INTERNET DAVE

We used to joke about the way we met.

On the Internet.

Embarassed probably.

And then the lies you told. Dave.
If that is your name.

First you were divorced.
Then you were separated.
Then you were separated, but still living in the same house.
Then you weren't separated at all.

By then it was too late.

You said you lied because you didn't want it to end.
But that's probably what you always said.
Then you said it didn't matter anyway, did it?

Thast wasn't the kind of realtionship either of us wanted, was it? You know, the live-in lovey dovey stuff. And anyway, it kept us from making fools of ourselves elsewhere.

The first time we met, we went to the cinema and you talked all the way through the film. INSOMNIA as I remember. You bought a bag of sweets. And ate them all. I couldn't remember the last time I saw an adult do that.

Then we went for a meal and you couldn't have anything to drink. You were a recovering alcoholic. Clean these 18 years you said defiantly.

Jesus wept.

After that we just had sex.

Sex in the afternoon.

But not at night.

And never at weekends.

I hated that. I used to say, I hate it when you go. And you'd say, it's all I can offer for now. I guess that's what you always said.

I was beginning to feel uneasy. It appeared to be turning into what we used to call, back in the day, an inside job. You know, maybe he was married, maybe she was married. Maybe he was still living with his mother. Maybe he was a priest. He'd pay a visit on the qt once or twice a month, more if the coast was clear. But they never went out together, they were never seen together in public, nobody knew what was going on, or so they thought. That could go on for fifteen or twenty years.
The women were pitied or scorned and ridiculed. Few of us recognised the addicitve charge of a combination of claustrophobia, secrecy, physical attraction and fear. The unique intensity of out of context sex with a person with whom it would otherwise be impossible.

You said if you spent the night with me you would be missed. There would be a price to pay.

I asked you, do you feel guilty about being with me - still - after all this time?

You supposed so.

Does anybody know about me?

One or two probably would, you said.

Yeah, right! But not the majority?

No.

And they would be horrified if they did?

Surprised, certainly.

So nobody knows knows about the sort of person you really are? And you'd go down in their estimation if they did? Whoooah - can't have that can we?

So we stopped talking about that too.

But I began to sense that it was nothing to do with your wife - that after two or three hours away from the apparatus of re-hab, away from the back slapping male bonding - women were never mentioned - away from the self-congratulatory network of cronies, coaches, the mentors and mantras - the acolytes and admirers you had surrounded yourself with - you did not feel safe, you began to feel the need, that was really what you felt guilty about.

You loved to talk about the celebrity drunks you'd had contact with. If a name came up in conversation you'd always shout out - he's one of ours. You were what we journalists used to call a starfucker. You'd been an alcoholic, now you were addicted to not being one. Itt gave you a kind of status. Stopping drinking had simply replaced it - it hadn't left you free to do other things. I said, you used to drink and now you don't, can't you just leave it at that?

You said I just didn't get it, you can't just stop, you have to keep working at it all the time. To stay sober you HAD to become institutionalised....although you didn't actually use the word institutionalised. I guess you can take the man out of the pub - but you can't stop him banging on about it for the next forty years.

No, I didn't get it - I couldn't understand - I had never felt, never experienced such whole hearted committment to a single purpose. So we stopped talking about that as well.

You said you had never had a real relationship - just a teenage shotgun wedding followed by a succession of bits on the side - now you didn't know if you could , if you knew how. I guess that was something else you always said.

Sometimes I minded more than others - just as long as you didn't keep lying to me. You did of course. Not just in the beginning, about being married. You lied about everything. Important. Unimportant. It didn't matter which. You lied when I asked questions you didn't want to answer, you lied when I made demands. When faced with awkward situations, even those of their own making, that's what some people did. But I had to learn that the hard way. Where I came from you told the truth, if it killed you, you faced the other played down, you didn't spare people's feelings, you didn't think of the consequences, you didn't keep your arse covered, we were taught not to deny our religion on any account whatsoever. You were a Southerner. I was a Northener..

What was the problem? If I accepted that you were married - and still wanted to be with you with - then I shouldn't really care about the rest.

I didn't really think you were going to leave your wife, did I?

No.

I didn't actually want to live with you, did I?

Hell, no. Not now.

The problem was that I didn't WANT to care, but I did. I couldn't help it. I was much too self centred, too full of my own importance NOT to care. I didn't WANT to be thinking about what you were doing when you weren't with me. Why you preferred to be elsewhere.

Sometimes, when I could taste you, when your heat and your smell were within reach, I really thought I didn't care, it didn't matter it wasn't important.

And then you'd catch me on a bad day.

The truth was, you dealt in assets, enhancements, and in the world outside my bed, this room, I was neither. I added nothing to the roles you had carefully perfected in the rebuilt life....long suffering husband, dutiful son, devoted father.....the best friend a man could wish for.....

Sometimes I couldn't, myself, believe I was in this situation. That I pestered you with texts and e-mails (no phone calls), that I was involved at all with somebody like you.

I know all about slippery, middle aged co-respondents, chancers, love rats, fly men dirt birds, acid bath murderers and serial cheaters. We all do, don't we, from the Sunday Dispatch and the News of The Screws.

I had no idea you still existed.

They used to wear tan coloured suede shoes and yellow socks. True to form you were relentlessly jovial. You made me laugh with dated catch phrases and classic lines and classic little vanities, about the blueness of your eyes and the size of your dick. In the past you would have been a commercial traveller maybe, not a life coach.

But hey - the loveable rogue lives on!

Ha Ha!

He laughs in the face of re-construction!

In the Sunday Dispatch in those days you targeted widows, divorcees, lonely desperate needy women, women in jeopardy.

Hey - I had no idea I still existed!
But of course YOU knew that.

We had some things in common, you and I - married too young, trapped for decades in a dead marriage, kids, mortgage, warped sense of duty, responsibility. Unlike me, you hadn't let that get in your way. You turned it to your advantage. It was always a handy excuse after all if some woman got too serious.

When my children were old enough, I walked. No-one else involved - I just walked out. It had all seemend so clear cut, so black and white - at the age of forty-five I had made myself homeless, penniless, but - by God - I had my dignity! You weren't such a fool.

The news seems to be full of stories about men who dupe, rob - and murder - women they meet on the Internet or lonely hearts pages.

You were a sweet, generous and affectionate lover. Something else I was'nt used to.

You could be sentimental and squeamish too. A mammy's boy with a horror of menstrual blood.

You said I knew you better than anyone. Which seemed odd, because I didn't know you at all. I didn't know who you really were. I knew what you'd told me of course, but I didn't know how much of that to believe.

At intervals, you would simply vanish. When you reappeared, sometimes months later, I tried to decide if there was anything you wouldn't lie about. An ailing mother? A wife with cancer? Would anybody lie about something like that? Has Pinocchio got wooden balls?

Or was it just the kind of statement you knew most people would baulk at challenging - regardless of what they were really thinking - just in case it WAS true.

The dog must have been forever eating your homework.

Then who am I to be judgemental.

It takes two to tango.

You said you wouldn't abandon me again, or at least we would talk.

Goodbye sweetiepie - or as you would say - ciao.

If you get this, call me.