I read the opening words "I wasn’t expecting to make a strange little friend that day. She was in
some strange mood. We sort of chatted all day and by the end of the day I think
I knew her…"
"For f*cks sake!" I said out loud. Where is my
story? Where is the one about me? About my charm, wit, enigma, the many facets
of my bolshy façade? Women! Seriously. You give them quite clear [unspoken]
directions, and they still go and do some stupid thing they were always going
to do.
But the challenge was on and the topic set and that’s how she had
decided to do it. I should have guessed. It was nice having a new strange
little friend, although I thought I was done with glitter falling out of
internal envelopes and random childish girl sh*t, like magic rocks. It was interesting having
a new strange little friend read my stuff. I didn’t tell people that I could
write, really write, or that I loved it. That I found a certain freedom in it.
She wrote in the same voice as me. She had stories like me. She had no barriers
like me. She was not as calculating as me. She didn’t know how to take me of if
she could trust me. She didn’t trust anyone, so she just stopped caring.
"at first I just
thought she was unhinged, spamming me with c bomb jokes…" continued
the little narcissist, impersonating me in print. "but she grew on me and became more soft."
Enough with this rubbish about her, lets discuss my dashing
good looks and overwhelming sex appeal. I'm good in bed. I'm really good! I'm a
highly skilled chronic flirt. I am the only guy you'd ever met who would give
up his lego Yoda figurine or send you plastic that melts in your coffee, smut
tokens and candy in the one package. I can get women to do whatever I want. Lets
have a dialogue in there where I am oozing Bogart please.
"She didn’t like
to answer questions…" This sh*t continues in a most un-Bogartesque
manner, and I am shaking my head in stern shame, shame that my little literary companion
has left the verdant fields of romance and betrayal, infidelity and absurdity, sickness
and resurrection.
"She does stupid
stuff, ALL THE TIME it would seem. And has a rude streak. That I see through. I
must be some sort of [insert] whisperer"
Seriously. This is not the stuff that's meant to be in this story! Ours is one
of inappropriate closeness, of platonic intimacy. And it's supposed to be about
me. This is just absurd. Some idiot calls about PowerPoint freezing and calls
his desktop a c*nt.
"She asks me
direct questions about my marriage and history and seems to be lecturing and
judging me for a bit. But she's not. She's genuinely trying to understand. She
gets it, sort of, my story, and wishes things were a bit less complex for me."
But they're not complex at all. I've got my stuff sorted, I know what I'm doing
and I have elected to have my cake rather than eat it and enjoy the memory.
C'est finir! Everyone is a winner. "Are they?" she asked me in a
funny tone, and one of her stories trickled out.
She tells me stuff, a quasi-stranger, things I don’t think
she tells other people. I reminded her of writing truthfully, spiked her tea
with serum and voice and dragged her gently to the water's edge.
"Write me about your weekend" I suggest lightly on
a Monday afternoon. Yoga, art, winter, whatever
it is you get up to. Its midnight Monday night when she goes to write a story about
her weekend and manages to get a couple of lines down in a journal about Kate
being weird at her birthday party.. Blah. She stops. A couple of lines about
Cornflakes being funny at his friend's party, about getting stompy at the
markets and the hot chocolate that failed to delight. And its all just really
boring. Boring normal sh*t. She starts a few more times but cant. She chews her pen and has a hot
flash of memory, memory of a thought she had on the weekend, a thought she
should not be having. Does that count? she wonders, as she puts pen to paper.
"I was thinking…
naughtier."
And she starts scratching away with a twisted little smile, having yet again stolen my line.
