Wild Sovereign Development Site

Tag: compliments

  • without spilling a thing

    This beautiful waiter was so caring and funny, he stood for five minutes as a very young guest chose his pizza, then I saw him across the room carrying a fully-laden table with quivering wine glasses, all without spilling a thing. He had flourish and verve but was not show-offy. Afterwards I bailed him up by the register. “We think you have a lot of charisma, a lot of character. My partner reckons you have that gleam in your eye – the gleam of stardom. We think you can do anything you want to with your life. You probably already know this. But in case you didn’t – I wanted to tell you.”

    I thought he might think, who are these people and what do they want from me. I made my companion wait outside in the cold afternoon light so it wouldn’t seem cheesy, like a deputation. The waiter’s face warmed and broadened. As soon as I finished speaking, shyness struck, I ran out of the restaurant. He was still looking after me as I rounded the last corner: “Goodbye! Thank you!” I darted upstairs to the street. “Thank you! Have a wonderful weekend!”

    ~ 2013, Brisbane

  • Kurfürstendamm

    I saw a woman who looked just like you, I wrote to my friend, smoking a cigarette and wheeling her bicycle, big black spiky thing with a huge basket strapped on front, down the boulevard on swank avenue with her friend, who was peering in the glossy shop windows, also smoking.

    Then as I posted the letter I thought: hey. If a red-headed person spots their own twin on the street – is that a doppelginger? The man who last week complimented me, “it looks so lovely with your open hairs”, that is, with my hair unbound, walked past and we were both hurrying in the cold and our beanies pulled down over our brows, still we managed to grin at one another and exchange a few visible breaths. When he said that, I felt so glorious and seventies, platform boots grew beneath my heels and I felt my freedom rising through me like a mist, like the mist on the old airport tarmac, my stride grew longer and the knotty bundle gathered in my parka’s hood felt its roots right to my brain. Oh, the well-placed compliment. It’s that blue light of evening makes everybody pretty. I assembled my adventures of the last several cold days. Crossing the old abandoned airport towed by a dog I felt the mist rising all around and how the sun burned a white hole in the dense white sky. People had erected little winter gardens using pallets and old baskets, others were flying their kites. And the virgin busker I think I spotted one night on the street. He was standing on swank avenue, swaying a little, jerking an empty paper cup and singing beseechingly, uncertainly; he made me think of the Mr Darcy’s younger sister who sometimes introduces shyly a sentence or two “when there was least danger of them being heard.” So I went up to him and gave him all what I had in my pockets (a whole 30c) and said, Beautiful voice. Really? he said. Yes, I said. He looked like a nightclub bouncer who had suddenly discovered folk roots.