There's a song by a pretty-boy pop singer that's called, "Par Absence." It goes something like, "If I bleed, if I ache, it is no doubt from the absence of love." Sans doubt par absence d'amour. He's always singing about loneliness and longing, that guy. Sure complains a lot for someone with a pretty young wife. He should walk a while in my shoes. Frigging pop stars—what do they know of suffering?
I've bled. I've ached. For real. And I'm no stranger to absence. Since the beginning, I've suffered from it: absence of my mother; absence of a home; absence of my best friend on the street who ditched me after six years together. And now, absence of my boy.
You'd think, by now, I would be used to absence; that it would be no more painful than a dull toothache. But the thing about a hole is that once it's filled, you forget there ever was a hole. When someone fills the hole in your life, you get used to it pretty quick and it's all you know until they leave you. And when they leave, they don't void the old hole; they rip a fresh one. The pain gets somehow sharper each time.
I've got a lot of holes by now. I fill them with work. And drink, I suppose. Sex. Cigarette smoke, for sure. And football. Football always helps. Maybe I should go outside and kick a ball around. Except the problem is, I got used to doing that with Jean-Paul and now he's gone. See there, I just ripped myself a new hole.
