I was sitting there, at the table, in the pub, alone, writing in my notebook, utterly absorbed in whatever it was I was writing, and a man sat down next to me and began to talk, to me, and I didn’t really want to talk, but I did, and I didn’t really want to leave my writing, but I had to, out of embarrassment at being caught, at being interrupted, in this shameful act of the mind, of the hands, and so I looked up, put my notebook away, and talked back, badly, as always, small talk, which I’m not very good at, nor any talk really, but I tried, I tried, and I felt bad at how bad the conversation went, felt guilty that it was all my fault that the conversation limped on, tediously, interminably, stumbling close to death but never actually dying, even though it was not my fault really, not my fault at all, I didn’t start it, I didn’t want it, although of course it was my fault to a certain extent, I suppose, in that I could have ended it, or engaged with it, or just been less of an awkward mess, and with every word that hung inert between us he looked so saddened, so pained and so appalled, as if I was being intentionally hurtful, my inarticulacy seen as calculated insult, my inability to think of anything to say as unforgivable rudeness, my tediousness as moral failing, my cowardice and confusion as I ran away to the toilets to hide and shudder at my inability to cope with normal human interaction a slap, sharp across his cheeks.
And as I lay in bed last night replaying it all over and over again in my mind, I wondered, just once, right at the end, before the eventual mercy of sleep, if he ever registered any of this, ever thought anything at all about my words, my behaviour, my discomfort, if he would even ever have remembered my existence beyond the few unmemorable minutes of our inconsequential conversation.
