The Overthinkers Read online

  “I’m leaving you behind mate!” I wheezed back at him, almost ploughing into an oncoming pedestrian. A Harajuku-type, with socks pulled up to her knees, a unicorn backpack and a beret. She skirted out of my way nimbly, a panicked expression crossing her pretty features.

  It was a virtual bike-slalom. I weaved in and out of the crowd unskilfully. We should have been riding on the road, but I wasn’t made to navigate a heavily trafficked Sydney street. I would have made for person-pancake in no time. My very fibres meshed and ingrained into that hot-bitumen, forever trapped, physical keepsakes, reminders that as a twenty-one year old man, I was poorly equipped for life (generally). Not Leo, he would have been fine.

  I was making a serious go of it, and Leo was still behind me. We sailed by the enduring gay bars, which were slowly filling up as that afternoon drifted apathetically towards evening. My feet kept pumping. My heart pounded in my chest. I was still ahead of him as we passed St Vincent’s; the grey building lurched like a ship out of the equally grey cityscape.

  He didn’t catch me until we were at the Paddo Inn, which was actually quite a distance from where we had started. I was kind of shocked by my physical prowess. Of course, by then I was in the full throes of an asthma attack – I fished out my Ventolin, and started puffing away like it was the end of days.

  A group of girls stood out the front of the bar with fancy dresses on and too much fake tan. They were smoking and drinking, wine glasses inelegantly clutched in one hand, and durries in the other. They were stuck in that delicate space between tipsy and drunk. It was a fine-line. They might topple over unexpectedly at any point, and then there would be vomit and tears. I ignored them, as they pointed at us and stifled laughter, tottering on their heels.

  Okay, they were laughing at me. I took it on the chin. Maybe I did look silly? So, what?

  “Mate, what are you even doing?” Leo said, clapping me on the shoulder as I struggled to breathe.

  “What are you on, the Tour de France or something?” he joked as he rode past me.

  Breath kind of under control, I followed a couple of clicks behind. Unperturbed.

  We turned down Paddington Street, the pretty back street they lived on, lined with Victorian terraces and Porsches. I took one side of the pavement and he took the opposite, the width of that tight street dividing us.

  “She’s not the chick for you,” he called from across the road. Here it was, I knew it was coming. It was a regular feature in our conversations. Why I should forget Francesca Moore, and move on with my life. I didn’t respond. I’d come to learn that his arguments were reliably standardised, and there wasn’t much deviation on key messages. In addition, there was no reply on my end that could stem the outpouring of negativity after its genesis. It was like it came from a main vein, or even an artery. You had to be a surgeon to apply the torque effectively.

  The thing was he lived with Francesca. They were tight. I’d met Francesca through Leo. We were kind of like his two best friends. But he objected to a potential hook-up between the two of us. This was strange – and while the arguments he ran kind of made sense, there was something about it that was not quite right. Something kind of ... curious.

  “She’s not the type of girl who dates guys like you. You’re too nice for her,” he called.

  Yep, I’d heard that before. Too nice. I still didn’t quite know what that meant.

  How was this “girls don’t like nice guys” chronicle still alive and kicking? I didn’t get it.

  “Explain to me how this ‘bad-boy’ category is still a thing? Isn’t it toxic?” I replied, ducking my head to avoid a low-hanging branch from an overgrown Magnolia tree.

  I could sense he was rolling his eyes at me. There was lots of eye rolling that went on in our conversations. One statement; eye roll. Another statement; eye roll. It was like we were talking two very different languages. It was a wonder we were still friends. Leo would say it was because I liked having a gay best friend, it ratcheted me up the “woke” chart. I would tell him that wokeness was kind of derogatory, that it was cultural appropriation of the worst kind, and he would roll his eyes. Again.

  Truth was, I liked him. It was hard talking to other guys. They didn’t say much. They didn’t say anything, really. You couldn’t tell a dude you’d just had an anxiety attack, or that you were worried about dying. No way. Trust me, I’d tried. They just thought you were a freak.

  But Leo didn’t mind. Not at all.

  “She’s not the type of girl who cares about carbon footprints, and toxic masculinity. She’s the type of girl who likes fancy cars, and guys that wear Huaraches, and went to a private school.”

  “I could get myself a pair of Huaraches.” As though this was the most pressing part of the argument that needed to be addressed.

  “That’s not the point. She’s like a completely different girl to the one you imagine. She sent you a couple of texts, and you’ve had a few conversations, and you’ve projected this aura onto her. Like you’ve imagined this dream girl, but she doesn’t exist. Francesca Moore is not deep, I’m not saying she’s shallow or anything. She’s one of my closest friends ... she’s just got a plan. And you wouldn’t fit into that plan.” He finished off with a flourish, like he was making a speech at the Oscars. Like I said, I’d heard it all before.

  “And how do you know so much about her?” I asked. He pretended they were best friends but sometimes he said things about her that weren’t so nice. Maybe he just didn’t want his two closest friends hanging out. Maybe there was some jealousy involved.

  We were close to the terrace now that they rented together. The sudden knowledge of her physical proximity made my chest constrict, and my palms start to sweat. She had a strange impact on my bodily condition. Like there was a direct correlation between her person and my frame. Like they were tied together by an invisible string.

  I didn’t convey this to Leo, he wouldn’t have been impressed.

  “I live with her,” he muttered.

  I glanced across the road at his brilliantly rubicund face. Dark hair shorn tight, and his hard jaw-line. He was a nice looking bloke. I didn’t get why some gays had a “No Asians” policy. Seemed weird. What I did know was that Leo had seen a whole heap of dick, and that was it. His carnal knowledge of women was virtually non-existent. He’d never had sex with a woman before ... sure he lived with Francesca, but what did he really know about women?

  Then I got stuck in a mental loop. What did I even know about women? Nothing. I had limited carnal knowledge of women. I’d slept with five of them, that was it. I was twenty-one years old, it was not lost on me that my number should have been higher. But then that was toxic too ... the idea of racking up “numbers”.

  “She’s the type of girl who will make you take photographs of her for Instagram,” he continued.

  I smiled, kind of thankfully, because I hated my personal mental spirals. Besides, it was funny the first time he had said it; on the tenth occasion it still brought a tight smirk to my lips. Maybe I wouldn’t mind taking a few photographs for her for Instagram. It seemed like a fair exchange; in fact it seemed like an uneven one. The thought of sharing a secret with her, of being in on her jokes, of being touched by her ... yeah, I’d be willing to take some photographs of her for Instagram in exchange.

  The sky arched over us now, shifting in colours as sunset started to descend, like a giant peach. In this transitional stage it seemed to promise something about the evening that was to come. Something infinite, or even, something epic.

  I didn’t tell Leo that either. He wouldn’t have appreciated the poetry of that late Saturday afternoon description. In fact, he would have taken it as another sign that my heart was beating way too fast for Francesca Moore.

  “It’s not just one or two photographs bro,” I could hear Leo continuing in the background. “It will be like fifty to a hundred. From every angle. It’ll drive you nuts. And then it’s not just about taking the photograph, it’s about what the photograph re
presents.”

  Oh yeah, they had come to it. This was Leo’s coup d’état. The photograph and what it represents. This is when Leo revealed her inner workings, and how deeply twisted they were, or how incompatible they were with my own.

  Do I dare ask?

  I got off the bike now. We were only a couple of metres from their place. I could feel my skin twitching, and a certain nervousness start to take shape. I raised an eyebrow at him as I passed his bike.

  “So go on, tell me, what does it represent?” I said more to calm myself than to actually hear the response.

  Leo followed suit jumping off the bike, overly eager to provide his Freudian analytics on this girl, who really neither of us knew at all.

  “What it represents, Benji ...” He paused dramatically at the gate ready to provide his prognosis. Use of my name noted to provide weight to the verdict that was to come. “Is exceptional vanity, lack of substance and of authenticity.”

  “She’s one of your best friends,” I reminded him.

  “I know. But nobody’s perfect.”

  “I’m worried about what you say about me,” I said wryly.

  “Don’t worry. I dish out all sorts of shit about you too.”

  I wasn’t surprised. Leo told it how it was, but he was the kind of guy that had your back. When it counted.

  I held my breath as he turned the key in the lock. I was obsessed with this girl, and it was by no means in a good way, I knew that much.

  We entered the terrace. It was cool and dark, like most terraces were. I always took in all of the details, like there were prompts, messages, secrets about her that could be unearthed from her home. There were fairy lights strung over the fireplace and a vase of freshly cut sunflowers on the dining room table. The place was clean and messy all at the same time. A jumper was flung unceremoniously over a seat, nail polish remover and cotton balls hung about on the table, as well as a dirty coffee cup, but otherwise the place was fresh and well-kept. I swept my eyes around quickly, taking in every detail greedily, thieving intimate information about her. Were the cotton balls hers? The jumper? It didn’t look familiar.

  There was an unfinished painting propped up on a chair at the end of the dining room. It was a portrait of a woman with pale skin and dark eyes. The eyes were complete but the rest of the face was a muddle of uncertain, sketched lines. It was like most of the bones were there ... but the rest, just didn’t exist. It had been that way for a while. At least six months. I wasn’t sure if Francesca intended on finishing it. Maybe it was supposed to be that way – incomplete. There was something kind of haunting about it that way. Leo caught me staring at it, and must have taken it as a sign of my unrestrained infatuation for the artist.

  “You know she’s with someone, right?” Leo said to me, as he dropped his keys on the dining room table. He looked uneasy when he said this. Leo was so transparent and a terrible liar. I nodded my head in return. Yeah, he’d told me about Hamish Chiel a hundred times, and I’d seen him on her Instagram account ... but there was something that felt uncomfortable about that story, I just didn’t know what it was.

  He held my eyes for a moment, like he was trying to convey something. I wasn’t quite sure what it was.

  The moment passed and he looked away.

  “Francesca!” he finally yelled. “Francesca, we’re here. Benji’s here too.”

  He was summoning her, from wherever she was in the house. I assumed upstairs, in her bedroom. I’d been up there once before, to her room I mean, ever so briefly.

  I smiled, tight lipped. Nervous. She was coming now ... and even though I had wanted to see her, the idea of it made me feel anxious. Panicky almost. Like I might do or say the wrong thing, and blow this. But what was I even going to blow? She wasn’t interested in me. She barely knew I was alive.

  I heard her fluttery movements on the steps. She had a light but erratic step. A strange combination of grace and clumsiness. I knew it was her. My instant reaction would have been to look straight in her direction. Instantly. But I tried to control it. I tried to act cool. I waited. I counted slowly in my mind. One, two, three ...

  When I finally looked up she was standing near us. A playful smile on her face.

  “Hey guys,” she cooed coolly. She rubbed her eyes, they looked swollen. From sleep? She touched me on the shoulder lightly. An implied intimacy. I could barely hear her speaking. She was wearing a crumpled midriff and shorts, she must have slept in them. A length of her stomach was exposed, and a protruding hip bone. It was so close to my face, I could almost taste it.

  “Finally you’re here,” she said to Leo, throwing a playful arm around his shoulder. “I’ve been so bored without you.”

  Momentarily I was jealous, about their intimacy. Why couldn’t she be bored without me? Why couldn’t I be an intrinsic part of who she was? Something she needed?

  “Do you guys want a coffee?” she said as she headed into the galley kitchen.

  Again, I knew the space well. Fridge first, covered in strange magnets which they liked to collect. They, it was like they were a thing ... a non-sexual entity. Then on the left-hand side was the granite bench top, the coffee machine, the sink, and the oven and stove at the end. On the right-hand side: a messy vision board, the pantry, and a cupboard filled with disorderly glasses and mugs.

  “No, thanks,” I managed. I couldn’t stomach a caffeinated beverage. There was way too much adrenalin coursing through my body as it was.

  “Why don’t you find something to wear for tonight?” Leo said to me. “You can borrow something of mine.”

  Dan’s party. I hadn’t forgotten. Leo was trying to get rid of me - clearly. He wanted to talk to Francesca privately. Probably about the “No Asians” dude at the gym. I got it. But it made me feel like the third wheel.

  I watched them disappear into the kitchen together. Their casual and perfect intimacy interlaced together.

  Maybe that was the problem with intimacy – sex. If you had no sex, you could have intimacy. If you had sex, it blew intimacy to bits.

  I was jealous.

  I opened the fridge and stared in. Francesca Moore was standing next to me. Benji had disappeared upstairs. He was probably getting changed now. And pining. For Francesca. Standard.

  But I needed her to myself for two seconds. I needed a moment to unpack Adonis Man. The sad truth was, I knew she wouldn’t understand. She just couldn’t. She’d never experienced that sort of flippant racism or personal exclusion. It was foreign to her. She could only ever understand it from a distance. But I needed to tell someone, besides Benji, who was mostly perfect. I needed someone who was broken to hear me.

  Like Francesca.

  Broken people met in the middle. Where the shards had splintered. They could never fit back together again. But it was close.

  I also hated when he stared at her like that ...

  The two top shelves of the fridge were filled with Tupperware which contained identical meals, meticulously prepared. Chicken, rice and broccoli.

  Francesca’s shelves, the bottom two, were always empty. Except for the occasional bunch of kale, and bottle of vodka. We both wanted to get shredded for summer, but we had two very different approaches.

  I had chosen the path of fanatical meal prep, and she had chosen the coffee/vaping (interspersed with kale and vodka) one. Who was I to judge?

  I pulled out a container now, while she was making a coffee. I was famished and I couldn’t even wait to heat this thing up. I reefed the lid off and started stuffing my face with chicken.

  Francesca prepared a coffee in the background. She looked incredibly thin, it seemed like she had shrunk even from the last time I’d seen her. I wasn’t even sure that was possible. When had she last had a proper meal? We joked about shredding for summer, but was she taking it too far? I ambled between judgement and acceptance with Francesca ... maybe with most things.

  “Did you find a husband at the gym?” she asked playfully.

  “Of course not, bu
t Benji almost did,” I said, assessing her reaction to this news. It wasn’t that I didn’t want Benji and Francesca to be together ... I just sensed they wouldn’t be good for each other. Francesca wanted to hide her secret – and Benji, Benji needed Francesca like he needed a grenade. The imperfect and perfect just couldn’t mix. It was dangerous.

  Not epic. Just dangerous. And there was something else about Benji, which I didn’t like to admit, even to myself.

  “Oh yeah?” she said seemingly unperturbed. Classic Francesca. Careless.

  I stopped eating momentarily and watched her. It was hard to understand that level of ambivalence. At least for me, that is.

  “You wouldn’t believe the douche I saw at the gym today.” “Show me.”

  I pulled out my phone, and tapped on Grindr again, which was trapped on the image of Adonis Man. I swiped through the various pics of his tone-deaf profile for her, and then raised an eyebrow. Then I clicked on his bio, and watched her expression. Mildly startled, at best.

  “Is every guy like that in Sydney?” she finally asked, returning to her coffee making.

  “Casually racist?” I asked, making a joke of it, even though it hurt.

  “It’s pretty gross. What type of person does that?”

  “Lots of people ... men I mean. I feel like when you’ve been othered your whole life, the only way to feel included is to other other people.”

  Like that was a good enough excuse. But disturbingly, sometimes I found myself othering Asians that were more Asian that me. WTAF? I shook my head to discard the thought. Had I really done that before?

  “Seems pretty unfair,” Francesca offered in that breathy voice of hers. It annoyed me that she wasn’t more incensed about this, but that was Francesca, muddled and vague. I brushed the thought aside.