Pipe
Wednesday, July 29, 2020This one time I went out with a guy. It was completely harmless and couldn't have been more blas but my intuition told me otherwise. Bear in mind, I was in my teens and not half as pre-emptive about people and reading the room. This is one of those.
As young people do, we had a meal, some conversation was made. I'd go into the details but I have far too many people in common with that gentleman and he's now married so why ruffle feathers (why I miss anonymity here).
The highlight of the meal was not the fibrous meat and bread and all that excess salad that neither of us needed, but it was this gesture. Since the eventful luncheon was being split on account of some payment both of us had been scammed of, and I was in possession of the funds, we were basically splitting the amount we had earned.
Anyway, the meal got over and the bill was cleared and I was trying to rest my nerves until the man started to scribble some stuff on the tissue paper. Within ten minutes, he gave me a piece of that tissue on which he had written a short poem about us and the meal. Effortlessly charming.
Ofcourse, I was a bag of nerves after.
Some other stuff followed (if you're my mom, you should know we didn't have sex) but largely harmless.
I returned floating on a cloud and recited that to all my friends the day after in class.
Anyway, about a quarter into this and our staccato conversations, I found this man has written another one of his masterpieces on Facebook. It was mellow, something on the lines of unrequited fondness (surprise, surprise on the subject). In hindsight, what else is an 18 yo supposed to write in the peak of their heat but ofcourse, my convent school hadn't prepared me for that. I was convinced it was about me because my grandeur of delusions and overconfidence knew no bounds.
For about a year or so, the highlight of my rather uneventful life was in total belief of the masterpieces, one with me and one for the public.
It took a few months after, just a year short of that luncheon for me to realize that not only the guy had a girlfriend who he was massively head over heels in love with, that she was actually smart and all that.
ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?
Back then, I imagined my life was parallel to this rom-com which I shan't name. However, if you're this intrigued and somewhat invested, you can always put two and two together (that my dear friend, the Ice Prince, once told me, "I've been putting two and two together since age 5." Okay then).
The iconic line that resonates with me to this day about my delusions and overconfidence is how I learned that my favourite love song is written about a sandwich.
That, my friend, is the reality of it all.
Perhaps, that entire piece of writing devoted to me, that I'm to this day using as a bookmark in my favourite book from 2009, is perhaps about the meal we had, and not about me.
How I look at myself in the mirror every morning is truly beyond me.
(Title reference; track of the day)
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