A Naturally Boisterous Child

'Obsessed, they're calling it? Well of course I'm obsessed! Well, was obsessed rather – something like this happens and it does tends to dampen any romantic feelings you might have. Of course I was obsessed! Except I call it 'falling in love'. Isn't that supposed to be a good thing? Jesus, I didn't expect this from you as well!'

[...]

'I only saw her twice. Well, I only went in the café twice, so what I mean is she only saw me that many times, if you don't count all this rubbish yesterday. I'd seen her loads more through the café window, well a few times when I was just walking past – but I had to go past, I went past most days on my way home from college. I never even stopped, only once, just looking at the menu, to see her, you know, she was beautiful. Not beautiful, just – you know, when you see someone, a girl, and you just know that they're your type of person. Is that obsession, then, that's what they mean by it? When you see someone and you instantly know that you'd get on with them. And you can tell that just by looking, just seeing them through a café window from a distance, it's the way they deal with people, the way they move... maybe you've never had that. When you recognise such a person, it's almost painful – painful that you're not with them. Anyhow – is that obsession?'

[...]

'I went in the café, yeah, of course – why do you think all this happened? Like I said, twice, that's all. And the first time I just sat there with a cup of tea, didn't even look up at her except when she took my order, and I could feel my cheeks, feel them burning just from saying, "tea, please", I couldn't even smile. That was all I said. And this thing about the photo – '

[...]

'One photo! That was all I took! Don't you have a photo of Jane in your phone? And I can tell you what was going through my head, listen: all I wanted was just one picture of her and then I'd decided that I'd never go in the café again. Because yesterday when I went in, I still couldn't manage to say anything, anything more than "tea, please" again. And I knew, it was obvious to me right then, that I'd never be able to speak to her, in any kind of confident way. It just made me – angry. No, I wasn't angry, don't think I was angry. Upset. I was upset. That all that was possibly going to happen was that she would tell me she had a boyfriend, or something, something I couldn't bear to hear, something to get rid of me. I knew this clear as anything. I was just sitting there, cursing myself, failing even to imagine with hindsight how I might have started up more of a chat with her, and I knew the whole thing was useless. So I decided I'd leave her alone. That's what I was thinking! Nothing perverted! I'd take a picture of her with the camera on my phone, and I'd clear out and never go near her again. Maybe I'd even change my route home from college to avoid the pain it would cause me. I just wanted something to look at – where's the harm? Where is the harm in that?

So at that point I hadn't even thought about how I might do it, take the picture. If I'd sat there a few more minutes I'd probably have given up on the whole picture idea. And then this old guy comes into the café and sits at the table next to me, and right then it occurred to me that before long the girl – whose name I still don't even know – the waitress, would be coming over to serve him. And it was likely she'd come over to the side of the old man's table that was furthest away from me, because that way she wouldn't have to stand with her back towards me. This was one of the things I'd noticed about her, she'd do things like that, little things so as not to upset, well not upset, but you know, things that made being a customer in that café a pleasant experience. Anyway, I knew because she'd serve the old man from the other side of the table that she'd be facing me when she did. So I see her start down from the counter at the back, towards the old man, and I pretend to press a button on my mobile and hold it to my ear so that the camera, the lens is faced towards where she'll be, serving the old man. Look, I'm just explaining all this to you, just as it happened, just so you know everything, you know there's nothing deviant about it.'

[...]

'Yes you do, I can see it in your face, that's what you think it is! Come on, you know me! Look, what I'm telling you, I'm just being honest here, guys like me, not like me, guys, just men in general, you included, they're thinking these thoughts, they're wondering about women, yes they're wondering what such and such a woman would be like naked, what she'd be like to fuck, for god's sake, this is what guys all over the world are thinking all day, all the time. And this is how I end up and you think taking a photo, taking a photo so that I could leave this girl alone, like I said, and I'm telling you the truth, even you think that's somehow abnormal. You know, at my college this girl, in my first year there, she was obsessed with a friend of mine, yeah obsessed, she had a copy of his timetable, she waited in places where she knew he'd be going past, she followed him all the time. It wouldn't surprise me if she took photos of him – and they're still together! Are you telling me that was somehow wrong?

[...]

Are you going to listen to the rest of what happened? Perhaps you should just go now. I was kind of hoping for some help here, did you perhaps not realise?

[...]

'No it wasn't because of the photo! If you'd let me finish. So she, the waitress-with-no-name, she's facing towards my table, in the café, and I'm holding my mobile to my ear, and when I can hear her talking, see I'm talking into my phone to make it look like I'm calling someone – What? Why that face? Come on – I'm trying to be honest! It's just that no one ever admits to stuff like this. Ok, quite finished? So I can hear her talking, asking the old man what he wants, and I press the button for the camera and the bloody flash goes off! And of course the waitress and the old man look over, the whole café looks over and I'm really embarrassed, and I just have the presence of mind to say, look, I'll call you back and then I pretend to examine the phone as though the flash was a complete mystery. And I sneak a look at the waitress and she actually keeps my gaze, and she smiles. She smiles at me! So I think I've got away with it. And not only that but she's smiled at me! Now I'm not so stupid or even vain to think that because a girl smiled at me that's like some kind of come on, that it's just about the same as an invitation to sleep with her. But I at least thought it meant she didn't find me loathsome, and at the very least trying to ask her out, offering to buy her a drink might stand at least a small chance of success. I mean I had no idea then nor do I now whether she has a boyfriend or not, but I'm allowed to ask aren't I? Or else how to people ever get together, how do they ever become couples and continue the fucking human race? If men aren't allowed to make polite advances to women?'

'So now, you see, after that I leave the café, with a quick thanks and a smile, which gets a small, just a small smile in return, but it's enough not to put me off, and I wait a little way down the street, because it's late afternoon, after college like I said, the café shuts at five, and I think that I'll wait for her, the waitress to come out, and then, then I'll ask her. I mean in a café it's almost silent, how are you ever going to blunder your way through some kind of chat-up line when your first word is going to cause all eyes in the place, even the cook's to look at you and be watching. So I stood down the road, waiting in a shop entrance, it was cold so I was kind of huddled, huddled in the entrance, I was rehearsing what I was going to say, and then she comes out, she's out and though I'm quick she doesn't stop, she walks across the pavement and straight onto this bus which has just pulled up. She's got one foot on the step of the bus, there's only one person in front of her before the driver and I'm nowhere. Well now I'm at the back of the queue. So what do I do? Well I could have just given up but at this point I'm both irritated and excited, you know, adrenalin pumping all ready to speak to her, and pissed off that the opportunity's passing me by. And so I get on the bus, I'm hardly thinking, I mean it's going my way anyway but I can't even look to see where she is, in case, well, you know, so I'm standing in the aisle even though there's seats, I'm facing the driver and I don't even know what I'm doing, I'm just on a bus, I can't see when she's getting off or anything. And after a while I sneak a look, just when the bus is at a stop and there's loads of commotion of people, and I see her stepping down onto the pavement, and I realise that anyway that was my stop, but all this realising is going on whilst the bus is pulling away and the girl is walking in the other direction. And one part of me is all excited because this means the girl's stop is also my stop which means she must live quite close to me which is pathetic because that means, what in a city she could be in any one of thousands of houses and it would barely make much difference anyway if she lived next door. But I'm only telling you all this so you have some idea of my state of mind, so you can see how all this lead on, one thing from another. So luckily for me, or maybe unluckily as it turns out, the next stop was only just down the road, one of those stupidly small distances between stops, and I'm first off the bus and I'm looking back and I can just make out the girl in the distance, I'm running now, running back towards her, I can see her because it's that great long High Road that my road's off, remember? And I can see her because she's wearing this white woollen hat, and her hair flows over her shoulders from underneath it, and I'm really running, because I want to see which side road she turns into. And it's mine, it's my road. Of course. And as she turned into the road she looked back and I'm only, what, fifty metres behind her now, and I wasn't sure if she'd seen me, I mean I couldn't tell because I was running, but I stop suddenly anyhow, and then she's gone round the corner. And so I dash up to the corner, and there she is, climbing the steps into a block of flats. But now she's inside, and I don't know which flat she lives in, and even if I did I can't just go knocking on her door. I mean afterwards thinking about it I realised I couldn't really have just stopped her in the street then anyway, could I? Or really anytime after we'd got on the bus, it would have been – wrong. But this was all heat of the moment thinking. And such niceties hardly help me now, do they?'

'So I'm standing on the other side of the road, just looking at her block, standing under this tree, I don't know what I'm thinking, except perhaps what the hell am I doing, but it's my road, I live in it as well, and I'm possibly thinking that because of that it's somehow more permissible for me to be there. Or something. So I'm there again the next morning, waiting for her to come out – '

[...]

'No of course I went home! Do you really think I'd have stood there all night? But in the morning I'm waiting for her to come out, and I must have been there at least an hour because I was guessing the café opened at ten but it must have been eleven, But I'm there when she comes out, and I go up to her, I cross the road and go up behind her, and I've got it all planned out what I'm going to say, you see... And then they grabbed me! These two coppers grabbed me from behind.'

[...]

'Because she'd phoned them! At least that's what I made out from their questions: the girl, she'd seen me, seen me waiting outside the night before, she probably looked once, I was only there for ten minutes, twenty at the most, and she must have looked again in the morning before she left, and there's me standing there again and she thinks, nutter, and calls the police. Tells them I'd been there all night long. And whatever but the next thing I'm carted off down to the police station. And locked up here ever since.' They said she might get a restraining order on me!'

[...]

'What's suspicious? I didn't know she'd seen me following her on the bus, did I?'

[...]

'All I was doing was trying to ask her out! Is it some crime to be a bit nervous, that I couldn't do it straight away? Jesus...'

[...]

'Well thanks. Thanks for nothing! Even you, you're not on my side. You don't even believe any of this, do you?'

(A Naturally Boisterous Child was first published in 3AM magazine (www.3ammagazine.com) in Nov 2007)