Could You Put A Name To Someone Else's Sigh?

Apparently, I am a pretty memorable person. It was a large incentive to move out of my hometown when people kept coming up to me in the pub and saying 'Hey! Remember me?' and I would have to try and pretend that I had the slightest clue who they were. The most memorable of these incidents occurred when a young man I didn't recognise came up to me out of the blue. This is what I remember of the conversation that ensued:

Boy: Hey! Remember me? 

Me: Um... well...

Boy: You kicked me in the balls once!

Me: I don't remember that, sorry. Are you sure you have the right person?

Boy: Sarah, right?

Me: Yes. 

Boy: Yeah, you kicked me in the balls when we were fourteen or something. It's okay, I deserved it.

Me: Oh. What do you do these days?

Boy: I'm a nude model.

Me: Oh.

After some prompting, I did remember that kid. I have no recollection of the ball kicking incident though, but apparently I was doing it on behalf of a friend of mine whom he had wronged in some way. I can only hope that the nude modeling wasn't connected.

But people do seem to remember me a lot better than I remember them. There was a particular incident one Valentine's Day a couple of years ago. I had just come out of a long-term relationship and I was planning on doing the whole single girl out on the town thing. Unfortunately, it was a Thursday. Fortunately, it was Newcastle, where every night is an acceptable drinking night. We started off at a club near my apartment which unfortunately didn't have a lot going for it. I was approached by someone though. An innocent looking red-haired guy who told me he knew me. I thought he had me mistaken for someone else, but he insisted that I'd been at the same party as him. When he mentioned the name of the party's host I was surprised that it had indeed been a party I'd attended. I did think it a tad weird, considering that I don't really remember talking to him that much and also for the fact that the party in question had been held halfway through the previous year. I remember thinking it sweet that he remembered me. On his insistence, I gave him my number. His name, he said, was Maxxie.

Later that night I did end up macking on a dreadlocked French backpacker, but it was Maxxie who called me the next day. He seemed nice so I went out to lunch with him. Unfortunately, after that day he very gradually revealed himself as some degree of mentally unstable. His name wasn't actually Max, or anything that could feasibly be shortened to it. That's just what he called himself. Whenever I asked him how he'd arrived at that nickname he simply said that it was just what people called him, or made a joke about the size of his penis. Well, I say joke. To be honest, I'm not sure that he wasn't telling the truth about why he'd appointed himself 'Maxxie'. He did love his penis.

Probably the most blatantly abnormal behaviour Maxxie exhibited during the time we were going out was his "showering habit". I am really not sure how to describe this. I didn't realise it until after I had made the decision to stop seeing him. See, looking back, Maxxie had a sort of strange thing in that he would not have sex with me without washing me first. And when I say washing me, I mean, washing my... lady parts. Thoroughly. With soap. 

When I tell that story, most people have the same reaction, a resounding 'How could you possibly not notice that??'. In my defense, I knew he was doing it, I just didn't realise it was every time. At first I thought it was some weird attempt at foreplay. But at some point I looked back and realised that he had done it every single time we'd had sex.

That wasn't his only little 'quirk'. He had this strange habit of insisting I was Italian, something I really couldn't get my head around. I tried explaining to him that despite my mediterranean features my family tree did not contain a single Italian. But then we would be out and something like this would happen:

Max: Gee, it's cold out here

Me: I feel fine.

Max: Ha, you Italian girls, you don't feel the cold.

Me: I'm not Ital-

Max: Ha, you Italian girls. I don't know.

Among the other things he did were randomly accusing me of being on heroin (more than once) and referring to his ex-girlfriend as his girlfriend, despite the fact that he hadn't seen her in a long time and had been going out with me for a couple of months. Don't get me wrong: he was nice enough. I knew him well enough to know that he had a heart of gold, or at the very least rose quartz. It's just that the crazy kind of overpowered that.

I tried to break up with him so many times, but the boy was very persistant. I would explain to him that I didn't think we should see each other anymore and he would agree to those terms. Then, a few weeks later, I would receive a text from him asking me what I wanted to do that night. At first I thought he was trying to be friends, so I would go see him. But then he would sort of expect us to act like a couple. As if the whole break up had never happened.

I haven't seen or heard from him in some time now. I guess he finally got the picture. I guess moving to the other side of the country probably helped a bit with that. 

-Smackie Onassis