Half Bloom

 I'm in the pub, writing, something I rarely do now because I can no longer stand the pub. 

The room's almost empty, except for the server and a teenage couple opposite me. A boy and a girl, wearing winter-woolens they don't take off, though the room is warm. The girl is blonde, the boy dark and hulking. They've barely touched their pints. They're talking, but neither has smiled. They whisper earnestly to one another, eyes to the floor. They aren't splitting up - they don't know each other. This is new. 

It's fucking adorable.  

I'd forgotten what it was like, negotiating first romances. What a slow, wary arbitration it is. The dead seriousness of youth. 

In my twenties I was like a fucking Viking because I'd had my heart broken and I didn't care about anyone, especially me. But before that, in the quietude of my teenage years, I'd been an erotic sloth, feeling my way emotionally if not physically. There was so much at stake. You really wanted to be good at this stuff and you really wanted them to like you, but what if they didn't? And how would you ever know? You couldn't come out and ask them. They'd tell their friends. That would be suicide. Social suicide, leading to speculations on the real thing. 

A dance as old as time, a bee drowning in nectar.  You puff out your chest, arsing about, trying to make them laugh. They have to see you, so suddenly you're there all the time and their friends start to notice and there's giggling and shoving and requests to "Shut up!" and you're pleased, because it's about you and so you must exist. You've been noticed, so you allow a sliver of something into your heart. The first inkling of hope. You're fizzy with it, your body flushed with pin-balling chemicals.  

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12.  Doo, doo, dah, doo, dah, doo, doo. 

But then you're alone. Together. And its deadly serious. It becomes a ballet of slights, of skewed meanings. Miscommunications flare up, though you're inches from each other. Mumbling, mealy-mouthed entreaties, hot hurts and long, slow thaws. A brief tick of a smile. Thigh brushes thigh. Eyes flash from beneath a fringe. The heart-in-mouth excitement. New sexy panic. Flat stomach sticking to spine. 

And these two are engaged in this ancient exchange. 

The older I get the more I value the quiet, the shy, the wary. They're the true heroes of life. They fly in the face of a world that wants them to blare. To project. To be all out and no in. And they resist. They turn their faces to the wall, sinking into the shadows. They're no bother. I love them. 

These two are doing next to nothing. Their body language is for the ages. They're leaning away from each other. But what's this? She's started to smile. She's stroking his arm. Sly romance lives, creeping, slow as leprosy. As consuming.