Don Giovanni & the Phone Box

Some friends in life are not worthy of the title, and it takes a major incident to sever that relationship. I’m going to tell you about one whom I once described as a best friend, although now I’d say he was the worst. It should have taken any of the many other ‘incidents’ to reach that conclusion, but I am too forgiving, it seems.

It’s hard to say what creates or constitutes a friendship. Often, it is simply that people find themselves in a social cohesion in which relationships develop into varying degrees of intimacy and, perhaps, trust. People whose company one enjoys, sometimes with shared interests or outlooks. With this friend, while I would say we had much in common and shared a great deal with each other, I now feel my main contribution to our friendship was in unwittingly providing women for him.

In one of my poems, I gave him the name of Don Giovanni, which seemed appropriate as he personified the old-fashioned expression ‘womaniser.’ Without being particularly attractive, he somehow had an appeal; his seduction techniques – even if subconscious – were prize-winning. If this is an unfair portrait, I will say that he did crave meaningful and fulfilling relationships, and I’ve no reason to think his behaviour towards women was unpleasant. But it was certainly led by a particular part of his anatomy. Not his heart.

My obsession with taking pictures of phone boxes was matched by his propensity for scoring women, which made this poem easy to frame, but it wasn’t this that provided the final betrayal. When I came to a point in my life when I really needed a friend, he turned his back on me. It was the first in a long line of situations where I have come to realise that people who turn on you are not worthy of the epithet ‘friend.’

And those who stick with you, in spite of everything – are more than worthy to be called true friends.

Don Giovanni and the Phone Box

Somewhere in a farmer’s field

in deepest Devon, this one stood,

a little battered, tattered paint

and tractor-spattered with mud,

but the panes were all in place.

One caught a glint of January glare.

It was just another in a long line of photo

opportunities. He said it was too scruffy,

but I insisted, and we stopped the car.

Of the many boxes I have shot, I have

lost count. But of unnumbered

female friends he pilfered, I would

put the count at one too many.

Testament to our friendship, I let him

pose beside it – even though I like

my phone-box photographs au naturelle –

much like he preferred his women –

one in particular, to whom I can’t refer.

She was just another in a string

of women I unwittingly provided –

Leporello to his concupiscent Don.

Every town or village we drove through,

I took a phone-box picture, but for him,

driven by testosterone, or libido, or both,

he took whatever he could sidle up to.

I was never exactly certain of what

my former friend was trying to prove.

My heart was like that phone booth:

slightly battered, but unbroken, red,

and still receiving incoming calls.

But his heart was shattered; devoid of love,

awaiting disconnection or removal.