Holding hands.

I guess I knew it was over when he tried to hold my hand. Not that the act of handholding in and of it's own was so atrocious that a break-up needed to be instigated, but the way it was done sorta, well, sucked.
We were sitting in a bar and he decided that there was a good chance of running in to somebody he knew and that might know his family.
Therefore it seemed prudent (to him) to cover this incredibly debauched act of contact with his coat. A coat he had already checked when we entered the bar. A coat that therefore needed to be gotten. With the ticket I had in my back-pocket. Which required that I'd stand up in an already a bit too crowded bar to fish around in the backpocket of a baggy pair of jeans to get a small slip of paper so he could safely hold my hand without being seen as "gay". The fact that he was sitting on a squishy loveseat pressing about 60% of his body into someone that could only be described as his boyfriend, cause why else would he be breathing into this persons neck and fingering this persons hair, was apparently ju-u-u-ust straight enough to pass under the incredibly sophisticated radar of whatever friends of his provincial parents would be hanging out in a newly opened bar in the centre of the city at about twenty past one.
But, not to be seen as the bitchy bf I went fishing. Not that I knew WHY it was so gosh-darned important that he'd get his coat right then and there, that sort of information was apparently on a need-to-know-basis and I did NOT need-to-know.

So he gets the coat, comes back (with HIS coat, mine, that was on the same hanger was now hanging forlorn and lonely in a cold cupboard somewhere) and drapes it over our laps. He waited for about three minutes and when still no shrieking image from a forgotten family gathering had come to drag him home to straightsville he decided to fill me in on some of the most top secret information that he had ever divulged in his entire life...

"I want to hold your hand."

I still maintain that at that precise moment something interesting happened outside. Surely the entire bar did not look in our general direction just cause I had a sudden and urgent need to laugh real loud...
But, all merriment aside, If someone decides to stage an entire production just so he can hold your hand it is considered impolite to refuse, and so he was allowed to do so.
Not that we didn't hug or greet "enthousiasticaly" in the street (sometimes) or had our share of quick kisses in front of sundry shop-windows (oft) but holding hands for him was a big deal, which had therefore not happened yet.
Which makes it all the more of a shame that he truly and righteously sucked at it.
I like holding hands. I think it's a sweet thing to do. Something that can create a slight feeling of "MINE" combined with the feeling of "HIS/HERS". The ability to walk hand in hand, or sit, for that matter, comfortably is one of the prime indicators of compatbility, as far as I'm concerned.
Kissing is mechanic, kissing can be thaught, but hands...
And everytime he held my hand he managed to jam his index and middle-finger between my index and middle-finger. Which hurts cause there is only about enough room for one finger there.
I like holding hands, but it should be a general "my finger-his finger-my finger-his..." type of affair. And that can't be thaught.
So when he held my hand the first time and it hurted, I tried to fix the configuration of fingers. It held, then. but next time, again, pain.
So I started to develop a distaste for holding his hand. And from that, more problems sprang. Tiny things, but tiny things amount to a great deal in the end. Shame, really. The entire end of the affair doesn't need telling, nothing very different form all the others.
But the anecdote above did. I've been walking around with it inside me since I watched the cristmas episodes of "the Office" which ended with two people walking off-camera with their hands held in the right way... It sparked a few memories..

Next time, perhaps, about a movie again.