A character assassination of two people, part II

A relationship story

This is part II of a III part story. To read part I click here.

‘What do you mean?’ I asked. 

‘Come on, let’s be honest here. Most women would’ve taken one look at this man and ran the opposite way.’ 

‘Oh?’

‘I mean the clumsiness, the unemployment…The fact that he can’t or doesn’t even want to hold down a job…’

It was true that Hans didn’t want a 9 to 5 job but he was more ambitious than I was, always applying for some grant or another, and the other things didn’t concern me that much. 

The single most important thing was that Hans would be there for me when I needed him. I was convinced of it. I wasn’t about to make a run for it just because he didn’t fit the tyrannic demands of a capitalistic society. To hell with Norma, I thought.

Although on the last day of his London visit, I could see what Norma had meant. 

I left Hans packing for his flight back to Dublin when I returned and found him on the living room floor, crouched on all fours, running his right hand, then his left hand through the carpet. 

Now I consider myself a woman who does not shy away from uncomfortable moments, and yet, I will admit that I felt a pang of alarm. 

He did not notice me standing at the door so I watched him crawling around for a while. Every conversation opening that ran through my mind sounded somehow condescending. 

This was the sort of moment that could make or break a relationship. I wanted to come across as respectful rather than well, appalled. I wondered what Jeeves would’ve done which was odd because Hans was not the sort of man who could afford a butler.  

I couldn’t figure it out. What was the right thing to say when you found a man crawling peacefully on your living room carpet.

‘What are you…doing?’ I asked, finally. 

He looked up at me. In that moment, I realised that a terrible mistake had been made in my decision to date Hans. I realised that I possibly needed to be in the kind of relationship where I, and only I, bore the exclusive right to act like a crazy person. 

Then I took one hard look at myself. How utterly absurd. How completely unreasonable considering that I never liked anyone unless they sat firmly and outrageously outside the norm. 

It didn’t take me very long to tinker out a solution.

The relationship would be just fine as long as we took turns and agreed that we would act crazy at different times of the week. 

When I acted crazy, Hans could play the role of the helpful nurse, and when he acted crazy, I could play the helpful nurse, and when we were both jovial, laughing and ensconced in sanity, that would presumably be the best time to have some sex. 

I had solved the entire relationship in less than a minute, less than the time it took him to respond.

‘I’m just searching the floor.’, he said, not interrupting himself. 

‘Yes…I can see that…but why?’ I asked. 

‘To make sure I didn’t leave anything behind.’

‘Oh right.’, I said and heaved a sigh of relief. 

Well, that was a perfectly reasonable explanation. 

I was fairly pleased then. It’s not that I thought of myself as a particularly superficial human but I learned in that moment that I could certainly be with a man who from one second to the next bore a striking resemblance to either a frightened rabbit, a surprised squirrel, a cackling hyena, and now this, this something crawling on my living room floor.

In hindsight, I could see how this all disarmed me and, simultaneously, confused me. He was a character and I was a writer drawn to characters. 

The problem was I never took the surprises seriously even when the surprises stopped being harmless. 

I had misinterpreted his openness and innocence for loyalty and dedication. When had I made the assumption that this was the sort of man who would show up? Who would leave everything and run to you? 

When I was sick three weeks into the relationship, Hans offered to drop by with some chicken soup. I was grateful and told him to get both the M&S rustic chicken soup, which always comforted me in times of sickness, and two chicken legs so I could make my own soup once the M&S one ran out. 

Then, and I didn’t see this coming, he changed his mind. The funny thing was he never actually came out and said he wasn’t coming but rather left me to figure it out on my own. 

You know that game that people play in relationships where they use the device of silence to get you to say the thing that they want you to understand but they don’t want to say out loud themselves because, well, it makes them look like a bit of a bin bag? 

‘So…where are you?’ I asked when I thought he was on his way and gave him a ring. 

‘I’m in Southbridge.’

‘Oh cool.’

Silence. 

‘What are you up to?’ I asked, pressing on. 

‘I’m just catching a bus.’

‘Cool. Are you on your way here?’

Silence. 

‘Oh. You’re not on your way here?’

Silence. 

‘Are you still coming?’

Silence.

‘Okay, so I assume you’re not coming?’

Silence. 

‘Is everything alright?’

‘Oh yeah, grand. I just spilt some coffee on…something.’

That was it. It was a beautiful game of chess. Hans didn’t have to pick up a single piece. 

The worst part of that entire episode isn’t that Hans didn’t drop by or that I didn’t get to goggle into the round, blue eyes of a man I was newly infatuated with but rather that I spent 4 hours looking forward to a rustic chicken soup that never arrived. 

What was even worse was the tirade of insane text messages I had sent him after he offered to do the grocery shopping. 

‘You’re going to M&S, right?’, followed by ‘I don’t like Tesco.’, followed by ‘Only free range or organic chicken please’, followed by, ‘No normal chicken!’.

After it transpired that he was not coming by, I sat in bed and stared at that text message until I could not look at it anymore. 

I had sent a message to the man I fancied that read, ‘No normal chicken.’

It was the last feather in the coffin of my chicken soup humiliation.

This is how it went. 

The more time I spent with Hans, the more apparent it became that Hans’ tardiness was, in fact, the least of his problems.

It was his honesty that drew me to him like a banana fly to a brown banana, and it was his honesty that killed me because as it turned out, this particular banana fly had diabetes. 

We were on a train to Hampstead when he asked me if I had ever applied to one of those female disabled writer grants. 

He was always looking up grants but I had no idea there were even such things. 

‘Oh well, if you find a link…whilst you’re looking for grants for yourself…perhaps you can send it over?’

He threw his head back then sighed audibly and rolled his eyes.

‘Pfff. I’m not going to do your work for you.’

I suppose under normal circumstances, it would’ve been nothing but a slightly thoughtless, slightly inconsiderate comment. 

That is if I didn’t have a chronic eye condition, or he didn’t know about my eye condition or we didn’t talk about it all the faffing time, or he wasn’t perfectly aware that I had 20 minutes of screentime a day on an e-ink reader and the remainder of the time I had to use Jaws which as far as I was concerned was the screen reader that Hitler used in a little place called hell. 

I didn’t say anything. After all, what was there to say? 

Most men withdrew at the mention of politics or planning a holiday but the worst thing you could ask of Hans was admin. 

I suppose it made sense that a man burdened with depression, who was constantly battling with his own to do list, would not be in a rush to send me a link to a grant. 

Perhaps this was the problem. We were like two patients on a holiday resort, and the nurse kept taking the day off.

Then there was the thing he said, out of the blue, when we were sitting in my favourite cafe. 

‘I don’t think I would like you if I was normal.’

I spit up in my coffee. It was a £4 Cinnamon latte.  

Norma laughed about this for a good while. 

‘He comes to see you all the way from Dublin and then he says that?!’

……………………………………………………………………

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