Call Me Kismet

by PJ Mayhem

  And beyond everything else it’d seem too weird to go calling Jane, saying, ‘Oh, by the way, I know I’ve been skirting around the edges of Situation Frankie with you for months but I went insane and gave him a quote from a book and he hasn’t acted on it.’ She’d want to have a full-on bitchfest about Frankie’s fuckwittedness. I can hear her now and I just don’t have the stomach for an ‘all men are bastards’ session, or the fuel for the rage.

  Goddess above, I must be in a bad way—I don’t even have the strength to get angry at men anymore!

  As the students work away at their papers, my mind drifts further. Too bad if someone pulls their text book out of their bag or gets on their digital device to look up the answers—I won’t even notice, I’m too busy imagining myself pulling a new trick out of my bag every time I go in to PGGG.

  It’s a pity I threw out the Cuddle Card, telling myself, ‘I’d never do anything like that’, but there’s a postcard I have at home that used to be on my desk pre-Broomstick with ‘Shut Up and Kiss Me You Fool’ on it. Maybe that could be my next move! Really make him squirm. Perhaps I should pop the postcard in my diary on the off chance that Sixpence None the Richer’s song ‘Kiss Me’ is playing on Retro FM one day when I am in PGGG. Who could ignore a sign like that?

  I could have all manner of fun coming up with things to hand over to Frankie until he either screams at me to stop, calls the police to have me escorted off the premises, calls the mental health crisis team for them to come and get me or takes me on the counter. Sometimes it isn’t until someone is backed into a corner that they show their true colours.

  I check the clock that ticks ominously on the wall. Buddha above, it’s only half an hour into a three-hour exam. Without any distraction, the sensation of how badly I need to shag Frankie is getting worse. I wrap my right thigh over my left, then twist my right foot around my left calf, squeezing my legs together, and chew, but don’t bite, my nails.

  Three long hours later, I’m at the station. Tiredness has pruned all of my desire and turned it to mulch. I don’t even give a second thought to the concept of Frankie whipper snippering some other woman’s edges, or co-composting at my pruning analogy. With his environmentally unfriendly rubbish disposal ways, I’m sure he’s not a composter anyway.

  I listen to a voicemail from Stephanie: ‘I need to get away from everything for an hour. Can you meet me near mine tomorrow?’

  I can’t say no. As much as I hate relatively impromptu catch-ups (I’m a week-in-advance girl) there is no question that I’ll be there for her.

  ‘What’s happening with that guy?’ Stephanie tries to be bright.

  I know I’ve told her Frankie’s name but she’s got a lot on her mind; besides, forgiving your friends is much easier than say—no, I’m not going to think about it.

  ‘Nothing really—slow progress. I haven’t got much time for anything with work at the moment.’ I take a smoke and mirrors approach then change the subject back to her.

  We share a tear and a laugh over cake and coffee—Stephanie tells me about her mother, I stick to safe territory and make her feel lucky she no longer works full-time. I’m careful not to take on too much of her ‘life doesn’t go on forever energy’ after what I’d done last time.

  On the bus heading home I get chatting to the guy sitting next to me. Obviously he starts it, I definitely wouldn’t.

  ‘I’m Hawaiian,’ he tells me.

  ‘Oh, a friend of mine goes to Hawaii every year, she loves it.’ Pleasant chit-chat with strangers is quite my forte—no demands, nothing at stake, so I can pleasantly bob along the surface.

  We get off the bus at the same stop (as fate would have it) and he appears to have misinterpreted my enthusiastic banter—he’s writing his details on a piece of paper for me. I glance at it and note his name is Kainoa Pukui.

  ‘Oh, one more thing,’ Kainoa calls after me once we’ve said our goodbyes and I’ve disinterestedly dropped his note into my handbag. I turn back. ‘I’m thirty-seven, I know I look younger.’

  ‘That’s OK—I like older men,’ I say, laughing, and fly off down the street, delighted he felt the need to clarify that. Who says I need Intense Reinforcing Anti-Wrinkle Eye Cream?

  35

  Hello, my name is Kismet Johnson and I’m a Frankie addict.

  Surely there must be some kind of twelve-step program for this sort of behaviour? Possessed by a force far greater than good sense, my survival instincts seem to have gone into hiding. One week on from the note passing, prepped to the max—my eyelashes have been curled at least a thousand times, underwear packed in my bag to pop on later, I’m walking down the street to PGGG. I may as well just get facing Frankie out of the way. How much worse can it get? I’m so nervous every time I leave the house that surely whatever happens is going to be better than living with that constant sick feeling. And after his physical appreciation of my chest on Thursday night, I don’t feel overly repellent to him. I’m not throwing myself at him by making a special trip—I’m just popping by on my way to lunch with my family (hence the underwear in my bag). Baking is still beyond me.

  I give myself a last-minute talk. It will be fine. Only what is best for my highest good can play out here. What doesn’t kill me will make me stronger. I can handle this. In for five hundred grams of salad greens, in for a kilo! But only Ms Terse-at-the-Till is there. Frankie is nowhere to be seen or heard.

  Of course he didn’t see you and has run out the back to hide—Ms Middle-of-the-Road wrestles her evil twin, Ms Paranoid-and-Chronically-Insecure, who is sure she saw the flash of a male figure risk life and limb as he leapt from the ladder to dash out the side.

  I’m scouring safe dessert selections like nougat and biscuits—innocuous if dropped and reasonably easy to handle when shaking like a leaf—when the squeak of a sneaker startles me. I look up just as Frankie is passing.

  ‘Hi,’ he says in a ‘fuck, I’d rather not talk to you at all’ manner.

  ‘Hi, Frankie,’ I squawk, certain I sound like a chain-smoking cockatoo.

  Ms Terse-at-the-Till comes out from behind the counter holding a broom. She moves closer, pretending she’s sweeping to get a better view—or maybe she’s going to fly into a jealous rage and beat me to death. Hard to know.

  Focus on what’s in front of you, I remind myself, one of Amethyst’s tips to manage my anxiety. I turn back to the biscuits and nougat, all blurry now. I close my eyes, try to breathe and regain my emotional equilibrium, and clear my eyes. The only sound I hear is the shattering of all hope in my head. Just grab something—anything—then all you have to do is walk to the till and pay, you can do that.

  Without looking, I reach forward and take the first packet my hand lands on.

  Who was I kidding? I’ve got about as much of a karmic connection with Frankie as I do with one of the cucumbers my gaze has landed on. Bad choice, too phallic and they make me sick. I look at the cauliflowers instead.

  You started it, Frankie, you with your seagull eyes looking at me like I was a hot chip!

  Frankie moves away from the counter as I approach. He’s been using Ms Terse-at-the-Till as a human shield. I put my head down and scuff at the floor as she rings up my purchase—Cardamom, Macadamia, Kumquat and Pineapple Nougat, that’s going to go down a treat, not. But I’m in no position to care. I pay and get out of there as fast as possible.

  Honestly, Frankie wouldn’t have noticed if I’d been wearing a pair of nanna knickers as a beanie let alone had a hint of visible panty line.

  I package my disappointment up in a tight bundle and return to Plan A: living in Shanghai with a Silicone Frankie. That’d have to be better than living with the real thing. I tell Lionel as much in our next session.

  ‘If you truly didn’t care and were over him, you wouldn’t be sitting here talking about him.’ Lionel sounds a little peeved.

  Touché, Lionel.

  I try to sit up tall in the apricot Jason recliner to give my Frankie declaration some dignity. Not eas
y considering my ankles are up around my ears.

  ‘I want you to email the Hawaiian guy, see what happens.’ He puts his hand up at my objection. ‘As an exercise. Maybe you just need to freshen things up a bit. Frankie probably feels too safe now. Time to snap the rubber band.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Snap the rubber band: pulling back a bit so Frankie can snap back to you. Be open to other opportunities. Better still—create them.’

  ‘I do try to entertain the possibility of other men but, to be honest, no one else does it for me.’ I push myself up as far as I can on the chair.

  ‘The Hawaiian, Kismet, write an email and send it.’

  After what happened last time I took Lionel’s advice I’m not sure it’s a good idea but I agree. Exploring other options can’t hurt anything. I know any semi-decent bookie would put the odds of anything happening between Frankie and me lower than Hitler reaching enlightenment the next time he’s incarnated, but bookies probably don’t believe in signs and destiny.

  ‘Sure, I’ll do it when I get home from work tonight,’ I promise as I rush out to get back to work.

  36

  Sorry, Spirit, but fuck, shit and hell, I think that’s Frankie.

  I squint down the street as I walk to the bus stop and have a louder than sneaking suspicion that the figure I can see surrounded by workmen is said fruitologist.

  Kill me now a thousand times over, maybe more. A few steps closer I realise it’s definitely him. I prepare to enter Humiliation Central and try not to drop dead from anxiety. Although why I’m trying not to die from anxiety when it’d be preferable to facing him with all these men around, I’m not sure. Could Spirit have thrown a more torturous situation in my path? Do I speak? Do I look in his direction? Do I not? He seems pretty immersed in the conversation. What if I speak to him or even just look at him and he blanks me in front of everyone?

  I’m not good saying ‘hi’ to someone if they’re engaged in conversation with another person, let alone a group. I can’t even do it at work, never mind with Frankie and a gang of workmen first thing in the morning. I haven’t even finished my coffee.

  My mouth gets drier with each step. If my hands weren’t shaking so much I’d take another sip of coffee to lubricate it a little. I look at the ground, trying to figure out what to do. I have so many butterflies that if I can manage to open my mouth I fear they’ll come flying out like racing pigeons. My near constant state of queasiness amps up—if it’s only butterflies that come out when I open my mouth I’ll be happy. If I vomit in front of them I will die, I’m sure of it.

  I’m sure the rapid side-step I’ve just made to dodge a guy delivering pig carcasses to the butchers, then another to avoid a cable layer’s legs sticking out of a ditch don’t help the situation. The actual pig’s carcass itself is probably not helping either, nor is being precariously close to being hit in the head with a pig’s trotter for all to see.

  Oh no, I can’t do it—I can’t say ‘hi’ to him. But I make myself lift my head and half-look at him so if he ignores me it won’t be obvious that I was expecting him to acknowledge me.

  ‘Hi, Fiona, how are you?’ Bless Frankie. He stops talking to the workmen and turns to me in full Mr Putney-Road-Alpha-Male mode.

  I look at him fully and deliver another original, ‘Hi, Frankie.’

  Beyond not getting a gig on the public speaking circuit, I doubt either of us will be writing a How to Make Your Mark Mingling and Maximising Small Talk book anytime soon either.

  Frankie looks into my eyes and I look back into his. I raise my eyebrow slightly, not intentionally—it’s another one of those ‘no control over my physical functions or actions’ things that hit me around him. I hope it compensates for the lack of enthusiasm in my tired, timid voice.

  As Frankie and I look at each other I can feel the workmen looking at us. There is so much sizzle going on that when a second guy comes by labouring under the weight of a pig carcass on each shoulder, I expect the meat to have crispy crackling by the time he gets it inside the butcher.

  Why him? I can almost hear the cogs of the workmen’s brains as they watch me turn to a steamy pile of mush, while Frankie puffs out his chest and broadens his shoulders.

  ‘Have a good day, Frankie.’ I give him a wave, fingers fluttering like snowflakes. I don’t skip (even though if I weren’t so tired I’d want to) but I do trot down to the bus stop, asking myself exactly the same question the workmen were thinking.

  On Saturday the weather is spectacular. The sun glistens off the waters of the bay. It’s so bright coming through the floor-to-ceiling windows of Amethyst’s waiting room I have to put my sunglasses on.

  ‘Can’t you just fix it?’ I say jokingly to Amethyst, head in my hands, when I get into my session. Of course I’m talking about Situation Frankie.

  ‘I can fix it when you’re ready for it to be fixed,’ she says. ‘But you can’t bypass the process, Kismet. You need to live through your karmic lessons to evolve. You can’t run screaming down your spiritual path. Our energetic and physical journeys are really very similar: you must crawl before you can walk.’

  Oh my Buddha, I’ve been crawling so long my knees are bloody and my hands raw. I want to ask if there isn’t some sort of spiritual bullet train that I can take to put an end to this ordeal but I don’t imagine she’ll find the humour in it.

  ‘Trust more, Kismet … the Universe, yourself, the signs—that’s what my guides say you need to hear.’ Forefingers and middle fingers rubbing her temples. ‘But there’s something more. I’m not getting it clearly right now. Let me get you on the table. I’m sure it’ll come through when your energetic field is less congested.’

  Once I’m on the table, Amethyst waves a chunk of turquoise around my aura, darting it this way and that. ‘It’s a potent healer, this one. It bridges the space between heaven and earth and will—Oh, hang on, I knew this would happen.’ She lays the piece of turquoise on the table beside me and moves her fingers to her temples again. ‘Yes, yes. I thought so. Vulnerability, Kismet. You need to show him your vulnerability, exposing that side of yourself to him will help, they tell me.’

  ‘I’m pretty sure I might have already done that.’

  ‘No, no. I knew there was a reason I chose turquoise for you today. It’s not a crystal I’d normally think aligns with your energy but it was calling me so strongly and now I know why. Turquoise helps you speak your truth. You’re still putting up a front around him.’

  She picks up the turquoise again. ‘Oh my, oh dear, what’s going on there?’ Amethyst’s not expecting an answer—I know she’s talking to my energy. ‘Kismet, your root chakra is turning the crystal into a hot rock.’

  Well, I did mention the sizzle, I think, but to tell her about the full level of my desire would only make me feel like I was exposing another of my spiritual failings.

  As I leave she reminds me, ‘Be grateful to Frankie, he’s an excellent spiritual teacher for you. He’s really pushing your energetic evolution to heights you wouldn’t have reached so quickly if you’d stayed in your comfort zone.’

  Spiritual teacher, my karmic asana, some people would say. But I really do need to have faith and trust. I haven’t spent this long on the spiritual path for nothing.

  I’m not madly excited when I finally get an email back from the Hawaiian guy on Tuesday. I’d contacted him as per Lionel’s homework, though I’d nearly stalled at his email address. Supa_bambang_like2partay@gmail.com so isn’t me.

  I open the email, not really caring what he says, but I am curious, that’s just my nature.

  It’s totally BLANK! Not a keystroke in there.

  I close it and re-open it to check.

  Nope, definitely blank.

  The third time I look at it, I see that the sender’s name is different from the one he gave me. Kainoa Pukui is really Suparman Bambang Prakoso!

  Not that being Indonesian, as his name indicates, is a problem. It was the dishonesty about being Hawaiian. At
least it proved my intuition was correct—I’d known something didn’t feel right. There had to be some reason I wasn’t attracted to him—I’d always fancied dating a Hawaiian.

  The following day another email comes through from him with CALL ME and his number in the subject line. Nothing in the body of the email again!

  What am I, some sort of dog? I don’t think so, sweetheart. What good is a man who doesn’t use words?

  Unlike Frankie, I bandy Suparman Bambang Prakoso around the office for entertainment. I feel a new lease of life, having a little fun again. According to everyone there, I should ‘Stop being a princess about how you were approached. Just go out with him as practice for when someone you really like comes along.’

  Everyone apart from Bing that is—he is outraged at Suparman lying to me.

  I don’t intend to even email Suparman back, let alone call him. Apart from the fact that I have less than no desire to, I’m totally irritated by the email.

  Maybe I should direct my rubber banding energies back to Jack? What did it matter if he didn’t have the same sense of humour as me; I could always snort with Jane. As for chemistry, maybe it would develop. I mean, you hear about people being just friends at the outset all the time. They probably even learnt to overlook things like unattractive forearms.

  37

  There are three reasons I once again decide to bite the bullet and return to PGGG on Monday night:

  My obvious Frankie addiction—am yet to locate a Frankie Fetishes Anonymous (not that I’ve tried).

  The dismal failure of the email exchange with Suparman in Mission Moving On/Rubber Banding.

  Amethyst’s words of wisdom—I’m committing to my spiritual path, being bigger than my ego, having faith and trusting.