Actual 'Don't'.
Funny - I sat down to write something completely different. That's why the last post was called 'Don't'.

I was thinking that now I am not so depressed and slug-like and have recovered a little of whatever I was before, perhaps I would be happier with a lover. All these trillions of years when I was determined that any kind of love affair would be disastrously horrible for the children because I would be ratty and distracted and not put them first ... quite true I'm sure. But now .. no longer the case ... because they are not here.

I was 'thinking' this. One huge drawback ... I haven't fancied a real person since I can remember. Or .. I haven't fancied a real person who isn't twenty years younger than me since I can remember. One of my oldest friends, a man, has dealt with this by starting late in life to make a hobby of sleeping with pr0st1tutes. He is/was so handsome and charming but with massive lack of self-esteem and wasted his entire youth lurking about feeling unworthy. Now, bizzarely self-trapped in a second marriage of mutual despisingness, he is sleeping with more beautiful young girls than he could ever have imagined. (And I'm sure they are thrilled to have a client that they would have pursued in real life).

I am obviously not in this position in any way. I was just saying. And I like to have an 'affair' with endless chatting and being stupid as well as 'other things'. So really it is not likely to happen. But the fact that I was even considering it was a real step ... in some direction ...

So .. because of these thoughts ... while I was looking at 291* site to try to find the address of one of my older daughter's friends as a surprise for her. (I will digress quickly .. she just saw a magazine article about his having a main part in a Tv series and hadn't been in touch for years but he had fancied her endlessly when they were at school and then drifted apart and couldn't find his address now). So ... having not been successful as he has a rather ordinary name and wasted nearly an hour looking back through the net .. I used up my credits on the site checking on old boyfriends. And at the very end of all interest I typed in a man I had a passionate affair with when I was 22 and in a fairly low-level job on a national newspaper which was meant to be my first step up to being a serious journalist. He was a lot older than me and we used to 'joke' that if he had been a naughty schoolboy he could have been my father. And .. he was my boss. And .. he had a wife and four children. I cannot lie. BUT ... he slept around like a maniac and I was probably the hundredth person since he got married. And but ... we were really in love and he wanted to marry me and I had to talk him out of leaving her constantly not only because I was actually engaged to someone else myself at the time but because he had children and I did have some kind of conscience.

It was all really romantic in a strange 50's black and white film kind of way. All the newspapers were still in vast ancient buildings in Fl33t Street with the printing done in the basements and the whole street filled with journalists all the time. And in the evenings all the local bars full of writers talking about their stories and contacting and drinking ... it was so cool and exciting. Now all the papers have dispersed all over London and everything is gone. He used to stand in the street staring up the hill towards St. P@ul's Cathedral and say 'My god, I love this place'. It was SO cool.

And ended craply of course because he was rather cowardly and unreliable and an alcoholic like most journalists then.

We parted on very spiteful terms, on my part at least, and I didn't see him for years. Then .. my mother died very young and I was so shattered and didn't really go out for some months. One night an old friend made me go to the theatre and we stopped afterwards at a S0h0 pub which was once my favourite and I was sitting on a long bench feeling trembly and out of it and the place was packed full. I was squashed by a man sitting down next to me .. and it was him. He was with some very young girl but still started to flirt and try to get through to me and I just said 'I can't speak .. my mother died .. '. And he looked so depressing and 'tawdry' is the only right word.

So ... I looked up his address. The thing was that he had a complex about being uneducated. He had been a brilliant natural sportsman and had got endless sports scholarships but had especially not really read anything. So while we were together I did a teeny 'School of 0ne' scenario and ran him through all my favourite books. It was something that drove his wife mad as he sat around every weekend riveted by the world's classics. He really loved it. We would spend hours drinking away after work in intense conversation about literature and all the hard old journalists would come over certain we were talking about sex and then be amazed. He had the weirdest upbringing because his parents were incredibly poor and had five children with him the oldest. He was very, very good looking and when he was twelve this rich gay man took a fancy to him, also because he was so good at sport, and ... his parents SOLD him to him. How unbelievable is that? BUT ... the man was totally saint-like and although in love with him, never touched him or even made the slightest advance and just paid for his expensive school and sports training and was supportive and amazing. BUT .. as soon as he was old enough to leave he shot away as he found the whole situation unbearable and he never forgave his parents or the man. He told me this story one night while we were, as usual, drinking heavily in a Fl33t Street bar and I felt so sad for the man that I spent hours breaking down his resistance and saying that he MUST ring him and tell him how grateful he was and apologise for leaving in such a cruel way. And finally he wove off to the pay phone and RANG after many years. And came back and cried because the man had died a month before.

So I looked up his address, in fact thinking that he was probably dead from drink, himself, by now. Only one address came up in the whole country but it is him because his name is quite unusual and it had the same middle initial. It came up on the electoral role, with just him and no one else living in his house. Although it was not a house .. it was a caravan, on a farm, in the countryside, not far from the town where he used to live comfortably and expensively.

From boredom and a memory of disappointment and vague annoyance I sprang, instantly, into a stupid motherly 'Oh, No!', mode. 'Poor thing, alcoholic and alone, how sad ... perhaps I should write ... he would be so pleased .. how could he have come to this .. where are his four children ... '.

And this is where the title 'DON'T' came from.
- posted by Iris @ 10/15/2005 01:40:00 AM comment