Unavoidable
Some things in life are unavoidable. Walking down the street, you pass someone who you sort-of-know, one of those many someones who is visible in your life but not audible. I’m here, and perhaps 60 metres away is a girl, and a further 40 is a second. The second has a creamy coloured top, and at this stage I’m thinking of the last person I saw in a top like that.
Actually, it was earlier today, on my summer school shindig, on a girl in the group next to my own. I passed her several times to talk to the group one further along, and she passed me several times at far higher speeds in a mad dash to the printer.
As the nearest girl on the pavement passes, and the second is near enough to be getting a focus, there is no doubt about it; this girl is the very same as the one from earlier. On this pitifully straight road we are forced to spend 20 seconds in each other’s visual company, individually looking up to check that it is in fact the real deal, that there is no mistake with it being someone with “just one of those faces”. It’s always those faces (or backs of heads as it usually is) that put you at your worst, with such a swagger you walk up to a girl you know from behind, simply radiating cool, until she turns around and turns out to be not only the wrong girl, but the wrong gender and everything. After deciphering that she is exactly who she looks like, there is a painful period of time. How much looking is friendly, and how much is just overpowering? Of course, playing it safe and looking away is just plain rude, and so I find myself flicking my eyes from her to the pavement and back. She’s doing the same I expect, I’m not settling on her long enough to focus so that I can actually tell. Then again, maybe she isn’t, she’s probably watching my crazed eyes firing around like missiles and -WOAH- one almost hit her again.
I’ve looked up far too early this time. Messed it up completely for sure. Seriously, what will she be thinking, with a random guy she only just knows staring at her from 10 metres! But it’s too late to look away now. She holds her gaze low, trying to deviate from the eyes of that psycho coming towards her.
The time is now. The moment of dread. I say “’Ello” And by Jove, I say it perfectly, at what must surely be the scientific perfect distance to greet someone if ever there was. Which there can’t be, not even scientists would be sad enough to work that one out, would they?
Suddenly, disaster! She doesn’t reply. Sure, she smiles, but what is that when compared to my crisp, groundshakingly friendly word? She must be sat there underneath that smile, screeching mentally about that pervert next to her. I’ve gone far too far I can tell, I know she has a boyfriend and popularity and the works. What if she thinks I’m making a move on her, that I’m overstepping the mark? No doubt she’ll return to school and moan about that twat that wasn’t satisfied with a smile, and spread dirty rumours about me, she’ll change the facts around to break me. All of a sudden I’ll be a woman beating paedophile with a permanent white stain on my trousers where it just wouldn’t wash off. Because I’m not really any of that, whatever you may hear.
And so, she’ll break my confidence entirely. I’ll go into college with a rabid fear of all girls who don’t possess an inch of flab and enough grease to put a chip factory out of business, and never get a girlfriend, never marry, and die all alone in a hole with earthworms as my only friends. And all because she didn’t have the courtesy to say ‘Hi’ back.
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This was one of the earliest things I wrote that people said was good, and looked like they actually meant it. I'm even relatively happy with how it has stood the test of time, which is a rarity in my work. Written July 2007. |
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