“Excuse me, miss.”

Urgh! That sleazeball pinched my butt!

Again. Again! I just don’t believe this! Okay, from the top. Hi, my name’s Alex. I am five-seven-and-a-half, my hair reaches my shoulder blades, and people always call me pretty. I suppose I am, because guys are always hitting on me. Doesn’t sound too bad yet? Well, maybe I should explain: my name, Alex, is actually short for Alexander. I’m a boy.

Okay, so there I was, with my sort-of-girlfriend-best-friend-and-next-door-neighbour-rolled-into-one, Sam, lining up at the checkout in Smith’s, where we’d popped in to get the latest Polemic Pandemic CD to listen to at my house, and that guy comes over, pretends to look at the magazines one rack away (guy stuff, like FHM and Biking Weekly and other stuff like that, and, don’t get me wrong, I’m straight, but I think the degradation of women for simple viewing pleasure is disgusting. That’s why I’m not into that stuff myself) and then, to my intense discomfort, he leans over, says, “Excuse me, miss,” and pinches my butt in what he must have thought was a very subtle move, all the while pretending to look at a copy of a CD he had no interest in buying (and this is where his plan falls apart, other than the should-be-obvious fact that I’m a GUY, because the CD he picked up was R’n’B Hunkz Collection (I HATE slang like that and deliberate misspelling)), and then, after a few seconds, he puts it down and shuffles off to do God-knows-what with the rest of his life. EWW!

It takes all of five seconds for Sam to crack up with silent laughter, look at the mortification on my face and start giggling so hard to herself that tears start to stream down her cheeks, and then, when she finally realises what he’d done, almost wet herself.

Don’t get me wrong, I love her to death, but if looks could kill, the glare I gave would have killed her, resurrected her and killed her again, it was just that evil. Aww, yeah.

All I can say is, this CD had better be the best thing PP have ever done, or I’m killing somebody. No joke.

We go to the bank, as I have a cheque I need to deposit. I got it from my gran about two months ago and haven’t had the time to cash it in, until now.

The kid in the waiting area is small and annoying. He keeps running around, in and out of the queue, and he kept pushing past me. I try to join the back of the line, but he is standing in the way and is completely oblivious.

“Now, now, Steven,” a woman I can only imagine to be his grandmother says, “Let the nice young lady past.”

Sam holds my hand for moral support. Thank God for her, or I would have gone crazy years ago. It’s not my fault that what little hair I have around my lip is completely see-through-blonde! And, come on! My voice is easily low enough! I mean, no girl can get to the penultimate octave on a piano when they sing! But nothing seems to make a difference!

I think the universe just hates me. It’s quite depressing, really.

“Don’t worry, ‘Lex, you’ll always be a man in my eyes,” Sam says, with a twinkle in her eye.

“Is that a confession?”
She blushes. “Well, it might as well be.”

“Okay! Well, good news, I love you.”
“I know.”

“You wha?”

“Lex, I’ve always known.”

“Let me rephrase that. You whaaaa?”

She grins. “I’m just that perceptive.”

And she kisses me on the cheek.

“Now,” she says, as I stand completely frozen in the high street, fingers brushing my face where her lips made contact, “Why don’t we get something to eat?”

And all I can think is, maybe today isn’t so bad.

…Until the waiter in the café starts flirting with us.

“What can I get for you two fine ladies?”

I tighten my grip on Sam’s hand under the table and she tries to hide a wide grin.

Before I can kill him though, she quickly says, ‘two vanilla milkshakes and house burgers, please.”

Oh, Sam, I think, my anger dissipating slightly, you know me so well. And she should, as we were born in the beds next to each other (she’s ten minutes older because I was just that stubborn). Oh, here’s another interesting fact: we were born on November 14th. What’s so special about that, you may ask? Well, just track backwards nine months…

After we finish eating and we go inside to pay, Sam asks how much it costs, and the guy says, as sweetly as he can muster, “just your phone number.”

At this, I can’t stay silent any more.

“Would you please stop hitting on my girlfriend?”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” he says, backing off, face as apologetic as I’ve ever seen, “I didn’t know.”

As things happen, we decide to get another milkshake to split. We sit down with it and two straws, and, as we’re drinking it together, I feel a pair of eyes boring into my skull. Probably just that guy from earlier, upset I put a damper on his plans, but no. With my periferal vision, I look at him, and I see him whisper to a waitress nearby:

“You see those two over there?”

He ‘subtly’ gestures to us.

“Yes?”

And here it comes.

“…They’re lesbians!”

Okay, so, here's the skinny. Every single one of those situations has happened to me. Except it was a guy with me, so he just laughed and apologised. But...! I started thinking. What if it was a girl? And then I ran with it.

Don't worry, this is not in place of Alandra High, just something I wrote down when I was at a blank.