Boyfriend in a Dress

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I go over to Charlie’s apartment early, just to get away from José, who is making vaguely disguised accusations in my direction about ‘Badgergate’, as it has already become known by the time I get back to the office. Charlie lives in East London. We live on opposite sides of town – Charlie in his urban wasteland outer and minimalism inner on one side, and me amongst the trees and families and pubs with gardens, on the other.

If I lived with him, I’d have to see him shagging other women, and that might force me to confront things. I wouldn’t be able to ignore an orgasm in our bed.

I wonder at what point love became so trivial. I wonder when I began to deride my heart, instead of feeding it, when I decided it didn’t matter and wrote it off. I wonder when the loneliness and despair became almost laughable. I wonder when we learnt to dismiss the pathetic who went back again and again to have their hearts trampled on. I wonder when they became ‘pathetic’.

When romance does break through all the walls these days, it leaves me in tears. If people sing in tune, or run the marathon, or exemplify any kind of harmony or commitment it leaves me crying, in private of course. Because these are the things my life lacks, and I cry that I wasn’t more careful to hold onto them.

I wonder why starvation, or racism, are so much more weighty issues, so much less pathetic than the emotional heartburn caused by the one you love trampling all over your feelings, and your heart. Why is this not deemed just as bad as an earthquake? Sure it affects just you, and not ten thousand people, but you can bet your life there is more than one person in the world at any given moment feeling like their world has ended, because they have been unbearably hurt by the one they love. There must be at least ten thousand at any one time. An earthquake for every day of the year. We are told to spend our whole lives looking for real love, and then if we find it and lose it again, we are supposed to underplay it, pull ourselves together, and get on with life.

When did love become a joke?

When did I?