My Impromptu Valentine

Last night I had the most memorable Valentine’s Day experience of my life. His name was Lee. He was a balding forty-something with an unappealingly thin frame and he wore a not-even-slightly-ironic tweed jacket.

He’d recently been back and forth between rabbit-sitting at his parents place in Gosford and “becoming more and more frustrated” with his Lewisham sharehouse of six, so was tired, but I didn’t mind.

To go with his vintage jacket, Lee used an original iPhone 3. He was the perfect picture of yesterday’s trends. His unnervingly crazed smile and twitchy demeanor captivated me – I couldn’t look away. And considering he was sitting right across from me with his attention buried in a magazine article titled “Getting rich quick”, I could stare as much as I liked.

I had chosen this particular Pho restaurant because I thought it was nondescript enough for it to have escaped the Valentine’s Day rush. Apparently it wasn’t. The place was crammed so I took the only available table by the door. I was secretly sniggering at all the legs and lipglosses on their cheap Valentine’s Day dates when he walked in.

He had a mothball smell and looked hungry and heartsore. When the waiter informed him that there was no table for him to sit at, I felt sad for him. I said he could sit with me. He seemed thankful and took his seat. Minutes of awkward conversation later the table next to us left and I told him that it looked like he had a table. He said he’d wait till they cleared it. They did. He stayed. Two more tables left. Still he stayed.

This is him. This is my Valentine. All these people think I am here with him. Well played, life, you cheeky bastard.

I then realised that while I was assuming he was a creep for not moving, he was probably thinking that I was a lonely, oily-haired desperado with flu symptoms and not a hope in the world. He surely feared I would come apart if he abandoned me on Valentine’s Day. I was his pity date.

So we ate and we talked and I gave him my beansprouts and lime. I told him about my love for hoisin sauce and New York. He asked me which I loved most and I told him not to make me choose. I told him that I would be moving there soon and he got so deep into the jealous and angry character that I actually became mildly afraid.

He told me about his psoriasis, his girlfriend who is ten years his junior, and how she ‘wouldn’t let up’ until she had him, as well as their impending trip to far North Queensland (for which I hope he will leave the jacket at home) where he would be assessing her as a future partner.

Satisfied with my pho and the fact that I had just had dinner with the strangest person in the world (and certainly hoping he felt the same), I bid him goodbye, secretly paying for his dinner on my way out just because I thought it would make him feel special, and despite the fact that it’s two weeks until pay day and I am not really in a position to even be buying myself dinner.

As I not-so-calmly power walked down the street, hastened by the fear he would find out I paid and come after me thinking that I was in love with him, I realised I would never forget him.

I hate Valentine’s Day. I really do. But my Valentine for 2014 taught me that memorable people come and go. Some stay for years, others stay for years too long, and some might just stay for pho.*

*That ending only works if you pronounce pho as ‘fo’ rather than the correct ‘fuh’ or ‘fur’. If you do indeed pronounce it correctly, well…good for you, you know-it-all prick. But I’ll have you know that you are closing the door on the endless pho puns that the mispronunciation produces. You think you win for getting things right? HA! Phogettaboutit!