Many writers have shared their thoughts with the public:

"There is something delicious about writing the first words of a story. You never quite know where they'll take you." - Beatrix Potter

"The role of a writer is not to say what we all can say, but what we are unable to say." - Anaïs Nin

"Sharing your writing, being enlarged by others' writing, is what makes you feel famous." - Gretchen Bernabei

"Writing is not an amusing occupation. It is a combination of ditch-digging, mountain-climbing, treadmill and childbirth." - Edna Ferber

"Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing." - Ben Franklin

"One must be drenched in words, literally soaked in them, to have the right ones to form themselves into the proper pattern at the right moment." - Hart Crane

"There are three rules for writing. Unfortunately, no one can agree what they are." - W. Somerset Maugham

A Butterfly's Proboscis, and the ungainly mind of a perhaps one day bride-to-be

It wasn’t as if Eliza necessarily wanted to get married. Not on this particular day, anyway. Right now, all she wanted was escape from the subject of ‘large-winged insects’.

Eliza thought it odd that so many brides harboured a fanatical desire to pre-order boxes of docile butterflies for their wedding day photos. Once opened, the butterflies are supposed to flutter out of the box and perch on the bride’s shoulder, Snow White style.

There’s a whole transportation procedure involved to get the butterflies to the bride too, often via the post. Ice-packs needed to be placed near the boxed-up bugs to keep them in a ‘resting state’ as they make their journey. If the icepacks are too close, the entombed flutterers stagger about, punch-drunk, without an ounce of the ardently anticipated flutter left in them. Then, they just flop haphazardly out of the box, stagger around a bit, and eventually crash-land on the ground, promptly ruining the bride’s day. A complete disaster.

Much the way Eliza was feeling on date Number Four.

She had decided, on a whim, that she wanted to meet a man the old-fashioned way—speed-dating. Date Number Four was sitting there right opposite her at the local Wyong RSL Club. This was her first charade with speed-dating, and she hoped, as every speed-dater hopes, that her future life partner was somewhere in the lineup.

But, after evaluating the line of participants, she wasn’t so sure. She gave herself a quick metaphorical slap-in-the-face, reminding herself that on this day she wasn’t going for her usual type. This time, for a change, she would put looks way down at the bottom of her wish list.

Ethereal handsomeness was still on the cards, though, that’s for sure. Otherworldly ‘magic prince’ good looks still had to be up there; she couldn’t deny it. So, that meant the guy in chair Number Eight, the one with the uneven ears, was out. Yep! She’d hurry past him if she could—perhaps muster a limp attempt at small-talk, fast-tracking right on to chair Number Ten. It’s called speed dating for a reason, after all.

She would skip Number Nine altogether, if at all possible. That mole on the tip of his nose was not something Eliza could wake up to and sit opposite at breakfast every morning for the rest of her life.

Speed-dates Number One, Two, and Three had plummeted by, largely unnoticed. Something about an accountant, and another one still living with his mother? And the third had to be muted entirely, banging on about the exorbitant, lamentably huge, amount of traffic on his bus ride and the slothfulness of the complimentary Club Wyong bus for members, that had nearly made him late. The audacity of it all!

Then, ‘Ding’, along came date Number Four. Eliza mentally nicknamed him ‘Mr Insectologist’, though his real name was Bob.

“Er, a-yes, the butterfly can, indeed taste with its feet. Largely thanks to its olfactory organs being—”

“Really?” Eliza had no idea how she had arrived here. Ah yes, that’s right. He’d mentioned that he worked at the zoo in the department of entomology. When she had asked, ‘what’s entomology?’ (a huge mistake, in hindsight), he went on to describe it in what can only be politely called comprehensive detail.

“And you know,” he continued, his grey eyes remaining distantly focussed on the barren wall behind Eliza, “their proboscis can’t taste a thing. Its sole function is intake.”

Eliza was sure Number Four’s proboscis hadn’t had much intake, as her nightmare scenario flashed before her eyes—the life of an insectologist’s wife.

“Yes, the proboscis is a marvel in itself, one of nature’s wonders,” he continued, somehow mistaking Eliza’s silence for a deeply shared fascination about the fluttering genus.

She slumped into her chair. “Well, we all have vaginas,” she sighed, wondering how the hell her life had come to discussing butterfly genitalia at a speed-dating convention in Wyong.

“No, no. It’s the tongue.”

“Huh? The butterfly’s vagina is its tongue?” Eliza envisaged some kind of worm head-and-bottom-the-same scenario.

“No. There’s no vagina. I mean, female butterflies do have vaginas, of course. It’s actually part of the corpus bursae. That’s how they copulate with the male, and consequently lay the caterpillar larvae. But no, the proboscis is their tongue. For licking.”

“For licking?”

“For sucking up the nectar. Of the flower.”

“Oh”. Eliza suddenly wanted more than anything to be sucked up and out of this room by an enormous alien proboscis. No longer did she want to get married. Nor would she ever, EVER have half-comatose butterflies languishing upon her wedding dress outside a church. Nope, for now, the fastest and quickest way out of this was a clean, and fast, alien abduction.

Number Four continued on, commentating like a university lecturer on the ‘spiracle’ of insects, and how they differ from species to species. He hadn’t asked Eliza a thing, as if she wasn’t even there.

Nor did speed-date Number Five, a stamp collector, or ‘philatelist, as he liked to style himself. Date Number Six was even worse, asking her how she was, then spending an entire five minutes comparing her to his previous girlfriend.

Eugh, Eliza thought, wondering if she should just give up and make her way to McDonald’s for a Happy Meal.

But, somehow, she persisted. Number Seven seemed nice enough, and Eliza reasoned that she had nothing to lose. Her opening line was boldly flippant. “Holy shit, this is a low-quality event, isn’t it?”

“Are you calling me ‘low quality’?” Number Seven laughed. “I thought I’d just met the one.”

Eliza looked over at the previous girl he’d been chatting to. “Her?”

“Ha, no. You!” He stared at her, his irises bulging, body language unflinching. The moment stretched out, Eliza’s speechless tongue frozen still, like a cold, frazzled butterfly in a box.

“Joke?” Number Seven offered.

“Oh! Gosh, you really had me there. See, I’ve just been talking to a guy about a butterfly’s proboscis, and—”

“A butterfly’s problemoscis?”

“Proboscis. Its tongue.”

“Ah, yes. Fascinating, indeed.” His voice sounded a little odd, as if he was stifling a yawn.

She was clearly losing him. “And, well, I just. It’s, well, my guard’s up from those other ones.”

“More probulcusses—?”

“—Proboscises, no. Just all the men. No good. Wanna get married. Can’t today. No butterflies.”

‘DING.’

Next.

The one guy that had seemed … normal. Gone.

Number Eight was nice. But the ears. Like fully opened taxi doors. Then Number Nine. Eliza could smell her heels singeing on the outskirts of the hell she was soon to burn in for her impending dissing of him. That mole!

Ten. At last. The final one. She sat down. His head tilted left. “Did I hear you talking about butterflies earlier on?”

He was quite good-looking.

“No. Please, no butterflies for me. I’ve had it with butterflies.’ Eliza was burning up, flummoxed and flustered.

“Oh, but I’m a psychic.”

Eliza’s ears pricked up. “A psychic?”

“Yes. And I know a thing or two about butterflies. Fascinating courtship and mating habits. The miracle of the chrysalis. The colourful emergence—”

“Well, it’s not like I want them at my wedding, or anything.”

“Wedding? But I haven’t even invited you to a reading yet. Or dinner, for that matter—”

“It’s just that they can die in the mail if they get too hot.”

“Who, the butterflies?”

“Yes. That’s why they need ice. But the ice makes them too cold. They end up in kind of comatose.”

“You know,” Number Ten arranged his face to the look of an empathetic psychic about to impart the Holy Word of wisdom, “A butterfly on your shoulder can symbolise that a loved one’s spirit is watching over you.”

“Me?”

“People. In general.”

“I, ah. Well, I don’t really want to be watched. You know? Or watched over. I just want to leave now, really.”

“But the pairing up ceremony hasn’t begun yet. At least stay for stage two, I’d like to talk to you some more.”

“But I don’t want to get married,” Eliza mumbled, confused now, erratically scraping her chair away, and stumbling from the well-meaning psychic just as the ‘ding’ of the final bell reverberated. Across the lines of chairs, all conversations, awkward, insect, or otherwise came to a wilting, stultifying end.

Number Seven. Eliza had to get the attention of Number Seven. Glancing over to his chair, finding it empty, she scanned the room for him. He must have gone to the toilet. He was the only one she wanted to see again. She’d wait for him to come back and explain her spasmodic outburst. He’d understand.

Then, a shuffle behind her, but it wasn’t Seven. It was Four again. “I, err, didn’t get to finish explaining to you the significance of the spiracle.”

“It’s okay. Another time.”

Eliza backed away, cutting her losses, heading for the exit at Olympic championship speed. Well, at least not all had been lost. She now knew that a butterfly tasted with its feet, not its tongue. She also knew for certain that she would not be heading down the aisle anytime soon. And that when the time came, she would definitely, definitely not have bugs of any kind fluttering out of boxes.

Set the proboscis free. Burn the boxes.

And as for speed-dating? Perhaps she could get Mr Psychic to conjure up a part-alien life form to help abduct her out of the building covertly and painlessly should there ever be an urgent need to flee next time.

She swooped by on the way out, grabbing his number just in case—because, well, you never know.