Separate Ways

I took the plunge Monday evening over tea. I'd been umm-ing and ah-ing over how and when to tell my son that I'm dating. He reacted so badly last year when I told him I was starting back on a dating website. Not surprising, when you think of the utter, selfish mess his mother got herself into (and dragged him into) with boyfriends after she left me.

So here goes:
"I've started dating someone", I said. "A woman, in fact."
"Oh right," he says. "Was she here on Saturday night?"
"Er, yes. Why?"
"I thought so."
"How come?"
"I saw you coming downstairs with two cups this morning."

Ahh. Two coffee mugs, two wine glasses - not normal bedroom stuff in our house. He's more observant than I realised. And less bothered than I feared.

"She's really nice," I tell him, "for a ginger...."
"She's ginger? Ha ha, what... more ginger than Ronnie? More ginger than Jake?"

We have a laugh about acceptable levels of gingerism. And it all seems ok.

"And she likes dogs," I tell him.
"Everyone likes our dogs," he says, tapping the lurcher under the chin.

Another little step in the right direction.

We were lying there on Sunday morning, my new girlfriend and me.....

Oh, did I mention I'd got a girlfriend?

Uh-huh, oh yeah (dances badly).

Lovely woman from the date last week, took her out on Friday to watch that sweary tour-de-force In The Loop, kissing in the pub (how annoying is that when you see someone else do it) then home in separate taxis. Rang her up the same night about one in the morning to invite her round on Saturday night.

So, Sunday morning. We're swapping snippets of life story, lying there in t-shirt and pants, a little sleep-deprived. I give her the shorthand version of the last years of my marriage and of the affair that transformed my life.

"Do you still love her?" she asks, meaning my ex-lover, not my ex-wife.
Pause.
I'm not about to lie but I can't think how to describe it. She fills in the silence.
"When you've been in love you can go on loving someone. I did with the last man I was in love with. You don't have to totally forget. But it doesn't mean you can't move on."
I smile at her, thinking she's put it well. "And you can let it go and hold on to the good things, the good memories," I suggest.

I read a review in one of the weekend papers, of "The Field Guide to Melancholy". It described a state of sadness we might actually choose and gain some pleasure from. It is a mood of loss and yearning but without the desperation - so unlike depression (which Susan Sontag calls "melancholy minus its charms"). Gloom, not doom, in other words. The author reckons it's a state which "slows things, allows for percolation, facilitates solitude and solace for the imagination."

I think that's a pretty good description of my state of mind these last few months. Living with gloom, not doom. I was in love, I still feel great tenderness towards that love, the memories of what we had and the sense of loss. I have chosen to dwell on them. But it isn't love anymore - it's melancholy, actually.

"I'm ready to move on," I said on Sunday morning, failing to find a less cliched phrase to sum all this up. "You can't keep loving somebody in a one-sided way. It falls into obsession or stalking, and I'm not going to let myself become that. I wish we were closer friends, but it's not to be."

We carry on talking, Sunday morning stretches out, sunshine fills the room. She's smart, this one. I like her.

Lots happened this last few days - time with my folks, a weekend away with the boys and Scottish Sara, lots of booze, one of the best gigs I've ever seen.

But more important right now, a brilliant, exciting, thrilling date. Four beers, a lot of chat, hands held across a bar table, kissing outside before putting her in a taxi home, and a steady string of flirting texts ever since. I keep doing little reality checks, frown, bite my lip and think "hang on, don't go getting all out of proportion, scare her off and let yourself down." But the overwhelming feeling is being on the leading edge of a big smile...

We'd been chatting for a couple of hours, it was going well.
"I liked what you wrote on your profile about books," she said. I hadn't read my own profile for months, I haven't read hers since the first email I sent her weeks ago, so I stick to a noncommital noise.
"I've not come across anyone else who likes E Annie Proulx before," she goes on. Oh yes, that's ok, I did genuinely finish The Shipping News recently... on DVD. No, I have also read it, honest.
"In fact, that section of 'what I'm reading' is the first bit I look at on a new profile," she says. "What about you? What's the first thing you look at?"

Oh shit! Face.... tits.... arse.... Face obviously in the photo, tits sometimes on show, arse you have to guess from "athletic" or "curvy" descriptions. But I'm not about to admit it.
"Um, well I guess I looking for....." FACE, TITS, ARSE "camping, you know, if you're into outdoors sort of stuff. You have to read right through the profile for that, umm it's not in one place...."

Pathetic. But there's no point telling her just yet that men do read books but are usually happier looking at the pictures.

My appointment with destiny looms closer. Or to be more specific - my appointment with urology. May 1st. It's weighing on my mind more and more. I'm having to make all kinds of arrangements at work, stuff I can't do so have to hand on to others. Each time I have to give a minimal explanation of why I'll be off. I haven't told anyone at work the full story. Normally I would, if nothing else, for a bit of sympathy and humour, but....

It's not very sexy, is it? Cutting up through the perinaeum, cutting out a 2cm section of urethra, stitching it back together, spending two weeks on a catheter and pissing in a bag. I won't be able to walk or sit without pain for weeks, riding my bike's out for ages, god knows when I'll be back to normal.

And then there's the risk of complications. Ten per cent of men suffer impotence after this operation. If the constricted section of pipe was any nearer my bladder, I'd risk incontinence. If it was any nearer my penis, the consultant blithely pointed out, it might involve shortening the penis. SHORTENING THE PENIS! No fucking way! If he'd told me there was a ninety percent chance of death if they didn't go ahead with penis-shortening, I'd have been thinking "yes, but that's a ten per cent chance of not-death...." Let's not even go there.

So if I'm unlucky, I could end up impotent or incontinent - or both. You could say I won't know whether I'm coming or going....

I had a bad case of piles at the end of last week. Not glamorous I appreciate, so I only mention it because it made me think about physical health and moods. Basically, all day Friday I walked round feeling like someone had their thumb stuck up my ass. A large thumb, stuck there despite their efforts to pull it out. My world revolved around my bottom, a very low centre of gravity. Sitting down, grimace. Stand up, grimace. A whole day frowning, unless there was a good reason not to. The opposite of how I like to spend my day - try and smile unless there's a good reason not to.

By the end of the day I was feeling utterly miserable. A friend at work had reminded me about the HALT acronym for avoiding depression - don't let yourself be Hungry, Angry, Lonely or Tired. I'm sure there's an arse-related interpretation of HALT.... it'll come to me. Point is, I'm no richer, poorer, more in love, more single, busier, friendlier than the same time last week, but a pain in my arse is piling on the misery. How many people you meet looking plain unhappy are just victims of some physical gripe, whose unhappiness in turn makes it harder for them to get physically better? Caught by a vicious circle - or angry ring, in my case.

Anyway, I seem to have it sorted now. And I spent today in company, doing practical stuff in the sunshine. And I might have this Summer's camping holiday sorted. So happy again.

There were six of us in the pub last week, blokes in our 40s and early 50s. None of us alcoholics, nutjobs, liars, gamblers or serial adulterers (only me that's even done occasional adultery). All of us Dads - full-on committed to our kids, hands on child-rearers and full time wage earners. And out of the six of us, only one still lives with the mother of his kids. The rest, dumped, pushed out or left by our women - set asunder, as the marriage vows would put it.

Our partners were unhappy, not bullied, degraded or abused. I know that does happen - happened to my sister, who literally ran for her life with her kids when her rapist bully husband walked free from court. But it ain't happening among my mates.

So what's going on? One mate blames a local mafia - or coven, depending on his mood. Women who know each other really well, know the situations and see less and less reason not to copy - a domino effect of divorces rippling through our close neighbourhood.

Maybe. Or maybe there's something else. What have these women got in common? No sense of humour, most of them. I know that sounds trite, but perhaps there's more to it. These women - all in their 40s - grew into their first relationships in the highly politicised 1980s and early 90s. A bloody serious time. Face it, there weren't many laughs in Red Wedge. And there was Cosmo telling them they could have it all - career, relationship, family, boob-job, ongoing youthfulness. And it just ain't so. Unless you're damn lucky or gifted.

You've grown up thinking that the personal is political - not philosophical. So you need a plan of action, rather than a philosophical shrug, an acceptance of disappointment as part of life, and an attempt to smile with it. So when the disappointments seep in to their late 30s, they get moving, take action on us, set us asunder. Start looking for another relationship to make them happy.
(note - only one of us dumpees is going out with another woman, three of the dumpers are already living with another bloke. Although I did get an email on the blog site today offering "a love relationship" with some woman from Russia, maybe I've scored!)

I was walking the dog this morning - past the house of the last one of my mates to still live with his family. Propped up behind the wheelie bin, a cardboard box for a DVD HD Hard Disk recorder. New stuff. I can't even think about buying new stuff without worrying about money. He's got two incomes supporting one home. I'm spreading my one income over two homes. What a bloody waste, what a bloody waste of money, time and effort.

Grrr.