Tag Archives: infatuation

Seeing Joseph: I Could Stop If I Wanted To

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The café hums softly — a low murmur of spoons, voices, milk steaming behind the counter. I go there more often than I should, pretending it’s for the coffee, though I know that’s not true. He’s always there — Joseph — the boy with the rolled sleeves, the nice ass, the quiet smile. He moves with a kind of unthinking grace that makes the simplest gestures unbearable to watch. The tilt of his head, the tiny crease that appears between his brows when he concentrates. He hums under his breath when the machine hisses, wipes the same patch of counter top as if he’s polishing a secret into it. The light hits his hair just so, and I find myself timing my arrival to catch that moment when he leans over the counter and looks up.

Sometimes he catches my eye, and it feels like an accident — a spark that wasn’t meant to happen. He doesn’t know what he does to me: the curve of his wrist, the steam curling around his face, the way his voice seems to linger in the air a heartbeat too long. When his hand brushes mine as he gives me change, there’s the faint scent of roasted beans and skin, a small, electric pause before he turns away.

I tell myself I could stop if I wanted to. That it’s just a crush, just admiration. But I don’t want to. I want the ache. It isn’t love — not really — it’s too fleeting, too impossible. He doesn’t see me, not the way I see him. Yet there’s a strange tenderness in wanting without having, in sitting there each morning, pretending to read, tracing the rim of my cup as the warmth fades — while the boy behind the counter unknowingly becomes the centre of my day.

I collect fragments of him and carry them home like offerings. Sometimes I imagine saying his name aloud, but I never do. It feels too intimate, too final — as if it might break the spell.

Reese with an S / The haze of an infatuation

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Cocky. Never have I met anybody so cocky. Thick, as in stupid. Never have I met anybody so thick. A girl flirted with him, and he gave no response. “I had no idea,” he said afterwards. “I was completely obnoxious.” The word he was looking for was oblivious. But Reese with an ‘S’ grows on me each time I see him. The third time I’ve fallen in love. The fourth time he says that he’s never met me before. But he still gives me a smile and a kiss on the cheek. The scent is enchanting. I’m hopelessly infatuated but he probably sees me as a father figure, and not an object of desire.

This autumn gloom has got me in deep now

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The summer ended and everything good about it disappeared too. Long days gave way to decline and by the time the leaves had turned the colour of brown leather, my world was unbearably melancholic.

Last night, I crawled through the undergrowth and scaled the stone wall like a hundred times before. Then I squatted under the horse chestnut tree from where I could see your bedroom. Third floor. Two windows from the left. There was no light, all darkness, and I knew that you’d gone.

“Remember the first day I saw you? When you stepped out of the sea and walked confidently towards where I lay on the sand. Beach blonde. Tanned. Swim shorts clinging tightly around your arse cheeks. The hairs on your body damp, glistening, and irresistible to a fourteen year old boy.”

I became a trophy, somebody to show off, to tease, and a plaything to practice on. I was the shadow that followed you, intoxicated when you were there, and bereft when you weren’t.

“They said you were called Theo, which seemed right for someone who came from a wealthy family and lived in a big house with iron gates and a long drive. Theo who liked to surf, chat with girls, and listen to indie music until the sun came up.”

Your friends tolerated me because I belonged to you and were obliged to include me in everything. Those days in the sun, laying on the beach, and going into town when you looked out for me and made sure that I didn’t go without. Sometimes we did nothing at all. But the days I enjoyed most were the ones when there were only the two of us. When you put your arm around my shoulders and treated me like an adult. 

“Remember when I snapped my surfboard? It hit the rocks and drifted out to sea, and I nearly cried because all I could think about was not being able to ride the waves anymore. The next day you bought me a bright yellow Thunderbolt Slasher board that cost you well over a grand.”

I didn’t want to share you with anyone, but I could never say that, and when you ended up with a girl, I’d scramble through the undergrowth and wait with the foxes and rabbits until you came home. And I would look with envious eyes as you undressed and strutted naked around the room that was bigger than our cottage by the harbour.

“Theo likes you, they said. He loves you like a little brother. The kind who throws you over his salty shoulders and squeezes until you become aroused. Except that I didn’t want to be a little brother, I wanted to be a lover. A girl called Olivia, who smelled of Unicorn farts, said that I was far too young.”

The last thing you did before going to bed was shower, and with damp hair and a big fluffy towel around your waist, you’d open the window and survey the land that one day would be yours. Then the light would go out, and I’d wander around that massive garden. I would strip naked and swim lengths of the pool that you said you pissed in when you were drunk. Then, I’d imagine climbing the ivy and slipping into your bedroom.

You asked me about the scratches on my arms and legs. When I blushed and said that I’d got them playing football, you’d winked and said that it looked like I’d been fighting with brambles. That was the moment when I realised that you’d known all along, and despite my best efforts at concealment, you’d seen me in the shadows. But then I knew that those nightly performances had been for my benefit.

“I hated the girls who talked with you and hated the boys even more. They were enthralled that you rode a fast Ducati down narrow country lanes, that you could play Edward Elgar’s Cello Concerto, and would be going to Trinity College.”

The room is sulking in your absence. Memories won’t last forever. When I sat under the tree last night, I watched your parents coming and going in their flash cars. Were they thinking about you? Were they worrying? They didn’t seem to care. But I knew that you’d be charming the posh boys and girls of Cambridge, and I fretted about whose boxer shorts or knickers might come off first. 

“Theo is going away, they said. He must prepare for a life worthy of his ancestors. The last thing you did was to give me a peck on the cheek, a scent of Aqua di Gio, and a trace of pepperoni pizza on your breath.”

A chapter in the life of somebody who cannot go there again

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Let’s get something straight. I’m not bothered that you live in a country town and have parents that never have to worry about money. That you had a good education, and study medicine at a swanky university. I’m not fussed that you’re planning a winter skiing trip to St Moritz either. I’m presuming all these things because you speak in an educated manner and are charming with customers, which means that the owner of this cafe is fortunate to have you. 

What matters is the present. I’m more interested in my latte and the fact that at any moment you’re going to bring me a pear, stilton, and walnut salad that will be the best I’ve ever tasted. Will I want balsamic or french dressing? I will choose balsamic. 

I discovered this cafe years ago. It was cold and dark, the windows steamed up so that you couldn’t see in or out. I returned here two days ago, but now it is August, and the town drowns with too many tourists, but this place is out of sight and a good place to sit and write.

By coincidence, that same winter day I bought Ernest Hemingway’s memoirs at the bookshop next door. A Moveable Feast opens with a chapter called A Good Cafe on the Place-de-Michel, where he sits writing notes in lined notebooks like the ones schoolchildren used in Paris of the 1920s. Inexplicably, he stored them in a Louis Vuitton trunk which he left at the Hotel Ritz in 1928 and forgot about it. The manager reminded him of its existence when he went back in 1956, and he was reunited with his lost scribblings.

I’d look silly, because writing in a notebook is no longer stylish, so I’ve brought my laptop as an excuse. On the way here in the car,  I heard a radio programme about people who never completed their work –  art, writing, and even needlework. I look at the dozens of stories on my laptop that remain unfinished. I’m reinvigorated to complete them, and you might be responsible, and are the reason I’ve come back.

The other day you were sprawled across a table, scrolling through your phone, and picking at a sandwich. I was perfectly placed to notice that you were handsome. I thought that you were a customer but realised that you worked here and was on an afternoon break. It was enough for me to return and carve a memory that won’t easily be forgotten.

Have I been disappointed? Well, I’ve spotted a few things. That you’re shorter than I imagined but that is fine. There’s that nervous tick that goes almost unnoticed because you hide it with a smile. Then there’s the pale unblemished skin, that expensive haircut and that tiny earring in your left ear. 

But it comes down to the pear, stilton, and walnut salad that you bring me, and I think about the gay thing, unless I’ve misread the situation.

It is a bit like my latest story called The World of Bianci, which is about an Italian boy I met on a bus in Verona. This is someone else I didn’t know and whom I also fell in love with. 

Spot the problem here? 

There is an American psychologist called Robert Sternberg who created the Triangular Theory of Love, which is intimacy, passion, and commitment. Love at first sight is the passion part of this simple hypothesis.

I once read that this may be a sign of something called ‘anxious attachment’ and this sense of attachment increases if I engage in conversation. I couldn’t do this on the bus because I didn’t speak Italian, but here the situation is different. This time it is about your excellent English and talking about lattes and salads and asking me if everything is to my satisfaction.

Infatuation is a terrible thing. That feeling of obsessively intense love, admiration, and the fear that I might never see you again, and that you have spoiled everything because nothing afterwards will come close.

You are on your break again, and on my way out of the cafe, you look up with coleslaw fingers and a mouthful of brie, tomato, and salad leaves, and say thank you.