It's Not Me, It's You

by Jon Richardson

  Stooping down to collect the small pile of leaflets and free newspapers that have been delivered in my absence

  I get angry about the waste of paper. It seems a double whammy that not only are trees being cut down to make leaflets, but that those leaflets are aimed at convincing me to buy food that is of no nutritional value whatsoever. Cutting down nature to promote crap.

  You might as well eat yourself into an early onset coronary, as there won’t be enough oxygen left for everyone soon. Chow down. Call now and we’ll deliver a pizza the size of a truck’s wheel with chips and coke for only £9.99.

  Before cutting down a tree a proposal should be submitted in writing to the government to describe what is intended to be printed on something that used to not only live a life of its own, but facilitate ours.

  Takeaway leaflets – no.

  Shitty comedians’ self-involved ramblings? Hmm. A sticking point.

  Then, I notice a brown package lurking underneath the crap. Rectangular, lightweight, about the size of a DVD and most probably a DVD. Whilst I have no recollection of ordering anything, sadly that has no bearing whatsoever on whether or not I did. It is far more likely that in a drunken stupor I have gone online and ordered something I thought I needed, only to wake up with no recollection of having done so. Nowadays I don’t even need to be sober enough to enter my payment details, the process is so fast.

  Hello Jon! Back again at 3am. What is it this time? Something a little obscure in a foreign language that you’ll never watch, or are we drunk enough that you are ordering a film you have loved since childhood without any awareness whatsoever of the fact that you already own three copies?

  To be honest this is not the worst habit I have, and it’s not even a practice I am altogether unhappy with, since it results in this moment: receiving an unexpected pick-me-up gift from myself! Here you go, mate, I thought I might like this … Ooh! What could it be? Thank me ever so much. I’ll open it when I get settled in the lounge.

  For now it is enough simply to lean against the back of the door and breathe slowly and deeply, not caring as the rain drips from my hair and runs down my back. The sound of the road outside is now muffled and distant, unable to make itself heard above the ticking of the clock in the hallway, clean and constant. I am becoming more and more myself with each clearly marked-out second that passes. You have to look after number one, that’s what everyone else does. Shut the door and make them all go away; do what you need to do to get through the rest of the day. That is the feeling I get when I close my front door – the tragedies continue outside, but in here all is well.

  The comfort really comes from the knowledge that this is no temporary state of refuge. I am not seizing upon these moments of stillness because at any moment I expect my housemate might return from work, or my wife and children from school. This feeling of security is the result of much painstaking effort on my part, slowly severing ties and carefully avoiding any encounter that might lead to the formation of an emotional bond with another person.

  Not only is the phone not ringing, it will not ring. Only I know the number to my landline and, since I know exactly where I am, I have no need to check up on myself. I drop my keys in their bowl, switch off my mobile phone and throw that in next to them, before hanging my coat on the one strong metal hook in the wall. I usually go for long periods without speaking to people and they wait a few days and then pretend that they have been worried about me when really they have been with girlfriends and wives. I will tell them I’m fine and they’ll leave it at that, or sometimes they’ll probe and keep asking me what is the matter.

  Buzz buzz buzz.

  God, it seems like weeks ago that I woke up listening to the shouting coming from next door. I wonder if they have made up yet. Maybe this time they’ll really break up and go their separate ways, then either realise how much they loved each other or lament not having done it sooner. Or, in the worst-case scenario, one wants a reunion and the other wants to move on, probably already has actually.

  I’ve been seeing him for a few weeks. Sorry, I didn’t know how to tell you, but it hasn’t been good for so long between us. It’s not you, it is me. You’ll be better off without me.

  Now that I am at home I feel a possessive sense of pride in my things. It’s not that I have any great emotional attachment to them, but I can’t wait to see them all again. I long to touch my remote controls, eat with my cutlery, sit in my chair as if I have been away for years; like when you find old T-shirts in summer and forget that you had ever even owned them because the winter was so long. I revel in the absolute certainty that everything in my house is where it was when I left, if perhaps a little dustier.

  A niggling doubt tugs at my new-found comfort, tainting it, and I remember that there is some washing up waiting for me on my desk. Never mind, that will soon be dealt with, and then the house will be in total equilibrium.

  To most people, self-sufficiency is about growing your own vegetables or keeping chickens, but I think you can rely on a grocer for that. To me, true self-sufficiency is a much more spiritual endeavour, an ability to do without being around people altogether. If someone told you that the door behind you was locked for ever and meals would be sent to you through a chute, books provided on request and there was a big television in the corner, but you could never see another person again, how would you feel?

  No hugs after a bad day at work, no idle chit-chat over the breakfast coffee, no reassuring smiles across crowded rooms full of strangers. The test of total independence comes each night when the bedroom door closes behind you, the lights go out and all that there is to keep you company in the infinite darkness are your thoughts. For most people this is a time of dread, when problems from the day that were glossed over at the time come back to the surface.

  Should you have been more sympathetic when you heard about Sarah’s uncle’s cat’s illness? Will she think you don’t care or will she understand that you have a lot on at work these days?

  Was it necessary to smack Toby to make him go upstairs for a bath earlier? Are you a bad parent or is that sometimes the only way to make him understand? Weren’t you smacked as a child and did it not do you no harm whatsoever? But surely the fact that you remember it means it has left some more permanent mark than was ever intended?

  What excuse will you use to get out of lunch with your parents this weekend? It’s not that you don’t love them

  – of course you love them – but there is so much to do at home and why should it always be you who has to go around just because you live closest? Would it kill Steve and his family to come up even once a month? They’re his fucking parents too, right?

  She is going to leave me.

  People are not the solutions to all this misery, but the causes of it. Those who care the most experience the most pain. If you are so foolish as to feel empathy and to want the best for the people around you, then they will upset you during the day and keep you awake at night, unless of course you have had enough to drink. To be selfish and deluded is truly a rare gift. I imagine that those whose concerns are only for themselves sleep well enough.

  My own may seem a selfish gesture, locking myself away from people who may need my help, who might crave my company in order to further their own search for happiness. Perhaps it is, but I can say with a sound conscience that I have done my best by those I cared for and it still wasn’t enough. I am sure that the decision I made was the right one. How many of us can say that?

  Whatever other problems I have in my life as a result of the decision I took, this is where I remind myself that it was the right thing to do. I could stand here for hours, listening to the sound of the rain beating against the door but unable to break through, the wind whistling through the keyhole, a siren’s call trying to lure me outside. Nothing can get in here. In here there is just the still, warm air, those familiar smells and the perfect tick-tock of the hallway clock. And a light. A pulsating, red light further down the corridor.

 
You have no new messages.

  I leave my coat behind on the hook and take my bag into the office and place it by the desk. My laptop sits perfectly in the centre of the table, alongside my note-pad, my diary and a pen, all parallel to one another and equidistant from the edge of the table. The laptop lies open on the table and as I touch a key the light from the screen illuminates an empty chair. The internet window is open and a half-composed email is shown on the screen.

  ‘Hiya mate. Could you get someone to—’

  Could who get someone to what? Why didn’t I finish the message I wonder? There isn’t even a name in the address bar. Had I been drunk or distracted? I close the window and shut down the computer. It can’t have been urgent or I would have remembered – I always remember the important things. But what if it was?

  Could you get someone to look at this rash on my arm?

  Could you get someone to get me the number of the girl who looked after me at that gig last week?

  Could you get someone to help me, please?

  Priority number one is the washing up, so with the dirty mug taken from my desk I head to the kitchen and start running some hot water. The washing up is a singular task, existing independently of my attempts to write a book or any other task to which I have committed myself: my tax return, the payment of my mortgage, my upcoming tour. It is a task that needs to be completed and, having been started, needs to be finished perfectly.

  A perfect finish to the washing up means every item in the kitchen is clean (including the hob), the surfaces have been scrubbed with an antibacterial wipe and the sink is free from debris, be that grains of rice, unidentifiable silt or the soapy suds which sit on top of the water surface and stubbornly refuse to drain away. Apart from leaving the task incomplete, they will leave a mark around the edge of the sink if I let them win. The kitchen must be completely clear.

  Dirty, dirty, dirty. I haven’t shaved for over a week, but things like that don’t count. I can’t explain to you why they don’t count, they just don’t. Besides, there is a lot of tidying to do; I have become rather remiss! I am a twentieth-century man, by which I mean that I can change batteries but not tyres, and I take extended warranties and buy replacements rather than take things back to the shop for fear of the embarrassment of being told that all I need to do to mend the item is change the plug.

  Oh, of course, yeah, change the plug. I usually do it every day – must’ve forgotten to do it this morning amidst all the shagging and watching rugby league. What do I change it into exactly?

  Maybe none of us are proper men. Maybe we all get caught off-guard every now and again by a surprisingly practical or intelligent point and have to repress the urge to high five every other man in a five-mile radius.

  I did it! I just correctly identified the sound of a slipping fan belt on a passing Mini Metro! Holy shit, touch me!

  There are just a few other items from last week waiting in the bowl to wash up, mostly teaspoons and one of my cut-crystal whisky glasses. Washing up is the kind of never-ending tedious task that can be a tipping point on days where everything is going wrong. The knowledge that no matter how old I get, I will never be rid of the need to stick my hand now and again into a bowl of tepid water and swirl my hands around the inside of a pan caked with cold bean juice is always a morbid realisation.

  You can’t cheat things like that – you don’t graduate from them. As much as I hated school I knew that one day it would be over and I would never have to go back, and still to this day I wake up from a nightmare in which I haven’t done my homework and grin inanely for hours at the thought that never again will Mr Porter have the chance to chastise me for losing my calculator. I never even did lose my calculator, ever.

  Plunging a mug into the water a little too forcefully, a wave of washing-up water swells up inside the bowl and leaps over the side. I leap backwards to avoid it but that only means it slops down onto the floor. Reaching for a few sheets of kitchen towel I bend down to mop it up and look to my left and through the door of the washing machine. I had always assumed the glass on the door was frosted, but this close up I realise that it looks more like a coating of powdery residue.

  I open the door and wipe at it with the now soggy kitchen towel and it comes away eventually to reveal clear, shining glass. How had I always missed that? And who was I going to email to ask for something? I get an antibacterial wipe from the drawer in which I keep cling film and tin foil and things like that and set to scrubbing the back of the washing-machine door. It feels amazing – the dirt comes away easily and leaves behind a beautifully smooth surface, quite literally as good as new. I toss the dirty wipe into the bin.

  Tomorrow is bin-collection day.

  I should put rubbish straight into the wheelie bin outside rather than allow it to build up inside. I retrieve the wipe and head off to the front door. I am just unlocking the front door when I notice that there is a spider in the corner of the ceiling; I don’t want it to run away while I am outside, or more to the point I don’t want it to drop on my head while I am opening the door, so I put the wipe next to the bowl with my keys in it and go upstairs to get something to get rid of my unwanted, eight-legged guest with. I keep an old measuring jug for this purpose in a cupboard under the sink.

  On my way through the living room into the kitchen I notice that the Henry is out in the corner of the room, so I must have started hoovering in here at some point yesterday too. Why didn’t I finish any of the jobs I started? I don’t know why I’m talking in the past tense, I’m doing exactly the same thing now. The washing up isn’t even half-finished and I’m already in the middle of three other things.

  Then the point at which I stopped working last night comes back to me in a flash and I remember kicking the Henry into the corner of the room, calling it a ‘fucking prick’ and pouring a large brandy. It’s not my fault I talk to Henry – the manufacturers gave it a face and a name, not me. Thou shalt call each thing by its right name.

  While I was hoovering in the living room I had needed to move the side table by the settee, which I noticed still had last week’s old TV guide on it. I had picked it up and replaced it with the new one that was on the seat next to where I sit, but when I went to put the old guide with the other old papers in the bag that hangs in my airing cupboard I found that the bag was full so I needed to take it outside and put it in the green bin. Then when I came back something must have got in the way again.

  How can trying to make things tidier mean so much more mess?

  I like alcohol because, unlike other drugs, it does not alter my reality. Alcohol doesn’t make things look different or make me giggle like a moron for no reason; it just stops some of the extra thoughts I don’t seem able to push out when I’m sober.

  The spider is still there.

  I drink almost anything at home – I even have a revolving optic like they use in bars to pour even measures of spirits. I keep whisky, brandy, gin and vodka on mine and when I can’t decide which I want to drink I play a game called ‘Spin and Win!’ in which I spin the optic and drink a shot of whichever spirit points at me when the motion has stopped. It’s called Spin and Win basically because I spin it and no matter which way it points I win!

  When I go in to the kitchen and pick up the glass a sudden urge hits me to lob it with full force against the wall, shattering it into as many pieces as possible and shattering along with it all my pent-up rage. Before I can even pull my arm back behind my head he chips in.

  Don’t do that.

  And I put the glass down on the side again.

  If you smash that glass, you will just have to go and clear it up again. It serves no purpose.

  I know this thought is supposed to be a positive one but that won’t help with the anger inside me. Before I have even had the chance to be reckless, it has been taken away from me by my crushing rationality. Now smashing the glass has ceased to be a moment of abandonment as it would be for anyone normal and has become a considered decision. If I am aware
of the consequences then I must take full responsibility for them.

  However it might make me feel, smashing a glass against the wall will only pose a health and safety risk, create more work for myself and rob me of one of my nice glasses. I might just as well cut out the work aspect and neatly place one of my glasses into the bin, but even to me it is clear that this represents total madness. Of course I would have to wrap it up in newspaper first so that the bin-collection men weren’t injured when taking my rubbish away.

  The rubbish is still in the hallway.

  Perhaps I could drive out to the middle of nowhere with the glass as my hostage and smash it against a tree, before driving home again?

  What if a badger or a fox ran over the glass and cut their feet? How would you feel then?

  I know very well that this is the part of my brain that stops me shouting at strangers on trains or sticking my hand into the fire just to see what it feels like, but right now it isn’t helping. The daemon of my rage is still by my side, prodding at me and daring me to do something stupid to get it out of my system. Next time I will just throw the glass before the other voice can interrupt. I feel a sudden shiver down my back and my hands are getting twitchy so I put the glass calmly back on the side, pour a brandy into another less expensive glass and go and sit in the bath for a bit.

  There is a common misconception that there has to be hot water and bubbles in the bath for sitting in it to be an enjoyable experience, but I find that if I put on my big dressing gown, and climb in with the door closed and the lights off and put a big towel over my body, I can feel quite safe and hidden in it anyway for a little while, in which time I can get my head together again.