A history of the world in 3 1/2 paragraphs
Today, I’m recovering from what might be a broken heart but might also just be one that is just a bit flattened. My last night with Naoko has left me with more unrest than any sense of closure. I feel that we left things incomplete, an unfinished sentence. I have no words and no grammar to express the feeling. Kazuo Ishiguro needed a whole book to evocate this feeling in The Unconsoled. So instead, I will remember happier moments, not all with Naoko – but memories that confirm that yes, love is sometimes something more than loss anticipated.
A human geography of love
We were lying in bed, awake but silent in the middle of the day, and facing each other. Suddenly she sat up, and as I got to raise myself, she pushed me back down. She started to run her open palms over my body stopping on every bruise and scar, and pressing down on them, hard, and giving me a questioning look: just a raised eyebrow.
‘Left kick, I was too slow to block it. It’s only a surface bruise.’
Her hands find another spot, and she shoves them down, and I wince.
‘Punches. Lots of punches. I used my arm and shoulder to block them while hitting back when I could. I won the round, but my shoulder and arm were bruised.’
And again, a smaller bruise. She jabs a finger into it.
‘Actually, I think you did that one to me just now.’
She kept doing that for about five minutes – a fighter has a whole history of scars and bruises. It was one of the most intimate tactile experiences of my life, and at the end I felt like I’d shared things with her that I wasn’t even aware were there to share. And then she just said: your turn, and lay back down. It’s such a small moment, but it’s things like that that give you the right to say you know someone in a way that no-one else can do.
A journey
We’d agreed to meet at certain time and place. I was running late, so suggested we change the time; she was already on the bus, but it got diverted, so she suggested we change the place. And so began a game of shifting-plan ping-pong, and it was eventually about 3 hours after we’d meant to meet, in an entirely different part of London that we wound up. And our plan of a lazy afternoon drinking wine and sleeping in the sun was gone. So instead we started walking. And we walked for miles, talking all the while. She took off her shoes because they were uncomfortable, and I did the same, in solidarity. Eventually we stopped, at a bench under a tree, and made out like a pair of teenagers. It was an amazing, uncomplicated evening in an otherwise fraught relationship. She wound up breaking my heart (or did she just break a piece of it off?), and that tends to dominate my recollection of the relationship, but you can’t have your heart broken by someone who didn’t have a good hold on it in the first place…
An education
Naoko has no facility for gadgets. One of the best days I had with her was just sitting in her flat, going through everything she had, and fixing them all. Changing the settings on her phone. Getting the reception on her TV working. Fixing her blender. Signing her up to iTunes. She just walked with me through every little mundane detail of her life and told me how I could help. I don’t think there are many things in life more satisfying than being practically useful for someone you love.
Some Miscommunication 
Awww. I love your last sentence. I hope (after a while) you find someone else you like as much, who isn’t about to move out of the country.
thanks… I’m still in a bit of a self-indulgent haze. On the bus home, I was studiously looking out the window to avoid ‘there’s something in my eye’ moments.
My experience suggests that meeting Naokos is relatively rare, but hope springs eternal, I guess. Since then we’ve been swapping wildly emotional text messages, which have not been good for my emotional state. I kind of need an ending, and I don’t think I’ll get it until she’s on that plane.