“It’s a glamorous, international, long-distance booty call,” said Damien.

“Nah, no way,” I replied. “Definitely not.”
“Oh please!” Damien rolled his eyes at me as if I were hopelessly stupid, which I’ll admit, may well have
been justified.
I was telling Damien about my possible holiday plans for later this year. During a phone call, my friend Graham had suggested meeting up. Since I hadn’t seen him for ages, this had struck me as a wonderful idea and I agreed.
Perhaps some background on Graham is necessary to give this tale perspective.
I met Graham when I was fresh off the boat and newly arrived in Dublin. As soon as we laid eyes on each other, something happened. I hesitate to call it love at first sight: I’m far too rational to believe in fairytale notions like that. My sister tells me this is because I’m a Capricorn. We are not given to starry-eyed swooning in general, preferring proof, hard evidence and certainty, all backed up with scientific data and a couple of pie charts. Ironically, being a rational Capricorn, I don’t believe in astrology either.
I do, however, believe in love. I am not cynical, just sensible. Whatever it was I felt for Graham, it was a lot like love. It wasn’t lust, although that was certainly part of it. Let’s just say we connected and the connection was more than just mutual physical attraction.
For the next few months we were inseparable, but alas, all good things must come to an end. Graham may have been the first person I got to know in Ireland, but he wasn’t Irish. His visa expired at the end of the year and
on a cold winter’s evening off he went, back home to
sunny Melbourne.
A few weeks after he had left, he called to wish me a happy birthday. The next month he called again, and the following month and every month after that for all the years that have passed between then and now.
So we have history – but even so, I was pretty sure that the potential holiday was a completely platonic affair. After all, we hadn’t seen each other for such a long time. We’d been in our twenties, now we were in our thirties; we’d been in and out of love with other people; we’d changed careers; had triumphs and reverses; we’d been living completely separate existences on opposites sides of the world connected only by telephone calls.
Nor were these phone calls of the erotic variety – they were conversations. Plans, music, books, work and the minutiae of life. There was nothing in what Graham had said to make me think he had any ulterior motive for wanting to see me other than a genuine desire to spend some time catching up in person. And why wouldn’t he? We were friends, and I doubt very much he’d been calling me for years on the off-chance that this would result in a hook-up.
Be that as it may, after my conversation with Damien I began to realise that if I was wrong then this holiday was fraught with a number
of potentially awkward social situations – much like a non-date date, but worse.
A non-date date is one of those annoying situations where a member of the opposite (or same) sex invites you out but you can’t tell if they are being friendly or flirtatious. You know the kind of thing I mean – you meet
by chance, have a bit of craic, and Person A suggests to Person B that numbers should be swapped and a night out planned.
Along you go, and because Irish men are, as a rule, rubbish at flirting, you have no idea if this evening is going to end in a semi-drunken lunge at your person. I find it’s good to know these things beforehand, so you can give them a nudge in the right direction if you are keen or gently dissuade them if not.
Unfortunately if someone has flown halfway around the world to see you, the situation is a bit more delicate. On the one hand, if Graham did want to have sex with me, it would smack of ingratitude to say no. On the other hand, I have never had sex with someone merely to be polite, and I’m not about to start now. Plus there was always the possibility that in the intervening years, he had developed some unappealing idiosyncrasy, like body odour or rightwing politics – which would make the whole thing a non-starter.
If life were anything like a Hollywood rom-com, none of these issues would apply. We would meet, fall into each other’s arms, two star-crossed lovers, cruelly separated by fate only to be reunited as the violins reach their swelling crescendo and the credits roll. In the movies, love is all that matters and tricky problems such as time, distance, immigration restrictions and jobs don’t enter the picture. In real life, they do.
Even in the best-case scenario, the prognosis on cross-continental relationships isn’t hopeful. I know. I’ve tried it before. He would go back to Melbourne, I’d return to Dublin and that would be the end of that. Of course, a holiday fling was certainly a possibility, but the emotional stakes were too high for my liking. He’d left me, through no fault of his own, with a bruised, if not broken heart, years before. I wasn’t about to let it happen a second time. Casual sex is isn’t casual if someone gets hurt.
Having given the situation a bit more thought, I realised I’d hit a sexual catch-22. If Graham did make a pass at me, it could be disastrous and possibly kibosh our friendship, but if he didn’t I would be a teeny tiny bit insulted too. No scratch that – a lot insulted! Not to mention more than a little hurt.
I would be forced to stare at myself dolefully in the mirror considering the possibility that the years had been unkind to me, and wondering
if injecting my face with toxins was the answer.
I certainly don’t expect everyone to find me attractive, but it is a bit different if someone who used to think you were hot stuff and couldn’t keep his hands off you now finds you distinctly resistible. It’s not vanity – it’s a tragedy!
Poor Graham. All he did was suggest a holiday, not realising he had opened a can of worms. He’d be damned if he did, damned if he didn’t. Women, there’s just no pleasing us sometimes!