Fuck me, Becki.
So there we are.
Seventeen months.
Thousands of looks, laughs, silences, stupid little moments, several completely unnecessary internal investigations…
and eventually I asked one very simple question.
Would you like to go for a walk?
You said:
“No, I don’t think I would like to, Paul.”
And fuck me.
That was efficient.
One sentence.
Seventeen months of ambiguity finally stopped moving.
Even I couldn’t turn that into a twelve-week improvement programme.
Although I gave it a fucking good go for about twenty minutes.
Raven already told you how I felt.
I don’t need to say all of that again.
You know.
What matters now is that you answered me.
And I heard you.
I believe you.
That matters more than everything else I spent seventeen months trying to understand.
Because ambiguity became its own fucking relationship.
A look could mean something.
A laugh could mean something.
The cold could mean something.
The warmth could mean something.
Silence could mean something.
At one point I could probably have produced a forty-page report on the emotional significance of you filling your water bottle.
With appendices.
Charts.
Executive summary.
Finding: Becki has consumed 500ml of water and Paul has somehow made this about himself.
And because everything could mean something, nothing ever fucking ended.
Until Tuesday.
You answered.
Then you said you were okay with the gym.
I’m not.
I’m not okay with six feet apart.
I’m not okay with one look buying another week of questions.
I’m not okay with having just enough of you to keep wanting more.
You said no to more.
I say no to less.
That isn’t anger.
It’s just me finally understanding that I don’t have to keep accepting a version of this that hurts me.
Bit late.
Seventeen months late.
But I got there.
Eventually.
I wanted you.
Properly.
Not the gym version.
Not the six-feet-apart version.
You.
And because I wanted you, I can’t pretend friendship would be enough.
I can’t turn love into small talk.
I can’t keep taking crumbs and building cathedrals.
I’ve already built one.
Planning permission was a fucking nightmare.
So I stop.
Not as punishment.
Not as theatre.
Just because you gave me an answer.
And I’m finally going to live by it.
I’m not disappearing.
I like the gym too much for that.
So yes, we may still end up in the same room.
Maybe we laugh.
Maybe we smile.
Maybe we don’t.
Fine.
The difference is I’m not taking any of it home with me anymore.
A look can just be a look.
A brilliant class can just be a brilliant class.
No investigation.
No cathedral.
No sequel.
You can still be in the room.
You just don’t get to be the room anymore.
Maybe Tuesday was simply this.
One moment.
One question.
One answer.
One door shut.
Could the walk have been shit?
Yep.
Could we have had absolutely nothing to say?
Quite possibly.
Could we have got ten minutes in, started talking about the weather and quietly realised loud music and elevated heart rates had been doing most of the heavy lifting?
Very possible.
Could one of us have said:
“Bit chilly.”
followed by eleven minutes of absolute fucking death?
Also possible.
Could we have walked for an hour, laughed our heads off, got lost, blamed each other for getting lost, stopped somewhere for a coffee we didn’t need, and then looked at each other thinking:
“For fuck’s sake, was this really what all the drama was about?”
Maybe.
Could it have changed everything?
Maybe.
Could it have proved there was nothing there at all?
Maybe.
Could it have established conclusively that the only genuine chemistry between us was dehydration and Les Mills?
Also maybe.
We don’t get to know.
That’s the bit that gets me.
Not because I think you made the wrong choice.
Just because there is now a road we never walk down.
The conversation we never had.
The hour we never took.
The version of you I never got to know outside those rooms.
The version of me you never got to know either.
Maybe it would have been incredible.
Maybe after twenty minutes you’d have thought:
“Jesus Christ. Put him back in Blaze.”
Fair.
We don’t get to know.
That’s the price of a choice.
One road becomes real.
The other disappears.
For too long I lived on the road that never actually happened.
One stare.
One laugh.
One brilliant class.
One stupid little moment.
And the whole bastard machine started again.
Not anymore.
You said no.
I believe you.
There is still part of me that thinks:
why the fuck not?
Why not one hour?
Why not find out?
But that part of me stops where your no begins.
So it does.
Annoyingly mature of me, really.
Actually, scrap that.
You probably already are.
You don’t strike me as someone waiting around for permission to live.
So don’t “have a nice life.”
Fuck that.
Turn the bastard up.
Full volume.
We get one of these.
One.
So if you already laugh, laugh harder.
If you already travel, go further.
If you already take the piss, take more.
If you already take the wrong road because it looks more interesting, keep doing that.
More laughter.
More heat.
More sea.
More stupid stories.
More “fuck it.”
Less “maybe later.”
I’m not telling you how to live.
I’m saying:
whatever version of life makes you feel most like you — fucking floor it.
Be happy.
Properly fucking happy.
The sort where your face hurts from laughing.
The sort where you look around and think:
“Fuck me. I’m glad I came.”
Not because Tuesday needs to become some regret.
Not because I need you looking backwards.
I don’t.
Live the shit out of the road you chose.
I’m going to do exactly the same.
And this is probably the bit you never really got to know.
Not because you did anything wrong.
We just never got outside the room.
You knew gym Paul.
Six-feet-away Paul.
The idiot staring across a room trying to work out whether one look meant something.
You didn’t really get to know the bloke who gets on planes, takes stupid roads, gets lost, gets bitten, gets pissed on by orangutans, argues with sat-navs and still thinks:
“Fuck it. What’s round the next corner?”
That’s me too.
And that’s the bit I’m going back to now.
Not running away from you.
Going back to myself.
Because Thailand is still there.
November is still coming.
The truck is still getting hired.
Which, frankly, shows a worrying lack of due diligence.
My international travel history is not really a collection of holidays.
It is a series of increasingly improbable incident reports.
Thailand
Reversed over a motorbike.
Beached a car.
Spent eight days in a clinic with a head injury.
Got chased by bullocks on an island.
India
Bitten by a rat.
Rabies jabs.
Chased by a dwarf.
Had a fight with the governor’s son.
Had my drink spiked.
At that point India had stopped feeling like a holiday and started feeling like somebody had accidentally written me into a very low-budget action film.
I was just waiting for the fucking helicopter.
Borneo
Giardia.
Which, if you have never had it, is a parasite you swallow in the water and then keep for weeks.
Not a dodgy stomach. A lodger.
Pissed on by orangutans.
Snakes in the fucking drawer.
A lizard down my back.
At that point I think Borneo had stopped hosting me and started actively trying to remove me.
And it finished the job when I got home, in a hospital in Derby.
Singapore
Supertrees.
Beautiful.
Spectacular.
Absolutely fucking enormous.
I hate heights.
So while everybody else was admiring the view, I was having a private negotiation with my legs.
“We are not going to fucking wobble.”
My legs disagreed.
New Zealand
On the flight over, a woman across the aisle died.
Properly died.
Strapped in for landing.
Which meant I found myself doing something no normal person expects to be doing halfway through a holiday flight:
trying to work out whether I was closer to New Zealand than Australia so they wouldn’t turn the fucking plane around.
Nothing says adventure quite like sitting there thinking:
“Please tell me I’m past halfway.”
I was.
Still one of the strangest pieces of relief I’ve ever felt.
Then I landed and stayed in an Airbnb hosted by Bruce and Sheila.
Which sounded so aggressively Antipodean I assumed somebody was taking the piss.
They were lovely.
Then I got trapped by the fucking tide.
Obviously.
Sydney
Cycled across the Harbour Bridge.
Got lost in Bondi Beach.
Had dinner with the former prime minister.
Missed my bus in Katoomba.
Which, compared with the rest of this list, feels suspiciously uneventful.
I don’t really have holidays.
I have incidents in warmer countries.
Sometimes with wildlife.
Sometimes with vehicles.
Sometimes with hospitals.
Sometimes with local dignitaries.
Sometimes with substances I definitely did not order.
And apparently, occasionally, with fucking mortality itself.
At this point travel insurance isn’t a precaution.
It’s a strategic partner.
And local wildlife appears to have my photograph on file.
Rats bite me.
Bullocks chase me.
Orangutans piss on me.
Snakes move into the furniture.
Lizards apparently regard my shirt as public transport.
Governors’ sons apparently want a scrap.
My drinks occasionally become chemistry experiments.
And somehow…
I still fucking go.
That is the bit you never really got to know.
Not because I was hiding it.
Not because you failed to ask the right questions.
We just never got far enough outside that little fucking bubble.
You knew one version of me.
The gym version.
The bloke looking across the room.
The bloke who got caught in the loop.
You never really met the rest.
The one who gets on the plane.
Takes the stupid road.
Gets lost.
Says:
“It’s fine.”
when there is increasingly compelling evidence that it is absolutely not fucking fine.
The one who sees a road disappearing into nowhere and thinks:
“Wonder where that goes.”
The one who gets a lizard down his back in Borneo and, once the screaming has stopped, thinks:
“Well, that’s a decent fucking story.”
The one who gets bitten, chased, pissed on, poisoned, stranded, concussed and occasionally finds himself checking whether the dead passenger means the fucking aircraft might turn around…
and still wants to see what’s round the next corner.
That’s me.
That’s the bloke outside the room.
That’s part of what I meant when I wanted the walk.
Not some enormous declaration.
Not a summit meeting.
Not seventeen months of analysis conducted over a flat white.
Just the chance for you to meet the bloke outside the room.
Maybe you’d have liked him.
Maybe you’d have thought:
“Jesus Christ, gym Paul was enough.”
Fair.
Maybe the whole thing would have lasted twenty minutes and ended with you mentally drafting:
“Thank you for your interest. Unfortunately, on this occasion…”
Which, given procurement, would at least have been on brand.
But we don’t get to know.
And that’s okay.
Because that bloke is still here.
Still travelling.
Still getting lost.
Still apparently being targeted by the international animal community.
Still saying “it’s fine” at moments when somebody sensible should probably be phoning the embassy.
Still fucking going.
And more importantly:
that is who I was before all this.
You didn’t create the fire.
You just became somewhere I pointed far too much of it.
That’s the part I finally understand.
I’m not becoming some new bloke because you said no.
I’m not reinventing myself.
I’m not disappearing into Thailand in some dramatic fucking montage.
I’m going back to the bloke who was already there.
Back to myself.
And Thailand is still there.
The heat.
The dusty roads.
The wrong turns.
The beach I wasn’t looking for.
The little restaurant with plastic chairs that somehow turns out to be better than anywhere with linen napkins.
Something cold to drink.
Something stupidly spicy.
Something I point at on a menu because I have absolutely no idea what it says.
There will absolutely be a moment where the sat-nav says left, I go right, the road gets narrower and some part of my brain says:
“Paul, are you sure?”
And I say:
“Absolutely.”
Based on historical evidence, that is normally the exact moment to become extremely fucking concerned.
The road will get narrower.
The truck will get dirtier.
Someone local may start waving both arms.
There may be water involved.
Possibly livestock.
Ideally nothing with teeth.
And I will still be sitting there saying:
“It’s fine.”
It may not be fine.
Historically, it often hasn’t been.
But somewhere in the middle of all that, the sea will suddenly appear through the trees.
And there’ll be that moment where everything goes quiet and you just think:
“Fuck me. Look at that.”
That’s the bit I love.
Not the perfect itinerary.
Not the sensible route.
The bit you couldn’t have planned.
The bit that becomes the story.
And yes.
I wanted you in that picture.
I really fucking did.
I imagined looking across and seeing you in the passenger seat.
Probably telling me I’d missed the turning.
I would obviously say:
“No I haven’t.”
We’d continue for another four miles.
The road would get progressively worse.
I’d become increasingly committed to the lie.
Eventually I’d announce:
“This is better anyway.”
You’d look at me in that way that says:
“You have absolutely no fucking idea where we are, do you?”
And I’d say:
“Course I do.”
I would not.
That still makes me smile.
But here’s the thing.
The road doesn’t disappear because you’re not in the passenger seat.
The beach doesn’t vanish.
The heat doesn’t switch off.
The stupid detour still exists.
The truck still gets dusty.
The sea still appears through the fucking trees.
The life is still there.
That was the bit I got wrong.
The fire was always mine.
You were never the destination.
You were the woman I wanted beside me while I was going there.
That’s a massive fucking difference.
So I’m still going.
Still taking the wrong roads.
Still finding the stupid beaches.
Still ordering the thing I can’t pronounce.
Still pretending I definitely meant to come this way.
Still apparently presenting a genuine commercial risk to the international insurance industry.
And if, somewhere in November, there is a Toyota Fortuner parked somewhere it has absolutely no legitimate reason to be, a local bloke waving both arms, a confused animal nearby, and one idiot insisting:
“It’s fine.”
That’ll be me.
Again.
Raven told you how I felt.
Tuesday told me where you stand.
That’s enough.
Except for one thing.
If you ever fancy meeting the bloke outside the gym, you know where I am.
No summit.
No emotional inquiry.
No fucking procurement panel.
Fifteen minutes.
Coffee. Walk. Whatever.
If not, genuinely, that’s okay too.
Although, technically, you don’t know where I am.
You blocked me on Myzone.
And Meta.
So this is admittedly not the strongest communications infrastructure ever designed.
Just unblock one of the poor bastards.
Or:
Until then, I take your answer exactly as you gave it.
Have the life you’re already having, Becki.
And turn the fucker up to full volume.
Go live yours.
I’m going to live mine.
And if at some point in November you hear a faint noise in the distance, it will either be the Indian Ocean…
…or a Thai motorbike owner shouting:
“NOT THIS FUCKING BLOKE AGAIN.”
Either way:
The road is still there.
And the fucking truck still leaves.