Finding without searching

So I bumped into the kissed boy twice recently.

First time he was flirting with a cocktail waitress, second time I came across him and a very leggy blonde as I was walking down Dame Street. I actually hid. Hid! I feel a bit silly, and a bit humiliated, but I'm not even sure why. I didn't do anything, I just kissed someone. I still don't regret it. But this whole boy thing is really very complicated.

You know, I have no idea what I want.

I do know that I'm scared, of being out there in that big dating pool. Where people stand around and size eachother up, when they have little to go on except what colour you paint your nails, or how you hold a drink. I'd rather just busy myself in the corners and not face it at all. Don't mind me, I'll read a book.

But that gets lonely. And now I feel a little sad for admitting it.

Last weekend I went to a museum with a married couple. They're my age, and lovely. We got talking about how they got married, and why. Their parents had warned them they were too young. Everyone had thought they were too young. They tried to explain to me. He said, "You see, we just knew, from very early on...", and he looked at her.

And I could see, all of a sudden, in that look. That was it.

I came across Love Story on my bookshelf the other day. It reminded me of them. Because it is such a simple, unpretentious story. It is an ordinary story. And that makes it extraordinary.

I keep thinking about the scenes in that book. The way she took his sleeve, not his hand. Things like that.

“Jenny, for Christ’s sake, how can I read John Stuart Mill when every single second I’m dying to make love to you?”

She screwed up her brow and frowned.

“Oh, Oliver, woudja please?”

I was crouching by her chair. She looked back into her book.

“Jenny-”

She closed her book softly, put it down, then placed her hands
on the sides of my neck.

“Oliver - woudja please.”

It all happened at once. Everything.

I think I want to find someone, without the searching. To know, just like that. In a look. That's the way it should happen, shouldn't it?

Just a look.