9 October

Rereading my statutory declaration about my relationship with Marcin, with the footers on every page swearing that this is the whole truth and nothing but and so on and so forth. In fact it’s anything but the truth, this earnest unequivocal chronology of coming and going and holidays in the snow. It has nothing to do with the development of a love which has been miraculous and ridiculous in equal measures from the very beginning, a tie constructed primarily out of absence and fantasy, brought into being by two stubborn animals with the aid of fertile imagination and a liking for impractical romance. I wonder how this longing will translate itself into appreciation of a presence? I’m suddenly glad to have time to think about it and to savour my solitude: I am about to change my life in a dramatic way and I hadn’t really considered that aspect of it until now. Being loved from a distance has been easier in many respects.

Not to mention the matter of farting. Yes, we have been together for almost two years and still neither of us performs this small act of intimacy in the presence of the other. Katherine and Tawfiq laugh at me (‘oh that’s right he’s had that operation hasn’t he? That one you had? so that you never fart again?’)
This is a requiem for the days of farting in my own bed, of pissing in a bucket when I don’t feel like making the long journey to the dunny, for nose picking and spinster meals straight from the can and for a thousand other joyous antisocial habits which will have to be terminated in the early phases of the new regime.