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i remember the break up

actually this isn’t about the break up, as such. this is about a night down the pub the week it had happened.
the break up itself was traumatic, well for me, for her it was a piece of piss. i sort of knew it was coming. did my best to prevent it; no luck.
naturally the week it happened i was in less than a good mood. bears with sore heads were better company than i. i threw myself into work. at first i tried to deny it and then i just told people. i think i sounded like a whiney sixth former (though i didn’t do any poetry; i was tempted).
at the end of the week a lot of us would trudge off down to the beehive public house. our general manager, robbo, was dating the landlady. it was a traditional pub that served those that lived on the housing estate as well as those of us who worked in the light industrial estate that backed onto the houses.

it was a pub where we once held a retailer event at which robbo and his lady put on a rational east end pub grub fare. no one went near the very large mound of eels in jelly. it looked like a work of art that damien hirst would have been proud of, but no one wanted to taste it.

it was a pub that several people deserted for awhile because the girl of their dreams had taken offense at something someone may or may not have said to her, or near her. it didn’t matter because clodagh the golden haired siren had spoken so like lambs to the slaughter they followed her to another pub just to bask in her glory. they would eventually return to the beehive.

it was a pub where one night i was involved in a conversation with three of my colleagues which started with one of them asking: “do you masturbate in front of your partners” (he couldn’t call them girlfriends as that would be showing possession). that led to a fair bit of spluttering and mumbling as answers were avoided. to his credit he didn’t give up and kept asking. he didn’t get answer as everyone tried to move the conversation on to safer ground.

it was also the pub where on one friday night we watched robbo and his lady perform the sloppiest of kissing. they were like two teenagers in heat. the general feeling was that public display of affection deserved public commentary. this would have been fine if it weren’t for the fact several of the group were pissed as news. rude and obnoxious didn’t cover it. out of order didn’t come close. it was a night where it snowed. so one of us wrote ‘wanker’ in the snow on the roof of his car (sadly while the snow had melted by morning the legend remained in the dirt on the roof) while another decided to have a piss on the radiator. he was spotted doing it from one of the windows. ah the jolly japes. to make matters worse it just so happened that several of us turned up to work on the saturday, including robbo. it was decided that we should man up and apologise to him. to robbo’s credit he wasn’t making a big issue out of it, which i think made it worse. my desk was near his office so i watched as a couple of people wandered into his office to apologise. i was going to do mine just before i left. tim, one of the culprits, was the only other person left in the warehouse. he walked to robbo’s office, knocked on the door, put his head in and said: “about last night. we were bang out of order. sorry.” then he left.
i couldn’t match that. so i never said sorry.

as we were locking up robbo invited me down to the pub for a drink. i declined.

anyway back to the story.

most fridays it was packed.
this friday was no exception.

i was as close as i had ever been to wanting to drink. drink and drown my sorrows. we gathered around a bunch of tables. people avoided me. they must have known what i was going to be like. i don’t blame them.
i do blame them for what they let happen: the bastards.
i was sitting there shell shocked. as far as i was concerned my life was over. my dreams shattered. i wanted to mope and moan. i wanted to whinge and whine. instead i got gareth. it is hard to describe gareth. imagine gary numan without the personality, but with the intensity. he would occasionally wear eye-liner; he would always throw shapes with his body when he talked like some mutant version of william shatner’s kirk. worse than that gareth could be boring. boring as hell.
but tonight he asked about the break-up and i started to tell him. this is what i needed. this is what i wanted. an outpouring. a gushering. a cathartic explosion.

what i got was gareth telling me about how his wife had screwed him over.
how his wife had taken him to the cleaners.
how his wife he done the dirty on him.
how he low he felt.
how he had suffered.
him. him. him. him. him.

no it should have been about me.
he went on and on and on. and on and on and on. and on some more, and then more.
the whole fucking night.
not one of my mates. not one of my pals. not one of my friends came to save me. bastards.
there i was my world fallen down around me and gareth moaning and droning on and on and on.

drone. drone. drone. drone.
white fucking noise.

as the night wore on i was closer and closer to crying out give me a bottle of vodka to drown my misery and so once i had finished the bottle i could use it to clout gareth over the head to shut him up.
but no. no drink. no violence. just the thought of it. it was all that kept me sane as he droned on and on and on about how bad his break up had been.

i am sure on any other night i would have been sympathetic, but not on this night. this night was supposed to be me. me being the sad sack crying into his cups bemoaning the fate of the world. instead i was fight to keep the will to live as the drone went on.

the only thing i can say about it was that by the time i left the pub that night i didn’t feel much worse off.

i guess i should have been thankful for some small mercies.