Monday, 7 November 2011
Elastic
I like to say I have no regrets - that I am the sum total of my collective experiences, and that the choices I made have made me who I am.
But I guess I do regret one thing - and that's the way some things turn out to be choices, without me ever realising I'd chosen them. There are things that happened by default, by accident, that I never would have chosen if someone had asked me to. This is the story of the main one.
It's about a boy. Isn't it always?
We were at school together. We were chalk and cheese, in a lot of ways. He was rugby, I was reading. He was bravado and I was was brains. Yet there was something there, always something. We liked each other, we really did. He was cocky, funny, popular. I was none of these things. Heaven only knows what he saw in me, but we had a connection. Any chance we got for a snog, we'd grab it.
He was easy to spend time with, in the boring days of summer when we had no money and all we could do was lie on the grass at the edge of the cricket pitch next to the squash club, talking shit and smoking with the rest of them. I didn't go out with him - he never asked me. I'm not sure I would have done, at school, for the simple stupid reason he was a few months younger, and therefore in the year below. Even in my nerdy swot uncoolness, I understood that a younger boyfriend might be social suicide.
It was ok because I was saving him for later. I was saving him for when he left school. He was leaving before me, going into the army. After that it would be ok to go out with him. I was just waiting.
Stupidly, I didn't account for the fact that once he was in the army, he wouldn't be around any more, and that when he was around he would need to do family stuff. Stupidly, I didn't account for the fact that once he was in the army, and I was at university, his leave would not match with my end of term dates.
I liked him even more after a few years. We wrote to each other a bit. We saw each other, Christmases mostly, when everyone else was around too. There was a sexual connection sparking between us, sometimes you could almost see it like a Ready-Brek glow, I was sure, but we never had much chance to follow it through.
It was ok because I was saving him for later. It was ok because I fantasised about him. A lot. Not that he knew, but it kept him in scope. I wanted him so, so badly. That part he knew, that part he felt too, at that time. We only managed to get it together on one occasion. I say that casually but I could still tell you every moment. I could tell you the smell of his neck, the weight of him pressed against me, the cold at the small of my back on the cold hard centre-circle of the playing field.
Then suddenly it was later than we realised. He was going out with a nurse. It was serious. Everyone said she was lovely. Well fuckit. I decided to marry one of my friends, and the last time I saw him was at my wedding. He brought a basket of flowers to the evening do. It was a shame to leave them behind so we sat them on the dresser of the honeymoon cottage in Cornwall. They stared at me in silence and I already knew I had made a mistake. Not because I should have married him instead, that isn't what I mean. Just that I shouldn't have married a man who couldn't eclipse my fantasies of a different man, even on our honeymoon.
Then we were barely in touch. Maybe there wasn't a connection at all any more. I heard where he was stationed - Belize, Kosovo - and I always managed to find out that he had made it back ok. I wondered whether he thought of me like I thought of him. Pretty often. He was my favourite fantasy. I wondered whether he sensed I was thinking of him, whether he got a brain-itch, a cock-twitch? I got divorced, but he was happy, married, kids. I left well alone.
We had a little flirt by email, for a couple of weeks, a few years later, then he disappeared off the radar. Lately I've been thinking about him more, since a strange coincidence put me back in touch with his brother. I didn't ask about him - I was afraid to give myself away. Only knew that he was "doing all right". I scoured the internet but he wasn't to be found. What would happen if I tracked him down?
1. He wouldn't remember who I was. I'd imagined a connection, an attraction that was completely one-sided. That would be awful.
2. He would remember who I was, but not remember any connection. He would have forgotten all that flirting and kissing, the superb once-in-a-lifetime sex. That would be awful.
3. He would remember who I was, and be angry I'd got in contact, tell me to leave him alone. That would be awful.
4. He would remember who I was, and it would all be there, just as it was. And we would be older and bolder, and determined to follow through. That would be awful.
Actually I'm lying, that would be brilliant, I expect, that last option, but you can't save someone else's husband for later, can you. Can you?
He's the one that got away. He's the one regret. And for that, if for nothing more, he holds a special place.
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