“Sorry?” she seemed somewhat stunned at the sudden in my tone of voice.
I calmed down a little, “So why did you disappear on me for six weeks.” I looked at her, “As far as I knew you’d just dumped me and hadn’t the decency to tell me to my face.”
“Oh,” she said. “Is that why you didn’t want to talk to me in the club.”
“No,” I got angry at the suggestion that it was ever me that didn’t want to talk, when it was her that refused to tell me anything of her feelings, either positive or negative, for me. “That’s why I wanted to talk to you somewhere that we could have a private,” I gestured at the crowd around us. “Or at least semi- private conversation, away from all my friends and acquaintances at the Club.”
“Oh,” she repeated.
I waited for to say something more, but after a few moments she looked down and took a sip from her drink.
“Is that all you have to say?” I asked.
“Well I don’t know what you want me to say,” she replied.
“What I want you to say?” I didn’t want her to say anything. I wanted her to talk to me. I wanted to understand her. I wanted to know what she felt for me. I wanted her to understand what I felt for her. This wasn’t just some game with set phases we were supposed to say to each other. This was supposed to be a conversation. Preferably an open and honest conversation were we’d both learn something of and develop an better appreciation of each other.
I took a deep breath and tried a different tack.
“What’s the most important think in your life at the moment?” I asked.
She paused for a moment, then smiled and said, “Improving my ranking at my Tennis club.”
“And after that,” I didn’t smile back.
“Well,” she shrugged. “Going out with my friends. And having a good time at the weekends.”
“And where do I fit in?” I looked down.
“I don’t understand,” she said.
“As far as I can see,” I explained. “I’m ranked lowest on you list of priorities. You’d rather play tennis or got to the pictures with your friends, or even stay at home and read a book ! before you’d want to socialise with me.” I didn’t mention work, or her classes because I could understand her needing to do them. “And then you only want to see me at weekends and if you’re going away, to where ever it is that you disappear to, you have no time to see me at all !” I snorted, “Not even enough time to phone me and tell me that you’re going away. You’re not even bothered enough to pretend that you’ll miss me.”
“Oh,” she looked down into her glass. Then swallowed half her drink. “I see.”
“Do you?” I asked. “That’s good, because I don’t. I don’t understand what I mean to you. And no matter how often I tell you that I love you, you never tell me how you feel.” I looked down again, “You never tell me anything.”
We were silent for a moment. I sipped my drink and looked up at her. But she was still staring into her Guinness.
I tried to explain again. “I don’t expect to be the centre of your universe,” though I’d have loved it if I had been. “But I do expect to be up there somewhere.” I shrugged, half attempting to make a joke, “I mean, who gets to walk home alone all the time and who gets all the orgasms?”
She looked at me and raised her almost empty glass, “If that were fuller you’d have it all over you.”
“Why?” I asked. “You do !”
She looked away.
“I’ll buy you another if you want to throw it over me,” I said.
There was silence for a moment. Then she laughed softly. “You know,” she looked back to me. “I really think you mean that.”
“Of course I do,” I spread my hands. “Why would I say it if I didn’t.”
She shook her head and smiled. “I’m not sure I’m ready for this,” she sipped her drink. “I’m not sure I want it.”
I didn’t know how to reply, so I sipped my drink.
“This is just going a bit too fast for me,” she said. “I just need time to adjust to it.” She looked at me again, “Just give me time to adjust to it. O.K.?”
“O.K.,” I replied and looked down, not knowing quite what she’d meant.
We finished our drinks in silence.
Outside the pub I turned to walk home with her. But she put a hand to my shoulder and stopped me.
“I don’t think you should come back with me tonight,” she looked down.
“O.K.,” I looked down as well. Once again I didn’t have any choice.
She put her hand to the side of my head and stretched up to kiss my cheek. “Goodnight,” she whispered.
I reached out to put my arms around and hug her and kiss her a proper goodnight, but she’d stepped away before I could react.
“I’ll phone you,” she turned and walked away.
I watched her go, knowing that she’d often said she’d phone me and that she never had, thinking that she was walking away from me for ever, hoping against hope that she really would, this time, just this once, actually phone me.
But she had told me that she would phone me ! How could I doubt her? Why would she tell me she would if she had no intention of doing so? Forget that she done so in the past. She’d told me that she’d phone me and I believed her. She would phone. I would have faith in her above all else.
So that night, as I walked home along, I occupied my mind by trying to figure out what my feelings for her were. By that time I’d given up any attempt at trying to work out what she was feeling.
Was I really in love with her? I thought about her all the time. It ached when she wasn’t there. I wanted to hold her, to touch her, even just to be in the same room as her. I wanted most of all to talk to her. I wanted to tell her what I felt. Or rather I wanted her to believe me when I told her that I loved her. I knew, deep down inside me, that she couldn’t accept that I did.
Every time I met her I couldn’t stop myself from touching her. Did she think I was some sort of pervert feeling her up all the time? Did she think that all I wanted was to have sex with her? Did she not know that every time I got her alone I just couldn’t help myself?
And yet I never lost total control. I never got carried away so much that I ended up raping her. I never did anything she didn’t want. And she wasn’t just passively lying there letting my do it to her either. She took an active interest in me making love to her. She’d just draw the line at doing anything that’d make me come.
Was it some sort of test? Was she trying to see if I was just some low-life that simply wanted to ‘have my evil way’ with her and then dump her. I can sympathise with her not wanting to be just another conquest on my hit list. The only thing is, I was beginning to feel that I was one on her’s.
But was I “having my evil way” with her even if I didn’t get to come? I think now that she wouldn’t let me come because she though that I wasn’t. As long as I didn’t come, she wasn’t conquered. But I never wanted to conquer her. I wanted to share myself with her. I mean making her come was the highlight of … well my whole life at that time. I lived and breathed just to make love to her. Oh it mattered that I didn’t come. It mattered a hell of a lot ! But as long as I was making love to her I could live in the hope that one day she’d respond. And wouldn’t it be a glorious day when she shared herself with me, when she finally admitted her love for me !
It was only much later that it occurred to me that she didn’t know how to respond to me. Yet even at the time I saw that she didn’t seem to know how to make love to me. I don’t just mean the physical acts, but the whole emotional attitude she needed to take to love some one. But for some reason I never connected this to the fact that she wouldn’t let me come. I’d always assumed that she didn’t make love to me because she wouldn’t accept the fact that she loved me. Of course I never directly asked her if she did love me, because she might have said no. And then where would I have been.
So once again I’d tried to get closer to her and had ended up further away. Maybe I was just feeling sorry myself, because I wouldn’t be making love to her. Or maybe it was because I couldn’t pretend that she loved me when she left me standing alone in the cold street. Either way I didn’t have the momentary illusion of being close to her. Those few precious moments after I’d made love to her that I could pretend that she did really love me. A feeling of rejection hummed in the back of my head.
But now, looking back at our relationship, I realised that night was one of the few times that we really communicated. The closest we’d ever come to each other. I’d finally told her that I was serious about her. She’d told me that she didn’t want to be rushed into anything. The thought that maybe we would end up sharing our lives with each other was out in the open.
But all the frustration and bitterness that was building up inside me had to go some where. A combination of writers block, being unemployed for over a year, having no money, having to live with my parents, a total lack of success in any aspect of my life, was surrounding me in a fog of depression and uncertainty. All my insecurities were being aggravated.
I needed somebody who’d give me a steadying hand through to the other side. But Alexandra had her own insecurities to deal with. I didn’t know what they were. But I could see that they were there. Would the stresses we were both suffering under forge us together or tear us apart?
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