When Matthew Met Jim

They were stood together, talking at the bar. Matthew was alternating swigs from his JD and coke, bottle of white wine and champagne, listening intently while Dad spoke at length between each sip from his shandy. The bar didn't have any Gay Beers on the tab -non-alcoholic beer that is, given the un-PC name by the tee-total semi-homophobe I call 'Daddy'- so he had to make do with that instead. 
'We', being the women of the family, were watching from a safe distance, judging, guessing and waiting for it to be over so that we could coerce the men into moving side to side to the Macarena without treading on our bare and blistered party feet and, of course, to be filled in with the details of the intriguing conversation we'd been shunned from.

"Do you think Uncle Jim is lecturing him?" my cousin Tanya asked.
"I can't tell from this far away," I replied, "Dad's not frowning, so he's not angry . . . Plus is it just me, or is Matthew smiling inanely? Surely it can't be a history lesson or, you know, worse."
"Go over and investigate," Mum nudged me, already tipsy from her second champagne and unwilling to tread the dangerous territory across the room in her Jimmy Choo's, that had cut her feet to shreds, but looked 'fabulous darling!' 


I was worried about Matthew, and rightly so. Dad usually grilled each unwilling suspect that I brought home, leaving them frowning, spluttering or just rudely chillin' on the couch completely oblivious to what he was saying while he made up his mind that they were pitifully under-par as their eyes glazed over.  


I wanted to know how he was coping, so sidled over to them under the pretence of getting my sixth free drink. I'll add here that, unlike my usual light-weight self, the alcohol hadn't affected me. It couldn't be absorbed into my blood stream you see, thanks largely to the canapés, Parma ham and strawberries, assortment of fish, new potatoes with garden vegetables and the near tastiest chocolate pudding and ice cream I've EVER tasted, lining my stomach and bursting the seams of my dress while I smiled contently. 

I approached them with tentative steps and attempted to eavesdrop but they stopped talking before I was close enough to hear. 

"You boys alright?" I asked, more to Matthew than Dad. I was hoping our telepathic connection would kick in and Matthew would blink once for 'he's boring me to death, get me to the dance-floor quick-sharp', but he just did the smile again.

"Yeah, we're fine." Then they both smiled. It was creepy. "Go have fun, dance."

They were definitely trying to get rid of me. . . 

Ten minutes later he found me, just in time for the Grease Mega-Mix and a lovely rendition of some of the words in some of the right places. He was pretty smashed by now. 

"So, what were you talking to my Dad about?" 

"Oh, you know, secret stuff."

"Matthew, tell me! Could he tell you were drunk?"

"No, not at all preeeetty. It was just men stuff," 

"Ok, if you say so," 

And I left it at that.

Two days later I was in the car with my parents as they brought me back to Derby and we began talking about the party.

"So what were you talking to Matthew about then?"

"Oh, just funny stuff. He's a nice lad."

"But what was it about?"

"Mostly 'coitus-interruptus' and horses."

"What?"

"Well, Matthew was pretty gone, bless him. We were talking about drinking in our teens - I told him about the time I came back to the flat and the kitchen was filled with chickens and a leg of lamb on the table because they'd done over the butcher's - and yeah, he told me some things too."

"About sex though? He told you about sex?" I said it quietly, hoping it wasn't true.   

"I think it was from the farmyard tangent, yeah. He said something about a horse looking at them in a field?"

Matthew's side of the story was a bit different.

"We hadn't been having sex!"

"But he said coitus interruptus,"

"Yeah! I know! I didn't know what that meant."

"Oh, right. It's Latin, see."

So maybe it was a bit of a misunderstanding, but they were still in a dangerous, weird territory if you ask me. They should have been talking about careers, or music, or me even, in an affectionate, complementary, 'God, isn't she ace' kind of way. Anything but that sort of men stuff. It's like they were both nineteen, and one wasn't my father.   

It's fine though, I've got a Plan Of Action. I'll never leave them alone together again. Not without an approved list of topics anyway.  

   


[And then this happened the next morning, which was thankfully not a sickening coincidence - Room Service]