Fell In Love With A Boy..

..and then fell straight back out again, when it turned out actually he was a bit of a mentalist.

Ahh the modern fairytale in motion. I wanted to post a couple of poems today, but realised that I owe them some context, so I'll do a bit of background on me and Mystery. (Not his real name, obviously, but for good reason Mystery as a pseudonym seemed appropriate, if a little ironic.)

I met Mystery when I was 13. I had dropped in on a friend of mine on a whim - well actually, I was busting for a piss. Leaving the bathroom refreshed and well, relieved, I first saw him. Tall, dark, handsome. What a cliche. It turns out he was my friend's best buddy, and also lived down the road. Im pretty sure it was that first, inconsequential meeting that did it. He was already crawling under my skin. We continued to run into each other at various parties throughout the next couple of years, and each time we met there was a definite vibe in the air. We got along like a house on fire, bonding over our favourite author, Kurt Vonnegut (I never did tell him this, but I'd actually never heard of Kurt Vonnegut until I once overheard Mystery mention him, and spent the next few weeks reading everything he'd ever written. He is now, coincidentally, my favourite author.) Each time we met we found more in common, but these meetings were tantalisingly few and far between. Even so, I was hooked. Fuck it, I was obsessed.

But then Ash. My Irish boy. My first, and only, real love. He came into my life, stayed for 2 years, and changed everything. But thats a different story, for a different time. Suffice to say, I had my first taste of love, and it nearly killed me. It, literally, killed him.

Another party. I was 17, going on 45, and had slept with most of the boys I knew (and most of the ones I didn't). I had moved out of home and was living with my best friend Pickled Lily and her fucked-up Russian family, and was dropping out of school. I was a broken, emotionally-twisted depressive who spent her days smoking in bed watching tv, and her nights dancing in dark corners of dingy rock clubs. Funnily enough, it was one of the happiest, most genuine, times of my life. But I digress - back to Mystery. By this time, Mystery had done some growing up of his own - these days he was tall, dark, handsome. Never trust a cliche. Anyway, another party. I'd gotten used to seeing Mystery at parties, we had a routine of merging the groups of people we'd arrived with, and spending the night flirting. But no pay-off, he never made a move. And I was still too in awe of him, and too unsure of myself to do anything about it, other than spend the rest of the night frustrated and insecure. But this night, this bloody night, I was on a mission. I manoevered myself back to his house, and told myself I wasn't leaving until he kissed me. Which he did. And we fell asleep in each others arms. I will always remember that night with such fondness, as one of those nights that you can only ever have at that age, when you haven't learned to play games. Except that even the memory of that night is a lie, as we were both proficient game-players and emotional manipulators.

That night lead to more nights, more parties, more sleepovers, until a few weeks later we were an established couple in love. I can think of no better phrase than to say it was a whirlwind of emotion. Sudden. Destructive. We spent the first few months learning each other and creating an emotional connection that we both thought would save us. When I think back to those days, I get a blur of darkness, late nights, tears, fist-marks in walls, and endless words - secrets, lies, truths, merging into one another (with a backdrop soundtrack of moody 90s prog rock). Turns out he was a fucked up little boy, with severe emotional issues and secrets that had been eating away into so much of his being that he'd become them. By the time we'd become a proper couple, when I looked at him I didn't see a person, I saw his secrets, and the lie that he'd become because of them. And I couldn't handle it. I'd built him up onto such a pedestal that he could never survive the fall from grace in my eyes. But he loved me. An intense, needing, suffocating love. He bore his soul to me, raw naked pain and anger gushed from him, drowning me. He was looking for help, for redemption, but over the months he gradually sucked up so much out of me that I literally had nothing left to give him, let alone keep for myself. I cared about him, but I couldn't breathe - he was destroying me, and I couldn't help him. And I couldn't live with any more guilt. In fact, I didn't want to. Selfish bastard. It was him or me. And I chose me.

I found several thousand bits of writing and poems (adolescent scribblings) that chronicled our 4-month disaster of a relationship, and have plucked out some snippets that I think represent the transition from obsession to suffocation to anger pretty nicely! Although Ive tossed the really powerful, angry crazy ones as all they did was chronicle his confessions, which frankly, Im happy to send to rot in a landfill somewhere. (Except that I recycle, so they'll be pulped up and remade into brand new blank pieces of paper.. but I don't want to turn that into some analogy on the nature of experience. They've been overanalysed enough already).


.................


Held up against the light,
Your colours leave me wired
Distortion on your breath sharpens my senses
Panicked, I grasp at patterns caught,
Poorly saught, but momentary
Intoxicated, Mesmerised
Dislodged and terrified
I have to know you tonight..
We may never meet again.
I have to know you tonight.
And I hate what I've become - yours for the taking
Consumed by the night and your dizzy words
As I long for the courage to raise the stakes
So strange and appealing you are
What a shame I'm disguised and enthralled
Itching for your touch on mine
I have to know you tonight.
Inspired and drained of colour, I resign.



.................



Tonight I had you on my mind
I don't even wonder where you are, or
What you're doing, who you're with
But mainly what had happened if I'd
Kissed you just that little rougher
Or stayed and let myself go
And looked you in the eye when we talked of..this
Then maybe I wouldn't still be slightly in awe
Of you and yours, and what this means
To you, beyond the words you speak
Which, although glittering and decorated,
And quietly deliberated,
Throw me a little off balance, and leave me
A little silenced.



.................



With you I forget myself
& I don't know why I ever was attracted
To you and I retract my latest statement
A little belated but I
I know exactly why
And didn't the muse just get it right
Close to me
I wanted you close to me
This may be bliss, call it bliss
Call this what you wish
The truth is I never was in control of this

& I know why I ever was affected by you
And the time we spend together I spend looking at the door
I clothed myself in silence
And you gently strip me down
& I re-mould myself in your eyes
My memory faded, a little elated but I
I know I had to lie
And didn't the muse just get it right
This may be bliss, call it bliss
Call this what you wish
Close to me
I wanted you close to me
My image mirrored on your face
Every trace of you erased
& this may be bliss, call it bliss
Tell me I was tricked,
The truth, the truth is I did this.



.................



Resonance takes residence in my mind
Ah, but for the pretty lies
Consorting with the shitty rhymes.
The truth is too painful to speak of in this place
The truth is irrelevant when we're face to face.
But I am one whose reticence is necessary
Imagery draws this night to dawn
Discordia brands me innocent
Possessed and colour blind.
Faces at the window
Oh, they wouldn't scare you
But caution knows its way around me
And fear, to me, is ever-present
Effervescent tonight you shined
As ever, lacking pride or effort
Disguise to you as natural as
Ignorance plays on my mind.
And time, to me, is finite. Another
Friendly thorn in my side
But somehow you are transcendental,
An ever-playing guitar riff
Of minor chords and accidental politics.
So I'll lay down my pen & replace mine with anothers.
Writing in the third person, shame and inhibition worsens.



.................



And I apologise for my sincerity
In all its forms
And I apologise for my insincerity
When we speak of time

My secret agenda - is a crime
Tis for myself I spit and lie
And for that I apologise.

But still I will not venture a promenade
Stagnant air will remain a friend of mine
In my mind, you lie intertwined
Laced in dusty lights
A whisper and a gentle touch - my primal weakness
My accused crime for you is a spit in the eye

I like clarity. I lack clarity. but
For my (lack of) cryptic bullshit, I apologise.



.................



I broke up with Mystery one anonymous night in Winter (all I remember of that day, detail-wise, is that there was a premiere for one of the Harry Potter films, which we were 20 minutes late for because I had to watch the end of a Man United/Chelsea Champions League match. United won 1-0, since you asked). It was out of the blue, and brutal. I pulled no punches - I felt I owed him at least the honesty of telling him I never did love him. He just weakened me so much that I went along with it and stopped questioning anything. I did, begrudgingly, care about him but by that point I couldn't even bear to look at him. We didn't speak for a year after that, in which time he travelled the world, and I found myself with the third in a consecutive trilogy of men who screwed me over. Funnily enough, Mystery is the only one of those men I still see. In fact, we're good friends these days.