The Milkman

The hedgerows file past in a green blur that mirrors the passage of time. He does not notice this. Few ever do. That is a lie that they tell themselves. Yet another filter. He sees so much, but most of it is lost. Filed away in the file called bin, headed for the landfill site of his subconscious. In amongst the flotsam and jetsam there is gold. The litter wilfully discarded during the course of a misspent lifetime smothers the answers to the questions that must be asked in order to make sense of life. And asked to establish who he really is.

He knows himself more than he ever has, but he remains a work-in-progress. This process of construction has made him aware of his true nature. His dark half goads him. Dares him to present himself to the world in his entirety. He knows he is not ready for this. Not yet. Perhaps not ever. Or is it the world that is not ready? He has no clue as to whether he’s the quiet and patient egg or the endlessly clucking chicken.

He smiles at the thought of chickens. Modern day dinosaurs. Vicious little feckers given half a chance. Their tiny brains are uncluttered with the nonsense he’s had to carry around with him. And yet they are angry and hungry to exact violence. You wouldn’t think it to see their offspring. But the dark seed must lay within the chick. The egg fertile grounds for hateful corruption.

He’s early, and yet he drives his car quickly. Covering the brake at the corners. Anticipating hidden calamity. When it fails to present itself, he gently steps on the accelerator and revels in the eager roar of the engine. This is where his fear makes sense. He is more alive for harnessing it and converting it into the power of adrenaline. He needs this. After the drive, there will be calm. He will sit in the pub garden and examine his pint. Enjoying the interplay of light with the glass and amber liquid. Anticipating its taste and the mellow feeling he will experience. Beer is a social experience for him. His very own engine oil.

As he sits and contemplates what is about to occur, he takes in his surroundings. The gentle chatter of the other patrons of the pub accompanied by the music of birdsong. The world around him is communicating and he experiences it all in one way or another, and so he chooses to bathe in it. Enjoys the moment for all that it is.

He is here because he made a violent choice in the most gentle of manners. He smashed the stability of his world after he scrolled through the profile and with the lightest of touches signalled the fact that he liked another human being. The signal went out into the universe and he waited. A tiny piece of him travelling out there in search of connection. Swimming against the tide. It’s chances so small. The only certainty in this life being death, he wonders at how he still experiences the chill dread of rejection and abandonment even now. After all he has seen and been.

She also gently stroked a key through which these transactions now occur. Reciprocating. Accepting his opening gambit. Always reserving the right to walk away at any point. The overwhelming likelihood being that her exit would be inexplicably premature. An imagined slight levelled against him. A projected reminder of pain caused in childhood, the truth of which grows warmer and warmer in that landfill site that festers within. Threatening to reach a critical mass of anger and worse.

There is danger in each and every interaction. He understands that more fully now. That which he mistook for chemistry is a dire warning. Anxiety rising up and trying to head him off at the pass. And yet he has had his ticket punched by lust masquerading as his dreams far too often. Aided and abetted by a sleepwalking partner. Both of them clinging on to the false memories of a honeymoon period and the promise that it’ll all work out OK in the end. Coasting downhill in a car. Neither of them with the presence of mind to switch the engine on, let alone grab a hold of the wheel and take charge of the life they have agreed to share.

Too many car crashes. He’s walked away from them all, and only ever looked back in order to blame. Too invested in what he has made of himself. He’s a good man. He knows when to switch it on. The pleases. The thanks yous. The smiles. The nods that indicate that he’s listening. All the accoutrements of a set of habits that mean he’s going through the motions in as convincing act as he can muster. Hiding in plain sight because no one ever looks beyond that. No one can truly know another person. Why? Because they are too afraid to know themselves. Better to make it up as they go along. Raid the dressing up box and choose a character to play.

That was then, he thinks to himself. There is something calming about this, but also unsettling. He is a rarity in the simplicity of his being. As he decided to give dating a try, his initial thought that it should be easier at this time in his life to find a suitable companion was mugged in the alleyway of his own darkness. Half a century of accumulated baggage was always going to be a problem. Then there was the discomfort of his new hobby. A hobby he’d dabbled in for an age, but was now indulging in on a daily basis. Thinking. He’d found the gym of his mind and he’d gotten into shape. The endorphins coursed through him as he explored sense and meaning. A cluster of jigsaw pieces came together and spoke to him of an endless journey. So much more lay beyond that which he could now see.

His mind tripped along of its own accord. More so now he’d cleared more room for it. Now it was presenting him with memories of his first forays into adult intimacy. He had always been a slow burner. Happy in the company of his friends. An awkward confidence about him. But cautious when it came to women. They were, he knew, made differently. His research was restricted to fairy tale princesses and quotes that the females in his family trotted out.

Faint heart never won fair lady.

Somehow he was conditioned into becoming an impossible parody of a knight. Courteous to a t. He shook his head and grinned as he recalled his time as a milkman. Only years later did he realise that he’d been propositioned dozens of times. He was young and fit. A promise of the joys of youth. And thankfully he didn’t have a clue. An innocence of ignorance. There was a denial in his misreading of the situation. A choice made even before the door opened and a scantily clad woman asked for a portion of cream. He wondered now, how his reaction to that had landed. The frown he'd worn at the subsequent awkwardness at the doorstep as he returned with a tub of cream and asked whether she would like to pay for it now or add it to next week’s bill. The same scenario played out any number of times and he never woke up to what was being asked of him. Would not have given it even if he’d realised. This lack of care insulated him from reality.

His misreading of others could only ever be as a consequence of his misreading of himself. The restrictions he’d placed upon himself so that he would not get things wrong. Not wanting to be too much and so struggling to be enough. His focus on entirely the wrong thing. No one pointing this out to him because they were similarly engaged in a circular course informed by a childhood of such roundabout endeavours.

It did not escape him that he was revisiting the very beginning of his romantic journey. Then he cautioned himself. Cutting out his childhood and disregarding it was a fool’s game. Everything went back to the templates cut out for him by parents too busy to take a moment to see what they were doing. Busy being one of the best guises of denial.

He had been made this way. Taken him an age to see that all he was, was rough-hewn stone in the shape of a man. It was for him to chip away at that rock with the choices he made in life and to mean them so they landed square and true.

Another memory swam up to greet him. They had been strangers for decades. His first serious girlfriend. A bond gradually forming as they found their way around each other. He’d loved her in a way he’d never love another. She was his first after all. You always remembered your first. He certainly remembered how she’d hurt him. Now, as he looked back through the mists of time, he chose to see it differently. Looked upon his part in it. Setting himself up for a fall by applying what he thought was the right framework and set of behaviours. Never really looking at how that might work for her, let alone asking her about it. Asking something like that was though, either too serious or a red flag of weakness. Men didn’t ask questions like that. Men were doers.

Her Dad had a trade. He’d never seen him out of blue, oil-stained overalls. His hands were big, calloused and stained with the patina of good, honest graft. A quiet man made all the more intimidating in the silence he wore. Her mother was nice. Even now, he had no other words for her. They exchanged pleasantries, but beyond that he knew nothing of her. Back then, she may have been referred to as a mouse. Quiet. Barely noticeable. Peeping out at life from the safety of the hole she resided in.

Time in that household was spent in his girlfriend’s bedroom. There was a convenience to that arrangement that suited them all. In that room, they’d both gently pushed the boundaries. Exploring how far they could go and get away with. With each other and with the two adults downstairs.

There’d been near misses. They’d almost been caught several times. The thrill of sailing close to the wind and getting away with it added a certain something to the proceedings and they had played with that new experience both in and out of the house. Adventurers discovering novelties hidden from the rest of humanity.

The memory that had returned to him sat within that patchwork. Those days had been good. Better than he’d appreciated at the time. This one time however had scared the living crap out of him. They’d been having sex. They’d been doing it for a while now and knew what they were about. This time was different though. Something happened that could have only taken up a few seconds, but the enormity of it swelled into a significance that intimidated and scared him. He could feel it now, even after all these years. The panic as he tried to make sense of what was happening and the pending consequences inexorably closing in on him. That experience made him believe that a person’s life really could play before their eyes in their final moments.

He was on top of her as they moved in a rhythm that worked well for them both. His motion pushing her back and forth. He could feel that special moment approaching and he was pleased to know that he could give her that pleasure. That was what mattered to him most of all. To give and in giving he received far more back. She’d flushed and everything was going the way he’d expected until she let out a small sigh and passed out.

Time froze. The panic he experienced was overwhelming. He thought he’d killed her. Questioned his sanity. Asked himself whether he’d been bashing her head against the wall with each upward movement. His brain was too busy cursing to provide an answer. But it wasn’t so busy that it couldn’t run through all the worst scenarios possible. He was in the most trouble he’d ever been in. Her father was going to kill him. He couldn’t find the words to gently deliver the news that he’d accidentally killed his daughter whilst they were screwing. No one would believe him that he hadn’t meant to do it. He’d be lucky to survive exiting the house. Then he’d be in prison. For life. And he’d be targeted by the other prisoners for the heinous sex crime he’d committed. He'd wanted to cry. But even that small mercy was denied him.

As he continued to torture himself, she’d come to. Her face etched with confusion. She asked him what was the matter. He’d managed not to blurt out the words that came to him at first, I thought I’d killed you! Instead he told her she’d passed out. She had no recollection of doing so. He asked if she was alright. She was fine. He wished he could join her in that state of being, but they were separated by a chasm of experience. A chasm he’d encounter time and again. Lack of experience removing the capacity to understand or care.

The petite mort never happened again. But something about it haunted him. He’d glimpsed something in the animal act of sex that disturbed him. There was something dark there. It would be a long time before he saw it for what it really was. His darkness. He’d lived a pretence of his goodness for such a long time. Intent on being a nice guy. That only ever took him so far though. Things always unravelled. The stories he played out always came to an end. They could not flourish in the world. They did not breathe the same air. The truth always came out.

And yet he went again and again. Baffled by the inevitable collapse of every structure that he built upon the sands of an unsustainable fantasy. Unable to piece the resulting evidence together in order to solve his crimes. Always looking outwards. Outsourcing his life because he was too afraid to be himself. Too scared to even look at himself as he truly was.

He hurt himself again and again. Worse still he hurt others in his failed pursuits. He had to admit that. He was after all the common denominator. He’d been there when the hurt occurred and he’d not even provided a witness statement. It was high time he worked out what was happening. What his part was in the demolition of everything that had been built. Eventually holding his hands up. Saying enough was enough and asking for help.

The help he sought was within him. Somehow he knew that. He had to dig deep. Interrogate the prisoner that he was. Trapped in a life he disliked. Trapped inside himself with so very little scope to express himself.

For a while, he took that externalised blame and he instead blamed himself. Berated himself for being a loser. Repeated prayers of self-degradation. Imposing upon himself the punishment of depressive self-flagellation. Roaring into the depths of himself to provoke a reaction. Any reaction. Beating himself down until he was on his knees whispering to his battered body that he couldn’t go on like this. There was no more left. He was approaching a point of nothingness.

Then he stopped in the midst of his exhaustion. And in the silence of a selfish grief he saw the darkness. Too tired to do anything other than stare down into his dark half, he felt that panic yet again. The despair of a loss that would consume him in the fires of a hate so fierce it could never be sated. He stared into the dark eyes of a creature that stared right back through him. It saw everything. It knew everything. Here was the infinite. And here was his well of shame. Here was where he would break or make of himself what he was always supposed to be. He uttered one simple word in an act of defiance and a promise that would deliver him from an evil that dwells within us all.

No.

And so now he sits awaiting his first encounter with someone who is a promise. Just as he is a promise. Only he intends to keep his promise for ever more. He is a knight after all. A warrior forged in the flames of his own impurities and flaws. He has become beautiful in the random artistry of his battle wounds. Painted himself in pain and made himself anew as he fought his very nature. Struggled and wrestled with that which he always was. In the discovery of himself, he found his dragon and he fought it. Not to a bitter end of loss and ruin, but in a struggle of acknowledgement, acceptance and reconciliation. Now he is the white knight and he is the dark dragon in an embrace that will never loosen, nor end. He has become what he was always meant to be and he is at last a force to be reckoned with. He is more than his shadow. He is whole, and he has come to understand the truth of himself and of the world he is an intrinsic part of. Armed with this knowledge and faith, he can love, because he now knows how to love himself. He sees all of himself and the worth he has always contained, including the darkness that completes him, providing the contrast needed for his light to truly shine.