stumbles off.
As I walk around the room it strikes me how almost everyone here is attractive, even for a Sydney party. They’re all striking, interesting, sexy (or at least a facsimile of sexy) and … well, I don’t belong with them. I don’t belong in my job, I don’t belong in Sydney, and I guess I never belonged with Tori. I mean, I look like a Muppet – a midget Muppet – in a city filled with big meat-eating men.
No wonder Tori broke up with me and my soft belly.
It was a huge mistake for me to come here.
Huge.
I head straight for the door and see another of Tori’s friends, who waves at me.
Fuck, even seeing someone associated with her gives me a jolt, what was I thinking coming here? I nod my head quickly without pausing my flight for the safety of the outside world.
Smokers cluster on the footpath outside, mobiles and cigarettes waving in the air to highlight conversational points, and I only manage to take a few steps when a peroxide blonde loudly calls my name. She looks familiar but I can’t place her, and as she puts her arms around me it clicks:
Fuck.
She’s Tori’s new best friend.
She’s the one Tori befriended three months before dumping me, she’s the one who told Tori one month before the break-up that she’d never date a guy who earned less than her. I still vividly recall how Tori earnestly relayed this weighty philosophical nugget to me, right after I’d been made redundant as the travel editor of a certain glossy magazine.
It’s hard not to make a connection.
When Jezebel un-suctions her tentacles off me I look beside her and there, sure enough, cigarette in her fingers, mobile in her other hand, is Tori the Movie Star. Before I can stop it happening she embraces me, her lips on my cheek, hand on my back. I want to throw her off, to get her and her scent far away from me.
She looks at me uncertainly.
“How are you?” Jezebel asks, as if speaking on Tori’s behalf.
I try to speak, but words won’t form on my lips.
“Wasn’t the movie fantastic?” Jezebel continues blithely, her voice squeaking with fake excitement. “Tori’s going to be a star. We’re going back inside – why don’t you join us? You should join us!”
Sure, and then I can take a razor to my testicles afterwards.
Tori nods her head like this is a good idea.
I suddenly feel like bawling.
I search her eyes in the hope of finding something, some clue, but my deductions fall short. All I can make out is what I don’t see, namely any regret, remorse or longing. I could be an old high school boyfriend she’d almost forgotten about, rather than someone she recently shared a bed and cat with.
I don’t want to make a scene, I just want to leave, and … I wish I could explain this better, but then the words come to my lips – the wrong words. They tumble and fall, soiling me, as I find myself possessed, telling them how attractive they look, how great the movie is, how talented Tori is (why am I complimenting her?) – all the while speaking at a hundred miles an hour, and then I say I can’t go in because I have some gutters to crawl through, I don’t know why I say this, am I after their pity? And if so, how sad is that! What’s wrong with me?
I rattle off how lovely it is to see them but that I’ve got to go, and I spot one of Tori’s muscle-bound co-stars in the background, dragging his knuckles on the ground as he lumbers up to us, and I race off without looking back.
6
I’m drinking a cocktail made with cognac, Cointreau and vanilla liquor that’s served in a dainty little cocktail glass with a maraschino cherry. Before me is a plate of mini burgers (I refuse to call them sliders), each one small enough to fit in a child’s palm, as well as my pocket-sized notepad and a pen.
I can’t help thinking I lost my manhood somewhere along the line.
This is a new small bar I’m reviewing for the paper. I fled here immediately after the cinema debacle and as I sip my lady cocktail I feel alone, sad and sorry for myself. This is not the glamorous life a bar reviewer should be leading.
This is not the life a man ought to be leading.
Of course, I’m not going to write the article up that way. Instead, as usual, I’ll portray myself as a gallant bachelor about town who flirts with femme fatales in the hope Tori will read it and get jealous. And even if she doesn’t read the review she’s bound to read the article I write for Susan on the movie – although what on earth can I say in that?
A barmaid comes up to me, eyeing my notepad suspiciously, and I order a martini to bestow some sophistication on me – or at least calm my nerves.
Lord knows they need it.
Although I ought to be figuring out what I’ll put in this review, or my piece on the movie, all I can think about is Jezebel’s cry of “you should join us!”
It taunts me, making me wonder what they make of the situation. Is it just a game to them, was I just a laughable episode that’s already past?
Are they trying to screw with me?
I was an idiot for even going out with Tori in the first place. I knew from the beginning she wasn’t quite right, that she was out of my league, but I let myself get sucked in despite all the warning signs. I saw how she cheated on her boyfriend with me for over a month (karma’s a bitch, huh?), I saw how rude she was to shop assistants … and waiters … and me …
I finish my lady drink angrily, sullenly popping the cherry in my mouth.
My martini arrives and I gulp it before realising I should be savouring it in order to write about it. I scribble “smooth and goes down easily, unlike rejection” in my notepad.
I think of that clichéd line: love blinds you.
And then, inevitably, it blindsides you.
I spin my bar coaster contemplatively. You know, love isn’t blind at all. On the contrary: it’s driven by sight, the most shallow of our senses. I went out with a girl for her looks and allowed myself to believe there was more to her. What did I think would happen? We primarily choose someone based on whether they’re physically acceptable, and only then start finding reasons to justify it. Love ought to be blind, but it isn’t.
It’s a sucker’s game.
The trick is to not fall for it in the first place. Instead you have to get in and get out, limit the damage on both sides. One minute is all you need – perhaps two if you’re into foreplay.
We’re trying to find meaning in a world filled with chaos and chemically-driven decisions: it doesn’t make sense.
Instead, we should be lowering our expectations of each other – and of ourselves.
We are not wayward spiritual beings in need of correction. We are animals, little more, with delusions
