Geneva
Rain is heavy. I don't see much of the city. Running to the meeting, late as usual. A modern concrete thing. Where skateboarders, if they had them, would fall off their boards all day long. They don't have them.
In the meeting I pull off a save. Surprise myself. Everyone loves the chapter. Coming up to me afterwards, asking me specifics. Wanting to know more. It's reassuring, and it's pleasant, and it's not so bad is it, after all?
In the evening, a Mexican fella drunk and showing me pictures of his kids. And the Glaswegian now pulls out pics of his, and we joke about comparing and contrasting. And they say they are jealous of me, and my travel and lack of attachment. And I say I am jealous of them, and their lives full of people and duty. And mixed in here and there may be some truth and courtesy. But for me, I do want that. Or I did want that. Or at least, I don't want only this.
But it's tiring, this tiredness, and this endless repetition of heartbreak and longing and depression. If it is depression. Fuck knows, I never would see a therapist. For fear they'd start a whole thing, and then that would be me - 'my therapist says.' And at least I'm not drowning myself in drink and women, not anymore. So it's all okay, isn' it, after all.
Torino
Alessia is in the kitchen, naked save for the white slippers I kept from the Geneva hotel. She has adopted them as her own. She stands at the stove, stirring pasta, laughs as she spies me spying on her, lusting after her nipples and young flesh and all that good stuff. A 40 year old man should count himself lucky to encounter this, I think to myself. I should consider myself lucky. But Saira always on my mind, and I even told her that story - about how I broke Saira's heart, then years later she broke mine. Karma or torture or just grow up, son. Alessia takes all this as matter of fact. She has it all going on, what has she to worry about, I guess.
In the morning, Alessia's kisses are perfect, and our sex is the best sex, and noise from the sunny street is inviting us to leave the bed and seek out coffee and cigarettes and cycling and life. But after months of this, after good long months of this, it's time for me to leave. And Alessia is sad but never puts it out there, never puts it on me either. And I am sad, but also old in the heart, and so I just take a taxi like it's nothing, and we part like it's nothing, and so who is to say it is anything after all. We were lovers and now we're apart. That's it.
Ghent
After the book talk, the host takes us for drinks. By the water we smoke together. I never actually wanted kids, she volunteers. I don't know why she's telling me. But my husband did, she says, I didn't want to lose him.
She has the air of someone who is always sad, no matter what. Deep down. I know exactly who she is. And my efforts to tell her that being single and carefree is not perhaps what she imagines are futile. There's no persuading on this. You can't convince this person to be happy. You can't convince me.
I buy a fridge magnet. A tacky, tourist fridge magnet. Maybe this will be my thing now. Maybe I will do this hereafter. A house full of magnets and sadness.
Oh shut up.
Cologne
Another week, another beautiful city I imagine I could live in. This time high up in a tower, overlooking the colossal and terrifying cathedral, and all that green and cycling young life below. I go flying around the streets on one of those electric scooters, like a right cunt. I talk about a book, it goes well again. I buy a fridge magnet of a bombed out wartime city,
Speak to Nadia. She's leaving New York early. It reminded her too much of our time there. The marriage that I cancelled. The dreams that I shattered. The heart that I broke. She tried to reclaim that city for herself, but it's too much. I've got you some things from the Chelsea Hotel, she says.
She is always too sweet to me, even now. I am doing a bad job of not feeling guilty about that. I remind myself we both moved on. Or we must both move on. The women in my life have always been better at that than me, after all. So it's okay. It's okay to move on. She's ahead of you, son. She's ahead.
Freetown
Torrential rains. But it doesn't rain as much as it should for this time of year. Everyone passes comment on that, most days. Planet gone to shit. Everything a bit fucked. But surely the entire world and the people in it are not simply vehicles for my narrative. Surely not, kid. Pathetic fallacy. Pathetic.
I watch a praying mantis do his little jig thing on a railing. What is the point of being this little creature? And what am I doing that makes me any better?
Days pass, I find myself a few hours out of town. On the road, working with Mo. The heat, the scent of the bush, but it's not like it used to be. Not like it used to be way back when. Maybe it's better, I say to Mo. Maybe I just liked things when they were more broken, but that's bad of me. He just laughs.
We spend some time with our reformed friend in his little village, far from the old trodden paths and streets of vice. No longer a gangster, he says. No longer a criminal. He offers us food and we eat together from the bowl, rice and fish and brotherhood. His son on his knee. He is so gentle with him, so caring. I need to be better for him, he says. I need to be someone he can admire.
We are all so much older. We are exactly as many years older as we should be, but it feels wrong somehow. It feels more than that. We aged too much. We over shot.
And in the evening I speak to my sister, briefly. Unable to find the right words to speak to her unfathomable grief. I will speak to you soon, in person, I say. At the funeral. And she says yeah, and even that she's looking forward to that, and we both know that's odd but we leave it hanging, because what the fuck else is there to say anyway, after all.
London
It's been so hot, the transition back has been easier. And people have gotten use to it, and it's nice to see the city at ease and the summer in swing. I embrace the scent of my own space. My bed, my things, my morning sunshine and my evening quietude. This is called home.
There is a thunder storm. I'm late for the meeting in the park. Taxi stuck in traffic, but when I get there Magda is fine. I had an ice cream, she says. I get a coffee and she opens up. The domestic situation is tense. She needed to get out of the house for a while, let her son calm down. He is in one of his dark moods. It's been four days, she says, so hopefully he will be fine by the time Glastonbury comes around. He had better be, I say with a smile I hope is wry. Because he's performing, after all.
Look, I've said 'after all' a lot haven't I? I have. I could have said it more. Don't think too much on it. On the way back from the park, it's still raining and I've decided to cycle. Can feel damp on my crotch and thighs. Possibly a mistake, but I'm in it now. Right in the traffic, trying not to get dismembered by buses. Not too far from home we come to a junction, and I pause at the front, fixed on the red light.
I look to my left, to the people coming out of the Tube, and there - fucking impossibly - is Saira.
Saira who haunts me as much, perhaps more than, I once haunted her. But she isn't supposed to be a real person. She isn't supposed to be here, in my world. She clocks me. Recovers from the shock quicker than I. Calls out to me. I say hi. Brain scrambled. Completely cooked and whisked and salted. She says: I'm sorry to hear about your brother in law. How is your sister doing?
And I tell her it's tough, what with the baby on the way, and I thank her for asking. And she asks me how I'm doing. And I don't tell her that I'm still in love with her and think about her much of the time, each and every day, though it's been five years and counting. I don't tell her that this is hurting me, just sitting here, seeing her. Especially after she condemned me to her silence, when she knew I wouldn't stop wanting, when she kissed me passionately the one moment, then pushed me away the next.
I say: yeah all fine really, I'll be going up for the funeral next week. And I keep looking at the traffic light. It's not that I'm nervous it will change and I'll miss it. It's that I don't know what the fuck to do. It's that I'm just nervous. The lights are clear on what must be done. And she says: I'm living just up the road now... and right then the lights change and I interrupt and say bye and pedal away like a champ. No, not like a champ. As though I just abandoned her again. But surely she knows I didn't. Maybe I should message her when I get home. Maybe I will. I know I will. Maybe she knows it too.
When I'm home I message her, sorry if I was confused or confusing. Was nice to see you, you looked good. Thanks for asking after the family. And so on.
The thanks, the courtesy, the apology, are an excuse, of course. I messaged her because I wanted a reply. I wanted a way back in. I want her, still.
I guess she's wise to all that. So, no reply. And things remain hard, perhaps now a little harder, after all.
