One evening long ago when I was an attractive young man, I was having a picnic in St James's Park one summer evening with a young lady who was working as an M.P.'s researcher. We had one of those unresolved, will-we-won't-we, do-we-don't-we relationships that had been going on for a few years. At some stage she mentioned YABF (Yet Another Boyfriend) and I decided that the answer was NO, we weren't going to. It was at this point that I lost interest in our story. Not in her as a person, or in that evening – we were almost-flirting almost out of habit – but in our story. Boy Meets Girl is the most interesting story we human beings know, but that interest ends the moment we know that they are going to go their separate ways home with no residual regrets, desires or fantasies. Boy Meets Girl gets its potency because it's about possibility, about what might happen, and, which is what makes it unique, how long it might happen for. Boy Meets Girl doesn't end with the wedding, or the kids or even the divorce. As long as there is some reason they might meet again, something still between them, the story remains. It only ends when they walk away from each other with nothing to suggest that they must meet each other again.
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