End Credits

On Wednesday I was made for you. By Sunday we were done.

It’s funny how heartache has the same symptoms as falling in love: you can’t eat, you can’t sleep, you can’t get it off your mind. I swear I could feel my heart cracking, in the wake of that first week.

When the shock recedes, I am flooded with relief. Our cautionary tale ends in precautionary euthanasia: you saved us from stagnation. Cut it off before we metastasised. Domestic purgatory is a better fate than desolation, but the road is long and our journeys have only just begun. There is so much world and we are still so young.

For a time, our paths aligned. For a second, you were my salvation. Now what we thought could be eternity has concluded in a blink. Ten years of tension, nine months in gestation, but it turns out that pounding heartbeat was stillborn after all.

Last year, I thought that even if I didn’t have you so completely, the invisible strings would pull us back. But once it starts, it can end, and now there is no going back. Strangers to friends to lovers to strangers to friends to lovers to strangers: those strings had to snap some day. I just thought there would be more days.

Now the eternal sunshine has set on our horizon, is it more painful to remember or forget? I thought little about us when us was living and breathing; I didn’t record the memories or moments because it felt like there would always be more. Suddenly, us has a beginning, middle and end and my memory bank is ripped open. Like Pandora’s box, the reveries outpour and there is no putting them away: even the most mundane reminders prick a fresh injection of heartbreak.

Now all that was, has been reduced to cliché: fastened smiles and aching ribs and stolen kisses and promises of forever whilst wrapped in perfect embrace. How could anyone else love anything this much? There simply is no way. The rest forge their love from convenience, but ours is founded in hardship; how smug we felt that day.

But time slipped through our fingertips. Now our bodies are strays. The cold has started to bite; how quick the sun can drop away.

Do you remember when you said, you don’t believe the honeymoon stage has to fade? That you love me more, not less, with every passing day? That you’d never stop making an effort; never give up the chase?

Yet when we hit our first real hurdle, you gave it just a week then ran away.

I just wanted a year. Just a few more holidays. I just wanted to know what each change of season, each calendar day, would look like, before you were the one that got away.

I know all odds were against us; I know it was only a matter of time. I know that wishing you were there when you weren’t was a problem with no resolution, and that when I really thought about it, I didn’t see you in my 2025. And I know, that you know, that I knew that, and maybe that’s why you had the trigger primed. What a predictable tragedy that because I loved an avoidant wholly, I put myself in the firing line.

But you don’t like it here, and I don’t like it there. I guess there always would have been a point when the standoff became too much to bear. I would have uprooted my life, because I relish the challenge of carving one anew, but why should it be me who gives up everything for you? Why would I surrender variety, all the peaks and troughs, to move somewhere flat and placid, because for you, routine is enough?

Why would I do that when your lovebombs are duds?

Why would I give my all to someone not willing to fight for us?

Of course, when I say ‘fight’, all I mean is book some fucking flights.

Instead you try to ensnare me there, again, even though I boarded a plane six more fucking times.

And I never would have counted, if I’d felt like I was getting it back, but now we’re done, be real: the imbalance was basic maths. I know your contribution was capital; I know your love language is cash, and now you’ll never see a return on that investment, which I agree is also crap. But I was getting so sick of being your concubine. Why did I seldom meet your friends? It’s far too far to travel, just to cohabit in your flat.

And I keep excusing you, in this way and in that, because it’s less painful to believe your pretty lies, than accept the bitter truth: you just don’t like my life. You’d run your mouth; I’d fall for all that’s untrue, and the reason this feels like an unfair characterisation is because you believed you, too.

Or at least, you wanted to.

The only thing you actually actioned, in those final wretched weeks, was axing me forever. It’s the only thing you said that, at this stage, I still believe.

And it’s not that I don’t think about you, or romanticise it all, in a sadistic kind of way, but the black cloud has cleared; I found my spark.

So why are there parts I still crave?

Is it intimacy that has this chokehold? Or the feeling of being truly known?

Only, I don’t know you anymore. My fantasies of what this could have looked like might have kept me up at night, but you only opened the window, never opened the door.

I so badly wanted to impart my lust for life, because I will never understand your penchant for strife. If you want to work and I want to play then the future you tore away would never have existed anyway. 

Now, these fantasies are swallowed by a thick, black jealousy that sticks like tar and mars every memory because, soon enough, someone else will get that reality. Another girl gets to reap the benefit of anything you learned from me. Another girl gets the you that travels; the you that uses your annual leave.

But I suppose, eventually, there will be another boy who gets the better me. Less anxious, less self-critical. More money in the bank; better title on her CV.

Little by little, day by day, thoughts and feelings about other people and other things fill my brain. In the fresh wake of our breaking, I cherished the minutes you weren’t in it. Now the flashbacks are fading and hours pass where I don’t think about us for even a minute. Soon hours will be days, then days will be weeks, and part of me grieves even this. Though I am so glad my mind is making space for all the riches of all the rest of what life beholds, this means one day I won’t think about you. Not even a little bit. Not even at all.

So, when I have erased you, and you have erased me, what becomes of that cavity? That gaping oblivion with no you-and-me?

Is this really just another notch?

A chapter closed. A footnote.

More obsolete sexual currency.

Truth is you broke my heart

so now that’s all it can be.

And it’s bittersweet, but now I see the beauty in grief, because to feel pain cut so deeply means you can feel love equally. If we didn’t care, it wouldn’t hurt, and though the waves are acute, that something can make me feel so alive fills me with gratitude.

So maybe

I should thank you

because finally we are free

RENAISSANCE

Shorter of breath and one day closer to death, my 25th year has brought ample time for meditation. For the longest time, my sexual experiences existed in extremes of serious relationships or calamitous one-night-stands. In recent years, I have found myself negotiating the grey area between these two things. This has caused me more grief than both of them put together. 

I always used to think that if it never really starts, then it can never really end: in lieu of coronafornication, at the height of the pandemic I relished a self-esteem boost spurred by loose chit-chat with ‘special friends’ scattered here, there and everywhere. The lucrative potential embodied by these interactions made me all the more antsy to escape my childhood bedroom and have my wicked way with the world once again. 

In the dawn of Britain’s post-COVID era, I revisited such companions like a sexy Scrooge attending his visions of Christmas Past. I re-consummated relationships and forged new ones. But all that sultry, Samantha-Jones-single-stamina – the all-powerful feeling that the world is my oyster, my options are limitless and I can do whatever (and whoever) I want – quickly dissipated when I discovered that even the most intangible relationships can crumble into nothing. 

“What happened with the lawyer?”

“I got myself more spangled than Bambi having a seizure and, suffice to say, he has not texted since.”

“Right. That guy who rents Airbnbs?”

“Sent me an unsolicited Snapchat of his penis captioned ‘When are you gonna come here and suck this?’ so I blocked him on everything.”

“Yikes. Okay. That Yorkshire lad?”

“Pissed in my sock drawer.”

“For god’s sa– what about the science dude? He was ni—”

“Coupled up.”

“Anyone down south?”

Pause. I take a deep breath.

“This one’s bad in bed, that one’s freaky in bed, this one ghosted me, and that one didn’t show me to the door because he was butthurt I didn’t fuck him.”

“You already told me that last thin–”

“Not the first time it’s happened.”

“Right. What about the Spaniard?”

“Moved continents.”

It is not long before my infinity of options becomes none.

I’m almost more bothered that I’m not bothered. After a string of flings and things fizzle out without either party so much as acknowledging that whatever it was has reached its deadline, I find myself wishing I could trade in apathy for heartbreak. I’m not saying that I never like anybody or that nobody ever likes me; it’s just that these things never align, or at least never for any significant length of time. Now it all just kind of swirls around in my brain like when you mix up soft serve at the Pizza Hut dessert counter. Like Pizza Hut soft serve, it’s all just a bit sticky and icky and if I think about it too much it makes me a bit sick(y).

I am irrevocably jaded from seeing the same patterns of bullshit reappear, no matter how different I think one person is from the last. At 18, I thought there was only The Game: smashing kills like a preteen playing COD. But I have now learned the hard way that there are more nuances than I ever could have imagined. Modern Warfare 2? Let’s talk about emotional warfare 2022.

Firstly, we have Operation Be-Distant-and-Aloof-Until-They-End-It. Also known as ‘the slow fade’. This one is kind of genius, actually. Why do somebody the decency of dumping them when you could string them along, put in the absolute bare minimum and hope it just kind of… stops? And they know they can’t call you out because then they’ll look crazy. They can’t accuse you of doing anything, because that’s exactly it – you’re not doing anything. The closure of rejection is so 2019. This way, if you ever find yourself truly down-and-out, battling a dry spell that would give the Sahara a run for its money, at least you’ve left the door ever-so-slightly ajar for a rainy day blowjob. 

I would rather have the door slammed in my face. 

I have learned to relish rejection because sexual purgatory is a truly hellish fate: life would be easier for everybody if we simply admitted we’re not arsed, rather than hoping they collect all our little clues like fucking Mystery Inc. But the phenomenal hypocrisy of sexual politics is that, as much as I detest being on the receiving end, this particular game is so effective that I can’t help but take notes.

Then, there’s the ol’ Go-Cold-With-No-Explanation. The gist is the same; the execution is more insidious – one day, you simply stop replying. It’s one down from ghosting because you don’t block or remove them from social media; you just stop acknowledging their existence all together. A more impressive feat, I think – you watch their stories and read their messages, but you are so stoically disinterested that all you will ever give back is the cool ripple of brisk, drafty air. 

Maybe one day it takes you to like their post or react to a story. But these gestures are as callous and meaningless as radio silence, if not more so: you raise their hopes and, should they respond, dash their dreams with Seen 21:09 once again.

Worse than saying nothing, what they do say is often completely fucking irrelevant. They might say all the right things and still leave you for dead. They might keep their cards close to their chest and your mind will fill in the blanks. They might tell you the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, but you’ll still only hear what you want to hear. All you can trust is whether the situation(ship) – the reality, not the aggrandised fantasy you’ve put on a pedestal higher than Snoop Dogg riding a giraffe – adds or detracts from your happiness. And if you have that sneaking gut feeling that what’s done is done? Trust that. 

Nowadays, nobody wants a relationship so much as they want a glorified teddy bear. You know, something to hump and cuddle without the emotional investment or reciprocity that make romantic relationships addictive to some and unfathomable to others. I don’t know who needs to hear this, but just because he likes sticking in you doesn’t mean he likes you, sis. If you find yourself playing ‘Who can be more cool and aloof?’, just take the L. You shouldn’t feel like Icarus flying too close to the sun whenever you text them because you know the reply won’t come for 3-5 working days. 

Unfortunately, knowing all this has not stopped me being drawn to emotional insufficiency and geographical unavailability like a moth to a flame. After announcing I would be boarding a plane because a boy asked me to (the third in three months), my friend commented “If a pretty boy asked you to jump out a plane would you do that, too?”

“Ha-HA. Very funny.”

“Have you tried, oh, I don’t know, dating someone who actually lives where you live?“

“Pfft. That’s ridiculous. I am prime sex real estate! You expect me to just sit in West Yorkshire collecting dust like an expired condom? Where’s the story? The adventure?” 

“You’re crazy.”

“I prefer funhinged. Besides, if I date someone local, there’s a real possibility they’ll run into Hungover Me stumbling out of Sainsbury’s biting into a Taste the Difference vicky sponge like it’s a sandwich.”

The truth is, post-’rona, I have no patience for the mundane. I hardly did before, but having now lost two prime years of my twenties, I feel compelled to have some kind of commotion bubbling in the background at all times.

But bubbles fizzle out.

In a way, it is harder to process flings with a shorter shelf life than Liz Truss’s premiership coming to an end, than year-long relationships. When relationships disintegrate, the process is so long and gruelling that when it’s finally over, the immediate feeling is relief. When something short-lived ends but it was never bad, the reasons you’re better off aren’t quite so crystal clear. 

A friend finds me lamenting the latest romantic shortfall:

“Curse my stupid little bird brain”, I huff. 

“Spanner in the works?”

“Spanners all over the fucking floor. I thought this was a link, not a Kwik Fit stocktake.”

“What’s happened now?”

“I invested when I should have divested. And now – shock – he’s dropped off. Again. Why does this keep happening?”

“Because”, my friend replies, “you keep shooting your shot. You can’t help yourself! You’re like the ADHD lovechild of Tigger and the Duracell Bunny; you can’t just sit still and enjoy the silence, you’re always looking for the next motive, the next story, the next playmate.”

“Maybe I’ll get RUIN MY LIFE tattooed on my forehead so it at least seems as though it’s my prerogative.”

“What were you hoping for?”

“Oh, I don’t know, just basic communication and respect.”

“Well, we can’t always have what we want. He’ll recede into irrelevance soon enough.”

“Let’s hope his hairline does, too.”

Later, on the phone to my mother, I find myself asking the same thing:

“Why does this keep happening?”

“These things do at your age, darling. People experiment in their twenties.”

“There’s ‘experiments’, and then there’s Unit 731”, I mutter.

I once read a tweet that said “We’re all just looking for someone to watch TV with till we die”. I can’t say I agree, but I suppose there does come an age when certain pastimes (palatial garden romps; K-holing in a squat) are simply not acceptable. This made me realise that in spite, or perhaps because of, my proficient singledom, I am potently obsessed with long-term couples. How has my mum put up with my dad for thirty years? How has my dad put up with my mum? Imagine, not only meeting someone in the right place at the right time, but both people being in the right headspace and the right circumstances to make it work. The fact that anyone pretends there is any special recipe for this beyond PURE LUCK is what makes unsolicited relationship advice so exasperating.

“How can you expect somebody else to love you, if you don’t even love yourself?”

“What the f– I said I’m hungover and could use a cuddle.”

“I know, I’m just saying, if you want something like what me and Kyle ha–”

“Oh, of course, I forgot you were the epitome of self-love and inner peace when you got off with Kyle at the 2016 UoB Freshers Ball after the Lacrosse captain pied you!”

I do not get invited to many dinner parties.

The truth is, I both fear and applaud those with more than a couple year’s mileage, because for me there is something that runs much stronger than that pang for intimacy or romantic stability: a deep-seated commitment aversion. 

Don’t get me wrong, I will always want the excitement and butterflies and rampant fuck fests that come when something starts. What I don’t want is to be so catastrophically inconvenienced by liking someone that I neglect my travel plans and slip and fall into a shared mortgage.

“What do you want, then?”, my friend asks when I relay this sentiment at a coffee debrief.

“I just… I no longer wish to experience the attendant nausea when a Tinder hook-up manages to slip their triple-digit body count into pillow talk. I am so sick of enduring a relentless torrent of horny Instagram messages, or foot fetish fantasies, or literal dick pics, only to get hit with slow replies the second I say ‘so when we doing this?’ I… I want… I want to be less than a girlfriend, but more than a three-hole minigolf course, ISTHATTOOMUCHTOASK?”

Pause.

“You want to be in the shagging nether zone? Good luck getting out of there in one, resentment-free piece.”

She’s right, of course: the rose-tint always fades. I can’t believe you’re real descends into I can’t believe you’re fallible. In my recollection of anything that was ever anything, I will always remember two looks; two glances exchanged, like epodic bookends:

1. We are going to have sex.

2. I am never going to see you again in my life.

Of course, it is rare the latter is ever outwardly acknowledged. This spurs another rant:

“Why do people hold off break-up conversations? Just spit it out, for Christ’s sake. Put me out my misery.”

“Are you saying you like getting dumped?”

“No. But if there’s one thing I like less than rejection, it’s decision-making. If I’m on the receiving end, then the decision is made for me. And I love the theatrics. The finality. When there’s nothing left to lose you can tell someone what you really think of them. Full circle, baby.”

“I think you just answered your own question.”

“Huh?”

“If someone tells you it’s off and your response is to unleash a glaring character assassination, then I can kind of understand why they’d opt for the ol’ ghost-and-coast instead.”

“Whose side are you on?!“

But really: imagine how much easier life would be if it was socially acceptable to say “No offence, but I never want to see you again.”

Other liaisons enter a kind of reverse Mexican stand-off: neither of us are going to reach out, but if it ever just so happens to be in front of me, then sure, I’ll take it. Like a child who hasn’t developed object permeance.

On that note, I must admit that I am a little jealous of those who have been loved up for so long that they have never had to entertain some of the truly insane conversations that casual sex entails. For example:

“Can you delete my nudes, please? I’m probably not gonna see you again and I’ve started talking to someone and I don’t feel comfortable knowing you’ve go–”

“Oh, I already deleted the–.”

“Whoawhoawhoa. What? When?”

“Last year some poi–”

“Last year? Why’d you do that?”

“We don’t really tal– you just said you wanted me to delete them!”

“Yes, at my request! I thought you’d fight a little to keep them, now you’re telling me you already deleted them?”

or


“You’re taking her out for dinner?”

“Are you… jealous?”

“You never took me out for dinner.”

“This was never really a dinner vibe, was it? Did you want us to go for dinner?”

“Us? Go for dinner? Absolutely not, can you imagine? God, that makes me feel a bit sic–”

“Then why are you mad I’m taking someone out for dinner?”


or


“Alright I’m going. Have you seen my knickers?”

“Um… I’ll have a loo–”

“I think they were over ther–”

“I haven’t seen anyth–”

“Down the side of the bed maybe?”

“There’s something under the– here you go!”

Pause.

“Mine. Aren’t. Pink.”


Of course, it’s the one-liners that make for the real zingers!

“Yeah, I just don’t really have feelings”


“I don’t have emotions”


“You miiiiight wanna get tested…”


“You’re just not the kind of girl you buy flowers for, you know?”


“You know, you’re like a boy...”


“If we kiss after sex you might catch feelings”


“I don’t really like women.”


“Dry… spell? I wouldn’t know.”


“Just because I have a girlfriend doesn’t mean we can’t go for a drink!”


“I guess that makes you… 155?”


Look, you can’t all be Dennis Reynolds. I’m not entirely convinced by this culture of denying the capacity to even have emotions, and I don’t just mean when it looks like things might be inching towards – gulp – serious; I have been on first dates where guys have pulled the ol’ “I’m a robot” card: 

“The thing with me is… I just don’t feel the way other people d–”

“You don’t have emotions; you’ve never been in love, blahblahblah. Do you know how many fucking times I’ve heard this monologue? Yawn. I don’t care. Save the Patrick Bateman impression and just admit you wanna use me for sex.”

If it’s meant to be a deterrent, it certainly works, because now I think you need therapy.

I think part of the reason myself and others fall off the deep end sometimes is because ‘feeling things’ is quite… nice? And, personally, a novelty: sometimes months go by where I find myself in a passive, careless stupor. At first, it’s kind of a superpower – I can keep shagging this and sniffing that, like an egoistic bulldozer with no regard for anything or anyone that crosses my path. But any kind of routine becomes boring after long enough, so when someone comes along whose company I enjoy in and outside the bedroom, who also wants to spend time with me, why wouldn’t I lean into it? Of course it’s going to end, but it’s still fun to get wrapped up in the moment. It’s enjoyable to look forward to seeing someone; to have sleepovers and do nice things; to have a primary focus and not be drained by the constant small talk that comes with serial dating. Letting yourself feel won’t teleport you to the altar; it’s possible to care somewhat whilst being more enamoured by a bigger picture that that person isn’t in.

Besides, isn’t horny an emotion?

I often hear lads say “It’s easier for girls”. Meaning, it’s easier for girls to pull, which is the be-all, end-all aim for many single males. But in the long-term, it’s definitely easier for straight blokes – your market is the one BIOLOGICALLY WIRED TO MONOGAMY. I don’t want to perpetuate stereotypes, but I know from personal experience that living with single women is a whiny echo chamber of “why hasn’t he texted meeeee’” that I wouldn’t wish on anyone. Seriously, is there a GoFundMe for all the besties out there who find themselves repeatedly comforting that one mate who keeps crawling back to a Neanderthal with the emotional intelligence of a cabbage?

My point is, if you pull a girl and the next morning you turn around and ask if she wants to go for breakfast or grab a drink later, I would bet every penny of my travelling savings that the likelihood is she would at least be open to the idea, because for many, post-coital oxytocin might as well be a heroin smoothie.

Now, imagine asking some hungover gym rat, deep in the abyss of post-cum clarity, if they’d like to get coffee or go to an exhibition. I would simply rather gouge my eyes out.

Is there an end in sight? Do forty-year-olds go around saying “Like, obviously we are married but it’s not deep, you know?” The only solace is seeing people hotter and less chronically cataclysmic deal with the same brand of bollocks. There is also the added bonus that I have completely avoided toxic relationships, by avoiding anything that could possibly resemble a relationship.

This hiatus has also helped me realise that much of rejection’s sting can be attributed to the accompanying ego thwart, not the actual loss. For instance, if someone stops replying, I would rather tell myself it’s because they died in a horrible, sudden accident, than admit I’ve been pied.

When I am so lucky to get a concluding discussion, it is often tinged with patronising comments that imply I am but a Silly Little Girl. A pliable, fuckable ragdoll with no ambitions of my own. I was dismayed to learn that there is no escape from such dialogues even when literally traversing continents.

“This has been great, but you know I don’t want a relationship–”

“I don’t want a relationship!”

“I’m busy–”

“I’m busy!”

“I’ve got plans–”

“I’ve got plans!”

“I want to travel–”

“Sorry, I thought my suitcase being in your field of vision as we speak would have helped alleviate the fugue state that has apparently caused you to forget the reason we met at all is because I’m travelling RIGHT NOW!“

In truth, I love doing whatever I want. I love the endless possibilities afforded by being a young adult with no major responsibilities. But I am also a shameless victim of my own humanity, so the strong-independent-woman schtick takes a backseat when I am presented with the opportunity to crumple into the arms of someone bigger and stronger than me like a flaccid marionette.

Some of these episodes bleed so deeply into the realm of the ridiculous that I don’t think that stains will ever come out. The stories are too good to stop telling. But for all the wining and dining and skyline-view-smashing and free gigs and free drugs, it is never long before I am humbled: maybe I wake up in a caravan, or a belligerent booty call pisses on my socks, or I find out the hard way that spicy food and oral sex (sans Oral-B) is a diabolical combo.

The Second Coming

‘Excuuuuuuse me’, a customer coos as I am about to take my break, ‘Where can I find loo roll?’

I knit my eyebrows in faux-pity and sigh.

‘Right here’ – I gesture to an empty fixture bearing four, barren shelves – ‘is where it would be.’

‘Do you have any out back?’

I nearly say ‘Oh, honey’, but bite my lip to stop myself, which thankfully my mask conceals.

‘We dooon’t, unfortunately.’

‘Could you look quickly?’

My quiet amusement turns to bubbling rage. I breathe in sharply through my nose.

‘Listen bitch’ I (don’t) say, ‘You are the third person to ask me in the last hour. Trust me when I tell you we do not have any toilet paper.’

She opens her mouth to retort but I cut her off with ‘I’monmybreaknowbyyyyyyeeee’ and dash down the aisle before she can ask me anything else.

It is the 1st November 2020. Approximately fifteen hours have passed since the UK government announced a second national shutdown. Strap yourself in, ladies and gentlemen, because it’s time for…

Lockdown 2: Not-So-Electric Boogaloo

I would describe my general attitude towards the pandemic as akin to sticking my fingers in my ears and yelling, Jeremy Usbourne-esque, ‘LALALALALALALALA, I can’t hear you, I’m fit and young and I’m going to live forever’. With normality seemingly in touching distance over summer, I hopped on a banister gilded with unfettered debauchery and rode it down a spiral staircase of rampant hedonism. But now the ride is coming to an end I can see the marble floor I’m about to hit head-first. I am barely able to enjoy the last few days of freedom because I can’t shake the feeling that I’m on death row.

‘Ok, but what about all the people who are, y’know… actually on their deathbeds,’ my friend says when I make this comment to her.

Pause.

‘and you’re just bitching because the pubs are shutting.’

‘I’m being flippant—’

‘What about all the underpaid, overworked NHS staff on the front line—’

‘Ok—’

‘What about all the vulnerable people who have been shielding for months—’

‘Righ—’

‘All those people inching closer and closer to poverty because they’ve lost their livelihoods—’ 

‘I am aware that as COVID Top Trumps goes, I’ve got a weak hand,’ I squawk. ‘But it’s still shit.’


November 4th: The Last Supper

‘I can’t believe I didn’t land a boyfriend between this lockdown and the last,’ I say to my friend as we each collect what might be The Last Pumpkin Spice Latte we enjoy in 2020.

‘Really? You can’t believe it?’

‘Excuse you?’

‘Your behaviour really, really didn’t suggest you were looking’

‘I mean I wouldn’t say looking, bu—’

‘The opposite, in fact’

‘Ok, righ—’

‘Picking up random men in parks doesn’t exactly scream ‘devout monogamist looking for love’’.

‘That was one time!’

‘Sure—’

‘I was on holiday. When in Rome–’

‘Munich, wasn’t it?’

‘Well, yes, bu—’

‘I’ve heard enough about your bratwurst-filled German excursion.’

Pause.

‘I see your point.’ Sllluuuuuuurrrrrpp. ‘I’m done with all that, anyway’

‘I’ll believe it when I see it.’

‘I’m doing No-Hoe November, actually.’

‘You say that like it’s your own prerogative and not a legally-enforced government sanction forbidding contact with strangers in a national lockdown’

‘Hey, I said I was quitting the game on, like, Halloween, before we knew there was even going to be another lockdown!’

‘Yes, but you were five G&Ts deep and dressed head-to-toe as a Playboy Bunny so forgive me for not taking you seriously.’

I take a long, hard, loud sip of my PSL.

‘BoJo’s announcement slapped all the horny out of me anyway’, I mutter.


Day 1

Part of me is excited for a month unhampered by temptation.

‘I could do with a detox,’ I tell my mum. ‘This lockdown will be a welcome break from my own behaviour. A detox from me. A… a metox, if you will.’

She stops eating, puts her knife down, looks me dead in the eyes and says:

‘Don’t ever say ‘me-tox’ again.’

Clearing up, I make a mental list of everything I’m going to achieve: I’ll cut down on sugar. I’ll run when the weather’s good and do home workouts when it’s bad. I’ll tidy up my C.V. and master LinkedIn and complete three job applications a week. I’ll read more, I’ll write more, and I’ll cut out all the crap that’s holding me back: no drink, no drugs, no junk food, no dating apps…

It takes less than a day for me to succumb.

I am on my way to work when I pass Colonel Sanders, iridescent against the empty street and the pitch-black 4 pm sky. Curiosity gets the better of me and I push the glass door gingerly. I’m inside.

I’m… the only one inside. Tinny radio plays from an unidentifiable source. Overhead lighting flickers. Have I reached the pearly gates? As I walk towards the counter, I see there is a girl standing behind it.

‘Are you open?’ Is this heaven?

‘Yeah, would you like to order something?’

Uh-oh.

My lockdown goals were directly or indirectly dependent upon fast food being completely inaccessible. In one fatal blow, everything I had hoped to achieve in isolation crumbles into oblivion like the ill-fated 50% in Avengers: Infinity War.

This is not a good start.

I arrive at work and kick the door to the staff room open like I’m performing a police raid then slam my KFC on the table. The clock-in machine reads 16:23. I’ve got seven minutes to get to work on my bargain bucket before I… well, get to work.

The greasy deliciousness brings a tear to my eye. The realisation that this is the highlight of my week brings another, less-happy tear. Mid-finger-lickin’, my co-worker pokes his head round:

‘Takeaways are open?’

‘They’re the only thing that’s open.’

‘Were they open in the first lockdown?’

‘No, Greg, because I was skinny in the first lockdown.’


Day 3

‘Really? You’re really not having anyone round?’

I am on the phone to my friend. He has just broken the news that his household are really, truly following the rules this time and I can’t hang out there anymore. Since when were my friends law-abiding citizens?

‘It’s the rules.’

‘But… but it’s me! Your pal. Your loyal dinner guest. Your friendly neighbourhood sex pest. I’m five-foot-four, I don’t take up much spac—’

‘Look, give it a few weeks, yeah?’

‘Is this because I work in a supermarket?’

‘No! But the fact you effectively earn a living touching surfaces and getting coughed on by the general public doesn’t exactly help your case.’

‘That is so unfai—’

‘Sorry, Laz.’

The dial tone sounds. I’ve taken a lot of pies this year but this one hurts the most.


Day 8

Day in, day out, the same thoughts rattle around my skull like the last Tic Tac in the tub. Fighting the feeling that you are sleepwalking through your twenties is an uphill battle. I am mid-way through ironing when I burst into tears.

Mum rushes to my side: ‘What’s wrong, darling?’

It is hard to explain to parents that you’re upset because rolling around half-naked in a field mashed off your face on a Class A-cocktail is cancelled for the foreseeable future.


Day 17

Who is this pale old lady? I think, staring at myself in the bathroom mirror.

‘I’m too young and too hot to be a spinster,’ I sigh, pulling my face taut with my fingertips.

‘And so modest!’ says my sister.


Day 19

I don’t know if it’s the loneliness or the horniness, but by week 3 flirtation and validation have become currency. After serving a customer I wave goodbye, then when he is fully out of earshot I turn to my co-worker and hiss:

‘Did you see that?’

‘See what?’

‘That cute boy I just served made a lot of eye contact.’

‘And? I had sex four times yesterday.’

‘Not all of us get to isolate with our beautiful girlfriends, John.’


Day 21

I kill a few hours scrolling through Rightmove in a vain attempt to fuel some kind of escape fantasy: If only I lived with my pals in a five-bedroom semi overlooking the seafront.

Tinder serves the same purpose: If only I was getting piped by Dan the Plumber, 27, from Crawley.


Day ?????????????

At other low points in my life, I have manipulated my privilege to flip the switch and mess around with the controls. Bad night out? Leave. Don’t like your housemates? Move. Need a change? Get on a plane. Relationship troubles? Dump ‘em.

Unfortunately, you can’t rage quit a global pandemic. Checking the news every day and wondering ‘Is it over yet?’ has become the adult equivalent of a child in the backseat of a car leaning forward every two minutes to ask ‘Are we there yet?’.

In the first lockdown, I distracted myself with fitness. I stopped drinking, started running and got into resistance training.

‘Why don’t you do that again?’, my mother asks when I bemoan Coronageddon for the 858376920829th time.

‘Because it’s cold and wet and dark.’ And it’s not like anybody’s seeing the results anyway.

‘You’d feel better for i—’

‘Hmm. No. No, I think I’m just gonna wallow this time.’ I bite into a Chilli Heatwave Dorito and press play on my sixteenth Sex and the City episode of the day.

I have sustained exactly zero (0) hobbies since COVID-19 graced our lives. This is partly because I spend sixty hours a week mopping floors, stacking shelves and performing (figurative) analingus on one of the whitest and Karen-est supermarket customer populations in the country, but mainly because I am an impatient and self-indulgent pleasureseeker who has never stuck out anything long enough to reap or even comprehend the rewards of long-term gratification. I am sure that, till the day I die, I will continue to blame my parents for not forcing me to pick up the cello when I was five, or conscripting me to Spanish lessons, or pushing me to join Athletics. That lockdown is the perfect opportunity to finesse a new skill does not compute. There’s always the next day in the endless hellscape, so why start today?

I raise the subject on a not-so-socially-distanced walk with some friends:

‘Maybe it’s a sign.’

‘A sign?’

‘A sign there’s more to life. A sign we should cultivate more viable personalities than ‘seshhead sex addict’.’

‘Well, that’s just ridiculous—’

‘I don’t want to spend my Friday nights crafting, we’re in our early twenties, for fuck’s sake—’

‘Yes, we should be on the piss—’

‘Slamming lines and banging 9s—’

‘Popping Es and shagging 3s, you mean.’

We laugh, then hold a moment of silence for our former selves.

‘Imagine being in a smoking area.’

‘Imagine feeling that bass.’

‘Imagine life being that fun.’

Even when the pubs opened again (fleetingly and exclusively in the home counties), last orders generally meant the night was about to come to an abrupt end. What I miss most is the realm of possibility. On any given night in the Before Time, a ‘couple of drinks’ could lead to ten more, a white powder raffle, an event and an afters till McDonald’s start serving breakfast. We’ve so quickly become complacent with this boring way of life that it feels shameful even to crave chaos. All concept of time and age has been lost in the lockdown limbo: am I going to bed at half 10 because there’s nothing else to do, or am I getting old? What if I’m still clocking out by 11 when everything does open up? What if I can’t hack festivals anymore?

Lockdowns have become bookends to momentary joy and a glimmer of what youth should be like. When the rules relaxed in December, I compressed as much drinking and depravity into the lead-up to Christmas as my body would physically allow, garnering enough PG to X-Rated intimacy ticks to see me through to the new year and onto the naughty list. Judging by how many people had the same idea, it’s a miracle the new strain isn’t sentient.

Unsurprisingly, a tier system which had us photoshopping water bills and crossing county lines for a pint failed to halt the spread of coronavirus. On the 4th of January 2021, Lockdown 3 (Cup of Tea) is announced and the nation puts their kettles on.

Before I have even decided whether to spend the next few months crying or masturbating, the event is swiftly consummated by a notification I swiftly swat away:

Hook Line Sinker

If you have ever watched the 2006 reality television series The Real Hustle on BBC Three, you will remember the show’s notorious refrain ‘if it’s too good to be true, it probably is’. There is a common scam in retail where, after the cashier has scanned and handed over the items, the fraudster feigns payment with a faulty card then flees with the goods before the cashier has time to react. After falling victim to this hoax myself, I wondered whether I could do that to somebody; whether the monetary gain outweighs instilling such alarm and shock, such shame and humiliation, in another human being. What makes the encounter so chilling is that the swindler appears no different from any normal customer – in fact, he’s better: polite and charming; chatty but not overbearing. He asks you questions about yourself and is sensitive to your responses. He cares. Until it’s abundantly clear that he doesn’t care at all.

When a wolf in sheep’s clothing steals hundreds of pounds’ worth of merchandise from right under your nose, the shock reverberates throughout your body in such a way that you almost wish he had been wearing a bandana, or a mask, or tights over his head. Because then there would be a giveaway. Because then you would know what’s coming. But if he looked like a thief, if he looked like a cartoon bandit or a peg-legged pirate or a stripe-clad robber, then the con wouldn’t work. It doesn’t matter that I could draw his face and pick him out of a police line-up, because his visibility is, far from his downfall, the reason for his finesse.

*

A few weeks ago, I resumed my five-month hiatus when I plunged into an explosive whirlwind romance which saw all the highs and lows of a two-year relationship compressed into two weeks. I’ll spare you the details but the short version is this: a certain dating app rekindled the spark between myself and a sexual partner I hadn’t seen nor particularly thought about for almost three years. The original affair – about a month from start to finish – was sloppy and chaotic, hampered by various dealbreakers that I led slide because I knew its expiry date fell at the end of that August, when I would board a plane to Canada to undertake a year of study abroad. Though my memory of that summer was blurry (and more cynical than sentimental), seeing his photo all these years later ignited some kind of feeling, and it’s pretty rare I feel… well, anything. So I did what I do best and pushed the big red button, just to see what would happen.

This is what happened: we matched. He messaged. He double messaged. He arranges a date and we meet in a park the following day. We get on even better than I remember, and I am shocked but thrilled to learn he has ostensibly expunged the traits I found undesirable before: he’s quit smoking, cut down on drinking, got into exercise and left his dead-end job for a career he loves. He invites me back for dinner, which is when I also learn he has moved into an immaculate one-bedroom flat in a much nicer part of town than where he lived before. I sit on the kitchen counter whilst he cooks. When there is a natural lull in conversation, he stops stirring and kisses me over the countertop. Similarly cinematic, passionate gestures characterise the eighty or so hours we spend together in the week that follows. We go on dates and he pays for everything before I can reach for my purse. The back-and-forth is electric and palpable and my face hurts from smiling and my ribs hurt from laughing. He’s expressive and sensitive and intelligent and interesting. He is categorically unlike any boy – anyone – I have ever met in my entire life. That I ever settled for less than this before seems truly, legitimately, certifiably insane.

Naturally, I don’t trust him for a second.

If the world is getting ‘back to normal’, I was overdue a fling with a sociopath with a jawline sharper than a steak knife. Normal programming has certainly resumed because I got chewed up and spat out quicker than unwanted gristle.

One Monday I message asking if I can come round. Naturally, he dumps me over text.

‘It’s funny because–’

‘–I am aware–’

‘–that’s what you d–’

‘—of the irony–’

‘–I mean, even the last time I saw you, you were gloating, again, about binning someone off over WhatsApp, and now—’

‘–please stop.’

Pause.

‘It is quite funny though.’

The karma slaps me in the face like a rogue wave. The more I struggle, the harder it hits. Just when I think I’ve got a grip on some driftwood, it knocks me back down. Eventually I give up; it is easier to let it wash over me and accept my defeat at my own game.

‘He played me – ME!’

‘Oh, stop it—’

‘—like a fucking fiddle—’

Not for the first time, I got too excited, ran too fast and fell flat on my face. Now I’ve got a scrape on my knee, a cut on my palm and a bruise on my ego.

 ‘It’s okay—’

 ‘—left me for dead—’

‘You’re being dramatic—’

 ‘—hung me out to dry—’

It would be a lie to say I wasn’t shocked when I opened that text message. But the shock of him bursting into my life in the first place – and he knocked down the door with a fucking battering ram – had never fully subsided, so that it was over as quickly as it began left me less upset and more concerned for my sanity. The whole saga may well have been a COVID-induced fever dream that I’m still not entirely sure actually happened.

I’m not even angry or mad or sad because I’m so impressed, after so many months of feeling so disillusioned by dating I am sadistically delighted to be so completely dumbfounded, even after watching him tighten a noose around my neck and kick away the stool. He whisked me off my feet then pulled out the rug from underneath me. A D.E.N.N.I.S system executed so expertly— really, we should all be taking notes. He spoon-fed me bullshit, but we’re not talking about your standard, run-of-the-mill bullshit, oh no.

This is not just bullshit. This is M&S bullshit.

It’s laced with arsenic but it tastes like honey and I swallowed it whole and licked my lips afterwards.

Here’s the thing: there is a game. You’re playing it, I’m playing it; we’re all playing it. You might not even know you’re playing it, until you get played. Maybe you played a little before but now you’ve found a league that suits you and stuck to it. Maybe one game was enough. Maybe you’ve thrown in the towel all together. But if you play the game well, the leagues only get bigger. The stakes only get higher. But the more you win, the more meaningless the wins become. You need more wins to get the same hit. If you know you’re going to win every time, it stops being about winning. You know how cats chase mice, round and round, up and down — I mean they don’t take their eyes off the damn thing; once they’ve picked their target they don’t stop until they’ve killed it. But then what? The game is over. The mouse is useless. So the cat chucks it aside and looks for another.

And we’re not talking about any old cat here. We’re talking about a lion. A fucking tiger. Joe Exotic couldn’t lock this cat up. It’s got opposable thumbs and it can walk on its hind legs and it can talk. It can shoot lightning bolts from its paws and have any mouse at its mercy in seconds. Most dangerous of all, this cat knows it’s special. It knows how low the bar is (but that’s another blog) and it knows it’s a cut above the rest. This cat knows exactly what it wants and exactly how to get it. How can you hate the player when they’re that good at the game?

And in our increasingly globalised world, where dating apps enable you to deliver prey to your doorstep quicker than Deliveroo, why settle for one mouse when you could have hundreds? Why tolerate the monotony of monogamy when you could just start again, and again, and again? If you could relive the flurry of excitement and have those first-time feelings every time, wouldn’t you? If your meal went cold and you could have another fresh off the stove, why would you finish the first?

It would be a lie to say I hadn’t noticed the food had cooled down. But this was my first dinner in a long time and I didn’t know when my next one would be so I was politely ignoring the temperature change, forcing down tepid soup and pretending, mostly to myself, that the last spoonful tasted just as good as the first. But he’d already moved on to the next course.

With hindsight, what I could kind of see at the time is now crystal clear. It’s the same thing that happens every time, only it happened faster than usual because all of it happened faster than usual, and if something moves at two hundred miles an hour, it’s going to crash and burn.

The shine wore off. What was kinetic became stagnant. What felt so vast and illimitable only days before suddenly feels cramped and suffocating. It’s that all-too familiar feeling when the rose tint fades: you can act out the bullshit fairytale and pretend you’re still in Oz but you know you’re only playing a role. You can say the right things, as if wishing them true makes them so, but you’re still reading from a script (and I should know by now that mine is directed by Tarantino, not Anderson). It was a Mexican stand-off and he pulled the trigger before I’d loaded my gun. Because if you end it before it begins, you’re always the victor.

That we were up talking until 3am every night made it easy to overlook the fact we had nothing in common. If all you share is a habit of wearing your heart on your sleeve, it won’t be long before you realise you’ve already scraped the barrel.

Am I too emotionally available? I remember the thought creeping in under the moonlight (again) after having overshared (again) and I wonder (again) why baring your naked body comes with the added side effect of baring your naked soul. But sexual deviance and minor drug use are neither noteworthy nor even particularly interesting – in actual fact, I have a very nice, normal life – so I’m clutching at straws for a bomb to drop; grasping for depth that isn’t there, and it is not long before I have (again) exhausted all my me.

Phone in hand, I swallow my shock and slump onto the stairs at the bottom of the landing and wait for the tears to fall. But they don’t. I’m ducking for a bomb that doesn’t explode. I endeavour to coax some kind of physiological reaction by playing ‘Back to Black’ on the loudspeakers, but it doesn’t fit, because there’s no black to go back to. The feelings I was just days ago so relieved to learn I was still capable of having are extinguished as quickly as they were incited.

I am frustrated and embarrassed that I let myself, however momentarily, lose sight of number one to pancakes and spooning and boring sex. My jaw is agape with disbelief that I let Project Me get sidetracked for one second; that I let a boy con me into playing house by smothering me with kisses and suffocating me with flattery. Cuddles and compliments are a nice addendum to my already-excellent life but I don’t need someone to tell me I’m pretty and smart and have a smashing ass when I damn well know that already.

So the phoenix rises from the ashes. Harder, better, faster, blonder. I pick my jaw up from the floor and, when I click it back into place, I am relieved to find that the words ‘He dumped me’ come out of my mouth with the same demoniac smile and accompanying surge of unrepentant mania as ‘I dumped him’.

I’d like to say I’ll learn, but I won’t. It’s happened before and it will happen again, and again, and again. Because even if it’s an illusion, didn’t you love the show? Because even though you held your breath, didn’t you enjoy the ride? You know the fate you resign yourself to when you board Stealth but you still let them tighten the straps.

I put the phone down, rejuvenated. For the first time in a long time, this tiny island is my playground again.

*

Tuesday

I march into Marks & Spencer and deposit a dozen teeny tiny panties in an assortment of different colours onto the till of the bemused cashier behind the returns desk.

‘Is… is there anything wrong with them?’

I shake my head, sighing.

‘It’s just like I’ve always said, Brenda’ – I take off my sunglasses and clasp them shut with one hand – ‘Men don’t deserve lingerie.’

Then I went out for some very hot dinner.

Thoughts on Coronageddon

On the 11th of January 2020 I visited China for the first time. I had a nineteen-hour connection in Beijing en route to Sydney from London. A lady I met on the first flight with a similar layover invited me to join her in a hotel room she had booked close to Beijing airport, an offer I took up without hesitation.

Unfortunately, the prurience of that sentence is as salacious and steamy as the story gets. Gill is sixty-one years old. After our brief chat on the plane I imagine she found my stilted awkwardness endearing enough to determine my company agreeable, but simultaneously the prospect of me spending nineteen hours in an airport alone worried her (‘I wouldn’t want my daughter in an airport by herself’). So I went with Gill to her hotel room, where we slept separately in plush, freshly-made king-sized beds for the better part of five hours. When I awoke Gill was sitting upright in her bed. Seeing I was up, she turned to look at me:

‘Do you fancy climbing the Great Wall?’ she asked, the way you might ask a housemate what time they’re having dinner or if they want anything from the shops.

Now, I’m not saying the coronavirus pandemic began because I climbed up (and tobogganed down) the Great Wall of China with Gill from Winchester. However, it is mildly amusing that this is how I kick-started my 2020. Even more amusing, in hindsight, was a comment made by Gill as we vacated our respective toboggans at the bottom of the Wall:

‘If your trip is going this well and it’s only Day 1, you’re in for a great year.’

She wasn’t wrong: it was a great start. The issue is that that year still happening, and the twelve weeks I spent in Australia and New Zealand – neatly mentally compartmentalised as Uninhibited Tanned Sexy Fun Time – are forming a smaller and smaller proportion of it. UTSFT came to an abrupt halt at the end of March, when COVID-19 went from a funny joke to a serious threat. I mean, it’s still pretty funny. You’ve got to find the humour in these things, even when the apocalypse is happening and you’re stranded tens of thousands of miles away from home.

On the 29th of March, I landed back in the UK. This was about ten months sooner than I had expected to return, and about a grand more costly. As the protagonist of my own life, I have mediated a lot on corona’s interruption of it (lockdown affords much time to mediate). Could this global health emergency perhaps have been timed better? Only last month, whilst gazing upon New Zealand’s inexhaustibly beautiful landscape through the window of a bus, was I smugly musing about how fortunate I am to have the time and the money and the freedom to cultivate such experiences.

‘God, I love being young and single’ I think self-contentedly.

Today, I look through the window of my childhood bedroom. The view is occupied more or less entirely by the upstairs extension on the house opposite.

‘God, I wish I was old and married’ I think self-pityingly.

‘What are you talking about?’ my mother says. I may have been thinking out loud.

‘It’s fine for you‘, I snap, ‘You’ve lived. You’ve done it. You spend all your time hunkered down in this house with Dad working from home anyway.’

‘It still affects us. It’s definitely affected our work.’

‘I know, but… but…’

I don’t know what it is about living under my parents’ roof that triggers my instantaneous regression to a sixteen-year-old.

‘…but what about me? I am in the prime of my life and I’m having to spend it locked away in my room like bloody Rapunzel.’ If the hairdressers’ are shut long enough that’s not an exaggeration.

At the beginning, there was something oddly comforting about the sheer scale of the crisis. It swiftly and deftly eclipsed every other problem in the entire world. How can you lament not getting a text back when people are dying by the thousands? Even the B-word, the bane of all our lives since the 2016 referendum, faded into the background.

For a time, anyway.

Of course, the resounding effect of the coronavirus is that it has paved the way for a whole new set of problems. I haven’t read the news for a couple of weeks now, having effectively stuck my fingers in my ears and covered my eyes ever since I realised it would be a long, long time before there was any good news, so I won’t attempt to discuss the virus’s grievous death toll, societal repercussions or its devastating impact on the economy.

Instead, here are the problems the virus has posed for me, a British white middle-class university graduate on a gap year:

  • My gap year is now a gap ????? On the plus side, I’ve got a legitimate excuse for the great, hulking gap in my CV.
  • In lieu of real-life social interaction, there is even more pressure to communicate online. So much so, it’s begun to permeate my subconscious: instead of dreams about nights out I have dreams about Zoom nights in. Worse, sex dreams have been replaced by sexting dreams.
  • All this talk of ‘hobbies’. ‘Have you taken up any hobbies?’ ‘What hobby are you keeping busy with?’ ‘Five hobbies to hone during lockdown.’ I have not entertained anything resembling a hobby since before my introduction to alcohol, sex and drugs in sixth form.
  • Without clubs, concerts or festivals, the only time I enjoy music is on my once-a-day run. This has led to the unfortunate discovery that techno is actually pretty bad when my serotonin isn’t being rapidly depleted.
  • Touching strangers, my favourite university pastime, is now a criminal offence.
  • In the same vein: enforced and indefinite celibacy.

Most significantly, I’ve had to return to my old job. That’s not a complaint by any means; I’m more than thankful I’ve got a job, and one where I get to leave the house at that. Through no extra effort I have also been promoted to the aggrandizing ‘frontline essential worker’. This has generated a whole new subclass of customer service nightmares. I’ll spare you the details, but one incident in particular left me not knowing whether to laugh or cry. After making idle chit-chat with a customer as I helped him bag his shopping, he turns to the floor and gathers everyone’s attention.

‘Honestly guys,’ he announces, ‘I really appreciate you all working so hard in such unprecedented circumstances.’

He squishes £100 into my hand.

‘Buy yourselves some drinks on me.’

...where?

Fast Fuse

When I was four years old, I used to crawl into my parents’ bed on stormy nights. The morning after my mother, bags under her eyes, would always assert that that time would be the last; the reason was always the same:

‘You… don’t… stop… wriggling.’

Flash forward a couple of years and my restlessness became a prime disruptor of family holidays. Side by side, sprawled over their sunbeds, each with a book in hand, my parents grew increasingly irate when their sea view and light reading was repeatedly shrouded by the burgeoning figure of a six-year-old in armbands.

‘Mummy.’

‘What is it now?’

‘I’m bored.’ I say, arms folded. Kind of. The armbands make this difficult.

‘Play in the sea’ my mother instructs, waving me away.

‘Can you play with me?’

‘Mummy’s relaxing.’

Time for a new approach. I yank out my dad’s earphones. He jolts upright, dropping his book.

‘For God’s sa- what is it?’

‘Daddy.’

‘What?’

‘I’m bored.’

‘Play with your mother.’

‘She doesn’t want to.’

‘Play with your sister.’

The three-year-old curled up under a tiny parasol at the foot of the sunbeds is entering her eleventh hour of sleep. I ignore this suggestion.

‘Can’t you play with me?’

Begrudgingly, my father closes his book and coils up his headphones. Result.

I suppose my parents thought my constant agitation was just a phase; that I would outgrow my incessant need for stimulation. And maybe one day I will, but that day is yet to come. My behaviour as a child was merely a presage of what the future held; nothing more than a preface to The Girl Who Couldn’t Sit Still, a fable of my own design. 

It is at university, with more time on my hands than ever before, that my agitation, my constant need to do, spirals. Marching – ok, running – through campus, blasting high tempo music of one genre or another at full volume through my headphones, I was always dismayed when I pulled them out. The dull silence of the library didn’t quite match the tenacious big beats of The Prodigy’s 1997 cult classic ‘Smack My Bitch Up.’ Unsuprisingly, watching telly in the lounge became my kryptonite:  

‘I’m bored.’

‘You’re bored the second you sit down. We should get you a hamster wheel.’

‘Are we going out tonight?’

‘We went out last night.’

I blink. ‘So?’

If chill pills existed, I would need a repeat prescription.

‘So we’ve all got work to catch up on. Why don’t you go to the library?’

I ignore this suggestion.

‘There’ll be drinks somewhere.’ I say, reaching for my phone.

‘Whoa, calm down,’ instructs my housemate, ‘you only got back from Bristol two days ago, chill out.’

‘Calm… down. Chill… out…’ I murmur, repeating the words like it’s my first time hearing them, when in fact it is rare a day passes that I am not told to do at least one.

‘I bet you can’t go two days without going for drinks, or getting on a train, or picking up a shift, or joining a gym class or humping someone or sniffing somethi–‘

‘Two days? I can’t go two hours without doing at least one of those things’

It was at university I also became acutely aware of my profound distaste for the millennial cultural phenomenon ‘Netflix-and-chill.’ Any night that ended in this way immediately spelled disappointment.

‘Sit down, let’s watch something’

‘Why?’

‘Why not?’ He pulls open Netfllix. ‘What genre you feeling?’

‘Can we just have sex please?’

‘Oh, come on, that’s not what this is about’

That is, exactly, what this is about.

I stand with my lips pursed and my arms folded like a petulant child. I’m tempted to leave, but it’s been a while and his broad shoulders and impeccable bone structure and just about make up for this train wreck. Just.

‘Ugh’, I scoff, gingerly tugging at the covers and climbing into the bed fully clothed.

The televisual lubricant of choice is the Netflix adaptation of Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events. What followed was a series of unfortunate events.

Going home with friends proved even more infuriating:

‘Can we go now?’

‘Give it a minute.’

‘Butwe’renotdoinganything’

‘My God, you’re like a rabid Scrappy Doo.’ He sighs. ‘Didn’t you get food?’

‘I ate it.’

Shock crosses my friend’s face for a split second, but this quickly dissipates. ‘Of course you did. Just… wait for the others, okay?’

Taptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptaptap.

‘Oh, here comes the foot tapping! She’s about to pull a road runner.’

‘I won’t’, I grunt. ‘What’s the ETA on the Uber?’

‘About twenty minutes.’

In about twenty seconds, I am halfway down the road. In my place, a small cloud of dust.

Subsequently, activewear has become my 2019 trademark. Not in a sexy gym bunny way. Think divorced-mother-vainly-attempting-to-fill-the-void-left-by-her-ex-husband-with-yoga-classes-and-Aperol.

‘Do you think they’ll let me into the club in my trainers?’

My friend looks down at my feet.

‘Those aren’t trainers.’ She points at her Nikes. ‘These are trainers. Those are… what are those?’

‘New Balance. They’re running shoes.’

‘They’re hideous.’

‘They’re comfortable! And practical.’

‘It’s not fucking DofE, we’re going to a bar.’

‘But-‘

‘I know you want to wear shoes that will most effectively enable you to sprint home from whatever manky ket den you wake up in tomorrow morning, but you’re not going to get let in anywhere dressed like a BTEC GB runner.’

I open my mouth to protest, but she makes a valid point so I press my lips shut and quietly sulk instead.

‘Lara?’

‘Mm?’

‘Get changed.’

A Day In The Life

13:03

Consciousness hits me like a brick. I sit up, gasping for air, naked and alone with little to no memory of the night before. It is not unlike being born.

13:10

An unquenchable thirst forces me out of bed. I stick my head under the bathroom tap at full blast and glug several pints of water.

13:12

I dispose of a Subway wrapper on my bedside. It appears I did enjoy six inches last night but not the kind I was hoping for.

13:15

My phone alarm goes off. “Work at 2pm”, it blinks. I whack a pizza in the oven and get in the shower.

13:32

I take a burnt pizza out the oven and dangle it into my mouth slice-by-slice as I try to dry my hair.

13:45

I charge out the house, slam the front door and attempt to lock it whilst buttoning my shirt. Success. I sprint down the road.

13:53

The automatic doors swing open at my entrance. A dog tied to the basket rack starts barking. I stomp down the aisle with my head down, avoiding eye contact with anyone and everyone who might try and converse with me before I’m getting paid for it.

13:54

Staff room. Beep-beep. I’ve clocked in. There are some cookies from this morning’s bake left on the side. I eat four.

13:55

Five minutes to spare. Red-faced and sweaty, I lock myself in the chiller, which is essentially a 10x5x4 glorified refrigerator. The smell of sour milk lingers but the cool air feels too good for me to care.

13:59

The door opens. I scream.

“AAHH!”

The entrant, also, screams.

“AAHH!”

Then, “What are you doing in here?”

“It’s humid out, okay?”

“No, I mean, what are you doing here, at the store?”

“I always work Sundays.”

My shift runner’s face collapses into a mixed expression of joy and relief, kind of like an excitable puppy or the look on a boy in a club after you agree to go back with them.

“That’s fantastic news. Thank god you’re here, we’ve been so understaffed today.”

I smile sweetly.

“Oh stop, I’m just turning up to my shift, I’m not an angel.”

“Yes, well, now that you’re here…” – he passes me a mop – “Some kid ate too many Haribos and threw up in the sweets aisle. Work me a miracle, angel.”

14:21

The sandwiches need refilling. We’re supposed to arrange them so that the older sandwiches sell first, but life is short and I’m on £7.70 hour so I just shove the fresh sandwiches in front of the old ones. I see my co-worker.

“Hey, you alright?”

“Yeah not bad… Have you done something with your hair? Looks nice.”

 “I… washed it?”

“Oh. Yeah that must be it.”

15:55

Chucking Warburtons onto the bread rack, I notice a woman looking up and down the shelves. She looks confused.

“Can I help you?”

“Oh, yes please…. Where do you keep ice?”

Not in the fucking bakery

“In the freezer.”

“Excuse me?”

Too blunt?

“…which” – I smile with all my teeth showing – “…is this way, let me show you.”

Nice save.

17:02

An attractive man brushes past me in the drinks aisle.

“Oops, sorry.”

This is likely the most sexual contact I will have whilst living under my parents’ roof this summer.

18:00

Break time. I inhale a meal deal. Mid-Innocent smoothie, the security guard puts the kettle on and sits down next to me in the staff room.

“Hey, have you seen this new—”

“Don’t fucking talk to me.”

18:34

After my break, Greg asks me to fill produce.

Golden apples, orange carrots, purple beetroot. Red, green, yellow peppers.

I try and remember the last time I ate something that wasn’t beige.

19:00

Seven o’clock. Greg puts me on tills.

19:09

I serve a customer who looks vaguely familiar but I can’t place where from. Then it clicks: Tinder match. His bemused expression suggests he has just made the same realisation. I can tell by the look of dismay that follows that we both feel catfished.

19:23

There is an Eastern European man forty years my senior who visits the shop every day. Every day, he is insistent that a woman serve him. He drags out every transaction for as long as he can and never breaks eye contact. He definitely keeps a mental record of all the female employees for masturbatory purposes. Any and all interaction with this grotesque individual never fails to make my skin crawl and bile rise in my throat.

“You are nice with hair down”, he grunts.

If I am found dead in a ditch with all my hair cut off, this is your best lead.

“Thanks.”

I make a mental note to never wear my hair down at work again.

“No, thank you…” – he leans in – “…Zoe.”

Name badge. Classic power move. Every girl is acutely aware of its particular bodily placement which creepy old perverts ogle with no subtlety; in fact, they want you to know. I thank my lucky stars I’m wearing the wrong name.

20:05

Reduction time. I have to check every fixture in the shop for products expiring today. I get to the sandwich bay; most don’t go out of date for a couple of days. Wait… right at the back, there is a sandwich with today’s date on it. Two sandwiches. Three! Four… five… six…seven…

My God. There’s loads.

What kind of idiot, what buffoon, what brainless imbecile, would so carelessly and recklessly put the newer products in front of the older ones?

“Who… did this?” I mutter, angrily pulling off all the stock.

Then: “Oh.”

22:00

We’re shut. Finally. Time to cash up. We separate the day’s profits into £500 denominations.

I’ve already used “Shall we take the money and run?” this week. I try a new angle. Holding up a couple of grand in each hand,

“Million pound drop?”

Greg is on an eighteen-hour double shift and does not find this amusing.

22:21

Greg signs off the plastic wallets of cash and drops them into the safe. It’s a one-man job but another person has to be present for legal reasons. I spin around on the swivel chair and make faces at the CCTV camera like I’m Jim from The Office.

22:27

Beep-beep. It’s over.

“Are you in tomorrow?” Greg asks.

I die a little inside.

The Resurrection

I didn’t mean to dump my boyfriend of fourteen months over WhatsApp. It’s not my fault he wouldn’t accept my FaceTime call because he knew what was coming and didn’t want his mum to hear the fallout from the next room. I tried to hold it in, I really did. I, nobly, wanted to wait until after we’d finished our January exams. But when those seeds of doubt are planted they grow like ivy: rapid and uncontainable. The thought This needs to end was like an itch that plagued me every hour of every day; it was my first thought waking up and my last thought going to bed.

I picked up hours at work to distract myself, but stacking shelves is hardly the most mentally stimulating job in the world so my brain continued to tick, tick, tick, so resolute in my decision that I couldn’t even bide the time by weighing up the pros and cons in my head because the answer was already so clear. Decanting the last of the turkey-and-trimmings sandwiches into the Meal Deal fridge on Boxing Day, a coworker asked me about my love life:

“Have you got a fella then?”

I burst into laughter.

Then, composing myself, “For now.”

“But not for long?”

“Let’s just say I want to leave him in 2018.”

So, I did.

I think what stopped me from dropping the bomb sooner was the fear that maybe ending things wouldn’t make me feel better. The break-up clichés that TV and movies and music have drilled into us over the years portend a post-split ritual of moping, eating your weight in Ben and Jerry’s and crying over romcoms. After it was over I ducked for cover, waiting for the inevitable despair to hit me like a train. Only, the train never came.

I felt amazing.

I felt guilty for how amazing I felt.

A few hours after my now-ex boyfriend and I said our WhatsApp goodbyes for good, I went for drinks with some friends.

“Hey, how’s it going?”

“It’s going great” I say, with an almost-maniacal smile plastered across my face, “These valuable goods are back on the market.”

The issue with ending a relationship that was never Facebook-official is that you actually have to tell people in person, and people don’t tend to be very good at responding to this kind of information.

“Wait, you broke up with your boyfriend?”

“I broke up with him, yeah” (as any dump-er knows, it is vital to linguistically incorporate the pertinent fact that you dumped them).

“Oh, I’m… I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Don’t be.”

No, really, don’t be. I understand why we typically respond to break-ups in this way; it would be my first response as well. In some cases, it may be exactly what somebody needs to hear. There’s no such thing as a “good breakup” because you’ve lost something that was once special to you. But in my situation, whatever made the relationship special had been missing for a long time, and – I don’t know who needs to hear this, but I wish I’d had someone to tell me – sex, cuddles and dinner dates really aren’t good enough reasons to stick around if so many other aspects are making you unhappy.

Listen: everything you can get from a romantic relationship, you can get from your friends. Meals, movies, drinks, emotional support, life advice, bloody forehead kisses, if that’s what you really miss. Ok, maybe there’s one thing you were getting from them that your friends can’t give, but there’s a whole pool of (That Thing) in clubs and bars and at work and in class and on dating apps so if you want it badly enough you can still get Doo Wop’d on a bi-, tri-, even quad-weekly basis.

They say there’s plenty more fish in the sea, and while that may not literally be true given the circumstances of the current climate crisis, let me tell you, figuratively? There are a lot of fucking fish. There are fish bringing things to the table that you didn’t even know you wanted. There are funnier fish; smarter fish; taller fish; fish who make you think new things and try new experiences; fish with whom you’ll have some of the most interesting conversations you’ve ever had in your life; fish with roof terraces; fish with better hair and kinder smiles and more chiselled jawlines; fish with bigger, ahem… fins.

Suffice to say, newfound singledom awakened this delicious, delirious selfishness in me.

“What are you going to do now?”, a friend asked when the dust had settled.

I paused. “I’m going to drink. A lot. And eat whatever I want. In fact, I’m going to do whatever I want, whenever I want. I’m going to do whoever I want. I’m going to book that flight to Bangkok. And I’m going to get a first-class degree.”

So, I did.

Admittedly, it hasn’t all been smooth sailing. That train that never came? Turns out it was coming; there was just a six-month delay. It didn’t hit me, but it certainly caught me off-guard. When I returned to the UK from Asia in June, I had a slight existential crisis upon learning that all my close friends, not-so-close friends, ex-boyfriend, ex-one-night-stands, housemates, classmates, neighbours and even my former pulling partner would be graduating in relationships. I guess something about the looming uncertainty of the eternity heralded by graduation spurs this rush to couple up, but I didn’t get the memo.

Despite an initial flurry of panic, being the Single One made grad week a lot more memorable than if I’d stuck out long distance; I can tell you that much. Maybe it’s a little early for a year-in-review, but with my university career officially and explosively over now seems as good a time as any to sit back and reflect on just how fucking good 2019 has been. Not for everyone. Not for politics. Definitely not for the planet. But for this semi-affluent, responsibility-free, satisfactorily-good-looking white girl, 2019 is quickly ascending the ranks as one of the best years I’ve experienced so far.