Thursday 3rd November, 19:00

Home: Oakworth, Yorkshire

Curtttttttt, this sensation is delicious! There’s this heaving tingling feeling in my chest and heart and I’m soaring around with none of the ordinary physical constraints, running off it as if it’s fuel with little regard for the sleep-dep or puppy love-esque single-mindedness.

But back to you:

Your position in the centre of the stage must have something to do with it; it almost reinforces that you are the source of this primal, undulating rhythm – you are keeping the beat – and I am transfixed by watching your movements as the sticks extend from your body and your feet tap the bass pedal and hi-hat so intuitively. There’s something incredibly titillating about your drumming demeanour in itself, but live it was something else, particularly when I clocked you licking your lips and closing your eyes as the pace quickened and the song crescendoed into sublime noise. mmmmm.

After sleeping on it, and reviewing the short video I took of you, I really think you did make eye contact! You see, the lighting wasn’t your typical gig situation where the audience are in the dark, which made it all pretty surreal because being stood so close and having these between-song moments that were relatively well lit seemed to narrow the chasm between performers and audience. I know you looked at me Curt. I know we shared a brief reciprocal gaze or ten before you sideways-averted, or I – conscious of looking stalker-ish – fixed my eyes on your sticks or kit instead. Perhaps in reality you couldn’t make out faces, but I guess this whole thing so far has been me attributing significance to gestures that were only ever accidental, if they even existed at all…

Sunday 6th November, 00:40

Rose’s Flat: New Cross, London

Who says our digitally mediated lives are cold and emotionless? From my perspective, those fleeting message exchanges carried a huge weight. Days have passed and I still haven’t replied to your message which, admittedly, in no way invited a response. I’m at my bezzie Rose’s in London and I can’t exactly borrow her laptop to write you a creep-ass love letter like some 12 year old, can I Curt?

I guess it would’ve been weird if you’d been super friendly, but that “super simple” was a bit patronising: it sits on top of all the times a boy has said something about keeping it simple, as if anything is fuckin SIMPLE?! Maybe I invaded your personal space but HEY, it’s your profile that’s publically viewable from google, it’s your privacy settings that permit me to message before we’re friends. Some would say you’re asking for it, public boy! You still haven’t accepted or declined. Maybe if you’d just declined me none of this would’ve happened, but you dangled yourself in front of me with that coy, cautious “Hello..?” before crushing it all with your simple response.

Anyway, I’m beat and ready to sleep, but I formulate a simple, polite and potentially flirtatious response – depending on how much you read into these things… probably not as much as me, that’s for sure! – to send you. I select a coy, blushy emoji which I feel reflects both my inner being right now and the way I feel at the thought of you. Still somewhat paralysed by the anxiety prickling from my lungs through to my fingertips, I again push my finger with the screen rather than the screen with my finger as I respond:

00:47

Thanks Curt 😊

Sunday 6th November, 18:30

Rose’s Flat: New Cross, London

So my friend Paula says there’s no such thing as reverse sexual predation because women can’t really be sexual predators in the same way; I suppose you just get the ‘mad bitch’ trope of Kathy Bates in Misery or Glenn Close boiling the bunny in Fatal Attraction. I think I agree with her but I’m still a pervert creep. Woe is me!

As a person I’m actually pretty chilled! Well, not chilled but I’m not some uptight repressed beta female, if that’s what you’re imagining. Whatever that is, I just did some online quizzes and I’m 70% high alpha, 44% mid beta; I am the warrior worrier, the INTJ-turbulent, the Jungian seeker, the hermit come life of the party currently plagued/graced with the mysterious libido of a teenager.

Still, I haven’t acted. Half of me thinks I will send you these letters I’ve been writing but I’m having more fun pushing it as far as it’ll go without participation from you: there’s a reason we’re all shouting into our own echo chambers these days, whether anyone’s listening or not. Beyond the letters, you did a DJ set in Brixton last night and I’m not enough of a real stalker to have actually gone to it… in body at least - maybe you saw my coy “Thanks Curt” whilst you were there? Maybe you didn’t give it a second a thought? Either way, I’m still here in the big smokey and naturally I am assuming I will bump into you at the bonfire or pub I’m headed to because that’s how these things work, right? London’s a small place really and I know the universe wants our bodies to be acquainted.

overlove by Geraldine Snell is published by Dostoyevsky Wannabe