(I’ve changed people’s names to protect their privacy)
So, it’s late winter, early 2013, and me and Nigel are walking those residential back streets that
connect Camberwell up with Peckham. It’s dark, except for the street lights which back then were
still orange, and their reflections off the wet pavement. And I love him soooo much. I love his
beautiful delicate blue eyes, the shape of his nose, the weight of his hands... But the main image in
my mind when I think about him, the thing I loved most about him, is the way his face would light
up with absolute joy, when he was just people-watching. Coz he’s a shy man, a reclusive man, and
sometimes an awkward man, but he loves people, he’s enchanted by people, and I love him for that.
We’d met 8 years previously. I was 19, he was 39. We fell in love fast, but, especially with me being trans, I looked even younger than 19, and he was uncomfortable with the age difference. He didn’t want to name the relationship, he didn’t want to call me his boyfriend. And I didn’t care, I was 19, I wasn’t into labels anyway, as far as I was concerned, we were what we were to each other. And what we were was two people who really did love each other. We knew each other inside out, we’d spend hours in bed together, falling over each other laughing. I’d sing him silly love songs, like, a cover of my favourite Dire Straits song, Romeo & Juliet, it goes like this: “Nigelette!! DUN DUN. When we made love you used to cry! And I love you like the stars above and I’ll love you till I die.” He could call me what he wanted, we were what we were to each other.
So there we were walking the back-streets of Peckham. He was walking me back to the station after another stiff and joyless evening at his place. Something had been wrong for a couple of years and I had been doing what I could to try and fix it. I arranged for us to take a holiday in Whitby on the Yorkshire coast. But that feeling of wrongness just followed us up North.
I kept having the same conversation. I’d ask if he loved me, he’d say yes. I’d ask him if he wanted to spend time with me. He’d say yes. It that was enough, enough to end the conversation at least. But I kept asking.
And here we were, again, on those dark Peckham streets, having the same conversation. I asked him if he loved me, he said yes... but then I went off script. Coz for some reason, right then, I found the question I’d been too scared to ask.
“Yeah but, do you love me, romantically?”
“Well, y’know Jasper these things ebb and flow.”
I went silent for a moment. I felt a huge ball of rage rise up inside of me.
“Well it doesn’t FUCKING ebb and flow for me!!”
He tried to call me back but I was already gone.
Around the same time that this happened I got a big housing benefit backpay from the council. So, I
concocted a three pronged plan to get over him, I decided to do 3 things for the first time:
*old nokia ringtone*
"'allo?"
“Jugular!!”
It was Toby Fieldmouse, my housemate.
“Thatcher’s dead!”
Shit. I had heard the news that morning that Margaret Thatcher had died. But for obvious reasons
I’d forgotten.
“We’re making an effigy!”
An effigy. Yeah, this could be big, this could be exactly the kind of profound experience that could give me the epiphany I needed. Maybe the ghost of an ancestor would come to me through the flames and tell me how to make sense of what had happened. I decided to make my way home. The problem is, by this stage I was tripping pretty hard, and to get home I needed to make my way 4 miles east through a land which I was now calling the Peopleworld. I needed to use peoplecoins to get the peopletrain and then get off at the right peoplestation. It was an adventure in itself, but I made it. And when I got home, sure enough there were my friends stuffing newspaper into a blue dress stuck to a giant crucifix.
When she was ready, we raised her up, took her outside, negotiated her over the wall, and into the strip of land that we used as a kind of communal garden. And up she went. It would be crass to call it beautiful but it was a genuinely poignant moment where we all ritually marked the passing of a person who had caused immense suffering and pain, and who had become a figurehead for heartlessness. I looked into the flames, waiting for my vision, my message, my epiphany. But it never came.
When we were done I went back to my room. I was tired and I was ready to call it a day. I sat down on the little sofa that I had and I just looked around at my room, y’know with my new eyes. When I looked behind me, I saw something white sticking out from behind the sofa. I took it out. It was a white t-shirt, XXL, with a couple of black streaks across the front. It was Nigel’s t-shirt. I smelt it. I recoiled. It stunk of Vanish. What had happened was, I’d borrowed it, got it stained while helping someone with their bike, and then to try and get the stains out I soaked it in Vanish. When that didn’t work I soaked it in Vanish again, and when that didn’t work I soaked it in Vanish again. I must have done this about 3 or 4 times, maybe even 5. And when the last soak still didn’t work, I must have just hidden it behind the sofa. I stared at this t-shirt for a while, sort of incredulous.
And then, I knew what to do. I left my room, t-shirt in hand, and went over to my bike. My old bike. My old, dirty, rusty bike. I smeared the t-shirt on the chain, and then I smeared it again. I did it again and again, until the t-shirt was covered in black streaks. When I was satisifed, I admired my work, folded it up, and put it in a jiffy bag. I got out a clean piece of A4 paper and wrote:
Dear Nigel,
Here is your t-shirt,
It is very dirty,
It cannot be cleaned,
Jugular.