In A World Gone Mad: Monday 27th April 2020: End of Life Partner

Monday: 27 April 2020

I am living with my end of life partner.

I hope this statement is true, I believe it to be so.

Max loves me, and me him. However:  it’s not perfect, we have problems, big ones. That’s what makes it the perfect relationship for me, I couldn’t cope with a flawless partnership. We aren’t married, but we are committed, and we have, on average, one major fight a year, where I threaten to leave him. last year, I spent three nights on Marty, my youngest son’s sofa until Max grovelled enough, and my back couldn’t take anymore.

We met on the 16^th April three year’s ago. We argue about this because I say that we started our relationship that night, he disagrees and says that he didn’t start seeing me until his birthday in May.

I was living on my-days-are-numbered, in Farnworth. Things had gone horribly wrong.

I fell passionately in love with a disabled man in a wheelchair who within months left me to die of cancer. We had his death planned. He was going to die in my arms at home with me—his choice, I didn’t bully him into it.  But—the dreaded ‘but’ start to a sentence—there’s always a but, he was a bit of a bastard. He left me, but I didn’t know it.  He put himself into a hospice temporarily in Liverpool, and I made the horrendous journey to visit him on public transport whenever I could, once three times in a week, usually once or twice. While I was commuting, taking him washing and treats, he was seeing his ex-wife on the days I didn’t visit—they re-married in the hospice and he finished with me by email. I didn’t get to say goodbye and I never heard from him again.

I got it though. He had stage 4 terminal cancer with months or weeks to live. We hadn’t been together long, and he had a whole life and two grownup children with his wife.  He wanted to die with his family and didn’t have the balls to tell me.  It was a dark time. The irony is that after about three months, I grieved his death—he’d blocked me on every device and told his friends not to reply to me. He must be dead ….the shock of finding out he hadn’t died until nearly a year later was incredible.  All the time that I’d been talking to a dead man, he was living at home with his wife and children.

He’d shown me what it was to be loved.  He didn’t, I wasn’t— but it felt like love from him. I wanted to be loved and I went back to where we met—good old Plenty of Fish, the romantic setting for many a new start and sordid bunk up.

My diary that year had a new title, A Hundred and One First Dates, bloody hell, I kissed some frogs.  I didn’t kiss many, most of them were one date wonders and I never saw them again.  I slept with one, he was big, bald and gorgeous, we had a thing for a while, but he wasn’t for committing. I commissioned a picture for him for his birthday and he saw that as one relationship building block too many.

I was so messed up that can’t remember if I had sexual relations with anybody else during those month—how can you forget something as big as that?  There were serial first dates and I met my next disaster in the local pub.  Knobhead came and went leaving a trail of destruction.

After him, being the creature of habit that I am, I went back to the dating site and met Max.  Our first date wasn’t great, but it had its up points. He’s a musician and I made him slum it by doing karaoke in The Brit.  From there we went to The Welly and we danced until three. My friend, Carol, turned up and wasn’t impressed with him.  But the dancing was great.

He is a southerner—from London—and he’s loud and arrogant and brash. People tend not to like him on first meeting because he’s loud. A kinder man they would rarely meet, he’s lovely but comes slap bang in the category of acquired taste.

He was an octopus and was hands on all night.  He kept trying to kiss me in public despite being told that I don’t kiss on first dates. That was a lie, I have when it felt right, but I knew a lot of people in the pub and I don’t go in for all that slobbering in public lark.  And anyway, I didn’t fancy him—he’s old.

He turned up in his green jag, as though it was ‘something,’ I came to love that car, but it was all show and no knickers. He’d paid a few hundred quid for it and it was a knackered old thing.

He’d driven to meet me from Windermere where he’d lived for nearly thirty years—it hasn’t done anything for his bloody awful cockney accent though.  We’d spoken over weeks on the phone and when we arranged to meet, I told him that I lived with a male lodger, so it would be fine for him to stay the night on the sofa so that we could go out for a drink. The rules were laid, and he understood them.

Saying that we met on a bunk up dating site waylays the need for further explanation, it says it all.

If I’d liked him and wanted to see him again, I’d never have slept with him anyway, I had a month rule because so many people came and went from my life in those days.  However, I thought he was an arrogant tosser, and had no intention of seeing him again.

We got in after three complete with dirty kebab.  I brought him bedding and said goodnight.

He laughed in my face.

‘C’mon, you don’t really expect me to sleep on that, do you?’

We met on a dating site and like, many before him, he expected a shag. He was three months out of a twenty-five-year marriage and was following his dick wherever it wanted to go.  He’s since told me that he wasn’t impressed with me, either. He thought I was a loaded author. I’d told him how much my books brought in, it was one of the first questions he asked, but he thought I was downsizing book sales to keep the gold diggers at bay. I was bigger than he expected, he has a thing for young size tens. We all put our best photos on our profiles, but I never lied to him.  He’s told me, he’d driven two hours so decided to make the best of it. He never expected to see me again, either.

I sleep naked but that night I wore a nightshirt, just in case. My fears were realised when three hours later, at seven, he strode into my bedroom with a tray of coffee and toast.

‘Are you going to squidge up and let me in, then?’

‘I am bloody not.’

I wanted him out of my room. That is the gospel truth, I wasn’t paying games, I didn’t fancy him, and I didn’t want him there while I was in bed. We talked and he said that yes, I’d clearly said he’d be sleeping on the sofa—and he had. I can’t remember what he said, but he made me feel guilty, as though I’d led him on. I masturbated him out of guilt, the morning after I met him.  I wouldn’t let him touch me and cocooned myself under the quilt while he stayed on top of it. Apart from sloppy kisses that I didn’t enjoy, that was that. Three years later and I hate that it happened like that on the morning after I met him. I feel that our start was tarnished because of it.  He pushed and wouldn’t take no for an answer and I was pressured into wanking him off, it was sordid and ugly and a horrible start to our relationship. I had no intention of seeing him again and wanted him to leave as soon as I could shove him out of my house.

He suggested spending the day together.

I didn’t want to.

We went to Manchester and had breakfast in a greasy spoon. We talked a lot and I enjoyed him. We went to an art museum.  Max is intelligent.  He knows a lot about a lot and art is one of his ‘things’. We spent hours discussing the exhibits and I warmed to him when he put his arm around me.

I had a fantastic day after a horrible start—but that was that, gone, done, sorted—bedding changed—next!

The next week, I moved away from Bolton and came home. I didn’t expect to hear from Max again, but his calls continued, and I avoided most of them, we talked but not much. I was moving closer to Max, not further away. I’d been given a council house in Whitehaven but said that I wasn’t feeling it and it wasn’t worth him driving up the coast to see me. He agreed with me that there was no chemistry there.

I had to be out of my house two days later and would receive the keys to my new house the same day. I was so excited. I drove to Barrow and Marty and I went to Whitehaven to see my new council castle. I lived in council accommodation when I was a child, it was massive.  This one was three bedrooms, with gardens back and front, I couldn’t wait to see it.

Marty and I stood in front of it and couldn’t say a word.  Typical of my son, his next response was to kill himself laughing. We were holding onto each other for support because we were laughing at the state of it that hard. The front garden was a six-foot strip of grass and it was on a vertical slope that rendered it useless.  The back garden was better, but I could possibly have posted it in a letter box. We looked through the windows and I swear you could touch all four kitchen walls standing in the centre of the room. It had three bedrooms; How? It was magic. The house wasn’t big enough for one bedroom, never mind three. It was a run-down hovel, no wonder nobody else bid on it.

‘Well, it’s not that bad, mam, you can get it nice.’

I couldn’t live there. Well that’s another fine mess I’d got myself into.

I had to leave my home two days later—and I was homeless.