The Seating Plan

At the grand old age of fifty five years old, I’m invited to a wedding. As a kid, weddings seemed to be a regular occurrence. I had a crowd of older cousins and marriage was an expectation sometime after they left school. Then, when I reached my cousins’ age, my friends got married. I think I was meant to follow suit, but the choices I made precluded that. One of those choices was my first ever serious girlfriend. I think at some point she was serious. I never spotted the point where she stopped being serious and turned her attentions to a smarmy wee get, who’s clandestine presence on the periphery of my life was a huge affront to my ego, an insult that exaggerated the injury she caused my heart.

After that, I was playing catch up. On the one hand, I was in no rush. On the other, I knew I’d missed the boat and it turned out that I couldn’t swim. So I paced the shore, unsure what it was that I was supposed to do. I was the frog that had lost the magic that would turn me into a prince. Just as well. I wasn’t in the market for a princess. 

For a long while, I believed that timing was everything. In a way, it was. I had yet to grow up, and yet I was too old too. A heady mix of wrong that made me a headache of a human being. I had my moments. I wasn’t a bad man. I was a bad judge of character. Mostly my own. Now I look back at it, I paved hearts with my good intentions. No one dissuaded me from doing so. 

I may have been guilty of breaking hearts with my own broken heart. I was on the longest of rebounds. A love-sick pinball with the destructive qualities of a mace. 

Now I wonder whether I have a type. My most recent type had a shelf-life I could never discern. I thought it said forever, but things soured well before then. The problem it seems, is that many people are not comfortable with love. The proper, full fat stuff, not the spray-on feel-good deodorant version. 

My brand of love is not a feeling. Oh, there are feelings alright, but that is not the be all and end all. Saying love is a feeling is like describing a rose as red. The statement itself is true, but as the be all and end all, it is the biggest lie going. 

Love is…

They had posters with those words when I was a kid. It was romantic to buy them or the related merch for your girl. Clever ploy. The permutations are infinite. Love is everything and more. Love is what you do. You live it. You demonstrate you care in each and every way possible.

You think it.

People hate thinkers. Thinking is dangerous. Fully loving your life, yourself and others means you have to be thoughtful. I lose count of the times I have been driven out of the village with pitchforks of mistrust thanks to my thinking. I’m the misfit. The witch.

Burn him!

And I have been burned. I don’t think there’s an inch of my soul that hasn’t been scorched, one way or another. I like to think that I’ve had my fair share of hell already. Either that, or I’ll be prepared for my stint in the next life. 

I can’t remember the last time I was invited to a wedding. I’m not aware of being passed up for an invite. I’ve just been lucky, I guess. All that time as part of a double act, and now I get asked along as a single. They don’t include the option for a plus one. I’m relieved. Although in this day and age I would expect you can bring anyone along. No preconditions. I pose the  theoretical conundrum and play out my asking the landlord of my local. He tells me he’s busy. I knew that already. Now my options are scarce and I fold after this first gamble. I’ve had enough rejection to last me a lifetime. Sometimes I feel like I have fulfilled the requirement to live a life time and now I’m in a queue. I’m reminded of footy at school. Last to be picked, and I wasn’t even the worst or slowest player. Never quite worked that one out. Never found the game I was made for. First to be picked. Certainly wasn’t love.

Sending an avatar on ahead, I consider my day out in the country. There might be a marquee. There will be booze. There will be men in suits and women in dresses and heels. Hats and fascinators worn atop heads. The ceremony will be poignant and I will reminisce. Then I will want to slit my throat, put a bullet through my head and hang myself as an idiot with a camera takes thousands of ridiculous photos that will hold about as much meaning as a banana flavoured condom. I look banana flavoured condoms up on my phone. They still sell them. I don’t buy any.

My wedding invite is a joke. I go along with it. I want to see who the joke is on. I know I’ll not fare well, but there may be collateral damage. Absolutely will be, if I have anything to do with it. 

A present has to be bought. There is a list. I come to it late and end up buying a fondue set. Something that may get a single use, then get slipped into the back of a cupboard to gather dust. I identify with the fondue set and further loathe the prospect of my attendance at the wedding. A nap in a nice quiet cupboard would be preferable.

Booking accommodation, none of the reasonably priced hotels have rooms left. I book a B&B and only afterwards do I realise I had other options. Still, the B&B may be cosy and friendly. Right up until I meet the proprietor. Anyone who opens their home up to strangers like that is never right. They have a screw loose. One step away from serial killing. Inviting strangers in, then bottling it. Instead insisting upon payment of a ransom, throwing in a bacon butty and cheap orange juice to sweeten the deal.

My suit still fits. Which is to say that the trousers sit below the waistline and I can do them up. I won’t do the jacket up. The acid test has been passed. I can lift a drink to my lips, so there is no restricted movement that would necessitate a further purchase. I try not to think about the additional costs of the incidentals. At least I wasn’t invited to the stag do. My drinking prowess was stolen by a pickpocket as I slept on a night train from London. I like to think that theft occurred a year or two ago. It was more like a decade.

As the Big Day approaches, my nerves jangle. I’m not excited. Excitement is a young man’s game and a foolish young man at that. Mine is a world-weary worry. A bored anxiety. Again I resent the invasion of the invite into my life. I was doing fine until this unwanted social engagement barged in. This is something to be endured and so I turn my attentions away from it and focus on the mechanics of living. I cook myself three portions of cottage pie and take my laundry to the washing machine. The barrel isn’t quite full enough, and so I consider a scavenger hunt around the kitchen and bathroom for towels. This may prompt me to change the bedding, but I’m not inclined to go that far. It’s not like anyone will ever see my bedroom, so that can wait until the next wash. I try not to think back to how many times I have made this excuse.

The days pass in a muddle of mundanity. Once, when I had far more days, I knew the day and the date. Now, with that information at my fingertips, I seldom have a clue. Truth is I don’t care. One day is much the same as another. I wake up tired and struggle to see the point, then I fail to find the point as I continue to struggle towards the welcome nightfall of the evening. I would watch a film, but watching films alone is the one time I feel lonely. Something about wanting to share the meaning and experience emanating from the screen. A film watched alone is like that solitary tree no one hears as it expires in the midst of its disinterested fellows. I listen to music instead and realise that there will be music at the wedding. I can’t remember the last time I danced. Dancing was a release. An expression of something. I think it might have been hope. For me to dance these days would take more drink than I can stomach and it would hurt, before, during and certainly after.

The day comes, and it seems to come early. I’m not ready. Getting ready is a faff and it eats more time than it should. The car doesn’t have enough fuel. It never has enough fuel when you need it to. The route my phone chooses is crap. I would have chosen a better route if only I had a paper map, pen and paper. I will search the garage for those items when I return home. This action, I add to a mental list that won’t be stored in my overstuffed mind. You get older and actually have the time to do jobs you never get around to. The problem is that you forget those jobs whenever the time comes available.

I get lost. The voice on my phone annoys me. At least the voice isn’t attached to a real person. I fall out with myself in the stead of another. I want to stop the car. I want to turn around. If I didn’t know better, I’d say I was close to tears. I deny this and in denying this, I continue to overlook the cause of my angst. Weddings hold a dread for me now. I’m in the Winter of my life and I cannot look out over the sea of garishly dressed guests indulgently from a place of marital stability. I arrived, but I didn’t stay. I’m old, but far from wise. I officially failed to be happy and in my failure I was once again exiled from a place of belonging.

“Old dog,” I snarl at myself under my breath as I try another road and hope the voice will find its way. I won’t. It’s not that I can’t learn new tricks, I just don’t want to. Who would see them if I did?

I’m later than I should be and I haven’t time to book in at the B&B. I call the landlady as I walk to the premises. I’ve had to park some way away. The place is busy. The woman I speak to is understanding, but her voice is terse. I want to ask if there is a problem. I feel her judging me.

There is a seat at the back of the room the ceremony is about to take place in. I’m not late now, but I cut it fine. I get a few looks, all from women of a certain age. More judgement. Their spouses effect a military eyes front. They know what their wives are doing. They condone them. I dislike the husbands more than the wives. Letting women do the dirty work for them is petty and weak.

The bride comes in and I’m glad I’m at the back. I don’t have to crane my neck and I can’t see the welding of two lives taking places. I consider a nap. I zone out instead. I come back to myself as the bride and groom walk past. I wait for everyone to file out. Making an executive decision, I head to the bar. Two hours later, my brain reminds me about the B&B, but that ship has sailed. Two hours of photography madness passes and I sip beer in an anonymous hotel bar and recall the times I did this when I was on the road with work. Back then I looked forward to a time when I’d do this in my leisure. Now I’m missing those days. It was better back then. Everything is better through the lens of memory. You can touch up the unsavoury bits or crop them out.

Numb panic nudges me as the second hour comes to an end. I need to show willing and there’s every chance that the photographer is a decent fellow and only done the necessary. Thankfully, he’s nothing of the sort. I find the dining room before any of the guests and this is when I see the punchline to the day’s joke. 

The seating plan is always a joke. Anyone tasked with creating a seating plan is possessed by a specific demon and this demon is nasty and unpleasant. I find my table and I’m not surprised to find that I’m tucked away in a corner. Furthermore, this corner is as far from the bar as is possible. This news is bad enough, but when I see the name of the guests on the table a heart I wasn’t aware I was in possession of jumps into my mouth and a brick is dropped into my stomach. This diet is nauseating, as is the name. 

Staring at the name as though I can remove it with a force of will, I try to work out the connections that would have brought her here this day. I draw a blank and wish that the name on that seat was also blank.

I’m not ready to see her and now I know I never will be. The sight of her name alone has poleaxed me. They say that those who touch your life bestow upon you a lesson. This is the only lesson I can extract from my time with this woman. That I cannot be around her. She is my kryptonite. For an age, I worried away at the lesson she carried with her into my life, but all she ever left me with was one question. One word.

Why?

This is why I’m allergic to weddings. They may agree with others, but after she came along, I was transformed into this old man that stands before a seating plan and mouths at it like a fish out of water. And that is what I am. That is what I have been ever since she walked out on me without so much as a backwards glance.

I step away from the seating plan and urge myself on as I stalk the tables. A bloody-minded part of me wants to see how I will react when I see the name card and the seat of the crime. I consider moving it even before I reach it. I have to grab the back of the seat as a piece of card confirms my worst nightmare.

I’m not over her and I doubt I ever will be. She didn’t just break my heart, that would be bad enough. She stole an important part of me and I don’t know how to get it back.

Through sheer exhaustion, I slump on the seat allocated to me. It isn’t my seat. It cannot be. Not with her at my side. She was never at my side. This is the joke. Her being here, but not being here. A reminder of a life that was never a life. A love that was as one-sided as it was possible to be. A fool staring at a mirror and loving an image of himself dressed up as the woman of his dreams. Smoke and mirrors, and a slow draining of the soul in the most insidious of ways.

I’m wiped out. But the remnants of my stubborn nature hold me down upon the chair as the guests finally file in. I patiently await my fate as one by one seats are taken. The wheel spins. Where it stops, nobody knows. And I’m nobody. I know that the wheel will stop and point an accusatory finger at me. And it will ask me why. She was only a mirror after all. She was never there. It was all me and it was all my fault.

I smile at the guests opposite me. We’re all waiting in the doctor’s surgery. When my name is called out, I will receive the terminal verdict; you’re done for. I regress to an age where the world was too big and far too scary. I want an adult to step in and stop this before it goes too far. The build-up to my execution is orchestrated. Seat after seat taken up. People cheerfully exchanging pleasantries as they side eye me. They all know, and they have ring-side seats for the Big Fight. David against Goliath. Only David has no weapon and no armour and Goliath is out for bloody vengeance.

My mouth is dry and my breath is laboured. My palms are sweating. I never knew that was a thing. I want to lick them so I have moisture in my mouth. 

She takes her seat.

I dare to look upon my nemesis and my face breaks out in every possible expression all at once. Stammering a question, but the question isn’t why. It’s a name.

“Paula?”

“Jim!”

“I haven’t seen you…”

“Since school!”

Then she does what I couldn’t do. She picks up the name card and slips it under the table cloth, “called in at the last minute,” she smiles.

“Last minute reprieve,” I reply.

She looks askance.

I answer with a smile.