The Almond Bun Trilogy (3) – Return Of The Almond

20 April saw the second night out with Emer, her of the Sliding JayeLs saga. The night began in McTurcaills, a warm friendly, yet bloody packed, place on the corner of Townsend and Tara (trying to start a whole New York style of street description here). Emer came past my house and I managed to get out before Mam saw her and invited her in. I’m gettin too old for this shit. We walked down to the bus, as I slowly realised it was the first time I had spoken to her sober. Gulp. So I talked to her in my business-like voice, walking briskly (she was too) and asking her how her week was while continuing to look straight ahead. She was wearing the Gap jacket she had lost the last night, one which was pretty much the same colour as mine. We joked as to how this would be interpreted by those we’d see in this pub. We talked on the bus, and once again I feel woefully inadequate. Can I change my diary name to “Woefully Inadequate”? It’s an ever-present emotion in my life, this feeling that I’m the first prize offered on the game show “but why have that when you can have this?” Audience goes “WHOO!” Joe quietly leaves the set. We both walk the same way when we’re on the way somewhere, kinda marching. I tried not to say too much (very difficult) and therefore keep the illusion that “I’m a great guy to know” going that bit longer. I might be a great guy to know, but not to her. She’s so……without baggage. I’ve always been around people with some kind of issues, some kind of quirk. That’s probably what’s wrong with Elaine and me. Elaine says she has problems and I suppose she does. But she’s got such a strong foundation, such a basic universal goodness about her that she can put them all in a box. I’ve just got problems and I can’t hide them for too long. I don’t know why I have problems, I had every chance.

This sounds terrible to say, but I’ve wanted to say it for ages and now I’m going to. Have you ever noticed that the nicest people you’ll ever meet are the ones with big noses? Or fat people. Or kids with big heads, lazy eyes, protruding chins…….anything that little bit different to the norm. And yes, there is a norm. Why else would we constantly refer to one? I’ll tell you why people who look physically different often end up the nicest people you’ll meet; they’ve had to fight to get to where they are. They’ve had to endure insults as children from other children (when else are you judged by how you look?) and more often than not it leaves them with extraordinary talents. If you’re rejected, fully rejected by your peers then in the middle of all the crying, the loneliness and the heartbreak something beautiful comes out of it. Like when thousands of tons of organic matter, leaves, trees, dead animals all decay for thousands upon thousands of years. They all get crushed and squashed into ugly turf. A few more thousand years later and it becomes coal. And out of the most crushed coal, at the very heart of all this disgusting process of rotting and crushing over hundreds of centuries what emerges? A diamond.

So you can either be the centre of attention and love it and never know what rejection is. Or you can be rejected all your life and at the end of it, when you reach adulthood, you have some amazing talents borne of years in the wilderness. I suppose I wasn’t like that. I was never entirely rejected, but never entirely accepted. I don’t have any protruding this or that (apart from my ego of course) but…..I dunno. Sometimes I wish I was never invited to the house parties and the birthdays. Sometimes I wish I only began discovering the whole sex thing now. I wish I was a fully-fledged outsider who knew nothing but my own world. I wish I’d got into reading, into joining political groupings or continuing with the drama thing I just abandoned at 17. I wish I’d had a more difficult childhood, some kind of terrible hurt that always haunted me. But I didn’t. I had an idyllic childhood, spent either running in school yards, falling off bikes, chasing around my estate or running between legs in pubs. Nothing terrible ever happened to me, no tragedies or heartbreaks. And yet I feel separate. Not alone or anything, just separate.

I’ve just been reading a lot of stuff by people who’ve had tragedy and such terrible things happen to them and it’s all beautiful. And I can’t decide what I am, where I am and or what I’m doing here. I want to be grateful of the good life I’ve had, I want to savour it. Hmmmm.

Back to the night out with Emer. We walked into McTurcaills and her two brothers were there, the two who’d also lived around the corner from me all my life. I shook hands with their friends, girlfriends and then I said what the hell and shook the brothers’ hands too. It was like meeting them for the first time. There were some more people from the suburb there, met them too. I really don’t like meeting people I know to see, it’s really cheesy and fake. “Oh, I remember seeing you laughing hysterically at something on the radio one time on the bus”. Yuk!

I was incredibly awkward. I barely knew Emer, and there were NO intentions on my part of the kind you’d come to expect from reading this diary. And here I was sitting with all her nearest and dearest staring at me. So I went up and got her a drink, an Archers Orange Aqua. And the obligatory pinta Heineken for myself. Just as the barman came for the money, I blurted out “…..and a Jack Daniels and white”. He comes over with my change and the whiskey. And I drank it all in one go, before wiping my mouth and returning to the table, much to the bewilderment of the barman. Yes, I know it’s sad but I couldn’t get talking to these people without shedding some inhibitions that can only be killed off by Mr Daniels and his merry men. I sat down and managed to engage those around me a bit more. I thought I recognised this guy sat at the table so I asked him if he went to my old college. He said he didn’t, but thought I looked familiar. He asked was I into “gaming”. I said no; I wouldn’t know what end to grab a Playstation by. Then he said no, he meant strategy games. “Like Warhammer?” I said, laughing. Yes. Exactly like Warhammer. Whole table looks at single Joe making fun of introverted, now-happy-with-fit-burd dude and grimaces. What an Alan Partridge moment. New beer please.