Coach Guy

London can be a big scary place sometimes, even when you've lived here for as long as I have. I think I'm trying to try and find a way to talk about something, anything really. But it's not always easy when you don't have a topic in mind…

 I'm looking at all the pictures of people I've loved and I find it hard to remember some of them. That's crazy. I genuinely loved them and now I don't even remember what for. But it comes back quickly when I think about it for a few minuets. Like this guy, Max. I met him on a long coach journey. I was coming from Glasgow, one of the best cities in the world, to London. So we were sitting next to each other for a long time. But the moment he walked onto the coach and looked around for a spare seat I was willing him to sit next to me. This seat. Here. Here. He wasn't even looking at me, he was looking for a seat by himself. But there weren't any left on the coach. Come on I won't bite... unless you like it. He looked down at me and said; 'Mind if I sit hear?' So that was the moment, rubbish right? That was the moment I fell in love. I didn't know anything about him at that point but at the same time I did. I could tell he was a very self conscious type of person from the way he looked around the coach. And he didn't make eye contact with me when he asked a direct question. To me that's instantly endearing, especially when I find a person hot. And he was hot, and well dressed. It almost made me think he had a girlfriend, but the stubble made me doubt that. He had a refined voice, which I couldn't quite place, I'm good with accents so that's surprising. Therefore I was very intrigued by him even though I knew stuff about him. I obviously told him he could sit.

'Where are you heading?' I asked. He looked a little startled, people don't often talk on coaches. 'London', he said, 'but then I'm not so sure.' Well now this was interesting. Because he had said something that was clearly baiting me into further conversation. 

'What do you mean?' I asked.

'Well I don't know where I'm going to stay, cause my brother is having problems with his wife, and my sister only has a tiny sofa.' Youngest of three and not actually from London. Definitely the south of England though.

'Big families, you'd think they'd be more reliable but they never are.' He laughs at this.

'Tell me about it.' At this he goes into his backpack. Inside there's just a small blank canvas and a case of arty stuff. I love artists, they're always so ready to fall in love. Now you may think, Dave, how can you generalise like that. But hear me out. Artists want to be in love with something, and by artists I don't just mean people who draw. Musicians, writers, anyone creative. They love to be in love, or obsessed with something. Even if it’s pain. They don’t do things by half’s. I guess it stems from the attention they have to put into a piece or whatever. Max, although I didn't know his name at this point, was becoming this amazing person right in front of my eyes. I was in love with him, I loved what I assumed his life was, how he would react in certain situations, how he looked, everything. His hair was amazing. You know you get people who just have really great hair? He was one of those people. 'What have you been doing in Glasgow?' He asked me after a minuet or so. Now we had a two way dialogue, this was going well. 'Just visiting a friend who moved up here, I knew her in school and it's been ages since we saw each other.' Not a lie, but it'd also been ages since we'd slept together so we had to meet up really. 'That's cool, kinda been doing the same. I've not really got a home at the moment, so I'm dossing on people sofa's and spare rooms.' Oh My God just let me save you and make it all okay and we’ll cuddle and fuck and it’ll be amazing! - Was an approximate thought. 

'Sounds rough, how long you been at it?’

'Almost six months. I've been through so much of the country, and to be honest I don't know why I'm doing it. But once i've been somewhere for a few weeks I start to realise how much the people want me gone. So I move on and let them get back to normal.'

'And so London?'

'Yeah, it's kinda a last resort. I hate asking for stuff of my siblings but it's become necessary.' I think about telling him to come and stay with me and he can fall in love with me right back if he wants to and then everything will be okay... but I don’t. I don’t even know if he’s gay or not… I mean I had vague idea. Well clearly he is, I know that now, but not then okay. 

So we talked all the way to London. Oh lord how we talked. *Disclaimer: when I use the lords name, I am doing it because people in my family do and it’s a habit I’ve picked up, not because I’m deeply religious, quite the opposite in fact.* So, I found out all about him, and he found out whatever I thought he would like about me. I found out he was straight fairly quickly though, which was a downer. But (spoiler) he wasn’t 100% straight. By the time we got to London we’d exchanged numbers and were meeting for a casual drink. Not a date, in a boy meets person who is also of the same sexual persuasion as him, type situation it would be. But this isn’t. But I have friends, I know that seems totally unbelievable but there are a lot of people who won’t got for me, almost half the world, so I have friends. 

Anyway more importantly back to the really great hair that I can’t believe I haven’t tried to describe yet. Okay I feel like I’ve built it up to much. (Takes breath to calm self) He had long blond hair, but it was a total mess, like the only reason it was that long was because he couldn’t afford to get it cut. But it wasn’t curly or that frizzy, it was just a straight, dirty blond main of hair. Very clean for long hair on a guy, and usually he wears it tied back. Okay that doesn’t sound that great does it. Just imagine it tied up and all sexy while he’s got paint all over his chest and face at 1:39 in the morning. (Breaths again). So he was my friends, for a long time, it was truly heartbreaking. He got a place in London eventually and painted and we both got together a lot when he tried to sell his work. If he failed we'd get together and drink and bitch until 2:30am. If he succeeded we’d get together and drink and ‘paint the town red’, sorry, until… well not necessarily 2:30am but you get the idea. 

So about a year after I’d met him he called me, he was high as fuck and begging me to come over to look at one of his paintings. And me being me I went. London’s always fun by night anyway. So I went and saw his painting. I’m not going to describe it, because visual art is there to be observed, not described, it’s medium isn’t words. But it was good, very weird, but good. But then he kissed me, it was a weird kiss. Mainly because he starting crying after about 7 seconds in. We talked into the early hours about how he’d wanted to do that for ages and he’d never told anyone he had feelings for men as well as women. And he sobbed and sobbed. I remember sitting in his place until it was almost midday, when it started raining and we got into his bed, and we kissed again, and fell asleep fairly quickly. I remember taking him by the hand and leading him to his room.  

I want to add that as I’m writing this I just took a very deep sigh. Emotional venting like that at me, at the time it made me, not that I needed to, fall in love with him again. Writing this makes me want him back, makes me fall in love again. Makes me want him in my arms again, he was mine, and he loved me right back. He woke up long after me, groggy as hell but so happy so see me there. The light in his eyes, it was like I could see an actual light in there. We stayed in that bed, well that apartment, for three days. We made love, and I don’t often refer to sex like that, on the second. He cried afterwards. Again for a long time. When I left, and it was me who had to leave, burst that amazing little bubble he’d created, he painted. The work was amazing, I wanted to cry when I saw it. God I loved him. God I love him. 

Now’s the part I hate, the part where I end it. I want to leave it there, say we’re still together now and he still loves me. But that’s not what happened. You see, he’s from a die hard Christian family. Yeah I know. And when they found out… well they didn’t like it. I was living with him almost full time at that point, and we were happy. He’d got one of those arty lofts that you always see that artists have in the movies. Of course I wasn’t monogamous and it’d probably just been ruined by me getting bored of him or interested in someone else anyway… but when it happens this way... So they found out. His brother came over one morning, he had a key, and he walked in on us. Max begged him not to tell anyone, literally begged, and so did I. When his family disowned him he was heartbroken. He went round to his Mum’s to have her shut the door in his face over and over again. I’d come home and find him sitting with the lights off more often that not. His family made him choose. He’d always been close with them… always. He didn’t choose, but once they put the choice out there it ate him. He thought about it too much, he started to want what he didn’t have more than what he did. 

And so it tore us apart. Technically speaking I ended it. I didn’t see him for a long time, then he tracked me down, told me he wanted to run away with me, he’d made a massive mistake. And I went with him.       

Large Hot Chocolate

So writing this in a Starbucks, this is a new experience, I always see people do it so I guess I can’t really be that bad. But I’m very self conscious of someone looking over my shoulder so I’m sitting in the corner of the less crowded upstairs part. It very comfortable up here anyway so I’m not bothered. However I’m a little at odds cause I feel like I’m the only one here that isn’t part of a couple. I mean all the tables are either taken up two people who are clearly in a relationship, and then one big ‘group of couples’. And looking around just makes me want a new relationship. But then I am a bit thin on the ground at the moment so I guess I’ll find something soon. When Mika said ‘Live you your life until love is found, cause love only gets you down’ I really think he just meant the pursuit of it. I mean I’m always in love and therefore I’m happy a lot of the time, but whenever I purposely go out and look for love then I find it hard and then it starts to make me miserable. 

Watching couples always makes me happy though. Like even if they’re unhappy it nice, and that sounds sadistic but hear me out. When people argue it’s only because they’re passionate about something, and when couples argue it’s just cause they’re really passionate about each other, it like seeing a couple look over a table and lock eyes and genuinely be doing it cause they’re in love and not just for show. Like in the group of couples, well mainly couples, sitting in here there’s one couple of two men. Big deal in our society right, it shouldn’t be but it is, and they can’t be snogging in public or anything but I still find them really romantic. Like they’re sitting next to each other and not opposite and every now and then they’ll just lightly touch each other. Like on the back or the wrist. And they don’t look openly gay, I mean unless you look. But there they are, really in love and it’s kinda amazing. Like as a race of people we have constructed the idea of love, and it’s amazing sometimes. In it’s simplest forms I guess. 

***

Okay so news. I just met Hayley. She came up and sat basically next to me, by herself. I just had an amazing chat with her and we’re going on a date next week. So I’ll let y’all know how that goes. She’s really small, like only just over 5ft, and blond and really cute. She was the one to start talking to me as well, like she just looked over and asked what I was writing so vehemently. I told her it was just a article on literature, which isn’t untrue, I am currently writer one of them too. She’s also into literature and is doing a masters at the moment at Kings. Wow I really Love her. Also I’m really getting into this blog stuff.  

Crash

So this blog has become a very nostalgic place. It’s probably because whenever I write it I’m always trying to get something off my chest and then I end up writing about a person from my past. Recently though there’s been a lot of stuff going around my head about this guy I met at uni. His name’s Chris. And well, he died… 

Yeah shit I know it’s a bit, dramatic. God I almost feel like I’m betraying someone by writing this. He’s dead, and he’s the only person that I’ve actually lost… Like I can’t get him back and that’s still scary. I feel so selfish for still loving him as well. Like I can’t let him go because there was no true ending. He died and that was beyond my control. Okay shit now I’m crying and typing this is more difficult than what I thought. 

  

***

Okay I guess I’ll start from the beginning. When we met, well when I first saw him I was in the library at uni, I was in third year at the time so the library was basically my home. I remember the image of how he looked almost perfectly. Well he was wearing a plain black shirt, tucked in (I know right who does that casually) to dark jeans, I’m not sure if they’re light black or dark blue, dark blue seems more likely. Or were they grey? I think they were. Anyway. He had that greyish/brown/blond type hair that you don’t get a lot on people, it’s a weird one even to describe. It’s like the colour of ash. It was also slightly wet, well it was raining heavily outside I think. He sat strange, at an angle so the desk was at his side and he leaned towards it, and he was facing me, but clearly not noticing me. He fidgeted and changed this position a lot, sitting cross legged on the chair. His leg bounced up and down from time to time. He took his shoes off at one point, who said one has to wear shoes in the library anyway. He stretched a lot as well, at one point I almost died when he curved his back and his shirt is tightened around his chest. He had dark brown eyes, I have a weird set of values that I attach to certain colours of eyes, but perhaps now isn’t the best time to go into that. Hey look, I resisted the impulse to go into something that I wanted to go into, go me. (Gives self high-five). Oh lord give me strength he twiddled his figures, who does that anymore? 

Do I just fall for beautiful people? Yeah in a way I do. I guess this is making me realise that I always get attracted to most people just by how they look. I mean that is what peaks my initial interested. But if they’re honestly dicks then I’m going to fall out of love fairly quickly. Or if a person isn't attractive to me at first but I really like them then I will fall for them, but then they seem to become more attractive to me, sooooooo… in essence I don’t really know. 

I remember I looked up at one point and my thought process was: Da fuck was that eye contact. Shit I’m in love. I wasn’t even staring at him either, well not that time, I was just looking up from reading and I caught him. 

Eventually however he got up, and meticulously puts everything away into his bag. Now that’s fucking sexy, I love a person who takes care. And he is truly a person who cares a lot, about appearance also, he had a scarf and coat that looked about £200, what student does that? He gets up and leaves, but he does look back once before walking out… I think. Anyway I didn’t see him again for a while, but I thought about him from time to time. I met him again when I was handing in an essay or something, well I was definitely in the English Department. I was leaning over the pile of free books, which are just old books the department are donating to the poor students, and I had a couple under my arm when he walked up the table which I was at. As I noticed him I said “hey” like I knew him. He looked very confused. 

“Um hey.” He said straight back. I knew exactly what I had done then. I knew exactly who he was to me but he couldn’t remember if he knew me or not. So he was confused and I wasn’t. But I had no idea what to do now. There was a long moment silence. “I’m sorry, but where do I know you from?” He asked. Oh shit, accidental ruse was broken fairly quickly. Now I was unsure whether he was Gay or not. I mean he looked it a little but you should never judge someone on how they look. But I went for it anyway. 

“Um… it’s a bit awkward… but I think you gave me your number the other night…” That’s approximately what I said. Of course whenever I put speech in it’s approximate. He looks at me confused. 

“Yeah I think I did? Um why didn’t you call me?” I bit my lip, I always do that cause it’s a sign of interest that they pick up on thinking you don’t know you’re doing it, but I do know i'm doing it so ha. It’s a sort of control thing, but I do know that other people do the same thing. 

“Well I kinda lost it, I think… I definitely remember going to text you but not being able to… but if you gave      me your number again I’d promise not to loose it?” He looks at me with mock suspicion. 

“How ‘bout you give me yours. That way you can’t slip up.” So I did and a day or so later he texted me. And so we dated. It was very out of the public eye. He was a first year and not publicly out. We had this long drawn out phase where we were dating. It was very… different for me. Like I guess it wouldn’t come as a surprise to say that most of my relationships happen at a fast pace. But Chris was so nervous, for a long time, and really self conscious. He was so honest about everything as well, and eventually I told him that I never had his number and that I just thought he was really hot so I lied to get it. I remember being scared when telling him that but he didn’t even take it in a bad way. He actually thought that was better than having met me in a club and definitely funnier. 

This all sounds really beautiful right. And it was. It was your whole 'running in the rain, clasping hands over a table, falling asleep to a movie at 3am shit.' But I can smash it all in two seconds by saying that he wasn’t the only person I was seeing at the time. And I obviously gave him the impression that he was. He always commended me on how patient I was with him and stuff because we didn’t have sex for a while, but I was getting it else where anyway. And I don't remember feeling that bad about it at the time. But I do now. 

Yep that’s right I’m a terrible person. He was in love with me. I was the one singular love of his life and I couldn’t even do him the common decency to let him just be the one thing in my life. Now I don’t rate people I’ve loved against each other, I could never do that… but Chris was pretty special, it was probably the closest I’ve come to having a… I don’t know, an innocent relationship. I’m not sure if that makes sense of not. 

We’d been together for a year when he died. Well just over. I take some pride in saying that when he actually died I was only seeing, and sleeping, with him. I can’t say if I would have ended up just staying with him, it’s not in my nature, but I would have tried as much as possible. I could have done it. And then it all just happened. There was a crash, and Chris was in it, and he didn’t come out of it. Simply put he was gone. I never got to meet his parents, I never got to see how far I could commit myself, I never got to show him off. God how I wanted to show him off. 

Is that rubbish? Do I even do justice to him? I don’t know. Maybe. The sad thing is that it took me less time than we were actually in a relationship to fall in love again. I mean I just reverted back to this big lusty mess, one that I’m kinda still in now.  

The Post After the Phone Call

 Excuse my blog post title, it took me a long time to think that up, mainly because once again I was delaying starting this post… because I really shouldn’t have left that last post where I did. So I called Ethan. I did grapple with the idea for several hours, well I say hours, I mean minuets. Because I got myself into the the mindset of going back and forth. But then I realised it was going to happen anyway so I may as well just embrace my fate. That was not a good move. As you can see it’s been ages since my last post, and it’s been Hell since then. Plus I forgot about this again for a while. But everything is done now, all the dust has settled and I’m ready to offload everything. 

Well… Okay this is harder to get into than I thought it would be. Okay. It started when I called him, of course. He answered on the third ring, and seemed to know it was me straight away. He answered like I was an old friend. We got to talking for a while and then he asked if I wanted to come out with him and some of his friends. At this point I was planning on sleeping with him, which I did end up doing, so I said yeah I would. There was nothing really special about this night out, apart from the fact that I pretended to be a lot camper than I actually am, because all Ethan’s friends are really camp. I know that pissed him off a little. So when we, inevitably, got back to him later that night, he got into an argument with me. The contents wasn’t really that important, but he basically said that I never show the true me to anyone. Which is pretty true really, so that scared me a little. But seeing as I was still wanted to seduce him I told him that he knows more of the real me than anyone. Which is kinda true, he’s scratched the surface before, but in comparison to what I really am, he’s nowhere near the truth. So I ended up fucking him, it was great, I got him out my system and because he’d just had an argument with me I didn’t feel like falling in love with him. But then shit got weird. 

The next morning I awoke to find he wasn’t in, which was a little annoying because I always stay for breakfast. If I know the person it’s good to talk and catch up, and if I don’t it’s often good to get to know someone. I hate people that leave in the middle of the night. Any who, satisfied but pissed I left and went to one of my various homes. But then later in the day he turned up, at this home. It was my house, mortgage pending, we’ve just switched from renting to mortgaging, in the suburbs, with my fiancé. Me and Claire were, I dunno going about our day, and then he turned up. He was angry, it’s not even the word really. It was beyond belief. So at that point I knew my engagement was about to be broken off. But don’t get to upset there’s some good news still to come. Oh and I’m very good at breaking up with people, I do it a lot. Anyway… he turned up, basically called me a “deceitful callous bastard” who can never tell the smallest piece of truth, and blurted out that we’d had sex not twelve hours ago.      

Now me and Ethan have history, as you are well aware of by now. And this is why he’s so mad at me really. He was the first guy I ever slept with, when we were sixteen, and that didn’t last long. But since then we’ve hooked up several times and have been in and out of relationships as well. We always break up when he finds out I’ve been having sex with, or am in a relationship with, someone else. And yet, this person, who clearly thinks I’m the love of his life and that I’m going to one day going to finally settle down with him, can still manipulate me. You think this is all angry on his part, but really he’s being very precise with what he’s doing. So he broke us up. That was rough. I mean I loved Claire. She’s a history lecturer and really very into it. But I was also bored. I mean I didn’t like how long we’d been together. In a way it made me feel uneasy cause I knew it would just make it harder and harder to let go. I guess that’s part of love. But I love in a twisted way. 

But after that Ethan didn’t bother me again. I mean I’m mad at him for what he did, but now I’m just past it all. I guess I wouldn’t take any of it back, that’s probably the mantra to my life. Wouldn’t take anything back. But anyway the god news is that I got to keep the dog, a Husky called Gerard who I love loads, and now he’s living with me. So you win and you lose.