I said something stupid.
Your motionless face sang disdain.
In search of conversation, I ejaculated a purile triviality.
Your face wrote painful tolerance.
Unrescued by the facially generous conversational cavalry
my lack of small-talk and I would prefer to be alone, or,
in the company of cats.
Poem inspired by an evening of gawkiness in the company of strangers, following an evening of inarticulateness in the company of friends. Its an accident. It’s predictable. Like a broken finger-nail or a drip from the spout of a teapot. Conversational gawkiness. It doesn’t end, teenage-hood stalks you throughout your life.
nineth in an awkward yet extensive analytical possibly exaggerated Wednesday series of “why wendy’s single“.
Reason # 9: gawky
Blog posts can be planned, edited, reviewed, carefully structured. They can be constructed to look smooth. Obviosuly, in my case the emphasis is on the phrase ‘can be’. By contrast, conversations happen quickly. They benefit from timely wit. I’m a bit gawky in many conversations and have been known to break into talking bollocks or simply running away. Un-proof-read emails can also produce some off-kilter-from-wendy’s-intentions interpretations by the reader.
In conversations I’m the person who starts talking before you’ve finished, realises it, stops, starts again, realises you haven’t finished, stops again, puts my hand in the air while listening, then says something on a slight (the slightness is debatable) tangent to your main theme. Finishes, there’s silence, then conversation resumes on the orginal theme and I wonder why it all feels so complicated. I do dislike those silences, the first one I encountered in America was during a work meeting:
colleague: when do you think that will be finished?
clear end point and direction for me to speak, phew!
Wendy: in a fortnight
Colleagues: (silence)
Colleague: is that four days?
my thick English accent, relatively quiet delivery and that ‘fortnight’ is not used in everyday US American had made my contribution completely unintelligable.
Wendy: in 2 weeks
flabberghasted, and realising the enormity of unanticipatable miss-communications to come….
seventh in a squidgily unstable yet predictably published Wednesday series of “why wendy’s single“.
Reason # 7: cinderella effect
I tend to skedaddle before the evening has really finished. This means any plucky lad has to either
- display cunning timing skills to engage me in ‘conversation’ before I scarper
- not take my quick exit as a personal afront
- find a creative alternative solution (e.g. let the tires down on my car)…..
Previously established reasons:
- hat fetishist
- capable cookie
- petite pool
- indolence
- talks bollocks
- tiny trichromes
