Thursday, April 28, 2005

Love Taught Me to Cry

You may remember me mentioning Beano before. As I had a dream about him last night, I feel now would be an appropriate time to tell all.

Oh, and just to clear it up before we start, having read this back, I concur that Beano bears some similarities to a certain person which some readers of this blog know rather well. Well it isn’t him. Capisch? There are exactly three people who have ever known about this relationship (for reasons that will become clear…). And that’s me, Beano, and Jellie. So ditch the preconceptions please…

I met Beano shortly after I met the first man I ever considered falling in love with, about a year before I met Him. Jesse was a foreign journalist. I met him through friends when he was in London, and thus began a long-distance relationship, mostly conducted by email, text, and long phone conversations. He was a nice man. A few years years my senior, reliable, decent and honest. I liked him. Under different circumstances it probably could have worked for a few years. He would never have been Him, but we would have been good together for a while. Despite what happened, I remain convinced of this.

I met Beano about a month after Jesse and I started our relationship. Again, he was a friend of a friend, and through several degrees of separation, also knew Jesse slightly. I had a very incestuous group of friends at that time. Beano was/is a drummer in a moderately well known band. He was/is stunning to look at. The first time I set eyes on him, I felt as though my heart liquefied inside my chest. He looked at me as though he wanted to devour me. It was a moment that could have led to sex, right there in the middle of a crowded pub. But instead, during a five hour conversation, we became friends.

Seriously, just friends. Best friends. We used to go out and get lashed on straight vodka then lay around in his bed next day, tangled in each others limbs, stroking each others aching heads, persuading each other to get up and make coffee (he is still almost the only person who knows that much as I drink my coffee black, I actually like it best milky with three sugars. I can’t drink it that way any more, it makes me think of him.)

We were twins, we decided. Our opinions, our thoughts, our personalities matched. We were both clever, lazy, hedonistic, and a touch amoral. Don’t get me wrong, we didn’t go around torturing children or animals, but we did treat the opposite sex badly. He preferred the ‘honesty’ of one night stands. I was busy pretending to myself, and most of all to poor Jesse, that my infatuation with Beano was just friendship, nonthreatening and cosy.

And then one day we kissed.

And after that, life became about finding opportunities to fuck, passionate and guilty and desperate. And when it wasn’t about that, it was about trying to find the strength not to fuck. We’d lie on the sofa, limbs entwined, bodies pressed together, drunk with lust and deceit, and telling each other that as long as we didn’t kiss on the mouth, as long as we didn’t go any further, then we were good people. But inevitably, resolve would slip, and we’d find ourselves once more sinking into each other, consuming each other. We were rollercoasting towards some kind of conclusion, and it was never going to be a happy ending.

Jesse ditched me. He never said he knew, but he would have been dumb not to suspect. The final weekend we spent together, at my house, I spent more time furtively texting and ringing Beano than I spent with him. He must have seen, though he didn’t comment on, the bruises on my hips, the discoloured patch on my breast which could only be a fading bitemark. Sex with him felt like cheating on Beano. We only did it once. The relationships had been reversed. Jesse ended things like the perfect gentleman he was. We promised we would stay friends. I haven’t spoken to him since.

Afterwards, Beano and I tried to make a go of it. But our relationship was based on the deceit, and the excitement, of what is forbidden, and our friendship had been swallowed. There was no possibility of backtracking to the stage of faux-innocent twinness. Now that we’d hurt someone, the shine was off our affair. I felt tawdry. He told me he loved me. I told him I couldn’t see him anymore. We screamed, shouted, fucked, and cried. I felt like I was cutting off my siamese twin, without an anaesthetic. I felt I needed to punish myself. A while ago I found the file of his old emails on my laptop. This is the last thing he sent me, when we were breaking up:

“You should be happy with me, but you aren’t. And if I am you, and you are me, then that just means you’re not happy with yourself. Bitter doesn’t suit me, and guilt doesn’t suit you. I can’t see you anymore. After tonight, when I think we should make love on my drum kit one last time. Come on doll, let’s not pretend you’re a good girl, and let’s not pretend I want one. I love you, you impossible bitch.”

That night we made love on his drumkit, said unforgivable things to each other, he slapped me, and then he cried while we clung to each other. An appropriately dramatic and messy ending. I couldn’t have written it better.

Aside from a few drunken and bitter emails and phonecalls, from both sides, it was a number of years before I properly saw him again. I bumped into him, literally, at a tube station. I was on the way to a wedding dress fitting last December. I looked up in annoyance at the stranger who had knocked me into the railing, at the same moment that he looked down at me. We stared at each other for a split second before the crowd pushed us apart. He fought his way back to me. We stepped outside and into the nearest pub. He bought me vodka without asking.
“I’ve missed you.”
“I’m getting married.”
He nodded. “I heard. Congratulations.”
“Thanks.”
We sat in loaded silence. It reminded me of him, us, so much I almost started crying right there.
He spoke without looking at me. “You’re still the most amazing thing I’ve ever known. I still want you.”
I leant forward so that my forehead was resting against his temple. We both breathed. I kissed his cheek and left. I looked back once. He wasn’t looking after me.

Last night, I dreamt about him. I missed feeling so desired and so torn. Believe me when I say that in its own way, it was beautiful. I woke up and turned over and looked at Him. My heart jumped. This is where I belong.

This morning I deleted Beano’s emails, and wiped his number from my phone. It was an old number anyway. I rang it, just to see, and a disembodied voice told me “This is a redundant line.” I think it might have been God

6 Comments:

Blogger Neil said...

What band what band???? McFly?? Let Loose?? What singles did they release?? Clues clues clues....

6:24 pm  
Blogger Mookmoo said...

My lips are sealed! Kis and tell just isn't my style... Not that anyone would be interested!

9:04 am  
Blogger Jellie said...

I don't mean to trivialise things here - but how does one have sex on a drum kit? My boyfriend once stuck a drumstick up my arse and hit me every time my beat went out of time but that's another story all together.

10:18 am  
Blogger Mookmoo said...

One's lover sits on the stool, and one straddles him, and leans back against the drums. It's an art. And if one's lover is really good, he keeps playing at the same time...

10:21 am  
Blogger Neil said...

Stunning debate. Iev ha sex with various drummers from various late 80s/90s bands on several occassions so it will be good to share notes one day.

Ref: the drunk stick arse comment, surely that is too tame, I would have at least expected double penetration.

Ref: How to Have Sex on a Drumkit. Im still having trouble with this. Could we either see diagrams, pictures and have dimensions of said stool, plu details e.g. how reinforced was it, did it rock, and so forth.

The Drum Sex Kama Sutra, another book on the way!

6:42 pm  
Blogger Mookmoo said...

Ref: how to have sex on a drumkit - it takes skill, balance, and thighs of steel. And you have to accept the risk that every now and again you will suddenly find yourself on the floor amidst rolling-away drums!

9:47 am  

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