A Life More Ordinary

I suppose by this point in my life, love had been mostly accompanied by violence, blackmail and exploitation, so it shouldn’t have come as a surprise that I had no idea what ‘love’ actually looked or felt like and my first, best guess in an adult relationship had been massively wide of the mark. I also had issues of my own making, a jealous streak (perhaps with good reason) that had a tendency to present often, accompanied by self-harm. You’d think that after all I had just been through in that first relationship that I’d have been more wary. But as I said, patterns repeated and perhaps I just attracted a certain type of person.

Soon enough, I was in another relationship where I would endure similar treatment. On a sunny evening around mid-1992, while Graham Taylor’s England were stinking out Euro ’92, I was kicking a football around the local park on my own, which to me was a perfectly normal thing to do. I got chatting to a girl who seemed confident, the total opposite to me, and perhaps by a rare stroke of luck, I summoned up the courage to ask her on a date, an offer that she accepted. Buoyed by this rare show of bravery and feeling very pleased with myself, I nervously prepared for the said date a couple of days later. After an hour of waiting at the prearranged location in Horsham, I sullenly made my way home, convinced that I would now remain forever single and at the mercy of that inner voice that tells us how ugly, useless and pathetic we are. A few days later, back in the same park, the same girl approached me and apologised profusely, asking for a second date. I agreed and this time around it was a much more successful venture given that she actually turned up!

As I said, Lizz was confident. Very confident. I mean, she’d have to be to have included an extra ‘z’ in the spelling of her name. She was tall and lean with long, dark hair that had a tendency to ‘frizz’ in the rain. She was attractive, stylish and popular. What I didn’t understand at the time was that confidence disguised a controlling and coercive personality. In the early stages of our relationship, I imagine that I fed off her assured nature, even gaining a little self-respect given that ‘someone like her’ should like ‘someone like me’. However, I was still incredibly insecure with that same jealous streak that had previously given me issues. I found it difficult to navigate when she flirted with other men, which again is probably unsurprising given my background (I’m trying to not always come back to that as I’m worried it makes it sound like it’s an excuse). There were a couple of occasions where Lizz disappeared for an evening and I had enough doubt in myself to fuel my concerns. As before, there were times when we were happy and I wasn’t the only one to display signs of possessiveness, although I was so focussed on being a ‘loyal and loving boyfriend’ that others finding me attractive kind of passed me by.

I do have a very clear recollection of Lizz aggressively warning someone off me and in hindsight, I wish that I’d been strong enough to stop it – not because of the way that things ended up with her, but because the person in question hadn’t really done much to warrant the treatment she received. It’s only really with maturity that I can now look back on moments like these and accept that I have to bear some of the responsibility for the behaviour of others. Being desperate to be loved shouldn’t excuse me for ignoring what I would call my moral duty and if I have any regrets it is that I wasn’t able to stand up for what I believed in during those early relationships. I could have saved myself and maybe others an awful lot of heartache.

Because of her confidence and outgoing nature, not to mention her ability to flirt with anything in trousers, Lizz was in demand. The area of Horsham that I lived in at the time was not an affluent area and there were people on our road who I didn’t get on with, one of whom would ultimately be the reason behind our breakup. At the time, I was still working in Athena in Swan Walk, which started as a part-time job ended up as a place that I just kind of got stuck in. During my time there I struck up a friendship with one of the girls who worked in the nearby newsagents and we’d regularly spend breaks just chatting. Lizz was aware of this and as far as I knew, she had no issue. However, the day before Valentine’s Day, everything changed. It was a Saturday evening and I was supposed to be seeing Lizz, but she never turned up. Of course, all of my usual fears surfaced and I was convinced that she was with someone else and in this case, I was right.

It turns out that one of the guys on our road who I didn’t get on with had told Lizz that he’d seen me walking ‘hand-in-hand’ with my friend, Susie, from the newsagents. On the strength of this ‘evidence’, from someone who, if I said they had a reputation it would be very much an understatement, she decided that it would then be perfectly acceptable for her to spend the night with him rather than actually asking me if there was any truth in the rumours, which of course there wasn’t.

She confessed to me the following day and I had to put up with knowing smirks and comments from the guy who I now despised rather than merely loathing. Lizz and I agreed to call it a day, but she would regularly turn up at my place (I guess when there was no-one else available for her) and spend the night with me, keeping me hanging on to the belief that there might be some sort of future for us.

This went on for months and I even turned down a couple of potential relationships on the strength of those empty promises and she was quite happy to ‘put the time in’ with me if anyone appeared on my radar, doing just enough to convince me that a reconciliation may be on the cards without actually committing to anything. Blinded by love and paralysed by fear, I couldn’t see that she didn’t want me. She just didn’t want anyone else to have me either. The only small pleasure that I took from the situation was…Lizz liked to impress people. She was by no means stupid, but she wanted people to think that she was more clever than she actually was. At this point, I was still regularly writing and took it upon myself to introduce ‘new’ words into our conversations as often as possible. When she asked what those words meant, I may have accidentally given her incorrect explanations…it was a slow, low-level win, but I like to think that over the years, she probably made herself look a bit daft on more than one occasion.

A short while after we had split, I was with a group of friends at the house of a mutual acquaintance and I got talking to a blonde girl named Tammy, who I think was a couple of years older than me with enviable biceps and a forthright manner. We got on well, under the distant yet watchful eye of my ex-girlfriend and spent a big chunk of the next 24 hours in each other’s company.

The following evening, Tammy and I found ourselves alone in the house for several hours. We were probably low-level flirting, which somehow developed into full on wrestling as we playfully attempted to overpower each other and pin the designated ‘loser’ to the floor. It was a very physical, sometimes bordering on rough, exchange of intimacy which I had never experienced the likes of before. Arms were twisted, legs were purposefully grabbed and some bits were inadvertently manhandled and after about an hour of this (I was much, much fitter back then and far less feeble!), pausing only for the odd drinks break, I had managed to finally pin Tammy down on the floor, on her back with her hands above her head as I lay on top of her. Our faces, hot, red and sweaty were inches from each other and I was struck by the dawning realisation that I wanted to kiss her. I mean, like really, really wanted to. And, in hindsight, the signals could only have been clearer if she’d written ‘Go on then’ on her tight, white t-shirt that her breasts strained beneath or if perhaps there had been an animated crab, accompanied by ducks drumming on turtles while flamingos and a handful of frogs had encouraged me to ‘Kiss de girl’.

Of course, she could actually have gone ahead and kissed me herself to make things far easier, but I suppose that didn’t really fit with the whole dominant/submissive thing that was playing out. So instead, somewhat disappointingly, with our clothed groins mashed together as a side effect of our wrestling, the moment passed. As the evening wound down and our bout reached its timid, non-sexual conclusion, I confessed that I had wanted to kiss her during our earlier skirmishes and she gave me one last signal that completely went over my head by saying that she might have let me. If that word ‘might’ had been ‘would’ I may have been brave enough to chance my arm. However, having already experienced her fighting skills and having been pinned on my back between her thighs (yes, I know, another ‘sign’), I was also well aware that any unwanted attention may well have led to a swift and painful kick in the knackers. Not forgetting, of course, that I was still beholden to my crippling fear of rejection.

As everyone returned home from their respective nights out, we fell asleep together under a blanket with no shenanigans occurring. A couple of days later, after I had returned home for a few hours, she had disappeared and my ex-girlfriend seemed very pleased with herself as she copped off with someone old enough to be her father. Lizz would retain a hold over me for longer than I would have liked and I wish that I’d been strong enough to instigate a clean break. But, as the little-known Robbie Nevil sang in 1986 and then B*Witched irritated the shit out of me in 1998 with a completely different song of the same name, C’est la vie.