Low Expectations (15 page)

‘Wait, first, so, did you keep the photos? Can I see them?' I have never sent or received nude photos. I did try to take some sexy lingerie pictures for an ex once, but it's damn hard to twist your body into flattering positions while trussed up like a chicken and holding a digital camera. I nearly threw my back out and ended up deleting them all. I looked like I was writhing in death throes.

My attempt was a dismal failure, but receiving a hypothetical cock-shot would leave me baffled, if only because of the lack of effort put into it. Women go the extra mile and men won't even put on a garter. Of course, I am also paranoid that such pictures might end up on www.mywhorexgf.com when the romance, such as it is, inevitably fades. Love is ephemeral; evidence lasts forever.

‘I deleted anything incriminating obviously; I ain't just a pretty face. I mean, I had a good long look and if he wasn't such a psycho, I'd be tempted to keep them. But! The point is, Monday we ignored each other all morning. Things were super-busy anyway trying to get all the fabric orders in, the fucking French and Italians are barely open the entire month
of December, the lazy bastards. Trigger changes his mind constantly and we need the metres sent asap. You remember how hectic it is. Frankly I thought the whole thing might go undiscussed. But in the afternoon he pulled me into the toilet, pressed me up against the wall and started saying all this stuff about how he'd thought about me all weekend and couldn't wait for us to be together, that he'd wanted me for so long – I know! Scary!'

‘Oh, poor Marco! He sounds like he just really likes you and finally thought he'd got an in.'

This is exactly why I am always in total denial about my own infatuations unless I am absolutely positive, through verbal and preferably written confirmation, that they are reciprocated. If you want something badly enough it is very easy to convince yourself that the other person feels it too. Being thought of as a bunny boiler is too much for a fragile ego such as my own to take.

‘Er, poor Marco? Poor me! I prised him off and let him down as gently as I could. I explained the situation, that I love Theo and that we've been together six years, et cetera. He looked like a petulant five-year-old child and stormed off. Since then I've received dozens of texts, emails, pictures, some romantic, some sexual, some threatening to tell Theo, or Trigger, I don't know what would be worse. My job and my man are my life! He's trying to blackmail me into sleeping with him! Who does that? He's Glenn Close in David Gandy's clothing. I don't
know what to do! He has those pictures of me, but it was just a stupid mistake and … and … I wish this would all just go away.'

Julian's pretty face is crumpled in misery and he is close to tears.

‘Well, whatever you do, don't sleep with him! That will make things far worse! You need to tell Theo and accept the consequences, it's not so bad a mistake as all that. I'm sure he'd forgive you. Plus, isn't this sort of indiscretion usually taken a bit more lightly in gay relationships?' I had toyed with not asking the question but as usual, curiosity won over my politesse.

‘Really? Georgie. In all the years I've known you, have I ever cheated? Have I ever said I'd condone it? Have I not mentioned if Theo stepped out on me that I'd slice his balls so thinly that they would pass for beef carpaccio? Monogamy is super-important to us both. It's one of the cornerstones of our relationship. I know some gay men are more forgiving, but really, is that sort of question necessary?'

‘Sorry! I didn't mean to be rude, but I was, I just thought, that it's one thing to say things like that and another to really mean them. I think I could forgive cheating, but I wouldn't necessarily broadcast that to the world as it sounds weak. I certainly wouldn't tell my partner, in case they thought they had carte blanche to do what they liked. If I was super in love,
well, I've been in enough shitty relationships to know how rare that is, so I think I'd try to salvage things.'

‘It's easy to forget how rare it is, that's the problem. I did, momentarily. Look where it's got me. I know I should tell him; I just don't want to see him hurt and disappointed. Why is it that if you do things right ninety-nine percent of the time, it's only the one percent that counts towards anything? I would understand if he flipped, of course. If it was the other way around, I would be super-suspicious that they had actually been shagging each other all along and this was damage-control.'

‘I don't think Theo is the suspicious type, you know. I think he'd believe what you tell him, as long as you tell him now and he doesn't find out from someone else. That's so humiliating. It's like what happened with Anthony when he was shagging his best friend for months right under my nose. I knew there had to be a reason why she was always so smug. I actually caught her with her hands down his pants while he was cooking for me. I haven't eaten raclette since. Can you imagine how traumatized I was to be put off a dish involving melted cheese, for life?'

‘There's certainly no chance of that happening with us. I haven't cooked in years. In all seriousness, though, I will, I'll tell him before everything gets out of hand. Luckily Trigger and Marco are going to the factory in Milan this week. It gives me time to think.'

The last order bells ring for the second time; Julian and I decide to head off home for an early night like the responsible adults we pretend to be. He will spend the evening contemplating how to manage his confession and salvage his relationship. I wonder what I will do with myself in the hours before drowsiness smothers me.

I should do something mindless but productive to try to take my mind off the possibility that my dad has cancer, like scrubbing down the house, a long-overdue task. At moments like this, swamped in an existential trauma with no real belief to fall back on, the likelihood is that I will deal with my worries in the far more reasonable, grown-up manner of drinking myself into a stupor while watching South Park. This is not such a huge departure from my weekly routine.

So, as it happens, my fraught weekend was for naught and my dad's cancer turned out to be, according to him, ‘an abnormally large but benign epididymis cyst'. According to my mum, it was, ‘perfectly obvious that it was an ingrown hair – really, only a man with no experience of genital landscaping would have put us through all that trauma. Vitoria must be sporting a full bush as well as a sack of rocks for brains'.

I'm relieved I wasn't at the hospital to witness the ensuing conversation. It's probably healthier to have one's first experience of an ultrasound be, ‘It's a boy!' or ‘It's a girl!' and not ‘It's a hardened hairy growth of indeterminate but non-cancerous nature!'

Though Mum's reaction was typically bitchy, she responds
with anger when she's been unduly worried. Apparently she had been in an agony of guilt all weekend, convincing herself that she had cursed Dad and was thus responsible for his incipient demise. All this added stress was because of a voodoo doll she had made in the early stages of their divorce.

As she is just about the least crafty person that I can think of, I sympathized with her – she must have been in a lot of pain to have gone to the trouble of stitching up a mini Dad-shaped pin-cushion and repeatedly striking its genitals. Though she later clarified that she had in fact bought a figurine of The Stig from Harrods and super-glued some of my dad's hair to it before bashing it in with a hammer, scissoring off all its appendages and setting it on fire. Far more her style. She sometimes (rarely) wonders if she's made a mistake by over-sharing these sordid details, but promises to pay for private mental health care if I ever go off the rails. It's quite loving, after a fashion.

Although I am overcome with relief that the situation has resolved itself so painlessly, it does make me wonder what on earth is wrong with Dad that he looks so old these days. As far as I know, he is far healthier than Mum and they are close in age. Can it be that her regime, consisting as it does of smoking, drinking, daily croissants and the occasional Valium, is actually superior? Maybe it's just that age has finally caught up with him and all he needs to keep his spirits up and stress levels down is a trip to a cosmetic surgeon.
It's easy to forget what a man in his early sixties looks like when accepting the ravages of time. So many of them are slyly altering bits and moobs on the side.

As usual, my mum has managed to turn someone else's drama into her own. Quite apart from the whole voodoo thing, which I hope goes the way of her brief colon-cleansing phase (i.e., down the toilet), she is now going through what I can only assume is a belated midlife crisis. While she was feeling low this weekend she decided that she was – her words – sick of
looking
like somebody, but not
being
somebody, the unspoken ending to that sentence being important. Why she has come to this conclusion after fifty-odd years of gracing the world with her presence is a mystery; my guess is Narcissistic Personality Disorder or some other borderline behavioural issue. To this end, she has decided to write a tell-all memoir-cum-guide currently entitled
This Lady Left The Tramp: Surviving Betrayal With Impeccable Manners
. I fear it is not satire.

I related this sorry tale to Gary in between clearing pint glasses on Wednesday evening at The Newt. The pub was not particularly busy, with only a few regulars getting pissed by the fake fireplace, including Toothless Jonny, famed in these parts for his gummy smile and proposals of marriage to any female aged between fifteen and eighty-five. He can be annoying, but is generally tolerated as long as he doesn't get rowdy and start his lisp-y rendition of ‘I Love You Baby'. The
jury's out as to whether he's a fan of
Ten Things I Hate About You
or
The Deer Hunter
. I prefer to think the former. Around 6 p.m. the place starts humming with after-work drinkers profiting from the run up to Christmas by getting silly-drunk, knowing they will not be told off for their hangovers the next day by equally incapacitated superiors.

‘Christ on a bike, your mum's a right character. I think I'd like her – she sounds like Bette Davis or Joan Crawford, some fabulous but unhinged old broad. My mum was more like Pat from
EastEnders
. Apart from the prostitution. But she was Miss Butlins in the sixties!' Gary chortles, patting the MUM tattoo on his upper arm affectionately; a habit that he says makes him feel closer to her in the five years since she passed away. I'm pretty sure if I got a commemorative tattoo in honour of my mum she'd rise up from the grave to disinherit me.

‘I can see where you get your good looks from then! What a stunner!'

Gary blows me an air-kiss in response and waves like the Queen.

‘At least she's gone through the menopause now,' I continue. ‘I used to hear her screaming down the phone at the building managers saying they were persecuting her with their choice of wallpaper in the entrance hall. She claimed it was harassment. I actually thought she had gone mental.'

‘What, did she start HRT and chill out then?' Gary looks
relieved that he will never have to shack up with an ageing wife.

‘No. After a few weeks she realized that the colour – a sort of green-beige, hardly a psychedelic eyesore – was actually weirdly flattering to her complexion and she pretended none of it had ever happened.'

‘Wow. Well, I can't say I can totally blame her for that. I too would be antagonized by bad wallpaper. You're okay though? Scott told me I should keep an eye on you, make sure you're all right and everything.' Gary looks at my face intently as I feel a red blush making its way up my neck.

‘He … he said that? That was kind of him.' In a deeply embarrassing moment the past Saturday, during which my resolution to get on with things came to a grinding halt, Scott had found me crying in the storeroom cupboard. I hadn't wanted to go into details, so I told him that I was having a few personal problems, something I later bitterly regretted. Hysterical women are always assumed to be on the blob.

As he caught me in a bear hug, I appreciated the comforting warmth of his broad chest but it was not so much romantic as super-awkward. Not that it should be romantic – he is my boss. After initially relaxing into him, however, the neurotic paranoia that underpins all my thoughts went into overdrive. Trying desperately to muffle my tears, fearful visions of spraying mucus or spittle on his jumper running through my mind, I went completely rigid.
Mumbling something incoherent, I brushed him off and ran away to the toilet. It was childish, ungrateful and stroppy; I felt like a schoolgirl. He left before I had found a quiet moment to explain things and apologize for my behaviour. I haven't seen him since; though as this is my first shift back, I'm not overly concerned that he's avoiding me. Yet.

‘He's a kind guy, our Scott. A really loyal, decent guy. Don't be surprised that he's looking out for you; he's like that. I think he thinks you've got boyfriend troubles or something.' Gary smiles, although his words have had the unintended effect of depressing me. Of course Scott was being kind because he's a nice guy and not because he likes me in some slightly special way. He barely knows me! And what he does know has been mostly unbalanced with a chance of psycho.

‘Ha! Hardly. Well, I've been seeing someone for a bit but we haven't known each other long enough for him to make me cry. I don't think I've ever really cried over a man, actually,' I say, pausing to reflect. That isn't true at all. Less than a year ago I was crying myself to sleep on a regular basis. How quickly the mind forgets old wounds. Or maybe I am just lucky to be exceptionally un-nostalgic.

‘Really? I have! Buckets. I don't think you've ever really been in love, my dear.'

‘Oh, who knows. Is love best gauged by hurt?' I used to think that way, but I am hoping that was a phase and not a pattern.

‘Pain, misery, unbearable joy, delusion and rampant sex all as intertwined as the congealed hairs you find languishing in a drain, that's what love is. I'm not sure I'd recommend experiencing it more than once or twice in a lifetime. It is exhausting. Mind you, the first time I thought I was in love I was just really, really hungover.'

‘What? How does that work exactly?' I lean back on the counter and eye up the clock. It's a quarter to six; I get off at half past midnight but will soon be joined by Joy, which makes me dread the remainder of the evening. I'm tempted to buy Gary drinks all night so that he stays on the other side of the bar to keep me company, but that would kind of defeat the purpose of working.

‘Oh you know … he was some guy I liked well enough, one of my first boyfriends. He was a total dick, but he was handsome and I was cockstruck. One morning after a really late night he started screaming at me over some stupid joke I'd made that offended him. Waking to a two-hour bitch fest with a pounding head was just too much for me. I started crying, thinking that no man could make me feel this bad unless I was really in love with him. So I told him as much and he was all chuffed – though the arsehole didn't say he loved me back. Anyway it got him off my back and for a few hours I really thought it might be true. But after I'd arrived home and was sat in bed with a cup of tea and
Corrie
, I realized
that all it boiled down to was that I don't take well to being screamed at. And that was that! Finito.'

‘What a tool! I don't think I could tell a man I loved him first, though, that's brave of you. Though I suppose if you're both men the rules are less clear,' I muse.

Anthony was the first man ever to tell me he loved me. I never responded in kind, though he began to say it after two months. I guess a part of me always knew there was something false about him. I was particularly grateful I never gave in to that sentimental impulse when I confronted him about his cheating. I asked him, ‘Why would you do this, if you love me?' He had looked at me with incredulity and replied without missing a beat, ‘Georgie, you don't mean the things you say during sex.' Harsh times. I am on the point of relating this story to Gary but decide it's too pitiful to share in the early stages of our budding friendship.

‘Actually,' Gary continues, ‘I learnt from the experience that “I love you” is a very useful tactic to bring out when someone's pissed off at you. Save it for the right moment and you can save your relationship. I once was really broke – really broke, I would never do this now – and stole £50 off some guy I was shagging. He was super-suspicious and angry but after those three magic words – phhf! – all that vanished into thin air and he started apologizing for thinking I would ever do such a thing. Magic!'

‘Gary! That's a terrible thing to do! I would never stoop so low. Maybe if I was really desperate, I guess, but really.'

Now I am glad I didn't mention the Anthony thing. Of course, I am years younger than him, so being less worldly is to be expected.

‘Hey, I didn't say that I'm proud of it! Just that it works a treat. Lying, cheating, stealing, these things happen, though they happened more frequently when I was in my coke-fiend phase, I admit. But I'm not gonna beat myself up about it on my deathbed, you know? Now get back to work, Ol' Toothless is waiting.' Gary uses a teacloth to whip my arse teasingly and starts to take the order of a couple on the other side of the bar who try not to stare at the gaping hole in Jonny's patient smile.

I turn to Toothless Jonny. Though he could be fifty-something, years of hard living have etched themselves deeply into his face and that, combined with his disregard for dental hygiene, makes him appear far older. The first time I saw him I was a bit shocked they allowed him to drink in the pub, considering that much of their clientele is young and trendy. I suppose that is Scott's kindness again. Though I'm not entirely certain allowing a hardened alky to while away his life at a bar is kind, he is a paying customer. If he wasn't here, he would find a less salubrious watering hole.

‘'Ello, love. A pint of your finest, cheapest ale if you please,' Jonny lisps, his eyes twinkling beneath their heavy folds.
Though it has become quite cold recently, he is wearing only cut-off jeans and a thin jumper over his wiry frame. It occurs to me that he might come here so often to avoid excessive winter heating bills.

‘Only the finest for you, Jonny!'

‘Yer a fine young lady, George. Though I take exception to a name like that for such a fine young lady. You can never be too careful in this life. Do you know – I have known six-hundred-and-twenty narcissistic perverts in my lifetime. SIX-HUNDRED-AND-TWENTY! How many have you known?' Jonny's constant smile and general air of near-dementia make it difficult to know when he is having a laugh.

‘Wow, six-hundred-and-twenty! What an exact number. Do you know, I'm not sure I know any narcissistic perverts … what should I look out for?' I look around desperately for Gary but he has popped out for one of his frequent fag breaks.