Tequila and Comfort

I hate anxiety.

I sat outside Matt’s block of flats in my car, briefly drummed my fingers against the steering wheel and then did a little square breathing. You know, where you breathe in deeply to the count of five, hold it for five, breath out for five, hold it for five, breathe in… Etc. Works like a charm. You should try it on any of those occasions when the alternative is best not contemplated.

The afternoon chat with Jeffrey hadn’t made me feel any better. His sheer mousiness, that lack of anything approaching backbone, was positively depressing. I mean, I’d always known that he wasn’t the most self-assertive person on earth. Truth be told, I quite enjoyed being the dominant partner in our relationship. It suited my particular personality, I suppose – and presented me with an absolute contrast with my mother.

I suppose my depression was at least partly triggered by the thought that I’d had a relationship with this… this worm for seven years without really noticing quite how wormish he really way. Actually, thinking about it, I’m amazed that he hadn’t long before become the victim of some early bird.

But enough already. Jeffrey was very definitely history. Hallelujah. Time to face the challenges of the moment. I was without a home and starting a new job the next day. I had to try to make a plan.
I’m not the kind of person who likes asking people for favours. I’m not exactly a ‘giving’ person, and so I don’t feel I can ask for favours I can’t return. I knew the only person whose place I could crash at was Matt.

Which explains what I was doing outside his flat.

I’d been running it through my head, sitting in the car, and I knew I didn’t have anywhere else to go. It was getting dark and I needed to have a bath and clear my head before registration tomorrow. So why was it so hard for me to go up to his door and knock?

Because I was feeling sorry for myself, and I didn’t want to hear what Matt had to say, that’s why.

Matt’s greatest characteristic is his searing honesty, his ability to cut me deep and make me look at what’s inside. It sounds sadistic but he’s really the only friend I can turn to when I need a reality check. And he makes me laugh all the time.

He’d been my first boyfriend, and it had nearly broken my heart to watch him slip into an adolescent drug addiction that nearly killed him. I had tried to avoid him for a while, and it worked for a few years. Luckily, seven years after the end of our intense – and immature – relationship, he’d emerged from his addiction clean and out of the closet. We’d been best friends ever since. And because he’d recovered from the addiction without the help of another person, I respected him more than any man I knew.

Respect is what made me walk up to his door and knock. I felt like I had very little of it then. I was 24 years old, penniless, dogged by a pathologically over-controlling mother, and I had no home to go to. Matt would kick my ass, which is just what I needed.

I knocked. First hesitantly, and then in a somewhat desperate, frantic way.

I heard Matt undo the latch and open the door. He looked me up and down and squinted a most unJeffrey kind of squint.

He laughed. “Well. How the mighty have fallen! You look like shit. If I didn’t know better, I’d say something terribly amusing has happened to you.”

“Just let me in! Please! I need a hot bath and some sympathy!”

“Well, I charge a very reasonable rate. Enter, queen of the hobos.”

I walked in and collapsed onto the couch.

“Right”, he said. “Say no more. You just lie here feeling sorry for yourself while I busy myself with the tequila.” He walked over to the kitchen counter and fiddled with a bottle of Olmeca, a couple of shot glasses and a lemon.

I lay on the couch and felt loved. I told Matt my sad story as he poured us a couple of shots.

Matt walked across to me with the glasses and wedges of lemon, which he placed carefully on a side-table. Then he collapsed on me in a heap. “Babe, I want to say you’re better off, and he’s a bastard and all those kinds of comforting things. But in this situation, there’s nothing good I can say to you. You just walked out on a marriage proposal from a perfectly eligible man…”

“Perfectly eligible? Are you mad?”

“A perfectly eligible man,” Matt continued unperturbed, “who you could have wrapped round your little finger with the greatest of ease. Idiot!”

“I don’t want to wrap a man round my little finger with the greatest of ease! I want a man I can, I don’t know, respect… Someone I can… look up to…”

“Bullshit, my girl. If you’re here looking for someone who’ll tell you how horribly you’ve been treated, or what a grotesque mother you’ve got, or what a little wimp your boyfriend is…”

“Was!”

“Was, then… you’ve come to the wrong place. And besides, look at you!”

Look at me? I looked, and could see nothing seriously amiss. Matt continued relentlessly: “If you didn’t have such great tits I would’ve slammed the door in your face when you showed up at my front door – in slippers. Slippers! That’s a crime almost more heinous than turning down Jeffrey’s proposal!”

I couldn’t help laughing. “Well, who the hell proposes over fried eggs?” I cried. “What was I supposed to do?!”

“You can’t really fool me with that kind of talk,” Matt said. “I know you feel shit. I know you’re mad at yourself for feeling shit, because you didn’t ask for the proposal in the first place. But you could’ve handled it better.”

“I came here for a place to stay. Not for criticism, okay? Give me a tequila and we can talk about it in an hour, when I can no longer remember who you are.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Matt headed back to the kitchen and I couldn’t help sighing. I was effectively homeless and without clothes for the first day of registration. I wondered what size jeans Matt wore? He was skinny enough. Besides, it’s not like I wanted to impress anyone…