I might take a bit of time off work.
Mornings find me achy and reluctant. The alarm beeps and I realise that though I’m tired, it isn’t really about not having much sleep. Outside is frost. Inside is a chill. The feeling of walking on a beach when the tide is coming in and has you trapped between wave and breakwater. you want to be off the beach and in a cafe drinking tea and eating eggy bread, but there are only cliffs.
Somewhere, there was an iron ladder that someone had hammered in to the rock – swollen with rust at the water line like the joints of an old man; iron cold above, but leading through the air to the grassy top, where you used to sit back, feet over the edge, head back, biting the salt air, hands in the dewy grass.
The walk that followed that climb – along the headland to the village and the waiting pub – granted a good, earned weariness that you knew would be washed away in the glorious langour of a fire and a pint of beer and a sandwich. But this tiredness now is not that. Beer won’t touch it. The fire would only startle me with its spit and crackle, the drink would sit in my guts like washing up water, and the chat of the locals would make my ears shrink.
‘Fuck off,’ I’d want to tell them. And ‘fuck off’ is what I want to say to too many people. The ones I don’t even know who want to do nothing with the gift of life but rip it from others. Stupid men who have no imagination or charity. No love or desire. Not just them though. Everyone. Even the harmless passerby who smiles at me. Even the shrill pleasure of the kids. That’s wrong.
I dream of beaches. Of headlands, of long roads without a destination. In reality I know I’d be restless and whiny. I might be stuck forever with the terrrible strip of duct tape that seems welded to my mouth. I might go down with this ship. but still – I might take some time off.
Oh, musn’t forget the fucking miserable song. Wouldn’t be the same without one:
An experiment in normality 
Why do you go this to yourself? To us? You can choose to be happy. Why choose this?
Is there no one of you he calls friend willing to do what it takes to save this man from his self-inflicted misery?
Hey lou. Is everything ok? Don’t go rushing into decisions. You still need to earn money man. And you can do something different.
Yes, Coco, he can.
Oh hello Mr. B. He can and I wish he would so he can be happy.
Of course he can be happy Coco, and he knows how. He just won’t do it. Louis doesn’t believe happiness is a choice you can make for yourself. He won’t take responsibility for his own happiness and so doesn’t have to be responsible for his own misery. I’m vain enough to think I could make him happy, if he chose me, but he hasn’t. If he ever gets to the point where he chooses to be happy, and that choice isn’t me, I’d let him go for that, that’s how I love him. But he hasn’t, so I won’t.
And it’s in that cruelty where we both have lived for the past 12 years.
You could make him happy. you do, he did. You could give him up to me, if he chose, he knows this, but he still looks your way.
Then why????
History maybe. But you’re done now? Or am I wrong?
Have you got another blog? where are you? Gone private?
I’ve heard not a peep from him for a fortnight.
Neither have I. Hmm.
Done Rob? I never said I was done. He decides these things unilaterally without ever listening to or consulting me. In 12 years, Louis has never asked me what I want.
He didn’t say it. Never says anything negative regarding your good self.
Losing the battle with his demons for 12 doesn’t make this self feel very good.
No. All that love and devotion he has, going to waste. I keep trying to swipe him, but he’s stuck. I’d accept it if he’d just go and get it.
Fuck me dead, so would I!
What is it about the little runt?
I dunno, he hates lamb and garlic (is he even Welsh??), that should have been a deal breaker.
He hates lamb because it’s a baby sheep. Can’t decide if that’s cute or…. what. Garlic, he needs educating.
I sent him a fat book of garlic recipes as a joke years ago. I think it props up a table leg.
It may well be, but I bet he at least leafed through it, sniffed the pages.
It’s been a long-held dream to cook for him. It breaks my heart that he’s been reduced to Quorn burgers. Sheesh.
Haha. How do you know he eats those things? And yes, he said that was something that he imagined happening too.
He told me. And something called Chicken Thingy, which I daresay wouldn’t bear close inspection. I’ve often dreamt of cooking for all of the people he loves, including Sunday lunch for his Mum (who once said she’d give me the keys to the house if I made him happy), Kath and Soph and Becky. Bacon butties over the Times crossword of a Saturday morning; his taking me on the cliff top hike at Mousehole, driving with him through the Ticino, which was so important to my childhood; tending my parents’ grave together in Wheathampstead; his laughter at my Welsh pronunciation, mine when he tries Portuguese; learning when he needs space and silence; watching his face when we’re digging in the garden and I hold his hand while passing an earthworm into it and he discovers he’s not afraid after all. Watching him discover he’s not afraid after all about a lot of things, that it was just a dream he made up.
Hearing his laughter, right there, right now. And not minding when he farts in bed.
That’s how I want to love him.
Wow.
Not really. I just want normal with him. To be more than just perpetual pen pals.
Even I would raise a glass to that.
Please check up on him Rob, and let me know? novocoboro@hotmail.com.
Thank you, friend Rob.
Will do. I’ll be home tomorrow.
It will be ok my friend. And don’t mind the ugly words.
How will it be ok, Luc? I need to know too.