How love breaks down – Saturday 15th

Baltic Babe was my first and last thought of every day. I had never been so taken with anybody or anything in my life. I was aware that I was rapidly falling in love with her. She had a way about her that I found irresistible. Everything about her resonated with me and our chemistry was intense. I’m not embarrassed to say that my days were filled by a giddy feeling, a lightness to how everything felt, a positivity to everything and everyone that I encountered. My heart would skip at least one beat when she sent me a text message during the day. I looked forward to hearing her voice every night when we would talk and laugh for ages. Many times each day my thoughts would drift over to her and I would feel a yearning to wrap my arms around her and hug her. At the end of some days my face would hurt because I had been smiling so much. Can you imagine what that’s like?

On the Saturday morning I arrived at 10am as agreed. I’m as punctual as she is not. Baltic Babe greeted me at the door just wearing a fluffy, white dressing gown and nothing else underneath. Her hair was a little wild and I knew we were running late, but her smile made me soft inside. Her eyes were shining bright as she turned to go upstairs to go prettify herself as all women feel the need to do. I grabbed her lapels and pulled her closer to me, her eyes widened but they relaxed as I gently kissed her “hello”. I let go of her, we stared at each for a moment, she gave me a beautiful smile and made an approving murmuring sound before excitedly running up the stairs.

She seemed so perfect in that moment. How I felt about her in that short interaction is how I always wanted to feel about a woman, my woman, my other half, the missing half. Right then and there I knew I could be with Baltic Babe for the rest of my life. I had never felt that way before. It was a wonderful feeling.

We drove to a shopping complex on the outskirts of London. It had a collection of shops that she wanted to visit to buy things for her home and take advantage of having me providing a car to transport it all. She was a typical Londoner in that regard; totally reliant on public transport, which in London is no big deal. I didn’t mind being her driver and laying on a car. There was very little I wouldn’t do for her.

It was interesting again to watch her go about her decision making process in the shops as she chose cushions, utensils and an enormous mirror that just fitted in to my little car. She did indeed assess all the options, then narrow it down to two contenders before making a choice. “Hmm…was there another man on the scene?”, I wondered.

As we walked in to a massive Sainsbury’s, it occurred to me that this was our very first grocery shop together. I thought it was a bit of a landmark for us. I pushed the trolley as Baltic Babe filled it up, once again taking advantage of having a car to get it all home. It was late afternoon when we finished unloading the car at her house.

The next part of the day involved me making a barbecue for us. I had brought exotic meats for her to try: ostrich and zebra. In case she didn’t like them, I also brought a leg of lamb. I still wasn’t earning any money and there wasn’t any immediate prospect of me doing so, but I felt that the expense was worth it…she was worth it.

At the beginning of the day I had been thinking that our day would turn out something like this: fun at the shops, I dazzle her with my barbecue skills, I do a few diy chores for her that she needed my muscles for, then we snuggle up in front of the television to watch a romantic movie, then I pick her up and carry her to bed, making sweet, mad love like we’ve never made before.

Stupid boy.

Stupid, stupid boy.

The meats were sizzling on the barbecue when I said to her, “Right, that’s all going nicely. Which diy chore do you want me to do first?” Time for me to be macho and manly.

“There’s that garden tap whose fitting needs to be changed,” came her reply from the kitchen where she was preparing a green salad for us. I don’t eat green salad, but I didn’t tell her. I’m wasn’t going to ruin our happy mood with a bit of pettiness.

We had spoken about the tap before and during the week I had stopped in at a hardware store and bought a new fitting for her. The tap (faucet to my American cousins) was old and rickety. The fitting was rusted on, but I got it off. The tap had come off of it’s housing in the wall, but I had fixed that too. I was pleased with my handiwork. When Baltic Babe came out to inspect it, she didn’t like what I had done.

“Oh no, that won’t do. It looks terrible,” she began with a sad face.

“Erhm, well that’s the best I can do with what I’ve got to work with. Besides, what’s the problem? It’s far sturdier against the wall than what it was before,” I responded, at a loss as to what more I could do.

“It looks so ugly. Can’t you make it look better?” she continued.

“With what?” I responded, a little irritated at her ingratitude.

“There’s a bag of cement in the shed. Why don’t you use that?” she implored.

Not a hope in hell was I going to spend hours to mix up a batch of cement and do cementing as the sun was going down. The meat might burn. That was far more important.

“Sorry, but that’s just going to have to do,” I retorted, intent on ending the discussion there. What I had done was infinitely better than what was there before. The fitting had been changed and I had secured the tap better to the wall.

Baltic Babe skulked off, unimpressed, perhaps even slightly pissed off that she didn’t get her way with me. I wasn’t going to have her bossing me around over every little thing.

Earlier in the day she had told me that she was having to take a day’s leave to be home when a refrigerator repair man was going to be visiting. It had taken her more than a month to get the service agency to agree to send someone out, even though the fridge was less than a year old and still under guarantee. The issue? The drawer for vegetables had a temperature of three degrees Celsius while the manual said it should be two degrees. I remember thinking to myself, “Are you mad?” when I heard her tell me this. It wasn’t the first time I had asked that question in my head.

The meat was ready and I gave her the best cuts. We sat in her garden on foldaway chairs that I had brought. There was a dreadful stony silence between us.

“Oh my god, no!” she suddenly exclaimed.

“What’s the matter?” I naturally asked.

“I can’t eat this. Look at that. There’s blood on the plate! Oh no!”

I leaned over to her plate and saw that the zebra was slightly underdone in one section and a drop of blood had squeezed out on to her plate. She had asked for medium-rare. Oh, the drama.

“Not a problem, I’ll put that piece back on the fire and bring you another piece that is well done,” I said as I took her plate off her lap and walked over to the fire, getting her another piece of zebra.

We sat in silence eating our food. I could tell that Baltic Babe was highly agitated and seething inside. I wasn’t exactly happy either. I had done so much for her over the course of the day and did not deserve her behaviour. Nothing I did was good enough. Because of how I was feeling, the meats tasted like cement and the salads like cardboard. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be!

I was now getting worked up inside myself too. Her ingratitude and small-mindedness was breath-taking. My frustration bubbled over. I turned to her and said, “Do you want me to stay or do you want me to go?”

“I want you to go!” Baltic Babe said instantly and angrily.

Equally quickly I got up and started collecting my belongings. I was angry, but said nothing. I carried stuff out to my car while she collected my other things into a neat little pile in the kitchen. We didn’t say a word, not even making eye contact.

After my second trip in to her house to collect the last of the things, I got in my car and drove off…