about goddamn time...
2002-11-02 . 1:08 a.m.

you know I dont think many people will read this seeing as i have not updated in so long. but that isn't the point. i dont write this for others. occasionally something i write echoes something in Fletch's diary or has some odd bearing on our lives as Sheffield's resident southern weirdos but the main reason i am writing tonight is to do what some of you others do...

tonight i will try and identify the last time i was happy. Hopefully this will excise some of the pain i've been carrying.

I have now been single for quite some time. i could work out the exact amount of time but that would be self-defeating. suffice to say it's been well over a year now since i was last with somebody.

In my life there are very few constants. I do not get attached to people or places like most normal people. I have no problem with getting up tomorrow morning to find everything I own stolen and my house burnt to the ground. hey-ho, it's just "stuff". move along. nothing to see here. The only real thing that remains static in my life is my love for my son. Until you become a parent you can't really understand the bond that takes place. Imagine the best and most pure love you have ever felt for someone. maybe multiply it by a factor of 100. thats what I feel for my son.

But...

Loving my son, bonding with him, helping him grow cannot replace companionship. sure, I have Fletch - the best buddy i could wish for - he's like a brother that I never had. If he had tits - I'd marry him. He knows everything I don't and genuinely kept me alive out of his own pocket for something like six months whilst i was getting over the wreck of my last relationship. there is nobody else on this earth that i could trust to the same degree.

(Welcome to the most round about introduction ever)

The last time I was genuinely happy was with a girl called Laura. We were together for a very short time in the grand scheme of things but never have i met anyone who conjured up feelings like she did. I have had a very "full" life - i wont go into details - suffice to say i have probably been with more people than most (not ego - and something im not that proud of; maybe...)

Nothing could have prepared me for Laura. As well as being quite, quite beautiful she had all the other qualities i look for in a partner - intelligent, capable of interesting discussions, funny etc. all the things that are great. there was only really one downside. i was poor.

i dont mean "damn i can only afford to buy a couple of beers" poor. I mean "hmmmm. if i only eat a single slice of cheap bread every other couple of days i can perhaps afford to feed my child" poor. dont think i wasn't working - i was, and i wasn't spending money on anything else. so imagine the scene - you are with the person you love more than almost anything else in the world and she says "lets go out tonight". now say you cant afford it and you say this. how long do you think it would be before she got bored. well - Laura got bored. she got so bored she went out every friday, saturday and sunday. she got so bored she got drunk and slept with her ex.

so she dumped me.

still poor (and now depressed) i then spent the next month and a half trying to win her heart again and against all odds i succeded. I asked her to marry me on September 11th. In tears she said yes. she would marry me. then it happened again - she went out, got drunk and slept with her ex. i came home from an 11 hour shift to find her and all her belongings gone. a "Dear Paul" note on the sofa.

now before this, i had lived with a girl called Kate - she was very materialistic and in fact the sofas (and most other things) belonged to her. i paid her money to keep these items around the house. maybe i owned the kettle, i'm not sure. the reason i mention Kate is because a couple of weeks after Laura left me, Kate came to the house when i wasn't there and, using a key that she had had cut without my knowledge, removed virtually everything from the house barring Dylan's cot and some of my clothes.

so now im living in an empty house - im poor and the woman i love more than anything else has left me. so i take a week off work. when i return - who should be there but...

The Ex Boyfriend Laura Slept with At Least Twice Whilst She Was With Me.

So i go up to my boss at the time -

"Mel. Send me home"

"Why?"

"Have you ever seen a dead person?"

"No. Why?"

"See that guy there? If you dont send me home; I'm going to garrote him and then individually break every bone in his body. If anyone tries to stop me, i will kill them without hesitation"

"Go home Paul. Take the week off"

I take the required week off work and come back feeling slightly better. then i discover that Laura fell pregnant and she doesn't know which of us was the father. either way - she had an abortion. I am pro-choice btw - "a woman's body is her own fuckin' business" but i also like kids. This, unsurprisingly kind of threw me (again). P.S. the "other" guy - whose name also happens to be Paul told her "so what?" when she mentioned it to him. nice guy huh?

(congratulations if you're still with me btw - as i said at the beginning - this is for me - not you).

Since this time i have been lonely as hell - before this i had not been single for maybe more than a night or two. i had spent the last 7 years in long-term relationships. The last time I asked someone out I nearly got fired and also got slapped with a "sexual harassment" charge. It would be funny if it were not for the fact that this has removed any chance of me asking anyone else out from work ever again. And this is the rub. Much as i love Fletch (and i do in that wholly hetero-male-bonding fashion) i am unbelieveably jealous of that man. you know him through his writings, i live with him. he has so much talent in every conceivable art form, he has so much knowledge, he has empathy, he has understanding, he has manners. *sob* sorry. nearly got weepy there.

He has been single for maybe six or seven weeks. the first girl he asks says "yes". I wish it could happen to me. I am only holding back the tears because i have so much experience at doing it. i am so jealous but im also elated. im happy for him. because barring Dylan i cant think of anyone else in the world i would rather see happy. i would sacrifice anything for either of them. one through a bond of blood, the other through an unspoken bond of brotherhood.

i cant think of anything else to say. i dont feel better for writing this. i kind of guessed i wouldn't but hey, it needed doing.

so there it is - Sad as I am, lonely as my life is, and whatever else i may say -

good luck Fletch