A Little Late Night Musing

I’m laying low. Life is leering lecherously at me. I quake in the corner. She (life, the bitch,) has lately landed some of her choice uppercuts on my jaw with jarring juddering impact.

But no, it’s not all bad. Today, a half-crush from the semi-forgotten past texted me. This lifted my spirits. (It shouldn’t have.) Perhaps she was just playing with her phone and my head. She could also have been just poking - don’t you just hate that poke thing on Facebook? You don’t? Sorry.

So, the half crush.

Uncertainty about her had flooded my mind in the distant past. On the face of it, she was a girl and I was a guy, thus it was all figured out and hence meant to be. (Primary school doesn’t encourage too much critical thinking, hence multiple choice national exams.) But my naïve mind was rescued at the unhappy moment when reality shone a harsh light on my dangerous naivety: I was only “infatuated”, and on top of that, highly reproductively capable, at least if you asked those guys who came round every now and then to threaten pupils with gruesome death from AIDs and guilt, leaving destitute illegitimate children roaming the streets as one burnt in hell for ever and ever. These hired doomsayers were in close collaboration with a cane-loving headmaster who constantly did violent “purges” of “boy-girl relationships”. Therefore I hardly even tried to nurture the half-crush into a crush.

This is not to mean there weren’t episodes. At a chance meeting, after we had both suffered the benefits of a few years of maturity, she told me (volunteering - without being asked) that it could never work between us. I was unsuitable, according to her, because she gravitated helplessly towards bad boy types. I took it in stride and nonchalantly and mightily-breezily patted down my carefully ironed suit. (Otherwise, inside, my alter ego screamt “Bloody f*cking sh*t!!!”) The conversation then crawled onward into more mundane things. But still…

Henceforth, after that event, I embarked on an initiative to ensure that in gender relations, I would be highly “suitable”, if you hear me correctly. Now the psychology-types among you will start yammering about how I was scarred for life but I beg to differ. Some experiences refuse to be rubbed off the head, no matter what moves are made to overcome their memory. DISCLAIMER: the experiences in themselves are pretty pedestrian and unremarkable, but as we all know, embarrassment gives a misstep the quality of immortality.

Moving on to other things… I recently did a small survey of the special ladies in my life. The list was alarming. (“Special” is not “hanky-panky”.) Not one of them is intimate in any relevant way, yet the variety is baffling. A look at the categories should make this apparent. Maybe I’m crazy to categorize, but I have in my list such illustrious ladies as a favorite ex best friend, favorite ex deskmate, a favorite ex groupmate, a favorite ex sit-across-table-in-library-and-exchange-suggestive-glances mate, a favorite ex neighbor, among others, and I haven’t even mentioned the favorite current lot, such as a favorite blog author I know a bit, and a favorite blog author I don’t know much of but wish I did. So I’ve finally figured out why I’m single and doomed to remain thus: One more favorite and I’ll have a nervous breakdown.

Otherwise, I quit the dating scene; it’s like a maze, complete with a bloodthirsty Minotaur (read The Ex) to panic your strategies for getting out. Having weaved my way out, I’m hoping the Minotaur didn’t catch my scent and follow me out into my austere retirement.

I’m off to text the ex-half-crush back. Hopefully it’ll remain distant, lukewarm and platonic. Fat chance.