Three Silly Things

Lately in my head it’s been a pretty steady loop of omg-new-job-immigration-visa-residency-flight-home-to-the-states-boys-lollies-bellydance-
trim-chai-latte-maybe-I-should-go-to-Rarotonga, so there isn’t much worth writing about, you know? However, a couple of silly things have happened semi-recently and I am just in the mood to tell you about them.

The first silly thing that happened didn’t actually happen to me, but A. went to a really fun party a couple of weeks ago, the kind where the cops get called for noise complaints at five in the morning. They showed up and told everyone to pipe down, and one girl there started yelling at them: “We’re not doing anything! We’re just having a good time! You need to be out there solving crimes…THERE’S A SERIAL KILLER ON SHORTLAND STREET AND YOU SHOULD BE OUT THERE LOOKING FOR HIM!”

The second silly thing happened quite a while ago and has to do with the fact that my phone is secondhand and that I still occasionally get confused texts from various boys looking for a girl named Emily. Emily apparently had a lot of admirers when she was in New Zealand and they never tire of trying to track her down. To wit:

Unidentified Texter: hey u.

Chiara: Sorry, who is this?

Unidentified Texter: jason ay.

Chiara: Sorry, this isn’t her phone anymore.

Unidentified Texter: who dis den? U no her new #?

Chiara: This is a person who bought a secondhand phone, and sorry, no I don’t.

Unidentified Texter: r u a gurl and hot?

The third silly thing that happened also didn’t happen to me but to my fun and gorgeous friend Alice when she was in Australia a couple of months ago, and I seriously wish you had been at her party on Saturday because I wore this very low-cut top she lent me and she and I acted the whole thing out and possibly we received some marriage proposals after we did so and you would have loved it. Anyway, she was in a club one night and grooving out with a fine young thing, as you do. They were having a fine old time and things were getting a little flirty and he tilted his head and leaned in the direction of her mouth, and…

You think you know where this is going, don’t you? You think he’s going to kiss her and it’s going to be a fun story she can look back upon fondly in her twilight years? That is where you would be wrong, because what this guy actually did? Was suddenly swerve his head, stick out his tongue, and…I can barely type the words…fully lick her arm from elbow to shoulder. And then, she reports, he actually sat back and made this smarmy eyebrow face like he was all proud of himself, like, “Yeah, baby, I just LICKED YOUR ARM. Weren’t expecting that, were you? You TOTALLY WANT ME NOW.”

The worst part, Alice reports…and you have to imagine her saying this is her beautiful Irish accent because it will bring tears of love to that cold hard stone you have in place of a heart…is that because he’d been drinking and smoking “he left a bit of a slime trail, kind of like a slug.”

Ooh, girl, and then, later that night? After she’d washed her memories of him away, along with the spit on her arm? He actually came up and asked if he’d blown his chances with her. Yeah, buddy, I think you maybe derailed that whole thing when you licked her arm, you know? That would be my first guess.

We wondered, though, if we were being a bit harsh about this situation. It’s hard, you know, when you’re a foreigner in a new culture, figuring out what the local customs are. What seems significant to you can mean absolutely nothing to someone else, and vice versa. How was she to know if maybe that’s just how Aussies roll, you know? Maybe that’s how all the great romances start, with a nice old arm-lick: you get dressed up, you have a couple of drinks and a couple of dances, you lick an arm, you go home and that’s that. You don’t know! You have no idea!

With this in mind, we gave everyone at the party a challenge, and it is one I will give to you, my beloved readers, whether you are in Te Aro or Seattle or Texas or Melbourne or London or wherever you may be: take this move out with you this weekend. Gather some evidence. Replicate it exactly: dance up to someone you think is cute, flash a smile and make some innuendo-heavy chitchat, and then, when he or she is all unaware, go in for the arm. The arm, man, it’s all about the arm. See what happens and then report back, okay? Speaking from a personal level, by the end of Alice’s party, when she and I had told this story to whomever wouldn’t physically run away, let me assure you we were all giving each other lascivicious glancing and making filthy gestures towards each others’ biceps and I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t a little…arm-licking going on as the night wound down, so your chances for success in this venture are very high indeed.