I Was The One

Pete lived his life in the shadow of his own expectations. Past and future were not concepts that concerned him as much as his lack and the frustration he experienced in attempting to address the chasm between what he was and what he believed he should be. He consumed time in order to acquire those things that would make him whole. This was not to say that he was materialistic. Few people get things wrong as conspicuously as that.

There came a time when Pete appeared to be keeping up with the Joneses. His car alone told people what they needed to know on that front. A new German motor on a lease that he convinced himself he could afford. This was just one in a series of cars that had increased in value and cache. Each apparent step forward lost something in translation and separated Pete from the magic he believed such things conveyed upon their owners, but he was set upon this course and stopping didn’t feel like an option anymore.

There had been a time when Peter curated his life with some care and on the face of it he was content. But no longer was he Peter. Pete had emerged into the world with peacock feathers fanning out. A new dawn after the darkest of nights.

That was how Peter had dealt with his difficulties. He’d admitted defeat. Sacrificed who he once was and reinvented himself in this new mould as Pete. There was a defiance in his rebirth. A battle cry in a hostile world. Underlying that was a capitulation; if you can’t beat em, join em.

There was validation in this reinvention though. As he’d dared to re-emerge in the world that had wounded him, he spied the prize that would make everything alright again and in this sighting he found his purpose.

Sally was a dream made real. The girl next door with the necessary modifications to suit Pete’s purposes. He knew she was the one from the very moment he saw her. He wondered where she had been all his life, but was thankful that she’d landed there right in front of him at the appropriate time. For Pete was battle-ready. He had built and prepared himself for such a scenario. Read the books and developed a strategy that would win him the war.

For love was a series of battles. Hadn’t his own mother told him ‘faint heart ne’er won fair lady’? Didn’t songs urge you to fight for your love? So then, courtship was a proving ground for the life-long battles that awaited. Pete was a knight and he’d won his spurs via ordeals of pain. He was hardened to the world and he would not countenance loss.

When first they met, charm came easily to him. He smiled a smile that radiated confidence as he stared deeply into Sally’s eyes. The smile had cost him a small fortune. Just part of the investment he’d made in himself so that he got noticed. And when people noticed him he left an impression. He’d sculpted his body and tanned it just so. These things spoke for him even before he resorted to words. Brand Pete stood out in the market. He was fit, healthy and successful. Pete was a force to be reckoned with.

The words he used on Sally did not matter. It was their effect that counted. The general in Pete’s charm offensive watched dispassionately and deployed words accordingly. The trick was to throw the grappling hook when the sentries were distracted. To make promises that secured further engagements. Draw the target in with a whirlwind of something they would think was love. Pete knew that there was no love in those first meetings. Only feelings.

Emotion was key. Pete had been cynically doubtful about this strategy at first. But as he researched it further and learnt the ploys and devices, the success of the approach was compelling. He knew that it could fail. Failure was a building block of success. Pete though had prepared and then gone right back through the entirety of his preparations until everything fit like a glove. He was a fighter and he emulated the best of the best. There were men who got in a ring and never lost. They put in more work than anyone else and they knew their craft. With that came a belief that shattered bones and broke spirits before the first physical blow was landed.

Pete had read widely and watched clips that substantiated the merits of what he was embarking upon. It was as he watched a small man screaming and gesticulating at a crowd and whipping them up into a frenzy that gave him control of them all that he began to understand the manipulative power of emotion. He watched that clip again and again and wondered at the magic of it all. If one man could bend nations to his will, then a one-on-one conquest was a cake walk.

Feelings it was then. As Pete accepted this and let it sink in he thought of how easily he had been manipulated in his past life. Considering situations where anger spoke to anger, he smiled at this revelatory experience. He marvelled at the arrogance people displayed in thinking themselves superior to mere animals when time and again they fell for the most basic levels of programming. And so he reprogrammed himself in order to become a conductor of emotions. Sally was his orchestra and he would have her playing his tunes in no time at all.

The success of Pete’s campaign was assured. He was best in class. He had forged himself to be everything a girl could want. Tall. Dark. Handsome. Competent. Competence was the big draw. You didn’t have to be all that good at anything in particular. Talk the talk and strut as though you knew what you were doing. Faking it without the need to make it. Life was all an act in any case. Everyone was making it up as they went along. Pete had repurposed the tired old shit people went along with and he was making it work for him.

And now Sally was working for him. There was something delightful about the way she interacted with him. There was a rhythm to the way they moved together. He was only too aware of this because he was leading the dance and choreographing their life together.

Reading the situation came easily now. Really, all Pete needed to do was to be nice. He listened and he understood what he could do to make Sally feel good. Making her feel good always worked. If Sally got what she thought she wanted then the rest was his.

This was almost too easy and Pete repeatedly asked himself two questions. Why was it that he had never done this before and why didn’t more people do this? He looked around him and all he saw were people in varying degrees of conflict, whereas Pete was giving Sally what she wanted and she had nothing to argue about. And so it was plain sailing all the way.

The plan was good. The execution exemplary. It should have worked and it very nearly did. As far as Pete was concerned the deal was done and he had the life he had always wanted. Now he had Sally it was merely a case of more of the same. Everything would grow and blossom. Promotions. Bigger house. Bigger cars. Two children and a German Shepherd. The dog was pretty much non-negotiable. Pete wanted a power dog. He cringed when he saw his friends and colleagues purchasing oodles or asthmatic Frenchies. There were so many compromised breeds that yipped of failure from the roof tops. People should at least get a half decent dog, even if they didn’t manage to get a life.

Pete was fired up and it showed. Having thrown himself into his new part he was now making it stick. He was believing his own press and with each passing day he was back-filling the façade that he had created. He smiled a million dollar smile and his bank balance crept up towards that magic number. Little by little and bit by bit.

Progress towards this goal was addictive and it drew him in just as he’d drawn Sally in. Both were blind to what was at play. Painted it with their own colours. Never did those colours bleed into each other the way they do in a loving relationship that has the potential to last a lifetime. The people who stood the test of time together grew together in the most gentle and inconspicuous of ways. They weathered to a point where the joins were no longer visible. This was not happening with Sally and Pete. The compartments of their life remained distinct and in their distinction, they were separate. There was nothing that held all their parts together, as shiny and bright as those parts may have been.

And so the Good Thing understood that it was in its nature to come to an end and it awaited the change that would befall it as Pete did his thing and Sally did hers. This was not to say that they were not happy. They were. Life was being experienced and in those experiences were flashes and bangs of happiness. Sometimes those brief moments of joy were shared.

When Pete became aware of Simon, the damage was already done. Just as Pete and Sally were on the cusp of their forever life, Simon came along and ruined it all. The problem was not Simon. He was an excuse. Never the reason. Pete and Sally’s life would always have been on the cusp of something that would elude them for the rest of their days. A vital ingredient was missing and so the recipe was incomplete and they would not rise.

Sally realised things were stalling when she met Simon. Simon was more real than anything she had in her life with Pete. Once she saw her shortfall in being, she could not unsee it. Suddenly her brand new, luxury car held little appeal to her and the big house that she’d called her home felt far too big and empty. All-inclusive holidays were a cop out. That wasn’t travelling, it was visiting the same club in a different location and the distance travelled seemed such a chore in the new-found context of Sally’s life.

Sally’s old life was rendered paper-thin and burned away in the rising passion she shared with Simon. All that mattered to her now was Simon and that she was in love!

Again.

There was something desperate and broken in the rise of the phoenix of this new love of Sally’s, rising as it was from the ashes of betrayal. Pete could see this. Peter could see it all the more. It wasn’t just the betrayal that damaged this new love. Although Sally’s betrayal hit Pete hard. Harder than he could have imagined. Whether this was an injury exclusive to his ego remained to be seen. Egos were swift to hurt, but they bounced back. That was what egos were there for. Shields against connection and the hurt a broken connection can inflict upon the self.

Pete quickly took to calling the fledgling couple the SS. The name was a knee jerk reaction, but lurking beneath this label was an elusive truth wriggling around restlessly. There was something to the unease that Pete felt and when he saw it, it was like a sniper’s shot right between his eyes.

In the wounded shock of the grand reveal it was Peter who saw Simon for what he was and the pain of knowing almost crippled him. Simon was everything that Peter had been. Sally had fallen for the wrong original. This was a travesty that Peter could not swallow.

This injustice alone was maddening, but as he observed Simon and decoded who he really might be, Pete saw something that made his blood run cold. Simon was also Pete. He was a fake! This was not who Simon was. Simon had reengineered himself in order to hook Sally and steal her away from Pete!

Both Pete and Peter struggled with their own, personal grand reveals. Trying to make sense of one was bad enough, but the second created an inner conflict that threatened a fatal implosion. Their bold quest to find sense was a form of madness. No one can make sense of the madness of love, for the madness of love isn’t love at all, it is the dream of a love that might be if both the dreamers dream hard enough and in the application of their wills they begin the hard work of entwining two lives.

Pete and Peter could see the deception and that Sally’s love was doomed to failure, yet they would not accept that this was no worse than what they had done. Sally remained their prize and they became obsessed with winning her even in the aftermath of their loss of her.

This obsession was amplified as they now saw that they were also the prize. Peter was the man who Sally desired far more than the impostor Simon. They had the means to unlock this situation and achieve a happily ever after for them all.

This was their moment. The time where everything pivots and aligns. All they had to do was vanquish Simon with the truth. Everything was ever so tantalisingly close. A third grand reveal of the real Pete; Peter!

Yes, Sally might temporarily be angry that Pete had deceived her. But another of mother’s saying was that all was fair in love and war. All that Pete had done was done for love. Besides, Peter had the enigma machine and was certain to win the day.

Except…

Pete was Pete and of Peter there was nothing more than a memory of a name. Pete could feel the man he was somewhere inside him. He spoke with him and begged him to come forth, but Peter remained hidden and would not breakthrough into the space where he needed to be in order to make everything right in the world.

As Pete struggled with himself and did everything he could to be a different man, he heard the sands of time roaring behind him. At first this drove him into a panicked frenzy. He wrestled in nonsensical bouts of being which left him sick and dizzy. And as he recovered from these fights he was enraged to discover that he was still him. If anything, he was more him than he’d ever been.

When a supposedly well-meaning friend told Pete of Sally’s engagement to the pod-person Simon, Pete got blind drunk in a last ditch attempt to cease being himself and return to his former state of Peterness.

“And you can shut up!” he barked at the incessant sands of time as he sat on a kerb stone under the amber glow of a street light. And in the silence that ensued, a very drunk Pete turned to gaze upon the sands that only he could see and could only see If he closed one eye and stopped breathing for a short while.

Upon seeing the hourglass that had stalked him during his failure to recapture an essence that had slipped through his fingers every time he’d grabbed at it, he began laughing and he kept laughing until someone opened a bedroom window and told him very firmly and clearly to SHUT UP!

All this while, the sands of time had been trying to tell Pete that Peter’s return would take time. Just as it had taken time for Peter to emerge and become. This was Peter’s breakthrough moment. This was when he began to live again. And where there was life there was hope. Only Peter was no longer hoping to win Sally back. That wasn’t the point. That had never really been the point.

In a way, Simon was the point. He was what counted. Only Simon was a cheap mirror of meaning and Peter was all about that meaning. Well, he’d been a bit about that in a past life and far more than Pete ever had. This time though, Peter was really going to mean it and in meaning it he was going to make it stick.

Time to be Peter.

Time to be more Peter.

Because if Peter couldn’t be himself, then who could he be?