Two - Derek

Beyond everything you’ve ever done to me - you bitch - taking the dog was the lowest. Like I couldn’t be trusted. Or a final twist of the knife. I realise now, after all the dust has settled, that every promise you ever made means nothing in the face of such fury. It wasn’t enough that you about-face and change everything about yourself without telling me - but that you hate me enough to take the dog, just to hurt me that little more.

I’m still not sure at the reasons why.

Well, that isn’t entirely true. Too many late nights without you, too few I love yous. They all add up, I suppose. Yes, I may have forgotten a few important dates, but that’s what a partnership is made of - that’s the Andy Capp of love for you. I’m the one that brings home the bread, and you’re the one that stands at the door with the rolling pin, or the one that leaves my dinner in the dog when I get home too late.

But no. Not for you. You wanted a bed of roses and, and one day, a breakfast in Paris, while I just wanted to watch the footie and down a few pints every night. Should have seen it - that gnawing feeling that I missed all the signs - but we ignore the missteps when we’re in love, don’t we? We only see the things we want, and the rest is just irrelevant, until it comes back to bite us in the arse.

I survive to spite you now. I go to work because you don’t want me to, have a few pints with the lads, sing on the karaoke and eye up the girlies - all to spite you. I hope reports of my surviving you get back to you and hurt you until your ears bleed. Though by that time I’m too pissed to care, staggering to an empty home you didn’t even want to fight me for. Ivor and Pawel sing me home, goose-stepping down the dark street, while all I can think about is the bloody dog.

Sandy. We chose her together, paid for her together. She got her shots, got doctored, and filled the house with her fur and her smell. Watched the T.V. with us, on a few occasions howled along with us while we were in the heat of passion. The child we never had.

But I’m the one that walked her. That’s more than you ever did. She’ll get fat and lazy now, while you canoodle and grope with him. Sometimes I try to imagine what goes on in her canine brain, and what she thinks of the changes you’ve made in her life. Does she wonder why she now lives in a different house, or why you’ve got a new man in your bed? Does she pull that big-eyed expression when you won’t open the door for her, or fill up her water bowl?

And all this is assuming that you care enough to notice. Could she die and you only pick up on it when she starts smelling?

No. That question’s about me. Do you still think about me? Hate me that much, still? Sometimes I could revel in your hate like a pig in mud, cause it’s something of yours, offered to me, gratis. That’s how low I get, drunk, in our house, wishing you were here, and wishing I had paid you more attention.

I stagger to the stereo, and fumble with some CD’s until I find the Jimi Hendrix one. No fear you’d take my music; you secretly hated it all anyway.

I feel too old to start again. Too house-trained, too boring. You took all those little things that made me interesting, artistic, dangerous, and ironed them all away with meals and laundry and comfort. I am no longer quite the catch I could have been. It’s a campaign, I suppose, that every woman embarks on consciously or not, making sure that their men aren’t interesting enough to get another woman. That this process can also fit into some post-break-up revenge is happy coincidence.

Maybe I should take up sky-diving?

I dance. You never danced. Too self-conscious, your sense of propriety getting in the way of any sense of fun. I rock to Jimi’s heavenly riffs, fighting back tears. What the hell did you see in me anyway? Was it just to hurt me this much? I find I’m doubting every single thing you said, since certain choice statements have proved to be so untrue.

I drink more, willing more tears, but they won’t come. Too afraid of the light, since men don’t cry.

You made me doubt myself, and I hate you and I miss you too.