Happy Birthday Shelly

The Virgo birthdays all start to happen now. It starts with Shane and then Shelly, my brother, my favourite great aunt who I still count despite the fact she has been dead since I was 25, me, then Anthony who is dead, the idiot drank himself to death, such a waste, and it ends with Adriana, (oh, I so must call her, she's just split from Freddie the last time I saw her, bad Christian) LouLou just misses out by a day, or so. 

Shelly is one of my friends, who I really don’t see much of any more. She lives in Perth, she has for many years.

So, mid morning, a couple of days ago on her birthday, I think about calling her. I go to call her, but I hesitate. Oh, I don’t know why? It’s been a few years since I have spoken to her, but we have known each other since we were 16 year olds.

When I hesitated about calling her, I think… had it been too long? What have I got to tell her? Was it just my own insecurities making me question it? I looked up her birthday (I put all of my friend’s birthdays into my contacts some years ago) and it turns out to be one of the big ones. There is no hesitation after that.

I call her.

The phone rings, I feel nervous while it rings. Stupid really. (Does everyone feel that way? Or is it just me?) It answers. “Hello.” That didn’t sound like Shelly? Surely no one else would answer her phone?

“Shelly?” I ask.

“Yes.”

“Shelly... Ann... Lois?” (A nick name since we were kids) I hear an intake of breath, a good inhale, of recognition.

“Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday dear Shel-ly, happy birthday to you” I give three cheers.

"Oh, Christian." She is pleased. It is like no time has passed at all. Me and Shel.

“It’s the big one,” I say. “I just had to call you.”

“Shelly Anne Lois, it just takes me right back. Instantly,” she says. She laughs.

“You threw me when you answered…”

“Why?”

“It just didn’t sound like you,” I say. “I’m thinking surely no one else has answered your phone.”

Shelly laughs again.

“This was the birthday that affected me the most,” I say. “I never thought about my age before this one. This was the one.”

“It just doesn’t sound real. [she says the number],” says Shelly. “It just doesn’t sound like I am talking about myself.”

“Yes, I know,” I say. “I never feel any different, Unless I look in the mirror…”

“Yes, tell me about it…”

“…than I have ever felt, until I turned…” I say. “I just feel the same inside.”

I tell her the story from a few years ago of me heading down to Coles to get something I desperately needed, possible milk for coffee I had already made. I just left the house quickly without checking my appearance – crocs, track pants with holes in them, footy socks pulled up over the bottom of the track pants, a huge motheaten t-shirt hanging out from under an old hoodie that was far too many sizes too big for me, hair standing on end, un-showered – crossing the road and seeing out of my peripheral vision some old dero coming towards me, poor luv, I thought, which, when I looked again, was my own reflection in the big supermarket glass windows.

We both laugh.

“Oh Chriso, it is so good to hear your voice,” says Shel. “What have you been up to?”

“Oh, you know, I was a bit of a homebody before lock down,” I say. “I’ve become even more of a homebody since then.”

“You still with Sa… Sam.”

“Yes, still together.”

“How are you?” I ask. “You still with your guy?” Gavin, I couldn’t remember his name momentarily, I stumbled, the pot smoker, but she wasn’t, so it didn’t really matter. “No, I’d had enough of him, you know what I mean?”

“All these years later, hey Shel.”

“All these years,” says Shel.

“Who’d have thought?”

“Those conversations we used to have… late into the night”

“Yes, I remember,” I say.

"I loved those times," says Shelly. "I hold them dear to me to this day."

But, pretty soon work encroaches on our call. Boris emails me, and I have to sort some stuff out.

“Don’t go,” says Shelly.

“I have to,” I say.

“Oh, I could keep talking,” says Shel.

“Yeah, me too.”

“It’s always nice talking to you.”

“And you too,” I say. “You have to move back to Melbourne.”

“You have to come to Perth to visit,” says Shelly.

"It's so far," I say.

"Oh, it's not," says Shelly.