s.  With a couple of years on him, she seemed to care less for marriage but has been crying out for kids for some time.  He has been indecisive, nervous, scared.  In more ways than one it requires a set of balls he’s never demonstrated.  Her clock is now ticking with more urgency.  He has admitted to depression but is only just beginning to seek help.  Now it transpires that in their own heads they too haven’t been a proper couple for several months.  They are, my friend believes, on the cusp of probable separation with tangible consequences.

While the guy of the latter couple never won my sympathy and from my limited experience in recent years I’ve often considered him hugely selfish, these are all fundamentally decent people.  Of all parties, it’s him I fear for the most.  From a privileged background, he’s arguably always been used to a bubble of protection, mollycoddling, mothering and dependency.  Not having the courage of my convictions and giving up too easily is something I loathe myself for, but this guy makes me look like some kind of Richard Branson impresario.

It seems to me that rational, clear-cut decisions need to be taken in LTRs, however difficult they are to make – although I’m clearly no expert in such matters.  Otherwise the festering stench of malaise can become heartbreaking and send people mad.

“How do you ever know?” is a regular question, one memorably discussed with another friend (and represented somewhere in these pages) before he separated from his wife and emigrated to Australia with the female subject of an office affair.  He was more confident of knowing after being intoxicated by everything about a new colleague, than he was when he was obliged to marry his young wife.

*

We parted outside the pub in the early evening, my comparatively happy married friend and I.  His reasoning about knowing was typically pragmatic and well-reasoned:  I knew I never wanted to be apart from her for the rest of my life.  It sounded so simple.

He hadn’t been persuaded to buy a few more minutes by asking his wife to simply pick him up from the pub, steadfast about walking back across town to meet her at the multi-storey car park.  It reflected his easy-going nature and antipathy towards any kind of confrontation: something we’ve sporadically argued hard about over the years.  Maybe his way was best.

We mumbled halfheartedly about dinner sometime, took a brief manly clinch and pushed each other away before fuzzily pacing in opposite directions.

It was a sorry state, those disintegrating relationships, but probably not untypical of people our age.  As our friendship group begins to nibble into the 30s, I came back to my earlier question and wondered at our relative baggage.  Is it harder to be optimistic about domestic life after going through a traumatic failed LTR of nearly a decade, or harder having been alone for more or less that whole time?  Is less baggage more baggage, or is it less baggage?

I was drunk.

then there were none

This one stems from another exhausted attempt with females; that once again defeated deleted what is the fucking point? futility..  Patience spent.

Single women often affect an exterior of confidence but when it comes to making decisions about men, even to meeting, they seem to almost subconsciously erect obstacles or barriers.  Of course this could be because they specifically don’t want to meet me.  I’m wide awake to this possibility, of course.  But I sense that other common factors are often at work too.

My hunch is this.  The one serious, possibly but not necessarily previous relationship, left them crushed and almost critically low on confidence.  Particularly if it was a small town childhood sweetheart upon whose word they hung unconditionally.

Particularly if that childhood sweetheart was an overbearing, oppressive, insecure twat who wanted to demolish them for anyone else.  Men do this.  It’s most effective if the women are left on the cusp of middle age, maybe with a child or two in tow.

Advancing through the emotional wreckage and feeling recovered, a remnant nervousness or flaky uncertainty can still exist, particularly when it comes to relating with men in real life, on that level, in meeting them, at that point when convenient cosy barriers must come down.  This frequently leads to them making excuses, overthinking and bottling it.

Merely a theory but I’m sure there are many like this.

Also unhelpful is the devilish deception of virtual communications.  That feeling of effectively being in each other’s pockets all the time; the blithe underestimation of the non-verbal, which itself carries masses of information.  Words are all we need, right?  That and the odd bloody “LOL”, an emoticon here and there.  Sorted.  Actually meeting can come later, even if you have to wait forfuckingever.

Still I find myself being held prisoner to virtual online communications.  It leads to a protracted period of unsatisfying and insubstantial communication about fluffy things which may easily have no bearing upon liking one another.  Opposites who appear to have little in common with each other can attract too.

Right now I’m again exhausted by the amount of time and effort which needs to be expelled in the virtual world, for nothing.  Months of time and effort and hope so regularly (basically always) turn out to be completely pointless.

You can chat to several people at once, even though doing so can feel oddly duplicitous, but everyone does.  You develop favourites.  You try to take it somewhere, and it eventually flumps on its disappointed arse and you realise your time would be better spent reading books or taking more photographs or playing on your Xbox or watching shit telly or doing practically anything else.

What instead?  Pretend like real life is an episode of Friends and talk to people in coffee shops?  Can you imagine the excruciating results?

I’d still like a dog.

great expectations

A question re-illuminated by events of a couple of posts ago was this: how far should your expectations of a female (or male) be adjusted?  Or, how far should they be toned down?

Romantic idealists who wear their heart on their sleeves, they’d prefer to be completely wowed by a female.  At least for a brief period.  Sure it’d be unlikely to last forever, but initially they would want that early phase of fuck me, she’s amazing.

But what if that never happened?  What if there wasn’t ever that exhilarating romantic spark with anyone?  Maybe you could only feel that in an unrequited way, with dynamic females who had been snapped up a good few years ago.  And maybe part of the reason they are so dynamic, magnetic, electric, is because they’ve always had the attention.  They’ve never spent much, or any time sitting alone in rooms wondering if they’re unattractive.

And you know, however tempting it might feel, you’d never have the nerve to try to negate certain barriers – as that episode earlier in the year proved.

So what if you met someone and she didn’t exactly knock your socks off?  What if she was just fine to be around?  If it was enjoyable hanging out together, and doing a little more besides.  You weren’t deluged with other offers..

Should that be good enough?  Should you permit yourself to make that compromise?  Because that is what it feels like.  Or should you go on searching in hope of someone who wows, someone who you may never find?

Would it be wrong to lazily throw in the towel like that?  Or is that what people do all the time?  They settle.  Especially if there’s a dominant, decisive one, and one party, a lazier one who doesn’t have the nerve not or inclination to settle.  It works well enough.  I absolutely have a certain couple in mind here.  I have no idea how he landed her at all.

It’s arguable that the longer you go on bitterly kicking down the picky single lonely path, the less likely you will find someone you’re wowed by.  More likely that you’ll gather additional neuroses about how you’d like A Person to be, and collect further constipating baggage by constant over-analysis.  By not just thinking: fucksake, just do something you prick.

A friend suggested that, if you asked many unmarried couples whether they’ll go on to get married and have babies, a good proportion would just shrug and say they don’t know; they’re just having an ok time as it is, see where it goes..  There’s no need to overthink it if there aren’t any real fireworks.  Don’t make a drama out of it.  If you find you’re having an ok time, go on having an ok time.  Take each game as it comes.

Therein lies a beauty of being relatively casual.  If someone else should happen by, it’s not illegal, there’s no til-death-us-do part sin, especially if you’re both on the same page about things.  And even if you’re not.

But romantic idealists beat themselves up.  They’re such soft pricks they’re nervous about other people liking them; ones they don’t know if they like much.  Although a kooky inverse vanity can inflate that impression.  Such gestures don’t necessarily mean anything.  They might behave the same with any guy and feel exactly the same as you.  They might be a level-headed, mature, sensible person, which is a dangerous assumption to make of females, but you never know.  Perhaps they exist.

It’s still unsettling, all the same.  Stop cupping my face like that, quit those soppy doe eyes.  Don’t like me too much; I’m a prick.  Everyone knows it.  Here, I can even prove that by being honest and saying I’m not really that into you.

Although perhaps I could convince myself into being into you, in time, maybe, perhaps, possibly..

No, you couldn’t.  Shut up.

way to blue

At the end of last year when another ill-fated relationship came to pass, one that had barely even grown serious, I predictably grew miserable then mildly cranky about it.  I checked her Twitterstream too often, beat myself up and generally thought too much about it and her, even whilst being a tourist in an exciting new city thousands of miles away.

Then I met a new female in said city and the female before rapidly faded.  Then I went home and we did the long distance cyber-relationship, will we / won’t we meet again thing.  Then that faded out too.

Over recent months a new affection developed, originally online.  Again, irritatingly long distance, but not quite as thousands-of-miles-away-unrealistic; merely a few hundred.  Telephone calls became regular, things seemed to be going well.  Reciprocal visits were promised (hers first) but nothing was cemented.  I pressed a little too hard, excited and keen to meet.  But several gently repeated questions about what the issue was, led to her cancelling everything.  Shocked and upset but still patient, I tried to argue against what I perceived to be a rash decision.  Nothing doing.

Perhaps she never really intended to visit. Perhaps she did.  Perhaps there was an element of her just bottling it, or generally getting cold feet.  Or maybe it was all my fault for pushing.  Whichever way, after three months of almost daily communication, the majority of it fun and pleasant, she called a halt to everything and I was hugely disappointed.

Another one down the drain then, you idiot.  All that hope invested, despite myself, despite telling myself it was dangerous, don’t do it, don’t hope too much.  And we never even met.   It felt ridiculously, embarrassingly ‘playground’, impossible to translate to less web-inclined friends in the pub.

“Ooh, I hope you used protection, mate!”
“Yeah, AVG Antivirus!”
“Funny bastards..”

These are the times we live in, the straws clutched at by sad lonely guys who live and work alone.  Guys who don’t often get to the pub with their married or as good as married mates.  Guys who feel slightly too old to play and socialise with a football team of lads in their early to mid-20s.

As ever when you’ve taken an unexpected knock from a female, you try to brush yourself down and say it was their loss.  You must try to convince yourself this is true, for the sake of your ego.  Sigh, grimace, try not to be angry with yourself, breathe, open a beer.  Never mind.  Download another stupid social / dating app to your iPod.  Bound to work this time.

Remembering how a night with an American female helped to dull my aching bitter crankiness about the female before (met and dated several times, but never slept with), I considered visiting a female who I’d been chatting to on the newly downloaded social app thing.  She’d likely be mental too, I reasoned, but sometimes there were virtues in distance; convenience in her being a good few hours’ drive away.  At least she was meetable, without too much planning and strife.

I’m profoundly bored of the internet, instant messaging, telephone calls, the wide and various nodes of virtual reality.  How about plain old simple reality for a change?  That luxury of interpreting facial expressions which aren’t reduced to fucking smileys, the ability to more confidently use sarcasm and irony and say “I’m joking” with a smile; for it to be clear that you’re joking.  Simply having an in-person, physical discussion.  Radical 21^st Century ideas.

Playing the long game, being patient and thoughtful and nice?  That doesn’t appear to reward as you might like to think.  Those Guinness ads about good things coming to those who wait?  BULLSHIT.

So fuck it.  Yeah ok, why not?  I’ll come visit you.  It’s a straightforward enough drive, a nice day, I like driving (I’m not doing anything else).  It’s only a few hours (don’t think of the extortionate petrol).

She was Hungarian, tired and unhappy.  You probably have to be quite bored and lonely to use those apps and engage with people.  She spoke excellent English but this didn’t mean conversation was always comfortable.  After watching the football in a generally light atmosphere, we ate dinner in a heavier one.  Facing each other it became clear how miserable she was.  How she wouldn’t help herself.  How insular she was, how unengaged with the world.  All politicians corrupt, all news bad; better not to watch.  An unorthodox job meant she was practically nocturnal, always tired, a ruined bodyclock.  But it apparently paid a better than average wage, which helped to relieve pressures of sending money home to family.  She was the rich daughter living abroad.  She wobbled, momentarily on the edge of tears, I looked down and away.  (Fuck, she was in a worse place than me!)  I suggested things she could do to be active in finding a new job, how she could force herself to be decisive, if she wanted –ignoring my hypocrisy – how it didn’t have to be like this.  The mood recovered, we walked back across to the multi-storey car park in a huge shopping centre.  Mine was the only vehicle left on the roof level, dying rays of a pink sunset casting its hue over the city: a beautiful setting for a murder.  Probably a bad idea; too much CCTV.  Instead I kissed her.  She tasted and smelled different.  I noticed it when we first met.  A little like a smoker although she wasn’t a smoker.  And it wasn’t that bad.. impossible to put my finger on.  Just Hungarian?  I drove her home.  She invited me into her studenty terraced house, shared with housemates she barely knew and rarely spoke to.  We went straight to her room.  I stayed.  Nothing more was asked.

*

A thick mist draped across the terraced street the next morning, joined by a novel October chill which felt abrupt due to the unseasonal weather.  My car was still where I’d left it, untouched but tightly hemmed in between two other vehicles.   I wriggled it out, navigated through the city’s rush hour traffic and out onto the long A-roads.  The sun punched a bright white, perfectly circular hole into the grey.  Driving through green hillsides, I listened to a new favourite album and watched the sky wash itself back to blue.

Bum day

I like the author of One Day, David Nicholls.  It’s practically impossible not to.  I saw him give a couple of readings from One Day at a trendy Notting Hill book event around the time of its original release, circa March / May 2009.  He was affable, charming, self-effacing, deeply motherable and understated; almost embarrassed to be there, on a stage in front of such a number of people, in such a building.  Yet not nervous and perfectly fluent.

His work is always readable.  Several years before, while travelling around South East Asia in a sulk because I was apparently unable to get any sort of job I wanted at home, I read his earlier book, Starter For Ten.  It was also converted to the screen a few years ago, starring the wholly winning James McAvoy – as well as my pal Benedict Cumberbatch (our meeting and that post remains the sole reason for 95% of this site’s traffic).

I loved that book and almost felt guilty for loving it and being moved by it as much as I did.  Before I left my brother gave me a paperback of three Graham Greene novels.  It looked classic and worthy and dense and I didn’t get along with any of it.  Backpack battered, the book eventually disintegrated on a short internal flight.  Repairing it seemed futile so I made no effort and left it scattered on the floor under my seat.

Starter For Ten stayed with me, though.  Sure, it was populist, but it was extremely funny and there was a tremendous voice.

The same voice behind One Day, of course.  Not long after hearing David Nicholls reading from it, I was made redundant and found myself flailing for employment once more – not that I really wanted it.  All it did was shit in my face, by and large.  And I seldom enjoyed it anyway.  Still, rather than sit and stew on my redundancy pay-out, worrying and wondering what to do next, I used some of it to take a few weeks in South Africa and do some volunteering in a remote valley, and take a safari.  It was on this trip, almost exactly two years ago, that I read One Day.

I knew I’d get along with it ok.  It’d be easy to read and witty, ideal lazy holiday fodder.  What surprised and irritated me was the lead male character.  Dexter was everything I hated about a person, throughout his whole journey.  Yet he commanded the affections of the apparently perfectly virtuous female lead, Emma.  Clearly this was intended and his character was designed this way, but it irked and confused me throughout.  I’ve never worked out why.  Besides being good looking and well-bred, having a charisma and confidence  – I couldn’t fathom the appeal.  Was this Nicholls’s way of saying girls are shallow and incomprehensible?

It similarly irritated throughout the film too.  In fact in the film I probably identified and empathised more with Rafe Spall’s buffoonish character, Ian.  (I fear Rafe Spall is getting typecast as loveable buffoon).  I could well understand his character’s frustration and hatred of Dexter.  Perhaps I am Ian, the quirky but unfunny, charmless clod.

This incomprehension of females and what is and isn’t attractive to them was underlined a couple of weeks ago.  A female had been with a guy for ten years.  Perfectly fit and healthy, he had never worked and was happy playing the benefits system.  They had a child together before splitting up and thanks to 50/50 custody, she also paid him child support.  But she endured ten years of him.  Ten years.  The tolerance levels and fear of being alone is bewildering.

Being steadfastly independent and going it alone blinkers you to the addiction of dependency many people have: a dependency on comfort and company, if nothing else, and even if the quality of that comfort and company is lacking, and in some ways they’re horrendously alone.  Because it’s better than actually being alone.

Not that this was quite the case for Emma, because it’s illustrated that she sincerely loved Dexter.  Fuck knows why though.  He starts out a dick, becomes more of a dick, then slightly less of a dick but still a really very much self-regarding dick, (be pleased that she found someone, fuckwit!) then a wallowing dick, and by the end he’s, well, still a dick.

Added to this is the ‘London for Americans’ cinematography and Anne Hathaway’s hysterical Yorkshire accent, which is as changeably disorientating as an English summer.  As in the book, The Thing that happens towards the end felt like a fairly desperate plot device to bring the thing to a conclusion.  Although I think I did leak a little at that part in the book – not too much as I was sitting in the front of a safari Jeep with our guide – at the film I felt nothing, and would bet that someone who hadn’t read the book could see it coming some distance off.  I didn’t even smirk at the amusing one-liners which were lifted from the book.  Not that there were many.

**An addendum to this.  I just read a review which says Nicholls wrote the screenplay for the film, which puts me at even more of a loss regarding its anaemia.  One which sadly didn’t translate at all.

want to dance

“Do you want to dance?” she asked.

When asked this question by a female I’m not that attracted to, my usual reaction is an uncomfortable paralysis combined with a shake of the head.  It’s a reaction I know to be stupid.  It’s just a dance.  It’s not marriage.  Perhaps it’s the thought of family, or new vague acquaintances observing the dance from the fringes and making readings.  “Isn’t he single?  And she is too..?  Oooh.”

Fuck off.  Leave me alone.  Don’t make me the subject of your reality television show.  It’s just a dance, ok?  I would burn crimson under the glare and hope it wasn’t obvious under the dark lighting.  Wouldn’t I?  Or would I ease into it, gradually not care?  Just be cool?  Learn to have fun?

Better not risk looking like a colossal dickhead anyway.  Because then… If that happens, then..  Oh shut up, brain!  Just, no!  Ok?

Unlike in my kitchen, here I would dance like the whole world was indeed watching and closely scrutinising, which I understand to be preposterous.  But I cannot not care when I do care.  This means there can be issues when it comes to letting go.  In some respects, yes, I am uptight.  You never would have believed it.

I’ve only ever been comfortable dancing with good friends in public venues when I’m drunk.  These are my unwavering criteria.  At weddings I never achieve such a level of comfort.  Either at a wedding where I know many people, or at a wedding where I know only a few, the more stagey nature of the dancefloor repels me.

With this offer to dance, my instinct had been firmly saying No, right from the outset.  Honking great Drunken-Lunatic sirens screamed in my head as she introduced herself, and didn’t dim as we spoke.  She wasn’t at all unattractive, a few years younger, red-faced, an easy grin, high intensity, over-animated, trying hard, undeniably drunk.  Having said this, she was entertaining to chat to and responded well to my own, not unlubricated banter.

I grew steadily aware that this was probably her, the girl my cousin had mentioned trying to set me up with twelve months or more before.  And there she was now in her striking bride’s dress, just over the girl’s shoulder, sneaking illicit glances at us.

Was the wedding, the belated consummation of a 20 year relationship which had already borne two children, merely an excuse to bring us together?

No, you fool.  Ludicrous.

My brother had mentioned it earlier in the week, voiced the possibility that our cousin was in charge of the dinner seating so that girl she’d tried to set me up with..  I’d shrugged and chuckled; the thought had occurred to me too but I’d been on enough crap dates to be able to cope.  As it turned out she only attended the evening party and wasn’t there during the meal, or indeed the service.

She found me again after she’d given up trying to cajole me onto the dancefloor.  I was pathetically nursing a whisky and reading a children’s football magazine, evidently not caring about looking a prick in that sad loner man way, my natural climate.  The magazine clearly only had a fraction of my attention and I was as much indulging in drunken self-analysis, as I was reading about Frank Lampard’s favourite film.  I was there to have fun, to party.  Why wasn’t I?  What was stopping me?  What was this annoying enjoyment paralysis thing and how could I rid myself from it?  More alcohol?  I didn’t really want more alcohol.  Why not?  Why couldn’t I have an addictive personality?  I’d be more interesting and magnetic if I could do things to excess and not care.  But I boringly know my limits, I like to have control, some semblance of dignity, and strongly dislike vomiting.

She smiled forgivingly as she approached me, alone at a dinner table.  She didn’t sit, leaned down and spoke loudly into my ear over the noise of the live band: “I think you’re gorgeous, and you should flirt more,” then she moved away again.

It was a pleasant thing to hear, of course, but I disagreed with both of her points.  I’m perfectly capable of flirting when I want to, I think.  I didn’t want to.  She was a little too much for my taste.  And she was increasingly drunk, which downgraded her first assertion, complimentary as it was.

I returned to reading banal trivia about vastly overpaid young men, finished my whisky and left.

*

At a family and friends garden party the next day, the bride pulled me to one corner and surreptitiously yet excitedly said: “so, dare I ask?”  She had a knowing twinkle in her eye.  I had no idea what she was talking about.

“Ask what?”

“Did you speak to my friend..?”

“Ohhh.  Yes.”

“And what did you think?”

“Um.  She was nice.”

“Is there anything I should or shouldn’t say to her when I see her again in a couple of weeks?”

“I wouldn’t want to tell you there’s anything you can or can’t say.”

“..”

“Look, um.., she was nice but I don’t think.. not like that..”

“She had had a lot to drink.”

“Yes, I noticed that.  But no, it’s fine.  She was nice, but y know..  Dyou want some more cake?”

steaming envy

Steam Room.  Steely, takes-no-shit looking Welsh mother, late 30s enters with blank but friendly young daughter, mid-teens.Daughter: gaw, it smells in yur doesnit?

Mum: yeh, they put summink on the thing down there.

They settle and breathe, enjoying the fumes, although Mum retains a general look of hard disapproval at the world.

Daughter: This is making a mess of my fake tan.

Pause.

Daughter:  Stef Jones just got back from Jamaica, she has.  Lovely tan.

Mum: What’s er Mum’s name?

Daughter: Can’t remember.  Young mum.  Works in the bank, I think.

Pause.

Mum (having thought hard): Claire.

Daughter: That’s it!

Mum: ay noes her.  Natwest.  On the counter.

Mum’s disapproving face stronger than ever.

Mum: who’d she go to Jamaica with then?

Daughter: boyfriend and his family.

Mum: Ah right.

Mum smoulders, steams.

Paris plugholes

My remaining couple of days in Paris were spent walking long distances back and forth across the city, beneath grubby overcast skies, taking photographs and doing the occasional touristy thing.

I considered going into roughly ten times as many cafés as I did. The truth is that many of them slightly intimidated me. When you have company, you have a front and a mask of some kind, or perhaps I’m massively pretentious and not at all true to myself when I have company – because it’s an infrequent experience.

My point is that you (or I) mind less about things because you don’t want to appear unnecessarily frugal, or fazed by over-formality. You’re happy to lead or comply, or make a snap decision and stick to it. Whereas solo, you approach cafés and see fancy glasses on the dining tables, even fancier twizzled napkins swirling out of them, a thick lusty tablecloth and a uniformed waiter; and you think ooh no, that’s a bit much for me. I just want a coffee and a sit down for a few minutes, not a bloody show.

On more than one occasion I grew sick of my plodding, indecisive self, bottled it altogether, headed for a main street Boulevard and found a Starbucks. Then I immediately hated myself for my total lack of adventure. Although you do get more coffee for your money and one of them was the most exceptionally grand and finely furnished Starbucks I have ever visited. And I’ve visited quite a few now.

In the same vein, I might have popped into an Irish pub or two as well, and instantly wanted to glass myself yet being also more comfortable being, well, more comfortable.

My hotel was bad and smelly and didn’t encourage doing anything rather than sleeping and awkwardly carrying out ablutions. Awkwardly because there was no shower holder, which meant holding the shower head above yourself with one hand and washing with the other, while ensuring the water temperature was ok. It felt like doing a weirdly static Bee Gees jive.

One time I tried having a bath and discovered the plug didn’t do its job. Despite forcing my heel down onto it, the water eventually seeped away to nothing, leaving me sitting naked in a puddle, swigging from a large bottle of Heineken and stuffing my scabby face with a French variation of twiglets. WINNER was not writ large across the scene. The plughole finally gurgled and belched its last and I managed not to cry.

My bathroom’s basin plughole had quirks too. Water would rise up to half the level of the basin, even if there was no plug in place, such was the lack of drainage. Yet conversely, when a plug was inserted into the basin and left for a few moments, prior to shaving, all the disappeared. Like I say: quirky. We had such fun, me and the plugholes.

With little of appeal in my room, I stayed out, pacing streets, doing tourism, sitting for coffee, meals and evening drinks; and observing human traffic with the company of books until I was tired or drunk enough to sleep.

A recurring setting of Julian Barnes’s latest book of short stories, Pulse, was a dinner party of thoroughly dislikeable, smug and overeducated people. I would have kept quiet and not returned, had I attended one. The stories were readable though, and touched on the issues of sexual desire and appetite which meeting my friend left me wondering about on my first evening. Another book was Pigeon English, the highly lauded debut novel by Stephen Kelman. A distinctive narrative voice of a migrant African boy in a dangerous London tower block. Easy to read, vital and urgent, if not wildly imaginative. Parallels with “Curious Tale of The Dog In The Night-time,” it should sell heaps, especially with the promotional backing it’s received. Like the author of that book, Mark Haddon, I could envisage Stephen Kelman never doing anything to commercially match it afterwards. It led me to thinking about the marketability of popular fiction and particularly the disparity in gender audiences: the ‘chick-lit’ market being much bigger and knowable than the ‘lad-lit’ one, simply because men generally don’t read as much, and are probably more simple in their tastes. Appealing exclusively to one gender demographic is perfectly acceptable and relatively simple; appealing exclusively to another is significantly harder and less commercially viable. Lad-lit must be touchy, feely sensitive and appeal as much to women as men.

Podcasts provided another branch of faux company, as ever: mainly book reviews and interviews. It was particularly arresting to hear the reliably strong Richard Bacon interview with zeitgeisty women’s heroine, Caitlin Moran. Pronounced CATlin, apparently. (Who knew?) I’ve read her so much, in her various newspaper columns and features, as well as her tweets, that it felt almost perverse for her to come alive and have an actual out-loud voice which I could hear. Like a fictional character was suddenly no longer fictional. Unsurprising was her alacrity and articulation. More surprising was the clipcloppy midland tone, and a headmistressy assertive pace about her speech. I kicked around a drizzly Champs Elysees, weaving between waterproofed tourists, failing to find any vaguely interesting photographic perspectives. The interview was engaging and witty. I was disappointed it only lasted about half an hour.

Speaking of women in a wider sense, I noticed the locals’ adoption of touch; that women of a certain age would happily walk down the street alongside a friend, one hand looped over the other’s shoulder, like footballers trudging off a pitch consoling each other. A continental nuance. Down south in Nice a few years ago I’d been surprised how men had met each other outside a football ground with double cheek kisses. Wouldn’t happen at Millwall.

Distance from home always gives the impression of being able to newly reassess, like it should offer a profound new perspective. Which may or may not be the case. All the same, as I plodded the damp Parisian streets I pondered the things I often ponder but don’t act upon.

• Join a running club, if I’m definitely decided about giving up football this season. There’d be females there too, but would the whole set-up be weird, the cross-section of people too diverse for a grumpy misanthrope? Middle-aged running nerds comparing their “PB”s and the best type of running socks? Not so interested in that.
• Internet dating? Never tried it, but often thought about it and ultimately turned my nose up. Lots do do it. Numbers are stacked against blokes generally, particularly against ordinary looking blokes who can glamourise software yet struggle to make themselves sound interesting. So probably not.
• Going to see a specialist Dermatologist about my sporadically grim face, which could ultimately give greater confidence in trying either of the above. I looked shit again right then, dark unmissable scabs bisecting the tip of my nose like a total prick. Lovely. Plane journeys with their recycled clammy air, however long or short the haul, are never a great treatment. It meant I wasn’t going to go out of my way to try and speak to people or make new friends, but at least I didn’t know anyone here and wasn’t forced to perform.
• Stop being such a boring twat and just end it. This permanent, tedious loneliness thing, living and working alone and not having any gumption to do anything about it except whine into the internet. It must be boring for every poor bastard who hears you whinge on about it too. Try finally doing something interesting and noteworthy that takes balls: take a leap off the Eiffel Tower maybe? That was where I was heading.

*

Other tourists kept me amused, particularly in the Louvre museum, and particularly the far easterners. I swear I was keeping roughly equal pace with one old Japanese guy who seemed to be taking a picture every single exhibit. I wondered what his internal stream of consciousness was like: “Ahso yes, this is picture. Aw yes, this is picture too. And look, this is picture.”

Except in Japanese, obviously.

It made me chuckle after a time, to think what his collection would be like or if he’d look at every image when he got home.

French connections

“No trains to Paris today. Electricity fault on the line. Buses on fifth floor.”

So said an English speaking Information Desk clerk at the train station of Charles De Gaulles Airport. A rail replacement service? Super news.

Having trundled my case miles through an, in part, eerily desolate airport, I had been confused by the lack of trains heading into Paris. Now I learned that this wasn’t totally because I was stupid. The electricity was out and there were no trains into the city.

Impatient and pressed by the urgency of a beer appointment with an old friend, I angrily made my way up to the fifth floor, and outside. No buses. A taxi-rank. Where were the bloody buses? This was stupid. The taxis queued and crawled and collected passengers and left. It would be expensive, but it would be less expensive if..

Two oriental men nearby were glancing nervously at the vehicles.

“Hey! We share taxi to city?”

They reacted openly and we compared Google map printouts, quickly figuring that we weren’t staying far away from each other.

We climbed aboard a waiting taxi – all three of us squished along the back seat; the driver apparently unwilling to move his own debris from the front passenger seat – or the Japanese passengers too polite to ask.

After he loaded our cases in the boot, I set about explaining our destination to the driver using the Google Maps and my broken schoolboy French. The driver was of Chinese appearance and spoke French in a Chinese accent. And yet, somewhat miraculously, I was still able to make my French understood and understand his replies. (Or when I didn’t understand, pretend I did by saying yes and nodding a lot, then making a rough guess of the translation to my new companions).

It showed what could be done under pressure, when needed. How I could surprise and underestimate myself. I wondered if that could possibly be extended to other parts of my life and my general willingness to take the more comfortable looking, slower road. Better not to dwell on that.

“Ahh, you speak French?” my Japanese allies looked admiringly at me, newly pleased with their selection of travelling companion.

“Um, not really.. Just a..” Ah, hell. “Yeah, well, you know. A little.”

We exchanged further civilities. They were chemistry academics: one a relaxed Professor, one a younger postgrad, heading from Paris to a conference in Spain. I asked if they weren’t still radioactive and they charitably laughed. They were polite and amiable but returned no questions of me. We looked out the windows, watched grey Parisian suburbs pass by and the city grow up.

*

We’d barely kept in close touch after a season of playing football together in 2006/07. I’d given him lifts to matches and training and we’d been out for occasional beers. Facebook messages had been the extent of our contact since then, but I’d given a month’s notice of my visit and he seemed keen to meet up; we could easily catch up and revive our bantering relationship.

And so it proved, despite the odd comprehension wobble due to his shaky English pronunciation. His main headline was that he was a new father of four months. He’d been with the same girl for the majority, if not all, of his adult life, after growing up on the same small western Atlantic island. They moved to Paris as young adults and he’d lived in England for eighteen months without her, when we’d met.

He’s always been open to me about cheating on her, not that he would ever use that word. He said he still has “friends,” and emitted an irresistibly infectious laugh. Everything about him is playful and lighthearted. He isn’t the least hounded by any guilt and has a naturally coquettish smiled reserved for placing orders with barmaids. (I instantly deferred in the company of a native speaker).

The key is to have friends in different cities, he explained. When asked if he suspects she also has “friends,” he said he didn’t want to know and didn’t appear bothered by the idea that she may. When asked if he loves her, he almost incredulously responded a powerful Yes, of course, as if this could never be questioned. The thing was, he explained, he can’t ever get used to the difference of women, how they can be attractive in so many different ways. And I can empathise. It’s difference and, when you’re in a long term relationship, the temptation of newness which is so seductive. Perhaps more so when the relationship isn’t the only relationship ever; when there is history of change. My suspicion is that to those who have only really ever been with one other, possibly more to women than men, any deviation is tantamount to an illegal act, it is so fundamentally wrong. The context of their history rules, and rules stronger the further back it goes.

On a separate level, I empathised with him because I can fall in love / lust several times a day for a very short period. I will be breathtaken by one woman of a certain kind or style for one moment, then forget her to be stunned by another who looks radically different the next. By the end of the day I will struggle to remember any, which doesn’t dim the strength of my appreciation at the time. It’s what makes men promiscuous and simple and dumb. Few are able to not look, or not notice.

But there’s little by way of practise in my attentions, as there is in my friend’s. That’s providing he’s telling the truth and none of it is bravado. He says his “friends” are all long term “friends.” None are random people, met once and never seen again, as my nearly-but-not-quite dalliances often are. Perhaps the small island migration experience forges a close bond which endures.

We had several beers over the evening in Bastille, Paris. I Britishly drank pints, while he drank bottles. Bowing to my Anglo ways of wanting to see more than one room, we visited a handful of different bars, flying in the face of French sitting and staying in one place for a whole evening.

I was perturbed by people outside bars as we walked between them. Chairs were positioned like theatre seats, directly facing the street; not even the pretence of an angle or position around a table, the street itself a stage. It made walking in front of busy Friday night bar cafés all the more unnerving.

With the final drink and all our stories spent, Things To Say grew harder to find and our chatter slowly sputtered out. The last trains were approaching.

On parting in the underground Metro station I asked him to teach me the handshake I had literally failed to grasp when we met, which left me limply clutching the ends of his fingers. It was a simple right palm slap and punch of fists. Easy enough to master. With that, and an ambiguously meaningful invite of a reciprocal visit, we turned down separate tunnels.

My fear of negotiating the Metro system half-drunk was unfounded. It proved simple enough, possibly because the eternal paranoia of self-doubt was reduced by alcohol. On my carriage I found the loud, hip-hop mobile ringtone of an old man more amusing than it probably was. Nobody else appeared amused. He ponderously addressed the device, taking a while to find the right key.

Village standoff

The village pub ended up being a traumatic experience last Friday night.  I was chatting away to my favourite local, a sharp-eyed early sixtysomething with an enviably adventurous spirit.  He and his second wife of twenty years or so – herself equally sharp-eyed, sophisticated and elegant, despite apparently dressing exclusively from charity shops, according to my mother – were planning an extensive around the world tour.  Their house has been on the market for two years now.  They’re looking to sell and find somewhere smaller nearby they can shut up for however long their travels take them away for.

I really like them both and wouldn’t mind if they wanted to adopt me, although I suppose I’m too old for that now.

He was telling me about his passion for gardening towards the later evening hours when my mother, having a separate conversation with a pair of women to my right, abruptly rose from her chair.  She waved away the protestations of her friend: “No, no..  just leave it.  I don’t want to talk about it..”  I didn’t know what had happened.

Mum, Dad and I had all finished our drinks and were on the cusp of leaving anyway, but this was very abrupt.  Dad stood too.  Mum looked upset, so did her friend, whose apologetic jabbering didn’t make much sense and wasn’t having the desired effect.

Tears formed in my mother’s eyes as she bundled her way out between tables and chairs and people.  I stirred the sleeping dog at my feed and untied her lead from a table leg.  With confused, rushed goodbyes, we exited the small room, Dad looking chastened and Mum scuttling ahead, wound in a knot.

“She just won’t let it go!” she said, struggling to confine her upset, just about keeping it together then calming as we walked down the unlit, steeply sloping crescent.

I noticed again how the dog walks perfectly to heel when walking home from the pub; yet rarely at any other time.

She explained then how her neighbour and friend, a pleasant but none too switched on lady of a similar age, had stopped her in the road to ask about takings from the village fete, how it was all calculated, and why Mum had taken the cash away.  Mum said that it wasn’t like she’d been accusing her of anything, then suggested that it was.  It wasn’t the time to question her.  Her integrity had been questioned and she felt vulnerable, particularly without the emotional articulacy to discuss it openly and rationally.

She recovered her composure on the five minute walk back to our house but the evening’s relaxed boozy blanket had been well and truly crumpled with nerves and awkwardness.    When we got in Dad set about making himself some food.  Mum was still mildly afluster and troubled, but less emotional.  The dog looked at her, concerned, and wagged what looked like an empathetic tail.  I briefly lingered to see if Dad would offer a nightcap, as he usually does.  Too engaged in making his cheese and not evidently fazed by Mum’s upset, he didn’t.  So I went to bed.

The next morning Mum clearly felt there was outstanding need for an explanation.  As I munched distractedly on toast, half engaged with a small device, she set about describing her accounting processes for the village fete.

“Mum, you don’t have to explain yourself to me.”

What happened next was odd.

She crumbled again, in the blink of an eye, this time properly crying and sulking off to the other room.  “Oh I can’t speak to anybody, can I!  Everything I say is wrong!  No, just leave me alone!”

I called her back to the kitchen and said she didn’t need to explain anything because I trusted her implicitly; she was my Mum.  She returned immediately and accepted a hug.

Jesus, I thought, resting my chin on her head; she was a way flakier individual than me.  Add her to the crazy moodswings of my father, practically a lifetime on antidepressants, the punishing figurative King Kong dominance of my brother and it’s little wonder I’m how I am.  However that is: not hideously abnormal, but probably not quite normal either.  Perhaps my brother’s strategy of locking himself in his bedroom and subtly disassociating himself with the family was the most effective way of achieving loose normality.

But hey, what is ‘normality’ anyway?

Approaching lunchtime I was sat down with a coffee and the newspapers when the doorbell rang.  I knew it would be the jabbering woman, come to apologise after receiving a telling off from her more sensitive partner, a short, cheerful, yet potentially firy, bald man.  He had realised Mum was fragile after the initial interrogation.  They entered bearing flowers and apologies.

This time, it seemed that for some reason Mum was happy to talk about it and everything was fine.