Ok, this may be messy.


I was working part-time with a brilliant bunch of people, always up for a big night out, whatever day of the week. Naturally I was making very little money and spunking what I did on various boozes. One of my very occasional fellow part-timers was a beautiful tall, pale, willowy (ok, skinny) blonde from the midlands who was 16 years my senior ( I was 21). Naturally, I'd get flirty with , let's call her P, when we went out but I knew deep down she was way out of my league. As time went by, I realised she was working fewer and fewer days and always seemed to be ill, but those days she worked, she always seemed to be working alongside me. We'd chat about the world and its' injustices, but never anything personal as that just didn't seem right, seeing as we were meant to be dealing with members of the public as well. I did notice that she wasn't hitting the boozer anywhere near as much as she used to, so we could never really get any further.
One afternoon, I was working with P and just thought, Sod it...why not? and asked her to a party my flatmates were throwing that week. Amazingly she agreed and asked of she could bring her mate, a fairly successful (financially if not artistically) actress.

Damn Right.

The party was pretty mediocre, and I noticed the object of my desire was sticking to the soft drinks, thus, so I thought, lessening my chances from little to none. However, with the absolutely bizarre come-on line of 'Do you want to see our sauna" (don't ask) somehow everything fell into place. After a few minutes of dicking about with the thermostat, and pondering the etiqutte of removing clothing in the sauna (Yes, really. Don't ask,) she settled the matter with the immortal line "Look, sod the sauna, let's just have sex."

Bloody Nora!

...

The next few weeks were a bit of a blur, I must have slept about 3 hours a night on average and lots about 4.7 litres of man-goo, but inevitably came the 'it's not you, it's me.' speech.
But this was different.
It was the 'I've been given 6 months to live' speech

Holy Shitting Christ.

Suddenly it all added up, the long absences from work, the concern about how she was from my colleagues, and I had never been told and never guessed quite how seriously ill she was. She lay in my arms and cried for hours about how every ones attitude towards her as a sexual being had changed after she had been diagnosed with cancer 2 years before, that she was too far gone for chemo, and that she understood if I wanted out.
Now your average 21-year old can't deal very easily with that sort of heavy-duty emotional weight dropping on them. I was your average 21-year old. We agreed to call it a day after one last night of tears and sweaty biology. Then I did the bad thing.
We both went out together with her mate, the actress who was 'only' 6 years older than me, and one of my best friends. As we had cabbed it back to the actresses flat, it was fairly clear that some horses were being changed mid-stream. Yup, we both did the dirty on each other with our best friends in the same flat on the same night, and amazingly I'm still with the other woman to this day.

When the end came for P over 12 months later, both me and the missus were at her hospice bed watching her hover between reality, the land of morphia and the big sleep. She died on a foul and rainy spring day while we had gone down the pub for lunch and a couple of pick-me-ups.
(Pickettywitchfinder General, Fri 5 Dec 2008, 11:16, 3 replies)

Click?
1. It fits the qotw.
2. Unless I mis-read something it is a very moving, and in some way, happy story
3. I am catching up with the qotw while on the bus and nobody else seems to have replied.
( Ghoti Fingers, Fri 5 Dec 2008, 19:30, closed)

brilliant
and despite the strange tension in the taxi I did a little cry and a click.
(Ktulu O'Ryleh float like a turd, sting like chlamydia, Tue 9 Dec 2008, 13:06, closed)

Damn well written
that gets a click from me. Thank you.
( wynoh kills threads by his mere presence, Wed 10 Dec 2008, 3:19, closed)