The shit blog of Paul Chris Jones

Dear Diary. I went to another social meetup last night. It was a bunch of people playing pool in a sports bar.

I arrived two hours late because I ate dinner with my kids and put them to bed first. So by the time I got to the sports bar, everyone was almost ready to leave.

I recognized most of the people. There was the German girl Denise, the bearded Italian man Alessandro, a woman from London I had met two days ago named Beatrice, and some other people.

There was also a new guy.

"So what's your name?" I asked him.

"Cum," he said.

"I'm sorry?" For a moment I thought he said 'cum'.

"Cum," he said again. "My name is Cum. I'm French."

Okay then.

They had all just finished a game of pool.

"Anyone want to play?" I said.

"Sure," said Alessandro.

Alessandro, by the way, looks exactly like Leonard from The Big Bang Theory, if Leonard had a Karl Marx-style beard.

I put a euro coin into the pool table. The balls came clattering out.

"I'm bad at pool," I said, picking up a cue from the wall.

"That's okay," said Alessandro. "We're all bad here."

And he wasn't kidding. On Alessandro's first turn, he hit the black ball into a pocket.

"OH MY GOD," said Beatrice, the woman from London. "ALESSANDRO, THAT MEANS YOU LOST!"

We decided to carry on the game anyway, since all the other balls were still on the table. And it turned out I'm not as bad at pool as I thought. I was able to hit balls and make them go where I wanted them to go, more or less.

"You lied," Beatrice said to me. "You know what you're doing. You're good at pool."

Beatrice had a big moth tattoo on her the center of her chest.

"Well, they don't call me Paul for nothing." I said. "Get it? Paul? Pool?" I didn't really say that. I wished I had though. But I didn't, because I've only thought of it just now.

"Where did you learn to play?" asked Beatrice.

"From Fantasia," I said. "You know Fantasia? That Disney film with Mickey Mouse and all those brooms?"

She nodded. "I didn't think Fantasia had pool in it though."

"Well, it does," I said. "Kind of. There's this scene where Donald Duck is playing billiards, and it shows you how to use angles to bounce the balls off the table."

Then I finished the game by potting the final ball into the pocket from the other side of the table.

"Does anyone want to get something to eat?" said Beatrice.

We all started walking together to a restaurant.

I noticed people had paired off into couples. A German girl and a Colombian guy were boyfriend and girlfriend, and Denise was with a guy. The first time I went to this social group was almost two months ago. Everyone was just friends back then, but now they were already pairing off into boyfriends and girlfriends. What's the next stage? Marriage? Babies? Will I be invited to their baby and toddler play groups, games of golf, and barbeques at their giant surburban houses? Will the men sit around in a smoking room, sharing stock tips and reminscing when we used to be young and play terrible games of pool?

We got to the restaurant. It was a Catalan tapas restaurant.

"So the best thing about this place is the burgers," I said. "Because they come with a syringe? A syringe full of cheese. And you have to squeeze the cheese out of the syringe yourself."

At the same time I was saying this, I overheard Beatrice saying, "I hate the burgers in this place. They come with a syringe with this processed American liquid cheese. It's disgusting."

The German girl ordered a burger. When it came, there was no syringe. Just a burger.

"You're lucky," said Beatrice. "They forgot to put the syringe with the disgusting cheese."

"But the syringe is the best part," I said. "If you don't have a syringe with cheese, then how can you draw a smiley face on your burger?"

Sitting opposite me was the Colombian guy. His name was Enrique. We were getting on well so I decided to tell him I have autism.

"So I have autism," I said to the Colombian guy. I suspect this will be a thing now, me telling people I have autism. "I think my whole family has it."

He looked thoughtful and said, "I worked with autistic people. At university. I was studying robotics."

"Oh yeah, I'm sure lots of autistic people study robotics," I said.

"No, it was with children," he said. "We were making a robot that taught autistic children how to read facial expressions."

Just then, Girlfriend called me. I answered the phone.

"Where are you?" she said in an impatient tone.

"I'm in a restaurant," I said. "I'm leaving now though. I'll be home in fifteen minutes."

She hung up.

So I said goodbye to everyone, paid for my beer, and left.

By the time I got home, Girlfriend was already in bed fast asleep. So I guess there had been no need to rush home after all.