So I ask my friend Steve what’s up with the girl he’s been seeing but not quite seeing, and he says, ‘Don’t talk about her, dude. Don’t even bring her name up, she’s bad luck’. At that instant the taxi we’re in nearly merges with an oncoming SBS No. 165, and we are nearly kewwed. The bus driver is so irate he slows down, so our taxi can catch up, so he can scold our taxi driver good.
One of my testicles is somewhere in my throat while the other is lodged under the front passenger seat (the one under the driver’s seat belongs to the driver). But without missing a beat, Steve deadpans, ‘Toldja. She’s bad luck’. Then he mumbles, ‘Sad. I didn’t even see my life flash before my eyes’.
You know if a friend gets as morose as that, there’s nothing much you can do but accompany him on a drinking binge or something. That girl he’s been seeing but not quite must’ve affected him really, really badly. I kaypoed further, ‘No, really, what happened? You were telling me you think she could be your girlfriend, but now you’re all sulky. I thought you liked her?’
That unlocked the floodgates, and chapters 1 – 23 of The Book of Steve were completed before we got to Wine Bar. He said he didn’t think very much of her when they first met, except that she was ‘kinda cute’, and that she wasn’t his equal intellectually and definitely not emotionally. But things, they develop, and next thing you know, they’re spending every waking moment and some sleeping ones together.
‘So, do you like her or not?’, I asked.
‘Dunno. I don’t think I should’, he sighed.
‘What the fuck?’, I what the fucked.
‘What do you think she wants out of this?’, he asked.
I what the fucked again, and asked him how that mattered if he didn’t know if he liked her or not. But when a friend gets as morose as this, he seldom is actually in the conversation, and Steve was no different:
‘Do you think she’s treating me just as a friend? Do you think she’s trying to gain something from me? What does she want? What does she want?’
At this point, our taxi arrived at outside Zouk. I collected my testicles, paid the cabbie, and shoved Steve out the other door while he was still composing rap lines out of ‘what does she want?’.
I have really screwy mates. Must be the company they keep.
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