Lonely Planet

I never knew what insecurity was until I came to university. I mean, lived through high school. High school nurses insecurity like a big fat baby off its huge perfect pink breasts.

But I never wanted to talk to anyone much. I, in my infinite egotism, could always brush them off with a simple – Ha! They don’t like me; I don’t need them to like me; they’re jealous and I’m more intelligent and mature than they are anyway. And hey, either I haven’t really got over that arrogance, or I was right most of the time.

But university is different. Here insecurity feels less like a product of circumstance and more like a plague. You’re supposed to be grown out of it now. Well, a big part of you thinks that anyway, a small part knows and sees in every bewildered gathering of lonely people that we never do.

There is a strong possibility that there might actually being people worth talking to at university. And this is a problem.

I’ve noticed many attractive guys today. I didn’t see any in my first week or on Monday. And now there is a smattering of tall dark and handsome about the place, which is always nice. But I have no way of talking to them, or starting a conversation. What do you do when you just pass a person like that? Try the succinct perky: ‘Hi, you’re cute, lets chat.’ or perhaps a longer more subtle ‘Hi, I’m new here and trying to meet some people, and you seemed like a nice person to talk to…’ They all sound like pick up lines. That’ so me. That’s so classically male. I’m not in denial about my attraction to the opposite sex. That, strangely enough, I can justify. But do you hear me trying to make any platonic friends of the same gender? I’m not as interested. I find it a lot more difficult. I am in denial that I need ‘friends.’

So while one side of my mind scans the courtyard occupants with interest, longing, and despondence – the other part of me adds, at the very least a sharp and dismissive wit, and at the most loud protestations: I didn’t come here to make friends, what the hell is wrong with me? Why am I lonely? I don’t even like people. What do I really need them for anyway? Sheesh, I feel like such a loser right now.

I am trying to guess the music piped to the train station. Sounds like 101 Bastardised Lounge Classics. I know the last one was that song which goes ‘Please hurry, why don’t you come back; please hurry, why don’t you come back – and stay for good this time.’ The bus is late again. Maybe I open my big mouth first, pointing vehemently at the timetable; I remember the surprised and agreeing faces of two Indian lads. But I strike up a conversation with a boy. We, led by one pretty, young Asian girl, head the group of dispirited commuters, on a trek to the residential college shuttle bus. He and I talk all the way up the hill. He tells me his name. I tell him mine. I tell him some public transport horror stories, he laughs. He’s doing Earth sciences. I tell him about my course. We talk about doing high school drama. He lives in a suburb four train stops south of the uni. He’s moving to the next closest city soon. He’s the first person who has actually talked to me since I’ve been here. He pours his gangly frame into the tiny shuttle bus and it takes us on a slow and winding tour of those modern pre-fab housing estates on the way to the uni.

We say some sort of awkward goodbye when we arrive and head off in opposite directions. He kind of looks like a cross between David Tennant and Chris Martin, without being drop dead gorgeous. Just nice, just a little homely, smokes rollies. And so very tall!

And then the worst of it begins. Endowed with the combined significance of being, not only within the university, but within my experience of Melbourne – one of the first attractive guys I’ve seen, the first person who has talked to me, the first person I might like to be friends with, the first person I might like to date, and the first thing that has me looking forward to university the next day. He takes on a preternatural significance. He becomes part of that clichéd feminist angering idea that ‘I’ve met a boy now, so I guess I can feel complete.’

You wonder obsessively whether you will see this person again amongst 15 000 students. You start designing t-shirts in honour of your befuddled mind.

I want; I need a shirt that reads like this:

I am an old and tragic romantic. Will I ever see him again? To me the answer is no. And it is not something I want to leave to chance. Tragic romantic, unforeseen stalker. I get on the university website and I look up the Earth Sciences timetable. The following day, during my break, I causally walk past the building where I know he has a class, and pretend to have just noticed him. We talk until he has to leave.

I’m smiling after that. Fate has nothing to do with my life. I orchestrated that. It might be sad, but at least it’s real. And he is attractive. Great listener, and I’m not just saying that because I talked all the time and he shut up. No, he really makes you feel at ease when you tell a story, he looks you in the eyes intently and laughs at all the right things. Everything I’m asked turns into a great story with me, I like telling it but it gets varied receptions, and to not tell it is to omit the truth in some cases. I do like talking about myself, too much. Is it bad that I have to consciously think ‘Well he’s asked me about my course, so now I should ask him about his’? I’m sure it all comes off very fluid on the surface. But do other people have to think that? Or are they really that interested in each other? No, that’s not right, because I am/was interested in him, mainly after the event, but still. It’s more a question of being in the habit and thinking of all your questions then and there and bringing them up at the right moments. I’m so out of practice with this whole social thing that it’s laughable.

I’m unsure about the whole smoking thing. I don’t have a problem with it on a moral level, it’s his life and he can do as he likes, and I certainly know better than to try to change a person. I don’t believe it will shorten his life expectancy greatly, or that will I be around to see that. And I’ve grown up around smoking all my life; it’s a familiar trope, and a not unpleasant smell. But at the same time I’m irked that he smokes. I can’t help but ask why. Is it socially demonstrative? Socially formative? Nervous habit? Stress habit? I’d always wonder what it was compensating for or feeding.

But I guess, now, I can tell you that I never had to worry about that. Because I never saw him again. Maybe once. I was walking along with my boyfriend and I think he passed us. But I didn’t stop. I didn’t blink. So in case my current partner (or my grandmother for that matter, who took a particular leaning towards this first boy) wonders if things would have turned out differently had I seen him again? I can only say: no, it wouldn’t have made any difference whatsoever. Even if I was given equal opportunity at both, without knowledge of the other; I know that if I was with this first boy that I met, somehow I would be able to feel that I was missing out on something much better.