PULLED BY A ROPE INTO THE SEA

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When I was young man, I fell in love with someone I did not want to be in love with. I’d known her from the periphery of the local music scene that I was also part of, as a fanzine writer. I’d see her in pubs and at gigs and at druggy house parties. I noticed her beauty and her happiness (a reliably deadly combination to the ordinary male heart); she was a bright point of light amid the dullness of an ordinary town in England. I knew almost nothing about her and yet I longed for her. One night, as I was leaving a party in Clifton Road, having failed to speak to her yet again, she called me to the doorstep, kissed me, and then disappeared back into the noise. A few weeks later we became a couple, and it was wrong.

I loved her so much, and the intensity of it made us unhappy. It was pathological. At that time I worked in sales at a record company, and a techno label we were associated with wanted to fly us to Amsterdam for a launch party. Everyone was excited, but I didn’t want to go. The idea of leaving her for just two nights left me bereft.

I decided to force myself to fall out of love with her. It became a war I had to constantly fight. I asked myself, how did the love get in there in the first place? I’d seen her in crowds, and then a feeling had come into me. With that feeling came thoughts and fantasies and plans. I didn’t choose any of it. It was like being pulled by a rope into the sea.