Love and kebabs

Posted by Lucy Robinson at 12:36 on 22 Feb 2010

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Friends. Hi! Happy Sunday to you.

Now, I'll try to keep this brief because it's Sunday and you are probably having a lovely day in bed with your partner which comprises eating hearty food, pretending to read the paper, shagging (when you can't be arsed pretending to read the paper any more) followed by deep sleep (him) and deep fear (you, because the breakfast he just made you contains more calories than you'd normally consume in a month). Or maybe you are going to meet your young fashionable friends in a beautiful gastropub full of shabby lamps and postmodern fixtures where you will drink a lot of red wine and laugh in a carefree manner and eat fashionable cuts of meat from large earthenware plates.

Or perhaps like me you have been up working in your dressing gown since 8am and are wondering what would be worse:
a)    Getting the remainder of last night's kebab out of the bin for a bit of a nibble or
b)    Going out in your pyjamas and a raincoat for a new one or
c)    Ordering one online at vast expense.


Anyway, this is not a story about today's kebab, it's about yesterday's.

Last night I was on my way home on the nightbus (on my own as bloody usual) when a REALLY FIT MAN got on and sat next to me. I froze in fear, because I'd been drinking for many hours and by now was looking a bit feral. Also I had a big kebab in one hand.*

So there I am, frozen to the spot with my kebab halfway up to my mouth when he turns sideways, looks at it, and says "Oh my god, that smells amazing, would it be really rude to ask for a bite?"

I freeze in even deeper fear.

I hate bad manners, and there is of course a part of me that could never approve of a stranger who asks to eat my food when I am very clearly in the middle of eating it myself. I mean, it's not like asking for a chip is it? It's full-on saliva sharing.

However, this is a man who I would probably be happy to exchange saliva with at some point in the future and so I do really want to share my kebab with him regardless of his cheekiness.

"MUMPHHHUUURGGHH" I blurt in confusion and embarrassment and excitement and indecision, shoving the kebab over at him. A piece of red cabbage flies out of it on to his jeans. Never let it be said that I am anything other than a first-rate conversationalist.

He seems spectacularly unbothered by the red cabbage; flicking it on to the floor and taking a long savouring bite of my kebab.

If this sounds in any way pornographic it is not meant to.

"Ahhhh.." he says orgasmically, handing the kebab back to me. "Thank you so much. I really needed that."

"Big night?" I mumble. (What? Who the hell talks about ‘big nights' any more apart from teenagers and people in Ibiza?)

"Ah, not really, I just forgot to eat dinner" he says. I nod knowingly, never having forgotten to eat dinner in my entire life.

And so we get into a conversation about our respective nights. I tell him about my friend whose birthday it was and he tells me about his mate who he spent the evening comforting because the mate had just been dumped. (I did try to peddle It's Called a Breakup because it's Broken to him but then stopped because I realised that to know about this book I must have read it and no man likes a woman who was once broken hearted, even if it was a long time ago.) So, fifteen minutes later we're getting on famously and as we inch closer and closer to my stop and I'm beginning to think oh no, what do I do what do I do what do I do? But then a ruckus breaks out at the back of the bus when a mad shouty man starts shouting at some poor woman. And because my new kebab-eating boyfriend is actually superman, he goes off to the back of the bus to help break it up.

And because I am a total idiot, who deserves to be single forever, I just get off the bus because it's my stop and I don't know what else to do.

Today I hate myself. What is wrong with me? A man appears to like me IN SPITE OF MY KEBAB and I don't even have the bravery or wherewithal to leave my number on the seat or, god forbid, just stay on for one extra stop.

ARGGGHHHHHHH. Etc. I WILL BE SINGLE FOREVER.

*I should clarify this. When I go for a ‘kebab' what I actually get is falafel and salad in pitta. I do not eat, have never eaten, and will never eat that hell-on-a-column ‘meat' stuff that is sold in kebab shops. I honestly think that if it was a choice between that and death I would choose death. 

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