Friday 14 August 2009

The awful tale of how my quest began...

I am thirty-four and currently in a Spanish holiday resort. My entire life is in ruins. Last night I was convinced that I was finally going to get it together with the beautiful Irish singer of a band that I have been secretly in love with for years and have moronically based my whole future around. Instead I had the most humiliating experience of my adult life. Tonight, instead of being seduced and fucked senseless, I am going to spend the evening with my mother and her boyfriend (whose holiday I gatecrashed) staring into space and listening to an elderly fiddler who plays the exact same tunes in the exact same order every single fucking night.

This is not entirely my fault. But it is a little bit. And this is why I need to find my inner slut. Or more succinctly, my inner sex goddess.
Here’s what happened:

I have been obsessing about The Irishman for three years and the most annoying thing is that HE FANCIED ME FIRST – when I first set eyes on him singing and playing guitar in his band in this same resort he had both a beard and a bun. Who could possibly fancy a man with such a hideous combination? But then the next night he’d cut his hair and had been magically transmogrified into the bastard son of Heathcliff, DH Lawrence’s gypsy and the devil, and as I danced a messy, vodka-addled dance to Blondie on an empty dancefloor that night I suddenly realised that he was staring at me! But did I care? Ha, no! Until the next night he spent the whole gig with his eyes burning holes in me and I was wetting my knickers just from looking at him and then he waited outside for me and convinced me to go along the next night, saying over and over in his sexy Father Dougal voice: ‘Ah, but you must come tomorrow! You must! I’ll get you a drink!’ Etc.

I spent the whole next day bobbing up and down in the sea and fretting about it. Then that night I went along, completely ignored him and left before the end, not giving him a chance to speak to me. And then got my flight home the next day, utterly furious with myself.

And why do I behave like this? Because I am scared of looking like a fool.
Ha.

Anyway, since then I’ve been going on holiday to the same resort and going to see his band, and there’s been this weird backwards forwards thing between us where we’ve had short, loaded conversations which have gone absolutely nowhere because of my shyness and drunkenness and his opaqueness and contrariness. The time in between for me has been spent doing hundreds of futile sit-ups, reading too many books about creative visualisation and cosmic ordering, compulsively stalking him on Facebook and generally laying waste to my life. Until this week.

On the first night of my holiday I bumped into him as I stood at the bar – he seemed genuinely excited to see me and whisked me off to a quiet corner of the club where we sat talking about music (I’m obsessed with music) and life and our big dreams (I love that question! “But what is your big dream??” I asked him, my hands waving on the air) while he plied me with vodka and shots and blasts on his spliff. He was lovely and funny and charming, we had lots to say to each other and the only awkward moment came when he told me a joke. I fucking hate jokes. It don’t remember it properly but it went something like:

Something something favourite vegetable? The one in the wheelchair! Hahaha!
I sat with my face screwed up as different vegetables raced through my head. Courgettes. Carrots. Cucumbers. It still didn’t make sense. He was disappointed in me, I could tell. Then the penny dropped. Vegetable. Wheelchair. Ha.

It was only the next day, scribbling in my diary and gazing into the sea with a morbid expression, that it occurred to me that we got along and could talk and talk but that talk would never lead of its own accord to us fucking. We were like parallel train tracks running on forever. Not that he didn’t try – I reckon all that vodka and spliff was his attempt to lead me screaming and kicking to my inner slut – but the fact is, I just didn’t flirt with him. I don’t know how to flirt without sounding like something out of ‘Carry on Camping.’ How does one flirt without sounding like Kenneth Williams? This is something I intend to learn.

Eventually someone tapped him on the shoulder and he said it was time for his band to play their next set. They play three sets a night until six in the morning. He disappeared and I sat there for a long time. The band didn’t come back on. Where had he gone? I ordered another vodka and drank it too fast. Some black guy sat next to me to me so I talked to him. “But what is your big dream?” I asked him, my hands waving on the air, just before he and his mates got kicked out by the bouncer. Then eventually the band started playing again but by this time I could feel rebellion against it all rising and rising from the soles of my feet and before I knew it I was standing and turning and walking right out of the back door.

I shall continue this tomorrow. The elderly fiddler is calling.

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