A recipient of little stories

Everyone needs a recipient of little stories. Someone who, even if they're not next to you, will listen and laugh when you laugh, feel your indignation, roll their eyes and sigh when you're being a little crazy or snicker sweetly at your broodiness (which you know you won't share with the rest of the world lest they freak out, call you too young or scream that your time's running out and that you'd better get yourself sorted).

Someone who will totally get it if you send them the Washington Post piece on 'Intellidating' in New York ("In the New Dating Scene, the Attraction Is a Beautiful Mind. Rather than crossing the velvet ropes for a rave, house party or disco, the hip patrons here were packing into a controversial lecture at the New York Public Library on the modern meaning of feminism."), which was written about a year after you stuck a London newspaper cutting on your computer monitor that says (a phrase that, by the way, they shamelessly re-used in the article).

Someone who will get the insignificant yet cringe-worthy events that happen everyday in the office, which allow you to bitch and mock and pay the most vicious, back-handed compliments to certain co-workers (today, we had a fire alarm in our Brussels office: we were all of us out and back inside in, get this, 6 minutes, to the second, uh-huh, that's how scary our drills are). Someone who will send you one more reason to obsess about the incompetence of the Belgian police. Now check this out. Isn't it just perfect?

Someone who'll pretend to have nothing but contempt for said bitchiness while blatantly revel in it and beg for more. Or love the idea of a cat calling a dog retarded (I don't care what you say, they so are). Someone who will single-handedly overrule all English dictionaries by putting a unilateral ban on the word 'gist' spelt with a 'g.' FYI, people, it's 'jist.' Someone who banters like they breathe. Whose hilarity makes you wish everybody saw the tangents. Someone who - you know it for a fact - is capable of 'beaming inanely' up to 4 times a (very good) day.

Someone who will picture you in a jungle when you say that you bought 5 plants for your apartment and will never question the importance of a strong, solid table for the dining room. Someone who will send you great books, great movies, great articles and make you read and watch stuff until your eyes bleed. Someone whose walk you'd recognize anywhere. Someone whose healthy ambition and unapologetic arrogance have become endearing, somehow. Because SOMEONE likes to act like they own the fucking place, think they know your mind, explode, shout that they couldn't care less only to apologize half an hour later. Someone who, against all reason, calls London your home. And keeps ORDERING you to come back. Because they have no goddam manners. Yes, I said it.

Now I may seem melancholy, but you'll have to forgive me: when someone goes, you're allowed to feel a little empty. Aren't you.