II

A brown-eyed girl is a delicate thing. Yet this pretty girl, was yelling at me uncontrollably. It was difficult to understand the protest. I had merely wanted to eat my dinner in front of the T.V. Her quivering pierced lip had insisted that supper had to be eaten at a table, with a tray and a table-mat, using both knife and fork. And stare at a blank wall. My plate in one hand, fork in the other, was causing no end of distress. You’ll make a mess on the couch. But it was an old worn-out couch, a hand-me-down your father didn’t want. I had to see the news, as there had been a skirmish in the Persian Gulf.

However, the Gulf and global politics seemed irrelevant now. We had been in love for a few weeks. We’d never kissed - on the lips. But I anticipated those sensual moments of goodbye, the most delicate lips on my cheek. If I could just be kissed goodbye on the lips for once. But now, this screaming imp in front of me, was giving an altogether different type of goodbye signal.

Love? Without a real kiss? Milan Kundera tells us that spending the night sleeping next to a girl is love. Sex is indifferent to this. We had slept together almost every night for many weeks now. So it was love then. And to end like this?

“please stop yelling” I say in what I hope is a calming tone. Why is it so important to eat at the table? I can remember the same argument in my family when, as a child, television first appeared in our lives during the seventies. My father had won the debate and we were all finally allowed to eat in front of the T.V. The family dinner ritual had finally been abolished, much to my traditional mother’s dismay. It had been a hard won battle for liberty over domestic tyranny.

“please don’t shout”, I ask. I look down at her tirade. I briefly consider giving in, and eating at the table, sulkily like a punished child. But freedom is a daily struggle that never rests, and the sooner we give in to tyranny, the harder it is to deal with later. So I take my plate and sit on the old buckled couch, observing the spectacle of the no-fly zone in Iraq.

It was an uneasy ‘ceasefire’ with only a few missiles being fired, and it had been going on for quite some time. What end could come to this uneasy domination? Surely something had to give: A catalyst to either ignite the conflict further, or bring peace, or both. The Gulf couldn’t go on like this forever, especially given the vast power difference between the sides. During the original Iraqi invasion of Kuwait which had sparked the conflict, the Americans had captured half a million Iraqi soldiers in the desert, then sent them home.

So now what do you do?

“Why are you fighting with me over something as trivial as where I eat my food?” I say, trying to negotiate her ever increasing volume, and increasing pitch. But of course such a logical question only incited further ranting about ‘civilized behavior’ and amplified the volume even more than before. So eventually I stand up, my dinner cold and spoiled now, and I join in the fracas.

“will you please stop screaming at me over …!” I consider just turning and leaving. Her trivial dinner rule was one thing, but the way in which I was being ordered to obey it, was more militant than romantic. I did admire the strength of her personality, but this sudden need to control my eating habits had come from nowhere. It had not been an issue when her house was empty, before the arrival of her Father’s hand-me-downs.

The fear, the fierce eyes. The sadness. Maybe just the animation of life. Perhaps the intoxication of her smell. Do I care? Do I care enough? Can I just walk away? She had already broken a wooden spoon on me while chasing me around the house and beating me with it repeatedly.

I had been singing a song from the Crash Test Dummies, which went “hold me down and spank me, use a wooden spoon, but be next to me.” After that she had decided it was better to beat me with the plastic egg-lifter as it was less likely to break on me. She had such anger in her, and the sting of the wooden spoon and now the spatula hardly bothered me much. She got such a thrill out of beating me, that I had laughed it off.

But now the attack had taken a nastier, more sinister tone. From her considerable height disadvantage, she stands on her toes, puts her nose, almost touching mine, and shouts: “That wasn’t screaming - THIS IS SCREAMING!!” with wild bulging angry eyes.

I instantly recall a crazed drama student who had screamed at me with a similar look on her face. She had left two long bleeding nail-scrapes down the side of my face, just millimetres from my eye.

This is not on.

I close my eyes slowly.

slap.

She is shocked into silence. It seemed as though it was the first time anyone had dared to stop her tirade. Had no-one ever taught her the boundaries of personal physical space?

Now I felt like running for the hills as I fumbled with the awkward door handle. I really don’t want this. She is sitting on the stairs now, her head in her hands.

And the lavish whip of words that stung me with their sadness, crossed the gulf between us, and melted any cracks inside my heart forever as they coiled around my skin.

She softly says:

“please don’t go…”