The Match Making Princess and the Homecoming Queen
It's 08:06 in the morning and I just came home from the moving in party at Ola and Louise, the last party I will attend during my time here in Gävle.
The bus (yes, I am getting a ride in dad's touring bus, believe it or not) is leaving on Thursday morning, only four days away.
At the party was also Jörgen, one of Louise's friends from Stockholm. The first time I ever heard about Jörgen was about a year ago, when Louise and I had agreed to meet for a coffee downtown. She greeted me with a broad smile.
"Oh, by the way, I have found your future husband!"
After a couple of seconds confused silence I asked, "I don't know this guy, don't I?"
"No", she replied, still smiling. I sould have figured. Louise is one of those people who loves to introduce people to eachother. Match maker might be a bit over the top, it is usually nothing more than a good intention and rarely goes beyond a first friendly introduction, but this time she was quite stubborn. There was apparently something about Jörgen that made her convinced that this would make a great match. Jörgen and I would get along great, she claimed.
"You have exactly the same sense of humor, for example. You know, that dry humor that could bite if you're not too careful, and that's the way you are too. You would make a great couple."
Under Louises kind but firm grip we had started talking a bit over helgon.net, and sure enough he did seem like a nice guy, but I never take those things that seriously. Internet is proven to be rather unreliable when it comes to representation of people in real life. However this made Louise even more confident in her capacity in match making. Unfortunately she hadn't had a chance to see the results of her little experiment since he lives in Stockholm - until now.
We started talking after dinner. I had arrived just in time for dinner, and since everybody were seated with their plates I had not had the chance to mingle and say hi to everybody so I had lingered in the kitchen instead, talking to the people who happened to be seated there. I hadn't dared to go into the living room, mainly because Louise had already gotten tipsy from the wine and came in and told me and the couple I was talking to that I had to "go out and say hi to Jörgen, your Prince Charming". Of course they all wanted to hear the entire story about how we "would get along so well" and how Louise wanted us to meet so badly.
"...all in a friendly manner, of course, since you're going to marry L anyway. It's just that you are so similar to eachother, I just know you will get along great!"
Uhm. Yeah. No pressure.
It took me a couple of minutes to gather the courage to actually go out and say hi. He looked up at me and I could see he recognized me. He reached out his hand towards me. I took it.
"Viola", I said on pure reflex, but continued somewhat foolishly, "but I guess you might know that already".
He confirmed with a crooked smile.
That was the starting signal of the interesting part. Would we get along as well as Louise and Ola (he had agreed when I once told him about Louise's plans) had thought and everybody expects? Or would we perhaps be one of those combinations that end up resenting eachother?
Oh, the pressure!
To my surprise things started out really well. We immediately got into a discussion of disbutable seriousness about how scary real life conversation really was compared to the comfort of communicating through technoligical media.
To my great surprise I soon realized what Louise had ment when she said we were alike. We had the same manner of speaking, made similar jokes about things and clearly shared a lot of common thinking patterns, and as the evening grew into night it became clear that we in many ways we were eachouther mirroring images. We both had librarian mothers, were both old scouts in the missionary church (ironically nether of us are Christians) and we discovered that we had both participated in the same scoutcamp at least twice.
At about eleven people started dropping off to bed, and at two everybody else had decided it was time to go to bed. At that time Jörgen and I had been chattering away most of the evening since eleven, and when it became clear that everybody else were going to bed we looked at eachother, uncertain as how to continue. I was genuinely curious about him, and I daresay he felt the same way about me, which concluded in a very uncertain silence where neither of us knew if the other one wanted to go to bed as well, and, in my case, a silent question if I should stay at all since I was the only one who wasn't staying there over the night. Louise saved the situation. She came out of the bedroom for her toothbrush and put her arm around me.
"I'm going to bed now so goodnight, honey, but you can stay here as long as you wish if you want to stay up longer. Maybe we'll meet up later on in the week. Goodnight, you two."
Then she went off to bed.
"Are you getting tired", I asked, but he shook his head.
"Naw, I'm quite alert still."
We ended up in the kitchen, discussing everything from more or less controversial political positions to 50's hair styles and the annoyance of the fact that life does not have a appropriate soundtrack. I had a great time, and it was way past seven-thirty when I finally staggered home, too tired to even see straight, dreading the next morning when I would be forced to get up and make a cake for the team on my last day at work. By then we had been talking for almost six hours in a row.
Nothing happened though. It was completely platonic, and in a way I'm glad it was. Not that I wouldn't have liked to try - and I did get some subtle hints that he wouldn't have minded either - but in some way it felt good to keep it simple. I still don't know what is going on with L (although it was probably good for me to get something else to think about, I'm tired of pondering on and on about him) and Jörgen lives in Stockholm so it wouldn't work out anyway. For now it was just nice to just sit down and talk to somebody who is just as quasi intellectual as yourself, can throw himself with just as pretentious words as you and just sit and enjoy the banter for hours and hours in a row without having to worry about the next morning and the next week, and seriously, the last thing I need now is another guy to worry about.
I'm completely satisifed with having found a friend.