Perserverance, vultures and a feisty mob

Today, after the thrill of Valentines, I’ve decided to discuss heartbreak. Being the stone-hearted, lady-killing, cool guy I am, you must be able to sense that I’ve broken a couple of hearts in my day. Actually, really only one. I think you’d be surprised to know that I was pretty good with the ladies when I was younger [ please try not to refer back to previous posts ]. The problem was I could not sustain it in person.While texting, I was probably the hunkiest man alive but in person I could barely string two sentences together without choking up or running out of things to say.To prove this, I’ll just say, the end to one of my relationships happened because I completely ignored the girl when I saw her because I thought I’d crack up and break the relationship we had. It broke anyway. To be quite honest I don’t think I was ready for a relationship back when I was ten. For goodness sake, I asked my mother for permission before asking her out. I got a ‘you’re too young‘ as a reply but I did it anyway. Bask in my glory.

I’ll keep that for another day, though. This story begins when I entered into secondary school [ or middle school to you other people ]. Let’s just say I was thrown into the deep end fairly quickly and I had, unfortunately, left my romantic floaties at home. The problem was, of course, a girl. Now this girl was different. Honestly. She liked me for the real life me. I know, I know, I was just as shocked. On top of this, she was definitely not afraid to show it. Not through herself and her own wits but through her cronies, who would become the biggest annoyance ever. When I talked to her she gave no hints. None. She just cackled at my puns and stayed relatively shy and quiet. As soon as she left, however, the vultures would swoop from above cawing and hissing [ yes, vultures hiss. I looked it up. You doubt me? I thought we had more trust ] phrases like:

‘Will you shift, my friend?’

‘Zara really likes you. Do you like her?’ e.t.c

To be frank, I was a bit overwhelmed. So, of course, I gave a vague answer and let the wake of disgruntled vultures take to the air again [yes, a group of vultures is called a wake. Where’s all this negativity coming from? Do you have a P.H.D in vulture analysis? That’s what I thought].

These shenanigans went on for an entire year before I cracked. I really had no other choice. I was being worn down by chisels on all sides until I resembled a very messy statue. That’s possibly the worst metaphor I’ve ever used. It’s all yours if you want it. Anyway, I agreed to shift her at the next disco [ definition – a sloppy french kiss which basically made you a man amongst teens ]. Now I was a friget at this time and really had nothing to lose [ definition– someone who has not lost their friginity { defintion – shift virginity } ]. I really should create my own dictionary because this is getting messy! Now this disco I’m referring to was a school disco which resembled a living hell. Being a first year, we were also crammed up front next to the speakers which usually were blaring ‘Cotton-eye Joe’. Caught between the sweaty walls, the sea of people and a group of aggravated teachers there really was nowhere to pull off the ‘deed’. I didn’t, however, need to think too hard about the logistics of how I was going to execute it because one key thing was missing. Her. The audacity! After so much perseverance and determination she was nowhere to be seen. I spent that lonely night next to Richard [ you may remember him ] who was jumping up and down beside me in a leather jacket, screaming something every now and then.

You must be able to tell I was fuming. After she had successfully ‘wooed’ me, she had pulled out the oldest trick in the book. She was playing hard to get. This was the craziest tactic I had ever seen but it truly did work a charm. It took three months of chasing the from me and we were going out. I really cannot explain what was going through my head. She wasn’t called ‘The Poodle’ for no reason with her mane of black curls and also, we still had not found anything in common betwixt one another in all that time [ First and last time I’m using betwixt in a sentence ]. It was destined to crash and burn. Let me tell you it was the most awkward month of my life. We did the required hand holding, sweet talking and such but we never met up outside of school and talking was a chore. I mean, on par with rifling through a garbage heap to scavenge a clean working microwave. In other words, fairly difficult. Naturally, I was blind to this what was going on. I was tipped off when a very nosy sixth year began quizzing us on our relationship and then finished with:

‘Why are you even going out at all?’.

That most certainly sent me reeling. This weirdly personal teen had just sucker punched my world views. He, of course, was right. I had experienced love before this and this was certainly not it. It became my goal to find a way out of this predicament I had jammed myself into. Between vultures and a hard Zara. Nope. Still not good with metaphors.

Unfortunately, I was also dealing with another set of problems. ‘The Shift mob’. Basically, a gang of hormonal teens who reveled in watching couples shift. Weird, I know. Anyway, we had managed to avoid them but they had finally successfully pinned us. For the days before this, we had stood awkwardly behind the sports complex kicking up sand when we should have been going at it. This essentially created a frenzy amongst the shift mobbers who grew in numbers and called out for our saliva [ a tad graphic, I agree ]. The next day I was armed with some advice from a wise teen, however, who said ‘The man must take charge‘. As per usual, we stood outside the sports complex kicking up dust but, this time, I lunged… It was actually more like a slow lean but it sounds more dramatic this way. Later, I would describe the kiss like ‘ licking a jellyfish that’s still alive’. See, I was never really great with metaphors and similes. All the tension was released from the mob and they returned to what they had been doing. Leaving me and Zara. That empty feeling managed to creep its way between us like it was want to do. That week, as we stood inside huddled against a radiator I broke the news in the most cliche way possible:

‘It’s not you. It’s me’.

She cried. A lot. This time, the vultures returned to mark the death of the relationship and to pick apart the corpse. Which involved a lot of scolding and ‘how could you‘s. I really did feel like a terrible person that day and it wasn’t helped by the fact that everyone was making such a big deal about it. I did learn to move on, however. The healing actually started that very day when a guy knocked over his soup trying to do the ‘Gangnam style’ dance which was meant to impress me.

~Matt