Like Magnesium Burns

I felt awkward in my body and my body alone that night. My mind kept clarity for the most part – there was just something about the order of events, the exact formula of our situation that made it uncomfortable to move inside. There was a tension there, just in existing, like I was sitting just outside of the present moment. Maybe a step back and to the left. Observing from without. It was hard to exist there in that vantage, hard too to step back inside myself, back into the flow.

My girlfriend Maya and I were celebrating our first date in a new city, we’d been together for around two years by that point. We were sitting outside a restaurant in Melbourne having just been seated, waiting to be served. The air felt somewhat thick and I with it a bit clunky. The event stood at palpable odds with our first proper meeting.

Up until the first time we had really spoken to one another, we had met once, months before. She had been dating someone else then and there hadn’t been much room to talk, so at the first opportunity and both as free agents we made up for lost time.

I marvelled at the beautiful niche that I ruminated in that night, that I lived from. Somewhere between a nervous excitement and a complete sense of ease. On the edge and flung to the depths, wholly aware and aware of my wholeness.

We spoke for hours; we were both fixated and couldn’t sit still. When our conversation landed on how lovely it was to go walking through the bush at night, we looked from the fire between us to the clear night sky above, and our path was clear. Having just moved to the Dandenongs and this being her first time visiting from the city, it didn’t take long for us to walk down the driveway, into the street and to the edge of the bush.

As we walked away from streetlight and entered the encroaching darkness, I remember trying to make levity, mostly for my own sake; Maya was completely at ease. There is something particular about nature, about being consumed and surrounded by it; it is a fine litmus test in as much as knowing how a person acts without any social crutch, when they are themselves. Green, the universal indicator and I, no exception to the rule.

When an animal made itself known somewhere across a clearing, I spooked like a shire horse, afraid of my shadow. I was taken aback by my reaction, felt exposed. Get it together, I laughed at myself.

In her moonlit calm I saw in her an impeccable grace; she wasn’t just at home, she was vibrant; she resonated in and from a place beyond my mortal fear, far above the earth. When she took my hand to walk on, I knew I was home too.

At any rate, we sat across the table from each other on that cold Melbourne night, outside no less, for some escapable reason. Maybe I thought she’d enjoy the fresh air; I can’t remember now. I recall it only being somewhat busy inside the restaurant as well. We were young, we maybe had twenty-two years on us each, if that, and in our love and inexperience we lived a lot for each other, still divining the right measure of living for ourselves. I can imagine she thought maybe I really liked fresh air too, because we remained seated opposite each other for most of the night in that southern street air and almost froze before laughing about it.

I had arranged the date earlier that evening, so I took the lead when the waiter who had seated us returned with some menus.

Can I get you guys something to drink? she offered.

Maybe some wine? I asked, glancing across from me to see Maya nodding with a loose grin.

What do you feel like this evening? asked our host, playing the part of guide. My only answer to that question in those days was a colour and a price, not that that imperative hasn’t persisted, but then, I suppose, it was also the limit.

Definitely something red, I said, as I scanned the list for something that worked, anything that caught my eye.

Cinsault, Rutherglen VIC, $25, sold, I thought, and promptly pointed it out.

Perfect, she said, and left to retrieve the bottle, leaving us to ponder food.

Oh! And some tap water, please, Maya added, turning towards the waitress as she fussed with the door at the entrance to the building.

Of course, her eyes said in acknowledgement.

After making quick decisions, we put down our menus, and I felt acutely stifled in observing the silence that followed, immediately becoming aware that I felt tired. Get it together, I thought to myself, and snapped some mental fingers at my mental face, my mental self. Wake up.

I remember breaking the ice somehow, trying to tease the corners of Maya’s mouth into a grin and halfway succeeding. I asked a question about work, how was she going in looking, comparing notes on where we had applied. She had a trial at a café in Brunswick next Tuesday, she needed to find some black pants for it. She in return asked about my day, the small talk coming to a fateful end with the return of a different host bearing wine.

I’d ordered a bottle, and honestly had not a care in the world for the gesture and performance of tasting; if it was drinkable, it was all mine.

This is the Cinsault, 2012 vintage from Rutherglen, he began, pouring us each a taste.

Fairly low yield vintage, he followed, so it has some great acidity, nice depth of flavour to it.

It was good, undoubtedly, but to me, it might as well have been a glass poured from a 4L cask of PREMIUM Merlot. I was too tired to care.

Delicious, I say.

Perfect, echoes my partner, and we order some food with him before he takes his leave and we return to the task at hand.

We poured glasses, and took our first few sips together, bearing witness to our existence and nothing more, and I slowly began to unwind. The pressure of moving, of re-establishing, of being a fulfilling partner, of starting a new course, of wanting to make something of myself, started to melt off my back. I was a duck in the water, the wetness just beads falling off me.

I cracked a joke, feeling easier, and by easier, I mean more comfortable at being the special kind of moron that I was (am) in my youth (life).

Cinsault? I ask, how did he say it? “Sen-say?” – Sensational if you ask me, and while you’re at it, ask me about the best C insult I know…

She laugh-groaned at my bad taste and poor humour and took a sip of wine.

The waiter approached, fumbling for an instant with the plates and the small steel handle of the terrace door in the fading rickety timber. Distracted by the spectacle, we offered help too late to be useful, and returned to being spectators the moment he passed the threshold.

Sharing? he asked, paused, primed in the arc of his movement.

Greeted with a positive response, he said nothing more and arranged the plates on the small table between us, offering a swift, bon appetito! before retreating inside.

As we began to eat, that awkwardness returned somehow; it found its way back and instilled in everything around us some visceral feeling, a jagged edge. Much like the food whose steam was quickly whisked away by the coolness in the wind, the warmth had faded quickly between us amidst the brief interaction.

Maya began to ask a question the moment words fell from my lips, and we both fumbled, indicating for the other to continue. She acquiesced, finally, and relieved, I took a bite of food as she voiced what turned out be a brief question. We both realised the error at once, my inevitable sentence becoming clear the instant she finished hers. We rolled our eyes at each other and chuckled at the escalation; I made the obligatory and universal gestures of chewing, time and intention to speak.

I must have had a good time to think and build up steam because I remember having a bit to say by the time I finally opened my mouth to speak. I answered the question but felt compelled too to dissipate some of the energy that was plaguing us, worked myself into some sort of tangent, raised a few questions in return.

As she responded I reached over the table to the wine bottle, listening keenly but needing to act on something. I poured another glass for her, making eye contact in reaction to something she said, her hand following my gaze back to the action, resting on the stem as I finished. I raised the bottle again to pour one for myself as her thought came to an end.

As I went to respond, her hand slipped forward on the stem of her glass and the bowl tipped backward toward her, most of the contents landing squarely in her lap. We both reached instinctively, and looked at each other in shock and acknowledgement – what was going on?

We broke the wall of action quickly, I helped with my napkin as best I could until she decided to clean up inside. I wiped down the table with the waiter and as soon as I was left to my own devices, I took up my drink once more, to wait.

It was a chance encounter, but still, I couldn’t help but feel responsible. I’d invited her there after all, chose the restaurant, poured the wine. I felt for her.

I took another swig, had a bite of food and let my mind wander back to the night we first met as we walked together along those cliffs; our feet light in taking us, our pace restrained, our senses burning like magnesium burns, or zinc, all fired up, and stripped; a flash in the pan.