Choose freedom, I want to beg. Choose happiness. Don’t go back into that dark room and close the door on me. Not now, after these months in the sunlight.

Choose love, princess.

Choose yourself.

Choose me.

Or just the ones that make me want to slash my wrists and swim with sharks?

Well I turned around and I said ho, ho
And the northern lights commenced to glow
And she said, with a tear in her eye
Watch out where the huskies go, and dont you eat that yellow snow
– Frank Zappa Don’t You Eat that Yellow Snow

Why is it that she can treat me like shit, and at the end of the day it’s me asking her to stay?

Thought I’d try out some on-the-spot blogging. I usually cannot be bothered taking my laptop with me when I go off to the beach, but pulling a sicky means I still need to check mail. So here I am, feet in the Unawatuna sand, nose still in the web.

Yesterday, on a whim, I decided to take the bike out for a spin. I only ever ride on the weekend now, given what a pain in the backside it is to navigate Colombo on a motorcycle these days. Have you noticed that very few people ride for fun anymore? I remember a time when I was in my teens and tweens when I’d come out of a club or musical show, and the pavement would be lined with hot bikes — XT250s and XLRs, CBRs and YZRs. Now it’s all utilitarian Hero Hondas. People spend their fun money on cars. Anyway. I usually take the old XT out either early on a Sunday morning or late in the evening and thrash her out to Mount or Wadduwa, but yesterday it just felt too tedious to face another five-day week. So I call up SO2.

Me: “Shall we skip work tomorrow and push off to Hikka or something today?”

SO2: “Hmm, ok I think I can call in sick or whatever.”

So, change of clothes, swimwear, snorkel gear, weed, a full tank of petrol, and we’re off. SO2′s got an XL250, so we keep pace. He’s already got a bottle of Rockland rum stashed in his backpack and we stop off at the Cargills in Mount to grab a liter of Coke so that we can have a drink whenever we want. It’s not even 10am.

We swing south along the Galle Road, but before we even get up to speed, SO2′s slowing down, waving at me to stop. I pull up alongside and he points back over his shoulder. SWFs. Two of them. Standing at the bus stand we have just passed. Well, they’re white and female, but since they are together, we can’t tell if they’re single. One’s blonde, and the other’s got sort of dark brown hair — brunette I guess is still the word.

SO2: “Shall we give them a lift?”

Me: Think they’ll come?”

SO2: “Worth a try. They look hot.”

I have another look. They are kind of hot in a gypsy-hippy kind of way. They’re wearing those baggy pants that white people think all of Asia wears in bright red and ochre, and one’s in a sun hat while the other’s got a turquoise bandana — well, a bright blue one anyway. Clearly their first visit to Sri Lanka.

I wait with the bikes, while SO2 walks back to talk to them. He takes off his helmet so that they can get a good look at him. Now S02′s a good-looking dude in that reformed beach boy kind of way, and when he gets up to the SWFs, they don’t panic and run. I watch him talk, and gesture towards me and the bikes. I take off my helmet too, expecting the worst, but the girls just look at me curiously, one of them talking guardedly to SO2. No panic yet. All the Sri Lankans at the bus stand stare at SO2 in a mix of disgust and envy.

A couple of minutes later SO2 is leading the SWFs over. “This is Marc,” he tells them, and to me, “they’re going to Hikka, and I told them we can take them there since we’re going to Una.” The girls don’t look convinced, eyeing the two big trail bikes. They’ve obviously been told that hitching rides on bikes with Sri Lankan guys isn’t recommended. Finally, after some quick debate between them (in what I figure is Dutch) they agree to accept our offer. Probably decided that no one ever got raped on the back of a motorcycle. SO2 and I always carry a spare helmet each when we go down south in case of female success, so we break these out and off we go. I get the blonde, and her name is Marjan (she shows me how to spell it later, but enough of that for now).

We arrive in Hikka before lunch, and the SWFs aren’t very happy. The sea looks really rough and muddy. We roll up a couple of joints and while we smoke it, SO2 and I convince them to come down to Una with us.

It’s 7pm on Monday now and we’re all stoned again. It’s raining outside on the beach. Marjan’s sandy legs rubs up against mine. SO2′s already disappeared off into the rain with the brunette. Can’t remember her name now. We’ve all shifted rooms after last night, SO2 exchanging with Marjan, which meant I had her all afternoon. More weed and long lazy sex. I think this flu is getting worse. I’ll probably have to skip work tomorrow too. A tongue licks the salt off my shoulder.

So after years, she’s an older woman. Not by much, but still, there it is.

And I had forgotten what that was like. I had forgotten what it was like to listen to the same songs. Not just the same kind of music, but the same songs, many from when we both were teenagers. It used to be that whenever I started to see a new woman, with her would come new music, new songs, often stuff I had never heard of before. A lot of it — particularly when the women were much younger — I didn’t really like, but sometimes, good stuff too. I cannot ever now hear a Skunk Anansie song without remembering Elle in ’96. But unfortunately, I also cannot hear a Britney Spears number without remembering ES from more recent times.

I love being with her. Every single moment. From the quickly grabbed coffee in the garden to the stolen moments in bed. I care for her in a way that I’d forgotten was possible for me to do. And I dare not tell her for fear of spooking her like a deer in the dawn. I don’t know if she feels the same, and I wonder sometimes if she doesn’t dare tell me either. I’d forgotten how delicious uncertainty can be.

I had also forgotten what it is like to be unsettled by a woman, to have my boat rocked in a way that a younger woman cannot do. It is scary at times, and disconcerting, but also very exciting, like swimming out beyond the reef. It forces me to work at things, but also to let other things go in a way that the control freak in me never allowed me to do with younger women.

For the first time in a long time, I realize that I’m with a woman who does not necessarily need me in her world. And that’s a relief.

I’m beginning to wonder why I still enjoy hunting and killing so much when it’s becoming increasingly obvious that I’m vegetarian.

The times I had kissed my sister’s friends I had not spoken to them. They had been around while my sister was off doing something elsewhere, and they had drifted into my orbit, and so I had kissed them. I do not remember any talking. I did not know what to say to girls, and I told him so. 

– Neil Gaiman. How to Talk to Girls at Parties

I feel like I’m 21 years old again. I’ve forgotten how to be single, and attractive to women. There was a time when it didn’t matter. I just was. Even when I wasn’t single. I didn’t have to chat up women, because they chatted me up. But that was when I was older. At 21, I was rubbish with women, as bad at seduction as I had been as a teenager, and that was pretty damn bad.

And then somewhere in my twenties, I figured them out. I knew what they wanted, and what they liked. I figured out what they wanted to hear. And they couldn’t get enough.

And now I’m back there at 21. I’d forgotten how stressful it is to be single and out looking for women. The whole clubbing thing bores me now, and Colombo just isn’t built for meeting girls in bars. I just see the same women, and they’re with the same guys. And those guys are just not me anymore. I still know what they want, and what they like. I’m just not sure I care anymore. And I’m not sure if I’m looking for women really, or really just looking for a woman.

Sometimes I feel absolutely alone, and that aloneness is cool. I had forgotten that too. And I feel I could be alone forever. But sometimes I miss that softness that talking to a woman brings.

I know he tries. He wants to pick that lock. But he doesn’t know how. And neither do I. And it’s frustrating and, ultimately, annoying. It makes me want to walk away as he did from his own father. I know I will regret it one day, as he himself regrets. I know I don’t have much time left. But still.

And I fear that history of cowardice; I fear that it will be the same with my own son. With the boy, there is so much time ahead, a lifetime. So much time, but so little will be spent together. And I know he is already comfortable with that.