Martinis and Monogamy

At exactly 9:05pm on Friday evening, Beloved and I came from our respective homes at opposite parts of Dublin and entered our favourite hotel bar of the moment, The Morrison, from opposite entrances.

I ordered a Martini, Beloved took a beer. It hadn’t been a particularly exciting week for either of us: Significant Other was ticking over at the office, whilst I, remained unpublished. I secretly longed for the moment where I had good news, something along the lines of “I’ve just had a 500-word feature printed in The Dubliner”, but a bigger part of me realised that the moment was no closer than it had been twelve months ago.

It may or may not have been time for a yet another career choice change, I thought, but either way, here I was, right now, in a good hotel with a great person, who was concerned only with the next six hours. I lost my worries and found my next drink at approximately 11:30pm across town at a venue that had caused quite a stir in my relationship on most visits since it’s opening.

As we walked the staircase to the decadent “room of doom” as I had come to call it, I noticed that I had adopted my single persona all of a sudden. Across the room, a stockbroker that I had been friendly with for a few weeks some months ago approached. “You're blonde now”, said the stockbroker, flashing a wide grin that I remembered from our previous encounter.

“Who are you here with?”, the stockbroker enquired. I glanced at Beloved and understood that it was not cool that my partner of three years was being overlooked. “Oh you’ve met each other before, right?”, I joked. “Oh we go way back”, the stockbroker said, more serious than before, and right then, with a beer in one hand, Beloved was punched in the arm. “Your friend here doesn’t like me”, the stockbroker announced. How could anyone know, I wondered, before catching a glimpse of Beloved’s Stare of Death.

The double glass doors opened and Michael, a Castleknock society boy renowned for his partying ways, entered with a new lover in-tow. “You’ve got to be shitting me”, I said under my breath. Michael, and his date. Michael stood for single, and when he was introducing a lover as a life partner, I knew it was time to settle. “How long has it been, Michael?”, I probed. I wasn’t ready for his response. “Three months…and we just had our first fight, I‘m an emotional wreck right now”, he divulged. “Well you look great”, like always I thought. The stockbroker had escaped whilst my attention was on the society boy.

I realised, the reason Beloved wasn’t exactly crazy about this joint was that my attention was on all people except my true partner. What was it, I had to wonder, that prevented me from being the person that I wanted to be for my Significant Other. I wanted to be the strong type who treated my partner like a trophy. Why? Because I had always felt that there was something terribly attractive about that. I knew that I never felt demeaned by such treatment on the occasions that I’d experienced it.

I wanted to tell Beloved, “I’m sorry you love me so absolutely and that I’m a prat to you”, but my single persona, the part of me that is most chauvinist, wouldn’t allow the words, and so instead I said “What do you want to drink, babe?” The stockbroker had returned, and the fact that I was buying all three of us a drink wasn’t going down particularly well with Significant Other. “It’s a suggestion”, my partner suggested. “No. It’s a Vodka”, I said, returning promptly to my obnoxious guise.

Later, on the dance floor in the next room, as the DJ played “4 Minutes To Save The World”, I stomped my feet, which were contained in my don’t-fuck-with-me Gucci loafers, as though I had only the same amount of time to live, flashing that same grin that the stockbroker had greeted me with right back.

“I am 22”, I affirmed silently whilst we walked to Beloved’s contemporary central apartment. I had been beating myself up for my flirtatious ways as we left the club, and I wondered, despite my knowledge that my existing relationship was the one that would be the most rewarding, not to mention the most sensible, why was I always tempted away from being smart and towards being sexually provocative with individuals who were interested mostly in checking off another man about town on their personal “to-do” lists?

I realised it may have been my age, and the fact that I had lived the beginning of my adult life in a particularly close-knit romantic relationship. I considered the prospect that it was the Martinis, that if I had been sober I would have been more sensible.

Most of all though, I was appreciative, that a couple of years my senior, Beloved probably knew that my behaviour, however nonsensical, was down to such trivial reasons. And of course, my Significant Other was nothing if not loyal.