Eviction Night

     It’s eviction night. I’m…excited. If that’s the right word for it. No, no, it doesn’t seem strong enough, it’s just not enough.


Excited; aflame, agitated, aroused, awakened, eager, enthusiastic, provoked, roused, ruffled, wild.

Thank God for the online thesaurus, it helps me define myself. But more of that later. Back to what’s important here.
    
     Its eviction night and I’ve been voting for her all day. Finger on the re-dial button, I’m nervous, fidgety, which is weird because I never normally get like this. I’ve never been one for reality TV, it’s inhumane, appealing to the lowest common denominator and you never know what might happen. Colonic irrigations and live liposuction, Richard Madeley being eaten by a crocodile whilst Ant and Dec watch on, open mouthed and horrified. It’s far too spontaneous. I used to hate them. I used to hate all of them, but then I saw her.

     It was love at first sight, I saw her enter the house at 9.21pm, she was the third person to go in which didn’t automatically endear her to me as I’ve always found threes quite confusing. As a child, I thought if you put two of them together you would make an eight. But she makes all that seem so unimportant.

     She is breathtakingly, deniably beautiful. An Earth Goddess, her favourite colour is black and she doesn’t like turnips, trainers or daffodils. Her favourite snack is stale bread and she despises insecurity. She’s an only child and an orphan, her entire family wiped out in a freak whaling accident when she was thirteen. She’s rubbish at counting and was picked on in school. I know this because I read it on her myspace page. It’s now my homepage and I know almost everything there is to know about her.

     I know lots of other things about her as well. I know I love the way she hides behind her hair when she’s moody, I love the way her eyes are different colours, I love her webbed toes. She is an eclectic rainbow of perfection, my anarchic angel.

     As soon as she stepped out of the car, tips of her shiny black boots pointing Westwards, I was mesmerised. I rolled the soft syllables of her name round my mouth like marbles. It seemed to call to me from a distance, the sea at the bottom of a shell. Mooma…Mooma…Mooma…real name Moira but she couldn’t pronounce it as a child so she became Mooma and it just stuck. Funny, because I normally despise nicknames on grown-ups, it’s a sign of weakness, makes me think they’re hiding something. But in this case I’ll make an exception. In this case it seems to suit her. Mooma. Like a comfortable chair or a favourite aunt, Mooma my love you have taken over my life.

     I love to watch her. Relentlessly, religiously, like an alcoholic reaching for the first whisky through a vague haze of sleep, unconscious, the TV on in the background subliminally filling my head with her. Lovely, lovely her. She is like sunshine.

    I had every reason to dislike her but I even love her when she’s doing the conga and her operatic rendition of Leo Sayer’s You Make Me Feel Like Dancing was nothing short of inspirational. The others only exaggerate how wonderful she is with their childishness, their bitchy comments. Darryl and Carol were in the diary room the other day and they said that she was insincere. Insincere? Nobody in their right minds would call a finger-painting vegetarian insincere!

     It was only logical really, this next step. It was the only thing to do. When I saw her big, promotional cardboard cut out, poised as if to jump, her features contorted into an unnatural expression of “look how zany I am! watch me defy convention!” When I saw her there, alone in a sea of other housemate’s friends and familiars I knew. I knew what I had to do.

     Now I’m here, I can’t quite believe it. Can’t quite believe I did it. I normally think spontaneity is so over-rated but here I am. Day twenty-one and I’ve had the three most wonderful weeks of my life. Like the holiday of a lifetime but without the foreigners. And there’s that three again. See what she does to me? If that’s not love, I don’t know what is.

“So, how long have you known the lovely Mooma?” our mock-cockney host asks, with just a hint of sarcasm.

“Oh, not long,” I said. I’ve never been one for lying and live on national TV is no time to start. “But she’s very important to me. She’s stolen my heart.”

I’m so excited, my hands are sweating and I have to concentrate very hard so I don’t accidentally wipe them on my trousers and leave marks. I’ve never been like this before. I never normally get so bothered about people, I don’t see the point. But she’s different. She makes me different. Makes me normal. Makes me feel what normal people feel.

     I feel like I’m going on a first date. Not an ordinary one but a big one, like an arranged marriage or something. I can’t quite believe I’m here.

“So!” shouts the over-sexed teen with the microphone. “It’s thirty seconds to go! Who will be re-united with their loved ones? Twenty seconds! It’s hang by the seat of your pants time! Ten seconds! And with a record ninety four percent of the votes the third person to be evicted from the house is…”

     They say Love changes you. She’s changed me. I feel like I’ve woken up. I can’t wait to meet her.