GENERATION END

A SHORT STORY, JUST FOR YOU

A SHORT STORY, JUST FOR YOU

I’ve been flicking through some of my old stuff lately. Here’s a short story I wrote a few years ago, which I thought I’d share with you:

The easiest part about it was that she didn’t love him. They didn’t meet in a bar. They met at a party, through friends of friends and they shook hands and introduced themselves and talked crap. He wasn’t that good looking but to be honest, neither was she. Nonetheless he thought she was different; nonetheless she liked his smile.

Their first kiss was in his car.

“You taste like cherry!” he said.

“You taste like… um… I don’t know?” She said.

Here are some of the things she did for him: clean his room, lecture him about his car, buy him a few shirts, recommend getting a watch, organise a surprise party for him, encourage him to work harder, befriend his parents, buy him perfume, go on the pill. Here are some of the things he did for her: buy her jewellery, buy her perfume, turn her car seat pink, change his hair style, lessen his swearing, take her on a holiday, smile at her parents, learn to cook, make her cry (in a good, romantic sort of way), buy her an iPod, think about her.

Here are some of the things they argued about: friends, best friends, alcohol, tattoos, sex, drugs, piercings, clubbing, spending, boys and girls, good looking boys and girls, sports, television, yelling, too much arguing, winter, Facebook, Simpsons, parties, lying, China, Mexico, Germans, parents, jealousy, forgetting to call, not having enough time to call, running out of phone credit to call, calling for too long, not putting effort into calling, not calling when one of them needed each other the most, being cheap with calls, calling too often, running out of batteries to call, not having enough time for each other, apologising too much, complaining about calls, Britney Spears.

There was a lot of crying. There was a lot of, “Yeah but is that what you want?” There was a lot of, “I keep telling you but you never listen!” There was a lot of, “I’m sorry. Don’t go.” There was a lot of, “I really didn’t know!” There was a lot of, “I love you.”

Here is what she did after the breakup: text her best friend and then immediately get a call from her best friend.

Here is what he said after the breakup: Fuck!

The beautiful part about this story is that you’re the reader. You’re not the girl, you’re not the boy. You’re sitting on your arse and you’re reading this and you’re (maybe) being entertained by this, and you’ll have your brief opinion and life will go on. The beautiful part about this story is that you’re an optimist and you have better things to do, your own life to worry about, something besides relationships to worry about. You know they’ll move on and one day, even if the damage and the hurt will still exist, they’ll learn to hide it, drink it off, sing it off, cry it off, dance it off. The beautiful part about this story is that none of it is true.

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NEWS: My book of short stories, Surface Children, is now available on paperback. Check it out here: http://amzn.to/18hhESk