How not to react when someone sings to you.
‘Hey. It’s been a while. Fancy going to The Gale on Thursday?’
That’s how it began. That’s how the event that, whilst not so amazing still has the capability to make me want to hide in my house for days on end so no one can see how red I have gone when I think back to it. Imagine not only meeting but going to your favourite club, getting pissed, dancing and spending the night with a famous person that you’ve fancied for ages. Then, the morning after, they sing to you a song that you are completely obsessed with and sing it well. Pretty sweet right? Well this is the exact same thing. Apart from the guy that I’m talking about isn’t actually famous. Oh, and I wasn’t obsessed with the song until he sang it to me. Apart from these small differences it is exactly the same thing.
Now it’s not the whole evening, night or morning that we spent together that makes me cringe It’s only the morning, when he sang to me that does. It’s not even the fact that he sang to me which embarrasses me… It’s my reaction to him singing, whilst he was singing, that is embarrassing.
I feel I should inform you that this boy and I did actually already have a history. A few month prior to the singing we started talking and eventually he asked me to go for a drink. Now me being someone who simply cannot say no to a drink obviously said yes. Well, for that reason and the fact I fancied him. Anyway – Nowhere was open by the time I was actually free so we decided that I would go around to his and we would have some drinks in. Now, I had already been for some drinks with my friend of mine so I was already a little tipsy by the time I got to his so as you can imagine the wine took effect pretty damn quick. If you’re assuming that because I was drunk I was throwing myself at him you’d be wrong. Quite the opposite – I pretty much passed out… After an hour or two though! I didn’t just get there, say goodnight and start dribbling all over his crisp, fresh pillow (I save that delight for my friends.). So I wake up after snoozing the alarm i had set to get me up on time for work about five times (needless to say I was late). Said thank you and goodbye and off to work I went. After me being such a composed, sober gentleman you would be forgiven for assuming he couldn’t wait to see me again. I knew I was already planning, in my head, the next time that I’d go round there, drunk as a skunk and pass out. Only this time I was planning on being sober at first. Sadly, it seemed he wasn’t on the same wave length. I mean I could be wrong but to never hear from him again for rather a long while suggests he wasn’t as fond of me as i was him. Bugger.
Cut forward a few months and we’re speaking again. I get a message about going to The Gale that fateful Thursday night and politely agree to go. Because I’m lovely and as I said, going for drinks seems pretty irresistible most of the time. We met. We had drinks… Oh how we had drinks and drinks… And drinks. We danced. Well, he danced, I jumped about like a Jack in the box without his box. We went to his. He played the drums at four in the morning and woke his housemate and half of the city. My ‘You’re soooo good’ actually meant ‘Oh wow it’s late, you’re playing drums, we’re in the ghetto, please be quiet, I don’t fancy some gangsta coming and making us shut up and by us I mean you!’. We Chatted. We slept.
Hello Friday morning. Hello the day I think I’m in an Emily Bronte novel but in reality it’s actually like some cheap, weekday afternoon film showed on channel 5.
I absolutely love when people do acoustic covers of songs I know and actually pull it off well. I can literally spend hours of my evening watching endless videos of this on youtube. So imagine my delight at the fact that he does his own acoustic covers. There they all were on his Youtube page – laying there across his screen like mermaids sprawled across rocks trying to seduce old, frumpy, bearded sailers. If these little capsules of treat weren’t going to be played right then, in front of him, please believe that as soon as I got home I was going to watch them all. We watched a couple of them and I was obviously in my element. Suddenly it happened! The acoustic music to a song I knew all so well (By ‘ all so well’ I actually mean a ‘knew a little’. I had heard it on the album a few times but always thought the track was a skipper.). He started singing – ‘La la, la la la la’. Sounds original, huh? Firstly, I will not say what all the lyrics are because that would be giving away too much and secondly, that’s actually how the song beings, so shut up! As he goes further and further into the song it’s like I’ve just become a statue – staring at him gormlessly. Mouth open, trying to catch flies, apparently. You know what a goldfish looks like when it’s not really swimming? When it’s just floating there, staring at its own reflection in the tank sides? No, I don’t mean when it’s dead, it’s alive and kicking… only not kicking because it doesn’t have legs. Well, I can only assume that’s is what I looked like only with long, gangly limbs placed clumsily on the bed. Then starts the chorus! The words ‘You’re so beautiful, but that’s not why I love you…’ fell out of his mouth and punched me in the ears causing me, who is already staring at him, to tighten my lips and bring the sides of them down slightly, shake my head as if I wrote the song and really understood the story and emotion behind it and then whisper ‘Wow!’ in a voice I can only describe as trying to sell the silkiest chocolate on earth.
Now we’re on the second line. ‘I don’t think you know, that the reason I love you is you, being you…’. Well apparently this was too much for me to take. I bring my hand to my chest, as though i was taken a back by someone asking me to marry them, look away from him, look back at him, look away from him again, look back at him again, smile and say ‘Stop it.’ There I am, at the time sporting an impressive collection as stubble pretending to be a beard, thinking I’m Kiera Knightley in Love Actually when that guy tells her he loves her. In reality it was nothing like that. This guy was only singing to me so he could show off his voice and I knew that. That didn’t matter though. Emotion had gobbled me up like a whale eating krill. Great! I was a metaphorical krill being eaten by a metaphorical big fat Emotion Whale. Brilliant. God help me when the bridge comes. Oh wait… Here it is!
‘Even though we didn’t make it through, I am always here for you, you-oo-oooo!’ At this point I was out of my body looking down at myself shouting ‘Don’t you dare James! Don’t do it! You’ll be in big trouble… James!!’ – Too late! I sat up and leaned closer to him. Put my right hand on his knee and my left hand on my chest… And here’s the money. The mortifying, cringe worthy money. I look deep in his eyes as he is still singing to me, nod knowingly and whisper ‘I know… I know!’.
He’s stopped singing. It was quiet, peaceful and calm. He looked at me with his deep, dark chocolate brown eyes and said softly ‘What time are you leaving? I have stuff I’ve got to do!’.
I’ve not heard from him since. Can’t think why.
