Story of My Life

It is only important to mention that I was, on this particular house- sitting evening, chipper and at ease. I had fed both of the creatures and I was going out – out on a date – a variation on a theme of what could be a date. We had reached a transitional stage, the gentleman and I – which is to say, I had reached it and wondered if he had too – and I have to make the best of what I may get, so I was dressed presentably and poised to be charming and, had it not been for the stitches in my mouth, I would have been perfectly on form.

More dentistry – surgical dentistry, but with mouthwash and antibiotics and painkillers – big ones.

I like them big.

So I’m all right.

I’m stylish.

And I slip into the restaurant – once I’ve found it – with what I consider to be grace and it’s an agreeable establishment. Italian. So I can have pasta – which is soft.

And here’s my date – my approaching-a-date – and he’s looking terrific.

He’s looking great.

Like a new man.

Truly amazing.

He’s looking practically as if he’s someone else.

Yes.

Yes, he is.

He is someone else.

I am waving at someone else. The man I am meeting is sitting behind him and to the left and not waving. No one, to be accurate, is waving apart from me and I would love to stop waving, but have been distracted by the expression on my almost-date’s face.

He is experiencing emotions which will not help me.

But I can still save the evening. I’m a fighter. I calmly and quietly explain the particular story which is presently myself: the drugs I am currently taking – prescribed drugs – the residual levels of discomfort, the trouble I have enunciating – and perhaps he might like to tell me about his week and I can listen.

People like it when you listen.

They have stories, too.

But he doesn’t give me anything to hear.

And so I talk about my roots – that story – a little bit angry, because he should have been better than he is, should have been a comfort. My roots are twenty-three millimetres long, which is not unimpressive, is almost an inch. I tell him about my root canals. I summarize the activities involved in an apesectomy – the gum slicing, the tissue peeling, the jaw drilling, the noise.

This is not romantic, because I no longer wish to be, not any more. I am watching a space just above his head and to the right where another part of my future is closing, folding into nowhere, tasting coppery and hot.

Could be worse, though: could be forty-five, when everything tilts and greys and comes to point behind your eyes and you have not run away, you have waited for the world to come towards you, given it chance after chance. And, besides this, you find it difficult to name what else you have done, or who is yours. After so many years you are aware of certain alterations, additions, the ones that would make you like everyone else, that would join you, tie you gently, allow you to fit.

But they don’t make a story – they’re only a list.