50 Reasons to Say Goodbye

by Nick Alexander

  “Oh, you live here. Cool! Manhattan?”

  “Yeah, thirty-seventh and sixth.”

  “Nice address, how many square feet do you have there?”

  I frown. This is starting to sound like a marketing survey. “Um, don’t know really, it’s a small two-room apartment.”

  Brian nods. “A brownstone?”

  I smile. “Yes, do you work in real estate or something?”

  Brian frowns. “No why?”

  I shrug. “You just seem interested in where I live, that’s all.”

  Brian raises the palms of his hands. “Hey man, just making conversation.”

  I have offended him, and I guess that this is simply yet another culture gap to be bridged. “Sorry, I guess people aren’t so inquisitive in the UK.”

  Brian visibly relaxes. “So what do they talk about in the UK?”

  I shrug again. “Don’t know really, normal stuff I suppose, the weather, clothes, music …”

  “OK let’s try again,” says Brian. “Nice suit you have there, very smart.”

  I smile. “I was thinking the same thing about you. You work near here?”

  Brian opens his eyes wide and cocks his head to one side. “Hey now who’s the inquisitive one?”

  “I haven’t seen you here before, that’s all.”

  “Oh, I often call in for a drink, mainly Fridays though.” He reaches out and strokes my lapel. “Very nice though, is that an Armani?”

  I laugh. The suit is from Marks and Spencer’s.

  Brian appears vexed. “Hey what is it with you? What do you want to talk about?”

  I shrug. “Sorry,” I say.

  “If you prefer,” he continues, “we could talk about you coming back to my place, and me blowing you.”

  I can feel myself reddening and glance around to see if anyone is listening, but everyone nearby is seemingly engrossed in their own conversations.

  “That’s pretty, um, direct Brian.”

  “Sure. I love to blow a man in a suit, and you don’t seem to like the small-talk so …” he grins. “What the hell.”

  I smile. “Yeah, what the hell.”

  “So?”

  “What? Now?”

  “Sure, now.”

  The situation is absurd. We have talked real estate for ten minutes, and here he is inviting me to his place for oral sex, but I want to do it. I swig at my beer raking through my thoughts to get a handle on my motivation.

  He’s very cute, self-assured, well dressed, and sexy in a rather bland, lawyer kind of a way. The offer is obscene and yet naive at the same time, almost childlike, as if coming from a space I had once known, a space where none of this stuff was meant to be bad or dirty.

  Of course the only time that none of this was bad or dirty was before I even knew that it existed, but all the same. I feel an urge to accept precisely because this is so entirely un-me, to go back with someone for sex, at nine p.m. on a Friday evening, after ten minutes of polite chat.

  It seems ridiculous and story-like, and I feel driven to experience something different, something that someone else would do, probably someone in a film I know, but as the man says, what the hell? At least it doesn’t sound as dangerous as visiting Julian Barclay.

  “Sure,” I say.

  Brian has been looking concerned. He punches my arm. “Good!”

  His apartment is a short taxi ride away; during the journey he stares from his window in silence. I doubt my reason, sift through the possibilities that he’s a sadist or serial killer, but just as I am plucking up courage to stop the cab, to jump out, we have arrived, and he’s leading me past the doorman. “He’s with me,” he says, taking me on into the elevator.

  It is not until we have stepped into his apartment that he speaks again. “Hang up your coat,” he says pulling his own coat and jacket off. He’s wearing grey silk braces; they match his tie.

  I start to undress too but Brian stops me. “No keep the suit, just take off your overcoat.”

  I do as he requests. He pushes me against the closed apartment door, kneels before me, pulls at my zip, pulls my dick from my trousers and immediately slips it into his mouth. I smile, amazed and disconcerted.

  Brian pumps away, reaching up, pinching my nipples through my shirt. I try to stroke his head, to unzip his own trousers, to kiss him, but he refuses any involvement on my part. I resign myself – it isn’t so bad.

  When I come, Brian flops my dick back into my trousers and stands up. He grins broadly. “Thanks,” he says pulling me towards him.

  For an instant I think that he will kiss me, I imagine that it is now his turn, but he just wants to open the door behind me.

  He hands me my coat – I am dazed. He grips my shoulders, spins me around and points me towards the corridor. “This is where we say goodbye,” he says.

  As the door closes behind me I start to laugh.

  Clueless

  We meet in Champs, a large, smooth, disco-bar. It’s three times the size of the biggest bar I ever visited in France. I am standing watching others watch the sterile, body-perfect go-go dancer. Everyone is drinking Bud. Disco lights swing across my face blinding me in time with the beat.

  A voice says, “Hello.” The man holds out a hand. “Darren.”

  “Excuse me,” he says. “But could I ask you what you do for a living, because I have a bet with my friend. He says you’re in TV and I say you’re some kind of an artist.”

  I tell Darren I’m setting up a branch office for a French company.

  He says, “Oh.” He looks disappointed.

  I add, “But I do write in my spare time.”

  He grins. “Wait. I’ll get my friend Henry.”

  They form a comedy double act. Darren talks a lot, it’s like having a personal TV channel – he’s witty, fast, funny. He kind of sounds like the guy in the American sitcoms, you know, the funny one, the one who thinks of all the great put-downs on the spur of the moment instead of the next day like real people do. Henry is his stooge – he gently smiles as he’s ragged to death. Though Darren is sharper, I like Henry best.

  I tell them that I have only been in New York for two weeks. “I don’t really know anyone yet,” I say.

  “Oh my God!” exclaims Darren. “It’s just like Clueless!”

  “You will be Tai,” he tells me, “the new girl in school.”

  “I’ll be Cher, and …” he prods Henry in the stomach, “you can be Diane.”

  They laugh at their new project; they’ll teach me the ropes, tell me what to do, where to go, how to be.

  “What to wear is easy,” says Henry. “This is New York, so just wear black.” I note that virtually everyone is wearing black and make a mental note to go shopping.

  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.

  Friends Forever

  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.

  Sell By Date

  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.”

  Being Clear

  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.