June 15, 2006
Suzanne said something earlier that I can’t get out of my head.
I was talking about how much things can change in a very short time, and I used Paddy’s attitude to being in a relationship as an example.
I pointed out that he’s switched in the space of a few weeks from ‘Yeah, I’m sleeping with a few other women, sure, but none of them are as good in bed as you are’ to ‘You’re enough for me now, I don’t want or need anyone else’.
I said I couldn’t help wondering if meeting Ollie at my house – a firefighter, there in his official boyfriend capacity – had anything to do with this sudden transformation.
Maybe it brought it home to Paddy that other blokes his age aren’t as chicken-shit as he is.
He might have reflected on the fact that Ollie isn’t afraid to run into burning buildings and risk his life in order to save strangers, and certainly doesn’t balk at the even more supposedly terrifying ordeal of Being A Boyfriend, which for years seems to have been Paddy’s main phobia.
But … and … New Paddy has now declared himself happy to be a boyfriend, which should make me feel less bitter, and maybe it will one day if I give it a chance, and no doubt it was disloyal of me to say what I said to Suzanne this morning, but I couldn’t resist. Rant bitterly first, forgive later – that’s my motto. Or, sometimes, don’t forgive ever.
I was thrilled when Suzanne said she one hundred per cent agreed with me. ‘I just can’t believe he said it.’ She winced. ‘He’s a douchebag of epic proportions.’
‘Obviously he was Old Paddy when he said it. Commitment-phobic Paddy. But, yes, there’s no denying that those words did come out of his mouth: “No one else I’m fucking at the moment is anywhere near as good as you”, and he definitely would have meant it as a compliment.’
‘Oh, for sure,’ Suzanne agreed. ‘Which makes it so much worse.’
‘Right. A clever man would have realised it was an insult, and not said it.’
That’s when Suzanne made her interesting, and really quite brilliant, observation: ‘It’s two insults for the price of one,’ she said.
‘There’s the obvious one – “Hey, just be happy you’re easily winning the competition I’m torturing you by forcing you to enter” – but there’s a deeper, more subtle insult too. ’
I was on the edge of my kitchen chair, waiting to hear more. Surely, I thought, there can’t be anything Paddy’s done wrong that I’ve failed to think of and add to my list.
‘It’s actually so subtle, it’s hard to put into words,’ Suzanne said.
‘Try,’ I ordered.
‘It’s like … not being chosen is painful enough, when you’re madly in love, but normally when that happens you can at least think, “I’m losing out because he prefers someone else.
” It makes sense, however much it hurts.
But Paddy was saying, effectively, “You’re losing out to something I don’t value at all and think is crap.
” The cheek of it! It’s like, “I can’t have dinner with you tonight because I’m staying in to eat a dog turd I’ve fished out of a bin.
” The message is basically, “I don’t care enough about you to choose you, even in preference to something I think is worthless. ” To me, that’s the ultimate insult.’
Undeniably true. Every word. And I’m supposed to think that’s all in the past now, because along came New Paddy!
New Paddy emerged from the ashes of Old Paddy, the one who’d done and said all the despicable things, and arrived on the scene glittering with all the allure of the previously unavailable.
I said something like this to Suzanne, who said, ‘Yeah, it’s a well-known marketing trick: create a sense of massive scarcity, then tell your audience this so-hard-to-get thing is now, amazingly, available. They’ll all want it.’
Apart from those of them who would still so much rather have Ollie, I thought, but didn’t say.