The Salad Dressing and Other Disasters

Hazzards of Love

I was once in love with a physics professor, an infatuation caused me admittedly to scald my own head and almost set a building on fire.

I was a part time receptionist. My life was a tragedy. He was a famous Professor. His life was a celebrated success. It was a doomed relationship from the start. Or if there had been a start, it would have been doomed from then.

But goodness, it was all consuming, it really was. I only saw him twice a week. Having to look good on those mornings took an indescribable amount of effort. Looking good was was a nearly impossible task on my salary, which wasn't a salary but an hourly rate of five pounds. His tweed waistcoat and cords swinging through the door still sends my heart racing. How sad, looking back. Quite, quite sad.

It was intense, unhealthy, and all of it occurred entirely in my head, for that is where all of my personal, low budget soap operas unfolded. Nothing can be evident on the outside world to anyone, really, but on the inside, all is a-woosh with powerful fireworks being let off in perhaps a living room in my mind. Or somewhere they can set fire to things and cause maximum damage.

In between these precious, infrequent meetings with the Physics professor, whom I imagined living in a very stylish New Town Flat, with a large skylight and post-modern art, post modern chopping boards, rubber plants from Honduras (I just made that up), I had all the time in the world to create a relationship that didn't exist. 'Did that glance for 3 seconds mean anything, or was he just deciding what to have for lunch? Did he notice how my blonde hair contrasted with my green dress as I strolled past him to boil the kettle? 

The small, scabby, vermin ridden, empty staffroom was the only place we ever met. I therefore gave up my entire life, and moved in. (Yes, we'd only ever meet at two specific times, but he might pop in at an unexpected moment- people did!) Going into town for lunch, looking at clothes, meeting friends for coffee, going to the gallery? Well, that was all meaningless now. All that existed was a green and white patterned carpet from 1995, fourteen mouse traps, and a desktop computer from 1991.

He'd always be so nice and ask questions when I saw him. Once, he told me once about stars and the specific months you could see Mercury and Venus with the naked eye. 

I didn't have that much to go on, but I went ahead and wrote a poem about him. In it, a small, unnoticed planet in the outer solar system manages to sustain itself though no other planet notices it or gives it any love. I didn't show him the poem. (This was correct.) 

I remember writing a poem for another guy once, coincidentally. I didn't want to write it. It was rather a poem which I was commissioned to write by somebody desperate. He was into organizing and his creative event needed poetry. So I was to read this poem, that I had written, me, in public on a night his band were playing and he would therefore be in the room. (The title of the band involved an animal or insect - the fluffy tarantulas?) I had no idea about poetry at all; imagery, or any of it. But above all, I had no idea what an absolute faux pas, natural disaster it would be to read a poem that I'd written about a man who would potentially be there at the performance. A man I'd chatted to once, who would definitely remember me because I'd described the exact circumstances of our meeting in the poem itself. Plus we'd talked all night. What would have happened? Pure mortification that's what. Anyway, the good news is, for some reason he wasn't there that night. I was stupid, but I was saved, possibly by some sort of divine intervention. 

Anyway, back to the Professor, the professor of Physics; oh dear, I wasn't on his wavelength. He was clever, you know. Probably a genius. I think he's working for NASA now. Isn't that where the geniuses go? while I still occupy dingy staff rooms and live for breaktime and cups of tea.