The Proposal

My desk is a mess.  My colleagues don't know how I can find anything, and I don't either.  I'd really rather not bother looking.  However, when I found my forehead resting on top of a coffee lid and scissor handles, it became apparent that I should at least clear a space for when I just need to put my head down and cry.

Surprisingly, my forehead becoming attached to the sticky side of a coffee lid had little to do with actual work and slightly more to do with Alex having just told me his girlfriend is pregnant. 

I had called him from work to keep the conversation short, and business-like.  In contrast to the months of thought I had put into how I would once and for all end our friendship and put a stop to all future communication, I figured the conversation itself would be short and sweet. 

(My original plan had always been to have this conversation in person.  In my fantasies we would be alone together, I would know exactly what to say, I would look amazing, and there would possibly be a wind-machine somewhere in the vicinity to blow my hair around fetchingly.  If I cried, it would be no more than a very pretty tear or two - enough to demonstrate heartbreak, but not enough to generate any snot or swelling.)

(In turn, he would be devastated, and would simply say that he understood completely how and why I felt that way.  Depending on my level of delusion on any particular day, I imagined he would then break up with his girlfriend rather than face the thought of not being able to send me text messages any more, and we would all live happily ever after.  Except for the girlfriend. Imagining a happy ending for myself can be hard enough, so she was on her own.)

I had even made plans to visit him on my holidays, but as it turns out, my vagina exploded and I spent the first night of what was to have been my holiday in hospital. 

Not that it would have mattered all that much, because Alex and his girlfriend had taken a last-minute vacation package to Mexico, so while I was laying there wondering what it meant when the nurse told me my vagina was packed, he was on a beach with her. 

So we stood each other up.  One more than the other. 

Actually, it was this thought that made me angry enough to force the inevitable conversation.  While I was experiencing one of the most horrific and terrifying moments of my life, his girlfriend was at an all-inclusive...with him.  I realize that life isn't fair, but should I ever make it to an afterlife, I'm going to be demanding an explanation, and somebody or something is getting kicked in the balls. 

Once Alex returned from Mexico, he wanted to know if I had been out his way and gone already.  I told him I never made it, due to a bit of an accident. 

Suddenly, he was very worried about me and wanting to know what happened.  I wasn't sure I wanted to tell him, but it made for a great excuse for a phone call. 

Which is roughly when things went off the rails - presuming things had ever really been on the rails to begin with.

First off, I hadn't planned on telling him what happened.  Alex is actually one of the few people I had told about the original assault, and we spent a good several hours crying together on the phone when I did. He actually cried with me, and I did not need a repeat.  Not so much the crying - I couldn't bear Alex being amazing all over again when I needed him to be the guy worth getting rid of.

I told him everything anyway, and he was amazing. 

For my part, I wasn't eloquent.  I stumbled and stammered and heard my voice breaking, felt my nose getting snotty, and instead of ending with the by now well-rehearsed and sunny sounding proclamation that I'm sure I would be just fine and am getting better every day, I told him how I may as well be a fucking eunuch and I was so sick of hurting all the time and I can't even take a shit properly and how I'm never going to be normal again. 

I couldn't believe I told him all of that - particularly the part about going number two, because he and I have had actual arguments over whether girls really do that or not.  I had always assured him we did, but for a guy who refuses to buy toilet paper in public, it was a hard sell. 

Even more worrisome was how quiet he got after I was done. I had no idea what he could be thinking. First he said that although he knows I don't know who that piece of shit bastard who started this whole thing was, but if I ever did know, he would kill that guy.  Straight up kill him.  I know that, right? 

Then he said this.  "You also know, that whatever you can or can't do sexually is like, the least important thing about you right?  To me, you are so much more and so much more important than that."

And then he told me Shelley is pregnant.  He's so glad I can tell him things like I do, because he tells me things that he doesn't tell anybody else.  Not even Shelley.  He tells me things he can't tell her.  In fact, the only people who knew she was pregnant at that moment was him, her and me. 

This is when my forehead hit my coffee lid, and stayed there. 

In defense of all that came next, I really did try.  I actually used him telling me how he can talk to me in ways he can't talk to her as a jumping off point.  Didn't he think that was a bad thing?  Didn't he think that it was probably a good thing we never ended up seeing each other, and didn't he think that now that Shelley is pregnant we should stop talking? For good?

As it turns out, he did not think any of those things at all.  In fact, he thinks that I'm the most amazing woman he's ever met and can't imagine not having me in his life, in any way possible. 

In case I didn't believe him, he spent the next twenty minutes describing all the ways I'm amazing, and if he didn't feel that way, would we even be talking at all still?  And even though he knows others would consider the relationship he has with me to be cheating, he knows how he feels about it, and that's enough for him to know it's not wrong at all.

Why couldn't he just say he saw my point and leave it at that? This unplanned for reaction was exactly why I wanted the conversation to happen in person.  I still would have had no idea what to say, but at least my hair would have been blowing fetchingly.

And so I back-pedalled.  I back-pedalled like the Tour de France on rewind.  We would stay friends.  We would stay in touch.  We do have this connection.  I feel it too.  We always will.  I miss you. I miss you. I miss you too.

I had tried to end things, but I've never been good at writing conclusions.  Instead, once we had re-declared our intense, undying like for one another, there was nothing left to do but congratulate him on his impending fatherhood with another woman.

Only...he didn't seem that happy.  He sounded scared and sad.  It wasn't planned, although from everything he told me I can't help but think there was a little bit of planning on her part.  He had trusted her to take care of things.  He wanted kids, but maybe not now.  He always thought he'd be married.

I told him if everybody waited until everything was perfect and they were totally ready to have children, the world would end due to population decline. 

He knew this was true, but still...he just thought he'd be married.

Better buy the ring, I said.  She's no doubt waiting for it. 

Maybe he said.  He's not getting any younger, and neither is she.  Maybe it's time to grow up.

Maybe it is.  Better go jewellery shopping.

There is indeed a time for everything, apparently up to and including a time to counsel the man you love to buy another woman an engagement ring and marry her. 

Somewhere in between a time to reap and a time to sow, I'm sure the authors of the bible considered slipping that one in there, but probably deemed it too fucking depressing. 

******

And so, right now, I'm working on a proposal for a book.  I'm pitching it to publishing companies as the opportunity to score another bestseller along the lines of "Eat, Pray, Love" by Elizabeth Gilbert.  If they could make money paying for that that bitch to travel all over the world because her marriage was going badly and she was experiencing distressing levels of ennui that only eating and praying and banging some guy in Bali could ease, have I got a deal for them.

In fact, they don't even have to send me around the world.  I'd be fine with a weekend trip somewhere.  I'd be sure to capitalize on the Eat, Pray, Love template, but I can't promise I'll pray.  Maybe...Eat, Drink, and I'd Love to Bang You But You Can Only Stick It In Half-Way Unless You Have a Small Penis...?  It's a working title - not written in stone.

The point is, I'd very much like to escape my life for a little while, and being paid to travel the world and write about how it perked me up a bit would be a great start. 

Maybe they don't pay for me to go to three countries - maybe I propose they just cover gas money for me to go to IKEA.  The point is...I feel like I'm done with just about everything.  So done, that it's time for something different.