30 November - Malaysians & Russians

I win! So there’s C. this girl who’s very fond of Toph and they met at yoga class. She’s tiny tiny Malaysian and he likes her because her speech is incongruous with her frame. She uses English colloquial expressions which are apt but sound funny coming out of her mouth, and she swears a lot and says things like ‘don’t mess with me, or I’ll kill you, I’m no China dolll’. She’s 30 and she’s tired of playing ‘China doll’ to men who are into the exotic, but by the same token she’s not into dating people from her own ethnic group. She’s s smart but she has a car decked out in furry fabric and soft toys which always spells immature to me. Yet she’s got a tough job, a traditional accountancy /actuary one. She’s friendly to me (she likes my style) and she lets me know Toph is not her type. Good to know, cause last time I looked he liked a bit of tits and ass on a frame. She’s had her heart broken by the silent, tall and mysterious Russian, S. who also goes to the same class. They went out a few times and then he dumped her and she’s making an illness of it. Granted, it’s kind of embarrassing to be mostly naked in the same class as your former lover who dumped you but… there are other classes and he clearly is not about stopping coming to this particular one… Toph is a very patient person and he does a lot of listening and advising. I kind of find it odd that he should give her that much time but it’s part of his curious nature to also live vicariously and she’s a fascinating creature (in my book for about half an hour as there really isn’t that much going on in her life and I’ve never heard her talk about a book) and all men like to play that part, the sympathetic friend and let’s face it, I never give him much occasion to console me, strong tree that I am.

I’m sure it’s crossed his mind what it would be like to shag her. He marvels how someone with such small and seemingly fragile bones, can do such a tough class. I remind him about the oriental tradition of kung fu fighting etc where you’d never think that such small men could despatch the big western baddies they fight in those films. Anyway…. As am now older and wiser, I let him be. I just occasionally call up if his post-yoga drinks are going on too long and I’m waiting hungry at home. Then it all blows up because after one particular class, a mancunian woman, says she’s not keen to go to the drinks as she doesn’t want to be in the company of the Russian because… they did it and now it’s over. Poor C. starts hyperventilating and crying and my solicitous boyfriend consoles her.

A couple of days later she calls him and I listen in as I read. There’s precious little talk on his part and the 45 mins are taken up by her essentially saying she can’t go to yoga anymore and she can’t be seeing my BF anymore and it’s all crap and blah blah. I hear him saying ‘Why don’t you just take a short break and maybe return when you’ll feel better’. After the call he’s a bit shaken by what I simply explain as ‘Now you know what women are like, and how they can go on forever and a day relieving /stirring up any upset and passing it on to friends who console them, only for their advice to go unheeded and before you know it she’ll sleep with the Russian again and then he’lll dump her again and the whole thing will go on and on’. He nods agreement, he’s clearly tired out by the ‘scene’.

And then the following Saturday she turns up at the class as usual (she probably just wants to tough it up and not be driven away from something she likes by her bad shagging choice) and as if her call had not happened. He comes home straight after it finishes, not having gone to the pub this time. He said he’s had it with her as he feels she’s just using him to dump on (after all, I doubt he tells her much about his own life/worries). Once again I say, ‘This is what girls do, they use up your time with silly thinking aloud for days and months abut something relatively small and you keep going through it with them and unless they’re grade A friends, then why bother?’ He agrees, but he seems sad about it. Oh well....