Saturday

Saturday came and went. The net result was that I went home by myself to a cold flat, and sat in the lounge for a few hours staring blanking at my laptop in a state of fierce despair and confusion waiting for the tumble dryer to tumble my bed sheets dry. I desperately wanted to just crawl into bed, shut my eyes really tight and fall asleep, not thinking about anything.

He came to the party. He didn't just appear all of a sudden - we met in advance, he didn't shy away too much from the cameras, and we didn't re-enact our favourite trick of competing with each other in front of other people to the point we both make idiots of ourselves. Making an idiot of oneself was reserved for me that night, and me alone, and I'm conservatively sure it isn't for any of the reasons you could imagine, so let me try to explain ...

Having had the opportunity to meet him for coffee during the week I took it, thus thwarting my own attempt at game playing. He was and has since been lovely, as I have come to expect, but he also was not planning on attending the party for a fairly reasonable reason: he knew the host had not invited him, she'd invited the prospect of us, which to someone like us, is strangely offensive. Neither of us wanted to feel like performing monkeys, we are both quite (and I say this somewhat ironically given the medium I choose here) private people, and can't abide matchmaking. So a little gentle persuasion and he booked himself a hotel, bought a new shirt and informed me of his quandary between shoes or boots.

To the other guests we appeared good friends, glued to each other side, but not what you would call an obvious couple. As the evening progressed and I performed my social butterfly trick I grew increasingly frustrated to a point I've never gotten to before, with the lewd attention I was receiving from a few other men. These are men that I know, and some I don't, but who all took it upon themselves to cross the line that is invisibly drawn between friendly banter, and inappropriate and unnecessary lewdness. As each one crossed the line I walked away, choosing to refrain from entertaining their company for the rest of the evening - that's an important point, I walked away.

At the tail of the evening, I explained my frustration as it really had an unexpectedly profound effect on me, and he was just lovely and we sat holding hands (a fact I confessed to him that surprisingly to me, with him I enjoyed doing it), but he also said that I invited it, the lewd comments he means. Why? Because of the lovely but fairly low cut dress I was wearing, but also because I choose to engage at all with these men. We escorted the birthday girl to her residence and watched her stumble through her front door trailed by a blizzard of helium balloons, and he invited me to stay at the hotel with him. I awkwardly deliberated and then awkwardly declined and as he kissed me goodnight I found I could barely kiss him - him, the man who makes my toes curl with delight, who pushes me into tornado of emotions and catches me when I'm tossed aside by it's force - and I couldn't bring myself to kiss him!

As I drove home, en route parking up in a layby 500 yards from the hotel to sit in my car and recover from my bout of insanity, I could think of nothing else but of why I reacted like that to him, whilst simultaneously feeling sick at the prospect of the damage I could have caused. What have I done? By the time I reached home I had gotten as far as realising that I couldn't bare the thought of hearing him say to me the same words those other men had earlier in the evening, to the extent I didn't want him to do anything other than hold my hand, or put his arm around me. It's an ugly and inexperienced knee jerk reaction that on many levels I perhaps could have handled better including telling him what was bothering me - the latter being possible had I actually realised what it was before I had left him but hey-ho.

I'm just used to it, the banter, the comments, the inappropriateness, and when, and if it goes too far I will unquestionably make that clear, but perhaps he has a point about my behaviour. If the situation had been reversed I'd have been uneasy to learn he'd engaged at all in these conversations, would probably not have acknowledged that he had drawn the line and walked away, citing the engagement, not the line crossing as the problem, and I would have been mortified if he'd then walked away from me at the end of the evening. Why? Because I would have found it disrespectful of my feelings for him, confusing and I would have been thoroughly unimpressed. Had he not been there, would I have acted any differently with these men - no, I wouldn't, but perhaps I should have acted differently because he was there, or just because of him ... I just don't know.

I like to treat people as I would want to be treated myself, so whilst I think it could appear meek, if I don't want him to behave in a certain way in those circumstance, I then don't want myself to either. As for any insinuation that my attire invites such comments, well, I'll dispatch that with a healthy 'whatever' - if he sticks around long enough he'll learn that if it's not my cleavage that instigates such comments, it's my mouth, and those are far worse. Regardless, I felt desperate at the thought of leaving him, and of having left him, at the thought that I might have upset him, and that I might not have upset him at all, and terrified that this might all be a concealed attempt to sabotage the relationship through sheer fear of what it could bring.

So I left him with a briefly apologetic text, which asked that if it was ok with him, I'd call him the next day to explain once I'd cleared my head, and that it really was lovely to have spent the evening with him. I will undoubtedly spend the rest of the day torturing myself over what to say before I call him, if he'll pick up, be receptive, or insist an explanation is not necessary. I'll wonder if he'd have spent the evening with his arm around me, something he does in short bursts as he knows my reserve of such displays of affection, if he'd have done that and made clear that we were there together, would these men have engaged with me in the same way, would I have let them, and would it have changed the outcome of the evening? Every time I consider that I end up asking myself why I think that it should be something he does that would have such an effect, rather than something I could have done, and that actually, he's been the perpetrator by flirting with me in front of his girlfriend so is he really going to cry wounded soldier?

Je suis un idiot. The reason for this remains unresolved