And now for Daniel’s WRITE HERE, WRITE NOW entry ...

Night Typing

When I was fourteen, and painfully so, I saw a naked female body for the first time. Not from some textbook, or on a rain-stained page of a magazine found in some field, but on my phone. And again, it wasn’t some sort of gift sent by the kind of person my mother warned me not to take lifts from. She was someone I knew, and she sent it to me. I lived in a new world, this world, where this was possible, and almost common. I just didn’t know it yet.
It was about two in the morning. Wide awake, with no plans to sleep for another few hours, and no worries about how I would get up before school the next morning. Inside me, I had that limitless energy all teenage boys can summon, and I poured it all into messaging/bothering this girl. I don’t know why she was listening. At the time I didn’t care. A girl was talking to me, and this unforeseen event took priority over all reason and sense.
She lived with an aunt. Her dad wasn’t on the scene, but I heard he was a snooker player. A thousand stories had flown about her mother. Her brother was expelled for throwing a chisel in woodwork, her other brother never spoke much, and her sister never shut up. I didn’t want to ask her about that. I didn’t want anything from her. I just wanted to keep talking.

Myself: Do u like Oasis?
Her: No lol
Myself: haha me neither
Her: u like foo fighters?
Myself: Yeah I love them! Everlong is class.
Her: I think they are overrated.
Myself: *No. yeah they’re shit.
At some ridiculous hour, when the sun was probably up, she asked me how many girls I’d shifted. I lied. Not the kind of exaggeration you could chop down to boasting. This was the Roger Federer of lies. In future, they’ll look at my lies and say, “A good one, but not as good as the one about the shifting.” This was the gold standard of bullshit. But, much like Roger Federer would, it impressed her.
Her: do u think Im gl?
Myself: gl? Lol
Her: good looking hahaha
Myself: Don’t know can’t see you lol
What a stupid joke. For the record, ladies, if a man ever makes a joke like that, just leave. Put him out of the misery he doesn’t know he’s in.
Her: Do you want to see me? ;)

I told her I did, put down the phone, and waited for it to come through. In that moment, it didn’t matter that I could hear my parent’s marriage disintegrate in the next room, it didn’t matter that we wouldn’t give a fuck about each other in a week’s time, and it didn’t matter that she had sent similar pictures to four of my friends. Because in that moment, as I waited for my phone to light up my life, I would have sold my soul to her.


Readers’ Choice Award
There will be a special award for the Most Popular Shortlisted Entry – that is, the one that is most read by members of the public, and most shared on social media. To share, use the social media buttons at the top of the page.
To read more Write Here, Write Now entries, click here

_image2_