Vogue and peanuts and falling in love
He first noticed that it wasn’t quite right when he was sat at their table in the pub, waiting for her to get off her mobile phone. He was idly flicking through the copy of ‘Vogue’ that she had left on the table in front, paying perhaps closer attention to the pictures of Kate Moss than he should have been.

Nevertheless, he was still surprised to have the magazine gently removed from his hands and laid, face up, closed and perfectly aligned with the edge of the table.

She hung up the phone and looked at the magazine, then at him and said ‘sorry, but you were ruining my magazine. I need to flick through each page myself while it’s fresh’

OK, he thought, that’s a bit odd. But then realised that he felt quite similarly if he wasn’t the first one to open the Sunday paper.

They talked, she ate peanuts, drank white wine. The peanuts were cupped in her hand. He looked at her, amazed at how sweet and delicate she was. Incredibly ladylike, the way she slowly picked the peanuts out of her hand one by one. It took him ages, but eventually he realised that she was always taking either one whole peanut, or two halves. The fewer peanuts she had in her hand, the slower the process became.

He watched her, her face screwed up in concentration, eventually the last peanut was gone, and she slowly emptied another handful onto her palm and started again, one by one, slowly delicately. When there were just a few left, he realised that he may as well not be there for all the focus she was giving him, and he watched, silently. She seemed totally unaware that they weren’t even talking. He noticed that there were three peanut halves in her hand. She took two, put them in her mouth and let the last, solitary half salted peanut drop to the floor.

He recalled a conversation he had had with a friend a few months earlier about how she had to eat everything in pairs. How odd numbers made her feel uncomfortable, how she attributed it to a mild version of Obsessive Compulsion Disorder.

He pictured the bathroom, where her stuff had gradually been accumulating recently. The bottles of girls potions lined up on the shelf, in descending size order from left to right. He pictured the rectangular bathmat that he had laid next to the bath haphazardly that had move to fit snugly in the corner between the bath and wall, he pictured the perfectly folded towels, the socks laid in pairs, flat over the end of his bed that she had spent what felt like hours sorting out that morning.

I guess that’s two people I know with it then, he thought while absent-mindedly, barely even aware was doing it doing it, pushing the quick of his left thumbnail down with his left forefinger, then the quick of his forefinger with the same thumb, then the middle finger, the ring finger and finally his left pinkie.

He became aware of a strange discomfort in his right hand and he repeated the process on that side, finally feeling relaxed as his right thumbnail pushed against the skin of the last finger. He touched his right ear, then his left, then he polished his glasses on his shirt tails, vaguely aware that he had only just done this, so they couldn’t possibly need cleaning.

She finished the peanuts and again, a solitary peanut half dropped to the floor and she laid the empty packet on the table. Instantly he picked it up and folded it in half length ways, rubbed it across the edge of the table, forcing the air out. He folded it again, rubbed it across the table again and started folding it at right angles, over, under, until he was left with about half an inch that he tucked delicately into the folds, leaving a perfect right angle triangle of the peanut pack. He laid it carefully on the table, and looked at her again as she tapped each finger on the table edge, one by one. She then picked up the peanut wrapper, looked at it, looked at him inquisitively.

Defensive, that was the word for how he felt under that gaze. ‘It’s just something I do’ he spluttered. ‘It looks…neater…’

She dropped it in the ashtray. He tried to resist, he really did, but he knew it was there, sitting in the ash and he had to pick it up, dust it off and lay it on the table.

‘Sorry’ he said ‘I don’t like other things in ashtrays. I can’t help feeling that they are going to catch light’

But she didn’t really hear him, she was too busy lining up the two empty wine glasses in front of her.

‘Shall we go?’ he asked, she nodded in agreement and moved away from the table. He went to pick up her magazine for her. ‘Leave it be, please, I can’t read it now’

They walked home, he was still pondering her behaviour when she slipped her arm around his waist, kissed him on the cheek, looked up at him and said ‘I was watching you tonight. I think you have OCD’.

That was three and a half years ago. That was the moment he fell in love. And now he can’t imagine life without her.
( scarpe We Stole Bikes, Tue 10 Feb 2009, 11:02, 5 replies)

Nice
work, matey! Good little read you've done there!
( SpankyHanky, Tue 10 Feb 2009, 11:11, closed)

I do the thing with the empty peanut/crisp bag....
...but I don't think I'm OCD!

My sister is though. It's not terribly obvious, but she's admitted that she counts the number of blinds on a window, the number of patterns in wallpaper, that sort of thing.
(Reverend Fister "a disciplined fuckwit", Tue 10 Feb 2009, 11:22, closed)

I'm so jealous
I bet your house is really tidy.
( Kitty v1.0 desperately naive, Tue 10 Feb 2009, 12:10, closed)

Yeah
But it takes twenty minutes to close the front door.
( scarpe We Stole Bikes, Tue 10 Feb 2009, 13:41, closed)

That was lovely...
Ever so slightly scary, but lovely :)

And I bet it makes everyone who reads this think of their own small OCD-like habits they have.

*click*
(annexed, Tue 10 Feb 2009, 12:53, closed)