AS GOOD AS YOU GET

Once upon a time, I worked for an Iranian businessman. Let's just call him, 'Kam'. Kam lived in the West End. So, I rode the Overground to work, a few times a week. 'Work' was a room in his flat; it was in one of those apartments, on one of those streets where you could walk past a few parked Porsches. But Kam liked to sit on the floor, on a comfortable rug, dictating notes, in between short drags on an intricate water pipe. Then he would wave me off into this windowless room, just space enough for desk and desktop, to type out his letters. Yes. It was a low point in my life.

 

But I had met this girl, you see. And she'd sort of changed 'The Plan'. 'The Plan' had been to turn in my course essays over the Summer, and be on the plane back home by the end of September. But, well, a girl like that can do that to you. Walking past, smelling just right; standing there, looking just right; she can have you thinking to yourself – I'm not going home without you. So, I stayed.

 

Still not sure what she saw in me; spending hours filling out applications for a better job, while she was driving to church in her own car, and dropping me off afterwards. But, one night, I looked at her and said, 'You know what? I will take care of you.' Not that it made much sense then. It's just that, sometimes, when it's all you have, you clear your throat and speak from the heart. But, truth be told, it made no sense at all, not when I had just created a separate folder for rejection letters. Still, she smiled and said, 'I know'.

 

Ah! Regardless of what these preachers say, you really can't predict Life. See, if you had told me, at my Call to Bar, that that was how it was going to be, I would have laughed. But the day after I got married, the car parked outside wasn't mine. She was the one with the regular income, the type we needed to sign the lease on the first house we lived in. And she was the one who got up in the morning and went out, then stopped at Asda, on the way back. Tell me, how can you forget things like that? How can you wake up one day and pretend it never happened, or that, even if it did, it wasn't that big a deal?

 

No. On the first day, Love is a promise. I'll give you that. But if you're waking up every morning and making new ones, then, I'm not sure what you have anymore. Because, on Day Two, Love is a good memory, the kind that remembers what you said yesterday. And that's what it is on Day Three, as well. So, these conversations make me laugh now. You know the ones: 'Eh? Your wife knows how much you earn?' 'What? You have a Joint Account?' 'Jesus! You trust her with ALL your money?' My brother, what can I say? Every relationship has its own dynamics; but, at the very least, you should give as good as you get. Well, in my case, I got everything. And if, in my heart, I knew, when I was getting it, that I couldn't give it back, then I really shouldn't have taken it, should I?

 

You see, this thing is not like setting a weekend aside to volunteer at a homeless shelter. No. In these matters, you will NOT find 'selflessness' so rewarding, trust me; giving will leave you with a simmering desire to receive. And, if you at the end of the day, you wind up sad – no, not just any kind of sadness; but the kind you don't talk about, that one that festers underneath the mascara, beneath the cologne, behind the mechanical routines we use to prop up the semblance of love, long after its substance is gone – if you end up sad like that, it will almost always be because you looked at the other person and knew, deep down in your heart, that you will never get as good as you've given, or – and believe me, this can be just as heartbreaking – never give as good as you've gotten.

 

So, what can I say? Take your time with these things. For happiness, like everything else on this blue planet, hangs in a delicate balance.

 

 

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