Where I post about the things that happened in my life. Sometimes they’re diary entries, sometimes works of non-fiction, sometime just random photographs.
Of course, by technical difficulties, we mean “Peter discovered his flatmate’s cache of Eureka DVDs and started playing Masters of Orion 2 again.”
In the meantime, I’ll give you my mother’s response to my post about what I looked like when I was 5.
Sadly, I think that’s the neatest my hair has ever been.
This scene is fiction. Probably. A little fiction never hurt anyone. You know that.
There are two of them seated at the table, and he’s having a better time than his date. That shouldn’t really surprise you. Most times when you see a couple, you know one of them is fighting above their weight class. There’s no way it’s going to end well for those people; they’re the ones who are going to spend the night pounded into the mat. But for a while there they’re can dream. For a while they get to be a contender.
“This feels weird,” he says. “Does this feel weird to you? It feels weird.”
He’s sweating. Fidgeting. They haven’t even got around to entrees yet, but you want to applaud him for getting through ordering without fucking up.
“I just don’t ordinarily do this,” he says. “Going out, I mean. Dating. It’s one of those things you see on the telly. A little bit American and all that. Never really occurred to me that it was a thing people actually did.” He frowns and takes a nervous sip of water. “God, that makes me sound like a bit of a loser, doesn’t it?”
“No,” she says, “I understand what you mean.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever really been on a date before,” he says. “It just seems a bit forward, you know? Very upfront. No pretending that I’m not interested in you.”
She doesn’t have anything to say to that. She lifts her wine-glass and holds it.
He swallows. “Have you?”
“What?”
“Dated.”
She pushes back thoughts of the night Chris first charmed her. The small car idling its way through Athens. The quiet bistro. The bottles of wine. “A little.”
“I’m sorry,” he says. “That’s a terrible thing to ask, isn’t it? Christ, I’m sorry.”
“Relax.”
He giggles. It’s not a pleasant sound. “You really think that”ll help?”
“It can’t hurt, right?”
“Depends.” He picks up his napkin and starts worrying at the edges. Where in hell are those entrees? Shouldn’t there be entrees by now? “Probably not a great idea if there’s a ninja attack, yeah? Never hurts to be a bit on edge when ninjas are about.”
“My parents were killed in a ninja attack,” she says.
His eyes go wide. “Shit,” he says. “Shit, I’m really sorry. Damn. I’m such a fucking idiot…”
And you watch them like that, watch the look on her face as she realises she’ll have to explain that she was just making a joke. I mean, seriously, ninjas. Whose family goes out like that?
First dates. You don’t really miss them.
Expository Note: I’m still recovering from the last of my throat infection, so I’m spending the next couple of weeks tackling some writing prompts I found on the internet. Partially I’m interested in seeing what comes out of it, since I’ve never really been a follow-the-writing-prompts kind of guy. Partially I’m just looking to take the thought of blogging for a stretch while I rebuild my enthusiasm for the task and get back into the routine of not-blog-writing. Partially I just figured it’d be far more interesting than another week of youtube clips.
This one proved to be tough. Is it clear I have no real frame of reference for bad first dates? Or, for that matter, good first dates? Somehow I always did the opposite – get to know women I liked, hang out with them for a while, start going out, then go on dates when we were already a couple. It took a hell of a let of pressure off. I did ask a woman I liked to an art gallery once, but it wasn’t a date. Just, you know, hanging out, sharing a mutual interest in photography.
Apparently that would have been a date if I was smarter, but I wasn’t. It took a lot of hanging out before I finally woke up and that relationship got started.
I’m curious about this now. Do Australian’s date? I always did assume it was an American thing.
Also, writing to prompts is weird.
I assume I was a weird looking kid. I don’t remember for sure, but that would seem right. I should be the kind of person who looked weird as a kid, if only so it matched the way I generally felt around people. Weird looking avoids any undue and unbearable pressure that might seep up from my childhood and mug me as an adult.
At five, if I can trust my memory, my family lived up in the northern parts of Queensland. Family lore suggests I already was pretty weird – telling pre-school teachers about imaginary pets, a menagerie of dogs and seals and mice that got treated like there were something real. I remember living next to the school where my dad worked, remember playing G-Force in the yard around our house. I remember someone finding the abandoned skins of carpet snakes beneath our house, in the days before such things would have sent me into spasms of ophidiaphobic paranoia (even now, I swear, I’m shuddering at the thought). I remember this weird separator wall between the living room and the dining room, or maybe I’m just imagining it. It’s the place we lived when I first heard Joe Dolce’s Shut Uppa You Face, and at five that song is the shiznit.
I remember the house vaguely, but it’s usually distorted. It’s been the setting for nightmare after nightmare over the years. Some of them have been transformed into stories.
I remember things about living there, but I don’t remember what I looked like.
It’s not surprising really: I was five. What did I care? It’d be a decade before I realised that there was actually a reason to pay attention to the face you presented to the world, another decade after that before I became comfortable with the face I’d assembled for myself.
But I assume I was a weird looking kid. It’s the thing that would make the most sense.
Expository Note: I’m still recovering from the last of my throat infection, so I’m spending the next couple of weeks tackling some writing prompts I found on the internet. Partially I’m interested in seeing what comes out of it, since I’ve never really been a follow-the-writing-prompts kind of guy. Partially I’m just looking to take the thought of blogging for a stretch while I rebuild my enthusiasm for the task and get back into the routine of not-blog-writing. Partially I just figured it’d be far more interesting than another week of youtube clips.
And partially, lets be honest, it’s ’cause topics like these always seem to freak out my parents a little. I’m not sure why, but I’ll take it – I’m easily amused that way.