Antisocial, by D. F.

Antisocial
              by D. F.

 

James hated soccer. He couldn’t stand to watch several usually attractive men stand around on a field – in other words, doing the equivalent of what he usually did on a Friday night; but attracting a considerably larger amount of female attention – more than he received on a Friday night, anyway.

“Oh, Gregory is so amazing,” he overheard one of them say. ‘Them’ being one of those people – the females, as they were known.

“He just does everything and is so put together – you just don’t get guys like that anymore.”

“Of course you do. The papers are filled with stories of criminal offenders,” he scoffed – internally, of course.

One of the other ‘them’ entered: not a female ‘them’ this time, but the more harmful type of ‘them’- the tall, athletic Adonis (well, as close as one could get to Adonis in high school, anyway).

“’Sup?” He said, flashing the whites of his teeth to the already impressed thems sitting a few rows in front of him.

How can they stand such inane chatter, James thought. Can’t they see through him; can’t they see that he’s not really happy – or, at least, that he shouldn’t be; that instead he should be moaning and wallowing at all the things he didn’t know and books he hadn’t read? Surely that’s the sort of thing girls should be concerned with.

“Saturday night is going to be so fantastic, I can’t wait,” cried platinum blonde Number 3.

“I know. Right, James, do you want to come?”

There they went again, making their silly little plans while people died in Syria and the Christchurch rebuild was lagging far behind schedule.

But wait a minute . . .

“Er . .?”

“Yeah,” replied Adonis. “You hardly ever come to these things. What’s the deal with you anyway? Why are you so antisocial? Come party with us!” This prompted the chorus of assembled platinums murmuring in agreement, followed by various comments expressing amazement that James had never attended.

“I, er . . .”

James wanted to say it was because he didn’t believe in their quasi-social gathering that excluded those less privileged in looks and wealth. He wanted to be Ghandi, standing firm and calmly eliciting his principles on why he had been boycotting those events.

Instead, he said, “I’ll see you there.”

Suddenly, soccer didn’t seem quite so bad any more.