Next Time, Run Away!

By Kevin O’Sullivan. Port Macquarie, NSW

Anwar said he was descended from Abdullah Muhammed Shah ll, the twenty-sixth Sultan of Perak. Of all the things he told me, it’s one I’m inclined to believe. That and the fact that he was HIV positive, which doesn’t, by the way, render you a more decent or pleasanter person. If you’re a bastard with HIV, you’re still a bastard.

Of course, I didn’t know on sight that he was a bastard. What I knew was that he was a small, athletic young man of Southeast Asian appearance — Malaysian perhaps, or Vietnamese — shaved head, great arse, and cute as a button. When we got chatting in the front bar of the Glasshouse Hotel in Collingwood, I was just about to leave. I’d had a drink with my friend Carlos, said hello to my sister’s friend Luke, who always looked annoyingly handsome and relaxed, and I wasn’t really looking. That, of course, is the fatal time to meet someone, when you’re not looking. You have no filters up, no impression to manage, you’re unguarded, and you walk straight into the line of fire.

At some point in our conversation this man-boy said, almost coyly, “Would it be very forward of me to invite you to come home with me?” “Yes, it would,” I said, “but I’d like to.” South Yarra, the St Kilda Road end of Toorak Road, a one-bedroom flat, decorated with taste, nothing out of place. I think I stayed the night and, if not that night, then very few days later, I was hooked. When I see this happen to friends, the warning lights flash right away, and I want a loud hailer to shout: Step away from the twenty-something year old! This is terrible idea. It will end in tears! But somehow when it’s me, no loudhailer blares its caution. Or it blares, but love isn’t only blind, it’s deaf, too.

Fast forward almost a year, to a Vietnamese restaurant at the other end of Toorak Road, near Chapel Street, and you will see me do something I’ve done twice in my life: walk out of dinner, leaving an obnoxious prick to pay the bill. Did I say ‘walk’? I meant ‘storm’. That’s a better word for the purposeful stride to freedom that took me to my car parked down a side street near the railway. We had driven to dinner together. Fuck him. He could make his own way home.

Shall I compare thee to a spoiled child? Oh much, much more! The child is spoiled by the parents and knows no better, knows that a tantrum will produce the goods, glories in the omnipotence of childhood. You were in your twenties, with a law degree, even though you barely passed, from Melbourne Uni, and yet you firmly believed that the world owed you, that people should do as you wanted, that your opinions were always right. You were a funny combination of utter belief in your own legitimacy and a profound insecurity that needed me to come to interviews with you or come with you when you went to arrange flowers at somebody’s wedding, or at the Lexus showroom at the top of Swanston Street, even if it meant me just sitting in the car, like a chauffeur.

Ah, the Lexus showroom! You mentioned your friend Trevor in vague terms, and it was probably six months before I realised that he was your ex-partner, the sponsor of your interdependency visa; not so ‘ex’ that he didn’t pay your rent, and give you work. Did you sometimes sleep together? I have no idea, and now I don’t care. Is that how you acquired HIV?

You told me about your HIV status one day during a walk in Fitzroy Gardens, but I had already guessed, and it didn’t matter to me. I’d been through that with Jay, the other prick I left in a restaurant to pay the bill, a rooftop Korean restaurant in Darlinghurst, that time. Interestingly, you were both born in the year of the Tiger, although twelve years apart. The horoscope book said that Dragons and Tigers should never have an intimate relationship. I thought that was bunkum but, going on my sample of two, I can attest to the wisdom of this advice.

So when did the cute wear off and the just-bloody-annoying begin? Fixing a time is complicated by my attempts to be grown up and not bail when things got difficult, something I was proficient at doing. This time, I thought, I’ll try to stick at it rather than run away. Note to self: trust your gut in future, and run away, it’ll save time.

Jealousy showed up pretty quickly, in all sorts of ways. I remember the tantrum you threw when I hugged a friend at Mardi Gras — he was my GP, for goodness sake! And that wasn’t the only tantrum: tantrums became your leitmotif. You had a particular way of doing everything — cooking, shopping … even cleaning, and woe betide the man who suggested a different way to do stuff — your scorn and vitriol were instant. You were so angry when a neighbour parked in your parking space, you keyed his car and thought it perfectly reasonable. Excellent law school training. A few weeks later, when your car was being fixed and you suggested I park mine in the spot, your neighbour returned the favour and keyed mine, all down the passenger side. You shrugged, I paid.

Maybe it was the cumulative sense of paying that got to me. For the moments of good company, and there were some, the outlay was horrendous. You played me Dido to explain what meeting me meant to you. But while there were no red flags above your door, there were plenty above mine. I stayed partly because I felt sorry for you, seldom a good reason to prolong a bitter, destructive relationship. Storming out of the restaurant was my Dido moment. Note to self: the flags are red for a reason!

Kevin O’Sullivan is a writer, therapist and aspiring poet. He was born and grew up in Ireland and is now exiled to the beautiful Mid North coast of New South Wales with his husband and their three dogs. He has been writing poetry, memoir, and short stories for some years.  His stories are inspired by his endless fascination with how people work and how we cope with pretty much anything the world throws at us.