Nearly happy
It is like a heady perfume has swamped me and I can't think because I think about her.
I don't mind.
It was not love at first sight. I'm not like that. It was love at first conversation. It was electricity, power. I knew she could power me. I knew she could allow me to live and I could allow her to live.
I don't even know what I'm fucking saying. If you understand, you understand.
***
In Carindale, I am thinking, they all chose these clothes, at some point, all these people chose the clothes they are wearing. Unless their mothers chose them.
When my mother chose my clothes, I wore a miscellany. It was the seventies though and mad flares were actually stylish. I was accidentally in tune with the zeitgeist. I didn't care. Girls liked me. That's all I cared about.
I'm not going to lie to you. It's all I care about now.
***
I am thinking, they all chose to have their hair cut that way. Except my hair, I don't even think about it much.
And my clothes, I don't think about them much. What do I even look like. A lump of shit in poorly considered jeans.
My girlfriend has a sense of style. I don't mean she's fashionable. I mean she wears stuff that's very
her. I feel embarrassed and clumsy to be her man.
But it's like she opened a door and I rushed through. I have spent years with women who wanted me to be someone else, the ones I was with and the ones I was kind of with but not really. They all wanted a version of me that didn't really exist -- a Windows 11, Grand Theft Nice Guy, a me that really is all the things they think i am.
Mad thing is, I am all the things they think I am.
***
Zenella is only telling me I'm handsome as a joke but you know what, I let my heart beat faster. I let my soul soar because there have been times I have only lived for her. There have been times I have wanted it all to stop stop stop and I didn't give in to that because I loved her so much.
That doesn't make me noble. It makes me fiery proud.
You know what? She didn't become what she might have been. She became what she is. And she isn't like anyone else. Hell fucking yes I am proud that my kids are just who they are. Hell fucking yes I am proud they are like no one else.
It will hurt them. When they realise they have been raised backward and fucked up so that they don't fit, maybe they will be angry like I was angry.
Then they will realise, I hope they will realise, it was a gift. I mean, you decide for yourself what it is worth but it's a gift of sorts. You are who you are. You are not categorisable. You are not wholly real yet you are as real as a person can be. You are a contradiction, you are legion, you are different from different angles.
You are fucking marvellous.
I would pay everything I have for her smile and I have. I have hurt her but I have not broken her.
***
She comes back with a swag full of books. I admit it, it is thrilling to have a child whose biggest love is books, who says, give me all your money so I can buy books, who cherishes books, imagination, the best of us.
We write our best. That's what we do. We write to say, we are worth it.
I believe you are worth it. Whoever is reading this, if anyone reads this, I believe you are worth it. I refuse to stop.
***
The people look sad in Carindale. No one ever smiles. No one laughs. It does not make us happy to shop. I ask myself if I am happy but I can't think about shopping. All I think about is Ally Ally Ally and how happy I nearly am.
Nearly am.
Because I'm afraid. Afraid that if I let go I might drown.
***
No one has read this far. You gave up in the second paragraph or the third if you're a diehard. So I am left talking to only myself.
Davey, I am ready to love you again. I am ready to cherish you again but I have felt those tentative steps to fucking it up and I have to tell you, ask you, plead with you.
Don't fuck it up.
You have the opportunity to love. To pour as much love as you can into the world. So pour, motherfucker. Pour, keep pouring, don't stop, don't ever stop. Be happy at last. Your children are beautiful and they're whole. Your woman is beautiful and she loves you. You are beautiful and you cannot deny it.
Yesterday, I thought about my mum and I cried because if only. But she knew and does not need to be here to have known. She knew.
Wondermazing
So a weird thing happened to me on Easter Sunday. I became a cliche.
I was just doing what you do, getting hammered round at a mate's house. I'd just been dumped but I wasn't really feeling sorry for myself because it hadn't taken me long to realise she wasn't worth much in the way of tears. But my mate said, ooooh shall I get Ally to come round and I was like, yeah, not bothered but go on (and I wasn't bothered
but I'd seen a photo of this Ally and believe me she was the kind of hot that fires me up and I'd heard quite a bit about how she was probably too awesome for me to handle and you know, I do believe I can handle a bit of awesome).
So this woman comes round and she's loud, a bit aggro, the way some English girls get when they are in a fresh social situation, and yeah she's sexy -- okay, I'm going to say dripping sexiness because this is a woman who
knows she can have her pick of the men present -- and very comfortable from the off and hella funny and engaging.
And I'm like, yeah
I would. Because of course I would. I'm a total slut, you know that. And if she didn't have her kids with her, we'd have been sharing the spare room because one thing I'll say about that woman is she is an
adult and she doesn't pretend to have hangups about getting what she wants, and if we're honest, neither do I.
But I didn't become a cliche straight away.
The next day, or maybe the one after, it's a blur, we talked on Facebook, like you do, and I just gunned it, like I never do. But I knew it was
right with this woman. I said, I get the charade and I like it but I am seeing someone different beneath that shell, someone much more tender.
And at some point, before we'd so much as kissed, it just struck me, this is the woman I want for life.
***
Now I do overenthusiastic. You know that. You know I get keen on women and then get my balloon burst. That's who I am. A Romantic. A heart in search of love. Whatever. But I had promised myself I would not be doing that again. I would not get too keen over too little. I would not look at a woman and see only the good points and ignore the bad.
And I don't make promises lightly, particularly to myself.
But I had a problem.
There were so many good points. I had to face it. I had steeled myself to accept being chill, staying casual, not getting too keen, blah blah.
And I had just met a woman I could love with everything I have.
***
So I know what you're thinking. You're cynical, bit like me. You are, like, well you usually settle for women who in a former age would have seen a great deal of the inside of an asylum because you have low enough self esteem that if any actual proper woman who was in the slightest bit hot gave you the nod, you'd wade through broken glass to get at her. And you're right.
But Ally is not just hot. Don't get me wrong. She's the hottest woman I've ever dated. I fancy her in a my dick's on fire way. Most men do. I'm not at all exaggerating. I've seen her walk into shops, servos, pubs and men just melt and turn into putty for her. She has the most singular sexual magnetism I've ever seen in a woman. I feel like high fiving myself because she wants me.
I say feel like. I have actually high fived myself, believe it.
She is also smart. She comes up with solutions to things. Things that leave me floundering, she ploughs through. If it looks insurmountable to me, it's just a blip on the GPS for her.
She is hella funny. She has a sense of humour that matches mine, quick wit, sharp tongue. I have never laughed so long and so hard with someone as I do with her. She's nearly as funny as I am, ffs.
She is as scattered and unfocused as I am. We get each other because we are similar in a lot of ways. We both live in a world where there cannot be too much stimulus.
She shares my values in a way that's scary. We agree on every fundamental. I mean, you talk about people being on your wavelength but Ally could often just have my thoughts for me.
Ah, don't let me bang on about how kind, how generous, how sweet she is. How when you get past the shell she likes to believe is really her, you find a deeper, beautiful soul. Let's just say that what makes her the woman I want to be with, more than anything else (and I know I haven't done it justice, I'm just trying to give a flavour), is that her instinct is to the good. She wants to be a cool, hard bitch but she fails
constantly. And she fails because she is just a good, good person.
And you know I want to believe that about myself too and she believes it.
***
So which cliche? All of them! You could pick from quite the range.
But the one that means most to me? The man who hated himself until he met someone who loved him and he could not doubt that love was worth having. When someone as wondermazing as Ally loves you, you cannot do anything but love yourself.
And you'll never get to know the full range of wondermazing. Because she's mine. I'm not sharing. She's mine for life.
