Beware of avuncular two-handed shoulder touches.

"Avuncular: behaving in a kind and friendly way towards young people, similar to the way an uncle treats his niece or nephew."

That was the Oxford Dictionary’s definition of avuncular, just now. In my day job as a digital marketer, I’m told ad nauseam to Keep It Simple, Shithead (KISS). When I’m writing for work, there’s a pervasive lore that marketers should avoid ‘fancy’ words. Avuncular might just be one of those words. It’s no longer appropriate for an ignorant person to become less ignorant by learning a new word. Finding out stuff has got to be easier than it’s ever been which makes me wonder if we’re lazier than we’ve ever been. Instead, we should dumb down our vocabulary until we regress into grunting—like our hunter-gatherer ancestors.

Thankfully I’m not writing this for an ad agency.

(Good, coz avuncular would NOT fly.) In that case, KISS can kiss my arse.

All this ranting has me off-topic. I had no intention of becoming a moany old fart in front of your very eyes, foaming at the mouth about the increasing trend to oversimplify. What I wanted to talk about was this: beware of avuncular two-handed shoulder touches. To be clear, don’t beware of them from your uncle. A caress from Mum’s brother should be teeming with avuncularity. But what I’m struggling to say, because of a colossal tangent is beware of avuncular two-handed shoulder touches from a man you happen to be incredibly attracted to.

Would you like to read a story based on my romantic ‘exploits’? Or rather, I should say, WARNING: this will be something about my romantic ‘exploits’.

Don’t worry, it’ll be pathetic.

I fancied a guy.

He was older than me—yes, uncle age older. That’s a running theme btw but this isn’t the time to unpack my daddy issues. No, this is the time to talk about, John—not his real name, obvs. Now, I’ve known of John for about twenty years. I say ‘known of’ because he wasn’t aware I existed.

Once upon a time, I was active in the Oxford music scene. It was the age of frosted eye shadow and platform trainers (yes, the early 00s). John was kind of a big deal musically, in fact, his family were a big deal musically and although I’d rubbed shoulders with certain members (family members, not body parts), I had never met him.

John left Oxford around the time I was singing miserable songs in bars. Somehow fate/the breakdown of his relationship brought him back to the Shire—and drunk on Facebook. (Lucky me, this guy would be vulnerable.) I saw his name come up on ‘People you might know’ so I uncharacteristically pressed ‘Add friend’. He accepted my request, because, as he told me later, mostly old blokes ask to be his friend (tell me about it) and as we knew some of the same people—and he thought I was cute, he said yes. His Facebook content was mainly about gigs but one post