Free The Hell of It All by Charlie Brooker Page B
Authors: Charlie Brooker
sound convincing, although part of my brain was still thinking, ‘Yeah, but come on, he is a man.’ It gets easily disgruntled, that bit of brain, and ought to learn when to shut up.
Anyway, the key to working out her next step was to decide whether said man had been genuinely flirting or not. Which wasn’t simple. With flirting, there are more variables than Stephen Hawking could handle. It’s as complex as poker, but with far higher stakes: potential life-enhancing happiness or crushing humiliation, not piffling financial loss.
Body language doesn’t always help. What if one minute they’re playing with their hair and touching your knee, and the next they’ve got their arms folded? What if they are flirting, but only fortheir own detached amusement? Worst of all, what if they’re already taken, and deeply in love, thanks for asking? How do you subtly find out? You can’t ask outright: that drops your guard and the answer might leave you not knowing what to do with your face for a good 10 minutes.
So you drop casual prompts … but don’t get a straight answer. Now what? You’re in limbo. You’re no longer even yourself. On the outside you’re a picture of amused, confident nonchalance, while on the inside your brain is gnawing itself to shreds, assessing odds, crunching integers. Above all, you want to avoid The Sudden Look of Horror, and the awful, awkward vacuum that envelops the pair of you when it transpires that You Misread The Situation Like An Idiot.
Infuriatingly, you won’t get anywhere without risking exposure to that Sudden Look. And nothing’s worse than discovering later that you didn’t misread the signs, but now something’s come up and sorry, but see ya. Years ago, on a night out with a girl I was slowly going crazy for, the sheer weight of mental calculation left me unable to make any sort of move. We shared a cab together, and after it dropped her home, she sent a text message saying: ‘I wanted you to kiss me.’ But the moment had gone. A week later she met the love of her life and that was that. It happens to everyone at some stage, obviously. But this was worse because it happened to me.
Anyway, we discussed all of this, my friend and I, and ultimately my advice boiled down to this: all you can do is prepare to go mad for a while. Maybe there’s a sunbeam at the end, and maybe there isn’t. But it’s out of your hands. To quote Abba: ‘The gods will throw the dice/ Their minds as cold as ice/ And someone way down here/ Might wind up sucking the cock of despair.’
If you’ll excuse the crude paraphrasing.
Abroad at home [5 November 2007]
Technically, you’re not reading this, because technically, I’m on holiday. Except I’m not. Instead, I’m basking on the glamorous sun-drenched beaches of my living room, having failed to book aholiday for the millionth time in a row. My last proper holiday was three years ago (OK, there was a week in Spain two years ago, but it doesn’t count because it was a relationship-break-up trip, and therefore the polar opposite of fun and relaxation).
I’m useless at every single aspect of holidays. Timing them for one thing. I tend to exist in a permanent work-bubble, fighting off deadlines with my bare fists. Then, when there’s an eventual lull, I think, ‘Wow, I really need a holiday’, but by then it’s too late. What’s more, I’m single. How, as a tragic singleton, are you meant to go on holiday anyway? I know from experience what couples do on holiday: they argue. But I’m not a couple. Who am I supposed to slowly fall out of love with? I can’t slowly poison my relationship with myself. Or can I?
I know several people who regularly go on holiday alone, including one whose idea of a rejuvenating break was a week on the Trans-Siberian railway, where he read books and stared out of the window into a landscape of unending nothingness, until he wound up drinking vodka just to get it over with quicker. He considered this a
Anyway, the key to working out her next step was to decide whether said man had been genuinely flirting or not. Which wasn’t simple. With flirting, there are more variables than Stephen Hawking could handle. It’s as complex as poker, but with far higher stakes: potential life-enhancing happiness or crushing humiliation, not piffling financial loss.
Body language doesn’t always help. What if one minute they’re playing with their hair and touching your knee, and the next they’ve got their arms folded? What if they are flirting, but only fortheir own detached amusement? Worst of all, what if they’re already taken, and deeply in love, thanks for asking? How do you subtly find out? You can’t ask outright: that drops your guard and the answer might leave you not knowing what to do with your face for a good 10 minutes.
So you drop casual prompts … but don’t get a straight answer. Now what? You’re in limbo. You’re no longer even yourself. On the outside you’re a picture of amused, confident nonchalance, while on the inside your brain is gnawing itself to shreds, assessing odds, crunching integers. Above all, you want to avoid The Sudden Look of Horror, and the awful, awkward vacuum that envelops the pair of you when it transpires that You Misread The Situation Like An Idiot.
Infuriatingly, you won’t get anywhere without risking exposure to that Sudden Look. And nothing’s worse than discovering later that you didn’t misread the signs, but now something’s come up and sorry, but see ya. Years ago, on a night out with a girl I was slowly going crazy for, the sheer weight of mental calculation left me unable to make any sort of move. We shared a cab together, and after it dropped her home, she sent a text message saying: ‘I wanted you to kiss me.’ But the moment had gone. A week later she met the love of her life and that was that. It happens to everyone at some stage, obviously. But this was worse because it happened to me.
Anyway, we discussed all of this, my friend and I, and ultimately my advice boiled down to this: all you can do is prepare to go mad for a while. Maybe there’s a sunbeam at the end, and maybe there isn’t. But it’s out of your hands. To quote Abba: ‘The gods will throw the dice/ Their minds as cold as ice/ And someone way down here/ Might wind up sucking the cock of despair.’
If you’ll excuse the crude paraphrasing.
Abroad at home [5 November 2007]
Technically, you’re not reading this, because technically, I’m on holiday. Except I’m not. Instead, I’m basking on the glamorous sun-drenched beaches of my living room, having failed to book aholiday for the millionth time in a row. My last proper holiday was three years ago (OK, there was a week in Spain two years ago, but it doesn’t count because it was a relationship-break-up trip, and therefore the polar opposite of fun and relaxation).
I’m useless at every single aspect of holidays. Timing them for one thing. I tend to exist in a permanent work-bubble, fighting off deadlines with my bare fists. Then, when there’s an eventual lull, I think, ‘Wow, I really need a holiday’, but by then it’s too late. What’s more, I’m single. How, as a tragic singleton, are you meant to go on holiday anyway? I know from experience what couples do on holiday: they argue. But I’m not a couple. Who am I supposed to slowly fall out of love with? I can’t slowly poison my relationship with myself. Or can I?
I know several people who regularly go on holiday alone, including one whose idea of a rejuvenating break was a week on the Trans-Siberian railway, where he read books and stared out of the window into a landscape of unending nothingness, until he wound up drinking vodka just to get it over with quicker. He considered this a