4. Morass
Isn’t that the problem: when you know someone inside out, the only mystery left is when they get to leave.

Roused from my slumbering, I went through the ritual of bagging up all the recyclables – paper, plastic, and glass – for collection. I dutifully put them all at the back door of the kitchen, then went to the fridge, with its cute magnetic pictures of us, the couple, to pull out a beer, a half-finished bag of corn chips and a tub of salsa. Slamming the door, I brooded over the irksome magnetic poetry plastered between the cloying twosomes. It was easy to spot the different authors: Jane's romantic quatrains (“sing then sleep my delirious goddess, her breast an eternity of dreams”) to my sicko couplets (“stiff sausage rolls into moist joy holes”). I had a fiddle with a few of the unused words but couldn’t bring myself to change any of the existing “works”. Just too upsetting to change any of these examples of our entrenched domesticity.

I was flopping down on the couch, considering whether two days might be too soon to give up on Jane, when a trio of thumps sounded on the front door. I leapt back to my feet with dramatic intensity, spilling chips and a slug of beer as I slalomed round coffee table and chairs to the hallway. I lifted the latch and swung open the door with no regard to personal safety, closed my eyes and flung open my arms.

“Hey, you betta watch wha you do with tha door,” said Jane. Or Jane, in a lower-pitched American/East European blended accent. Why would Jane be putting me on, I wondered. She’d never revealed any talent for mimicry in all this time and this was the best Mister Sprinkles voice I’d ever heard.

“Jane?” I asked plaintively.

“Wha?” the voice replied. It was time to face up to reality. I opened my eyes.

It was Mister Sprinkles. That was the name Jane and I knew him by anyway. The five-foot nothing, gnarled pensioner with the head as bald, orange and pockmarked as a Jaffa standing in front of me was really called Ladislao Radz. I knew this because the check we wrote out each month to him, our landlord, was in this name. We gave him his sobriquet, however, in honour of the many hours he spent watering the gardens in the bungalow complex, Silesia Cottages. The fact was that he owned all seven of them so tending his own gardens was bizarre behaviour to say the least. Either he loved it or was too mean to employ Mexicans. We figured the latter.

“I wanna know whaz’s going on, Ramage. You and Mrs Ramage cause a scene the other days. Is you gonna pay the rent?”

“But it’s not due for ten days or so,” I replied sheepishly, disturbed by the insensitivity of this assault.

“Yeah, well, I’m only asking. I don’t wanz no trouble round here, you see? No fighting or shouting like you and Mrs Ramage. I don’t like it.” He folded his arms and nodded his head theatrically, like a Mitteleuropan Mussolini. He was enjoying this, no doubt. Any landlord with a hint of sadism loves putting the wind up his tenants and Radz was no exception.

“I don’t want to leave Mr Radz,” I said honestly. “I like it here,” I lied. Truth was I couldn’t face the upheaval of moving from our home, our Hansel and Gretel cottage, but my life was beginning to resemble something by the Brothers Grimm. I felt trapped and Radz wasn’t helping much. He snapped out of his fascist impression just enough to give his closing peroration.

“If you can’t make rentz, then you’re out, Ramage. Out, out, out.”

With that he turned and stomped back towards his bungalow, revealing that he had indeed been holding his beloved watering can behind his back.

Wallowing in a glutinous mud of self-abuse and self-flagellation, scattershot hatred and chemically enhanced despair, there were enough morbid, pre-occupying thoughts to fuel a mini-orgy of introspection. Now money trouble added into this to create an exquisite loop of despond and fear. Like imminent roadkill, frozen in the path of oncoming traffic I was so overwhelmed I couldn’t move. My brain frantic but my body petrified, I even considered phoning my mother for money. I rejected it. For one because I knew the old bag wouldn’t lend it to me and, for two, I couldn’t summon the strength to punch her number in. Why I got the blame for dad running off to live in Spain with next door’s twenty-year-old Andalucian au pair I’ll never know, but she remained seething about my alleged complicity. I only let him borrow my car to take Isabella (that was her name) out for driving lessons. How was I to know that when he wanted my car because it had a gearstick that she turned out to be practising putting some other knob into overdrive? Seething away in her Banstead maisonette, the very thought of her was agony.

Even more agonising was that I couldn’t expect any financial help from my nearest and dearest. If only I could touch them for money my opinion of either parent would be rather more positive. Dad always kept his fists firmly in his pockets when I was growing up. That was until he found his Sevillian soulmate. Money was no problem then, as he lavished gifts on her and bought her dream villa somewhere on the Costa del Sol. Mum though had only enough to keep herself in gin, dulling the pain and giving her the front to cut a swathe through the local Conservative club. She was pumping up her liver and enlarging the prostates of a string of lonely old duffers. It was pointless asking her. How I ever got through college I’ll never know, working every holiday, bar jobs during term-time and I was still short every year. That was the great thing about Jane. As our relationship blossomed gradually our debts began to merge. Mine, I had no chance of paying back quickly but Jane was different: she had family with money. The Laird-Temples (Jane dropped the Laird bit as a teenager) came to her rescue each summer with a curiously well-paid job in her father’s surveying business. The bits and pieces of work I picked up labouring, gardening and stacking shelves while she finished her final year were barely any better than being a student) but it was Jane’s work that helped most, that and the twelve grand her granny left her just after she graduated. Without that we’d never have made it here and been able to get by on our meagre grad student paychecks.
But what did money matter? When we found each other it felt like two separate worlds colliding to form one new sphere, not a joint bank account, a head clear of financial calculations and a ticklist of lifestyle choices. Only now, as two separate entities money mattered again. It mattered an awful lot.
All told, this cauldron of despair kept me on my couch suffering from a “virus” (as reported to work) for the next three days. On the fourth day, though, my psyche-devil briefly rested and a slightly redeemed state of mind began to assert. Actually, it wasn’t anything angelic or penitential that roused me from my nihilistic stupor. More simple than that, it was fear. Fear plus that desperate desire to stave off your own destruction and survive. If I didn't get to campus, didn't see a doctor, didn't get certificated as sick, I might as well stay on the bus heading for LAX and take the next available one-way economy class ticket back to sunny Heathrow.

Heathrow. Heathrow. Yes, it was the word rousing me, the early morning nightmare with which I woke. I left the dream unresolved, but when I confronted the greasy haired, stubbly bum in the mirror at eleven that morning I resolved to get myself to campus and see a medic. I called the student health centre and asked if there was anything available but all they could give me was five minutes next morning. The doctor was sympathetic, gave me a lot more of her time than I’d expected, but recommended that I see one of the counsellors as there was “nothing physically wrong with you Mr Ramage.” At least she gave me something to wave at the university management to prove I was ill, though I wasn’t sure if mild depression looked any better than chronic malingering. I was lucky and managed to book a session with a counsellor for the following morning. A cancellation apparently, which only made me brood darkly about whether it was a suicide's slot as I slouched home.

In the morning, the campus was brisk with the cheery and the clean-cut, student hordes moving to and from class in small, happy and exclusive groups. The difference between their healthily tanned faces and limbs and my body, the colour of a slightly sun-kissed paracetemol, was again cause for self-lacerating analysis. A plain inadequate floundering in a shoal of youthful beauty. A black hole of partner-less misery framed by a galaxy of sparkling supernovae. At least not everyone was quite so gorgeous, well scrubbed and gregarious though, even here there were examples of that well-known human sub-specie the American lardass, or the extreme version, the blimpbutt. But, even taking them out of contention, it still left me feeling low on looks, personality, charm and loveableness.
I did have the consolation that I wasn't expected to teach after today. If I could get through the afternoon and dedicate my time to building up my defences, I might be fine. At the reception desk of the centre, my eyes fixed on the scuffs and scurves of my distressed loafers as I mumbled my name and details. After a quizzical, but courteous pardon from the vague presence behind the desk, I started again.
"Yeah, hi again, I'm Adam Ramage. I have an 11.30?"
"For what Mr Ramage?" she replied.
"Counselling" I whispered self-consciously. "I've made an appointment and..."
"Oh, yes, of course sir. I have the details here - Mr Ramage?” I nod. “You are slightly late, but I’m sure there will be no problem. Now please take a seat." She gestured over to a grey, leatherette sofa. “Dr Alamander is waiting for you".
Feeling vulnerable and self-conscious, this comment made my heart pumping even quicker, which was particular terrifying as my heart was in my throat.
Presently, a calm, American voice intoned "can I see Adam now please?" and I was directed by finger pointing into the room across from the receptionist.
The set up inside his room was as expected. Large, highly buffed hardwood desk in one corner, behind which was an equally large leather-upholstered chair and behind that a wall-length bookcase stuffed with costly looking textbooks. Underneath the main window, a chaise longue, with another leather swivel chair partially obscuring one end. A few seconds later this swivelled, and I was completely in the presence of Dr Alamander.
I figured him to be about sixty, although his smooth brown face, framed by frizzled grey hair sprouting energetically from his small head, had a youthful quality that might not have been cosmetic. Around his pursed lips, however, an outcrop of black fuzz gave the immediate impression of an avuncular uncle. He held his chubby hands clasped tight together across his chest in a parody of a corpse, while he looked me over with his inquisitive black eyes.
My nerves caused me to blurt out the only question you could ask a man with a surname like Alamander.
"Hey, so I guess you get called Sal by most people?" I said, aiming to cover my nervousness with a flippant informality.
"No, Mr Ramage it is not. It's Vincent. Besides," he continued in a serious, deadpan, "if it were Sal, I would be Sal Alamander, which isn't quite what you mean I think. Is it?"
I mouthed the word "no", and looked down at my feet, like a first former in front of his head. I was already feeling as if I was too intellectually inferior to participate in my own counselling session.
“It’s an interesting name,” I eventually mumbled. “Is it Middle-Eastern?”
“No. It just sounds like it should. My grandparents came over from the Ukraine, so God knows what they told immigration when they arrived. Anyway, they took the -ovsky or -itz off the end and put it down as Alamander and here I am. I see you live in Silesia Cottages. I guess there’s no connection with you?”
“No, I think the owner comes from there. I’m not even sure where Silesia is.”
“I see. Well, perhaps we can leave the geography lesson to the end. Now, if you’d like to make yourself comfortable.”
Vincent, as I was to call him, continued with a few pleasantries punctuated with approximate smiles then waved his right hand in the direction of a film director's chair. As I was ushered to the chair, he then turned and strode towards his rather more comfy-looking, high-backed swivel chair opposite. After a couple of perfunctory swivels, he nodded as if to give the signal that we were formally beginning.
"Now this is a first appointment Adam. It's designed to explore some of the reasons for you coming to see me. I see from your file that you're not on any medication at the moment, is that correct?" I nod. "So, can I ask then Adam", he continued, "why you feel the need for counselling?"
His warm, chocolate-coated bonbon of a voice soothed my nerves a little, reassuring me that I wasn't just wasting his time. As the holder of the so-far, secret information that we were there to discuss, I started. Eventually, after ten minutes of painfully thin self-revelation based on spurious memories of early childhood and various grievances from school and adolescence which I hadn't remembered for several years (mostly irrelevant, but, hey, that’s the nature of the game we were playing) I got to the point. I could tell this by the way that the pulse in my throat started keeping double time.
"And of course, Jane, who is my, was er, girlfriend. She left quite recently – couple of days ago in fact – and I’m not finding it easy to cope with. That and I don't actually know where she is... or for that matter who she's with, or... just that she's taken everything she owns and left town for two weeks. No forwarding address: nothing...no postcard...nothing".
"How long have you been together?"
"Oh, I don't know. Years. We met at university. I'm twenty-eight, no twenty-nine, so that's something like seven, no, eight years last October." Even now, I couldn’t remember this simple fact. No wonder she left.
"Has she done this kind of thing before?"
I immediately said no, which gave me time to reflect as the doctor went off on a monologue I wasn’t prepared to understand. There were clear memories of her going away for short periods in the early years of our relationship which I was mulling over on the way to the appointment. That time when I caught her in a tongue-pumping clinch in the main Student Union disco bar with Andrew McIver from Politics and History. Or, when she dumped me for a week and went off on a caravan holiday in Devon with three of the good time girls on her course. After that, any time one of the girls saw me they always sniggered, even though Jane turned up at my door on her return from holiday begging for sex. My paranoia was that she wasn’t begging me for sex because she was starved, just for more of the same she’d been getting in Devon. Despite feeling these anxieties and rejections almost as keenly as when they happened, I discounted them as events more to do with the settling down of our relationship. They were a long time ago.
Alamander moved along. "Would you say that you are in love with Jane?"
"Yes. Of course. Absolutely. I mean, it’s in absentia right now," I giggled nervously as I reflected on this way of looking at her as an absent love. My laughing was met with silence. Embarrassed, I continued. "No, no, I guess I am. I've never been this close to anyone in my life. Her not being there just feels so odd. And, of course, I am worried sick about her."
"Why is that Adam?"
The obtuseness of this question caused me to react angrily. "Well, like where the hell is she? She could be in danger, or maybe she's having some kind of breakdown. She could be lost somewhere in the middle of the desert, or languishing in a motel room, or anywhere. This is still a foreign country to us you know."
Alamander remained entirely unperturbed. His mild-eyed gaze steadied on my folded arms, which I self-consciously rearranged to a more convivial pose. Alamander started talking again, but something odd had happened. His mouth was open and his lips moving, but I could not hear a word of it. He was talking and talking, then I started talking and talking but I couldn’t take in what I was saying either. It was all too weird. I was having a conversation, borderline-monologue, but none of it was real. Inside my head though, in tandem with this silent conversation, I was chatting happily to Dr Alamander. This seemed real.
The imagined Alamander began this conversation, but he was nothing like the real Alamander.
"Come off it smart guy. You’re not worried about Jane. You’re worried about yourself. Admit it. It’s all about you. Isn’t that right?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Glad we got that lie out of the way. Jeez, I hate dishonesty. You bastards come in here, trying to pull a fast one on me. Every motherfuckin’ one of you. Why can’t you face up to reality for Christ’s sake?
“Sorry.”
“You betta be. You make me sick with your hopeless lack of decisiveness, your ridiculous way of balancing things – “on the one hand, I’m this, but on the other hand, I’m that” crap. “Boohoohoo, I’m so unhappy, I can’t get on with my life”. Well, screw you buddy. Try telling that to a beggar in India or a miner in Ecuador or a Palestinian refugee.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“Stop snivelling. Now tell me about it. Tell me something really horrible, something that shows me what you’re really like.”
“I can’t.”
“Yeah, come on you neurotic limpdick, lets see you in all your pathetic glory.”
“I was on a school trip once, and I got caught short, so I did a poo next to the wheel of the minibus when no-one was looking, and later on the geography teacher, old Pikey, slipped on it and broke his wrist.”
“That’s not much of a story, snothead.”
“But I didn’t get the blame. Everyone accused the class scapegoat, Stinker Stubbs and I didn’t let on it was me. He got suspended for it.”
“So, not only are you a liar but you’re also a bully and a coward. Tell me more.”
“Well, I had a dream the other night. I was at London Heathrow, but it wasn’t really Heathrow. I was at this indeterminate airport with an anonymous, but unknown departure lounge, I wait to catch a plane, a Swedish SAS-ensigned airliner. I am in the lounge waiting for Jane. It is getting close to Final Call and I'm waiting and waiting. I go up to a counter and find to my anguish she has already boarded without me. I run to the counter, am issued with a boarding pass, but cannot seem to get through. I make a detour outside of the building, realise I am going the wrong way and rush back in. I shit myself and realise I am not wearing any trousers or pants. I wipe off what I can with my shirt to the horror of a watching middle-aged woman. I think - if I catch that plane, if I make this final huge effort perhaps it will crash and I will die for my own folly of trying to catch a plane that I don't really want to go on anymore just because I have a ticket. But then I reason - how many planes actually crash?”
"With people like you on them, not enough.”
“That’s not nice.”
“You’re not paying me to be nice. You’re paying for a few home truths, a bit less bullshit and a bit more straight talk. If you want platitudes and niceties, go ask your friends. If you want your hair stroked and your tears wiped, go ask your mother. And if you want your cock sucked, go pay a whore. Wait a minute. You’re not fucking paying me at all. I must be crazy.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“You’d better be. There’s a bit of a pattern with your stories isn’t there? A shit pattern. Are you a coprophiliac?
“A what?”
“A dirty poo-poo-loving son of a turd!”
“No!”
“Yes. Shit boy. Have you got any stories that don’t involve excrement?”
“Well, there was that time when I was having a bath at my gran’s and she came in and caught me wan…hey, do you think I’m cracking up doc?”
“I hope so.”
“Oh. Isn’t there anyway you could help me?”
“Why? Why the fuck should I? You should be able to help yourself and you can’t. By what reasoning does it follow that someone outside of you can help?
“Self-help?”
“Self-help’s for the selfish.”
“Is this tough love?”
“No, it’s very easy hate.”
“I don’t get it.”
Instantly, the real Dr Alamander, gently frotting his bushy grey beard, spoke.
"It's far too early to tell Adam”.
What? Tell what? Did he just hear me say I’m cracking up? Or did I just imagine it? If yes, what did I say that made him respond that “it was far too early to tell.” What was it?
Real Alamander continued.
“As this is only an initial consultation, Adam, I’m afraid the clock has beaten us. Shall we continue another time?"
“Er, yeah,” I said with great uncertainty.
I booked a full appointment for ten days time, if only so I could find out what I’d told him. There was also an undertaking to keep a log of anything significant that happened, or thought happened in my brain, in the interim. Anyway, I rationalised to the clerk as I booked up, by then Jane might be back and so I could easily cancel.
-----------------------
Coming out of the medical centre, into the pristine light of the noonday sun, an arm reached across from my ray-blinded side to bar my progress. After a few seconds of blinking, the presence spoke and I realised who it was attached to.
“Hey there Adam, who pissed in your lah-tay?" The cheerfulness in the Yorkshire-inflected pronunciation of latte immediately impressed an unlikely smile on my face causing the hour I'd spent with dear Vinnie and the life-dregs it brought up, to spin away into the back of my head. It was Kevin.
"Oh, a general deluge. Where do I start?”
"Maybe you got a touch of I SAD?"
"I sad? What's that?"
"Ironic Seasonally Affected Depression - the irony being..."
"...oh yeah, in California there are no seasons so it lasts year round."
"Ah, you’ve heard it! I got that one off me missus, so I might’ve guessed another bonce-boffin like yerself would know it. Better stick to the blue stuff. Anyway, you look a bit low pal. What’s the problem?"
"Well, it was for…” I was trying to conjure up a fake condition that would disguise the purpose of my visit to the medical centre but all I could think of were a variety of sexually transmitted infections. These were far more implausible than melancholy and, in the case of anal tags or syphilis, far worse to own up to. I thought better of it and came clean.
"I've just been for a bit of counselling. Yeah, a few little problems at home and guess I needed to talk to someone over there."
"That’s a bit fucking drastic isn’t it? It can’t be that serious can it?" Kevin was predictably cool about the whole show and didn't push for the details that I wasn’t prepared to forward in response to his questions. He continued. "You know Adam, I always saw you as the therapy type."
"Thanks. I have been here for a couple of years longer than you. It'll come to you eventually."
"No way, I don't ever want to get in touch with my feelings, thank you. In fact, I probably don't need to talk much to anyone about all that crap. Whenever I feel a bit down I go and swim fifty lengths or zip round track a few dozen times: problem sorted. Perhaps you should try it."
"You're saying it's all in my mind?"
"Well obviously. You're too...too...cerebal.”
"Cerebral?"
"Yeah, that’s it. Too much of that thinking lark. Now come on me old cerebral mate,” he said throwing his arm around my shoulder, “what say we get out of the sun and go get a beer: therapy in a glass."
The nearest bar was Pacheco's, a small Mexican cantina in the shopping mail just north of the campus. At home in South London this might have been run by, at a pinch, Spaniards or Colombians, but this was the real thing, populated by authentic Mexi-Cali diners; the cartwheel and sombrero kitsch was authentic kitsch in this part of town. We sorted out a booth and swiftly ordered drinks. In our shorthand, “ a beer” equalled several Dos Equis and an assortment of chasers, so we started off with a beer each and two straight tequilas. We both took our shots straight from the waiter's tray and threw them down our throats. The hot fluid hit the back of my throat with a cool splash that instantly turned fiery as I bit hard on the accompanying lime slice.
"Well pal,” said Kevin, “I bet you feel a lot better for that. It won't be long before all your worries move over to your unconscious. Unfortunately, a few more of these and that’s where all your thoughts will be. Cheers.”
I wasn't sure if these were wise words, but they were said with such a genuine pleasure that the bar room philosophy sounded entirely plausible and reassuring. It made me hope that the merest coat of his pangloss might stick on me.
So, over several more beers and tequilas, plus a chicken burrito the size of a weightlifter’s forearm each, we pretty much gamutted sports. This included a run-through of rumours about the drug regime of several Olympic hopefuls I had never heard of, a full report of the last England Test match on tour and the scant prospect of Leeds United ever winning anything ever again. That left women, the chasing thereof. This was his other favourite subject. Somehow a winning combination of a voracious appetite and a shameless personality meant that he never seemed short of female company and he wasn’t shy of telling all. Some of the more outrageous conquests that I knew of included: an usherette at a cinema in Century City during a poorly-attended matinee; a female lifeguard in the locker room of the college swimming pool (cubicle love, as he put it); an infamous wank on one of the rides at a famous local theme park. He also tried to convince me that this was given by one of the employees dressed in character, but I refused to believe it. Apart from that, anything seemed possible. If heterosexual cottaging were ever to become an acceptable pursuit, he would be in the ladies restrooms like a shot.
Predictably, therefore, Kevin zoomed in on the subject of women.
"Jesus pal I've just about had enough of Shera. It's not just that things are getting a little predictable, but I don't think I've ever lived with a woman with such annoying habits. How many women who snored have you slept with? And picked their toenails in bed?"
I nodded along to this diatribe without feeling it necessary to reveal that my count of partners was almost certainly in single figures and the status of half of those were wobbly. There was only the one serious partner, lover, other half, what have you, the one that just left me. Kevin meanwhile, with his Mr Average looks, body and height stretched his feral charm and cheeky grin across a vast number of vastly different female bodies. Never one to keep a statistics uncounted, he reckoned on two hundred and twenty-three.
"Well?” he insisted. “How many?”
“I don’t keep count,” I ventured nervously, “but I guess not many."
“Look, if I can count up to two-hundred and twenty-three, I’m sure you can count to, what, eight, nine, ten?”
“Two-hundred and twenty-three?” I exclaimed, neatly changing the subject. To make it a round ten, I would have to make some big assumptions about what counted.
"Yeah, okay. There have been a few others, but you know, Shera. Okay, she may be incredibly pretty, and cute, with a totally desirable and fit body. And yes she does have a seductive, husky voice, but that doesn't mean she hasn't any faults. You see what I'm saying?"
"No-one is perfect?"
"Exactly. Present company excepted of course. Now you've been with Jane for years haven’t you? You must have dug up some pretty unpleasant or irritating habits I'll bet?"
I couldn't stop myself from unveiling the sad fact that she was perfect.
“Nobody’s perfect, silly bollocks. Think man.”
"I’m not sure if I can name any real faults. She’s driven, I suppose, but that’s not a fault. Really, I feel so flattened that I can’t think of anything. I feel nothing, all irritation or anger has left me, as indeed has she. Fuck, at least you've got Shera at home waiting for you. I wouldn't have been at the counsellor today unless Jane hadn’t disappeared."
"That’s a big word pal, “disappeared”. Implies no coming back. Jane really must have left you to be bouncing that word around. "
"She might have done. Well, yes, maybe it’s too early to call. Anyway she’s not here."
"Really?” For one moment Kevin looked genuinely shocked. “Really not here, as in not there at home making you something nice for your tea?”
“Really, really, really.”
“Oh. I never realised things were that bad.”
“Neither did I.”
“Nothing gave it away then? No big rows, scenes, that type of thing?”
“No. We never really row. Well, not so you’d notice.”
“That’s odd. Shera and I are at each other’s throats all the time and we’re, like, together.”
“Thanks for reminding me.”
“Sorry. I can’t understand why you didn't give me a bell and tell me?"
"I guess I felt too odd really. It's such a shock and I didn't know if you'd want to like help".
"Course I would. You know me, Ad? Would do anything for me mate." After a moment to consider what immediate help he could be of, Kevin continued while picking at the nacho debris in front of us.
"So, did she say why?"
"No not really. Wanted some space, a feeling of being calmed. No sorry, becalmed. Oh yeah, and I couldn't remember the colour of her eyes."
"That's fucking typical", said Kevin before launching into a body-shaking bout of guffawing. "Typical".
"Why typical?"
"Aw man, I bet she thinks she's been telling you all this for months and months. All those subtle little hints she logs in her Reasons to Leave the Bad Man notebook. He doesn't notice me, we don't make lurrve as much, when was the last time he took me out for dinner. Et fucking cetera. You don't know it's happening, but it's happening."
"Isn't that a bit unfair? Like on women?"
"Is it hell! It's men who aren't getting it fair. Women are carrying out experiments in the field every day and the poor subjects only find out when the experiment fails. You know that Attention Deficit Disorder right? In kids?”
“Yeah, I know,” I said ruefully, remembering Jane’s comment.
“Well this is just the adult male version."
"So, the eyes question was my $64,000 question?"
"Yeah and you fucked it up. Bloody hell Ad, even I know Jane's got blue eyes".
"Actually, they’re brown. I checked. But that to one side, I just didn't have time to think; I was all flummoxed."
"That's a nice word Adam, I must use it next time I fuck up. Anyhow, don't worry too much, mate, we'll see about going to a club next weekend, maybe see what'll happen. Don't lose your edge, keep practising. It's like sport - train, practice, then go out on a Saturday and do the biz, put all you've learnt into it."
"That sounds a lot easier than I'm feeling", I replied with a nervous giggle.
"No worries. When my old woman, Lisa, dumped me I was well knackered, but I went out and picked up Shera about a week later in a bar over in Westwood. She sorted me out soon enough and I'm quite happy, despite what I just said about her. You've, well, just got to get in there and compete, don't wait around dreaming about what's gone."
"But it's only been a matter of hours! Surely, what about some time for mourning?"
"Yes, I admit, you could have some time for grieving, but you’ve got to put it into perspective.”
“How?”
“Well,” said Kevin slowly and nodding sagaciously like a grandmaster in bullshit, “let me tell you the parable of the marble. Yes,” I was obviously giving him a look of utter disbelief, “mock though you may. Consider the marble. As a child I, like many a young boy, had a magnificent collection. I knew the value of each – the big ones (tankers we called them) and the little ones – their prices, their swap value, everything. I can remember thinking I’d never let go of my tankers with the little silver inside them and when I played one of my little mates and lost one I’d be devastated. But you know, one day I got up in the morning to go to school and I thought to me-self: Kevin, what the fuck do you care about marbles? So I took ‘em all to school that day and swapped ‘em for a copy of Razzle and ten Embassy that me mate Mickey Ramsbotham nicked off his older brother.”
“And the point is?”
“The point my friend is this: one day, the value you place on something, or someone, will diminish of its own accord. One day, you will feel a whole lot better. If you can stay focused on that now, it’ll make getting to that day a hell of a lot easier. As long as you don’t lose all your marbles beforehand, course.”
Comparing my beloved to a bag of marbles wasn’t quite what I had in mind by way of mourning. I said this to Kevin in plain terms. He was unmoved.
“Ah man, it's not like someone's really died," he said dismissively.
"It feels that way,” I replied. “I was even thinking I need to start writing this all down, y’know? Just to make sense of it."
Kevin visibly recoiled. “Jesus! Do you really think that’s a good idea?”
“Why not? It’s just another way of helping me make sense of what’s going on. I thought I should write down what I’m feeling that’s all. What going through my mind is all about this terrible event.”
"Yeah, well, alright. I know you're the sensitive type, so I guess it’s up to you. Personally, I find writing things down confusing.”
“Writing things down is supposed to be cathartic that’s all.”
“Yeah, but who’d want to read it? It sounds a bit dull if you ask me. Now, if you wanna write something that people will queue to buy mate, my life and loves will do the trick - much more marketable. I could tell you some stories about my conquests, make the hair in your arse crack stand on end.”
“Er thanks, but I’m not sure I want the job of Boswelling your Johnson.” Kevin looked blank.
“Sorry mate, you’ve lost me there. You’re not going to start talking that bookshit now, are you?”
“No, no. Boswell, you know…” my voice trailed off. He was shaking his head now, like an adult disapproving of a child’s idea of fun.
“It’s not exactly a knob gag is it? Who would think that funny – some of your other poncey mates?”
“Some might say it was amusing.”
“I feel sorry for you sometimes pal, caught up in all those books and theories. You can’t appreciate what’s important when you’ve got all that crap floating around inside your brain.”
“I don’t know,” I replied, “I should really be getting home.”
“For what?” he exclaimed in a faux-American accent. “Ain’t nobody home, man.”
“I know that,” I said pointedly, “but I’ve got to get the bus. It’s not exactly the best time of day to take public transport, is it?” I neglected to mention to Kevin that I had never taken a bus in this city after the hours of darkness, but he picked up my anxiety.
“Sure, Ad. I understand. As it’s only a few blocks away, you can kip at mine. We’ll have to get a cab or university transport.” Despite the proximity of his shared house, it was not worth the risk of walking and Kevin’s bravado knew some limits. Two years before a good friend of his, a linebacker on the University team six weeks from being drafted, took a bullet through the thigh no more than a hundred yards from Kevin’s house. He only went out to get some beers at the convenience store at the end of the street, but he never played again. Kevin had not forgotten.
“Hey Ad, have you heard my great idea about getting rid of these scumbags off the street? Compulsory wearing of Dr No gloves for convicted criminals. Can’t drive, can’t shoot, can’t knife, can’t shoplift. Simple, eh?”
“What about karate-chopping?”
“Well, yes, but what would be the point if they can’t steal anything?”
“Fun? And what about eating, drinking, going to the toilet?”
“They can take them off in their own homes, for fifteen minutes every hour. You don’t like my idea do you? Fuckin’ liberal.”
“Well, you know all about the criminal mind, having been one.”
“Yeah, and I’m not ashamed of it. Best thing that ever happened to me, playing for the King’s team. Now about that beer…”
Kevin went off to the bar, leaving me reflecting on how to write the history of his love life. I vaguely recollected the Lisa/Shera interregnum, marked as it was by such brevity. I made it three days, partnerless, in total. Not that partner really describes it. Nor even significant other. Maybe “main other” defines the concurrently shared status of Lisa and Shera. I also clearly remember why Lisa left. Coming home from the day job to find your fiancée in bed with two of the college gymnastic team and one of them doing the splits over a specific part of your intended's anatomy, well, it was understandable. Not that Kevin saw Lisa that way (“a woman so vindictive she would marry you just for the pleasure of divorcing you later”). In Kevin's moral universe, Lisa drove him to it: none of the womanising was his fault. There were so many flaws in this argument and so little chance of persuading Kevin to examine them that I never bothered.
---------------
I didn’t make it home that night, preferring to crash on Kevin’s sofa and avoiding both the long journey home and my solitary cell. The beer and the unfamiliar surroundings, plus my unhappy state made for an awful night. I couldn’t sleep that night for thinking that somewhere, somehow, in the greater Los Angeles area someone was putting the finishing touches to a script based on a self-help book. Bulimia (Chuck Away Chucking Up); Anorexia plus Sex Aversion (From Stick Thin to Thick Sin: A Thirty Day Plan); Food Addiction and Sex (Put a little less Sugar, Fries and Burgers in my Bowl) or a title for those poor people continually marrying and then divorcing (How to Love Yourself and Avoid Being a Whiter Shade of Stale?) The Stale book I could identify with. There seemed to be no time when I wasn’t wide-awake, staring at the ceiling. Or rolling over in the desperate hope that lying on my side would give me what I wanted. Sleep. I wanted to be drenched in sleep, overpowered with non-consciousness. I wanted to sleep my life away and wake up someone new.
In spite of this, I must have finally got off as I woke from a reverie just after 6 am. It was a dream of a huge row with Jane. A big, final, catastrophic set piece. A first-thing-in-the-morning humdinger of a row. Jane starts it crisply, speaking from an upright position while I stay burrowed beneath the duvet, frantically trying to pretend I was still asleep.
“Adam, I don't know how to say this to you. Really. I just have to say this to you...I just feel crushed by you".
I remain still and silent for perhaps thirty seconds or so. In this time, my mind raced my frantic pulse as it searches for answer, rationale, excuse and reassurance simultaneously. After another quizzical “Adam”, I realised, reluctantly, that I needed to reply.
"But isn't that just the way being together is?" I ask innocently, attempting to prise my sleep-encrusted eyes wide open.
I cannot be sure if the words of the look of sheer bemusement did it, or the simultaneity. Whatever the root cause, Jane’s reaction goes off the scale.
"What? What did you say? Like hell this is how it should be! Like fucking, bloody, fucking - shit. What absolute bullshit. How can this be it? And don’t go looking at me like that you bastard. Like you don’t know - you’re a bloody, bloody - oh, I don’t know! Yes, I do. Of course. You’re a dead weight. Crushing me. My chest cannot take any more of your deadness. It’s, oh, shit, I don’t know. It’s just... just everything!”
The barrage halts abruptly and Jane calms momentarily. I listen in a cowed silence. I haven't the anger to be able to return fire, so Jane takes up again.
“Adam, please listen. I don't know what it is, just a little time really. It's that I just need to be away from you. That’s all. Time and space, you know, to give me some thinking time. There. I said it. I need to get away for awhile. "
Jane runs her fingers back through her bobbed hair a couple of times.
“This relationship is, I don’t know, it’s sort of …lacking, y’know?” Shrug. “I guess it's...becalmed. Yes, I guess that’s why. There's no momentum, nothing keeping us moving along.”
I’m not sure there is any adequate response to this and I’m afraid now that even a minimal comment might re-ignite Jane’s ire.
"Oh, I see”, I play for time with a phatic statement, looking for words while trying to take in the seriousness, or not, of the situation.
“So, was that what last night was about – like a good-bye?"
"Take that any way you want” she responds breezily. “Sex isn’t really the issue here, although it’s somewhat symptomatic. I just cannot continue this, this just being with you. It doesn’t seem to be enough at the moment, not for me anyway".
I now certainly lack a grip on this situation. I have no purchase on the cool hatred Jane seems to be directing against me. She sits there sullenly. I search some more. Finally, and after some time, the big one rolls in. I can’t stop myself. I ask.
"Do you really want it to end then Jane, after all we've been through?"
This doesn't create the outburst I expect, but a firmer, more absolute resignation.
"Well, we'll see. I need to be alone for awhile. I don't know it could be we’re on a bit of a plateau - things don't normally end on plateaux, you know".
"Not according to critical theory anyhow," I annotate with what passes for academic humour, but said with a hint of bitters. "Sounds like you may be letting doubt back in". This produces no answer. Again, after a pause, I speak.
"So, you're making a new beginning?"
"I have nothing to add, Adam. Nothing. I'm just too tired, too tired to think straight. Perhaps we’d just better get up now and go to work.”
I get up from Kevin’s couch and stand still for what seems like an age, slumped forward with my head on my chest and my arms wrapped tightly around my chest. That wasn’t a dream I just had. That was what happened.
----------------
I couldn’t face public transport so I called a cab. Home in Echo Park I chucked the guy a ten and poured myself out onto the sidewalk without a care for change. Slathering on rubber legs, I wobbled up the path and, after pausing for an eternity to put key in lock, I fell through the front door. The fall might not have happened if not for the beloved Arnold, mooching unhappily in the hallway. A cat-trip and then a cat scream, I landed face first in a pile of shit the size, consistency and, I must say, colour of several tins of refried beans. The little fucker obviously realised that the normality in his home disappeared with Jane and that it was now open season on dumping wherever he pleased.
It was clear too that he’d been pining ever since his mistress left. In some ways it was quite impressive how domestic animals can sense the antipathy of a human, namely myself, and accommodate our bent towards cruelty. Every time I got up off the sofa, Arnold scurried off in the opposite direction, as if he expected a kick up its rear or a flying slipper attack from me.
This time, he skidded across the parquet floor of the hallway, cornered tightly into the kitchen, disappearing with a delayed thwack as he shot out his cat flap. By now, he spasms in my hands were shaping into fists and a hungover rage throttled through my throat.
"I am going to kill you!" I growled before rolling over onto a clean patch to expire.
When I awoke from my hallway slumbers it was nearly two in the afternoon. I ached like I’d been in a hit and run and my mouth tasted like Arnold mewling one of his furballs down my throat during the night. Coughing up this alien entity, I managed to catch it between my teeth while scrambling to the bathroom to expel it unceremoniously down the pan. It lay there, floating on the yellow sea of piss I'd left overnight to stew a globule of hairy pea-green ectoplasm. Flushing, I grabbed my toothbrush and paste and vigorously sought to de-scale my teeth, gums and - gagging - throat.

That’s when I saw it.

Having gotten absolutely shit-faced, I’d woken to find a shitty facemask caked into my pasty mush. Had it come this? Waking up in a pile of animal crap?
“Oh Jane”, I wailed beseechingly but with a tang of self-pity, “please help me!”
As there was no reply to this cry, there was no choice but to start scrubbing the excrement off my own face - blindly as I couldn’t bear to look into the bathroom mirror at my bloodshot and desperate eyes.
Death to all cats, I thought, especially fat, incontinent ones. What the hell did he have to do with me anyhow? In Jane’s presence, I suppose I was vaguely considerate of the thing, feeding him in an ostentatious “look at me I care, really I do” kind of way. Occasionally I would give him a stroke and I was capable of letting him sleep on the bed (although Arnold mostly took this as a sign of weakness and spent most of those evenings sleeping on me). But, with Jane not around, I really didn’t give him much thought. Not unless he’d shat someone where prominent (like last night) or when he’d got even bolder in bed and I was forced to swat him off of my face. One night, Arnold retaliated and lashed out with his claws, causing me to chase him round the bed, through the kitchen and out into the night. Jane thought that was justified but an aberration, but Arnold never trusted me again. Our relationship frosted over. In the short time we’d been alone together it had not warmed up. Okay, I was remembering to feed him when I was neglecting myself, but he niggled guilt in me with his general loitering around, that doleful look of supplication with the knowledge that he hated me really as I could barely tolerate him.
So, maybe he had a valid point. Why couldn't I love? This was another Jane criticism, lack of real love. I never could figure, though, how I could prove the intensity of my love for Jane by loving her cat. It seemed something that would always separate us, not affection for animals per se, but Jane’s ingrained feeling of responsibility and care for them since she was given a kitty for her ninth birthday, as hers and hers alone. Then me, with the occasional non-swimming goldfish and rabbit escapologists for there was no feeling whatsoever. They came. They went. I got over it each time.
Perhaps it wasn’t the cat's fault after all.