You’re quite mad, you know.
Who is?
You. Me. Us.
Oh oh. I’ve flipped. If I’m having a conversation with myself, then that’s madness, isn’t it? I’m doolally, out to lunch, for the birds, dancing with the fairies...
Steady on. Sanity is not all it’s cracked up to be.
I should never have let the cats go, they were always good for a chat. Too much time spent on my own, I know it. But you can’t blame me for that!
Who else is there to “blame”?
OK, didn’t mean “blame”. I mean – it’s out of my control whether I’m on my own or not, that’s up to other people.
Rubbish. You’ve spent a freezing winter on your own in the middle of the countryside, an hour from the nearest city, with no heating except for a wood fire. Someone forced you to do that, did they? Twisted your arm?
No, I mean “on my own”. You know. Unpartnered.
Oh, that. Now I’m certain you’re mad.
What do you mean?
Everyone thinks that being partnered is the route to happiness, to completeness, to well-being.
Well...
Except those who are in real relationships, and I mean those who’ve gone past the romantic whirl and into the slobby casualness that takes a lot of effort and goodwill not to interpret as indifference.
Well, it’s a lot better than being on your own.
Is it? You’ve spent the past week obsessing, like only a true geek can, in front of your computer. Mad professors have nothing on you, the way you were forgetting to eat, to sleep, to notice anything but what you were working on.
So, nothing wrong with that. I got plenty done, it was very creative... plenty of men like me, and quite a few women too these days...
How do you think you’d cope with someone wanting something from you? Like time, attention, consideration, even?
This week wouldn’t have been a good time, no. But I do so many things because I’m lonely, it fills the time...
So you’d do things differently if you were “partnered” then, would you?
Well, yes, stands to reason.
Doesn’t sound like “reason” to me. So: because someone else has churlishly declined to partner you, you’re living your life either completely workaholic or, if you’ve nothing better to do, pining and whining like a lovesick puppy looking for his master?
Erm. I don’t know. Sometimes, it’s like that.
What sort of “partner” is it that you’re looking for?
Well, I’ve given up on figuring out what kind of guy would be right...
Stop right there. A man. You’re looking for a man to partner you?
Well, yes.
You’re certifiable, then. Men aren’t good at partnership, relationships, coupledom. Haven’t you figured that one out yet? Ask women what they think of men on that score.
Rubbish. Plenty of happily married men, plenty of gay men I know are in relationships.
Alright then, let’s shift it slightly. You want sex, or a relationship?
Both, of course, doesn’t everyone?
Which. You have to choose.
Bollocks, I don’t have to choose.
Yes, you do. At some level, you do. If you wanted a relationship, there are plenty of good men you’ve met along the way who’d have been very happy to try and work something out with you.
Hardly “plenty”.
Enough, more than most, I suspect. But you didn’t fancy them. There was no “spark”. They were the kind of gentle, caring souls who would have been very good to you. But they seemed wimpy to you. Lacking in oomph. Mirroring your own softness. Heard of projection, hmm? You would have thought training in psychotherapy would have given you an ounce of sense. But, as the man says, “the plumber’s tap is always dripping.”
Look, it’s hard to make a spark happen when things are soggy.
That’s just the trouble with men. What’s wrong with being soft? It’s soft men who form relationships, hard men have sex and move on.
Every man is soft on the inside.
Oh you think so? Perhaps, at the beginning. But men have an amazing capacity to refuse to get entangled emotionally, if they’ve been hurt. Teflon has nothing on them. They – we – get suspicious of caring, gentle men, who seem to be only interested in a relationship. They seem “mummified” to you, don’t they?
Your Freudian slip is showing.
Am I right? You go for the impossible cases, the hard nuts, all Heathcliff and poses, but I have news for you...
What?
You’re no Cathy.
Are you saying you have to be a heterosexual man to have a relationship ?
No, I’m saying that the hard nuts only melt, yield, succumb to emotional vulnerability once or twice in their lives, and usually it takes a woman to do it, for they are far more emotionally literate and sophisticated in the art and craft of relating. And if you’re a heterosexual man, you’re far more likely to give up your independence if sex is part of the deal, for no-strings sex is hard to find with women. A tough nut gay man will never be short of sexual offers, so dependency doesn’t seem so attractive.
You’re saying relationship is dependency?
It’s interdependency. It’s mutuality. It’s alien to someone like you, who has sentimental notions of relationship, whinges about it when he’s depressed, but when it comes to the crunch will go for the sexy guy with the tantalisingly impossible conundrum-psyche, rather than the sweet guy with doe-eyes for you. It’s sex or relationship.
And not both?
The dream of “both” is the dream of a world where we get all our needs met, physical, emotional, spiritual and mental. It’s not of this Earth. It’s pining for the Golden Age, the womb, the time when we had not a care in the world. People can have “both” at once at fleeting times in their lives. People can negotiate it with each other in loving relationships, once they’ve climbed down from their ivory tower and softened up a little. But it’s imperfect, it’s a compromise, and it sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t. That’s life.
My head hurts...
As the actress said to the Bishop. Night after night.