-2

i remember: the break up.

there are several points about the break up.
1] it was a protracted affair. annemaire and i had broken up earlier in the year. i went to warwick patched it up (my mistake). in order to carry out this mission of reconciliation i had to contact work and call in a sickie, it remains the only time i have faked illness at work.
2] both times it happened it came out of the blue and caught me by surprise. i am a man with his finger on the pulse.
3] there was no reason given for the break up. it seemed to boil down to “i’m bored of you, it is not your fault”. oh well that was fine then.
4] i took it very very very badly. to say i was childish about it would have been an understatement.
5] it was made worse because we lived together for a few weeks after she dumped me, once she told the kid that was when i left. (when he found out we had some hugs and tears and he utter the words that took what was left of my broken heart and crushed it a little more “i love you more than my real dad….” right there you have your field of dreams moment. it is the reason i will blub every time i see that film.

but in a sense this isn’t about the break up as such, it is about why i hate gareth.


the second time annemarie dumped me i knew there was no saving it, oh i tried but it was very much a tilting at windmills moment. so unlike the first time i fessed up and let everyone know i was no longer part of a happy couple.
i got some sympathy, i got lots of questions about the whys and the hows, and i got advice.
i was not just a bear with a sore head, i was a bear who had a sore head, toothache and dodgy joints. i was the most miserable fucker in the world.
but i had a plan.
it was a doozy.
it was a plan that sun tzu and wellington would have been proud of. what was my plan? friday night i was going to go to the pub, the beehive, straight after work. no i wasn’t going to get drunk, but as the boys poured booze down their throats i was going to pour out my heart. as they got drunker i could get more purple in my prose and i could exorcise the demon of annemarie.
see plan of pure genius.

but not even general montgomery could have prepared for gareth.

gareth was one of the people i worked with. he was also one of the most intensely boring people you are ever likely to meet. i worked with people who could tell a taut, tight funny story. i worked with people who would embellish that story and tell it as if it were their own, but they managed to keep the humour. i worked with people who could tell the same story in the director’s cut version, it was longer but not as good, but still mildly amusing. on the other hand gareth would take the story and stretch it to breaking point and in the process he would lose all the humour.
gareth was the betamax of comedy.

friday night arrives i am off to the pub. i am ready to get all kurt cobain and trent reznor on people. i am full of woe. i am full of self-pity. i am ready. i was born ready for this moment.

but no. i get stuck with gareth.
i am in the start of the “she’s a bitch, but i love her.”, “she’s a cow, but i want her” riff. the i love her i hate her line. the i did everything for her song and dance. i am ready to spit bile, i am ready to hurl verbal volcanoes in her direction. i will spill venom and get the poison out of my system.
i am going to get all jazzy and bluesy with a touch of goth grunge.
i am a ready for this cleansing.

but no. no sooner had i started than gareth interrupts and tells me that he had it worse. and suddenly i am wile e coyote outmanoeuvred by the roadrunner.
instead of me pouring out my woes, i am listening to his. worse still i can’t escape, the pub is full and i can’t get away, even worse i am like a bunny in his headlights and i am trapped listening to him.
he tells me how his wife left him.
how his wife took the house.
how he had given up his job to look after the kid while the wife worked.
how the wife took the kid.
how he was prevented from having access to the kid.
how the lawyers screwed him over.
then he told me it all again, but this time in detail.
then by fuck he told me again, this time we were in the minutiae of it all (i swear he gave me details on the shoe sizes of the lawyers).
in-between all this he gave me the “i hate her, i love her, i did everything for her” riff.
the bastard was stealing all my lines.
my suffering was compounded because i was sober.
i confess i did have some admiration for the fact he was relentless in his retelling of his tale. he had a campaign worked out and nothing was going to deter him, no obstacle, no objection, nothing was going to prevent him telling me his misery memoir.
all the while i have a gut full of self-pity boiling away, festering poisoning every fibre in my body.

the end of the night couldn’t come fast enough.
not one of my so-called mates came to rescue me.
that week i suffered annemarie dumping me, that night i suffered gareth. in that moment i knew my life was shit.

the upshot was i never got to pour it all out, i never exorcised it. i got to carry it around with me forever.
the break up scarred me for life. in truth i let it and i have spent many a night thinking about what i could have done to have made sure annemarie stayed in love with me.

every now and then i remember that night in the beehive pub and i know in my heart of heart if it wasn’t for gareth i would have gotten it out of my system and i would have been a much happier person in the years that followed.
i confess i have never really gotten over annemarie, but as billy bragg says i am a big boy now and i can sleep without the light on.

buy by jiminy i still hate gareth.