Mr. Commitment

by Mike Gayle

  At Mel’s suggestion we had arranged to meet in the basement bar of a vaguely trendy Thai restaurant in Soho. I’d never been there before and to the best of my knowledge she hadn’t either. I remember at the time thinking that she’d done this on purpose—selecting somewhere unfamiliar to us both so that it would be free of associations. It was a smart move on her part because the suggestion on the tip of my tongue had been the bar, Freud, where it all began.

  Mel had called me briefly at work in the afternoon to remind me that she could only meet me for an hour because she had other plans for later on in the evening. I’d said it wasn’t a problem even though it was. My confidence was running high now that she was meeting me, and I’d convinced myself that if I played my cards right, any plans she’d made for the night would be canceled to make room for a whole bunch of my own.

  I arrived at the Paradise out of breath but with plenty of time to spare and so I headed downstairs to the bar, perched myself on a ridiculously high stool, bought a bottle of Michelob and sat staring up at the metal staircase expectantly.

  When Mel arrived (fifteen minutes late), it was her legs that I saw first. She was wearing her short black sleeveless dress, my favorite dress, the one I’d always thought made her look perfect.

  She greeted me with a kiss and sat down. “Hi, Duff.”

  “Hi,” I said sheepishly, returning her kiss with a peck on the cheek followed by a hug to balance the lack of intimacy of the kiss. These were all delicate maneuvers that required a deftness of touch I wasn’t sure I possessed.

  “You look great,” I said warmly.

  “Thanks.” She smiled. “You look a bit sweaty.”

  I examined myself in the mirror behind the bar. Mel was right. I couldn’t have looked sweatier if I’d been in a sauna. All that running to get here on time had taken its toll on a body as unaccustomed to exercise as mine. I attempted to make myself look a little less flustered while she spoke to the barman. She ordered another beer for me and paused carefully before ordering a vodka and orange for herself.

  Our conversation was nowhere near as stilted as it had been on the phone. In fact, after a while it was almost possible to forget that we weren’t a couple. We updated each other on the small but important details of our lives (I told her about work, recent gigs and last night’s EastEnders, while she told me about work, her flat and new bars and restaurants she’d been out to).

  Mel really was pleased when I told her the news of Vernie’s pregnancy, and made me give her all the details that I knew. I told her she should go and see Vernie, but she smiled awkwardly and said she didn’t think she’d have the time because of work. It was a real shame that our not being together had to mean that she and Vernie couldn’t be friends. She asked me to send her love to Vernie and Charlie and made a note in her diary to send them both a card. She asked me about Dan, too, and I told her he was okay. I considered telling her about the wedding invitation from Meena, but reasoned it was a subject too close to home for us to be comfortable with. In the end, though, it cropped up in the conversation all by itself.

  “I had a letter from Meena,” said Mel. “You know, Dan’s ex-girlfriend. You’ll never believe this, but she’s getting married.”

  “I know,” I said warily. “She sent an invitation to Dan.”

  “Oh,” she said ominously. “I suppose she has her reasons.” She paused. “Meena sent me an invitation, too, along with the letter. Well, actually it’s addressed to you and me. She didn’t know about us—”

  “I think it must just be for you,” I interjected quickly, stopping her from finishing the sentence. “Meena was never exactly my biggest fan.”

  “No,” she said, handing me the invitation. “You take it. It’s ages since I’ve seen Meena. I’ll just send a present or something in the post.”

  I handed the invitation back to her. “Look, she’s inviting you because she likes you. My name’s only on the invitation because she’s being polite. Anyway, if Dan’s not going—which he isn’t—then I don’t think I should go either. Why don’t you and Julie go or something? You know how you love a good wedding—” I stopped, glaringly aware of my own stupidity. “I’m sorry . . . you know what I mean.”

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “I know what you mean.”

  The bar was beginning to fill up with after-work drinkers, so to help create a “groovy” ambience the barman dropped a tape into the cassette deck behind the bar. I was hoping it would be something inspirational to lift my mood, but instead through the speakers came one of those songs you recognize immediately because it’s played every thirty seconds on daytime radio.

  “Mel,” I said, as the song reached its annoyingly catchy chorus, “it really means a lot to me that you could come today. I kept thinking that you must hate me and want me dead and all that. I just want you to know that I still love you—it wasn’t anything to do with you. What I mean is . . . it’s not that I couldn’t marry you. I couldn’t marry anyone . . .”

  “Thanks,” she said bitterly. I desperately wished I’d left well alone.

  “I don’t understand. Why are you taking this the wrong way? I want us to be friends. I need us to be friends.”

  Mel emptied the contents of her glass in one smooth movement. “This is so typical of you, Duffy. Sometimes you’re so caught up in yourself that you don’t see anyone else’s needs. What about what I need? What makes you think that I’d want to be friends with you? Every meeting, every phone call a reminder that you’d rather live in”—she flicked through her internal phrase book for the perfect put-down—“the kennel of the unkempt with Dan than with me! I waited four years for you and I’ve got nothing to show for it. This isn’t a meeting of equals: it was you who didn’t want to marry me.”

  I didn’t have a leg to stand on. It didn’t take any great insight to see that she was right. If the tables had been turned, there would be no way that I’d be sitting in some poncy bar that played terrible music, listening to Mel give me excuses why, although she loved me, she didn’t want to be with me until death did us part.

  “I’ve done this all wrong,” I said.

  “Yeah, you’ve got that right.” She sighed and ordered another beer for me and another vodka and orange for herself.

  I tried to get us back on to safer ground by asking how Mark and Julie were getting on.

  “They’re fine,” said Mel, sipping her drink slowly. “Mark’s been busy at work as usual. Julie’s busy, too, but she’s somehow managed to take up pottery classes after work. So far all she’s made are ashtrays. Well, they start out as vases and then end up as ashtrays. I’ve got five of the things!” She laughed, seeming to relax a little. “Do you want one?”

  “A Watson original?” I said, laughing. “I’d love one.” This is good, I thought. This is what we are about. “Any other Mark and Julie news?”

  She paused, sipped, and thought the question over. “They’ve decided that they’re definitely moving somewhere bigger next year. Hopefully in time for their wedding.” Mark and Julie were obsessed with moving house. In the time I’d known them they’d bought and renovated three houses. I think the plan was that as soon as prices in their corner of Shepherd’s Bush reached critical mass, they’d sell up and finally move to their spiritual homeland, Notting Hill Gate. “Oh, and they’re going to rent a villa in Tuscany at the start of August with a few friends. They’ve invited me along. I told them I didn’t fancy it, but Julie’s twisted my arm, so I just might take up the offer after all.”

  She checked her watch. “It’s seven o’clock, Duff. I’m going to have to go.”

  “Okay,” I said, sliding off the stool. I was disappointed that she hadn’t changed her mind, but I was sure it didn’t mean that I wasn’t in with a chance. The bar was now completely packed. We worked our way across the room and up the stairs, stepping out through the door into early evening sunshine.

  “Okay then, Duff,” said Mel abruptly. “I’ll have to say goodbye now.”

  �
�Off anywhere nice?”

  “Just out with some friends,” she replied. “Which way are you going?”

  “Leicester Square,” I said, having duly noted that her friends were now nameless.

  “Listen,” said Mel, “I’m sorry I was horrible to you just now, about this being friends thing.”

  “No. No, you weren’t,” I apologized. “It was nothing less than I deserved. Really.”

  She smiled patiently. “This is still hard to deal with but I’m glad that you want us to be friends, because we are, aren’t we? I don’t want us just to drift apart, okay?”

  This is it, I thought. The Moment.

  She kissed me on the cheek and I gave her a hug and returned her kiss briefly. On the lips. It wasn’t a peck either. It was a full-on, pressure-filled “give-me-a-few-more-seconds-and-I’ll-be-playing-tennis-with-your-tonsils” snog. It was wrong of me, shallow and contemptible. My title was that of ex-boyfriend, and as such my kissing location was restricted to the cheek. Cheeks were for ex-boyfriends, acquaintances and relatives. Lips were for current boyfriends, close friends and stuffed animals. Those were the rules and I’d broken them.

  Mel’s glare put me right within seconds. She pulled away awkwardly, opened her mouth about to share her thoughts with me on my behavior, but obviously thought better of it. Instead, she sighed as if I’d managed to disappoint her more than even she’d thought possible, and walked away.

  Burdened with guilt I made my way down Wardour Street toward Leicester Square tube, but something—you could call it a sixth sense but I prefer to label it my sense of tragedy—made me look back just in time to see a black Saab convertible with the license plate ROB 1 pull up next to Mel. The car’s casually attired driver got out, greeted Mel, put his hands on either side of her waist and kissed her.

  On the lips.

  He wasn’t a close friend, otherwise I’d know him.

  And he certainly wasn’t a sodding stuffed animal.

  So there really was only one option left.

  Thinking back on it, as I walked to the tube with a black hole in the place my heart used to be, it occurred to me that it wasn’t so much the kiss that bothered me. It was his hands on her dress. My favorite dress.

  You need to get out more

  Mel’s mysterious, lip-kissing, personal-number-plated new “friend” completely threw my world off course. If I was the earth, then Rob 1 was a huge meteorite knocking me off my axis, thus heralding in a new ice age.

  I’d never have believed Mel would want to find a replacement me this soon, only a month after we’d broken up, let alone one so solvent, good-looking and upwardly mobile. Whatever happened to grieving periods? That’s the problem with modern women, I decided. No bloody sense of decorum. The thing that really hurt was that it hadn’t even occurred to me that I might even need a replacement Mel. That’s how stupid I am.

  I wondered whether it was just me being unreasonable. What did “real” people consider a decent mourning period following the death of a four-year relationship? I conducted a (fairly) scientific straw poll of family, friends and associates to find out.

  Results from the Duffy Institute of Relationship Statistics as follows:

  Dan: “For a woman like Mel? Three months minimum. You’ve obviously made some mistake, mate. This guy’s got to be her brother. What, as far as you know she hasn’t got a brother? Even better, mate, he’s got to be her long-lost brother.”

  Charlie: “I have difficulty even recalling the existence of any woman before Vernie but I pretty much agree that for a relationship like yours three months would seem to be the industry standard.”

  Greg: “For women to get over a relationship of that length, anything from six months to never. But for us men pretty much as and when we feel like it—the sooner the better, though. It’s not sexist, it’s genetics: women want a long-term provider while blokes just want to have a good time. It’s the way of the world.”

  Vernie: “Even though I’m a pregnant woman and therefore a cauldron of unreasonability, I have to say this: women can do whatever they like when they like because all men are stupid.”

  My mum: “Enough time to heal the hurt but not so much that you drown yourself in depression.”

  With the exception of my sister’s answer (and needless to say Greg’s), I interpreted the results of the survey to conclude that Mel should still have been in mourning. She’d obviously made a mistake in her calculations and was gallivanting around town with her new man when she was still, according to conservative estimates, some six weeks away from recovery.

  It’s only the beginning of May, woman! You’re meant to be in mourning! You’re not supposed to get over me until at least August!

  Up until this stage of events I’d been coping reasonably well with life without Mel—it was as if she’d gone on holiday and was taking a long time to come back—but seeing her with Rob 1 made everything more real than it needed to be—and now it hurt more than anything I’d ever experienced in my life. When I’d split up with girlfriends in the past, I’d dropped out of their lives so completely that it was easy to imagine that they’d stopped existing altogether. But with this stupid let’s-be-friends thing still at the forefront of my mind, I had to come to terms with the fact that the never-ending ache in my heart was bound to get a lot worse before the passing of time would make it any better.

  It made no sense to be the only one of us grieving. But grieve I had to. So I let myself go wild for a while. I called in sick at work, canceled all my gigs for the coming week and ate bag after bag of Butterkist toffee popcorn whilst watching bad daytime TV. I even adopted the uniform of dressing gown and blue Marks & Spencer pajamas my mum had bought me for Christmas. I told her at the time that I wouldn’t need them because I slept naked, and I remember quite clearly that she said, “Take them. In case of an emergency.” Now I knew what she meant.

  During that week I fell apart. Every few days Dan, Charlie and Vernie would try to drag me out of my melancholy, but I always refused, explaining to them that this was only a temporary measure I needed to go through in order to come out the other side.

  Two o’clock Saturday afternoon—approximately eight days since I’d gone into mourning—I did just that. It wasn’t like I’d stopped hurting—I still felt the pain as keenly as ever—I think it was more a case that through my grieving I’d learned to live with it.

  I let LadyBic razor and chin meet for the first time in over a week (sweet justice indeed. Mel was forever telling me off for using her leg razors to shave with), I molted my mourning clothes straight into the washing machine, and naked, strode into the shower where I symbolically washed the sadness from me. It was then, as I rubbed a large handful of Mel’s abandoned Laboratoires Garnier frequent-use fortifying shampoo into my scalp, that I made a decision. The decision to change. To become a bachelor boy like Dan—a superstud of seduction, a he-who-will-never-again-come-off-worse-with-the-chicks, a righteous dude committed to anything but commitment.

  What I needed to start me off in my new role as a superstud of seduction was a dead cert. Someone to break me in gently. I flicked through my address book looking for past liaisons that might have fallen into that category. A–Z and back again. Twice. None of them had been dead certs when I had met them—and it would have taken an outlandish brand of optimism to make me believe that things had changed that drastically in my four years out of the game.

  When I came across Alexa’s card with her phone number I thought long and hard about making contact. “Didn’t she describe you as ‘cute in a little-boy-lost manner’?” said my ego eagerly. “She’s TV’s Hottest Totty, you know.” Alexa was precisely what my ego needed to get over the Rob 1 blow, but I needed practice, a few jogs around the block before I’d be in any shape to tackle a New York marathon like her.

  Over mid-afternoon toast and beer (Dan’s idea of a welcome-back-to-the-land-of-the-living feast), we discussed the problem at hand and together arrived at the perfect solution not just to my
own predicament but Charlie’s and Dan’s too. Now all we had to do was persuade Charlie.

  I’m not going to a nightclub!”

  It was later that same day and Dan and I were round at Charlie’s listening to him reject our master plan. He sat on the edge of their huge sofa looking at me and Dan as if we’d lost our minds on the short journey from Muswell Hill to Crouch End. It was at times like this that the age gap between Charlie and ourselves became most apparent. At thirty-four he felt he’d served his time doing pointless youthful activities, and was one of the few people of his years who took comfort in the idea of middle age.

  “Nightclub?” goaded Dan. “Have you just beamed in from 1962, Grandad? ‘Nightclubs,’ as you so quaintly call them, lost their ‘not daylight’ prefix a long time ago. You need to get out more.”

  “All right, then,” said Charlie. “I am not going”—he faltered as if the word alone was making him feel nauseous—“clubbing.” He paused to see what effect it’d had on him. “I can’t believe you made me say that. What kind of worthless tosser uses words like ‘clubbing’? It’s like ‘pubbing.’ Are you coming pubbing on Saturday? No, I’m afraid I can’t. I’m going clubbing. After which I’m kebabbing and then cabbing home. I hate progress. Suddenly every noun has been turned into a verb.”

  Dan and I exchanged glances as if Charlie was going off on one.

  “Sorry, lads. I’m too old for this. I am. Look at me.” We did. Although Charlie had a youthful face, his body let him down. The contentedness of married life had increased his girth like the passing of time adds rings to a tree trunk. But somewhere deep inside him we were convinced there was a teenager who wanted to party. We just had to find a way to let him out.

  “Don’t stress it,” reassured Dan. “We’ve got everything planned out. A boys’ night out will take your mind off the baby, Duffy’s mind off the whole Mel saga and, fingers crossed, my mind off Meena and her stupid wedding invitation.”