Friday 24 January 2014

LLD

I've done this before (with me in England, B.F. in Paris.) J.G. makes it my second time (this time with me in Paris, him in England.)
The first attempt admittedly went entirely titz up and everyone came out of it feeling bitter and shortchanged and disappointed and neglected. I can't cope with this time going down a similar path (said path involved a drastic decrease in communication taking place as soon as I moved out the country- texting at most every two days, skyping just the once in order to break up, and seeing each other... never.) Which is why I'm trying everything in my power to ensure that me and J.G. stay well connected and as close as our 810km of distance allows.
There's no need for me to detail all of the things that are fucking shit about being in a Long Distance Relationship. But I'm actually going to do exactly that:

Things That are Fucking Shit About Being in a Long Distance Relationship
1. I am nowhere near my boyfriend. The people around us don't even speak the same language or use the same currency. For an hour a day we don't even share the same date. There's no way I'm bumping into him unexpectedly in the street.
2. Every single bit of time spent together has to be planned. And I hate planning.
3. I really miss him. I think he misses me too.
4. I find it absolutely impossible to open jars by myself. And he's really good at it. It's a waste really.
5. If I happen to see a sickly, cuddly, vomit-inducing, loved up couple I could simultaneously burst into tears and punch them in their smug little faces... I can't even contemplate just being happy for them. I take it as a personal insult if anything. Why do they have to rub their togetherness in my face?
One time when we were saying a particularly difficult goodbye at the train station J.G. lost the plot and started shouting at couples going past, 'TREASURE HER!'
People don't know how good they've got it. Seriously.
6. I'm forced to spend an ungodly amount of time glued to my phone.
'Wait a minute while I send J this picture message of a tree we once walked past together/audio clip of a song his dad likes that's just come on/link to the new lipstick I'm thinking of buying/text message containing nothing but a line of kisses (obviously I've never done that, but just to give you an idea of the severity of my case...)
It's just not sociable.
7. Something else that is far from sociable is that, being as I see him so rarely, all of our time together is fucking precious, and it means that I can sometimes feel a little bit reluctant to share him by seeing other people. Pathetic, right?
8. Being away from him makes me really whiney. I can often be heard saying things to him in an absolutely ridiculous pitch- 'come hereeeeeeeeeeeee,' 'I miss youuuuuuuuuuu,' or even the basic, 'what have you doooooooooooone today?'
I seem to have forgotten how to speak to him in my normal voice.
9. Being away from him also makes me weepy. I cry at least once every time we're together. I think I just get overwhelmed or some shit. It's like when a child has too much fun and gets overexcited and then can't cope with all of the emotion of it all and breaks down. That's me.
10. There's a whole section of Rue de R that I just can't walk along anymore. It's the journey from my house to the metro station where I have to take him when he leaves. On leaving days I go there with him and come back without him. So now I can't help my heart from sinking every time I'm there. It's kinda inconvenient because I often need to use that metro...
11. Bizarrely, sometimes I forget that he really exists. I mean, I know that he does, but when I haven't seen him for weeks and weeks I begin to just think of him as a voice or an online persona. It's always something of a shock when I eventually see him standing there in flesh and bone. Which means that...
12. ...The first few hours of being back together are always slightly unnatural. Meeting me at Liverpool Lime Street after an absence of a week or two (back when we first got together), a somewhat ill at ease J.G. literally looked at me utterly perplexed, and asked, 'Silv, what do I usually do with my arms...?'

But then, of course, there are the perks of being apart. There are plenty of things that are really good about being in a Long Distance Relationship.

Things That are Really Good About Being in a Long Distance Relationship
1. You don't have to shave your legs all that often.

Oh. That appears to be it. 

Monday 20 January 2014

Pervy Parisians

The title of this post is somewhat misleading... You don't need to be Parisian to be a perv, and not all Parisians are pervs. Truly they're not.
A few are though. Quite a few.
Now. I am not the kind of girl that merits a double take on the street. I mean, I like the way I look, and if I spend time actually doing the necessary work on my hair and face and wear snazzy, jazzy, hip and happenin' stuff I can be positively attractive. BUT the point I'm trying to make is that I am no more likely than any other 20-something girl to be the object of a pervy Parisian's attentions. So this probably rings true for most of my peers who have spent any extended amount of time in a busy capital city. I know the majority of my friends have experienced it. There was G.B., who would have 'ey princesse, princesse!' incessantly shouted at her on the street. A pretty girl, biensur, but with no traces of royalty in her blood to speak of...
Then there was T.J., my cutie pie Mauritian pal. Poor T would receive marriage proposals in the street, and assuming (for some wildly inexplicable reason) that she was actually from some remote island, her suitors would become gradually more and more offended when she was unable to answer them in their native language.
Then we have the extreme example of S.H., a friend from my home town. She came to Paris with some friends for a few days of 'fun.' She made the fateful (but completely understandable) decision to wear exactly the kind of clothes that she'd wear on an English night out. We're talking big heels, bodycon skirts and false eyelashes. The works. But lord almighty, was that just a feast for the eyes for the scummiest of scum...
S.H. recounted to me how she'd been followed, harassed, and, ludicrously, on two occasions, had her groin grabbed in the middle of the street.
INEXCUSABLE.
Although her choice of outfit may not have been very well thought out, considering that the girls of the French capital consider dressing up to consist of wearing a slightly different white tshirt with a minimally dressier pair of skinny jeans, and at a push (for the grander occasions in their social calendars) applying a slick of red lipstick to their otherwise unmade-up faces. Of COURSE I'm exaggerating (and don't I just love to?), but what I mean is that it's quite rare for Parisian girls to go all out and have a lot of skin on display for a night out. It's just a whole other mentality here.
I'm not justifying what S.H. was put through though. Far from it. Obviously you should be able to wear whatever the fuck you want and feel comfortable and safe with it. Fuck, if you want to go out in a thong and a feather headdress then that's your prerogative. Probably don't. But if you want to... then nobody should get in your personal space about it. Now, if you're dressed provocatively then I'm going to put it out there that subconsciously you probably DO want a little bit of attention. But attention is one thing. Being grabbed or followed is something else entirely.
And sometimes you can be dressed in your frumpiest get up and still someone will take it upon themselves to bother you. That happens too. Then what?
Take yesterday for example. Early afternoon, I left my flat to take a walk around the neighbourhood because I had an acute bout of cabin fever. I put my headphones in, had Biggy blasting, and was minding my own sweet little business. At a crossing I stopped (obviously), only to find an overly friendly face literally craaane around my own to peer directly into my eyes.
'Salut, ca va?' the owner of said face asked me, admittedly very politely.
I proceeded to crane my face all the way back around away from his just as the lights changed. I hurried off and no harm was done.
Fine.
A bit annoying, yes, but mostly just fine. It was the middle of the day, he took his cue to leave me alone, and consequently both parties emerged unscathed.
These men don't always take their cues though, and sometimes it's quite dark when they approach you, and that's when it begins to become a bit of a different situation...
One evening last week I met a friend for a few glasses of vin more or less close to my place. So when it came to the time to say goodbye I had no qualms about walking home alone. However... somebody else had other plans...
As I made my way through a busy square I heard, 't'es belle, toi!'
N'aw shucks, thanks mister.
I didn't look over though, I wasn't in the mood to.
'Ey, ey! Comment tu t'appelle?' He inched closer.
Nah.
I carried on walking.
'Vraiment la, ca va?'
Eugh, he'd cut me up and was walking backwards so he could look me in the face.
I gave him a dismissive smile and dodged around him. By this time we were in a back street and there was nobody else around. I began to feel uncomfortable.
'Je veux juste te parler!' he insisted, with a leery smile that I didn't like at all.
'Excusez-moi,' I said, overtaking him. I tried to keep my cool and stay as polite as possible. But this little fuck was insistent. Plus now that he'd heard my accent he saw me as an even easier target. Merde.
'T'es super belle,' he started up again, jogging to keep up.
By now we'd gotten close enough to my flat for me to want to change route so that he couldn't see where I live. That's when it started to really piss me off. In my head I was muttering, 'I'm just trying to get home and you, utter twat that you are, are impeding me of doing that by being all up in my shit. And what's more is that you can see exactly how annoyed I am, and you're persisting anyway, prick of all pricks.'
In real life I simply glared at him and hissed, 'laissez-moi tranquille.' ('Leave me alone.')
Oooh, he liked that. He got really close and started keeping up with my pace, continually trying everything to get me to talk again. He clearly wanted to wind me up. He liked seeing me squirm. I turned my back and headed in the opposite direction, skyping J.G. as I walked, hoping that me being occupied with something else might put my pursuer off.
It didn't.
Eventually I did shake him off. I managed this mean feat by stopping abruptly and childishly shouting, 'MAIS!' (A tactic that E.V.P. favours when he is really frustrated and can't take one more second of whatever it is that's taking place.)
It's true that no harm was really done, but it's so tedious to have to deal with socially inept idiots like him when you're just trying to get on with your day. If I don't immediately seem like I want to chat with you, stranger in the street, then that's probably because, yep, you've guessed it, I don't want to chat with you. At the end of the day, the rule should always be that no means no.
Discussing this with two of my Parisian girlfriends a few days ago the main idea that we all kept coming back to was this:
DOES THIS TACTIC ACTUALLY EVER WORK FOR ANYONE?!
Has any girl in the history of humankind ever been approached in the street by someone and, as a result, struck up a conversation so good that she's thought, 'yeah, actually, I will go for a drink with you. Sure, here, have my number! You're someone I want to see again, definitely'? Surely the number of times that an approach such as that has failed compared to the number of times that an approach such as that has been successful is about a million to one.
Who knows?
I just know one thing and one thing only- that this happened to me with a boy that I actually recognised and had always kinda fancied, and even then it didn't work, so... (Admittedly, that might also have had something to do with the fact that he approached me in the same way three times in the same week, never once recognising that not only had he already chatted me up, but that we were in the same French class for a whole year. So the prominent feeling there was one of being incredibly insulted, but regardless...)
I'll end this post with this very simple piece of advice for any males that may happen to be reading:
If you see a girl that you like the look of today and you give her a smile and she either looks away, generally ignores you, or snarls at you, chances are she's not in the market for an in-the-street-chat-up at this particular time.
Bonne chance! 
And me?
Oh, well, I'll be going out dressed like this tonight:
And I expect not to be bothered, thank you very much.

Wednesday 15 January 2014

Bribes (and how to calculate the exact perfect moment to accept one)

These are my confessions... The confessions of a corrupt au pair...

Of course, in theory I'm 100% averse to bribes of any kind.
HOWEVER, in practice, when handling a somewhat spoilt (and when I say 'somewhat' I mean 'extremely') child on a daily basis, you can afford to let your morals slip slightly.
Now, the child that I have dealings with can only be described as the undisputed king of 'you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours.'
It started out innocently enough- 'If you give me one more macaroon, I'll do my homework before mum comes home.'
A mutually beneficial arrangement such as that is fine with me. It shouldn't be, but I need to get to the end of the day in one piece. So shoot me.
Similarly, we'd get things like, 'if I go to bed now can I have an extra story?' 
Sure hun! No probs! Hop on in and I'll grab The Hungry Caterpillar!
Once he worked out that we could happily haggle with each other, he began to use it to get other things that he wanted. Him finishing his dinner could be swapped for 10 minutes on the playstation, him brushing his teeth properly could be exchanged for an episode of Peppa Pig. Happy days.
However, as with most things, E.V.P. became greedy. Not content with our cautious toe dip into the black market, the bribes grew in frequency and became ever more unbalanced.
'If you don't let me play on the iPad for 15 minutes I'm going to be bad for the rest of the day.'
Right, already you can see that he'd stopped phrasing them as questions. Now they were simply threats. (I can't possibly win with a bribe such as this one, and this is where E.V.P. begins to lose his leverage over me.) So... You're basically saying that my two choices are: I either let you do something I've told you I don't want you to do, orrr I have the equally tempting option of you misbehaving even more than you already do? Guess I'll... NOT DO EITHER BECAUSE I'M THE ADULT HERE AND WHAT I SAY GOES AND WHY HAVE I EVEN HUMOURED YOU TO THIS EXTENT ANYWAY?!!
But the damage was done.
A couple of weeks back, he was being a petit cauchemar in the middle of the street (which is the worst- people look, and point, and tut and make me feel like a shit teenage mother being condemned), and I was losing my temper. Once he noticed me unravelling at the seams he saw his chance. He got that manic glint in his eye that means one thing and one thing only: 'I'm going to make you an offer you can't refuse.'
'Silvia, do you want me to stop being bad?'
Yes, obviously, you tiny lunatic.
'Well, you have to pass my test then.'
Okay... This sounds... Unappealing...
'You can pick from 3 challenges and if you do one of them I'll stop being bad all day.'
Here we go...
'Number 1: when we get to daddy's house you have to scream as loud as you can for a full minute.'
No. The neighbours will call the police, so... I'm going to have to say no.
At this point, he looks at me eagerly and sees from my face that that particular 'challenge' isn't going to be attempted.
'Okay, number 2: when we get to daddy's house you can run up to the top of the building and back and I'll wait in the house.'
No. First of all, there are six floors and I haven't been to the gym since the summer. Second, what is this? P.E? Third, there's no way I'm leaving that terror on his own for a second.
Again, he looks at me expectantly. I shake my head.
'Fine. Number 3: you let me watch you do a wee.'
WHAT IS WRONG WITH THIS CHILD?!
'E, we're not doing challenges today. You're just going to listen to me and you're going to be a good boy and everyone is going to be happy.' 
I frogmarch him to his daddy's house and the matter is never mentioned again.
Bribes like the aforementioned are NOT the kinds that you accept.
Earlier today I was frantically trying to get him ready for his music lesson while he was frantically trying to hit me with a rubber plane. As I was calling for a taxi he increased his reign of terror. 
'Hello, yes, 9 rue....' BANG, the plane smacks me in the back of the head.
And I lose my shit.
And he sees it as a perfect opportunity to bring out the bribes-
'If you don't stop shouting I'm going to punch you in the nose.'
Right.
I narrowed my eyes as he reached for the pouf (seemingly to throw at me.)
I stepped towards him and lowered myself to his level.
He clutched onto the pouf even tighter and clenched his hand into a fist.
I brought my face up to his and looked him right in the eyes. 'E, either you put that pouf down and calm down RIGHT now, or I won't take you to music.'
And he sighed and put it down.
'Aaaaalright.' His anger forgotten he placed his little hand in mine and slipped on his teeny Air Maxs (yeah, I know, what you gonna do?)
At least there's someone around here who can judge the right time to accept a bribe.
Now... Just need to work on MY timing....

Monday 13 January 2014

Little green eyed monsters


Jellied eel, jelly baby, jelly shoe. I am all of these things. Jealous. Such a jealous person. I'LL ADMIT IT. Oooh am I jealous. Be it because I'm an only child, be it that my high school heart throb trampled all over my impressionable heart by sleeping with everyone but me, it really doesn't matter. What matters is that I'm fundamentally a bit of a bunny boiler.
I don't (always) act on it. I try to smoother it as and when possible. And I mostly succeed. I often even go too far the other way and pretend to not be bothered in the slightest. But the fact remains that I do get jealous.
Not just with boys, even with my friends and family. I distinctly remember one of my school friends telling me that she'd recently struck up a 'really close' friendship with some girls that lived around the corner from me, and the very first thing I did was mock her. 'HA! You can't be really close friends with them! You've only just met them! HA! You idiot!' But in my head I was frantically thinking, 'You're my friend!! What's going on here?! Who are these new girls? Why are they marching all over my territory? WHAT IS THIS?! HOW CAN IT BE STOPPED?!'
Fundamentally, it just feels really nice to be someone's favourite, and it doesn't feel even remotely as nice to be second (or third or fourth) best.
I mean, I get that it's selfish, I really do. And being rational, of course I want all the people that I love to love, and be loved by, LOADS of other people. All the other people they want. But yet, I can't always stop that little green eyed monster from rearing its ugly acne-ridden face.
So there you are, I've aired it, it's out in the open, my secret is now your secret too. Ain't no shame.
Now. Most jealous people manage to control these shameful feelings of envy. I certainly do (most of the time.) But there's one little green eyed monster who just can't seem to grasp the concept of concealing this embarrassing sentiment.
This little green eyed monster is also an only child.
This little green eyed monster most definitely hasn't lived enough to be cheated on yet.
That's because this little green eyed monster is six.
This little green eyed monster is E.V.P.
And this little green eyed monster doesn't even try and hide his jealous streak.
And my god, is he jealous... But strangely, the object of most of his jealousy is none other than my very own J.G. (Don't let E.V.P. hear me calling him that though, god forbid.) I would even go as far as saying that E.V.P. hates J.G. All it takes to wind E.V.P. up into an unsuppressed jealous rage is for me to get my phone out of my bag. He'll start tutting and sighing and he'll eventually swallow his pride enough to ask, 'is that J pourri?' (This is the sole name with which he can bring himself to address J.G. with...) While I'm talking to J I'll catch E.V.P. out of the corner of my eye rolling his eyes and sticking his tongue out. And his collection of insults reserved for J is extensive to say the least... We regularly get:
*crotte de chien
*idiot
*cretin
*espèce de cafard
*bête
*tout pourri
...and I'll stop there, because then they get personal. He's quite something with the creative insults.
My tiny 6 year old nightmare has also been known to see J.G. on Skype and shout in dismay, 'he's ugly!' So there's that too.
He asks after him though. Intertwined with his apparent dislike of the other man in my life there's something like curiosity. Like they say... keep your friends close, keep your enemies closer. I guess he realises the perks of knowing what you're dealing with.
To be fair to E.V.P. though, now I know that it gets on his nerves, I speak about J.G. even more (haha, I'm a petite bitch, je sais, but I need to fill the quiet time in between one Beyblade tournament and the next somehow.) I'll purposefully pretend to go all weak at the knees when I'm talking about J, and I'll say things like, 'ooh isn't he lovely? Oooh isn't he beautiful? Oooh my precious J!', just to see E.V.P. go all green and exasperated.
The one time they were in the same room E.V.P. just completely ignored him. He couldn't even muster up the energy to say hello to his arch nemesis. I'm hoping that for their next meet we'll maybe progress to something slightly more civil. Maybe a handshake. Maybe a slap on the back (knowing E.V.P. though, it's more likely to be a slap in the face.) My favourite thought of all though is that E.V.P. will take J.G. to one side, look him straight in the eyes and tell him quietly but seriously to treat me right, or there'll be trouble.
Wouldn't put it past him.        

Sunday 5 January 2014

Cheats, bores and ragu makers

I'm not the luckiest in love (even though now I seem to have struck gold) and as a general rule I tend to have somewhat shabby taste in the opposite sex...
Like most of you, I have many a toe-curling story to tell about my *ahem* love life. Throughout the years I've developed unrequited obsessions, been on the receiving end of unrequited obsessions, been lied to, been cheated on, been ignored, been disgusted by my own choice of partner, been out with people I didn't even fancy, been interested in twins (on separate occasions), and gone for drinks with many an unsuitable suitor. I've experienced boys that kiss like llamas, ones that kiss like nuns... I've once hidden under my mum's bed rather than confront an extremely keen neighbour. A particular highlight was going back to someone's flat for a 'friendly drink' (yeah, I know I'm stupid), and him going to 'freshen up' and coming back in what can only be described as a floor length robe (an event which will now be eternally embedded in me and ma pals' minds as 'Kaftan Cuddles'), going to visit an ex in Paris (and let me clarify here that not only had he invited me, but that he'd insisted I book my flights for those particular dates) and him having exams on that he hadn't told me about so the whole time I was there he 'couldn't hang out, sorry,' being put off a boy because his favourite genre of joke was toilet humour (which makes me gag), and being pursued by someone who lived round the corner from me who would text me stuff like, 'looking nice today' EVERY SINGLE TIME I walked past his house. Honestly.
Reflection on all these shambolic boiz, added to obsessively re-reading my old diaries for two days solid made me want to compile a little taster list of some of my very worst love interests (bit too strong a word for most of them.) I found four PG examples of how badly my initial judgement on boys can sometimes be... (Once again, I've blurred most of the boys' names out so that they need not hang their heads in shame unless they really want to. A guilty conscience has no hiding place after all...)
ENJOY!      

Let's start out with a short and sweet classic, shall we?

Example 1 Sometimes they wouldn't even show up:



Poor little Silvy in her sad little pyjamas.


Example 2 Sometimes they'd already have girlfriends, and would just... fail to mention this... (Ooooh this is one of the most annoying things that can happen, and this particular charmer was amongst the very, very worst of the shady characters I ever dealt with):






My god, was he annoying. Added to that, he was one of those idiots who'd see you on campus or something and not say hey (completey FINE by me), but then text you later that day to say, 'saw you today.' ARGH! He continued to do that for a few months until one night I saw him out and told him he was a prick and to stop contacting me. He did. Eventually.

Example 3: Then we have the one that just wouldn't take no for an answer...
(I warn you in advance- this is a LONG story, so skip the first 7 pages if you're not interested in the backstory pre-disaster-date!) 











(I really am sorry that this one is so long, but I wanted you to grasp just how many millions of times he asked me to go for coffee before I agreed...)


And finally... Sometimes they'd be so fucking unbearably boring that it'd turn me into a monster:









So that's that.

This is really only a tiny fraction of my dating disasters, and I'm sure there'll be more (not for ages though, J.G.!)
It does make me think that maybe, just maybe, the problem might actually be mine. I am fussy, and I do tend to fabricate problems where there might not necessarily need to be problems, but... it's all part o' the story, isn't it?
And for now, all of this really just makes me appreciate the fact that I'm with someone who doesn't make me cringe (very often), someone who doesn't wear weird stuff to unwind in (just the occasional checked pyjama bottom), and most importantly someone who doesn't make me act like a complete lunatic just to avoid seeing him.

Saturday 4 January 2014

Those three little words (and how to avoid saying them...)


In life we can say so much by uttering so little. ‘Sorry’ is only five letters. ‘Thank you’ is just two words. So is ‘you’re fat.’ You can ask someone to marry you with the same amount of words as you use to ask for a divorce. 
Really, it’s the smallest things we say that mean the most.
Some words, when put in a particular order and said with the right amount of emphasis, can change the dynamics between two people irrevocably. There are three in particular that do this like no other. I won’t patronise you by spelling them out for you. We all know what I’m talking about.
Now. The last time those words were said to me (well in a romantic way anyway- my mum, R.D., C.F. and most of the rest of ma palz like to say it on the reg) I was probably still in college. Being at home over Christmas gave me the opportunity to dive into my old diaries (and to writhe around in physical discomfort at how much of a drama queen I was and how seriously I took all my bullshit problems.) Anyway, there was one name that came up again and again and again: my high school boyfriend’s. I said those three words to him very prematurely, and, as recorded in a diary entry circa 2006, he said them to me even more outrageously early (before we’d even started properly seeing each other.) In fact, he first told me how strongly he felt over text (as a result of me falling out with him for calling me by another girl’s name over the phone. CUTE!) The next 50 pages or so of the aforementioned diary concentrate on one subject and one subject only: how to avoid saying it back to him. Once he’d got the words out (albeit electronically) there seemed to be no stopping him. My 15 year old self lamented about how he’d blurt it out at the end of every phone call, use it as a way to round off every text (ludicrously unnecessary), type it midway through MSN conversations (retro), pass me notes that said it, and even occasionally say it out loud (turns out he did have a real voice too...)
One particularly memorable page of my diary contained these frustrated sentences:  

(I've blurred his name out to preserve his identity... Poor little smitten mite...)
From these melodramatic reactions, it’s relatively clear that I wasn’t in love with this person at that point. And, although you can never speak another person’s mind, and even less so their heart, I’m willing to bet that he didn’t really know what he was saying either, and was more likely just using the words purely to entice me into being his girlfriend. Which, admittedly, probably did absolutely no harm at all to his cause.
Well anyway, we carried on saying ‘I love you’ for the couple of years we were together, and even after we broke up... And maybe the teenage me did love him in my immature little way. Maybe he loved me too, but nothing can take away from the fact that I put off saying it until the very last possible moment, when I felt (somewhat) comfortable with the meaning of it. What I’m trying to say here with this stupid long-winded anecdote, equipped with diary excerpts, is: that putting it off and ignoring it and pretending you haven’t heard them for as long as it takes is C O M P L E T E L Y fine. Completely. Fine.

But... What happens when it’s the other way round?

What happens when both of you know exactly how you each feel, and more importantly how each other feels, but you just. can’t. say. it? Be that because you don’t feel ready, be that because you think it’s probably a bit too early, be that because you just can’t bring yourself to be the first one to say the words out loud... It happens. It happened to me.
But you can’t help what slips out your mouth sometimes...
J.G. has little to no filter on his mouth at the best of times, but when it comes to matters of the heart he doesn’t hold back at all. So once we’d started out that was it.
We soon found many (less committal) substitutes for those pesky words. In the heat of the moment we’d shout ‘LIKE YOU!’, ‘FANCY YOU!’, ‘CARE ABOUT YOU!’, ‘ONLY WANT THE BEST FOR YOU AND EVERYONE THAT MATTERS TO YOU!’, and occasionally, as a treat, a classic: ‘FOND OF YOU!’
But sometimes this control over what we said would slide. Not from me. (Never from me.) But J.G. has a tendency of eulogising. So, unavoidably, talk would sometimes fall to me and him, and him and me, and us. And I’d get an, ‘I love you to bits,’ or an, ‘I love the spiky little bones of you.’ Now. They don’t really count. OR DO THEY?! Once you start adding bits, or even if you say it in the wrong tone, it isn’t really that anymore, is it? It’s more just a friendly way of announcing that you care. Well. That’s what I like to think.
The strangest thing is that me and J.G. had already said it. We'd already said it loads. Ages ago. We'd actually said it openly and frequently right up until the day that we first kissed. We stopped saying it right after that.
That's because up until that day he'd been as R.D. is to me- a friend. A really close friend. So we both knew that we cared that strongly about each other from the start, but you can't possibly just carry on saying it, because then what the fuck do you say when it flips to that different intensity?!
There aren't many words that are sacred or powerful anymore. Believers used to only write the words 'God' or 'Christmas' with capital letters; people used to gasp at the word 'cunt', (even I did, until I read 'Atonement.') But 'love' is still scary, and it still means something, and it should. It always should.
So did me and J.G. ever get round to saying it out loud? Well I couldn't possibly say. And do you know what? I'm going to stop right here because I've already disclosed too much, and even though when I told J.G. that I was writing a bit about him he said, 'you can say whatever you want,' I don't think it's quite right to say anything more.
I'll just say that trying to say it is just as hard as trying not to say it. And that it doesn't matter if you see it coming a mile off or if it catches you completely unawares, it'll always be the peskiest of all the teeny, tiny phrases...