Kissing Frogs

There is some ridiculous irony in having to do the rewrites. In all likelihood, I won’t be around to see the publication, but the publishing is contingent on the legal compliance. To have come this far and not see it out there in the world feels unfair, but, as Shakespeare said, “There’s a divinity that shapes our ends“, it’s out of my hands. This isn’t the space for examining the fairness and unfairness of life, in some ways, it is relief being able to let go of it all. The readings won’t take place, so my foolish, ever optimistic idea that he would turn up at one of them – Southampton, Bristol maybe where so much of all that happened, happened – is dynamited. If our positions were reversed, I would have to go out of curiosity, but if that were the case, we wouldn’t be where we are. I ‘m not hidden from public view, I am out there, everywhere, accessible, open to contact and beer/wine marinated meetings to meander through the past. Perhaps being able to see who and what I am has been a factor in keeping a distance. Who knows. And that is it really, who knows, I don’t and guessing and speculating has become tedious and, truthfully, there are too many other things vying for space in my head. But, he hums along in the background and occasionally the idea punches through that I might go off on a fairy tale quest in search of the impossible magical item that he is. Luckily for us both, probably, that isn’t the remotest of possibilities. My quest has to remain anchored to the keyboard and the real mission is to finish the book.

And so we come back to that, which is where this episodic set of posts started, how it came to be what it is. Is it a true story? It contains truths even if the ‘legals’ have forced me to create a ghost of the ghost. I have written stories since I was a child. I have created fantasy worlds, I have weaved tales, I have created alternative lives for myself. The Playhouse is a curation of memories, of the past, about using sex and alcohol to self medicate, to block out an injury I have carried since childhood, how the intense unexpected encounter with him resulted in emotional flooding and reinforced my own complicated, negative images of myself.

The past feels more present just now. There are some people who emotionally tag you, they are more vivid, the sensory memories of them so powerful it is almost possible to feel their presence, and I did feel it on the beach in South West France. There is a theory about the ‘Peak End’ rule, how we tend to remember the most intense part of a negative experience with someone , the “peak”; it becomes the defining memory of that person and all the details become encoded. I remember our last meeting, the hotel room on the M32, the desperateness of it. I remember him; the smell of the old wax coat impregnated with fags and booze and sex and I remember the feel of him. I can’t change that he doesn’t or doesn’t want to remember me, but I hope when he reads the book – an arrangements have been made to ensure it finds its way to him – he will. Huge chunks of it are pure fiction, but the essence of him threads its way through the whole narrative. The person he was, inhabits the story.

I hope too, that when, if , he reads it he will understand that, whatever he may have thought, what I wanted was the smallest of asks and how his response to it, admittedly at a bad time for me, so partly my fault in how I reacted, fanned a tiny flame in to a wildfire of hurt that I have struggled to control. His life, as far as I can understand it, would never have been something I could or want to be part of, in spite of our shared skills as storytellers. His stories are of a totally different genre to mine with a very dissimilar audience and with completely divergent purposes. We operated then and now under completely different narrative rules. But, I wanted to be seen, to be recognised, for my memories to be affirmed; we did have some fun times. What happened is I have been sitting with his hand over my mouth for the last seven years, terrorised by the idea of speaking in case it is seen as ‘hounding or stalking’ and feeling like a whole chunk of my past has been wiped out because it doesn’t suit someone else’s version of themselves to remember it. Fortunately, I don’t care anymore, I don’t have to. I am free now, allowed to say whatever I want as part of my last wishes. And the book, well the book, in spite of all the scribblings out, the tweaking of this bit and that bit, tells my version of the past and his place in it and while he may have erased me, he, or a version of him, will be forever, enduringly, in print.