I am a lonely person.

I believe that lonely people attract each other like magnets of different polarities.

Despite the ever-widening circles of friends and the love of my family, I feel isolated. Perhaps wallowing in isolation for so long has made me subconsciously seek out and bond with other lonely people.

Who are these lonely people? They are the career-minded female PMEBs who know that they are not spring chickens...They are the lost hearts who have just broken up, looking for someone to fill their emotional vacuum...They are the bored significant others in relationships which have been leached of any feeling and devotion. They are people with too much time and money in their hands...who are jaded and beautiful, who seek someone to share their feelings with.

I am just there to fill the moment with some fun and games. And they in turn, fill my moment with laughter and scrape away a little bit of the loneliness.

Met E. last night at a pub in town.

She said was nursing a beer. Sitting alone and watching the world drift by. I received a message asking if I could come down to join her. I accepted. I was lonely too.

I arrived and was pleasantly greeted by my favourite door bitch...I proceeded to make some casual conversation with her while paying the cover charge. Her manager, a woman with a thick neck and a cold stare, eyed us suspiciously. The door bitch counted the change wrongly and gave me two dollars more...The manager spotted her error and came down on her like a hawk, accusing her of being distracted by the customer. I pointed out that two dollars was a small sum to pay for me to grace their grubby little establishment. I meant it as a joke, but nobody laughed...what a bummer.

I made my way to E.'s table...past the happy bunch of execs celebrating someone's birthday... past the hordes of SPGs and their white accessories... past the cuddling gay couple.

I sat down. We talked. I left to take a pee.

When I came back, she was gone. She left me a message:

thx 4 cmng.

Daddy's tkng me hme now

tc...Nitez~

I looked around. She was really gone.

She left a dish of mixed nuts and half a pint of kilkenny. All the cracker nuts were missing (DARN!)...I decided not to waste the beer, so I downed it...to make myself feel better for wasting 8 bucks on a coke.

So now I am the lonely one...left behind to stare into space.

And then I saw her.

She was staring into space too...so vulnerable, so tender...so lost.

Our eyes made contact.

We smiled...and then I walked towards her...

Phm! Phm! Phm!

Loud, confident steps...the steps of a winner.

" Hullo. Alone?"

"Yah...My friends left without me. You wanna have a drink together?"

And so it begun. She's a nurse...She's from abroad...been around for awhile...She has been here for four years...not many friends...just trying to make ends meet doing what she finds meaningful...and so forth.

Although she's around my age, she seems so determined and intense when she is talking about her dreams and aspirations...totally different from the lost and vulnerable waif I found at the bar scant moments ago.

We talk some more...and then we exchange numbers, setting a time and date for our next meeting. She smiles. I smile back. I get a hug for smiling back.

I promise to call and then I leave.

"Nic you have shit for brains you know...both of you are just leading each other on! You KNOW what your main reason for getting her number is right?...and yet you invite trouble to your door...Go on, go ahead, set yourself up for another fall! Just don't blame me when the shit hits the fan...%^&* you." A small voice within my heart gibbers unintelligibly. By now, the booze has hit my brain and I find myself vocalising these incoherent thoughts to an alarmed audience-a gang of Bangladeshi workers repairing a road at night.

I crumple into bed...but not before I bang my head on the bed slat. I strip in clumsy movements and stare at my pale green ceiling...I read somewhere about somebody being a Great Pyramid of Failure...I start to feel the same way about myself.

This is the way the lonely-hearted end their nights.