CHAPTER TWENTY SIX
“Something is always better than nothing;
Be happy with what you’ve got!”
I woke up the next morning with a sense of anticipation, but also with a sense of dread. I had had a very restless nights sleep. I had spent hours lying awake day dreaming about Ellie, until I’d fall asleep and have actual dreams about something far less interesting, and my brain would somehow realize this, so I wouldn’t let those dreams develop, instead I’d wake up, and day dream about Ellie. Until exhaustion would take control of my body, and again I’d drift off to sleep and real actual dreams, and again my brain wouldn’t like it and wake me. ....
By the time I woke up for the final time, the first thing I did was roll over and stare at the phone. The chances of that phone ringing anytime that day were about the same as the chances of me opening the window and discovering a crowd of female porn stars asking if they could practice for their next movies with me.
However I knew for sure that there was no way in hell I was going to go more than two meters away from that phone until Ellie called again. That was not a call I was willing to miss under any circumstances. Fortunately having given myself a two meter radius of the phone as my area to explore for the day, I could still reach every corner of my tiny apartment. So I was able to distract myself at least slightly by normal mundane day off activities like blocking my arteries with bacon and egg grease, and damaging my brain capacity by watching a bunch of starving losers holding up piles of sticks for as long as they could to try and win something retarded called ‘immunity’.
Still when my phone actually rung it was such a shock that my pancreas nearly exploded. The body is just not designed to cope with such a sudden burst of nervousness. I slowly lifted the receiver and brought it to my ear.
“Heeelllllooooo” I answered
“Hey draino, whatcha doing?” Hannah said from the other end
“Nothing much, just watching TV”
“Where were you last night” I tried calling like five times”
“Well, I guess I better tell you…..I was with Ellie”
“OH MY GOD, WHAT HAPPENED?”
“It’s sort of a long story”
“Ok I understand, I’ll be there is five minutes”
She hung up the phone, and sure enough in four minutes and thirty seven seconds she was sitting on the couch asking me to tell her what happened and spare no details what so ever. So I told Hannah the whole story, every little detail. I’m not usually one to give out every little detail of personal events that have happened to me, but for some reason I was compelled to spill every single bit of my evening to Hannah. I did regret mentioning to her that despite the less than sexual nature of our conversation, sitting staring at Ellie for a couple of hours in a restaurant had caused my penis to feel sore from the strain of my erection trying desperately hard to rip apart the zipper in my jeans. Hannah resisted the obvious temptation to bag me out about that non stop forever, and instead chose to only make a joke alluding to the fact that if I could stay hard for that long then maybe she should have sex with me after all. Hannah really is sweet. I guess that’s what made me comfortable enough to put my faith in her, and tell her the whole story. I did need someone to talk to about it, it made me feel much better having Hannah tell me over and over that Ellie will call eventually.
Hannah agreed with me that it was about a million to one shot that Ellie would call me again so soon. She also understood my desire to sit by the phone all day anyway. Fortunately she said she knew exactly what to do. “Wait here” she said, then disappeared out the door to god only knew where.
I waited in the quiet for about fifteen minutes, wondering if Hannah’s idea of “I know just what to do about this” was to abandon me and let me suffer alone. Then felt extremely guilty to have ever thought such a thing when she came back inside with a big bag of stuff.
“Now every girl in the world has had a day like this JayJay, where you’re waiting for a call from a boy that will probably never come…today I mean, Ellie will call you though….and every girl knows the remedy to this problem is to gorge themselves on junk food, so that if he ever does decide to call he will have to put up with a five kilogram heavier version of you as a punishment for not calling earlier” Hannah explained
“I thought girls don’t like it if you call too soon?” I asked
“Oh no…you can’t call too soon, but you have to call soon enough”
“How do you know which is too soon and which isn’t soon enough?”
“I guess it depends on the situation”
“But that just makes it so hard….for everyone”
“I guess it is kind of confusing…but you learn to play the game after a while”
“Fucking girls”
“I know we can be bloody hard to deal with cant we….I’ve had to put up with that crap for years….but anyway…so what I have here for us is (she reached into her bag and started to pull out items one by one) microwave popcorn, a bag of jelly babies, a block of caramello chocolate, a block of white cookies and cream chocolate…I know your favorite, and the most important item of all, a tub of premium grade extra sugary extra fatty ice cream and a bottle of hot fudge. Oh and of course a bunch of chicks flicks for us to watch”
“This doesn’t seem so bad” I said as Hannah opened up the caramello and broke off a row for me to eat, which I subsequently bit in half letting caramel drip stickerly over my chin. It was yum, yum.
Hannah threw on ‘Brigit Jones’s Diary’, which I thought was awful and I struggled to relate to the story of a girl who’s complaining how fat she thinks she is, but is at the same time being pursued by two men who clearly would fit in the overly desirable to women category. What the hell is it with you women sometimes, if you’re being pursued by men you’re attracted to then you no longer have any rights to complain. I’d kill to have women chase after me. And why do women get so worked up about a few kilograms over weight. You’re the ones who have it easy in the looks department. A couple of extra kilo’s and you just look curvier and have bigger breasts and more arse to get our hands over. A guy puts on a couple of kilos and we get a beer gut, and beer guts are never desired. You hear guys all the time say they like girls with curves and breasts. I have never once heard a girl say “Where can I find a nice guy with a beer gut?” Plus even if you do decide to put in the work in attempting to get the stereotypical image of beauty, all you have to do is get skinny. Not that that is easy, but for us guys we not only have to lose all our fat, but we have to spend hour after hour in the gym to add muscle aswell. That’s a lot tougher. And even then, even if you spend enough time in the gym until you look like a body builder, you still make us do the work in trying to pick you up. Bloody girls! Well yeah anyway, ‘Bridget’ was funny I guess. The popcorn was delicious, as were the jelly baby’s, and the caramello was divine.
Next Hannah put on ‘Lost in Translation’, which chronicles how hard it is, even for a world famous movie star with zillions of dollars, to pick up some female action. Well I don’t think that was the actual point of the movie. It’s really movie about two lost souls in ....Japan.... who find comfort with each other. This one I could relate to much more. It felt good to know that everyone feels lost sometimes, and it can take as little as a new friendship to improve the way you feel. It reminded me of how much Hannah had done for me. Also the rest of the jelly babies were excellent, and the cookies and the cream was heaven in bar form.
After the second movie Hannah made me up a sundae the size of a small car, just drowning in hot fudge, nuts, sprinkles and jelly babies, and I somehow managed to consume so much that I could physically feel the fat forming on my stomach. Then just as Hannah was saying to me for the fifth time of the afternoon that “no JayJay, there isn’t any chance that Ellie would call today”, the phone suddenly rang.
“Heeelllooo” I answered with
“Hello is Mr Domey home sir?” A female voice asked from the other end
“Yes this is Mr Domey”
“Good afternoon Mr Domey, I was calling to see if you had any interest in changing your broadband internet connection over to ‘Bobcat Telecommunications’? Sign with us and pay just eighteen months in advance, then in six months when we file for bankruptcy and you try and reclaim your extra years payment which we have already spent, you will only have minor legal fees to pay before being told straight up that you can never get back one cent of that money, before paying another huge bill in order to have your existing connection reconnected. So Mr Domey would you like to sign up for the standard eighteen months, or would you like to take advantage of our special price for a twenty four month subscription?
“I’m not interested”
“Oh are you sure sir, this is a once in a life time opportunity, you must take advantage of this as soon as possible, we could go bankrupt any day now”
“No I’m NOT INTERESTED, I don’t even own a computer you moron”
“Ok Sir, no need to be rude”
Then I hit the hang up button on my phone. I didn’t want to hear anymore of that crap. Only thing was as I walked over to hang up the phone properly I could hear a faint “Hello….Hello”. After a few seconds it finally clicked, there was someone on the phone still.
“Heelloo” I answered “Are you still there?”
“Yes I’m here, is that Jason?”
“This is still Jason”
“Hi its Ellie….what’s going on?”
“ELLIE!” I thought
“Ellie…do you work for Bobcat Telecommunications?”
“No...Why would you ask that? You know where I work”
“But didn’t you just call me to see if I wanted to change internet connections?”
“No…are you ok JayJay?”
“I’m ok….just that’s weird, that’s all”
“The phone didn’t even ring at your end, were you just on another call?” she asked me in a bewildered tone, yet a very sweet tone. Ellie always did have the cutest tones in her voice.
“Yeah with this crappy Bobcat offer thing, then I hung up, and you were there” I answered also bewildered, but in my boring monotone voice
“I must have called the second you hung up, and you must have answered my call instead of just hanging up”
“That’s nuts”
“I know, talk about bad timing….or is that good timing?”
“Well I’m suddenly talking to you, sounds like good timing to me” I said in the cutest voice I could
“You’re sweet” she answered
At that moment Hannah suddenly got her things together and kissed me on the cheek and said she’d call tomorrow, saving me the prospect of telling her to “get the fuck out” after the next thing that Ellie said.
“Listen…Brad just called to say that he isn’t getting home from work till late tonight…do you maybe want to watch a video…I mean can I come over to your place?”
“Of course…come over when ever you want”
“That’s great…I’ll see you in about fifteen minutes….I’ll bring some movies”
“Ok”
“Bye, bye”
“Bye, bye”
“Hooray for JayJay” I whispered to myself.
