I looked it up. It is real. I am as surprised as you are.
Girlfriend’s Day, Allegedly
Nobody celebrates this. No card aisle, no set menu, no bar to clear. Which means I get to spend the entire day describing what you are like, at length, with examples, and there is no format for you to appeal to.
My reasoning, such as it is
No bar to clear. This is arbitrage more than romance.
On a birthday there is a bar. Clearing it earns you precisely nothing, because clearing it was the assignment. Anniversaries are worse: a bar, a scoreboard, and photographic evidence of last year for comparison purposes.
Today there is no bar. No card aisle, no set menu, no correct spend. This is arbitrage rather than romance and I would like that noted before anyone gets emotional.
The advantage is that with no format to satisfy, I can spend the whole thing on the one thing I am truly bad at: describing you out loud, in words, with examples.
Fair warning. Most of what I would normally say is about the effect you have on me, which is a description of me. So I have taken myself out of it. Largely. The board game section is a lapse and I stand by it.
A character reference, unsolicited, with evidence attached
You notice the person who has gone quiet. That table in October — you clocked it before anyone else had finished a sentence, swung the conversation ninety degrees onto boats, which he happened to know everything about and nobody else knew anything about, and he talked contentedly for twenty minutes with no idea he had been extracted. Nobody there knows it happened. I only know because I was watching you rather than him, which is the sole useful contribution I made that evening.
You are alarmingly competent about enormous problems and completely unserious about small ones. Four days of moving, three lorries, a landlord lying about the keys, and not once did any of it become anybody else’s emergency.
Meanwhile: a board game grudge, running since March, aired in public, at dinner, with exhibits.
You would be precisely like this if I were not here. That is the part worth writing down.
Exhibits, chronological, none of which you will remember
- October
The table, and the person who went quiet
He had stopped talking about two minutes earlier and nobody else had registered it. You turned the whole conversation onto boats, which he knew about and none of the rest of us did, and he talked for twenty minutes. You never mentioned it afterwards — not in the car, not the next day, not ever. I have raised it three times since and you still do not think it counts as a thing you did.
- The move
Four days, three lorries, one lying landlord
You handled the keys, the deposit, my parents arriving a day early, and a van driver who suddenly wanted cash. At no point did any of it become anybody else’s emergency. You went to work on the Tuesday as though none of it had happened.
- Since March
The board game
You have now described that final round to four separate sets of guests. Twice with the board out on the table for reference. I am not going to concede it and neither are you, which is why it has already outlasted several friendships.
- Any Tuesday
The thing you do without noticing
You read the room on the way in. Inside a minute you know who is having a bad day, and you go and stand near them. You have never once described this as a skill, because you do not know that you are doing it.
Candid, chronological, deeply unflattering
A suspicious number of these are from the move. You are holding something heavy in most of them and complaining in none of them.
Day three of the move. In a van. At volume.
The van song, performed badly, keys still missing
Day three of the move. In the van. Keys missing, my parents already at the flat, a driver suddenly demanding cash — and you sang the entire thing, badly, with the window down. This song belongs to that version of you now.
Supplies. Rationed.
You would have spotted this happening to somebody else within a second and quietly steered them out of it. Do that for yourself. Turn the conversation. Their problem was in the room long before you walked into it.
You moved a flat in four days, through three lorries and a landlord who lied about the keys, without making it anyone else’s emergency, and then went to work on the Tuesday. You are allowed to treat that as evidence.
At that table in October you noticed the man who had gone quiet, and moved the whole conversation to get him out of it, and he never found out. You have never mentioned it once. It is the rarest thing about you and you have it filed under nothing.
Come home, put it down, put the whole thing down. The only person round here keeping score is currently losing a board game argument on principle.
Not a chance. Get the board out and we will do it properly, rules printed, and I will still be right about March.
Achievable ones
Deliberately low bar. I fully intend to clear it.
- 01To be the one who notices the quiet person at the next table, so that for once it is not your job.
- 02To take a whole thing off you before the next move, and not to narrate how much of it I am doing.
- 03To say why I did the thing, out loud, rather than leaving you to work out that it was for you.
- 04To read the room on the way in, the way you do, instead of waiting for you to tell me who is having a bad day.
- 05To concede the board game. Once. In writing. Under protest, and not this year.
You have never once mentioned the table.
Not in the car. Not the next day.
Not on the three separate occasions
I have raised it since.
You will describe a board game for forty minutes
and file this under nothing.
Bonus round. Scratch it. It is embarrassing.
You did not ask me a single question about the move until all three lorries had gone. Not once, in four years. I assumed that was ordinary until I watched you do the same thing for a man at a table in October, who also never had to explain himself twice.
Speech. Brief. Remain seated.
To you. To made-up holidays. To the board, unfinished.
- To the man at the table in October, who still does not know.
- To four days, three lorries, and a landlord who lied about the keys.
- To going in to work on the Tuesday as though none of it had happened.
- To a board game grudge in its sixth month, aired at dinner, with the board out.
- And to a holiday nobody observes, which is the only reason you did not see this coming.
One more thing, and it is not a card
Second drawer, your side.
The one you never open. It has been in there four days.
You have walked past it roughly forty times, twice while telling somebody about the final round in March.
It is not a card. It is heavier than a card, it took two weeks to track down, and the man who sold it to me asked what the occasion was and did not believe the answer.
One more, and it is not hidden
I have registered a star. On a day nobody marks. Committed to the bit.
Still not a page about my feelings. This one is about you and the thing you did in October and have never once brought up.
Albireo
Cygnus, the swan
- Designation
- Beta Cygni
- Constellation
- Cygnus, the swan
- Right ascension
- 19h 30m 43s
- Declination
- +27° 57′ 35″
- Magnitude
- 3.1
- Distance
- 430 light years
- Type
- Double star · gold and blue
- Dedicated to
- Ishita
Two stars of visibly different colour, one warm gold and one sharp blue, sitting side by side in a telescope. Most people who see it once remember it. They are not the same and were never going to be, and they have been holding that position for longer than there have been people to look at them.
Two of them, gold and blue, parked next to each other since long before anyone existed to notice. No audience for the first few billion years. Carried on regardless. You swerved a whole table onto boats to save a man who had gone quiet and then never mentioned it, so, same energy.
Northern sky. Look up on a clear night and it is there.
The sincere part. Look away if uncomfortable.
I am excellent at the day-to-day and hopeless at the summary. I will make the tea at precisely the right moment and then entirely fail to mention why.
The summary, then, since the day has no other duties.
The table thing is not a table thing. It is what you do everywhere. You walk into a room, establish inside a minute who is having a bad time, and then spend the evening rearranging the furniture around them so subtly that nobody notices, least of all them. October was one instance. The four days of moving were another, except the person being quietly managed was me, and I only worked it out a fortnight later, in a car park, holding a lamp.
You do not think it is a skill. You have it filed under nothing, which is exactly why somebody else had to write it down.
That is what you are like. Not what you do for me — what you are like in rooms I am not standing in, which is the only description worth having.
The board game is still open and I would like that minuted.
— yours, over-committing as usual
One table in October.
One man, rescued, unaware.
Four days, three lorries, one lying landlord.
One board game, unresolved since March.
A holiday nobody observes,
an evening I should have spent working,
and one person expecting precisely nothing.
Excellent.
Happy Girlfriend’s Day, apparently.
I am now going to find an even more obscure holiday and say nothing about it in advance. You cannot stop me. Get the board out.
made on a technicality, while you slept