*I actually wrote this entry over a week ago - but my phone lines weren't working*
Fucking TSTT. Fucking TSTT. Fucking telephone, mobile and internet provider. The fucking bastard took away my phone – oh, no folks, they did not cut it; my mother is quite punctual when it comes to paying bills.
“You know how forgetful you Niggars are when it comes to paying bills.” – Dave Chappelle to the Niggar family
Recently, the phone service would just go completely, for several days at a time – no warning, no notice, and most appropriately, no explanation as to its occurrence.
Anyway, I am writing this entry on Sunday night, about the events of the previous one. A quite interesting night indeed. A night interesting enough by itself, but in my opinion (and the only one that counts being owner of this diary and all), far more interesting when put in perspective with the last few entries I have written.
But fuck! I am getting ahead of myself – something I usually do on purpose – but this is genuine forgetfulness at work, here. The fun, as I now recall, really started a couple days earlier – on Thursday night.
Now, Tiragem Roça is several things – a painter, a writer, an owner of secrets, and apparently a painter/writer/secret-owner who refers to herself in the third person. What Ms. Roça is not, however, is a two-timer. With this whole arrangement with the Mark of The Penis, and what not, I decided it best to cool things off with Zodiac. It is not as if sexual things have not happened between us, and oh I am not only speaking of massaging each other’s throats with our tongues. I am talking about me getting an orgasm in the back of another guy’s car at Zodiac’s hands. Fingers, to be more precise. I still get turned on thinking about it.
Hm. I never mentioned that, did I? But I did say I was the owner of secrets, did I not?
We had class together on Thursday night – 3.1 – the advanced audit paper. He annoyed me throughout class. Zodiac, you understand, is one of those guys who constantly puts his hand up to answer questions, which is slightly irritating, but that is fine. What I cannot entirely endure is him also constantly interrupting the teacher to make stupid jokes or comments, which people laugh at, mind you. A bit of that is and welcome (once intermittent) break from the monotony of class – too much is fucking annoying, and makes me want to constantly use the bathroom in hopes that they would get back to talking about advanced auditing when I’m finished urinating.
I drink lots of water.
So that, the fact that he is overweight, that we do not exactly click, that we have very different personalities, that he believes in the zodiac, the fucking Zodiac, made me want to quit it all. An interesting point to note, though, is that Zodiac, a few days earlier, had told me had not read the horoscope since I told him that his beliefs were stupid.
Cautiously, I said, “Okay… We’ll see.”
Because I saw him as the kind to get right back to horoscope hunting as soon as things went sour between us. Like I said in an earlier entry – people operate on emotion, not logic; if Zodiac did not have feelings for me, my arguments would have never swayed him.
After class was over, thankfully, we strolled together to our respective taxi stands as we usually did. I knew, of course, not to immediately launch into the it’s-not-you-it’s-me speech. So we talked a bit about nothing much until I saw an opening – a slight pause in the conversation, and our steady approach to Zodiac’s taxi stand. And that is when I brought up the whole girlfriend / boyfriend bit.
“We’ve told each other,” I was saying, “what we like about the other. But we still have doubts. Why do you have doubts? What’s preventing you from us being together?”
He told me something about not having a car – we did live far apart – and not being able to pick me up so that we could go out as we pleased. I frowned. Distance is always difficult, I agree, but as long as we live on this tiny island, “distance” would not prevent us from being together, and I told him as much. Hesitation, and an unwillingness to be rejected, were more likely candidates than lack of transportation – I did not say the last bit.
Instead, I told him my side, without giving him much of a chance to respond – that taxi stand was fast approaching.
“Well I still have my doubts. And the thing with me is that if I have doubts about something for too long, I do not bother to do it.” (A little something I learned from JD – the reason I made the best decision of my life, and broke off the charade).
And we were at the taxi stand. I was not really looking at Zodiac – no, not because I was ashamed of saying what I said. I was not. It was not because I was afraid of getting hit by a car either – we were almost in the centre of the street. Thinking back, I speculate the reason to be my not wanting him to see me look at him; I wear my feelings on my face, and if he were any good at reading them, he would understand that I was searching his face for a reaction. And that observation may only add to his embarrassment, and I hate to see people embarrass themselves or other people – that’s why I switch the station every time American Idol comes on.
I cannot really remember what was said after that, but I think it including saying our goodbyes and talk-to-you-soons.
He called me later that night. Oddly enough it was only to ask me what computer games I wanted. I told him Resident Evil 4, and God of War, if there was a PC version of them.
“Okay,” he said.
There was a pause.
“That’s all?”
“Yeah…” he said.
I laughed, and said okay.
“Actually,” he said, “there’s something else I want to tell you. But I’m in a taxi right now.”
We hung up soon after. He did not call me again that night to reveal the “something else”. I did not call him either.
At half past seven the very next morning, on my way to a meeting at work, I excused myself from a conversation with a colleague and one of my managers to answer my phone. It was Zodiac.
“I just called to wish you a good day,” he said.
“Aww… that’s so sweet,” I said with a divine mixture of sarcasm and genuine appreciation that only I can pull off, and only those close to me can understand. Apparently Zodiac is one of them.
“I just got to work,” he continued.
I glanced at the clock – 7:30am. This was so unlike Zodiac, who promptly, and consistently, arrived at work between 6:30 and 6:55 in the morning. As we had class the night before, I thought it was because he was not yet accustomed to going to work, and then to class until half eight, and traveling all the way to Arima. When I offered my explanation, he quickly corrected me.
“No, actually… I was thinking about you…”
It’s at times like these I am not really certain what to say.
“…I was thinking how much I wanted you to be my girlfriend… because the truth is I want you to be my girlfriend.”
The candor did it for me. In all the time he was wooing me, he never said this quite so plainly. And the pause that came before my mentioning that I was among company and that we should talk later was more than slight.
We did talk later – later that night. I was a ball of indecision. A few hours before, I had begun preparing myself to cut things off with Zodiac – resigning myself to a mere friendship and another year of celibacy. Now he says the word “girlfriend” and I’m humming and hawing.
Yeah, I want the relationship. But do I want Zodiac? That is the question. There is no question of separating the two, you get one and you get the other. In that way it is sort of like downloading software on the internet – you download the file knowing that it is coming along with some other kind of mandatory software you do not really need – like the Yahoo! toolbar – but you figure might come in handy every once in a while.
I did not make a decision – I was babysitting and my brother was screaming. I told him I would finish the conversation later. We have not yet – he probably tried calling me and could not get through. Like I said, my phone lines are down. Fucking TSTT.
There is more. There is Saturday night. In a later entry.