On the Wrong Side of Open

The door’s left open after his heels depart.

One hour earlier, I’m thinking of trying to find him, but the thin carpet holds no clues. Neither does the bottom of my whiskey bottle.
Two hours earlier, I’m wondering who I am. I’m hoping that he knows.
Three hours earlier, he’s grinning sideways and chatting to a pretty girl in bad clothes while I pretend not to watch from across the smoky room.
Four hours earlier, we’re arriving at the student-flat of my school-friend, 6, Victoria Street, Northampton. I’m pointing towards pumpkin-shaped fairy lights adorning the front window-frame. One of his eyebrows is raised.
Five hours earlier, he’s saying his first hello to my parents. They seem ambivalent. I want to run upstairs.
Six hours earlier, we’re on the train together, hand held in gentle hand.

How can it all go wrong in a quarter of a day?

Well, in that short time, I saw many things.
I saw the countryside zipping by, and Scottish hills slowly flatten into English undulations.
I cringed when I saw my father awkwardly shake hands with the man who sleeps beside his youngest daughter, but chuckled when I saw my mother serve him more than he normally eats in a month on one plate.
I saw old friends, new faces and fake cobwebs.
I saw how I used to live, and felt better about my current life, with all its faults and failings.
Then I saw how wrong I was. I looked inwardly and saw a side of myself I didn’t know existed.

In the final three hours of my day, not only did I see things I didn’t want to see, I also heard things I didn’t want to hear: screaming, loud, repetitive sounds that ancient dial-up modems used to make. It turns out this ‘music’ is called Hardcore, like that durable, demanding material used for laying roads.

The beginning of the end, as they say, was when I spied him in Julia’s kitchen with that girl I instantly hated. Her eyebrows were too perfect. Her tight skirt was too short. Her hair was too soft, too straightened, too styled. I could come up with more, but why bother? She wasn’t me, and that was all that mattered.

I sauntered up to them after a while, gave them my most winning smile, and said, “Hey, how’s it going?”
I didn’t know the protocol on kissing him or not, so I stood there, glancing back and forth as if the pair were playing tennis rather than standing this still.
She giggled like a girl and looked at him. Typical.
He mumbled something akin to an introduction. I wasn’t listening though. In my ears was just bad music, reflected in mood.

The next couple of hours passed quickly. I remember the bottle I was clutching becoming empty. I remember playing with the worn-out edges of a chair, and trying to use the filthy bathroom without placing my fingers on a thing. I remember remembering, and wanting to forget.

This wasn’t how it was meant to be.

At about a quarter to midnight, I knocked over an overflowing ashtray and decided that enough was enough. I was going to look for my boyfriend. He was upstairs, in a pink and green faery-glen of a bedroom, next to the perfect girl from the dirty kitchen.

The facts were as follows:
They were sitting on a bed together.
The bed looked very cosy.
Their torsos were touching, one long, pale arm round her shoulders.

I drank all this in, and my mind stayed level.
In a flash, I flipped through everything he’d said the week before.
Then my mind skipped a beat, as if my feelings were a ventricle, lost inside my brain.

This wasn’t how it was meant to be. Even according to him.

I shouted “WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?” at him.
They were only doing what I’d agreed to, he said.
I said, “I agreed to be ‘open’, not completely fucking pathetic. I asked you to wait ‘til I was ready. This is way too... I mean, are you crazy? Time and place, Eric. Time. And Place.”
He looked at me like I was the crazy one, then said something to that effect.
I paused and realised through my haze that he was right. I’d never voiced such valid concerns. I’d simply looked away after he’d made his suggestions, and agreed.

The truth is, I’d only asked him one thing that night, the week before his heels departed, when he’d first broached the subject of our status-shift, from closed and secure to open and free. As we stared deeply into each others eyes, between claustrophobic sheets, I’d asked him whether he was ever trying to read my mind. He’d laughed at me; said no. Said he was just soaking up my beauty.

But, see, I was always trying to read his.
I guess that’s where we differed.