my stuff
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another one of those nights
Oof. Hangover.
When I go to McDee’s House for tea
I bring:
1 bottle of wine
1 tub of olives
1 tub of sun blush tomatoes
3 stuffed vine leaves (that can be chopped in half to make 6)
My best listening ears.
When McDee comes to my House for tea
She brings:
1 jar of ½ eaten olives out of her fridge
3 stuffed vine leaves (that can be chopped in half to make 6)
1 pack of giant, rubbery, tasteless pre-cooked king prawns
No listening ears
Her best talking mouth
1 bottle of wine, and
1 litre of wine
Perhaps she feels that wine + more wine = compensation for shite snacks and rubbish conversation.
Yes I know. I am being very harsh. And not a very nice friend either and I know I will be eating my own words when I have children and I want to talk about them all the time but, really. I mean REALLY, why does the talking/listening ratio have to be so unequal?
I feel that a large portion of it is down to how pissed she gets – she wolfs her wine down at a rate of 2 to 1 to me (and I really am a fast drinker), so she gets really pissed, really quickly and repeats herself. But she also repeats herself over the top of me and it’s almost always about her and it’s almost always rather uninteresting.
For example: She asked me what was new with me (normally the sort of question that you have to reply either ‘oh nothing’ or ‘I went to the shops and bought shoes’ or something equally as swift so you can get it all in before she interrupts by telling you something she’s done or is planning on doing etc. etc. etc) and rather than my usual response I decided to tell her about something that actually was new with me. It involved a bit of setting the scene, a bit of character introduction etc and a few other tit bits before getting to my actual point. If conversation wasn’t always so one sided, I would have told her about this ages ago and wouldn’t have needed to do so much ‘setting the scene’ and therefore wouldn’t have taken so long to tell my bloody story.
Anyway, I was just getting into it and I could tell she wasn’t listening as intently as she should have been, I recognised the signs of the Great Interruption and lo and behold a few moments later she put her hand up (in a “stop!” type fashion) said ‘Sorry, Heeland Lass I just have to say…’ and then proceeded to tell me (for the 3rd time that night) that the album we were listening to reminded her of her student days when she had a very small room in a dorm and she’d sit and listen to that album and get very home sick and sing along to the album.
“Honestly, Heeland Lass, you wouldn’t believe it. I mean, you couldn’t imagine just what it was like. There was me, sitting in my wee room, listening to this music, feeling home sick. Drinking wine. Looking in my little mirror. You couldn’t possibly imagine blah blah blah”
Yeah, cos picturing someone in a small room listening to music is so frigging difficult to imagine.
Anyway. After that she proceeded to tell me more stuff about her babies and to console myself I drank as much wine as I could stomach before I got heart burn (i.e A LOT) and went back to my ‘uhuh’ face.
It’s not that I don’t love this girl. I do. I genuinely love her, she’s my oldest friend and that is why I stick with it. For a long time now it has been very one sided and I don’t feel fulfilled by my friendship with her, but I stay with it, knowing that I have a loyalty to her and also to myself of X years ago – a me who would have really wanted me to stay friends with her.
I hope that one day it will change, but for the moment I feel more and more and more like a character in her TV show and I really do wonder what she gets out of it. I wonder what would happen if I made a big deal out of it and actually said something.
Every now and then I get the tiniest glimmer of the McDee I have always been friends with and then I wonder if that McDee was ever there at all.
I suppose we’ve both just grown up and we’ve grown into different things. I feel like I do a lot of giving and with every giver, there’s a taker. It just makes me feel a bit miserable sometimes. And a bit sad.
But that’s life I suppose. And so the night ended with McDee sloshing lots of wine all over my living room floor, giggling her head off, farting loudly a couple of times and then staggering off into the night and a waiting cab.
What an exit!
2:07 pm - 11 May 2006
