#190

It is now official on Monday 3rd january 2011 I will be evicted. From that date I have seven days to remove all my possessions and find a new apartment. If I am not out by the 10th I will be physically removed by some lobotomized council creeps with extra thick muscles and way too much testosterone. That's what the letter says. I have it right here besides me now. It also says that since the last letter not only did I launch no appeal against the process but there has been an additional 23 complaints made against my name. My five year tenure in this place is up.

I'm not sad. This place is full of too many memories. There's hardly a shadow cast which doesn't hide some tale or other – take me back to times which were awful but better than now. Apart from maybe three good months with John, this apartment has been loneliness walled in. I could always feel it. A kind of emptiness that existed in the spaces which were open. And being on the ground floor was worse. Shadows would extend and float through the room, sometimes laughing and always alone. Next place I take will be one hundred stories up. As far away from my fellow beings as possible and a decent jump to the ground in an emergency.

In my new place, if I were to meet John again I would do things differently. I would not be so weak and touchy and would mask my sensitivity to the point that it'd look like I was born without a heart. I'd also be more fun – shake him awake with excitement, buy us dinner and theatre tickets and take an active interest in things outside of my arms reach or eyes vision.

In my new place, if I were to meet John again I would not cry. Well not so much. A healthy volume of tears that showed I desperately cared but not too many to make me appear sentimantal or needy. I would also never procure the words “I love you” by threatening to jump out the window. I would wait for him to say them naturally. One of the saddest nights of my life was kinda like that. I was desperate for John to tell me more than he could, would or felt, and so I pressed the issue. Every five minutes I would ask: “Do you love me yet?” Finally he stopped answering. So one night in bed I came up with an idea. I thought: John does love me but he is scared to show or tell words like that, but maybe, maybe if he thinks no-one will hear he would say them.

I remember it was a weird night with light shining in from outside. The room was as still and as quiet as a cold bed in winter. I lay there pretending I was having troubled dreams, making fake groans and noises for a good 20 minutes in preparation. Then I started tensing up, clenching my fists etc, and my groans took on words: “Nooo... no... please no....” I was then sobbing, as if the punishment never even stopped when I closed my eyes. Groaning and moaning in pain I fought off invisible phantoms. And then I started up with “John... John... d'you love me?... no... nooo.. please... please say you love me... John... please just tell me. I love you... do you love me?” I went on like that for at least half an hour. Tossing and turning and repeating the words over and over again. Finally a sharp elbow was smashed right into the crux of my back followed by: “Shut up you cunt!” which was hissed with such venom that I did. But a few days later John did tell me what I wanted to hear, that HE loved me and I became ecstatic and wanted to hear it more and more. In the end he said it on cue but it was like an orchestra playing with no feeling. They were just words and as 'just' words they are the cruelest combination in the world.

Ffrrr... I will do many things different next time. And If I'm unlucky enough to have another life there's even more I would change. Small things right back in my past which meant nothing until 20 years later. Those seemingly meaningless events which should flush straight through, but which we hang onto like a sore defeat until we are consumed by them. The things that you swear you'll never let affect your life but which you sorta know inevitably will. In fact, I'd change almost everything except my hair and possibly my index finger. In another life I'd be somebody else.

I thought those things and as I thought them the little snow fella which Brian had built slowly melted away - bits dropping off and melting into the soil of the window box. Why Brian built that there I should never know, only I do. He is evil and he has a rotten soul. He enjoys watching people suffer. God help anyone who falls desperately in love with him. It will only end one way: bungee jumping off a bridge with no rope. The man has at least four broken lives in him, and none of them his own. Maybe I am even the first.

Monday the 3rd of January I am out of here, and good riddance. They can fucking have it back, anything that is left. Brick by brick, lightbulb by lightbulb, I am going to take this whole sorry place down...