A night of FaceTime. Again.
She was a joke, or meant to be. Not a bad one, just the end result of a throwaway discord comment — the kind where a friend who’s seen me spiral one too many times decides the only ethical thing to do is introduce chaos.
"Hey, I found someone perfect for you" she said.
"Perfect like ha ha she collects taxidermy and lives in a shipping container perfect?"
"No like my six-foot-eight-inch Russian-accented Scottish firefighter friend who wants to move herself to Australia perfect."
Ok if you don’t keep talking you die.
I’d been the punchline of my own romantic life so long I didn’t fucking flinch.
Another test of how far my loneliness would carry me into delusion.
But then there she was.
Tatiana.
Tati.
Taz.
Muscles like fucking Captain Ivan Drago would come off second best every time. Cheekbones that looked like they were engineered by cold war architects. She said ‘hello’ like she already owned me, my bunny, maybe half my family. We’ve been talking on facetime every night since.
My battery is always dying and my heart is never charged enough.
It’s near midnight but the heat out here is melting me into a strange mushy version of myself. A burnt creature of mascara and delusion, trying to play it cool while this absolute goddamned unit of a woman talks about firefighting drills and how Edinburgh smells like wet stone, and ash, and how she’s always wanted to fang around the mount in a V8.
"I want someone to show me how it really is there" she says.
I tell her there’s a servo in Lucknow that sells chiko rolls crunchy all the way through, served with too much salt that you need to down with just about every Japanese soft drink they sell, and they have vape juice too if you wink right. She laughed.
Not politely, loudly. Like a landslide.
Like maybe she’d lift me above her head and throw me lovingly into the ocean. If I’m lucky. Again and again.
She says she wants VB and dust, muscle cars and haunted towns. I say I know a place where the streetlights hum loudly, the main is empty at two AM and every third guy is named Shane. She says, "Yes. That. I want that."
I tell her about the town from The Cars That Ate Paris and she says that’s where she wants to live, or die, or both
And I’m nodding like a woman who’s forgotten what nodding means, in some kind of physical semantic satiation where I’m questioning every action.
I can’t stop.
Because she’s there on my screen, this high-definition goddess of oil, soot and sinew and I’m sitting in my rental in the armpit of New South Wales wearing a Target sundress and socks that say 'BYTE PARTY' on them.
I can smell the smoke on her. I'm sure that's grease on her shoulder.
My nails are chipped, my self esteem is flammable, BUT I keep catching myself grinning like a teenager who hasn’t yet figured out how not to believe any more. It’s surreal. Like dating a thunderstorm. Like being haunted passionately. Because this isn’t a crush. This is a revelation. A divine intervention in biceps and shoulders you could sink your teeth into if she asked nicely (she has).
She’s not just hot, she’s vasquez-from-aliens hot. She’s lift a tractor and kiss me with conviction underneath hot. She's move-across-hemispheres-with-nothing-but-a-duffel-bag-and-a-smirk hot.
She wears fucking gold aviators ferchrissake.
And I, God help me, am just a girl who hasn’t been held in way, way too long. A girl who can’t believe in miracles again but I’d be okay if whatever passes for one sticks around for a just a bit longer because even if she’s another joke from the universe she’s one I want someone to play on me a thousand times.
But oh no, this isn’t allowed to be real. I might have feelings. Actual ones, not the ironic kind. And that’s terrifying because beneath all the jokes and armour and late-night-dopamine-deficiency there’s a Skylab worth of wreckage.
But she keeps calling and I keep going through the motions because this is gonna make a great story for the grandkids one day. Which begs a question not yet asked. But I’m still showing up.
So there we go, facetime again.
The screen glows blue and my chest glows in infrared along with a whole load of dormant parts, and by God there’s a lot of those nowadays.
The worst part is that I like her. Not ‘like’ like her. Not a swipe-right-and-ghost kind of like. Not a "mutuals on Bluesky, haha oops we kind of sexted again in one of Chelsea’s threads" kind of like.
I mean like, like I’m making up scenarios in my head where she lands at Sydney airport and I pick her up in some sun-damaged 70s ute and she rides shotgun, legs crossed, heatstroke-and-sweat-glamorous, as we peel out and head west into the feral heart of the continent.
I mean like, like I care if she’s hydrated and eats dinner or had too much caffeine
And that’s a problem.
Because somewhere beneath the ironic flirting and dissociated girlishness and deep-fried ‘strayan memes there’s a real heart there.
Mine as well.
Buried under and pre-dating six layers of Demtel infomercial plastic. ‘But wait, there’s more!’.
Yeah thanks Tim, that’s the problem.
There’s trauma in here. Repressed, boxed, and shrinkwrapped. Childhood grief, medical bureaucracy, abandonment in triplicate. Whole fossil records of misgenderings, interventions, drive-by dysphoria, voice cracks in public bathrooms, of being medically exciting.
I've spent years sealing that shit up like a DIY sarcophagus built entirely from the inside but she… she she she she’s warm. Even through the screen. She makes stupid jokes in that accent that’s somehow three different kinds of hot, and she listens.
I feel my body doing things it either hasn't done in years or is trying out parts I didn’t know I had let alone what to do with. I look down mid-call and realise I've been curling my legs into myself like a shy teenager at a sleepover. I haven’t sat like this since before uni, before rafters bar and before endless nights on the FACOM or shuffling Motif windows around waiting for a compile to… where was I?
Oh yeah. Her.
It’s happening. I’m actually feeling things. It’s not just longing, this is yearning. It’s fear that I might not be broken and now I’ll have to let the clutch out. that maybe I’m just hurt and healing in slow, strange layers — but they're all kinda raw.
That maybe someone, she, could see the whole mess and still want to stay. That’s the scariest fucking thing I’ve faced in decades and I’ve lost count of the surgeries I’ve chosen and the ones even my parents had forgotten.
What if she comes here, and I’m real?
Not cute-dork-on-cam real, not witty-chimeric-two-tone-cryptid-on-a-facetime call real… I mean morning breath and wrinkles and squeaky tics real. I mean I’m quiet when I’m sad real. I mean I get distracted the nights I forget ADHD meds and I’m in Coles sometimes forgetting what milk is, but not Stilton real?
What if she still likes me?
What if I start to?
This is so very much.