Things are simpler in black and white

A note.

Taped to the TV remote; the implication being that's what was most important in his life, and that's the first thing he'd put a hand on when he got home. It was insulting how predictable she thought he was, but more insulting how right she'd been.

Just a sheet of paper ripped off a pad; torn perforations along the top and scribbles in the margin to make the pen work.

"I still love you, I'm just not in love with you..." Whatever the hell that means.

"It's not you, it's me..." Again? Taking his own example, that was all four of the women he'd dated who had a problem with themselves, not him; 100% track record. Extrapolate that out to world populations and that was a whole lot of "it's none of you guys, it's all of us".

"Please don't call me until the dust has settled." Consider your number blocked and deleted, bitch.

"K." Signed with an initial; one character. She didn't even have the decency to put her full name to this 'decree nisi'.

Five years, three months, and two days reduced to a few scratches of ink on scrap paper, and an unfamiliar echo in the apartment; the cushions and curtains were gone.

Liam turned to glance round the living room, paper still in hand.

Jack, best friend and confidant for well on eight years now, slipped behind him to take up his usual place on the sofa.

The rack of DVDs was now sporting gaps like a tumble down fence. No major problem so far... it would be "Captain Correlis' Mandolin" and "Sex In The City" that were missing... Maybe "House"; he didn't remember who'd bought that, but he'd already sat through every episode and still couldn't identify more than one story line.

It would be a while before he could cope with assessing the decimation inflicted on their 'joint' CD collection.

He wandered on auto-pilot into the bathroom. His toothbrush, razor and gel had about five percent of the now empty shelf to themselves. The outline of each feminine potion and lotion, hydrator, desiccator, hair dryer, hair straightener and hair curler marked what had been Kate's territory.

Scrunching the note into a ball, he threw it into the toilet and pressed the flush button. Glancing at the empty toilet roll holder, he felt a spasm of regret at not saving the note to make a better and more symbolic use of it later.

The sound of splashing water teased his bladder. He was about to turn round and sit when he realized that rule was no longer applicable or enforceable.

Taking slightly guilty pleasure in the deep burble of his stream, he aimed to try and dislodge a nugget of shit glued to the porcelain. It broke free. Finally, he thought. That's been how many days?

Triggering the flush again, Liam picked at the edge of a vinyl sign urging visitors to sit down to pee, and tugged. Half came away in his hand leaving only the standing man overlaid by a red cross, and the single word "NO".

The bedroom wardrobe was similarly female-free. His few shirts and a pair of suit trousers hung in solitude, while his jeans, boxers and t-shirts were liberally distributed between the floor, the only chair in the room, and the edge of a drawer that hung permanently open.

On numb legs, he sloped back to the living room and flopped onto the sofa at the opposite end from Jack.

"Yeah, she's definitely gone this time, buddy." Jack glanced round and opened his mouth to speak, but Liam beat him to it.

He kicked his flip-flops across the room and lifted his feet onto the coffee table; another regulation struck from the statute books.

"Taken her stuff and buggered off... Good bloody riddance to her..." Jack lifted a quizzical eyebrow.

"No idea why... well, maybe..." Liam was talking as much to himself as his friend.

Jack didn't seem to be embarrassed by the dying embers of the relationship being raked through, and Liam felt grateful for that.

This 'still love you, not in love with you' business nipped, though. Demotion from boyfriend to boy friend meant Kate no longer saw him as mating material; maybe he did have an idea why.

"I tried to do the right thing... be a modern man... sensitive, caring... look where that got me? She had me whipped. It doesn't matter how you look at it, at an instinctive animal level, women want a strong man... emotionally, intellectually, physically strong. But everywhere you look, there're constant reminders to be new age and weak... not afraid to cry... discuss and open up."

Jack got up and padded through to the kitchen in search of a drink.

Liam continued to his retreating back. "And you know what? There's bugger all we can do about it. It's totally fine for women to make fun of men... man-flu, we can't get anything right, can't find the g-spot... but try turning the tables and you're called a sexist pig! I keep hearing women like a man that can make them laugh... but laugh at what? Nothing's safe anymore. We're being emasculated one tiny little slice at a time."

He tried to replay every argument he'd had with Kate. Surprisingly, there weren't too many, but of that few, the ones that clawed at his memory were those he'd only found a retort for hours later.

Liam stared unseeing at a poster of a tennis player scratching her butt and called through the living room door. "They complain that we lust after good looking women, and unrealistic bodies, but they're the ones that buy all these glamour magazines... We're programmed to go for who'll give our progeny the best chance at life... we can't unwire millions of years of evolution in one go, for God's sake..."

He was whining now, words catching in his throat as his voice warbled up and down in pitch. Moisture was beginning to film his eyes. See, there I go again, he thought.

He pushed himself up, followed Jack to the kitchen for a beer. He nudged the overflowing bin aside so he could open the fridge; a stale waft of liquefied lettuce and might-have-been cheese washed over him unnoticed. The bottle cap pinged off a pot balanced in the sink and rattled down the stack of crockery beneath.

"It's like... everything that made us men is gone. We can't hunt... we can't provide like we used to... I mean, who can afford to live on one salary anymore? We can't fight... get angry... Men have testosterone! It's supposed to make us aggressive... but no... we have to bottle it all up. No wonder more men get depression than women... and more suicides too. We're constantly trying to suppress our instincts just to fit in... it's just totally against nature..."

Jack knew not to interrupt when Liam was on a rant.

He leaned back against the kitchen countertop and took a long swig of his Corona.

"If we do fight for our women, we get yelled at for being Neanderthals, and if we don't, we're cowards." He glugged back another mouthful.

"You're lucky. You've never been through this, have you?" He pointed his beer-hand at Jack.

By way of answer, Jack curled forwards and began to lick the seam where his scrotum had been.

"Yeah... sorry. I guess it hasn’t applied to you for a while, boy."

He banged his half-empty bottle down on the draining board.

"C'mon... I need some fresh air... Go find your ball! Go on! Find it... Good boy."

A scrabble of claws on the floor tiles, a tail that wagged the hips, and a bound out of the door and into a simplified world.