by PJ Mayhem
Mutual Eye Contact: 7.5—The dip there was my fault.
With things going as well as they are there’s no need to force the issue. Still, I’m acting like a drug mule at Customs whose heroin-filled condom has burst on the plane: edgy and fidgety and my eyes keep darting out to the street. I’d asked the Universe for a sign this morning to tell me without a doubt what to do.
Nodding and murmuring in the appropriate places as Frankie chats on, I search for sausage dogs or at least someone in one of those bunny-adorned Souths caps or shirts or something. When none of that appears my gaze zips around inside the shop for a sign. Nothing. I take another quick look outside.
Frankie has stopped talking and I know it’s time for me to leave, but I’m standing there, signless, unable to move. Except for my hand, which reaches into my bag.
‘I just have to give you this.’ I pull the note from between the pages of my diary and thrust it at Frankie, with all the grace of a gymnast missing the bar, landing on their arse. It’s my take on the quote from The Thirteenth Tale: If you hypnotise a man with green eyes, he will never know there is a girl behind those eyes looking back at him.
It is such a flustered and ungainly manoeuvre that I can only pray to Spirit, the Universe and every deity in existence that he will find something endearing in my clunkiness.
Once I’ve handed over the note it’s as though I’ve accepted a baton in a relay race. I take off, running from the store. Holy motherfornicating Goddess hell, Ms Middle-of-the-Road is so out of control that I should be arrested for reckless driving. In my defence, Stephanie’s ‘We think life goes on forever’ comment has played a part here. Her words had been hovering in my mind all week.
Oh, Kismet, what have you done? I scream silently, hurtling home as quickly as I can. Which, given I feel as though I’ll die if my humiliation catches up with me, is faster than I’ve ever moved before. I barely even notice a red short-haired dachshund as I run past it.
Doing things like that at 2.15pm when you haven’t eaten all day. Ridiculous! I should know better. Plus I’d promised myself I wasn’t going to do anything extreme until I’d consulted with Amethyst. Yet I’d done it. And, oh my Buddha, I freaking did it in front of someone; there was someone behind me.
When I get home I google whether it’s possible to die of humiliation.
‘OK, Kismet, calm down. This may be confronting and a bit embarrassing and it may mean that right now you’re feeling quite traumatised and you may have to go to the other bus stop tomorrow. But your life is not going to end, for Govinda’s sake—Google just proved it.’
But what if Google is wrong. What if I’m the first?
Obviously if Frankie doesn’t do anything, like come out and see me or mention it as I’m passing or pursue me in some way, I can’t ever go back into PGGG. Simple. The name forgetting was one thing but this—well, this is something else entirely.
On the upside—which I do take quite a while to find—at least I’m not waiting for him to call as I didn’t give him my number. That would be the drawn-out torture of peeling off a never-ending band-aid, minute by minute, hour by hour. I mean, someone ‘normal’ would have probably just given him their number and said, ‘Give me a call sometime.’ Or better still, just kept the conversation going with something like, ‘Hey, I’ve noticed you’re a Souths fan, would you believe John Sutton and some other players once asked me for directions?’
But not me, I had to go all Jane Austen again and pass over a handwritten quote from a freaking novel that may make me sense to me and to Lionel but probably not to Frankie. Now he’s really going to think I’m some conceited bunny-boiling maniac!
The magnitude of my trauma is evidenced by the fact that in my Post Note Passing Trauma State I’ve even blanked out what songs were playing in PGGG. But if I were going with the theme of my behaviour, Retro FM would have been spinning Gnarls Barkley’s ‘Crazy’ or maybe Prince’s ‘Let’s Go Crazy’—it certainly appeared I had—or even Cheap Trick’s ‘I Want You to Want Me’, seeing as I’d been pushed to such extremes … the possibilities are endless. Running through them provides a brief respite from my thoughts but as soon as I hope I might be on the verge of not so much calming down as slightly de-escalating my hysteria, they’re back again.
I put on Aurora’s ‘I Went Too Far’ and Sarah Blasko’s ‘No Turning Back’ and sing and dance around for a few minutes to buy myself a little more time to escape my thoughts, but as soon as they’re over my head is flooded again. Rescue Remedy proves fraudulently ineffectual—twenty drops under my tongue doesn’t even take the edge off. Hypno-breathing is hopeless.
I think I’m going to vomit. I run to the bathroom but it’s a false alarm. A good thing I hadn’t eaten. I definitely won’t be able to eat tonight.
I spin around, not sure what to do. I tidy things that don’t need tidying, I wash up, I vacuum, I search for jobs, I do anything. Every time my body and brain stop simultaneously what I’ve done hits me and I feel ill again, paranoia snapping through my thoughts like a starved pelican at a fish market.
You’re a fucking idiot, Fiona. Everything was going fine—you’d had quite a nice chat and everything was fine. That’s the worst thing—it was all perfectly lovely and now you’ve gone and ruined everything!
My paranoia is set on calling me Fiona—I’m sure Amethyst and Lionel would have a field day with that.
Maybe I can pretend it was just a dream. Back on my bed, I throw my Meditation for Monkey Minds CD across the room—as effective as the bloody Rescue Remedy and hypno-breathing!
Dying mothers indeed. I should have known better than to act on someone else’s karmic journey.
33
I’m not having a nervous breakdown, I’m putting my make-up on, I’m curling my eyelashes. I’ve set my intentions, I’ve picked my Meditations for a Monkey Mind CD up off the floor, and I am going to om myself into a state of elevated consciousness. Sure, I might have been googling natural rat repellents and throwing liniment and peppermint oil around my kitchen cupboards at 2am when I heard the rustling of rats, but I am perfectly in control now.
My previous distress was misguided. The rats, apart from the one I can still smell decaying in my ceiling, have decided that my kitchen cupboard, with its cosy little hot water system, can provide them comfort in their grief. I was pleased to discover it had only been one member of the rat troupe that had died in the ceiling—from the sound of the rustling the others were alive and very comfortable snuggled in with my hot water system. I didn’t want to cast them out to the street, but they need to find new quarters and another rehearsal space for their Riverdancing ways.
And in terms of my not having a nervous breakdown, I may have only got four hours of broken sleep but I’m not crying, I’m not collapsed on my bed, surrounded by tissues, bunkered down and planning to watch daytime TV and eat triple chocolate mud cake for the rest of my life, or even just today. I’m going to walk out the door and face the world.
All those people you think are looking at you as you go by their shops, Kismet, they’re not, you are just being paranoid. Ms Middle-of-the-Road’s cogs grind as I try to get her into gear. I begin counting my steps in Chinese on a loop of eight. It’s the most calming thing I can do and it keeps my feet moving, one in front of the other.
It’s not too late to turn around and head back to the bus stop in the other direction. It would be so easy. But I have to be stronger than I think I am. If I don’t do this today, I won’t ever be able to go past PGGG again. My breath scratches at my throat. I have a coffee in my hand, though I’m not sure how it got there—Jack, obviously, but I’d blanked out the whole interaction.
Holy mother of Buddha, I’m going to die—there’s someone walking out of PGGG as I approach. My glassy eyes can’t focus enough to recognise who it is. I may not be having a nervous breakdown but I think I am definitely about to have a stroke.
Ms Paranoid-Nowhere-Near-the-Middle-of-the-Road has taken over the wheel and I wonder,
Have shopkeeper secret messages tumbled down the street like dominoes to tell Frankie I’m coming?
Without looking again, I lower my head. I take furtive glances from under the veil of my hair. Relief or devastation—I don’t know which emotion to choose when I recognise the socks as Raymond’s.
The street is still a warzone with the road works that have been going on for weeks. Angels disguised as council workers in high-vis vests have barricaded the footpath so I don’t have to walk directly past the doorway of the PGGG but I can feel Raymond’s eyes on me.
No, I’m not having a nervous breakdown, I tell myself again. My breath might now just be skimming the opening of my nostrils, little droplets of coffee might be shaking through the lid of the cup, and someone might ask me if I need a hand as I try to navigate extracting my card from my bag to tap on as I board the bus. The bus Spirit sent immediately on my arrival at the bus stop to scoop me up from my humiliation. (Thank you, Spirit.) But I’m fine. The worst is over. I’ve done it.
I billow out a breath of relief and sink onto the bus seat. A strange sense of calm washes over me (a miracle really, given I’m on public transport) and I feel more free and less focussed on the outcome of my actions. Letting go and letting the Goddess.
It takes only till the bus stops at the next traffic light for this to change. In my not-moving state, my mind unoccupied by cycling from ‘yi’ to ‘ba’ to count my steps, the murky waters of fear come washing over me. What will my next interaction with Frankie be?
Of course I’m not going into PGGG, that would be insane—humiliating and insane. If Frankie doesn’t pursue me, I shall forfeit my purchases from the Purveyor of Putney’s Finest Fresh Produce since 1963 and seek my salad greens elsewhere.
Waves of nausea rise, their undertow pulling me further down with each turn of the bus’s tyres. I fight against them, momentarily settling back in to Everything will be fine—Spirit has it all under control, before a fresh swell rises to submerge me.
I arrive at work and try to pretend everything is normal. ‘Fine, thanks. Yes, a nice weekend, yours?’ I say as people pass my desk on their way in, my voice as taut as a tightrope.
My movements match my robotic response. I shift files from the Quite Urgent pile on my left to the Super Urgent pile on my right, then move them to the Extremely Urgent pile in front of me. Steel girder straight and strong, I type furiously in my effort to block Frankie and what I’ve done from my mind.
But as the morning wears on the lulls become fewer and the swells become bigger, building to tsunamic waves of nausea. At lunchtime the day remains a sign desert. On the treadmill I’m so desperate that I beg Spirit for a sign. Two tiny sporty logos appear, but I think they’re only half a straw I’m clutching at.
This is weird and fabulous, this is fabulously weird, I think, reaching some sort of high when I get back to my desk. It could be the endorphins from the gym.
Sitting opposite Broomstick, the Prioritising Compliance within the Organisational and Academic Structure Report on her desk between us, I smile at her. I watch her Adam’s apple bob up and down as she prattles on, thinking, No, I think I have actually gone insane. I can’t believe I did that. But in this instant I feel fabulous and free and like nothing at all matters anymore. Even the desire to beat Broomstick to death with the report, stapler, phone handset or hole punch as I’d visualised myself doing in some karmically unsound moments has disappeared.
Maybe I haven’t gone insane, maybe I’ve reached enlightenment.
I’m not sure how to tell.
Thursday brings a freakishly hot day—global warming refusing to be ignored. Facing a furnace of thirty-five degrees, the city is set to become a pressure cooker. For four and a half days, the note and every other interaction, look, thought and feeling I’ve ever had with or about Frankie has been thrust under the microscope of my mind, magnified until there’s no room for anything else. It’s not just every waking hour; they take over my scraps of sleep as well, tormenting me through my dreams. I toss and turn, feeling as though I haven’t slept at all.
I’ve cast Lovers’ Oracle cards and ‘Manifesting my Mojo’ meditations aside for hypno-breathing and Amethyst’s ‘Acting My Life’ meditations. I need them to get me out the door. Today I’m trying I make the right choices every time and everything is perfect in my life as it is right now on for size.
I’ll miss the flirtation, the mystery, the build-up, the wonder and the fantasy of Frankie. I might even miss Frankie a bit too.
Lost in thought, outside Jack’s I nearly run directly into someone wearing a T-shirt similar to the style Frankie wears. At least the signs have returned but sporty logos, Souths bunnies and even sausage dogs are cold comfort in the harsh light of Frankie’s complete lack of response.
‘You look cute, like a teenager.’ Jack eyes me in my Chinese-influenced sleeveless top and black three-quarter pants.
‘It’s so hot, I can’t stand it,’ I say.
My breath catches on my way to the bus stop as a bald spot emerges from the entrance of PGGG. Bloody Frankie! I think. Now so much time has passed I was hoping I wouldn’t have to deal with him until I’d sought guidance from Lionel.
Calm yourself, Kismet, false alarm. Closer to the PGGG, I realise it’s Raymond again.
My angels of the high-vis vest wearing variety have inched their earthly pavement digging and cabling mission to almost directly outside PGGG. They part like a sea and down shovels as I walk through them. I keep my eyes on the ground, but I feel them watching me.
Thank you, great Goddess of salvaging some pride, I think, hoping Raymond is still watching. Working on the principle that people can catch your thoughts (Amethyst, of course) I put so much effort into giving power to my next thought that I fear I could burst a blood vessel in my brain. See, Frankie? I’m not some desperate freak—I can still turn heads, so you should be gobsmacked, delighted and flattered that you’ve driven me so close to the point of insanity that I’m indulging in bizarre non-me behaviour like thrusting quotes at you.
I admit it’s asking a lot of someone to catch a thought that long but eventually Spirit was going to come up with the proof of the pudding; as everyone I encountered on the spiritual path kept reminding me: ‘Spirit has an infinite capacity to deliver.’
On the bus, I stare out the window. As the adrenalin of the perving angels abates, I’m hit with an awful thought. Maybe Ms Terse-at-the-Till is Frankie’s partner and she’s found the note and killed him. Perhaps that’s why Raymond keeps coming out, he’s trying to work up the courage to tell me. It’s alarming that I haven’t even heard a sneaker squeak since the incident.
‘Not that you care, Kismet, you’re practising non-attachment, remember?’ The echo of Amethyst on Enlightenment Day comes screeching through like a parrot on my shoulder. But I’m not failing at non-attachment; I simply hate unanswered questions.
The niggling feeling that I’ll see Frankie tonight creeps up on me and stays all day. I’m sure it’s intuitive knowing, although it could just be the hope that I’ll solve the mystery of his imagined demise.
Even though I’m trying to be non-attached, I can’t say I don’t experience a slight surge of disappointment when I pass PGGG that evening and it’s closed. Then I remind myself it’s perfect, because I need to see Lionel before Frankie.
A few steps down the street, I look up and there’s the bald spot I’ve been longing to see.
‘Hi, Fiona, how are you?’ Frankie turns from the quartet of shopkeepers when I reach him.
‘Hi, Frankie.’ Oh Great Govinda, I think I just arched an eyebrow. What has become of me? Why can’t I control myself around him?
His eyes move towards me—towards my chest, to be precise. Seems the message in the note may have been entirely wasted on him, but good to know he has manly desires—a girl can’t live on deep drowning glances alone.
Fuck, fuck, fuck! (Yes, fuck, sorry, Spirit!) I think and keep walking, wondering if he’s watching. Ms Completely-off-the-C
entre-of-the-Road is wishing/hoping that he will follow but Ms Middle-of-the-Road knows he won’t.
There’s a time and a place to practise non-attachment and I’m afraid this isn’t it. I don’t even seem to have the power to—the spell that overtakes me whenever I see Frankie has been cast again. I swoon down the street, legs weaving into each other like the strands of plaits.
34
Tonight I have the excitement of supervising an exam. Well, ‘invigilating’, as Broomstick insists we call it now. I’m sitting at the front of a large room full of students. With the electricity of exam nerves buzzing around, every hair follicle within a hundred-metre radius must be standing on end. I could do something like read the new Government Compliance Guidelines to kill the time, or I could slash myself to death with them. Death by papercuts would be preferable. Looking at the sea of anxious faces, I remind myself that I have a responsibility to provide conditions that are conducive to exam sitting, so I don’t think the latter would be appropriate.
To make productive use of my time I try doing a little of the proofreading I’ve brought with me. I can’t concentrate on it. Not that it requires great concentration, however, I can’t really think of anything but the inexplicable way Frankie affects me.
I’m too protective of the kernel of him that’s growing in the seed of my heart to Phone-a-Friend for answers.
Even though a few months ago I would have been madly poking my finger at the favourites on my phone to call Jane before Frankie’s eyes were back in their sockets last night, I hadn’t even thought to text her about it. I’m having a hard enough time as it is trying to cling to my friendships, just managing to hang onto most of them by a thread with one-line texts because I have nothing more to give. The last thing I need is to have to defend myself or listen to anyone tell me what I should do. I knew what people would say if I told them about Frankie and I didn’t want to hear it. They wouldn’t get it, whatever ‘it’ was exactly. More than ever before Frankie had become the terrain of trained professionals.
