A Critical Character Flaw

I couldn’t remember the last time I had tried to chat up a girl. I was languishing in the nadir of my late twenties and most of the time felt at least ten years older. I had just had a relationship surgically removed. Not a painless operation and I would have happily kept the unsightly lump for much longer but then I’m not a doctor. After you’ve spent so long with one person a veil seems to drop over your social skills. It’s not necessarily ineptitude but a blanketing of certain vital functions. Personally I became very adept at talking to members of the opposite sex, far better than I ever had as a teenage where fear and terror would echo from every word I uttered. But even in the days of fear I was able to vaguely hint or sometimes even say how I felt. Not now. Now I am resigned to idle chatter, being a consummate listener and often just a simple distraction from a missing partner.

These are skills honed in a long term relationship. When you are in a long term relationship her friends become your friends. Sometimes her friends are attractive, intelligent, witty and as a consequence of this would be the type of person I crumble in front of. The type of person I would normally dream of being able to go up to and then spend the evening with, hanging on each others words. The type of person that you know you cannot even consider doing anything with if you value your testicles and possibly even your life. Some men deal with this by not talking, some by getting drunk as often as possible and therefore not ever being invited out and some just don’t deal with it and worry about genital removal at a later date. Personally I developed a wall. A glass ceiling. A barrier of emotional retardation that would never move beyond safe. I could talk for hours and would seem like no more than a nice friendly eunuch. I was sexless.

So come the big day as you stumble into the bright new world as a single man again you think, “Hey, I’m much more confident in myself. How difficult can this be?” After few months of watching potential singledom exterminators go home with the men who are actually able to explain that they are talking to them with the intention of taking it further, confidence takes a dip somewhat. You eventually get to the point where you just sit there hoping that the tables will turn and you will be the target of a conversation heaped with undertones and connotations. However this hoping will tend to make you look like a desperate psychopath and lessen the already minimal chances of it actually happening.

So that is the state I found myself in. Work, drink with my friends, Go home. Repeat ad infinitum. There is seldom any change and what’s worse is once you get used to a rut it become disturbingly enjoyable. The slightest change or deviation becomes unacceptable. The local pub is my home and when it’s suggested that I go elsewhere with friends, even if the reason is to get me a date, I make every excuse not to go.

This regularity has its merits though. For example - catching the bus the same time everyday to work. In a small town it takes very little time to establish who gets on where, what they do and the days they don’t work. It becomes a mild and non-intrusive form of stalking. Attractive Girl A always gets on halfway into the trip and is always wearing a bank clerk badge. She never wears a coat but often has a pink umbrella with her. Attractive Girl B gets on before my stop and always sits over the rear left wheel. She works at either Wilko’s or Woolworths, the uniforms are very similar, and reads the type of book that people often say they’ve read just to sound intelligent. Attractive Girl C is a short stopper. She gets on just near town and is on the bus for just a few moments. She works in an art supply shop and smiles frequently at the music playing on her walkman.

It is at this point I would like to point out that my bus stalking goes no further than the bus. I am not a loon who follows these girls around every moment I get. In fact I feel pretty bad about knowing this much about people I don’t know just through bus journey familiarity. I can’t help it that I people watch.

So it was more than a little uncomfortable when Attractive Girl C got on the bus on a particularly busy day and sat on the only available seat. This seat happened to be the one next to me. I didn’t really know what to do. I felt terrible for my bus stalking and hoped that she was totally unaware that it was going on. I smiled politely as she sat down and just waited for the bus to get to the station.

“Are these yours?” the voice called from behind me as I had tried to scuttle away from the bus as soon as I got off. I looked behind to see Attractive Girl C holding a bag of CDs I’d left on the bus. As she brought them over to me I winced at how badly I could potentially deal with the situation that I found myself in.

“Wow, you like some really…” at this point there was a quick sugarcoating break, “different music. You don’t look like the type to just leave these lying around. They’re even alphabetised in the bag.” Although sarcastic her voice had this strangely soothing tone that eased the hypertension I was beginning to suffer.

“I’ve got a lot on at work at the moment, don’t know where I am half the time.” I replied.

“Well that sucks. You always look so calm on the bus. Who’d have thunk?”

From there it went on and on, in a good way. Her voice enchanted me and I found myself doing all that I could to keep from actually getting to work. Her name was Deino, a curse from having a dad obsessed with Greek mythology. Her sisters were called Enyo and Pemphredo which she thought were worse names as hers could easily shortened to Dee while theirs compacted in much less attractive ways. But as ever when the moment came when I really did have no other excuse to not go through the door to work I hit that barrier. I said a polite, “Nice to meet you, maybe I’ll see you again sometime.” and left her at the door. If the human body was physically able to kick its self in the nuts that would have been what would have followed. As it is not possible I took advantage of hitting the nearest wall. Probably a little too hard because at the exact moment Dee stuck her head around the door I was writhing on the shop floor nursing what I hoped was not a fracture. With an amazing air of nonchalance she bypassed my self-inflicted pain and said, “I know you’ll probably never get ‘round to asking so I’ll do it for you. Do you want to meet me for a drink after work?”

“Yes. 5 at the Lion on Church Street?” I just managed to squeeze out the words between spasms of pain.

“Perfect. See you there.”

And with that she was gone. I remained on the floor for several more minutes before the pain subsided enough for me to move. When I did eventually get up I found myself floating around the store with an odd kind of inane grin that disturbed both staff and customers alike.

For the rest of the day she was all that I could think of. Her hair, her smile, her eyes. There was something in particular about her eyes. They had this bright, yet sleepy quality. They seemed so familiar, like had stared at them before many times. I had seen them many times during my bus stalking but I’d never noticed this before. What ‘this’ was I couldn’t quite say but thinking about it made the day pass swiftly and painlessly, except for the pain in my hand which I still suspected to be broken.

When I finally got to the pub Dee was already there waiting. We talked in rapid bursts, flitting from one subject to the next. I found out she’d been doing a bit of bus stalking herself and had been waiting for the day when she could sit next to me without looking desperate. Flattered I decided not to tell her about my own bus stalking as I was pretty sure it wouldn’t seem quite so cute coming from me. We clicked on so many subjects it was embarrassing. I thought she’d think I was just trying to please her when every film, book or album she mentioned was one of my favourites too. I even lied and said I didn’t some of the things that I did just so she wouldn’t think it odd.

It is at this point that I should mention that I am known to have one, two, three maybe four character flaws. Bus stalking is one, being a rather arsey know-it-all is another. But for the most part I hide these pretty well from friends and society in general. One flaw that I do struggle to contain is that no matter how much I am enjoying myself if something bugs me, itching at my brain I find it very difficult to stop thinking about it. Tonight, despite being in the company of a truly fabulous girl I couldn’t stop thinking about those eyes. Where had I seen them? Without trying to look too much like an idiot I took every opportunity to frame them, see them in stand alone context from the rest of her face. This squinting only made her ask if I was ok to which I made some feeble excuse about my contact lenses made a dash for the toilet to regain my senses.

I had to get this out of my mind. This was not good to get a freakishly strange obsession this early into a relationship. It was so early it wasn’t even a relationship, it was a first date. I washed my face and took a deep breath.

“You can get over this, don’t worry about it. This will all pass. She amazing, probably the best you can ever expect to do. Do not fuck this up.”

For the next three and a half hours I was good to my word. I regained my composure and acted less like a human being that had social skills commonly found on the wings of psychiatric hospitals. My new found composure led to a very swift relocation to her flat. This in turn led to probably the best sex I had ever had. After two years, three months and five days – counting the hours would just be sad – it was never going to be bad sex but I was pretty sure that even without the wait it would have still entered the charts at number 1.

Dee had drifted off to sleep before I got up to get a drink. Pinned to the fridge were some photos of her and two girls who I guessed were her sisters. I swear I heard the timer buzzing, marking that three and a half hour point where I ruined it all. I put my finger to the picture and masked the whole of her face except for her eyes. I realised where I had seen them before, why I felt they were so familiar. Dee had Tobey Maguire’s eyes. They were there staring right back at me. I went back to bed. It didn’t matter, this was a trivial thing not anything that should cause me to worry. She could have Vin Diesel’s eyes. That would be a million times worse. As I got back into bed she put her arms around me and I did everything in my power to remove the thoughts from my head and go to sleep.

My restlessness didn’t subside and I got up again for a wander to try and clear my head. It was ridiculous. Here I was with this stunning, funny clever girl who liked me and I couldn’t get over the fact that she has Tobey Maguire’s eyes. As I pushed open the door the front room I reeled back in horror. Suspended from the ceiling by a disturbing array of meat hooks and leather straps was a naked man. He had two cylindrical pumps attached to his face where his eyes should be. I tried to edge closer and as I did I saw the pictures surrounding the room. They all showed Dee and her sisters but they didn’t have any eyes. Just empty black holes in the spaces where their eyes should be. I got even closer to the man. I felt a chill run over me as my fears were proved right. It was Tobey all trussed up. It seemed like the pumps were siphoning off the very essence of his sleepy come-to-bed eyes. Looked at how I would get the poor guy down when suddenly the two sisters leapt out from the darkness. Their eyes still were empty, they blindly scratched at the air reaching for me.

“It was her turn with the eyes today Petal, but we’ll get them soon then you’ll be ours. We’ll share you. We know everything about you.” They cackled as they got closer to me. I fumbled for the door, slipping over as I tried to grasp the handle.

I woke up, startled, to a concerned looking Dee next to me in bed. “Are you ok? You looked like you were having a nightmare.”

I lied and said I didn’t remember any of it.

My character flaw prevented me and Dee from ever really getting out of the starting blocks. We got to become good friends and my conversation skills reverted back to their limited emotional range. I really wish I was able to get over my hang ups as I don’t think I’ll ever get on with anyone as well as I did with the girl with Tobey Maguire’s eyes.