Thursday 25 October 2007

What to Do When Your Ex Hasn’t Got Fat

I had lunch with an ex yesterday. It’s been 9 years. She hasn’t got fat. This is a big, big problem. In an ideal world, all my exs will be bigger than my postcode, with bad skin and thick ankles. In an ideal world, you can just walk up and say; ’ Wow. It’s been ages. What have you been doing all this time... APART FROM EATING?!’

Better that than to see them and have your heart somersault like a flipped pancake. This ex still has sea blue eyes that makes time hiccup, leaving you wondering just where you are and what exactly you were saying. Coherently formed sentences vanish on your tongue quicker than a snowflake on a frying pan. If this wasn’t enough, there’s the thought ‘we’ve seen each other naked!’ blipping in and out of the static, shrill and sudden as an alarm clock in a biscuit tin.

Some people's company has no shelf life. Conversation's easy like an old well-worn mix tape, where you both know what song’s coming next. In a heartbeat you’re finishing each other’s sentences, swapping obscure jokes and giggling at them like school kids passing notes under the desk in the in class. That sort of empathy gets scarcer as you get older, and seeing them makes you rue the ones that got away, or regret those you discarded.

I guess once a relationship starts, on some level it never ends. It just carries on. Maybe you got married, maybe you broke up earlier than you did, maybe you shagged her sister. Whatever. Somewhere someplace else, those feelings never stop, they keep just going on an on, like a million flickering TV shows bouncing off the satellites, beaming into space.

6 comments:

The Divine Miss M said...

Best to just remember all the bad things and the reasons you broke up in the first place. That usually is the best thing to do ;)

timothymarcjones said...

Thanks miss m, the annoying things are starting to come back...

Dolce said...

Ai yai. Ex's should all be banished to other places. The first boy I ever kissed rocked up at my place of work yesterday and cried. It's very, very odd, these things.

timothymarcjones said...

Why, thank you.

flygirlnn said...

So pleased you're writing - you said you wanted to on our first date a lifetime ago. You are good. And I only used aubergine in lasagne once.

timothymarcjones said...

nicole,
Thanks, so glad you like. Aubergine is still my nemesis.