Cheese Graters

You know when sometimes you go to parties, and you meet some random person and they compliment you on your shirt, and you can’t find anything to compliment them on so you just say thank you, and you stand there awkwardly like you’re wearing a party hat at a funeral? And then that person asks you what you do and you say copywriting and they look at you like you have some snot running down your nose and it’s about to touch your lip. And then you ask them what they do for a living and they say something about being the junior to the senior of the president of something to do with numbers. And so you look at them like they have snot about to touch their lip, but it’s because you couldn’t give a fuck and you are trying to figure out a way to leave the conversation that doesn’t involve insulting their mother and her evident inability at making kids that are interesting. Lazy bitch.

And then they go on about their job which their girlfriend doesn’t understand requires them to work late, and that one of her friends has syphilis or so they think, because she’s really crazy and bites people when she fights, and that the one time her boyfriend made a pass at them in the toilet and they thought about it for a second because he has an emo-hairdo that makes him look like a girl, but then decided to punch him in the nuts. And then continues with how they're not gay and say they don’t have anything against gay people and say they wish they could be gay so they wouldn’t be pestered for hanging out with the boys and touching girls' boobs. Eejit.

And you stand there half-listening, half-looking out for the people you got there with, half-smiling, half-caring, halfway through your drink and then it dawns on you that if you gulp down the rest of it, you could go get another one and then make your escape. But then they somehow telepathically, or with the voodoo that most of them are born with, sense your plan and synchronise their drinking to yours and as you’re about finish they offer you another. And you stand there caught in this web of small talk that grew up too quickly and free booze you can’t deny, because that would be like calling Mary ‘God’s Baby Mama’. Just wrong.

And when you’ve had your third free drink, their girlfriend shows up with the friend that they suspect carries the syphilis and her boyfriend with the emo-haircut, who must now also carry the syphilis and you excuse yourself and go to the dancefloor looking for your friends. And then you find them having the time of their lives, dancing and drinking like the Irish, and you hate them for not coming to look for you but like them because you know you can have fun with them. And then you walk up to them and they ask you who your boyfriend was at the bar and you tell them that it’s just some guy and they tell you that guy is coming towards you with another drink. Fuck.

People like that grate my cheese.