Three Little Words

Attracting chaos and hilarity is something I do with relative ease, and for the most part I enjoy it. Friends can rely on me to regale them with stories of birds hanging themselves from my balcony, ceilings falling in, The Actor force-feeding Herbert cheese and other such nonsense that seems to hurtle my way on a daily basis. However it would be rather pleasurable to occasionally enjoy life's finer moments without an attached farce. No such luck. After meeting my friends tonight for the first time, and enjoying a rather fine evening at the Royal Exchange Theatre to watch Henry V, Rough Stuff provided the slapstick.

After tenderly gazing into my eyes, Rough Stuff announced that he was "gonna just say it."

"Oh Christ," I thought. The concussed conversation outside Mojo's about falling in love minutes after I had literally fallen several feet came flooding back to me.

Rough Stuff: "I love you."

I looked at him intently, then looked away, and then back at him. In my mind, this flirtatious eye dance lasted a mere nano-second but by the time I looked back at him his face had crumpled. Before I had the chance to respond, Rough Stuff did his best:

"Well I don't love you, but I could love you someday. But not now. Obviously. No, I don't love you at all. Forget I said anything."

He high-jumped over the back of The Circle Club sofa we were sitting on and disappeared off into the toilets for at least twenty minutes, leaving me to wonder whether I should feel relieved or rejected. Over the years I have been subjected to every kind of line from men - some romantic, some downright dirty. Never has a man told me he loved me and then retracted it with immediate effect. He may as well have issued a press release with an embargo of "until further notice."

After twenty minutes he reappeared looking like he had been shot. I allowed him to ramble on for a further twenty minutes before announcing "Look, I love you too."

"Thank fuck for that" he sighed as he visibly crumpled in relief, and squeezed me so hard that the under wiring of my bra popped out of its cotton cover.

And they say romance is dead.