A Woman Comes To Stay

His Blog 2

You forget certain things living alone.  Suitable sleeping habits, cooking decent meals and bathing may all but disappear at some point. But my (now) girlfriend needed a place to stay and I wanted her around as long as possible. Really I wondered how bad it could be, I knew it would be a change to have someone around all the time, but it was someone I felt I really knew, even down to a few personal habits. She had no reason to be dishonest with me so I couldn’t see it being that much of an issue. Plus, I was genuinely lonely being by myself all the time. It was great being able to do whatever I wanted whenever I wanted, but that I meant I really couldn’t be bothered doing anything.  If someone was there it meant I would be inspired to take them places and get that social life I’d heard good things about.  So I tidied until I was late to pick her up from the airport, unfortunately disobeying the law that I must meet her at the gate. I waited and hoped that she was not waiting for her luggage by the belt, and instead still yet to come down the Virgin Australia escalator at Brisbane Domestic (You know the one.). There is a moment when accepting a big change, where you see the clarity of the decision you’ve just made. Humans are very good at transforming large problems and difficult decisions, into trivial matters. We have this ability to make a decision seem simple, we’ll be able to handle the unknown outcome. It is my belief that any human born who cannot do this will become unable to make decisions and be forced into politics.

So I continued to think it wouldn’t be that life changing, we got on, I knew we had disagreements, but the moment she came down the escalator and saw me, her face melted like she was drowning in puppies and rainbows. We had a weekend after that initial one in Melbourne, just a weekend together at my house a few months prior just to vent all the tension and testosterone caused by the last time we met. It was more relaxed we watched movies and went to a show I had won tickets for.

And with that crazy fun weekend out of the way it was time to get to the serious part of the relationship, well, that bit when where you can watch the other clip their toenails and not freak out. I had never been in a long term relationship before, I rudely observed and criticised others for their relationship mistakes but I had never really had the chance to make my own. Relationships seemed to be no real work. Time consuming, sure, but if you act maturely, it appears you could get through it with very little effort. And calling and messaging was easy over the time we were away. I had watched enough sitcoms to know that there would be an adjustment period with her in the house. But I had been living with housemates before so I know you can have your own space and if you feel like killing each other there are ways to handle it. I could do this. At least, that’s what I could tell myself as we started driving home. Prior to the roundabout being installed on the way to the Brisbane Domestic Airport it took 13 minutes to get home (Once I did it in 9. Yes, I have no excuse for being late, but really I do, a girl was coming to stay.) in that 13 minutes it dawned on me that not only was I taking a girl home to mess up the bed that I’d taken half an hour to make. (Getting out all those creases is hard.) but I was going to cook for her, help her look for work and get over any homesickness she was going to have. I may also slip up and she may see my disgusting side. I was not just violating my rental agreement by having someone stay for an undefined period of time who was not on the rental agreement as a tenant, but I was letting her into my life to stay. I was not taking her back to the airport in a day, two weeks, a month, to further her trip and stay with relatives, she was now a roommate. As I made the turn off Sandgate road (Airport Link wasn’t open yet, and I’m from the city which thinks something as fundamental as roads being privatised is ridiculous and means the government cannot budget. Although it really shows what Brisbane people think of tourists with the amount of roads to get out of the airport and get anywhere near a tourist attraction. Both of which are an hour away from the airport. In opposite directions.)

Rounding the final corner, I decided that I would just continue what I was doing.  She was staying at my place and, therefore, would have to tolerate not only myself but also my oddities. And that worked out just fine. For five minutes.

Then I quickly learnt that having her around was fantastic and if I did whatever I would have this nagging feeling that I should go do something else with her. A feeling which has yet to go away. And hopefully, it never shall.

CONTACT.

If there is one thing I can always pull off, it’s a first impression. Whether it’s a job interview, meeting a family friend or just helping a random stranger on the street, the one thing I can always rely on, is my ability to make anyone who meets me think that I am a raving lunatic. While I do have attributes that are inconsistent with most people, I have an uncanny knack of always making a bad first impression.

It’s no wonder when I first met the other half of this blog that her best friend wanted to file a restraining order against me.  In my defence, she deserved flowers, so what if I deliver them to a friend’s house and address her as one of my personal stalkee’s. It’s really hard to get on that list.

Maybe it didn’t help the fact that it was really late at night. Whatever the weird reason Stalkee #3’s friend thought it would be okay to want to block her from seeing me, it meant I had to call him up and calm him down. I don’t completely remember what I said, just that I was, in fact, sane and that I would not take Stalkee #3 and put her in a van to harvest her organs. Actually, I remember I did not say this so I guess I could have done it, but the person on the other end of the phone had enough details to track me down so I thought I shouldn’t anger him with badly worded sarcasm.

As pointed out by others, sarcasm is funny until you get specific

“I’m not going to tie her up and throw her in a river”

Is okay but

“I’m not going to tie her up and throw her into the Brisbane River off that little wall in front of Streets Beach”

Has something about it which is not socially acceptable. Whatever I said it allowed her to see me the next day (She was even allowed to come alone.). I actually arrived at the area a while before she was supposed to arrive and watched her arrive and waited for her to sit down. I felt I shouldn’t do any more creepy things and suddenly standing next to someone seemed to fit that character, so I walked over, right in front of her so she could clearly see me from a long way away.  To try and fix the night before I decided to have a killer first line. I straightened my tie (Situations like this require nothing less than a suit.) put a mysterious\charming look on my face, strode over, looked at her straight in the eyes (Well, attempted, she was looking at her phone at the time.) cleared my throat and said

“Saskia?”

Which came out squeaky and quite horrible.  Nevertheless, she got up and followed me to my planned date location. So I really did nail it.

Except she admits today she never heard what I said.

Her going away party several days earlier had been a black light party, so I decided to follow this up by the fact that I had found a black light mini golf place. I had also chosen this as there would be very little chance of uncomfortable silences, we would both be doing something – therefore need silences to concentrate, and I would use those silences to come up with interesting conversation topics or in the darkness, be able to bail if things went south. We walked in and within thirty seconds had begun to discuss the fact that the black light mini golf here was an idea stolen from one in her native city. We started and she confessed that she had never heard of it. Then I realised my plan to participate in an activity which involved awkward silences fell apart with the realisation that if she was silent while I was playing, and I was silent while she was playing we wouldn't talk at all, and therefore any physical contact would be pretty hard to achieve. So I began to talk about the pretty artwork, about how her party was and how the flight was, then she talked about her tired she was. And I realised that if I continued as I was, I would kick her ass pretty hard. So I decided to muck up the next couple of holes and then continue on so I would still win, but it would be pretty close. I continued talking about the weather of Melbourne, about how one of my sisters used to live her, and how it has the best coffee and she continued talking about her tired she was. I felt the score hasn’t gotten pretty even so I decided to go with my full mini golf skill again.

This inevitably failed and I was a was several down we approached the final hole I was enough shots down that I felt that she just wanted the game to end, because that’s how I felt, so while I repetitively failed to get the ball up a 45 degree angle she patiently waited in a corner for a kiss that would never come. Seriously, I had no idea that’s what she was waiting for. She just stood there. I really thought she was bored and just wanted to leave already.  So after a few more attempts, I finally got my ball in the last hole. I thought I’d take some photo’s with her in a nearby photo booth and be done with it. It was a failure, she was bored with me.  I told her to meet me again before I left the next day for the airport back home. She showed up, we said goodbye. As the taxi left I reflected on the fact that maybe I wasn’t ready for a relationship yet, and I wondered how we would be friends now. I decided I would still let her stay with me in Brisbane. I couldn’t really take that back now. I had done the damage and would never get to find out what was under the plaid dress now.

And that was the beginning of a relationship. You see, when we talked again, I found out she wanted to make out, and I wanted to do that too, so we planned to meet again and this time we would make that happen.