Chapter 8: Another Saturday Night

It had been ‘all on’ with Maureen until the moment she orgasmed astride me, rubbing her denim clad crotch on my serge clad dick. Then it was ‘all off’ and she had been clear that she had changed her mind. I was now in her ‘friend zone’, and that all she was now offering was acute and knowledgeable observation to improve my performance as a cricketer. Whoop de shit!

As Sam Cooke was to say a couple of years later ‘Another Saturday Night and I Ain’t Got Nobody’. Of course at that stage I hadn’t heard of Sam Cooke, but I was nevertheless feeling a bit flat. So I rang Pauline and asked if she wanted to come round or go out or something. She didn’t.

I hung up wondering why not, and then started to tell myself a story that she was looking for a ‘real’ boyfriend and was shitty with me for going with Maureen, and that very soon she would ‘friend zone’ me, and that I was fated to have sex only with myself for the rest of my life and would die alone and miserable.

So when Frank arrived home from his day’s work on his latest project, it was to find that there was no meal prep underway, no washing or cleaning done, and a thoroughly miserable nephew and flatmate gazing morosely over the railway in the gully out the back.

“What’s up Mate?” I grunted, hoping he would leave me alone in my misery. No chance!

He kept at me. “Something’s wrong. You haven’t started the meal, there’s lotsa housework left to do, and you’re moping.”

“Maureen just wants to ‘be friends’ and Pauline isn’t keen on coming over.” As I heard myself laying it out that simply, my misery seemed ridiculous, even to me.

Uncle Frank wasn’t fooled. “And?”

“Nothing.”

“And nothing? Bullshit!” He snorted. There’s got to be more going on than that.” He waited, and after perhaps five seconds that seemed like fifty, I accepted that like it or not, I was going to have to share my stupid self talk.

“I tell myself Pauline is looking for a real boyfriend, Alison will stay wrapped up in Aapi, no other girl will want me as anything but a friend, I’ll be pulling myself for the next sixty years, and I’ll die miserable and alone!”

Frank seemed a little short on sympathy. “Yeah probably! After all, you’re crap at dealing with girls and their parents, you were the last in your class to have sex and you were lousy at it. You’re as ugly as a Baboon’s bum, and you suck at sports as well as being academically challenged and thick as pig shit!”

On one level, that was useful. But I already knew my feelings were irrational. And I still had them. “Sure feels like it!”

Frank was obviously keen to teach me something. I wasn’t sure that I wanted to learn whatever it was, and I suspected I might rather keep moping in my misery – even if it was self-inflicted. But my uncle wasn’t backing off and it was his kitchen I was sitting in, so I gave a (somewhat theatrical) sigh, and like the good boy I always tried to be, I turned and came back to sit at the table across from him.

He looked at me keenly. “So when did you know things weren’t right with Maureen?”

“Soon as she had an orgasm. She couldn’t wait to get rid of me. Pauline said she was probably guilty.” Frank hmmed and I went on. “And when I saw her today at cricket, it was like I was in the friend zone. Then she did the ‘We need to talk’ bit, and told me her parents were right, and she is too young to be in a relationship and she hoped we could still be friends.”

Frank screwed up his face at the ‘We need to talk’, and nodded sympathetically at my tale. “So how did you feel when she told you that? You’d been puzzled at what had been going on, Pauline suggested Maureen was guilty, then she told you that whatever it had been, it was all over. How did you feel then?”

“I guess I felt okay. I’d been puzzled, and it was actually good to have her be clear about where she was up to.”

Frank nodded. “So you were okay with the situation, and then you rang Pauline?”

“Yup.”

“And how did that conversation go?”

“I said gidday, and asked her would she like to get together tonight or go out somewhere, and she said no and said she was a bit tired.”

“What did you say?”

I thought for a few seconds, then remembered. “I said ‘Okay, see ya Monday’ and hung up.”

Frank laughed. “So you didn’t tell her you were feeling down, you just asked her if she wanted to do something, and when she didn’t you didn’t share any disappointment, you just hung up.” I nodded. “And then you told yourself you had been rejected and off you went catastrophising – rejected, lonely for life – all that shit!”

I felt embarrassed, but also couldn’t help laughing. The story Frank had pulled out of me sounded bloody ridiculous. “I’m pretty bloody stupid.”

Frank grinned. “Maybe. But do you feel better?”

I thought for a moment, and realised that despite my embarrassment, I did. “Yup. Stupid and embarrassed, but better!”

“Good. So what’s for dinner?”

“If I can take your van, I’ll get fish ‘n chips.”

Frank smiled again, and pushed the keys across the table. “Do you need cash?”

I shook my head. “Nah. This is on me.”

The rest of the evening was relatively cruisy, and I knocked off a couple of hours homework. We had decided to give the Sunday study group a miss for a few weeks. Robyn said she preferred a long ‘lie in’ with Jack after their regular Saturday night together, Aapi had church, and Alison was quite happy to attend what she described as a ‘chess workshop’ rather than study.

I was able to earn some dough by spending the whole Sunday working with Frank. He was doing some alterations on a big house not too far from the Farrell’s, putting in an ‘onsweet’, a second bathroom off the master bedroom. That was an almost unheard of and decadent luxury, but the people who owned the property were elderly and believed the convenience of adjoining facilities was worth the (considerable) expense.

Chick caught up with me at lunchtime on Monday. “That was a short romance. What the hell happened? What did you do?”

“Fucked if I know. It was all on – then it was all off! She doesn’t seem upset though, she did the ‘just want to be friends’ bit.”

He laughed. “Girls are complicated. Was it about the stuff you talked about after Dad got rid of me?”

“Dunno. That was all about how far we could go, but I think Maureen must have just changed her mind about what she wanted with me.”

We talked about cricket for a few moments, and then once again, went off to our respective classes.

Monday study group was a bit tense for a start. I didn’t know what to say to Pauline, and I sensed that she had something she wasn’t saying to me. We had barely started on an exercise on meiosis, when Alison, who Frank had identified as our group’s ‘coal mine canary’ made us front.

She looked across the table at us. “Alright – what’s going on with you two?”

I found it easy (well relatively) to ‘fess up’ about me and my nonsense. “It’s ‘all off’ with Maureen, and I rang Pauline and asked her if she wanted to get together, but I wasn’t strictly honest about where I was up to and what I was feeling, and when Pauline was tired and didn’t want to get together I started to tell myself a whole lot of awful stories and felt bad as a result.”

Robyn laughed. “Poor baby!” For about half a second, I wondered whether she was making fun of me and I started to bristle just a little. She reached out to put a hand on me and continued. “Sometimes you’re not terribly good at saying when you’re not okay. You are always honest when you do know though!” I was somewhat mollified.

Pauline was also sympathetic. “I didn’t know! If you’d said, I’d have offered at least a kind word!”

I had been feeling a bit better ever since Frank had pushed me into laying out my stupid self talk. Pauline’s response made me feel better still. Really good in fact. Then I had another thought.

“That sorts out you and me, but I keep wondering about what I did to put Maureen off.”

Pauline was quite definite with her prediction of uncertainty. “You’ll probably never know. Maybe it was nothing you did or didn’t do. Maybe she just changed her mind about being ready to be sexual.”

“Maybe she did, but if I did something to put her off and cause that, I’d like to know. But she won’t talk. When it was clear there was something wrong, I asked what it was and she said ‘Nothing’.”

Robyn laughed. “The dreaded ‘Nothing’. It’s probably no consolation, but Maureen has missed out. You are a sensitive and caring guy, and she’ll be really lucky to find anyone better to be exploring sex with.” She took a breath and went on. “I feel really lucky to have had you and Brian to get me started. I love Jack to bits, but thank Christ I had some idea what feels good, because he sure didn’t.” She covered her mouth and blushed. “Sorry! I shouldn’t have said that.”

Alison and Aapi were holding hands and paying at least as much attention to each other as the conversation. Now they chipped in together, almost a chorus. “Forget it!” Then they looked back at each other. “Time for a rest!” and adjourned to my room. The rest of us began discussing the difference between a gerund and a gerundive.

Pauline didn’t usually stay the night on Monday, but she showed no inclination to hurry away as the study group broke up and the rest of them departed.

We cuddled on the couch in the parlour, and she went back to our phone call on Saturday. “I’m sorry I didn’t ask you to tell me how things were. I vaguely sussed you weren’t fully okay, and I really was tired, but if I’d asked I could have at least reassured you that it was only that, and that I wasn’t pissed off about you going with Maureen.”