Three evenings later, Roger came to my flat to eat. I’d been looking forward to seeing him all day. All my reticence, all my worries about having strangers in my home, had disappeared. Our burgeoning relationship felt like the most natural thing in the world. It all felt easy.
“Mmm,” he said, coming into the kitchen. He was wearing a tweed cap and long overcoat and looked dashing. “That smells good.” I’d made a warm salad with shredded duck and endive and plums; an apple crumble sat on the stove waiting to be cooked. He wandered around the flat while I finished getting the food ready, being lovely about it, admiring my books and pictures. He chose a CD from the pile under the television and put it on, saying he loved Brian Eno – he hadn’t known I was an Eno fan.
We talked about music as we ate. We took the last of the wine through to the big sofa and half sat, half lay on it, my head on his chest, listening to more music: we both had a liking for instrumental film soundtracks, it turned out. He told me I was a very lovely person, and had cheered him up more than he could say, which for a man I’d begun to understand was deeply shy and reticent, was a real tribute, and made me happy.
We ended up in my bed, among the many throws and hundred cushions; he kept finding new cushions and throwing them across the room, which made us giggly, and the dog came in to have a look at us and had to be evicted, which made us giggly again. Cuddled up naked in bed, listening to the evening noises of the city, I’d assumed we were going to have sex, but this didn’t seem to be happening. Which is fine, obviously, but it had seemed as if sex would follow, and then it was plain that it wouldn’t. I tried to resurrect the passionate mood that had brought us in here, when we’d rushed to remove our clothes, rushing to be together, skin to skin. I waited for him to be reawakened, but there was nothing doing.
“I’m sorry,” he said after a while. “It just isn’t going to happen. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I didn’t used to have this problem.” It was probably a mistake on my part to keep trying, but like many before me, I felt I could beat it, given enough time and enough technique. All my efforts made no difference and I saw eventually that Roger had a pained look. He apologised again and said he thought he should go home.
After I’d tidied up and had taken the dog out for his last pee, and had showered and got into bed in comforting soft pyjamas, Kindle primed and ready, I felt that I needed to say something. I sent Roger a text, saying: “What happened earlier, our not being able to have sex, it didn’t matter, you know. We’ll get there and meanwhile I am so glad to have met you. I am becoming really fond of you. Night night xx.”
A one-word response came back. “Night.” No kisses. That was odd, I thought. It bothered me so much that I had trouble sleeping. The next morning there was another text from him that said “You are very lovely, you know.” That was all.
I frowned at my phone and replied. “When shall we meet again? Soon I hope. Cinema?” He didn’t reply until lunchtime. His message said “Overloaded this week with project, but perhaps the weekend?” Should this have bothered me? Probably not. But, oh God, the bothering that it occasioned was really something else. I do this, though. I torture myself with others’ ways of expressing themselves. I’ve never really learned to make allowances for poor communication skills. I’m tortured by bloody nuance; by often-imaginary slights and misjudged tone. Though sometimes I’m absolutely right.
“Roger, is everything OK?” I asked him. He didn’t reply until the evening, and then I got an email from him. The first email I’d ever had from him. My heart was full of dread when I opened it, and with good reason. If he was emailing it was to explain something he couldn’t say by text and couldn’t bear to on the phone. Sure enough. He was seeing someone else on Friday, he said. He hoped I wouldn’t mind too much. He hoped that I was also dating and seeing other men.
Stella Grey is a pseudonym
