Some Things Are Art

It began, as these things often do, with a rabbit.

Not a metaphorical rabbit. Not a literary rabbit, appearing at the edge of a chapter to signal innocence, fertility, or some other bollocks. An actual rabbit. A very cross rabbit requiring video evidence.

I gave Dan my phone. This is worth noting only because I gave it to him quite comfortably. There was no sudden clutched bosom. No secret second life trembling behind the lock screen. I handed it over because the rabbit, for reasons known only to itself and God, was doing something that needed recording. Here is my phone. Take a video of the rabbit. That was the whole brief.

While he had it, my daughter messaged repeatedly. Six times. Possibly seven. Grown-up children messaging repeatedly sit fairly high on my alert system. Above Instagram. Above general nonsense. Above almost everything except fire, flood, livestock escape, or someone shouting, "The surveyor is in the septic tank."

He saw them and did not announce them. What he did announce was that I had an Instagram notification from someone called Daniel Middel.

This interested me because I barely use Instagram. My feed is less a carefully curated portal to erotic danger than an algorithmic shed: strange creatures appear briefly, do something inexplicable, and vanish.

Daniel Middel was a particularly fine example. He was a portly man in a frock, rotating a hula hoop across his stomach in front of a fucking cat tree. And honestly, he was good. There was commitment. There was athleticism. There was fabric. There was a level of swivel that suggested either deep practice or a pact with forces beyond ordinary human balance.

Had Dan opened the notification, he would have discovered this for himself. He did not. He announced it. There is a difference. One path leads to information. The other leads to atmosphere.

What particularly interested me was the selection. Six or seven messages from my daughter had passed without comment. One unfamiliar male name had not.

I listen to Dan talking to women all day long. Actual women. Women with names. Women he knows. Women who exist in the proper three-dimensional world rather than the hula-hoop underworld. Somehow I manage not to require a full transcript or witness statement. Yet Daniel Middel had made it through the filter.

I told Mairead, which was the correct thing to do. She did not solemnly investigate Daniel Middel or ask whether I had encouraged the hula-hoop community. She understood immediately that if an unfamiliar man had appeared on my Instagram, the odds were considerably greater that he was doing something peculiar in a frock than attempting to seduce me.

The more we looked, the funnier it became. Daniel in white, Daniel in yellow, Daniel in blue. Daniel in skirts. Daniel with hoops. Daniel in front of the cat tree, giving everything he had to the cause. Mairead said aliens would be horrified and impressed at once. She was right.

Meanwhile, Dan had gone outside to strim a path to the septic tank in preparation for the surveyor. This was wise. There are times when a man's best contribution to a relationship is to be outside, holding equipment, saying nothing.

I did briefly and uncharitably hope the septic tank lid might give way. Not catastrophically. I am not a monster. Just enough to create a moment of reflection. But no. He remained intact. The septic tank, for all its flaws, showed restraint.

And really, if your insecurity is going to identify an unfamiliar male name from among everything arriving on somebody else's phone, it might at least conduct some basic due diligence. Daniel Middel was not a rival. He was a man in a frock doing extraordinary things with a hula hoop in front of a cat tree.

Some things are not flirtation. Some things are art.