Long day

I text Rhys and told him that I didn’t want to go out clubbing like he had suggested, but coffee sounded good one day and I said to him that perhaps he should come out to Royal Oak and try ‘icoco’ because he had always told me about how he wanted to try it out.

He text me back asking me if I was in the city by any chance and I told him that I was actually at home. He asked me if I wanted to do something and I told him that I would come into the city. He gave me a call and said that he would come over to Royal Oak and we could have coffee over there so I set him up with the right bus and told him where to get off and arranged to meet him there soon.

Because I got dropped off instead of having to walk, I got there a bit early. It was 2.30pm when he arrived and we sat outside; me with a hot chocolate and Rhys with his latté and biscotti. We hadn’t seen each other in a while, not since I left work at Telecom. We were talking about what was new and it was a coffee place that he had always wanted to go to so I asked him how he found out about it and what he thought about it.

It was such a beautiful day, there were no clouds in the sky and the weather was quite hot. He asked me what I wanted to do and I told him that I wasn’t really fussed, that I was up for anything. We decided to go into the city because he wanted to take me to ‘Brazil’ where they serve great coffee. We ventured there by bus. When we got there, he ordered another latté and some cheesecake and we went upstairs and sat there. He read the newspaper and I started reading the pull-out ‘Canvas’ from the morning Herald which I had already read at home. It was a bit uncomfortable because we sat there in silence for about half an hour reading our respective materials. I had read every single article two or more times and was running out of things to pretend to read. I decided that I would pull out the lip balm and start applying that, perhaps breaking the pattern. Luckily it worked.

We were walking back into the city and he said that he would give his friend Shawn a call and see what he was up to. He arranged for both of us to go to Mission Bay where he lives with his two sisters and some other boarders in the house while his parents are in China for a couple of months. I didn’t really want to go thought that I may as well, even though it wasn’t my thing.

We stopped off at IMAX on the way though because Rhys wanted to look at mobile phones. We spent a good twenty minutes looking at phones and talking about why they were so good or bad. He remembered that he needed to buy a bottle of wine to take over the Shawn’s so we walked down to Foodtown on Quay Street and bought that and then walked over to the bus stop which was a few hundred metres away and waited.

He rang a friend and spoke to her the whole bus journey over and then called another friend as we were walking to Shawn’s house. I decided that I would ring Alistair and be anti-social as well so talked to him for a couple of minutes. He was on his way back with the group; they were on the train. I told him about what I was doing and said that I was a bit apprehensive because I hadn’t met Shawn before and I had no idea what we would all be doing.

It was really cool when we finally got there because everyone was so nice and friendly. We sat at the dining table and went through the Property Press looking at different houses and found the one that Rhys and I stopped at on the way and had a look at. Shawn’s sister come out and said “Hello” to me and asked if I was Japanese. Shawn was asking if I spoke any Asian languages and I said no and Rhys was telling him all about my family and things like that.

We went and sat outside and drank some wine and talked about friends that we had in common and Matt O’Brien came up. We all exchanged our Matt O’Brien stories and some good laughs. It was pretty cool. We then sat at the computer going through pictures and talking about all these different gay people, looking at different profiles and just having some fun.

We decided to go out and get something to eat so Rhys took us into the city in Shawn’s car and we went to a Downtown food court. We got to the food court and Shawn went to get some Japanese and Rhys said that I could share his Thai because he wasn’t going to eat it all by himself and that was fine by me. He asked me if I liked my food spicy and I said that I did. When we started eating it, I told him that it was really spicy and I needed a drink. He said that he thought I liked spicy food and when he started eating it, he realised it was actually very spicy. I went and got him a drink as well and we both couldn’t finish it.

It was quite funny because when we had finished eating, I put my plastic bottle on the tray for it to be thrown away. Rhys told me that it should really be recycled so he took it and put it in a plastic bag for him to take home! He told me that he always takes bottles and things like that home to be recycled which I thought was a bit extreme but it seemed like he was used to doing it.

Rhys drove me home and I told him the wrong off-ramp to take but managed to bluff my way out of it once I figured out where we were. When I got home, Alistair told me that he was in a pretty bad mood.

I asked him what was wrong and he said that when he found out I was with Rhys, his friend on the train asked him who Rhys was in a jokingly fashion. He told her that it was the person I had slept with when we had broken up for a while and she said that if she were in that situation, she wouldn’t be able to handle it. She wasn’t very respectful towards his feelings and it started putting ideas in his head. He said that he felt really silly but just the thought of Rhys hugging me and being close to me made him really sad. I told him that that doesn’t happen and he said that it used to. I felt really helpless, but then again, I didn't do anything wrong!

It was a great day though. It was good to meet some new people.

Todd

I showed Alistair a picture of Todd and asked what he thought of the photo. He asked me if it was ‘Zachary’ as a joke. I told him that it was actually a photo of my best friend. He told me that he thought I didn’t have one; that I thought I could do without one. I told him that I had actually gone back to someone else and asked them to be friends with them again. He kept saying that he was going to presume that I wasn’t talking about who he thought I was talking about. That he would presume I wasn’t low enough to resort to going back to someone who hurt me so much.

We got into a bit of a heated discussion about it, or more Alistair did and I just listened and calmly spoke my bit. He told me that he couldn’t understand why I would want Todd to be my friend again, after everything that happened. Alistair asked if everything he had told me about being a magnificent person and so on, had suddenly meant nothing?

He asked me what I saw in Todd, why I liked him. I told him that I wanted a friend who didn’t reserve judgement on situations, that I wanted someone who was honest with me. Someone who would tell me the truth, regardless of whether it would hurt me or not. I told him that even though he thought that Todd was cruel, harsh and not a very nice person, he was saying all those things because he knew he could and he knew that I wanted him to. I explained to Alistair that Todd was like an authority figure; anything that he said I would take on board, I would listen to and I would at least think about.

I told him that I was to blame for the whole situation; that it was me who shaped the image of Todd into his head. Everything that he knows about Todd is from what I’ve said, my description of Todd is the only thing that gives him any shape. If I hadn’t focussed primarily on all the negative aspects, then Alistair wouldn’t have formed such a negative opinion of him. I told Alistair that Todd had been there for me at times when I really needed him and that he had turned my life around as well; they were just aspects of our relationship that I didn’t share with him.

Moved on

I emailed Todd this evening – it was the first email I had sent him in seven weeks, my final email. He had sent me an email only a couple of days ago which I nearly didn’t find. He told me that he was moving to Christchurch to study, taking up a scholarship that was offered to him last year. I told him what was going on in my life and let him know how upset I was about the way things turned out between us. I realised that I don’t miss "us" anymore. I don’t crave for it like I used to. I’ve moved on. I didn’t think that I ever would, but I have.

Hanging out

I woke up this morning just after 9am and went into the city to meet Darren. He was running late so I ended up going to Uni to post Alistair’s parcel and then went to BNZ and ASB to pay off my credit cards. Darren only ended up being about half an hour late so that worked out quite nicely. We went to pay off my phone bill at the post office and walked to the Gen-I building to see Rhys.

The computers were down at the office today so Rhys had an early lunch. We met up with him and he gave me the discs and we ended up going back into the city for coffee. He said that he was officially, 100% single and we talked about that for a bit. It was only after about twenty minutes that Rhys realised that it was Darren who Alex had asked for information on me.

We were all sitting at Gloria Jeans drinking our coffee and just talking. It was quite interesting. I brought out my pictures of Alistair because Rhys wanted to know more and more about him. Rhys told Darren the story about how we met and about how our families actually know each other. We talked a lot about work, what is happening in all our futures and just had some good conversation.

After Rhys went back to work Darren and I walked around the city. We ended up at a Martial Arts shop near the Town Hall looking at shoes which they had on sale. They are really great shoes, really flexible, thin, and good for clubbing and dancing.

It was such a hot day, it was about 26°C and we walked to the Oracle Tower to see if that was open. We ended up going back onto Queen Street and saw Darren’s sister at work. We just walked out of the building when he saw Helen, someone who he used to work with. We were sitting there talking for a little while and it was quite interesting, I found out that she went to Mt Roskill so knew a lot of the people that I knew. She asked Darren if he was ‘seeing anybody’ and he said no. Then she looked at me and said, “Are you...” and I finished off her sentence by telling her that I was ‘engaged, you know, to be married’. That was quite funny and when she left twenty minutes later she wished me all the best for the wedding which was really nice.

We ended up at Wendy’s where we sat for about an hour, just talking about the time when we first met, how our perceptions over guys have changed over the last four years. We started sending each other photos and things like that via our mobiles and he spent about half an hour going through my phone and reading messages that he had sent me months ago. He said that it was always funny reading things that he had written and couldn’t believe some of the things that he had said.

We went walking along High Street and into some clothing stores. It was quite cool to go into stores that I hadn’t been in for ages but I wasn’t really too interested in shopping. We spent a bit of time down at the CD store looking at DVDs and then went down to Starbucks for a drink. We ended up going down and having a look at the Downtown Westfield and spent most of the time in the Electronic Boutiques store looking at games.

Long day, but a good day. It's great hanging out with friends!

More dramas

I was woken up this morning by a message from Darren. He had been to Flesh the night before and had a run-in with Alex. Alex was annoyed because Darren told me about how Alex wanted to know some embarrassing things about my life, dirt on me, and all that kind of stuff. I told Rhys, who confronted him about it. Alex told Darren that he shouldn’t have told me about it and was really angry. Darren of course felt really sorry for Alex.

I'm a nurse, any jobs going?

Gus text me saying that he had ran out of papers, so took the Onehunga off-ramp and wanted to know if I was at home. I gave him the directions and he pulled up outside a couple of minutes later. We sat in the car and talked about a lot of stuff. Just random things, what was happening at Flesh, where his parents were in the world, what was happening with our jobs and stuff like that. We took a drive around the block because he wanted to show me what happens when he goes over bumps, apparently there is a noise from a loose latch at the back of the car which I heard, but didn’t seem to be that annoying.

We talked about ‘Shortland Street’ of all things which is something we talk a lot about. I remember sitting outside 277 talking about it with him, about how everything was all linked. We talked about whether Ferndale was a suburb or a city, as apparently there is a ‘Ferndale City Council’ on the programme. We made family trees of the characters and talked about why they all lived together, or have slept together. Why do strangers just turn up and say “hey, I’m a nurse. I’m looking for somewhere to stay” and there is always a spare room somewhere and a job going?

Jealousy

I was talking to Rhys tonight and asked him if Alex had anything against me, an impression that I got from Darren last night over the phone. He said that Alex didn’t have anything against me and asked why I thought that. I told him about what Darren had said and he told me that he would ask Alex about it and that they were having some problems.

Ooh, someone is jealous over me.

Vendetta?

I rang Darren this evening. Apparently, Alex asked him for information about me; he obviously doesn’t like me and has some sort of vendetta against me. I told him that I would ask Rhys about it and see if he knew anything.

Another sighting

I was woken up by a text message from Gus around 2am. He said that he had spotted Charlie McDermott (Ben, ‘the best mate’) at Flesh. We always seem to tell each other when we see sightings of people that we like and talk about. We did it with Carl (who he saw in Subway once), Kulai (who works at Telecom and knows Rhys), and Jeremy Birchall (Billy, ‘the gay guy’).

Closure. Happy Birthday Todd

Today was Todd’s birthday, he turned 19. I wanted to wish him well and congratulate him but I didn’t. He needed some time away from me and I agreed that it is best for both of us if he got that time. We spent an amazing 19 months together, I heard from him most days, even if it was just to tell me he had a long and tiring day and would get back to me at another stage. He would send me messages telling me how he was thinking of me. I miss them but I still know that he is.

I loved Todd. I thought that we were going to be in the lives of one another forever. But our relationship wasn’t equal; I think that he had too much power. It’s not that he went and exercised all this power, but it was just how it naturally fell. Anything he asked of me, I would do. I would always succumb to him because I needed him much more than he needed me.

But I needed closure on the situation between us. I couldn’t just cut my ties with him. This was my best friend. I didn’t know how to get over the hurt and pain of it all. It was sudden, it was unexpected. I don’t ever want to go back to how things were between us. I was flying back from Melbourne, coming back to life in a new year. I imagined that Todd had died. In a way, he has. That way I can just think of the wonderful times we had, I can imagine that I will never see him ever again, I don’t have to wait for that phone call or that email from him on Valentine’s Day or at birthdays. I think that is how I managed to get closure on the situation.