The Fullfillment* Centre 6/5

Our living situation was clearly untenable and the fact that it had drifted on so long was a testimony to our inertia I suppose. We had discussed moving to somewhere a bit bigger, after all we were all working and the differences in rent were minimal. A two bed place with a separate living room that we could convert into a third bedroom would keep costs down and I had started to look for somewhere without any real focus or intent when Chris announced that he was moving out mid September of that year.

It had only been a matter of time really. He had been, spending less time in the house, the occasional weekends away and his attitude toward me had changed, really the balance of power in our relationship had shifted. He was displaying more disinterest and scepticism now his self-esteem had improved, his need for my company significantly lessened and his willingness to sit around and have me patronise him reduced. The hostility that before had been muted through our mutual dependence now began to surface. Nothing really explicit, but a directness and a dismissive edge to our interactions was becoming more evident. Our unhealthy dynamic was becoming unhealthy in new and different ways, that were in my disfavour.

I was in a new stage of relative status decline. Before if I had been older, better read, more engaged, seemed to be modestly successful, married even, now I looked a little pitiful, like someone whose life had slipped out of his grasp. I hadn’t managed to add things, to accumulate, I had merely swapped things around, rather than building up and expanding the elements of my life, I had just progressively dumped them and taken on others, a lateral movement without any real sense of growth or increase and now perhaps there was even evidence of reverse, decline. The hulls of abandoned projects, hal built monuments strewn at my back, my forward momentum slowing to a crawl the weeds growing up around my feet. The precipice of having left it all too late.

 Ah, but my soul, I wanted to say, I suppose, my inner-richness, the works I still have in me. My heroic sacrifice for the common good and yet, it’s true too that there was something acrid accumulating at the back of my throat when I thought about what I could have had, done, with little more will and a little less inclination to always opt for less as a way of avoiding the demand that I grow. I had got old refusing to grow up. Perhaps for years, decades even that hadn’t mattered but now it was true I had become something faintly pitiable, touched with the tragic, the grotesque even, rather than determined in my refusals I simply appeared stunted. Worse I had started to feel more vulnerable and that had made me needy in ways I was still to proud to overtly express. Chris, a decade younger, still had the chance perhaps his last chance now to have something resembling a conventionally successful life. An attractive, successful partner, a foot on the housing ladder, kids, some foreign travel, if not love at least some intimacy, if not that at least some order, and he could, anyway, still keep a hand in with the politics he claimed to be wedded too.

Listen he said, mate he was adjusting his collar in the mirror and had look of self satisfaction that I wasn’t used to. I’m going to have to move out. I can’t bring her back here, you know. She’s a professional women, you know. ]

Alright, I said. When. I was faintly panicky in a way I still couldn’t quite understand, some small current of dread trickling back from the future. What had I thought? That Chris was going to look after me in my old age?

Well I am going to give my notice in at the pub tomorrow. 

This all seems a bit sudden, I said you have e hardly met.

To be honest he said, we were seeing each other before Morecambe; we met at one of the meetings you didn’t go to. 

You never said anything.

Don’t have to tell you everything mate. Anyway. It wasn’t serous, you know. 

Is it serious now?

Look he said. To be honest, there’s not a lot going on round here is there? So I just think you have to get serious if you meet someone you like. Otherwise you know you end up…

Like me? I asked. 

Mate, no; you have got your writing. I don’t have that. How long can I, look, if it’s leaving you in the lurch I can pay an extra couple of month’s rent.

No that’s fine, I said. His offer angered me. Can you afford to move out? 

Yeah I've applied for a teaching training post anyway, starts next week.

Well this is a bit of a surprise. What about the initiative the reason we came down here?

I’ll still be involved. To be honest he said, I’ve probably been to more meetings than you have. 

Well, it’s the long term commitment I said. You need to pace yourself for the long-haul. 

He smiled and went back to sorting out his tie in the new mirror he’d bought and propped up on the table. Alright.

I went back into my room and sat on the mattress. Typical of him, I could see his underlying cockiness had come through again, he had got lost, ended up somehow falling in with me and pretended to be interested in ideas, in politics for a while but when the chance of a mainstream life cam e up he took it and was starting now immediately to look on others as failures. 

Well, let him have the life he thought he wanted. Let him mock me. I turned off the light and lay back in the dusk. It was true what I said; I was on for the long haul.