Love

He strikes again.

Just when I think I’ve gotten over him, he somehow crashes back into my life and I feel a medley of emotions running through me, unable to latch onto any one of them but I feel all of them at once; anger, frustration, annoyance, love, giddiness.

Robert is an arsehole. Pure and simple (thank you Liberty X for the break out). I struggle to remember why or how I ended up falling in love with someone like Robert. I know people have different perceptions of why someone is an arsehole ,and we’re likely to disagree with the definitions, but Robert is a cheater and that makes us un-pure and complicated.

I was on my way down the stairs when I found out about him and Neil, I remember I was on the stairs because I missed a step and sprained my ankle – yet another thing to thank bastard Robert for – but really it was my friend Josie that told me and ruined my day, and my gay little life as I knew it.

Me and Bert – an endearing nickname for him that I have now learnt to hate but was once inspired by ‘Bert and Ernie’ from Sesame Street. To me, as a closeted queer child in the 90’s watching this cute, bickering, ‘gay’ couple on TV was just what I needed to see and even though I wasn’t called Ernie or Ernest or whatever my name would be if I was to be called Ernie, it still made us smile whenever I called him Bert – were together for 5 long years of, what I thought, was love.

The first time I met him I knew he was going to ruin me – well, I wanted him to ruin me if you know what I mean… - but I thought the ruining was going to be all the good types of ruin. You know, the ‘I’m going to fuck up your life forever and take you away and get married and we’ll have a whole life together with children and pets and financial debt on 1 or 2 houses and live till we’re old and die together’ type of ruin but it turned out to the be normal ‘I’m going to pretend to love you whilst I fuck others’ type of ruin.

Arsehole.

I sat at the bottom of the stairs, that dreary February afternoon, with a sore coccyx and aching heart wondering what to do with this infuriatingly annoying information. Josie had seen Robert kissing our mutual friend Neil (pretty impressively and grossly, apparently) outside the comedy club the night before. She had assumed we were in the market for an open relationship considering how flirtatious we were with others and how open we were about sex in general around friends so she told me by accident.

(Imagine texts)

‘Omg I didn’t know you had invited Neil into your gay fold.

He’s cute, well done to you both. You’ve grabbed a stunner hun.

Is it normal for one of you to go out with third?

I didn’t get chance to speak with Berty last night but how come you didn’t come with them?

Neil couldn’t keep his hands off your Bert, I was horny for it haha

Anyway, you missed a great night. Miss Munter was on fire last night!’

Josie is a classic fag hag, always wanted us gays to get it on and in front of her. I don’t know what it did for her to encourage us to fornicate in public but women will always be an enigma to me and I didn’t want to start on the path into Josie’s mind. I only missed last night with Mary Munter because of mother being weary and in need of some company. Selfish bitch. I mean, no, sorry mum, I didn’t mean that but if it wasn’t for you my boyfriend wouldn’t have cheated on me! Although, I guess without her being needy, I wouldn’t have known about the two of them so actually, thanks mum. There we go, full circle!

Anyway, Robert had left early that morning as he had a 9am meeting which he said he couldn’t be late for, but I did wonder how he managed to get in past midnight and still be awake and active by 7am to leave the house before I had got up but the text proves why.

The cheating arsehole.

Is kissing cheating? I don’t know. Am I naïve enough to believe that the kissing must have been a one off, a ‘spur of the moment’ type thing that only happened because they were drunk? Or was I just ignoring the fact that he’s not been himself over the last couple of months and I’ve blamed myself because I was working too much but actually, he did have cause to fuck other people? Surely fucking comes before kissing? It did with us when we started courting so why would it be any different?

The nearer I edge towards 30, the more I can understand how married couples have threesomes etc but I hadn’t seen that for Robert and I’s journey but it turns out, he had.

That day was a blur to me. I don’t know what I did, who I spoke to you, how I managed to get through a full day of work, talking and serving strangers whilst I smiled my disaster of a relationship away but it was 9pm before I knew it and I was onto my second bottle of wine. I couldn’t stomach going ‘home’ to him so I went back at mum’s, using her neediness as an excuse to see her and avoid the arsehole. I never returned ‘home’ after that.

That night was 4 months ago now and yet still, seeing him in the coffee shop just now knocked me the fuck out.

Why does he look so good and how, since I moved away for my new job and deleted all my social media accounts, did he find me here?

Fuck.