Dear reader,
Tuesday night in Big Slope. It was sure to be the beginning of a love story for the ages, right? The man who sat in front of me had ghosted me previously, and like all true Prince Charmings, saw I’d been at Ponyboy from my instagram story and decided this was grounds to give it another go. He asked me what I wanted to drink and I said a St Mungo (I actually wanted a £5.50 Marg, obviously) and the stage was set for a perfectly forgettable night. It should come as no surprise to you all by now that as we started to chat, he revealed himself in record time to be, in fact, an insufferable prick with more knowledge of French autofiction than sense. As I gazed into his pristine black Salomons and tried not to dissociate, my mind flicked through the rolodex of absolute wankers who’d paved the way. One in particular stood out, and before long I was seized by the memory of our first (and only) proper date which took place a few months earlier in this very bar.
On that night (also a Tuesday), I remember being startled by this man’s bold decision to sit solo at the biggest booth available despite my earlier admission that I’d be 10 minutes late. Arms sprawled freely around the sides, he resembled a kind of fruity Tarantino figure about to offer me (the beautiful ingénue), a lead role in his next movie. We proceeded to get absolutely wasted together and things were actually going pretty amazingly for once? A vague comment about a book he wanted to show me back at his flat sealed the deal. I stayed over, he lent me a hoodie, and as we chatted nonsense for hours I could sense something truly unexpected beginning to happen. Were genuine feelings of romantic affection about to pierce the surface of my cynical heart?
In retrospect, these initial flutters were probably just a complete overreaction to being shown some sustained interest, as it became clear pretty quickly that we had vastly different agendas. Over the next five or so weeks, I traversed the sporadic highs (free airport whiskey, The Handmaiden) and many lows (cortados, Adult Swim cartoons) of his personal taste, as I clambered to get closer. One night, I remember watching him get stoned and feeling distinctly like a third wheel to him and a tub of Mackie’s honeycomb. Never a reassuring sign. “Do you want a pizza pocket” he muttered later the same night, more of a proclamation than a question. How could I possibly explain that all I really wanted was for him to tell me how much I meant to him?
Like all great romantic dramas, ours was one limited by time. Things had limped to their inevitable close and before long I was laying in his bed for what I knew would be the final occasion. I wanted to make it feel significant. In a particularly brilliant (or deranged) moment, I thought to myself ‘what would Elio do?’ and began sniffing his pillow uncontrollably when he left the room. Trying desperately to absorb the stale, musty, sweaty smell of his sheets that had become a familiar comfort over this period. We lumbered through an awkward goodbye and I blasted Folklore during my last glorious walk of shame from his flat, before being rudely interrupted by the brazen honking of an oncoming car that clearly couldn’t see this was MY main character moment. Plummeting quickly back down to earth, I wondered, should I really be crying to August when we only made it about a week into June?
Before getting too carried away in all this reminiscing, I was yanked back to the present moment by a particularly rousing and impassioned rant about how ‘Ponyboy is creating unfettered hierarchies in the community but I’ve met some of the live performers and I do think they’re great people’. A rather queasy feeling started to wash over me, as the current absolute wanker started to appear more nose ring than person. I thought about how easy it was to reshape people in your mind, and how infuriating it is that they can never quite leave your field of view thanks to social media. But none of this mattered now. I was moving on. Wasn’t I?
Yours queerly,
a fed up twink
Xoxoxo
Author: Fergus Kane [he/they]
qmunicatemagazine.co.uk 