16 :

And then there was love.

We came together slowly. There was you and I, me and her, not a we, for far too long. Our respective orbits were too far apart to meet. They crossed over occasionally, but that was really it.

The night we met we paired off together, talking for either far too long (if you ask Paul), or not long enough (if you ask me). Paul was pissed, and pissed off. Secretly, I think he brought her out so he could charm her into bed.

The problem is he can’t charm anything into bed. Not even a hooker if he waved notes under her crack-addled nose. Though he later told me to get my hands off Helen. After all, he did see her first.

Between you and me, what a fucking prick.

As I said, we were getting on very well. And she was fucking gorgeous. The type of woman whose not even out of my league, she’s in a completely different game.

So what the fuck is she doing talking to me?

We were brought up in a world where we were lucky if any woman spoke to us. That’s the way things were. At school Mary Jane Rottencrotch honoured us by even acknowledging us. We were ugly, we had bad skin, and we had no pocket money. Life was shit. To us, getting laid was the pinnacle of human existence.

So beggars can’t be choosers. And when we were young, we were beggars. Women chose us. Occasionally. We would fuck anything that gave us the chance.

So Helen was way out of my league. She was the kind of girl who looked like all the boys would ask for her number when she was younger. Now, even. I certainly wanted it. But I thought it best not to try and chat her up. There was just no point. If I came onto her I’d be like every other man in the country.

Rejected. Substandard.

It must get boring when everyone in the world wants to fuck you. You end up not talking to people because you know all they want to do is fuck you. I deliberately tried not to fuck her. Not to even want to. Maybe then she would see that somehow I was different from everyone else. Even though I am just another slave, just another person, and just like everybody else. T

So we talked. And that was all we did. But in the conversation, in the words, something clicked. Souls connected at some level. I felt like I’d met a friend.

And I had.

The text messages got flirtier. I found every time the phone vibrated in my pocket I reacted as if I was a new-born father reacting to the baby monitor during a period of silence. Instant panic. I still found it somewhat astonishing she was interested in me. Had Paul paid her or dared her for a laugh? What dirty little secret did he have on her? Did she used to be a man?

In the end, six days later, I took her out for a meal.