Yesterday night I did not have the energy to put
up with people’s nonsense so I popped into a pub to drink a pint of Australian lager
on my own. I sat down a on a worn-out leather couch, put on my headphones and
played some Robyn. I twiddled my thumbs, checked my emails and made a mental
note to buy hairspray and fresh limes on my way home.
I looked at the old couch I was
sitting on and initiated a mental calculation of how many people may have had
sex on it. I am aware that no one has full sexual intercourse in pubs (not the
pubs that I go to, anyway). But that sofa is so old that it was probably second
or third hand when it was bought so it must have had a life that not me nor the
owners of the place are aware of. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the fellow pub-goers were conceived on that very same couch on a steamy night in 1987 to
the tune of Tiffany’s I Think We’re Alone Now.
I tried to focus my attention on the people
around me. I scanned the place from left to right, zooming in on the parts I
deemed most fascinating. Like a real life Instagram but without stupid dog
filters or gross hashtags misuse. There was nothing particularly amusing or interesting
about them. Just regular interactions between friends, strangers, lovers and
business partners ingesting large quantities of fermented sugar starch. I looked at them and marvelled at how satisfied
(or blissfully unaware) they seemed about themselves and their lives and who
they are and what they represent and what they’ve done up to that point and the
direction in which they’re headed, etc.
It’s not like I asked them,
though. Surely they have their fair share of struggles, dreams and hopes and doubts
and sorrows. That’s why most of them wind up at the pub, anyway. But their problems
are still normal problems, they are shared and understood by most of their
peers, talking about them is a bonding ritual, fostering a universalized sense
of communion among regular human beings with regular human problems. They all
have that unmistakable regular human glow that is really hard to miss.
I don’t have that glow. For
better and for worse, I don’t feel like a regular human being. I was denied the
membership to the NPC (Normal People Club) at age six when I stopped watching
SpongeBob Square Pants and became convinced that I was the Vampire Slayer of my
generation. Even my problems feel slightly more intricate and nuanced and
fundamentally unsolvable than my friends’. Maybe because they’re mine. Possibly
as I get older I’ll realise that my issues were not so unique after all but for
now I do believe that I am worthy of a prime spot on Dr Phil’s show.
Anyway, the people in the pub made
me wonder if I’m doing this adulthood thing right or if I am unconsciously making
a series of lethal decisions that will inevitably result in celibacy,
unemployment, death - or worse - baldness.
From the outside it looks like I’m
nailing it. I always pay the bills on time. I periodically descale the
dishwasher. I don’t eat candy after brushing my teeth and I make my bed every morning.
That’s peak adult right there.
But even though I rushed into maturity
with the same eagerness as when I hurry to toilet when I forget to have
Lactaid with my ice-cream, I can’t help but feeling that maybe all this
middle-aged wisdom I claim, the Christmas cards, carpet cleaning products and whiskeys
on the rocks are just a tool to distract myself from the fact that I’m stuck in
some kind of emotional adolescence where everything feels as intense and
dramatic and weird as it was (or should have been) when I was fifteen.
I look at the people
around me and Jesus, everyone is a mess in one way or another. But there’s a
recognisable pattern in their messiness, it’s in line with their age ad their stage
of emotional development and other generational/geographical/environmental
factors. I, on the other hand, am a weird hybrid between a hormonal teenager
who’s equally terrified and excited about the future and an exhausted pensioner
with the agonising look of the man who’s seen it all.
And maybe that’s the key right
there. Some of the experiences I have lived through have taught me things that most
people only have to reflect on later in life. But in the meantime, I missed out
on that teenage melodrama that turns into a stepping stone to access the next stage
of your emotional development. There’s a big gap to fill, a long bridge to
build and a hell of an uncomfortable hike towards self-completion.
Changing the order of things,
giving up on some experiences to make room for others (not that I had a choice
in the matter), and overthinking all of this… that kind of stuff is what makes
me atypical (it’s a neutral word, so I’ll take it). And without the aid of a
time machine or, even better, divine intervention, there’s no changing that. And
either way I’m not sure I would want to change anything at all.
I don’t know. I’m generally fine
but I also sometimes stop to think that I’m in a pretty weird place. It’s the
kind of feeling you get when you google a fairly specific question and you
realise that no one has asked it before, not even on Reedit. There’s no map, no
blueprint. Just me, sitting in a pub, trying to learn from seemingly normal
people what it could possibly mean to be normal.
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