This chapter is now in trash. It, like the subject of it, is impossible. I have skirted and skipped and shilly-shallied round the reality of it and the words won’t come and it’s now like the red scribble; messy, confused, impossible to untangle. Partly, it is because I don’t know who I am talking to. Who am I having this conversation with? I realised I don’t know. There was a moment when I could have known, had the chance to know, but I detonated that in the midst of the destruction caused by the drinking caused by the grief which was caused by the loss and paralysed by the discovery that I was living a life I didn’t belong in and couldn’t escape. Would it have made a difference if I hadn’t been on a journey of self-sabotage? The initial response was so slow and so unenthusiastic and when we finally did communicate through an online chat, it was fractured and confusing and offered no real information about where he was/is. He suggested staying in touch but didn’t say how or when or how that would work. When I tried to follow on from the conversation the tenuous grip I had on reality then strangled the possibilities and I couldn’t retrieve it now matter how hard I tried. And, all that, all that was really underwritten by not knowing who he was/is. I was still talking to the badly behaved, naughty, living on the edge Lothario that I remembered and was transfixed by, not the multi-national business man he seems to have transformed in to – though I have my doubts about the extent of the change having seen the videos. But, I messed it up.
The appearance of him after I had worked so hard to forget, erase, trash following the email, was beyond strange. I have no explanation and I am tired of rationalising all the weird co-incidences and strange occurrences that literally hold up a huge sign saying ‘NOPE, FORGETTING IS NOT AN OPTION’. But, what is the option?
I lay in bed on my back, knees bent, legs slightly apart and I am doing the exercises to try to keep my limbs supple. I put the soles of my feet together and the feeling of that sparks a memory that is so utterly present that I struggle to breathe for a minute. I can see the top of his head between my legs, the black hair, and I can feel the tongue working its way around inside me and I squirm with remembered exquisite sensations. I can smell the unique scent of beer, wine, fag smoke and sweat. All the organs in my body lurch, slide, are readying themselves…..Desire and longing are falling out of me, rolling around on the bed…But, the memory suddenly stops. It’s just me, lying bed with my knees in the air like I am waiting for a gynaecological internal exam. For a minute, my hand drifts down and fingers the edges of my cunt, but I don’t do it. It will be quick, it will probably be explosive – thinking of him fucking me can have some pretty impressive results – but, it will just make the wanting worse. It will be a relief for a few minutes, but the itch, or is it an ache, will be back in seconds, because it isn’t the real thing.
How bizarre is all this? Well, very, it is very fucking bizarre and it is exhausting . The resolution? There isn’t one. I am increasingly learning to live with it like the effects of a chronic illness. There is no cure. There is the occasional period of relief and stretches of remission, but there is nothing that will wipe it away. I am internally tattooed now with the images, the captured moments of a time I clearly remember and he does not.
The 100th, 200th version of the letter which writes itself in my head every day now because I cannot believe it’s true that you don’t remember.
What a memory you have! I do, what puzzles me is how you can have forgotten everything. If I’d been a casual fuck, a one night stand, a drunken beer bust shag, I’d understand, it would make sense, but it wasn’t that, it went way beyond that. It was a relationship – of sorts. It spanned months across more than one location.
I have a playlist of memories which are on more or less permanent loop now. The most played one recently has been the ironing board. You, turning up on the doorstep of the flat in Clifton – the one where we broke the bed leg – with an ironing board because there wasn’t one and I couldn’t iron anything for work.
‘It’s a spare.’
You were wearing the de facto green waxed jacket, the smell of which I don’t think I will ever forget now.
I have a thousand other memories of hundreds of other people and, yet, there is still room – too much room – for you. I know you have lived a life in other countries and god knows how many women there have been, are, I don’t suppose age has stopped you, I imagine they just get younger. But, has that life really completely erased me? Is there no moment of wondering what it would be like to meet, to see if the spark generated when we met is still glowing. Maybe you want to forget the person you were then? I don’t know, but even if that is the case, does that person never come knocking on your mind’s door in the early hours of the morning, unannounced, asking for attention?
And, remember, the last time we ever met, was you coming to find me when I had categorically chosen not to contact you. That, that, is like a cracked rib. As long as I don’t move suddenly or laugh too hard, it is barely noticeable, but if I do, the pain is breath stealing.
And, you are there somewhere. Cloaked in the folds of Facebook and Instagram, observing. I know you are there and I am waiting for the call the message, because it has to come, it really does have to come now.
Spellbound and Swallowed 