Adrian and Christian

Murky night with
An awkward date -
Two brothers are friends
Of the one I am with,
Adrian has tattoos that
They speak about
But don't include
Me in the
Conversation, so I
Sip my Gin
And become accused
Of being quiet
By Christian, who
Has a moustache that
Matches his curly hair
And his
Beige sports coat, and
I feel like I'm the younger
Out of all the
Company I'm keeping this night.
Then we go dancing,
And there is no need
For speaking,
But I still feel alone,
Even though I then meet
Tedo, and Laura and Harry.

Phillip, Nick

Bars are not often the best place to meet people, I have found.
I was out with a friend, in the city, rain falling outside.
The band played pop covers to an adoring crowd - mostly friends who'd come in support.
I was introduced to Phillip - he was in the band - but I learned more about Phillip from Nick.
Nick was drunk and enthusiastic, he introduced himself when he sat down next to me, waiting for a drink to come back for him from the bar. He indicated Phillip after both Nick and I, and Phillip and I had exchanged names. Phillip began to pack up the band gear.
"He's just so amazing." Nick began.
I nodded.
"He plays violin," he began to number things off on his fingers. "Guitar, piano, and he can sing," his voice when up a notch. "And he's Austrian, and he can speak French, and Dutch and German."
Nick flailed his arms in admiration.
"I want his babies."

On Awkward Meetings

Waiting outside the class roo, our eyes met briefly
Then they shifts to our respective feet
We've been sitting in the same class on and off now for 8 weeks
He speaks first, referring to the room change for the class
"Hope we have the right room"
"Yeah, I think we do, there are some other guys"
I indicated other people from the class sitting behind the escalators.
"I'm about to do a talk on Marx..." He started vaguely.
"Yeah, it was a good reading."
"Yeah, I enjoyed it."
The noise of the people coming down the hall coloured the silence.
"You don't come to this class very often"
"No,"
(He had a very enthusiastic way of speaking: He was animated, good humour but he almost spat out his words)
"This have been a bit crazy this semester."
His voice then dropped and I missed the first few words of his next sentence.
"...died, then my girlfriend left to go overseas for four months, and then I lost my job, I might get to do the readings but I can't get to the classes."
I smiled because I didn't know what else to do.
"Yeah, I understand."

On being female and trying to meet people.

He slid his hand self-consciously through his greased fetlock and in the same movement, placed the hand strategically on the wall next to us. I was already leading against the wall, so his arm boxed me in. He smiled and continued to talk about the state of newspaper journalism.

This is the moment I had dreaded. I'd begun a conversation with his person because we were both waiting in the toilet line at a house party. It appeared now, as I read his outrageous body language, that he thought that I had further designs on the inception of my conversation with him. 

This instance was not isolated, it has happened to many a time, where I have had to excuse myself from the connect because it seemed to be assumed that because I was of the opposite sex, and had commenced a conversation, that I wanted something...more.

Anna

She was blonde, sitting outside at the party with a circle of others i didn't know.
The theme of the party was 'Turning Japanese', but she hadn't dressed up at all. 
I was dressed as a Cheery Blossom tree, with a dress I had adorned with painstakingly handmade flowers. Anna, wine glass in hand, the hour getting fast towards midnight, pointed at me with a spare finger.
"You're costume is great!"
"Thanks," I replied.
"What are you supposed to be?"
"A Cherry Blossom tree, it's peak flowering season over there at the moment." I volunteered.
Anna made various noises of understanding. 
"Cool."
She took a sip of wine and the silence between us began to open up again. This is the moment where a conversation can be left hanging as a fragment never to be realised, or it can be built upon - that initial ice-breaking and become something else, for good or ill.
"So how do you fit in here?" I asked.
"I know Alistair."
"Ok,"
"Yeah. You?"
"I know Thea and Simonne."
"Oh yeah, I don't know them."
I was beginning to realise that I was staring down a dead end.
"What do you do with yourself," I tried one more time.
"Aw, I study like radiology - so like Xrays and stuff."
"Ok, that's interesting."
"It's alright."
I looked around, then I excused myself.
"Sorry I just need to go to the loo."

Café Civilisation

Rob, he has large skim café latte. He wife works in lingerie. 

Jason, he's a bookie at Flemington Racecourse. He never comes in wearing the same pair of sunglasses. He has a long macchiato, sometimes a short macchiato, depending on how much time he has to spare.

Sharon, She's a teachers aid. Small and weathered, with a perpetual tan, she has a large cappuccino with takeaway, because she is always going somewhere or doing something. If you ask her how she is, she will always answer with "busy", before elaborating. 

Trent, he has a green tea because it's more healthy. Sometimes he has a espresso, usually when he's with other men.

Barry, he meets with his daughter and granddaughter, Chelsea. Both he and his daughter have a skim café latte. He discribes himself as a refugee from Cafe Lomar, which closed down recently.

Matilda

"I'm trying to get a gig, and I think I have coz Tyron's the man two know you know, and he's a graphic designer as well so you know, fliers and stuff too, It'll be great, I can't wait coz I'm so bored at the moment, I haven't been teaching for a while now coz I just needed a break: I'm a piano teacher, yeah, I usually teach little kids and sometime half the trouble is just keeping there attention on things - but I know it's really important because I wish my parents had made me practice more when I was a kid, you know and so I have to keep them on task, I sometime have to use puppets for really little one's, you know, the five year olds 'mr cockatoo says play C', but you know, you do your best, like I try to engage them a bit more than just going through the book - some teachers just go through the book, but I go: what's your footy team, ok Collingwood, well then let's learn the Collingwood theme song."

"But yeah, I couldn't stand to hear the same mistakes played over again so I'm taking a break from teaching although it's really good money cash in hand. I'm going to start back at Ava's school after a bit, I'm playing my own music now and it's really good, and Ava's getting really good now too, she's got nimble little fingers and she's playing her blues progressions now really fast and I said, 'right do that, and then eight more times.' You gotta practice or you loose focus, like if you see that your getting better you wanna keep going, yeah, she's getting really good, but like, Ava met her dad the other day and she's been a bit regressive since, like she was in the fetal position the night after but she getting a bit better now. I'm just try to separate how I feel about him from her experience of it, you know".

Matilda coughed and took a drag on her cigarette. Finding it had gone out, she lit it again, clearing her throat.

"I shouldn't be smoking, I'm had the flu or something, it's just all the stress I've been under, coz of Ava meeting her dad and that. He bought her like 40 presents and stuff, but she was so scared, she hid behind me for ages when he first came in, but like, he was really good about it you know, well, with her you know, I've got to let my feelings go and just do it for her, I can tell my psychologist what I think about me later you know, but it was really hard to put it aside you know, but yeah, it's been a bit full on at the moment."

Kathleen

'Hi Monique, I'm Kathleen, I'll be seeing you today.'

Spoken with those softly-softly spifer web-words of someone trying ever so hard to be unconfronting. 

I'm not sure how the professionals do it, but they must train their voices; take classes to make their voices form the words differently. They seem to weigh less in the air, how feathers glide over the skin so breifly like they were never there. 

"Ok, great, it's good to meet you." I said, my words so much less subtle as I try to hide the sound of her words grating against my mind with their emblemished senstivity. Meek like knives.

The room Kathleen lead me into was airless, and by a great leap of progress in design, the windows don't open.

The chairs were fake blue suede; boxing and square. 

After explainantions of legal matters and the signing of concent, Kathleen asked the envitable,

"So tell me why you have come to see a psychologist - what sort of problems are you wanting to discuss here."

I cringed at the word 'problem'. Perhaps they were not problems at all, perhaps they were just perspective that I wished to change, habits that need guiding, thoughts that needed tidying. Problems sounds so grave. Problems sounds like that needed solutions, and solutions are a lot like conclusions-find-the-answer-and-put-it-in-a-box-move-on-it's-fixed-now. I don't see the  world like that. I just want to go on a journey inside myself and take Kathleen with me, so that we could both try to understand myself a little better.

Within five  minute of me explaining, in tangents and wall-of-words styling, I knew it was not I who was meeting Kathleen, but she who was meeting me. 

Tania

I didn’t like her. The moment the glass doors pressed quietly shut behind me with a faint pneumatic hiss, the mood changed. I was now the patient, and I was being lead down the hall to room 401. 

Offered a seat, (or was I instructed?) I sat looking down into the pits of the university. I pondered a moment, as I often did, of the lives of others; all those thoughts inside the seemly tiny heads that traversed the ground like rain on a window.

"So, Monique, tell me why you want to see a psychologist - we just need some details so we can better match you with someone." Tania sat opposite me, pen poised over a yellow sheet of paper, ready to take notes about my 'situation'. 

I felt like a multiple choice quiz as she prompted responses from me. 

"I'm here because my friends think I have an eating disorder."

"Well, you need to be here for you, and I think that you wouldn't have come it if was just for your friends. Why do they say you have an eating disorder?"

I went on to describe some of behaviours I'd developed, suddenly succumbing to frustrated tears. The tears were not mine - they were involuntary and I tried to explain it to Tania, but she just pushed the tissue box towards me and said with a smile, 

"It' OK, it's good to get things out."

Duncan's sad side.

(This is a story about meeting other 'sides' of people. All people are dynamic creatures, they are in constant flux - the have many facets to 'meet'.)

Steam rose between us from the urn in the kitchen. Duncan leaning on the bench right beside it. People came in and clanked through cupboards looking for things. They didn't disturb us though. I stood right beside him and the steam seemed to cast us invisible in a wet, warm bubble.

The wedding reception continuing outside of the room. Duncan's hand played with the beginnings of a beard along his jaw line. I hadn't met this side of him, although, I had guessed at it's existence.

He told me great pause, and considered gesture, a great analogy of his mood.

“You know those moments in animal documentaries when the antelope gets chased by the lion?”

I nodded and he went on.

“The lions don't usually catch the antelope, they just wait until it can't be bothered anymore, where it becomes so tired by the chase that it can't be bothered living. It just stops and waits to be killed. Then the lions catch up. I feel like that. I feel like that moment were the antelope just gives up. I want to just give up.”

Marty

You spoke about facts. Those silly ones that everyone has a few of. You gave my friend your jacket and you called me hipster. "A BA? You look like you do a BA". We had to talk loudly over the music and seemed to dislike the dancing crowd as much as I did.

Marty is the first person I feel that I have really 'met' in a long time. I don't even know how we got started talking. Maybe because you spoke to the host, who was wasted didn't have any shoes on. I'd only met her a few times and she was going to take me on a tour of the house. That's when you chimed in with you fact about the moon being 400 times smaller than the sun, but the sun was coincidentally 400 times further away. So the result of that celestial phenomenon was that when there was a solar eclipse, the moon fit perfectly over the sun.

I talked to you most of the time I was there, some two hours. That's why I feel like I met you, because we got past those first steps of conversation, the foundations of orientating ourselves in each other, plotting, if you will, the scope of how well we might relate on different subjects. Talking to someone new is a lot like playing Battleships. A new topic might miss the mark and the conversation might begin to unravel, the charm broken.

You walked me out when I left. You said, 'I don't really do this, but can I get your number?'

This got me thinking about the follow through. Are connections momentary or are connections truly only when they more from the ephemeral to the more reified realm of the promise of more? I find there are never enough words in the English language to describe the stages of things like this. Perhaps those who we don’t connect with are the acquaintances. But then within that distinction, there are those who you might smile at in passing, or the ones who you would say hello to, and then another level – the ones who you would at least ask how they were for a few awkward moments. I suppose ultimately what it is about is the moment – the face to face and the being human. No matter the time frame, it’s the interaction that is the punctum.

…I did give him my number.

Girl at Ted's Camera's, 7pm, Friday

"It must suck," I said, beer breath escaping, "That you have to stay open so late on a Friday."
The girl looked up from her listless clicking of her computer screen, her eyes dazed. She look Indian, or Sri Lankan maybe, although race shouldn't be a matter, she should just be a person. I place my purchase on the counter.
"Yeah", she agreed, her eyes slightly creasing at the edges, "It does...you want that?"
"Yes thanks."
"We're open 'til like, 8, no, 9pm. It's totally bedtime by the time you're done."
"I can imagine" I said. "And there'd be only someone every 20 minutes after a certain time...not very exciting."
She scanned the barcode and swiped my card with precision and speed.
"Cheque, Savings or Credit?"
I pressed the keypad, watching my invisible money disappear into the ether.
"Do you work in retail too?" She asked.
I paused, not know really how to answer the question - it was not so much that she wanted to know what I did, but why I realised that her job was shit.
"No," I answered, "I've just come to come to realise these things." I felt inadequate at expressing who I felt.
"I appreciate you being here." I added.
She smiled and almost laughed. "Thanks."
I left the store.