Making Do

The sun streams through the curtains.

Gently, he lifts her off his chest and tiptoes down the stairs to the bathroom.

On his return, she purrs softly as he gets back in beside her. She is warm, that morning warm that only a woman feels.
Her hair falls into his face, her breath touches his cheek.

What need for words? They are not strangers.
It is loving and tender, why should it not be?
They sleep beside eachother, they eat together every night.
They argue and fight, they do not really understand eachother, she is a college lecturer, he sells phone systems.

He dreams of changing the world, she dreams of changing the wallpaper.

But that doesn't matter as their limbs entwine.

Afterwards, they hold eachother close. They talk, it is nothing talk, she giggles as a woman only does after sex. He speaks with that baritone lilt that only a sexually satisfied man uses.

He turns and smiles 'Up for it again if you are.'

And she?
She knows the cards she holds.
It is ten thirty. She just wants to pop to Wilkinsons, get a toilet roll holder for the bathroom. Just a quick trip. If they both go, there will be all day for love making.

Of course, the trip to Wilkinsons doesn't involve going straight to the toilet roll holders. Other items suddenly appear on the list. Pillow cases, bleach, a whole range of items not in the plan.
He thinks of the two hours of listening to music he could have had.

After Wilkinsons, other shops that can be visited are thought of. But it's OK. If he lets her go to those, he can go to HMV.
She knows how to play him.

By two o'clock, hungry and bag laden, they sit down at plastic tables in McDonalds. She smiles at him, that special smile a woman in love smiles, her man, doing what she wants. She wouldn't have wanted not to have him along. She hates every moment he isn't around, hates it even when he is late home due to drinking with work colleagues.

He says what's on his mind. 'I'm looking forward to getting back and fucking'
She tilts her head sideways: 'Oh, XXXX, can you put the toilet roll holder up first?'

He grits his teeth.

They get back. He puts the toilet roll holder up. She puts the shopping away.



At four o'clock, they have urgent, passionate sex. The sex that was there as his bribe the whole of the day.
They lie in soft silence for a few minutes afterwards.
She is happy.
He is satiated.
He looks out at the dimming sky.

The whole day gone.
He feels cheated.

He puts his shirt on 'Just going to the shop', he says.

He slams the back door behind him and strides up the path through the back gate, to the car park behind.
When he knows he is out of range from the house, he pulls a pack of ten from his jacket pocket and lights a cigarette, a cigarette he theoretically no longer smokes.

He inhales deeply and blows out.
Is this his life?
Her-Work, Work-Her?

A woman he has to lie to about smoking?

He feels caged, trapped, she is wasting his life before his eyes, and deep inside, he hates her for it.
Bribing him with sex, because she controls his sex supply.
And because she controls that, he has no weekend.

What he would give for one day without her.

And yet, he doesn't want to be alone.

She loves him, loves him with all her heart, clings to him as he sleeps, cries at the thought of losing him.
How can he let her down?

And as he pushes open the door of the Esso garage, the deeper truth, the deeper misery, the root of her insecurity, the reason she can never let him go, the reason she holds onto him with her death grip chills him, for they both know it.

She knows he doesn't love her, and he knows she knows.

They both make do, in their own way.

He makes do with a woman he doesn't love, because she loves him.

She makes do with a man who doesn't love her, because at least she has him.

Who is more miserable?

He pays for his items and leaves.

This is life, he thinks. This is reality. Life isn't dreams, it's making do. It's what there is. It works- kind of- so live with it. She'll never get him, never understand the things he says, just look on, eyes shining, chin in her hands, loving to hear him speak, but never quite getting what he says.
But will any woman?
Is that not an idle fantasy?

To be loved by someone, is enough.



NO
NO
NO

If I learned anything in my life, it is that making do, leads to ruin, it leads to misery, it leads to devastation.

It took me years to realise this, that hope matters, don't write yourself off.

Fight for your beliefs, don't live in comforting apathy.

And don't give yourself to someone who isn't your dream.
And if the one you love isn't going to be yours, even so, don't make do. Don't have someone, just for the sake of having someone.

Don't make do.