complainer

I am a horrid friend. Horrid, horrid friend. Not a friend at all really. I wouldn't want me as a friend.
Or maybe it's that my friends are horrid. Well, just one in particular. Maybe I should stop using the word friend to describe our relationship. That might make me feel better for despising the idea of spending time with her.
It can't be that bad, I hear you tut. Oh, but it is! I am a pretty personable person. I get on with pretty much anyone. Especially when I have plentiful fodder for discussion, and with the week that just passed, I had more than enough to cover an entire evening of one-on-one catch-up time with a long lost classmate. Ha! If only that had been enough.
It was Saturday, day after The Fire. My clothes still stank, my throat still hurt, I didn't wake up until well past noon. But still I was looking forward to another night out. Even if it was with S.
S is a former classmate of mine. We hung out because of a common love of indie music, and a bus stop. It was almost enough to allow me to overlook some of her less endearing qualities, like her chronic complaining and inability to cope with even the most simple tasks. She couldn't even deal with the most straight-forward assignments. Every piece of classwork was handed in late, after much drama and tears and stress. Which is more than a bit disconcerting considering her chosen field - journalism - and its tendancy to involve immovable deadlines. Hmmm.
We all thought that perhaps she should reconsider her chosen career path, and we were certain she would never make it. She barely passed the course. In fact, I'm not even sure she really did. But by some miracle, I heard she had landed a job at a weekly newspaper, and had lasted more than a few months.
While I was quick to contact Alison almost immediately upon my return to Glasgow, I decided it was best to keep my distance from S, even though I knew she lived a few blocks away - or maybe because of it, actually. But in my zealous networking binge, I inadvertently contacted a mutual friend who passed on my contact details. Before I know it, I'm standing outside the local underground station waiting for her. It's my duty. At least one drink. To catch up. Hopefully I can disappear after that. Yeah.
The first words out of her mouth are: "Can you believe I'm off work for two weeks because of stress? It was just getting to be too much, Stacey, too much."
Oh GOD. My only desire at that moment was that Alison was there to hear this. We constantly moaned about S's moaning and her insane stress levels.
She had already filled me in briefly on her stressful love life over the phone during our meet-up arrangement chat. She told me she was "sort of seeing" the lead singer of some local band who was playing that night, but how she couldn't possibly go to the gig because his exgirlfriend had announced she was coming up from Manchester to confront him, unable to accept their recent break-up.
So we were avoiding the gig at all costs. Yet drinking at a bar across the street. Why she thought this was wise, I still don't know. Because, inevitably, we ran into him. But that comes later...
At first things were going swell. We lingered for ages over two drinks, and I managed to fill most of the conversation with all my harrowing tales, recent and not so recent. I got to bitch about work, and mutual acquaintances - two of my very favourite pasttimes - until my throat was sore. But I also had to listen to her complain as well, and her complaining is so banal and obsessive and ridiculous. I think at one point she was complaining about how her landlord was refusing to buy more furniture for her room (a wardrobe and bed and side table and set of drawers is not enough, apparently) and how this forced her to buy her own and now she will be forced to live away from home forever because she can't possibly fit all that new furniture in the tiny box of a room she has there... huh?
Anyway, this dragged on for hours, and before we knew it, it was midnight. Time to go home, phew. Except I could tell she was not content to let things lie there. She was itching to get out there and confront her love life, knowing full well this was foolish. She had been obsessively checking her phone all night, hoping for messages from her friends who were apparently at the forbidden gig. Even though she knew full well it was in a basement where there was no mobile phone reception.
"Oh what am I going to do, Stacey, what am I going to do?"
I didn't see what the problem was, really. She's been "sort of seeing" the guy for four weeks. It wasn't serious at all, and he had decided against telling the ex he was seeing someone new, as he was trying to let her down lightly and didn't want anything else to muddle the matter. So the ex didn't even know S existed. Why, then, couldn't have S gone to the gig? It's not like it would be a scenario in which interaction would be inevitable. If anything, it would be interesting to check out the ex, non?
Anyway... S was certain her friends would be heading to the art school afterwards for Northern Soul night. And I had been wanting to go back there for ages, but never found myself awake and nearby and energetic enough to make it. Here was my chance. I figured it would be good to mingle with others as well, and I was certain I'd see other people I knew there. Plus, I didn't feel like venturing down to Saucihall Street to get a cab by myself at that hour.
So I was happy to tag along when she suggested we head up the street and see if we could find her friends. Big mistake.
We found the friends. A strange crew. Foreign and way too hip for the likes of scruffy old me. Seriously hip. In fact, I dunno how she came by such friends. Okay, now I'm just being bitchy. But anyway... we got to cut the queue, which was good I suppose. It still meant 20 minutes waiting awkwardly outside, surrounded by other ultra hip students. And halfway through the wait we were joined by the man himself. Her guy. Oh dear.
He, too, is of a nervous disposition. In fact, as the night progressed I realised how perfect the two of them were together. Both obsessed with obscure shite indie music, and with anxiously agonising over the stupidist things. If S was upset over this exgirlfriend development, it is safe to say that the boy was 100 times worse. S spent about 10 minutes hmmming and hawing about whether or not she could bear to go inside since the ex would be there too, and the boy was stupidly encouraging her. I should have seized this opportunity to put an end to what was to become the worst two hours of my life. But no. I was too annoyed by her ridiculous overanalysis. I told her to get a grip and go in. She listened.
It was exhorbitantly expensive to get in. Lordy. That's what happens when you are no longer a student and show up late I guess. Grrr. And once we got inside, everyone else scattered, leaving me and S to our own devices. There were no seats, so we ended up standing awkwardly in the middle of the floor, directly between the door and the bar, meaning I got jostled by every drunken idiot making a beeline for the bar. Argh. I decided to opt for water, to wake up and save money. I tried to divert my gaze from S, who was freaking out at this point, and take in the hodgepodge of interesting characters who frequent the place. But I just found them annoying as well, and quickly lost my patience with the whole scenario. When the boy came up and decided it was the time for a long drawn-out one-on-one chat with S, I was relegated to standing completely alone for a good 20 minutes, holding my coat and trying to not to pass out standing upright.
Once he left, his eyes darting around nervously, it was just the two of us once again. Conversation was forced and awkward and involved little more than "What am I going to do, Stacey, what am I going to do?" It got to the point where I wanted to slap her. Seriously.
Meanwhile, the exgirlfriend didn't seem half as distraught as either S or the boy she supposedly came to Glasgow to win back. She was dancing giddily in the centre of the dance floor, not a care in the world.
"Oh I can't watch, Stacey. I don't dare to even go near there. Oh no. I can't."
And I thought I was overdramatic!
By this point I was bored to the brink of tears, and couldn't find the will to respond to anything she was blethering about. I just hoped it would all be over soon. I prayed. I started yawning and hinting that I was tired. Eventually, it worked and we snuck out.
All the other clubs were closing at this time, which meant a scary scene along the main drag and a horrendous queue for taxis so we decided to walk home. It's a pretty long walk, but I didn't even care. I was all too eager to bring the dreadful night to an end. She was intent on talking about nothing but the boy the entire way back, deciding she loved him and all, but I managed to hijack the conversation for the last 20 minutes, which saved me from saying some truly awful things.
Torture. Torture! I escaped, a bit scathed, but am not about to subject myself to that again. My god. No. Despite a barrage of texts suggesting we meet over coffee to go over the job ads together. Ack!
When I got home, the light was still on and Richard was waiting up for me. Bless him! At 3am! Awww. It was nice to strip out of my smelly clothes, slip into a nice warm bed and complain about the complainer until my eyes drooped closed.
I know... hypocrite. At least I'm honest. Yeah.