Catching Flights & Feelings
I left my heart a world away
There was always something that enticed me about holiday romances and foreign guys. I am presented with a blank canvas to fill with whatever portrayal of myself I please. The fact that a guy knows nothing about me allows me to be able to convince him that I am who ever I want to be. He will only know what I want him to know and learn about me from what I tell him.
Being away from home also adds an element of excitement. I can make my home country sound ten times cooler than it actually is. Make Malta into some exotic island in the Mediterranean with beaches everywhere and parties all the time. Hype up my university course to sound more interesting than I really think it is and talk my way into making him believe almost anything.
The first time I caught flights and feelings I was 16 and on a cruise from Dover to Norway with my family. I met a pale Scottish boy on Deck 14 and thought that he was everything I had been looking for. I loved the way his braces scratched me as he kissed me and the way I didn’t always understand his strong Dumfries accent. We spent the whole week acting like we were on our honeymoon, holding hands, taking selfies, and making out every chance we got. It was a dream turned reality and I didn’t want it to end. Of course, the cruise only lasted 7 days and I cried my eyes out saying goodbye and he was on his way. Keeping in touch was an option but the chances of two 16 year olds that spend 7 days together on a cruise in Norway seeing each other again any time soon was unlikely. And after about 2 weeks, I got over it.
Little did I know that a quick 16 year old holiday fling that took 2 weeks to get over would foreshadow such a significant theme in my life, boys abroad.
Apart from the whole 2 year long distance open relationship with a guy in America I am sick of talking about on this blog, I have been a victim of catching flights and feelings a couple more times.
When living in Glasgow I swiped through tinder pretty regularly as I felt it was a great way to meet new people when living abroad (if you can’t accept that you need to stop reading now). It also became a ritual to sit slouched on the sofa after dinner with my flatmates and read out the funniest tinder messages I’ve received and come up with witty replies. A certain french boy (who looked more like a Greek god to be fair) slid into my tinder inbox very bluntly but smoothly and my flatmates and I decided it was a good idea to reply with an equal amount of wit.
His english wasn’t great and we chatted on insta sporadically for about a month. Both of us too proud to make any actual plans to meet up. He’d ask me what I’m doing on a Friday night and I’d ask him the same but we’d never take that step into integrating our plans. I had other things going on so never really considered taking things anywhere with him. To be honest, I was also a little cautious due to the previous guy I’d met through tinder. Once bitten, twice shy.
Until one morning, towards the end of my exchange, I was hauling a bag of my dirty laundry to the campus laundromat which was maybe 500 metres away from my flat, so you can imagine how much effort I put into my look when walking there. French guy was walking on the 500 metre path in the opposite direction and I recognised him from his very accurate tinder pictures. I don’t know what came over me but I somehow blurted out the word “Hey” as I walked past. He looked at me confused, of course, me doing laundry at 9am and me on my tinder profile are two very different people. He said “Oh sorry! I didn’t recognise you for a minute ” (what an insult lol but could I really blame him?). I asked him what he was doing here and he replied by pointing to the flat right across mine and saying “I live here”. How convenient. I was suddenly more into this guy and after our little street meeting he promptly texted me to plan our first date.
With few weeks left living in Glasgow we both knew this couldn’t go anywhere but we both enjoyed eachother’s company all the same. We were into the same house and techno music, laughed at all the same things and had incredible sexual chemistry. I liked to make fun of his french singing and the way he used emoji’s to flirt because he finds it hard to flirt in English. He liked to bounce my curly hair and correct my amateur french.
Saying goodbye to him brought paradoxical emotions. It was sad saying goodbye to someone I had so much chemistry with, but it was more of a “see you again” feeling. We still chat from time to time and he does talk about visiting Malta and is constantly inviting me to Toulouse. Although nothing will ever come out of it I’m sure we’d have a great time together and then resume to our normal lives. I’d be happy to keep things the way they are, casual.
The Glasgow Boys (that made it on the blog) #2
I didn’t go to India to fall in love, I went to India to get away from anything love related. The mixed and uneasy feelings which where dominating my thoughts where to be left in Malta and me and my free mind alone, were to go on this trip (and my gal B of course). It was supposed to serve as a getaway from the disaster that had recently surfaced in my love life back home. A easy escape.
But sure enough, Delhi Day 1, I meet a guy.
We were sitting on the roof of a the hostel with a couple of people we’d met no more than an hour before. A guy walked up to the roof and one of the girls we were with shouted,“Oi! Where have you been all day?”. He told us what he’d seen that day and we all proceeded to say hello and make polite conversation about Delhi and what our plans for the rest of our trip were. We all agreed to get drunk and go to a club that night.
I was sussing out the crowd and as more people joined the table my options widened. When we all went for a walk to buy beer the guy from the roof ended up being the guy walking beside me. I’m not sure whether he sought me out or this happened by chance, but either way, I’m glad he did.
Classic me chatted some shit about how I want to disregard my undergrad degree to be a writer or get a a masters in investigative journalism and save the world from political corruption. He totally bought it and loved my enthusiasm. He was a 25 year old medical student from England going back to Newcastle to graduate as a doctor in a couple of days. I told him about my girls trip to Newcastle and how I wasn’t impressed at all and the flanterous teasing started here.
As we walked, it naturally felt as though we were getting physically closer, almost bumping into each other with each step. When we got to the alcohol shop one of the girls who had been in India for a couple of weeks told me that women who bought alcohol got bad looks and were more likely to get turned away for being under 25 (the legal drinking age). So I turned to English-boy and asked him to get some beers for my friend and I. “Oh, come on,” he said to me, “It’s just some beer! Surely you can get it yourself.” Wow ok. I guess he didn’t enjoy our little conversation on the walk over here and was trying to get rid of me. But as I pushed my way through the rowdy crowd made up of judegmental Indian men, he made his way next to me and told me “See, I told you you could do it!”. Now I don’t want to be an over analytic person and look into this too much but that’s exactly what I’m going to do. This little scenario goes to show how he is the type of guy to push me and motivate me to do things for myself and that is such a perfect quality to have in a significant other.
Back at the hostel we all sat around a table and played a silly drinking game that revealed everyones secrets. He was conveniently sitting just across me which put me at the perfect angle to watch whether he drinks to reveal a secret or not, without making it too obvious. We chatted through out the game and often passed comments to each other which made it a little more clear that there was something between us. As all 21st Century love stories begin, we kissed in a club and were lovers from then on. We spent the evening dancing and laughing and acting like we’d travelled to this country as a couple to celebrate our 5 year anniversary. We stayed up almost all night on the roof of the hostel chatting and couldn’t keep our hands off each other. It felt absolutely amazing to just unbutton his classic english-boy-finding-himself-in-Asia shirt and lay my head on his chest.
Sadly, the next day I was leaving to head to the Himalayas for some mountain adventures and couldn’t put mine and Becky’s plans on hold for a guy I met for one night. Saying goodbye was harder than I thought it would be. I didn’t know whether it was the excitement of being abroad, the vulnerable state I was in because of the mess I left back home, or whether there was something actually there between us but this guy felt so right in so may ways. I texted non stop the rest of my trip and kept each other posted on what we were up to. The time difference didn’t hurt us and voice notes kept his cute accent alive in my head. The day of his graduation I got caught in a storm on a 125cc motorbike at the top of a waterfall. I pictured him in Newcastle giving the graduation speech in his perfectly ironed suit as my motorbike bounced on each bump and my helmet became more and more unclear with every raindrop. I loved how dramatic it felt to be so far apart and living such different lives but hated the thought of not knowing when I was going to see him again.
Things on text continued to progress throughout the trip but as I know how these things go, I thought it would all fade away once I got back home. But here I am, sitting in my garden writing about a boy miles away, once again. I’m a fool to be surprised how I’m back in this situation. It’s my curse and my destiny but I know no better than to live through it. For this reason, the rest is still unwritten.
