Just a Girl

Just a Girl

Saturday, July 05, 2003
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You were well gone last Saturday night, asking me what
I thought of Larkin at three in the morning. Jesus,
what do I care about that ugly four eyed dead
librarian? Calm down. Calm down. Just a girl see and I
don't like living in the land of liquor and so I don't.
And that's how we come to be in love, still after ten
years, yet apart, and at this impasse in our lives.

Love is a many splintered thing; love is a special
thing. Love love love. Love is all I need. And for you,
insert the word drink. Drink drink drink is all you need.
All the world loves a lover. All the drunks love a
drink. Drink to me with thine eyes. Have one yourself.
One for the road. How about a quick one? Fancy a bevy
or two. One for the road. Fancy a totty ? Hey, how
about a couple of drinks.

I won't blow your cover but the only time I've ever seen you move your
butt is when you're signing on. Like a bat out of hell. Swift, dark
movements; quick sleight of hand and there you are, standing with your
triangle of mirror, the residue of a wooden hand mirror smashed into
oblivion during one of your crazy bouts.

But look, this is a damn bad press for a veritable
shining star. The universe is yours and mine if I can
only be foolish enough to share it with an old soak.
You don't believe that this is what you are. But it's
true. I am just a girl and you are just a big drinker.

Funny how time slips away. Not funny at all. We are
diametrically opposed on every matter. Opposites
attract, one of the first laws of science. I remember
physics , and I wish to God I'd paid a bit
more attention as it would be great to polarise you
with a scientific nugget or two. But you're just a girl
is all you can say, from the top of your glass of cheap
pig swill lager. And I - you declare, pathetically it
has to be said, I am just a poet. Are you now ?
Marlowe, Christopher is one of your heroes; Keats, dead
at 23, another favourite. It certainly plucked my
emotional strings when you first penned a poem to me.
But there's nothing poetic about your words these days.
Not now I have removed the bushell and can see your dim
light flickering , a decade after first you touched my
lips with yours. Oh it was a sweet moment, and as
Shakespeare, another of your deities, would oft proclaim,
ay there's the rub. I am lost you see in this sea of softness and
sensuality amidst the promise of love. But yet in the daylight and in
the long light night, I am alone. Whilst you choose liquor over me and
us again and again and aagin. Ten years. A disgrace. A waste. The
Wastelands.

Not funny I said, not funny at all. That you would
choose the ooze of the booze over my devotion to you;
lager and laughter over love and laughter. But hey, I
am just a girl. And you have shown me the dark edge of
time in your mad moments and I do not like it.

Lots of reasons why you are half mad in the head and
they would make great copy for some psychiatrist's
thesis, but I am trying to have a life somewhere in the
middle of your swimming pool of drink. Bukowski. That's
it. I remember now just how much you idolised that
drunk tosspot. My birthday present "Post Office" was
the first big shock you gave me.. there have been many
many others. But I love you.

Post Office: The tale of a drunk who took a job with
the US post office to fund his drinking. Repulsive and
disturbing and you gave that to me to teach me a couple
of lessons about life and how bad it is; really is.
Thanks for that tender moment. It's not forgotten.

Saturday July 5 2003
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Nothin's easy.Just read your text message- and heard
your dulcett tones on my answer machine. You need help,
no doubt about it. Strange how I was ever attracted to
you in the first place. But I was and am. But you know,
has it ever occurred to you, that we girls need hunter
gatherers not beastie boys who lash liquor and sleep
the day away, whilst their girlfriends slog the day
away in some poxy job.

Ten years later and here I am with a calendar of love
and a kaleidoscope of memories that make me want to
weep. You are not alone, there are plenty of other guys
in line for the boot any day now, and like you, they
are too dumb to listen and look when all the evidence
is right there before their pokey little bloodshot eyes.

July 9 2003. Wednesday
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Funny how time slips away. Yesterday for example was a
humid haze. July can be like that and yet it can be
scorching. I can think of a number of people and
imagine them dressing for the day's climatic changes.
Shorts ? No, best not for the office, not with that guy
down the corridor flaunting his debonair derriere. I'll
stick to the conservative mode. God I would hate to
rock the boat, it's bound to capsize.

I am going to mooch today, unusually, in my garden. I
have found a passion flower ensnared behind a more
aggressive and luscious plant. I've gently unwound it
and now I'm trailing it along the window ledge; I've
fixed it with a large gold hook into the wall; love
climbing high and pining for the sky, with it's
delicate twists and turns, and one small tight bud.
Water and light and love this plant needs. Water light
and love.

Your cadaverous love. Yesterday you tried to ensnare me
with threats to leave me, forever, and with
declarations of your recovery from the illness of
loving me. Pathetic and I said so, though you know your
words hurt.

If a man of forty does not know how to get
out of bed in the morning, go to work, earn his money,
hold his head up, pay his way in the world, to have
choices,by now, there can be no hope for him, for you
or for me. Only the life you currently choose, living
on a comfortably numb plateau and moaning your head off
day and night, night and day. Week in and week out.
Months and seasons turning into years.

Thank God I hit the bottle to save me from you: That
was your caustic tongue's offering last night. Bastard.
I am tired and numb. You say I am depriving myself of
love because you know how much I want to lie with you
next to me. I need to feel your breath on my neck; I
need, you say, to feel your lips softly against my
skin; I say you need to get a job and then there might
be time and space for love. You say I am weak and deny
you your sensitivities and your poetic licence to
thrill. I say if I was waiting for you to put one crumb
in my mouth I would have starved by now. You laugh. I
cry.

The sun is in the morning sky, I am cutting my grass
today and watering the sunflowers and weeding and
threading the curls of passion flower into green mesh.
I know you are lying hung over in your single bed in
your father's house. On the floor, the debris of the
night before: The phone line trailing into the
computer; the nubs of at least twenty or thirty
cigarettes fill the air. The curtains roughly pulled
together, and you nestled into your pillow. The artist
at his best. Lazy Leonardo Da Vinci. You talk of
science, cells and particles. You dream of me. Your
father who grips you snores the morning away. Old, and
weary, but tenacious to the end. He has had the last
laugh though you claim to despise living with him. Lazy
Leo and Laugh along Larry. What a couple you make and
two is company and three is definitely a crowd. And you
expect me to stay there in that catacomb with you two.

But I am going to buy a wooden seat that swings in the
wind and sit on it in my garden. I will rock backwards
and forwards, feeling the wind on my cheeks and in my
hair. I will sit and read my book and sip my wine and
eat my olives and look at photographs of the children
when they were small and innocent before all the
disasters happened, before I met you. Before this
decade of pain began.

July 10 2003
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Slip back in your mind to this day ten years ago. Another time, era,
space, universe. Another world. I was sitting quietly having a meal. I
felt a viper's grip around my neck, yet no-one was there. That was the
beginning of a Summer of torture. Not from you, but from my
husband.

You were, then, not now of course, a friend. A close, intuitive and
soulful man, in a world filled with disappointment and hurt. How things
change.

But then, ten whole years ago the pea was stil safe in the pod, the key
to lock me in with you, to you, as yet unturned. It's strange how a
husband believes you to be his. My love is like a cabbage, divided into
two, the leaves I give to others. My heart I give to you. And I did.
But not for months and months and months.

The heat. It's everywhere. I can't breathe, then or now. I've lost the
black diamond button off my best coat; one by one the threads worked
loose and the sparkling orb broke free. The hedgehog was dead when I
came back from the park with Daddy. All the prickles were covered in
blood and its head rolled away into the middle of the road.

Together we will sleep and I will give you me. Dreams will hang soft
with droplets of love. My kisses or yours, I forget now, but all my
life I have waited for you. I am just a girl. But it worries me that
you can't swim, and I need to know why.

The first swimming costume I ever had, was given to me by a tall girl
aged twelve, when I was only seven. It was black. It was too big and we
had to loop up the straps with a silver nappy pin belonging to her
mother. They didn't have any babies. That costume was fine and I wore
it with pride and it allowed me to enter the chlorine water. I was
fearless. I am more afraid now. Now that I know the horror of the
risks, I am terrified.

You are the only one who knows this about me and yet. My world would be
a sham if you didn't, and would be featherweight, light and pointless.
You understand this. I have been trembling inside and waiting for you
and your compassion which is always there, even when I am whacking you
for being drunk.

Ask my heart. In this parallel world, we will see my heart's veins
puffed and swollen with tension, pain and horror. Horror. Tomorrow
morning the dust will settle and rise again, and my pain will still run
through the a to z of my day.