Good Material

by Dolly Alderton

Ruined my life.

We found it funny—my chosen life partner, reduced to a borough. It’s not funny now it’s lost all its irony. It’s just a fact. I am about to call Jen (Hammersmith), a woman who I would probably never be friends with, who lives in a part of London I would never visit.

One of our favourite jokes, extinguished along with our relationship. We were only allowed to make it when we were in cahoots; when we were so close that her family felt like my family, even though they drove me mad. But she’d crossed over now. I’m not her family any more, we are no longer playing for the same team. I am just a man from the Midlands who she would probably never be friends with, being rude about her sister.

“It’s weird, being here. Sleeping on the floor. Smoking and drinking as much as I want. Not seeing anyone. It sort of feels like Christmas.” “Like Christmas?” “Yeah. Just, like, my world has stopped for a bit.” I stay silent. “You know what I mean.” “No I don’t, actually. Because it feels like the opposite of Christmas to me.” “What’s the opposite of Christmas?” “I don’t know. Easter? The worst birthday ever? My own fucking funeral except I’m alive at it?”

“She said that at the end of a relationship, it’s useful to write a list of reasons of why it’s good you’re no longer together.” “I can’t write that list because I want us to be together.” “I don’t think you do.” “I do, that’s all I want.”

I want her to know how much I love her and I also want her to think that I don’t care about our relationship any more.

“Maybe we should agree to not speak for a while.” “If that’s what you want,” she says. “It is what I want.”

Everything is a sign since she left. Everything is another clue to help me understand what’s happening.

I think of the possibility that I will never hear her laugh again, never buy her a birthday present, never guess what she wants from the takeaway menu, never hear her secrets or kiss the petals of her eyelids.

I take a photo on my phone of the jumper and the shirt in case I forget what it feels like to be loved. I close the curtains and get into the bed I’ve been sleeping in since I was a little boy. And I cry and cry and cry and cry.

I couldn’t remember if jeans and heels and hoop earrings had always been my favourite combination on a woman, or whether it was only now my favourite combination because it was on her.

“I don’t know anyone like you,” she said.

We got a kick out of the novelty of each other, heightening ourselves for the other one’s enjoyment (she, the fauxhemian corporate West London girl; me, the scruffy comedian who never had enough bog roll in the flat). We made too much comedy of our differences and placed too much meaning on our similarities. It was flirting to a Premiership standard. Any time someone came over to talk, it felt like our match had been disrupted. I was desperate to return all my focus to her and I could feel she wanted to do the same to me.

“WHY DO YOU KEEP DOING IT?” I bopped my head from side to side, biting down on to the plastic straw as I contemplated the question. “LOVE, I THINK,” I finally shouted, my voice breaking over the song-change to Nelly’s “Hot In Herre.” “UNREQUITED LOVE.”

I felt tiny and enormous; like I was her toy and her king.

“Beauty and the bell-end,” she said. “What a fairy tale.” We kissed some more.

I open Instagram and the first circle that appears on my story updates is Jen. Of course it’s Jen—this phone knows me better than anyone in the world. Never has there been a worse time for all of my algorithms to understand my interior life better than I do.

I click on it, feeling a rush of masochistic euphoria.

As I walk through crowds of shoppers, I sense Jen next to me and my body reacts involuntarily. Head light, heart galloping, breath short. Armani She. God damn her for choosing such a widely used perfume.

The one thing she chose thoughtlessly was the one thing that would follow me around forever; that reminded me of her skin and hair and clothes and bed. I turn to my left, expecting her to be there, but instead see a stranger carrying shopping bags and speaking into her phone, completely unaware of me.

“WIPE. That’s the only way you’ll move on. Wipe her from your life, wipe her from your memories.”

I laugh along too. I laugh and laugh and laugh and laugh and pay £159.14 and wonder who is more depressed, me or Sally.

I close my eyes and turn my face to the sky, trying to force an epiphany or even just a metaphor about sending things out into the water to go on their own journey, but I draw a blank. I hear chatter from a distance and spot a pair of figures walking in my direction, so I quickly turn the plastic bag inside out and dump the three other perfume bottles in the canal. I search for a sense of triumph as I walk on. Four fewer potential opportunities for me to smell Jen. That was a fantastic idea.

Van booked, storage unit booked, temporary home found. I had organized the flowers, the hearse and the burial in one morning.

Poetry is the most reviled and redundant art form, everyone rolls their eyes at it and takes the piss out of it. But the second that something shit happens in our lives, it’s the first recourse we have.

“I’d like to be single,” Jane replies. “I think most women would. It’s men who don’t know how to do it.”

There are so many hidden miniature break-ups within a big break-up. There are so many ahead of me that I haven’t even thought of yet. I’ve been so busy mourning Jen, I’d forgotten I’d have to mourn us four too.

I think about the message all day, each hour giving it an entirely new meaning. One kiss could be absolutely loaded with subtext—it is a kiss after all. But then again, it could also be a ruthless gesture. Just a kiss is the sort of rushed thing she’d send to her assistant in response to a message about a meeting room change.

It’s this sort of behaviour that makes me feel the most depressed—more than the morning drinking, more than the binge-eating, more than the post-break-up wanks when I try to think about anything other than her, but there she is, knocking at the door, like a celebrity guest on a nineties sitcom. I hate that I’ve become a private investigator for my own broken relationship.

“I think you’ve been given a gift, you know,” he continues. “Not just to grow as a man, but to grow as an artist. The voice of the heartbroken cuckold. Philosophical rigour on wanking. Mastery.”

“Andy!” he shouts from the window as he rolls it down. “Remember: a broken heart is a jester’s greatest prop.” I smile defeatedly. “You’ve been handed a clown wig and collar. You could get some of your best work out of this.”

“And the truth is, I was only ever going out to find someone to stay in with.”

I wish I could explain to him that I don’t want to think about her any more, but thinking about her is not a choice; that—even though Jen is no longer in my physical life—the room inside my mind that has been occupied by her for the last four years still exists. I want to convert it into a home gym or a meditation room or get in a new tenant, but I can’t. Sometimes I wake up and the first thing I think of is Jen, and I imagine the tiny version of her in a doll’s house bedroom in my brain and I’m comforted by Imaginary Jen who wants to keep me company for a little bit longer.

Unbelievable dream about Jen. The memories of it are so clear and I am unconvinced she didn’t actually come join me in my subconscious last night. I wake up feeling truly happy for the first time since our break-up. I wish I’d known this Inception hack for heartbreak before now. You’ve just got to eat some really mouldy cheese really late at night and you get to have your dream reunion with your ex.

I find that everything reminds me of Jen. Romantic films remind me of Jen for obvious reasons. Comedy reminds me of Jen because anything I find funny I imagine sharing with her. Films about family remind me of Jen, as she’s the person I wanted to have a family with. Even a nature documentary about the sea reminds me of Jen because of her enthusiasm for coastal holidays and swimming.

The love of my life, asking me about my mode of transport to the bank because she has nothing else to say to me. She’s gone from girlfriend to uncle-standing-in-the-hallway-as-I-arrive-for-Christmas in a matter of weeks.

I feel like I’m in the presence of a celebrity. A couple of months ago, Jen was the woman whose pants I put in the washing machine with mine when I put a load on. Now, she is unfamiliar and untouchable; someone I have a one-way relationship with in photos and memories and in my imagination. I cannot believe she’s real, here and standing next to me.

“I can’t even look at the sea any more because it reminds me of you.” “If you can’t look at the sea that’s YOUR FAULT, ANDY,” she shouts. Passers-by look at her, surprised to see someone so well-put-together bellowing something so demented in the middle of the day. “Not mine. YOURS. YOU need to go fix your relationship with the sea, NOT ME.” She turns and walks away. “YOU’VE RUINED THE SEA,” I shout before I turn and walk the other way.

“You are locked in a prison of your own nostalgia. You need to let go of the past.”

It’s weird not being in our subculture of two any more.

That instinct never goes—look at my fire engine, look at my vinyl collection. Look at all these things I’ve chosen to represent who I am. It was fun to find out about each other’s self-made cultures and make our own hybrid in the years of eating, watching, reading, listening, sleeping and living together.

But I’m not a member of that club any more. No one is. It’s been disbanded, dissolved, the domain is no longer valid. So what do I do with all its stuff? Where do I put it all? Where do I take all my new discoveries now I’m no longer in a tribe of two? And if I start a new sub-genre of love with someone else, am I allowed to bring in all the things I loved from the last one? Or would that be weird? Why do I find this so hard?

“Pleased to have realized early on in my life that you can trust nobody. Rely on nobody. When someone tells you something, don’t believe them. When something is given to you as a fact, ask yourself whether it really is a fact. Everybody is out for themselves in this life. Everyone. And that’s how it should be. I should be out for myself,”

I feel both wronged and proven right and like of course this was always meant to happen, of course Jen was meant to be with someone like him. And I look back on myself this morning, with my sweet ignorance, and I want to hug him because it’s so cute that he really believed that someone like him would end up with someone like her.

“When you get to hell, you won’t be brave!” he shouts. “When you get to hell, you won’t be brave! WHEN YOU GET TO HELL, YOU WON’T BE BRAVE!” — Yes I will. — Yes I will yes I will yes I will.

I make a mental list of all the things I would be willing to do—actually, realistically willing—to have Jen break up with Seb and be in love with me again.

I’m desperate to ask him everything but also want to know nothing.

Every night feels like a possibility for moving my break-up on in some way. I’ve never been out so much in my life. Sometimes I worry I’m only going out with the hope of bumping into her.

I want someone to be mine and I hope they’d want me to be theirs.”

Here’s what I’m getting at: I don’t know if I really want to move on, because the further away I get from the pain, the further away I get from her.