I had a dream in the early hours of this morning - generally those are the only ones I remember. I dreamt that my recent ex (Claviers) was on the phone to his new girlfriend (Bâiller) and I was arsing around in the background, making fun of Bâiller. Claviers then told me off and, whilst crying, told me how much I'd upset him. I woke up feeling instant guilt for my dream behaviour and sadness at having made the Dream Claviers cry. A quick sojourn-to-the-kitchen-for-some-juice later, and the guilt had gone and been replaced by anger. There is, of course, a background to this dream...
A week ago I had an accident and tore a ligament in my foot - f***ing painful, as you can imagine. Before we split up in July, Claviers would of course have been there to help me - we lived together for over 4 years, 18 months of those alone as a couple. Now, obviously, the state of things has changed but we did have a very amicable break-up and have remained friends.
In a situation where one is in dire need of help, one generally has a handful of people that one can truly count on. For me those people are:
* My parents (now living in Wales, whereas I live in London - not an option in this case)
* Peebug (a mutual friend of Claviers and myself - I tried to call him but it went to his voicemail: an über irritating message recorded by a child that I really wish he would change...)
* Treacle (my friend from uni and drummer in my band. I was staying at her flat for a few days whilst in between homes - she works nights and on the Saturday when I particularly needed help, she was off to West London for a family Do)
With those options unavailable to me, I was left with...
* Claviers (actually the one person after my parents who I would want there. Being vulnerable and on a crutch is not the most dignified of states to be in, and Claviers is one of those people who could have instantly cheered me up and made me feel better about myself)
Problem. Friday (the day when it happened) is the day he works with Bâiller. I therefore knew I couldn't call him that night as he'd be with her. On Saturday I suspected they would be together but I also knew he had a gig that night and so may have gone back home from hers at lunchtime, or something like that. Who knows, or wishes to know, the movements of their ex in sexual situations?
Eventually, being (as I was) rather blue at having been alone since the accident , in tremendous pain, and stuck on the second floor in someone else's flat, I bit the bullet and called Claviers, hoping that he would be able to drop by to cheer me up and help get my suitcases downstairs and into a taxi so that I could go to my new home. If nothing else, I just wanted to speak to my friend and get some sympathy even if he couldn't actually help.
As soon as he answered the phone I knew that Bâiller was there. He didn't answer in the customary way and generally sounded like he was working as a customer service agent in a call centre, responding to the news of my torn ligament with a cheery "Oh, I'm sorry to hear that" and "So, what do you need from me?" Somewhat doped up on painkillers, I don't remember exactly what I said but it something like "What I need is the help of a good friend, but apparently I've got the wrong number" At least that's what I think I said.
So the anger I felt at this dream was rooted in that incident - how dare Dream Claviers have a go at me for making fun of Dream Bâiller, when he spoke to me like I was a student calling in sick? When I call him while she's there he speaks to me like shit, if she calls him while I'm there everything is normal... Obviously this was all a dream, but it does have a basis in truth: one time when I was at his (our old) flat, Bâiller called and he even spoke to her in the Team America Kim Jong Il voice that he and I use. Unusually for me, I didn't make a fuss about it as I've been trying ever-so-hard to be grown-up about the whole situation
What I realised after waking up from this dream is how much resentment and anger I've built up towards Bâiller throughout all this. More resentment and anger than I feel towards Claviers. Now, some of this may well be justifiable seeing as she came on the scene before our break up and is the reason for me now falling out with Claviers (over the foot thing), therefore losing my best friend. But then I started to fall for My Love at around the time they met, so not much moral high-ground there. And it was Claviers who was the dick on the phone, not her.
What it causes me to think about is why we girls turn on each other in such situations, rather than turning on the men who have instigated the heart-ache. Perhaps it's just down to basic sperm-grabbing biology. Women are supposedly hard-wired to look for the most desirable sperm so that they can carry on the reproductive process.
As Van Morrison sang "All the girls walk by, dressed up for each other..." A few weeks ago, when I had the misfortune of knowing that I would be in the same room as Bâiller, I spent days pondering my outfit and hours preening in preparation, determined to make the point that I was considerably hotter than her. I need not have worried so much (she didn't make much of an effort by the looks of things) but this is something I know all my girl friends would have done too.
Is it just down to basic human reproductive urges? If so, it seems pretty dumb in my case. Claviers (bless him) is hardly an Alpha male, and by no means possessed the most desirable sperm out of those present at that particular occasion. I genuinely don't have romantic feelings for him anymore and I'm also 85% certain that I won't have children. Furthermore, although I would have made the effort to glam up anyway (not least because My Love was there), I was fully aware of the fact that I was doing it mostly to show up Bâiller. And yet I did it anyway. And will no doubt do it again.
For me, such behaviour shows the flaws in the view held by many feminists that social ideologies are the sole cause of what we think of as gender characteristics. You know the argument: girls are brought up to like pink and Barbies, boys to like blue and trucks, and therefore there is no such things as innately 'feminine' or 'masculine' traits other than those that are foisted upon us by cultural ideology. But my petty need to out-hot Bâiller has no obvious roots in social conditioning - it seems to me to be just an instinctive reaction to the presence of another woman in the life of my ex. And even an intelligent person such as myself, aware of the base urges that drive such behaviour, falls for it anyway.
Intellectually I know it makes no sense, but I still f***ing hate Bâiller...
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