Left Brain vs Right Brain (Jeremy)

*** note to readers: from now on in the character in the blog formerly known as “C” will now be known by the pseudonym “Ophelia”… well, it beats using initials, at any rate!***

It happened again a few nights ago.

I knew it would. Lying down, lights out, newspaper casually strewn across the floor on the left hand side of the bed. Head on the pillow, dead-tired, trying to empty my head of everything that happened across the weekend (see post “Dear God;”), when suddenly, cutting through the darkness, it happened.

LEFT BRAIN: Hey, you there mate?

RIGHT BRAIN: Sure thing. How ya been?

LEFT BRAIN: Bloody tired. More languages than I can handle. If I ever hear the words “composite verbs” again, I think I’ll have an aneurism.

RIGHT BRAIN: Really? You should try thinking of twenty different filthy jokes and one-liners a day.

ME: Oh shut up. I’m trying to get some sleep here.

LB: Oh really? Best of luck, buddy.

(silence)

LB: … Ophelia….

RB: (sniggering) Oh, Lefty, that’s really not nice.

LB: …. Ophelia…. Ophelia….

(pause)

LB: OPHELIA!!!

RB: Don’t listen to him, Jez. You’re shot of her. Well clear.

LB: Really? Then why can’t you stop thinking about her? Why does she keep drifting through your head like a ship passing in the night? If she’s worth nothing to you, then why can’t you just shut her out of your head?

RB: Don’t listen! Save your emotions for something worthwhile, Jez… remember what Sophie said? That the only girl worth your tears is the one who doesn’t make you cry at all? Yeh, sure, she had something special but think of how she made you squirm… like, say, when she stood you up on Friday…

LB: That was once!

RB: And then she didn’t call you… but blamed you for rocking up “without confirmation”…

LB: Ahh, look, water under the bridge. Here you go Jez, I’ll turn your hormone levels up. This might help you see things a bit more clearly. Remember the way you found her fun? How you felt you could connect with her, how you found her funny and engaging to be around?

RB: You say that again and I’ll put your sweat glands on overdrive for a week so much so that people think you’ve been on the Pure Chocolate Diet.

LB: She seemed like such a nice girl… she just loses sight of the big picture sometimes.

RB: Oh yeh. For someone who couldn’t give a flying f*&^ about the way you felt when she sent that email to you on Monday morning, she’s very nice and considerate. So nice and considerate, in fact, that she didn’t even bother giving you so much as a phone call.

LB: Hey, she’s not the sort of person who has the courage to face these sorts of things head-on. She’s not a bad human being, it’s just that… she doesn’t have the empathy to realise what the effects are of what she says and does.

RB: Or the compassion, or the humanity, or the sympathy, or even really the maturity or the sense of responsibility.

LB: (mutters) That’d be right. Trust the Powers That Be to put the power of vocabulary in the Right Brain.

RB: Something better will come along. You go to a University with forty thousand people, for God’s sakes. Twenty thousand of them are women. And, let’s face it, you know one of the best places for good-looking women in the city… Monday afternoon’s French Lecture.

Me: Mmmm… Monday afternoon French Lecture…

LB: Stop being a sleaze! Remember the good times you had with Ophelia, laughing together over truly obscure jokes, racking up phone bills large enough to keep Telstra in business on your own… remember that? A person can’t just change overnight.

RB: And what was one of the last things that she said to you?

Me: Would that be the comment about going and finding yourself “a nice Melbourne-Uni girl-next-door type”?

RB: And how that made you feel like…

Me: … blowing up her tertiary institution with a rocket launcher?

LB: Hey, Earth To Jez, everyone has their own personal faults, you included, buddy. You can’t just isolate people for not being perfect. That’s ridiculously hypocritical. Sometimes people fall and trip and bruise their knee; and what do they do? They swear, and loudly. That doesn’t make it the right thing to do, but it’s only a human reaction. It’s the same with emotion; you fall over, it hurts, you do something rash and ill-considered that you shouldn’t. That’s no capital offence.

RB: But you can isolate people for being nasty and heartless. There’s a difference between saying that you’re wrong, and laying on the sarcasm thick and strong. There’s a difference between being detatched and being inconsiderate. Above all, there’s a difference between being upset and being hurtful and she crossed that line.

(Silence)

LB: … but you still like her, don’t you? Eh? Eh?

Me: Oh shut up.

RB: Not in the same way that you used to. And not even a quarter as much. And, above all, not for who she is, but who she used to be. Who you thought she was. What you thought she represented.

Me: I guess.

LB: Hey, Jez, you know the good news? You’re now a very, very available man.

RB: Ahh, the possibilities.

LB: There’s a whole world of women out there for you…

RB: … and quite a few desperate men, if you’re ever open to possiblities…

LB: Time to start dreaming. I think it’s back to the good-old single-man standby….

RB: … are you thinking what I’m thinking, Left Brain?

LB: I think I am, Right Brain…

(Together) : … Uma Thurman.

END

‘Night all. I’m off to watch Pulp Fiction… mmm… Mrs Wallace…

xo

jez