50 Reasons to Say Goodbye (12 page)

I laugh. I say, “I've never seen, what's it called?” They agree that seeing Clueless will be the first part of my education.

And a new life it turns out to be, an amazing stroke of luck.

My lonely New York outsider life changes overnight to a frantic social whirl of restaurants, dinner-parties with caterers (
no-one
cooks) and guided tours of New York nightlife.

Darren leads, organises, buzzes around. He talks and talks and we laugh appreciatively.

Henry watches, Henry listens, and when Darren is not around Henry tells me he has cancer. He tells me of his treatment, tells me that he has no time for assholes anymore.

He starts to tell me about his English aunt, but then he stops suddenly and says, “Anyway enough of me, let's talk about you.”

I am thrown – he was in full flow. I pause. I say, “Erm …”

Henry shakes his head and rolls his eyes. “OK, well! Enough of you then, let's talk about
me
again!” he says.

He tells me he's in remission, says he grew up in the same precinct as Darren. They had the same model of house, a “Sheffield.”

“I lived in the Cs, Carol Crescent, between Chrysanthemum Drive and Cheryl Close,” he tells me.
“Darren lived in the B's. Benjamin drive,” he says. “The Bs were so much more where-it-was-at, so Darren got to grow up feeling all,
superior
you know?”

I start a new diary.
“Darren is so funny, I just love him. But Henry, Henry is special,”
I write.

I'm not sure really what I think about him. It's a new kind of relationship for me – uncharted emotional territory – but he's sinking into my skin, worming his way through the layers of British reserve.

“You British are so slow!” he exclaims, clicking his fingers. “Wake up! Wake up!”

But he learns to give me the time to express myself and I tell him about the death of my father; we compare notes on our failed relationships.

In coffee shops throughout Manhattan and walking around Union Square market on cold winter mornings, while driving to Long Island, another part of my “education,” we exchange and swap stories. Slowly, over the months, our auras merge.

I don't think Henry realises what's happening, I certainly don't.

We don't know what's happened until the end.

We are sitting on the sofa. We've been out to
The Bar
and we're drunk. I hate my job, and I can't stay here without it, and though I love New Yorkers, I hate New York. I had thought it would be the other way around. I can't live somewhere where even when the sun
does
shine you don't get to see it – I can't live in the shade of these buildings any longer.

Henry is looking into my eyes. I've only known him for five months, but I know the door to his soul is as wide open as I have ever come across, and I've been in, looked around and liked what I've seen.

He says, “Are you sure you've thought about this?”

I can hear him slurring, as drunk as myself.

I nod. “I've thought of nothing else for the last month.”

“Because I don't think …” His eyes gleam, his voice shudders. “I actually don't want you to leave,” he says.

My own eyes water. I stroke his hair. I say, “I know.”

He leans in towards me, his head fits comfortably on my shoulder. I stroke his back.

“I think I love you,” he says.

“I know. I think I love you as well,” I say.

My dick is stirring, surprise! I had never thought of Henry sexually before, not once. He sits back, stares into my eyes for maybe a minute.

I am torn; torn between a physical law, something to do with magnetic attraction of close bodies, a desire for fusion with all that is loved, and logic – this can go nowhere, this can only hurt, it is futile, I am going back to France. I know that Henry must be a brother, not a
lover.

We brush lips, we kiss, gently, then in unison we stop, we pull back.

I shudder, another tear. “Life's not fair,” I say.

Henry laughs, swallows hard. “It's bullshit isn't it?” he says. He smiles at me, starts to shine, to radiate. It's not the first time I've seen him do this. “It's OK though,” he says. His eyes are astoundingly beautiful.

I look at him questioningly. He shrugs. “We don't have to live together, we can't live with
everyone
we love.”

I frown.

“We love so many people.” He speaks calmly, as if in a trance. “Friends, lovers, family, ex boyfriends … We can't live with them all.”

I nod.

“But it doesn't matter …”

He moves back onto the sofa, rests his head back on my shoulder. “Only the love matters. It doesn't matter if it's on the other side of the world.”

I have a feeling I am letting slip away the kindest man I've ever met.

“Don't worry,” he says. “We'll always be friends, our whole lives.”

I slide an arm around his shoulder.

“We will,” I say.

I sit nodding, listening. The conversation is the same one as last time, the same as the one before I left, seven months ago. Only the names change.

The vicious circle of Yves' love life is driving me insane and the fact that his own reactions to it never seem to evolve is bringing me to the point where I am wondering if I can continue to see him, if our friendship hasn't somehow reached its sell-by date.

He's waving a pasta twirl at me. “So you can imagine! I'm left sitting on my own at home like a twat while he sleeps in a hotel less than a mile away rather than come to me! I mean, it's not as if he doesn't know how I feel about him.”

I say, “Yes, Yves.” I sigh discretely. I imagine him saying,
“Enough of me …”
as Henry used to.
As if
.
“Will he ever ask me about New York?”
I wonder.

He continues. I stare out through the front of the restaurant. The winter sun is casting hard shadows on the pavement. Strange people are lingering outside the tattoo parlour opposite. I look at my empty plate; I'm still hungry but this is Yves' choice of restaurant, not mine – all big plates and fancy prices, but precious little to eat.

“But Yves,” I interrupt him. “It's always the same.”

He shrugs. “So they're
all
arseholes.”

I sigh. “But you never meet the men you
want
to meet because you're never clear about who it
is
you want to meet or what
kind
of relationship you want.”

Yves grins and frowns at me simultaneously. “I am!” he says. “Gilles is perfect, that's the whole point.”

I rub the bridge of my nose. “Gilles is a perfect
arsehole.”

“You haven't met him.”

“He's a perfect arsehole who lives with his partner and has two or three affairs going simultaneously of which you are just one.”

Yves nods. “Yeah, put like that,” he says. “What a bastard!”

I nod. “So he's not perfect at all,
is he?”

“Yeah, but I mean apart from that.”

“What, like, if he was someone different, he'd be perfect?”

Yves nods his head from side to side. “But I couldn't have known,” he says.

“Yves. Your ad! I saw it.”

“Yeah, so?”

“Well you asked to meet a guy for cool sexy fun at the weekend with no commitment.”

He shrugs. “So?”

“So that's what you got, for God's sake. You can't now start wanting him to marry you!”

“I don't, I'm not like you; I don't have a problem with my own company. I don't need a husband, I'm fine on my own.”

I open my eyes wide. I nod, I swallow and wait for the “not like you,” to pass. “Yeah, well, except that you do,” I eventually say in my calmest voice. “Every time you look for something casual, every time you try to snare them, and every time they run a mile.”

“You don't listen to me at
all
, do you,” he says.

I nod. “Yes I do. Over and over again.”

“I wanted something cool, but it was …”

I interrupt, “So amazingly good that you decided you were in love? You see I do listen, and it's not difficult because it's the same story, time after time.”

Yves glares at me. “Sorry if I'm boring you,” he says.

“You're not,” I say. “It's just that until you get a grip
and admit what you really want, until you start announcing
that
to the world, then you're going to continue meeting the men you
say
you want to meet instead of the men you
really
want to meet.”

“Yeah, well it's pretty boring talking to you as well,” he says.

I grimace at him. I say, “Uh?”

“Yeah,” he continues, “you're always so busy telling everyone what you think that you don't even care. You're not even interested in
my
problems, I suppose you'd rather talk about
you.”

I blow through my lips. “OK,” I say. “Let's carry this on another day. We're not getting anywhere here.”

Yves grunts. “Typical,” he says, “just walk away.”

I signal to the waiter for the bill. We pay in cash, both desperate to speed to the end of our time together.

As we leave the restaurant, Yves says, “Goodbye.” He uses,
“Au-revoir,”
but makes it sound like,
“Adieu.”

I restrain myself from replying in the same tone of voice.

“Yes, see you,” I say. I start to turn to leave.

“Oh, and Mark?” he says catching my arm.

I look back at him, raise my eyebrows, nod. I think,
“Please don't do this.”

“If you're so fucking
clever
on the relationship front,” he says, “then how come you're
still single?”

I stare at him. I search the corners of my brain for a good put-down, but the only thing that comes into my mind is,
Va te faire foutre
. – Go fuck yourself. So I say, “Good point Yves. Yes. Good point! Thanks for that.”

It takes me a few days to write the ad, only seconds to copy and paste it onto the web site. If my theory on being clear about what you want is true then it might just work. I log on to check the appearance of my ad. It sits uncomfortably two entries down from Yves'. He looks much cuter than me. I click on my photo. I re-read it one last time.

This great unfolding novel we call life: the joy, the sadness, the beauty, the ugliness – such an amazing chance, such an incredible stroke of luck, or genius.

To wake up every morning and see the trees and the sunlight.

To be able to stroke the cat and to make toast.

To be able to hear neighbours sawing logs and shout at them about the noise …

I am a man. I am thirty-three and I have a life.

I love it, but I'm sick of doing it alone.

I want someone to share it with. Someone to say, “Yes it is a beautiful day.”

Someone to say, “Shut up, mellow out.” Someone to say, “Will you cook or shall I?” and, “Please don't make that disgusting green soup again.”

Someone to say, “I love you too.”

I can see him in my mind. He looks normal, ordinary, except for a glint in the eye, a tendency to smile a lot.

We laugh a lot together. He takes the piss out of me all the time.

We are busy separate entities with different interests and different friends, but when we meet I tell him about the bird I saw in the garden, the accident I nearly had on the motorbike. He tells
me of the sad old tramp he saw outside his work place and I read him a phrase from the book I'm currently reading.

And it's all even more beautiful, even more sad, even more poignant, than if we weren't two.

Slowly, surely, we start to decode the mysteries of life together. The power, the amazing, moving, incredibleness of it all becomes even bigger, even more, until our hearts are filled and we think we might explode at the joy of just being able to do it together.

And then of course, we shag.

I am depressed; I am leaving. The collection of muscle-bound boys, t-shirts swinging from their back pockets, sweating, glistening, as they wobble their perfect pecs across the dance floor does nothing for me tonight. It all seems smooth and superficial and pointless and not what I need.

I miss Henry. Even if the clubs in New York were just as sanitised, we used to have great conversations.

I crave for some real emotion, a real flash of love at first sight, even hate at first sight would do. Some joy, some sadness, instead of this cheap excuse for a good time.

I push through the double doors into the windy winter night and fumble in my pocket for my keys, preparing myself for the drive back to Grasse – alone in the country with my cat and my chickens again.

The cold air bites into my skin and I pull my collar up.

I thought the country would calm me, thought the isolation would be restful, but I just spend my time driving into Nice, and then driving back to the winter desolation of it all.

Sitting on a car bonnet in front of the club is a young lad, maybe twenty-five, maybe even less – at any rate he's around ten years younger than myself.

He has the sultry dark looks that so many seem to have here in the south of France: olive skin, jet-black hair, half-length, swept back from his face, deep brown eyes. He's beautiful; he's drunk. He's wearing a brown leather pilot's jacket and a thick grey scarf wrapped high around his neck; he drunkenly catches my eye and
smiles.

I give a crisp grin in return and head towards my car, but I sense him moving, following me.

He grabs my sleeve. “Bonsoir,” he says. He sounds like he has a cold.