Paul Simon made it all sound so easy.
You just skip out the back, Jack
Make a new plan, Stan
You don’t need to be coy, Roy
Hop on the bus, Gus
Drop off the key, Lee
..and set yourself free.
Sorry, it’s not that straightforward, pint-size.
When I was nineteen, I lived in Germany as part of my studies at university. Whilst there I met a diverting chap called Salvatore, who was of Italian parentage but born in Germany. He was eighteen. He was also one of my students. OK, OK but I was a student teacher and I was NINETEEN, OK?
Anyway, I saw him for about five months. I'm a big Al Pacino fan and I guess I had a little Michael Corleone thing going on (the years in Sicily, specifically, since you ask).
Salvatore said he loved me. And I thought I did him too. Until I got on the train out of Cologne back to Ostend to go home, that was. As soon as the train left I decided, I did not. I was NINETEEN,OK? Stop giving me a hard time!
Back home in the Motherland, I got a summer job and started seeing some other bloke I worked with giving nary a thought to Sal. I replied to Sal’s letters of undying love with the news that “Hello, I’ve left Germany. Time to move on.”
He didn't take the hint, so I wrote a letter informing him of a new boyfriend. Then it started. He made phone calls in the middle of the night to my parents’ house in tears. You do not want to see my Mum being woken up after a couple of hours’ sleep, trust me. The phone calls had to stop.
And they did, for a while.
One year on, I get a letter from Sal at my student flat saying that he’s on a tour of Scotland and could he pop by to see me. I see no harm. I’M TWENTY for Godssakes, of course I didn’t see it coming!
Turns out, of course, that Sal takes the casual affirmative reply to mean he’s back in there. There’s no bloody tour of Scotland that he makes out to sound like he’s doing the old backpacking thing with mates. He is coming over alone specifically to see me. Indefinitely.
Of course, the fact that he’s thrown in everything to come over and be with me doesn’t dawn on me until after a few days after he's arrived. He just doesn’t leave, and it is excruciating. I find everything about him annoying. Even his shoes annoy me.
I also keep asking him things like, "So are you going to go and see Edinburgh?", "So is a tour of the Highlands on your agenda?". He doesn't budge.
Worst of all, my flatmates and friends think he’s adorable, even though I have tried to hide him from them. They think he is cute and laugh at his little jokes, but everything he does embarrasses me.
Worse than that, he tries to creep into bed with me every single night. He cries (he’s Italian, remember?) when I say I don’t love him anymore. The only plus side I can see about his presence is the fact that my finals are coming up and the German conversation is good practice. But the linguistics is not enough; I have to get rid of him.
I start a campaign of making him hate me, so that he’ll leave. I leave him waiting in for me all evening whilst I go out straight from class and get pissed on Friday night with another bloke. I make no attempts whatsoever to entertain him in any way whilst he is in the UK for the first time. I am rude to him, I purposefully try to make myself look unattractive to him. I make no attempt to smother any bodily emissions in front of him (as you would normally do in the company of a bloke), because I know he is quite chauvinistic Italian about how a woman should behave, and it will annoy him.
But he does not get the hint. If anything, he seems to like me even more.
I have to do something drastic before I end up marrying him out of politeness.
I break his heart and put him on a train.
15 comments:
This might need to be a "to be continued" post. I can't imagine he would give up just because you put him on a train!
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Haha! Well it least it proves you were drop-dead gorgeous, because no Italian man would have been interested if you weren't. The lovely Susan Abraham was chased by an Italian in Rome asking her for "just one kiss".
Bettejo: It's the heart breaking bit that did the trick...the train came after.
Gorilla: As I said, I WAS NINETEEN! (and in my limited experience, Italian men are never happy with "Just one kiss")
I'm really not with it today, I thought I was in the other blog and was trying to work out who the celeb was. Imagine how much of a fool I felt when I reached the bottom of the post and realised my mistake. Anyway let's gloss over that.
Not enough has been made about the you being a teacher and him being a student. Tsk tsk. :)
Oh the place in the photo was Wellington, New Zealand
I despise clingy chaps who can't take no for an answer. He must have had a favourite toy crushed by a truck when he was a kid. Or something.
"Interestingly", it was Carrie "What A State" Fischer who gave Paul the title of the tune. He was banging her while he was married.
Call him Al? F**kbag more like.
Dirty boy!
Scotsman: I would NEVER blog as the great Pacino. His honourable shoutiness gets far too much respect from me..and I don't know if you've notice but I don't show much respect to the celeb bloggers. I am glossing over the student/teacher thing....
Asym: He did have an overbearing mother. Perhaps Gorilla could enlighten?
Cammy: Top trivia. Disgraceful behaviour. This'll be after she was banging the married Harrison Ford on the set of Star Wars then?
In my late teens, I had one of those who wouldn't take the hint. Sadly, he turned out to be a mental and spent months (literally) stalking me until the police had to get involved. None of it was helped by the fact that when he'd call in floods threatening suicide my mum would spend ages chatting to him and trying to calm him down because she felt sorry for him, poor lamb.
I had no idea that Carrie Fisher was so naughty. I shall have to watch the gold bikini scene again from "Return of the Jedi".
I now envisage a crowd of women at Euston putting men on trains. I had a man from Oregon follow me around Bali in 1981. He kept telling me he loved me. In the end I couldn't get rid of him until finally I got on the plane.
Apparently, Carrie was in bed with Mr Simon and he was fretting over having to leave his wife when she delivered that line, "There must 50 ways to leave your lover".
And, just like those South African musicians many years later, she didn't get a penny from it.
If only she'd said, "There Must Be 50 Ways To Gaffa My Boobs".
Sigh.....
PS. Say Happy B'Day to your husband from me tomorrow.
Ooh, you slutty little teacher temptress you! Leading your poor student on like that ha ha .
I so know what you mean when you say you even found his shoes annoying! I used to be like that with guys (obviously not now being all grown up and mature and stuff). When I stopped liking a guy everything he did, said, wore or ate would annoy the hell out of me and I couldn't pretend it didn't or pretend I liked them anymore. I would have made a crap actress.
I want to know more about how you broke his heart and put him on the train...please tell us more oh evil heart breaker?
Cammy: Meeester says "Cheers!"
Wifie: Oh German school kids go to school til they are 20/21. Quite a lot of my students were older than me. Pretty much these people were your friends for the year and the only people in your age group you got to know.
Not really an excuse, I know, but all the English assistants were at it with their students! And they probably still are.
Nice blog~
www.honhai007.com.tw
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