Gifts

I knew I was home again when I found myself wiping the piss off the back of the toilet, as I do every day. I postponed the shit till later. What is it about the lot of a woman, I asked myself, that we are condemned to be the servants of grown men. And yet, for the right man I would do this happily, a gift that would go unnoticed and unthanked day after day.

The shops are full of World Cup shit right now. Almost any item you can conceive of is available to purchase in white with red crosses, from coolbags to deelyboppers. Whenever I see this load of old crap on the shelves I think, "I would love to get this and that for him." It's coming up to his birthday but I won't buy anything this year. How could I? An innocent gesture from my perspective could (who am I kidding? would) look sinister and wierd from his.

After all, I can count on one hand the number of times I have seen him in the past eighteen months:

1) Chance meeting in the street where he seemed quite pleased to see me actually.
2) A nasty and dismissive encounter at a contacts party.
3) A conference where a mutual colleague looked at me in a "you're so transparent" sort of way.
4) Someone else's leaving drinks at Xmas.

I gave him a Christmas present on the last occasion, maybe the fourth or fifth unreciprocated gift. As I rustled in the bag he seemed jumpy, perhaps wondering what on earth I was going to produce and whether it would incriminate him in the eyes of others.

I don't want him to think I've forgotten and moved on, that would make me like other people. And I resist that. I prefer to think this love is so special and unique that it will never fade like ordinary loves. But what is unique and special to me is just strange and bizarre to another. I can't impinge on his consciousness in any way except in a bad, creepy way, so I just have to accept that the black hole sucks up whatever it sucks up and doesn't even know it because it's not a conscious actor, just a force in nature. I've stuck a face and body on it but it's not a real person that I love, just an artefact of my own mind, driven by a desperate hunger for someone to (s)mother.