The Overthinkers

by Lisa Portolan

  I didn’t know. I felt incredibly dull at the moment. More so than usual. Like the mental synapses were no longer firing. Like the grey matter had turned white. It was like this awful feeling of not caring about anything had settled over me. It was an incredibly heavy blanket, that kept me pinned to the ground, unable to rise. Unable to feel anything or affect a reaction that wasn’t fabricated.

  I counterfeited a whole heap of my reactions, and all of my dialogues as well.

  I thought they were the right things to do, or say. Or they were the right things for Francesca Moore to do and say. She was kind of like an alter ego. Someone that I had pressed on to my skin, and cinched in at the sides. Glued and pushed down with great force.

  You could only tell that Francesca Moore wasn’t me at tiny junctures. Like at my neck, where you could see that the skin bagged and collected, and even around the ankles.

  It so happened that Leo was downstairs that afternoon. Was he eating Ramen? I caught sight of the Uber Eats delivery bag crumpled in the background. Things were taking a turn ...

  “Morning.” He mumbled at me even though it was afternoon. He looked bedraggled. His hair was messed up, and his clothes looked unwashed and unironed. He was not in a good way.

  But, how do I talk to someone who spends his whole life deflecting vulnerability?

  “Morning,” I said trailing a hand over his shoulder, as I headed past him to make myself a coffee. It was one of Francesca Moore’s character traits, that tiny touch as she acknowledged someone. It wasn’t one that was originally mine. Just something I had gathered along the way and adopted as my own, It came along with the slightly breathy voice, and the tiny air of optimism and enthusiasm. I was pretending.

  As I prepared the coffee, I remembered laying a hand on Benji’s knee and telling him about a book I’d read. This was a while back. I remembered my put-on voice and charm. All of Francesca Moore’s signature (but really not so signature) elements coming together in a killer combination. Yeah, I’d flirted with him. But I flirted with a lot of guys, and a lot of girls too. It was part of my cache.

  But I guess it had been different with him. It had kind of been real.

  I affected my breathless quality, but he also induced the breathless quality.

  That kid had gotten under my skin at some point in time. Was it at uni in some tutorial? Or had it been laced in between a thread of his texts? Or even, when we’d had sex? I wasn’t sure if there was some sort of critical juncture, where he had cracked the veneer and slithered through, or if it was a multitude of things. Like all of the above combined.

  One thing was for certain – I was having intrusive thoughts about him. That was Leo’s phrase. Something he had picked up from a psychologist.

  Benji’s face flashed before me with that big grin. He had a beautiful smile. The kind of smile that had been shaped by an orthodontist and awkward braces before I had known him. There were so many teeth in his smile. You could only see four or five of mine, no matter how hard I grinned. His seemed to go on for days. His face creased in all the right places, and he beamed. The smile met his eyes, and they turned upwards like crescent moons.

  Once you’d seen it. You were always searching for that smile. Always trying to be the recipient of another one.

  Me pretending that I hadn’t noticed him, or that he didn’t mean anything to me was a lie. But I didn’t want what came with it. If I conceded to him, then he got to have an opinion: on me, on my choices, on my life. I hated the idea of losing control.

  Coffee made, I headed back to the table and took a seat opposite Leo. He glanced up at me, and continued to chew loudly, like he’d barely clocked my presence. I kind of missed our banter. Where had he disappeared to?

  “You look like shit,” I finally said.

  Usually, he would have had a little laugh at this, and told me I looked like shit in return. And then we’d go into who was the shitter of the two. But he didn’t respond, just kept on chewing.

  “What’s going on?” I finally ventured. Here it was – that conversation. The one I hadn’t wanted to shoulder the burden of.

  He raised an eyebrow at me and looked despondent.

  The silence struck a chord with me. It was so unlike Leo to just withdraw like this. He was so shiny and bright, I didn’t recognise this muted version. I knew the ‘shiny and bright’ Leo was probably fake, like the ‘breathy and optimistic’ Francesca, but we rarely dropped our masks. To be honest, I didn’t even know who was behind Leo’s.

  “I’m serious, what’s going on?” I continued.

  He rolled his eyes.

  “Luca and I aren’t seeing each other anymore.” I knew that much, but I feigned surprise instead.

  “Oh shit, I’m sorry, what happened?”

  “It’s complicated.” He stopped, and started to fidget. There was unease in his body language, this was the tipping point, was he finally going to speak honestly about what was plaguing him? He always dolled out snippets of his reality, never the full truth. Like me. A potential real encounter between the two of us worried me. What would surface? And did we really want to know?

  “Well, I caught him on Grindr talking to other guys, and then we had this big fight.”

  “Oh no, Leo. What a dick ... that’s such bullshit.” I filled the sentence with expletives thinking that might help. It used to help when I was comforting Mum too.

  “Right!? He’s just been manipulating me this whole time .... He tells me he loves me, pulls me in, tries to make me his property, then goes behind my back and does this shit. He was in a relationship too.” Sheepishly almost.

  His property. Exactly. That’s what they always did. There was no real relationship without some sort of battle for control. There was always someone dominating and someone yielding ... there was no way I was going to be the latter.

  He slammed his hand down on the table in frustration. Shit, this was serious. There was a twitch in his left eye. This was Leo, no filter, no pretending. He was clearly down and the most emotional I’d ever seen. If he was willing to let me see this side of him, maybe I could be honest with him too? No, I didn’t think that was the case.

  “Luca doesn’t even deserve you.”

  “I’m such an idiot,” Leo continued.

  “Well you wouldn’t have slept with him if you had known he was in a relationship – you wouldn’t do that. You’re a good person.”

  Like it was that black or white.

  “You believe that?”

  “Of course, you deserve so much better.” It was a counterfeit response – I was sure this is what he had wanted to hear.

  Silence. He didn’t move. “Leo?”

  “Well,” followed by a big sigh. “That’s not entirely accurate.”

  I tried to remedy my mistake.

  “You might have unwittingly hooked-up with a guy with a boyfriend in the past, but it’s not like he was married with kids.”

  More un-ease spread across Leo’s face... And then it hit me, and he saw me joining the mental dots.

  “Look, it’s complicated. Luca, was married,” he said quickly.

  The statement took the wind out of me for a second. I didn’t want to judge one of my closest friends ... but I felt the wave pass over me, making me slightly nauseous. He’d been with a guy that was married?

  Briefly I had another intrusive thought. It involved Benji’s face again. I pressed delete on it.

  “With a man or woman?”

  Why did I need to know? Why did it even matter?

  “A woman.”

  “Did you know when you first met?”

  He nodded. He met my eye boldly like he was challenging me to say something further on it. I struggled keeping my mouth shut.

  I didn’t say anything – but he gathered everything I was thinking from my expression.

  “That’s rich coming from you,” he shot back, glaring at me.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You’re judging me – even thou
gh your behaviour is utterly disgusting most of the time.”

  It was true, although I would prefer that it go unarticulated. Again, I didn’t respond.

  His eyes bore into my mine. Blood shot and furious – like he had secretly been carrying a vendetta around for me this whole time.

  I knew what he was going to say.

  “Don’t,” I pre-empted.

  “Don’t, what? Talk about how you string Benji around and treat him like a toy?”

  Of course, because the reality was, Benji was between us.

  “That’s not true.” I said coldly.

  “Everyone sees it. You know exactly what you’re doing. You know how much he’s in love with you, you’re being the world’s biggest cock tease. Talk about manipulative.”

  “Well at least I’m not a home wrecker,” I responded, emotionlessly. One of my super-powers, being able to utterly disconnect from someone – fast.

  “I’m sorry Mother Teresa, I didn’t realise you valued the sanctity of marriage so highly. I mean you have virtually slept with everyone in our friendship circle. Francesca, what are you even doing with Hamish and Benji? Get real!” He yelled at me. His face had turned a deep shade of red and there was a vein pulsating near his temple. He was pissed. So, this is what was behind the shiny and happy veneer. Anger. Contempt. Directed towards me and my dealings with men. Because it wasn’t okay for me just to say no to these guys. Or sleep with them and then say no to a relationship. He was slut shaming me. Leo Teoh, a ho himself, was slut shaming me. No, that was unpardonable.

  Well fuck him. If he wanted to rage, I was more than happy to direct some of mine towards him. If he wanted exposure – he should gear up, because it was coming his way.

  “If you want to get real Leo, let’s really talk about your relationship with Benji. How do you really feel about him?”

  And now that was totally over-the-line. The one thing we could never talk about were Leo’s feelings for Benji. A totally taboo topic.

  He looked angry, so angry, I thought he might fling the Ramen-bowl at me. Instead he said matter-of-factly: “I have a problem with the way you’re treating him – like a piece of shit. He doesn’t deserve you walking all over him. I’m sick of seeing it, you’re one of the most selfish people I’ve ever met.”

  “Are you even serious right now?” I yelled back at him.

  “Yeah. I’m totally serious. I’ve never been more serious. I’m honestly sick of pretending. And I feel like that’s all we ever do. Let’s just drop the shit.”

  At that moment, I felt more broken than usual. Granted I’d made mistakes. Had I been a good friend? Not even close. But I hadn’t been a bad friend – had I? I didn’t know. Maybe. My thoughts were all jumbled together, impossible to disassemble. They were a mess of Leo, Benji, Hamish, and me.

  I couldn’t make sense of any of it.

  Clearly it took too long for me to respond, because Leo just turned on his heels and stalked away from me.

  Then he slammed the door, like a real fucking diva.

  I started to follow him upstairs but then I was too tired to continue. I sank down on the steps, my bony bottom finding some solace there.

  I felt like crying. But the reality was I was too dehydrated to cry.

  I never cried.

  It just hurt a lot on the inside.

  My eyes fixed on the unfinished painting propped up on a chair gathering dust. The eyes were complete but the rest was left unfinished. I’d always been good at painting eyes. They came out incredibly realistic. Like they were shimmering, and quivering, like they could transport you inwards, down to the very kernel of that subject’s being. But I was shit at the rest.

  The rest was imperfect.

  The most awful thing was the contrast. The beautiful eyes and the amateur lips, nose, chin and torso that followed. It was an unforgivable disjuncture.

  The reason I had to social climb – and be everything else, including emanciated, was because I wasn’t a good enough artist to make it otherwise.

  I really wasn’t that talented.

  There was the truth.

  It was just one of my secrets.

  I decided to go out that night. I’d gotten a text from a chick I knew from uni – Siena. She was an awful human being. The type of person who made unnecessary and unwarranted commentary consistently. But I didn’t want to stay at home. For once. Her friend Grace was having a house party. The idea of spending the evening under the same roof with Leo, and all of those goddamn awful secrets made me feel kind of sick.

  I texted Hamish to let him know I was going. He was a regular at those sorts of things. He hated being alone, so he turned up everywhere.

  I’d painted my nails a particularly bright (and garish) shade of red to buoy my spirits half an hour before we got in the Uber. They were still tacky and I knew they’d end up with all sorts of smudge marks. Standard. Who was I even kidding here? There was always something slightly off about my look. I had no idea how some girls got it so right, and made it look so effortless. Girls like Maddison always looked faultless. Flawless skin, not a hair out of place, outfit dropping and hugging all the right directions ... just right, always right. With me there was always something to be self-conscious about, a hole in my skirt that I hoped nobody would notice, or a strange spray tan mark, or a kink in my hair, or a gapey top ... today, it was smudgy nails. But I was pretty sure I could identify a whole heap of other things that weren’t quite right.

  My skirt was an inch too short, and rode up when I sat down. My stiletto heels, had been worn down so far the metal spike was now clipping against the pavement, making a sharp noise every time I took a step. My hair felt more curly than beachy waves. I could go on. But I would stop there. There was a never-ending list of these things, I was always sort of slightly off kilter.

  I had no idea whether other people were just more studious in their approach, more diligent in the delivery of ‘their person’, or if they were just like that naturally. Kind of air-brushed. The type of people that never had a pimple on their face, or an ingrown in their bikini line. The type of people whose hair just fell perfectly always, whose face was never blotchy when they worked out. Perhaps their bodies never did anything embarrassing.

  They weren’t made for the embarrassing. They didn’t even recognise the emotion. It was completely foreign to them.

  I on the other hand, felt embarrassed about things. I was selfconscious about things. I worried about tiny inadequacies, even though I knew they were kind of my fault. For example, I could have worn a longer skirt, or painted my nails an hour earlier so they had time to dry, or even re-heeled these shoes if I insisted on wearing them.

  I knew I could have fixed it. But it would have taken too long. Like if you counted all those extra steps, and the thought that went into each of those actions, it was a whole multitude of time. Spent on the absolutely mundane.

  And I didn’t want to spend time on the mundane. It reminded me of my red brick, French polished upbringing.

  What I wanted was magic. Something original. Something different.

  Reality was a dive.

  We pulled up out the front of Grace’s house in Dover Heights, and tumbled out of the car.

  It was past 9pm by then, and wait for it ... yes ... I was tired again. It seemed hardly possible, but I was. I could have done with a fucking pep. Hamish could’ve helped – but it so wasn’t my scene.

  “Could you just get those heels re-heeled already?” Siena said rudely, as I clomped up the immense and upwards sloping driveway. The house was huge, and the driveway seemed endless too.

  “I’ll take them off if they bother you so much,” I responded spitefully.

  “Yeah, please do.”

  Fucking Siena, she was a total nightmare.

  I took my shoes off, just to make a statement.

  They were a cheap, satin blue pair that I had bought from Zara a year ago. I called them my lucky shoes. Because lucky things always happened to me when I wore them.r />
  Not really. I actually had no idea how or why I had concocted that fantasy.

  Perhaps I willed the night in that direction when I was wearing them.

  There were a lot of people inside the house, a couple toppled out as we entered. It looked like they’d been on the piss for a while. I hated being around drunk people when I wasn’t drunk. Incredibly, they were more boring, than what they were sober. I was in a fucking mood – the fight with Leo had set me on edge, and the intrusive thoughts were coming thick and fast now.

  Where are you? I texted Hamish.

  In the kitchen, he responded promptly. Great, he was still somewhat sober today then.

  “Hamish is in the kitchen,” I told Siena, who was applying another slick of lip-gloss, to her already glossed lips. “Do you know where that is?”

  Siena nodded, and led the way, through the lounge room with a Jeffrey Smart painting on the wall. A fucking Jeffrey Smart painting. Were these people even serious? Down a corridor, through to the immense kitchen. Siena and “Gracey” were old school friends. Cut from the same elite Sydney cloth. Only Gracey was far less obnoxious. But she was barely credible, who went by Gracey?

  Worst nickname ever.

  I spotted her in the background now. Near the immense fridge with built in ice-maker, hovering behind the monolithic island bench, with a great big slab of marble stuck to its surface. She looked blonde and tanned, and unfathomably perfect, and yet at the same time, boring, so very boring.

  There was Hamish sitting alone at the island bench, drinking what looked like whisky. I wrapped an arm around him – shifting from psychotic to loving in one fluid movement.

  “Hello darling,” I breathed into his ear, cinematic smile. He looked up quickly, and his face broke into a grin. Clearly, our nonlovers quarrel from a week ago had been forgotten. Besides I needed an ally – I had potentially just lost Leo.

  “Can I have what you’re having?” I asked.

  He pushed the glass towards me.

  “I was wondering when you were going to turn up sweetheart,” he said with a smile that kind of masked a grimace.