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Christian stood up sharply, pushing his chair back with his legs. He could take no more of it. He ripped his napkin from his shirt and threw it down onto the table. His clip on tie clipped off because of this, and rather fetchingly fell top heavy into his wine, the clip making that sort of ding sound, as it his the glass.

Not the sort of ding sound that signifies whatever you were drying out in the microwave has finished going round.

The sort of ding that is made when thin metal hits rounded glass.

This did not detract from Christian's anger; it was merely a
side-track.

"DAMN YOU..,!" he snapped. "And all of your other boyfriends."

She retained a confident look. Her calmness was not broken. Her neck was at a different angle, but that was just so as she could see Christian. Her dog-loving eyes were still there, but maybe that was just because they were fixed eyes. She could not just take them out and put some surprised eyes in whenever the mood took her. She did not look surprised or saddened, however. Maybe that was because her mind knew that she had been found out.

On the other hand, she could have had some pretty taxing psychological problems earlier in her life; and now when she gets to extreme confrontational moments, such as this, the iron gate flies down, and a barrier of confidence is formed.

Maybe she was just a whore who was used to this kind of thing.

Then again, maybe not.

Whatever.

"And to think..." Christian cried, pausing for a minute, but
continuing, upon conclusion that the present company's views on his life and inhibitions and stuff did not matter at this point. "...To think I gave up masturbating because I fell for you so much."

The silence that was in the room silenced even further. It was bordering on some sort of negative silence. New Scientist were standing by.

All of the men felt for Christian that night. One or two of them were heard to mutter things like 'poor guy' and things. Most shook their head in sympathy.

Some of the women put two and two together and learnt something about the male that night. Perhaps not such a good thing, but then neither is a double Jack Daniels on an empty, dry stomach through a tight throat, but sometimes these things have to be done. Not an extremely seamless comparison, mainly in the same way as the length of a piece of string would be compared to the weight of a house; but it can not go right all of the time. Into every life a little rain must fall. You can't have everything all of the time. Look before you leap. A stitch in time saves nine. Because with every perfection there lies an equal and opposite imperfection. Everything must balance; automatically. Even if you have everything you wanted in something, the absence of what you don't want would detract the perfection from what you've got. Like the better it gets, the worse it gets. With the start of incline comes the introduction of decline. When you've weeded out all of the problems and dead wood and stuff, a whole new set would come along. And if you've therefore got a quest in life for perfect happiness and perfection, you really don't stand a chance of attaining it. But maybe that's it. Always keep Joe Public wanting more. If you take the right road of life, then paradise lies at the end of it. But if you squander it, and spend it, and use it all up now, you ain't not never gonna get to where you want to go. Or something. It really is a simple life, only people get in the way. But then you can't have everything all of the time. Not again. It all kind of raises the question, if everything must balance out, then why are we trying to abolish evil? Which kind of also puts a damper on life. Which kind of makes you want to chuck out the theory of balancing and stuff. But then a world without evil would be weird. Good would no longer be noticed because it has no opposite to be compared to. But then that's assuming that good and evil are opposites, and not two completely different things. Strange. Maybe we are fighting evil to maintain the balance. Evil in it's nature has greed burning through it's veins; and good does not really stand much of a change against this, because, being it's alleged opposite, it naturally makes do with what it has got. So to maintain the running of, what we could consider to be, a stable universe, it could be argued that our quest for global paradise is quite essential. But then, with the limited knowledge that we possess, anything at all could be argued.

A waiter walked passed Christian and patted his condolences on his back. Christian held his posture for a few seconds. The waiter's sympathy had touched him, and he tightened his lips together and nodded his head a little in appreciation. He then realised that he did not really know why he was still standing there. What was he waiting for? She was not going to say anything. Or at least if she did, then she would not say it until he made for the door. Even then she would have kept her speech quite sparse. Saying something like "No," or "Wait." That is, or course, unless she was the sort of person that would stand up, go one further that Christian, and defend herself. Christian considered this, very quickly due to the speed that the brain actually thinks at, and figured that if she did defend herself, then the restaurant would get to know a whole lot more about him than what he has all ready told them. You know, about giving up things, and stuff. He considered a lot more besides, a lot of stuff that bares relevance to story line, outside of this situation. But, as that has not been written yet, one cannot possibly expect it to be included here. Unless nothing short of a big brain wave were to occur. Like, I could figure out a whole history as to who she is, what history she has got, and why they are both having dinner there. This would also require motives from either character's point of view, and, now I am trying to think of something, I really do have no chance Usually it just sort of happens, but I don't think it will today. Not at the moment anyway. Then he would have no more cards to his chest. He would not have anything saved incase another situation, probably much larger than this one, turned up.

Christian walked back to the table, sat back down, tucked his napkin back into his shirt top, and clipped his tie back on over the top of that. A little sparse on the organisational front, but this was a high pressure situation here.

He picked up his fork, and started munching on his starters once more.

She looked at him with a slightly puzzled expression on her face.
"What do you want from me?" she said.

"What?" said Christian, looking up as if nothing was the matter.

"What do you want? You would have gone by now if you weren't after something."

"Oh that. Don't worry. I've said all that was cutting me up, let's just get on with dinner."

"No, you're not making sense, but then again, this piece of writing has hit a bit of a brick wall where future is concerned."

"Yes. Yes it has rather. Let's liven it up a bit."

Christian stood up, kicking his chair right back into some fat old businessman. This caused his head to plunge forward into his soup. The downward force on one side of his table naturally caused and upward force on the other side. This launched a bottle of Tomato Ketchup up in the air, over the businessman, and down into Christian's right hand.

Damn, did that look good.

He clutched it tight and brought it to his mouth.

"Well, allllllllllllllllllll right," he screamed into the bottle. "I'm gonna write a little letter gonna mail it to my local DJ. I got a jumpin' little record I want my jockey to play. Roll over Beethoven, I gotta hear it again today."

Christian shook up the TK bottle, took the lid of, and dolloped a lump into the corner of his plate. He then put the top back on, walked over to the other table, and put the bottle back where it came from.

"Thaaaaaaaaaaaaaaank, yooooooooooooooooooou. Yeah," he went.

He then walked back to his table, sat down and continued to eat his dinner.

September 1994