I Just Like Your Face

I spent my Sunday morning catching up with one of my best friends from university, Harriet. It was amazing talking to her over Skype - we hadn't properly chatted in an almost criminal amount of time, but as soon as I saw her on my screen, it was as if we were sitting at her kitchen table, clutching mugs of hot tea, gossiping over good boys, bad men and literature. I told her about the exciting events of my weekend - something had happened with Mr. Swipey! I gave her all the juicy details, we discussed the ever-important rules of Who Shouldn’t Text Who, and I wondered aloud how I'd approach the whole subject on my blog.

"You should write a parental advisory warning at the top, to actually advise parents not to read it!" she said.
"Yeah, but they're gonna read it anyway," I moaned.
"Yes but then you can say that you warned them beforehand! It's not your problem!"

So I follow Harriet's suggestion and stick a big, black and white PARENTAL ADVISORY sticker on this post. Not that there is anything actually, ahem, untoward in this entry, but I'm just always embarrassed about talking about boys on here. Despite this embarrassment, I want to write about it, because it makes good writing! I'm getting out my big broom and shooing you all out: shoo! Shoo! Get gone, you older generation!

...You're going to read it anyway, I know. You're all nosy gossips.

I met Mr. Swipey at a cinema in town on Saturday evening, to see La Grande Bellezza with him. The film was peculiar and wonderful and often confusing, something I was glad I could go see with someone like Mr. Swipey, who would want to really talk about it when the lights went up. We sat side by side, sharing an armrest, occasionally accidentally touching hands in the popcorn box. Each instance of minute physical contact I registered - I had mentally marked this night as the night that I was going to finally kiss him, because we'd been hanging out for about a month now, and there was only so much more of prolonged eye contact and standing-much-too-close-to-one-another that I could take.

The film finished, and I clutched my chest as the credits started to roll, softly appearing over a long shot that took you down the Tiber river. “I don’t know how I’m supposed to feel,” I said, eyes still fixed to the screen. My heart was racing and I felt emotion well inside of me. “Am I supposed to be happy? Am I supposed to be sad?” Swipey laughed, and started telling me about what he took from the movie. As we left the cinema, we started making connections and talking about the motifs of the film, figuring out what Paolo Sorrentino was trying to convey through our extended conversation. Mr. Swipey had a theory that the protagonist had died halfway through the film, and the rest of the screenplay was simply set in his version of heaven. I was having none of it.

We walked out on to the street and decided to hit up a bar for a couple of drinks and food. I ordered sweet potato fries and calamari, and as we ate I talked about the stress I’d been suffering as of late. “It just feels like - I just know that no-one, despite what they say, no-one  here, in Toronto, actually cares about me. No-one asks about how I’m doing, or how my day was… no-one,” I said at one point, gesticulating exasperatedly. Swipey raised his eyebrows and cocked his head to the side: “I care,” he said, with a half-smile. “I’m sorry,” he backtracked, “that sounded a bit disingenuous, didn’t it?” We laughed. Swipey told me that his father had a book which talked about the practice of mindfulness: “you have mindfulness in Scotland, don’t you?” For a brief second my imagination painted a picture of highlanders roaming the glens with zen-like serenity. Of course we had mindfulness in Scotland, what kind of question was that!? Swipey elaborated: “You just focus on the present moment, like, the sounds, the sensations… because at this point the past doesn’t really exist, and the future is fluid - I mean, technically, even the present doesn’t really exist, as it’s constantly being generated and lost at the same time.” I sipped on my rum and coke and nodded along, wondering how I was going to get him to kiss me later that night.

After paying the bill, we hit the road, walking into the cold Toronto night. Swipey lent me his hat to cover my ears. We took side streets and residential roads, Swipey often powering ahead while I teetered along on the ice, grumbling to myself. After about fifteen minutes walking southwest, he turned to me and said, “Wait - where are we going? Am I walking you home?” I replied with a slightly overenthusiastic “yeayuh!” Small crowds of partiers and smokers were gathered in clusters outside the cool Saturday night clubs on College Street. Mr. Swipey and I talked fast - riffing off of each other’s jokes and mispronunciations, creating endless remixes of the conversations we’d been having. I could speak and squeak and make peculiar noises, I could talk in tongues or made-up accents, and he would get it, he’d laugh. He felt like the only person in the city who really got me.

Out of the cold, in my front door, we traipsed upstairs to my tiny room where Swipey would take a break from walking before heading off west for home. We lay back on the bed and he took out a book he’d bought earlier that day. We took turns reading out different lines, creating mysterious accents and misreading lines. After a while, he sat back up and said he had to go back home. This wasn't part of my plan. As he reached for one of his boots, I blurted out, “don’t go!” He paused and turned to me. I couldn’t say anything else but, “I’m so lonely,” in a half-joking tone. He sighed and set his boot back down on the floor. “You know, you joke around a lot,” he said, “and I can’t tell sometimes if you’re joking for fun, or using it to disguise something which you’re actually really serious about.” I tried to say something, but I could only shrug my shoulders and manage an “I don’t know.” Swipey then stood up to go, and, again, the little words, “don’t leave!” flew out of my mouth. He looked at me, expecting an elaboration. I gestured a bit and sighed, and tried to figure out what I wanted to say. Eventually, I just went for it:

“I just like your face.”

“I also like your face,” Swipey replied. I cocked my head to the side and scrunched up my nose, asking, “Are we gonna do anything about that?” He sighed and brought up the Such Good Friends card, which I was familiar with. We work really well together as friends, he said. It would be a shame to do something which had the potential to mess it all up. And, he said, I was in a weird place, emotionally. I would probably take things differently, being lost and lonely and displaced in a new country. I totally knew what he meant: I didn’t want to lose what I had with him as friends, we’d spent so many afternoons and evenings together talking and laughing, and I recognised him as one of the sole people that I could be honest with in the city. I also knew that I had a lot of pent-up affection, which wasn’t necessarily for him, but instead was a result of not having any real human contact from friends or family for two months.

I told him I understood. I understood, but I just missed being hugged, or having my hand held, or resting my head on someone’s shoulder. I missed that. He sat back down and took off his boots. “Would it make you feel better if we just cuddled, then? We can watch an episode of something?” Just cuddling. No complications. I could do that.

I decided we should catch up with Hannibal - nothing like a bit of gore and cannibalism for a sleepy spooning session. I lay down on my side, Swipey putting his arms around me and resting his head on my shoulder. We held each others’ hands while we watched Dr. Lecter chop people’s legs off and be absolutely, subversively horrible to everyone. It felt so lovely, just another human being willing to hold me and make me feel at home.

Eventually, Hannibal finished and I closed the laptop with a squeak of anticipation for next week’s episode. “I’m gonna be honest,” Mr. Swipey said, “…I didn’t catch, like, half of that.” I laughed and told him it didn’t matter; we rearranged ourselves so I lay with my head on his chest. After a few minutes of sleepy silence, I heard my flatmate and her new boyfriend enter downstairs. They were chatting away, and as I heard them ascend the stairs, I cringed internally, because I knew what was going to happen soon. My flatmate often enjoyed spending rather loud, uh, quality time with guys. Very loud.

So now I was lying with my head on Mr. Swipey’s chest, the both of us silently pretending that we couldn’t hear the exclamations coming from the room up the hall. I was practicing my mindfulness, focusing on the present moment with Mr. Swipey. This is nice, I told myself, this is not complicated. We are not complicating things, and it’s good. All the same, I couldn’t help giggling quietly about the situation. “Do you hear that?!” I whispered to Swipey. “Mhm,” he nodded, “she sounds like a broken carburettor.” I laughed and we settled into another sleepy silence. Despite being close and quiet, I could tell that neither of us felt as calm and collected on the inside. The pace of our heartbeats betrayed us. I moved a little. He moved a little. Then, slowly, slowly, somehow his face found mine, and we kissed.

And just like that, it became complicated.