Loveless

by Alice Oseman

  ‘What if Sunil doesn’t want to come after all?’ She lowered her voice to a whisper. ‘What if he thinks it’s a shit idea? He’s a third year. He knows things.’

  ‘He’s really not the sort of person who’s going to criticise a student play, to be honest.’

  It was then that Sunil entered the room, wearing dark chinos with a red stripe up each side, a tight polo and a denim jacket. Somehow he appeared not to be freezing to death in November’s brutal northern temperature.

  He smiled as he approached, and I felt an uncomfortable wash of guilt that he might just be here because I asked.

  Pip and Jason joined us to say hi.

  ‘You’re the only one I haven’t met already,’ said Sunil to Jason, holding out his hand.

  Jason shook it. He looked intimidated. He was probably in awe of the sheer coolness that radiated from Sunil at all times. ‘Hi. I’m Jason.’

  ‘Hi! I’m Sunil. You’re very tall, Jason.’

  ‘Uh … I suppose I am?’

  ‘Congrats.’

  ‘Thanks?’

  Rooney clapped her hands together loudly. ‘OK! Let’s start!’

  Jason and Sunil got sent to the other side of the room to go through a scene from A Midsummer Night’s Dream while Pip, Rooney and I sat down in a circle on the floor with copies of Much Ado About Nothing laid out in front of us.

  Much Ado is probably one of the best Shakespeares because the plot is exactly like an enemies-to-lovers fanfic, with a lot of confusion and miscommunication along the way. The premise is: Beatrice and Benedick hate each other, and their friends find this hilarious, so they decide to trick them into falling in love, and it works much better than anyone expected.

  Amazing.

  I had again been chosen by Pip and Rooney to play one of the romantic leads – Benedick. Pip was playing Beatrice. We sat down in a circle to read the scene, and I hoped I’d do better this time. Maybe it had just been awkward with Jason. Now I was acting with Pip in a much funnier scene.

  ‘I wonder that you will still be talking, Signor Benedick,’ Pip drawled with an eye-roll. ‘Nobody marks you.’

  I put on my best sarcasm and responded, ‘What, my dear Lady Disdain! Are you yet living?’

  ‘Less angry, I think,’ said Rooney. ‘Like, Benedick’s teasing her. He thinks it’s hilarious.’

  I loved enemies-to-lovers romances. But I was struggling to get into this. I’d much rather just watch someone else perform it.

  I let Pip read her next line before I chipped in again, this time trying to sound less annoyed.

  ‘Then is courtesy a turncoat. But it is certain I am loved of all ladies, only you excepted,’ I said. ‘And I would I could find in my heart that I had not a hard heart; for, truly, I love none.’

  ‘Hm,’ said Rooney.

  ‘Look,’ I said. ‘This is the first time we’re reading it through.’

  ‘It’s OK. Maybe this role just isn’t for you.’

  This and Juliet? Was it just the romantic roles I couldn’t do? Surely not – I’d played plenty of romantic roles in the past in school plays and youth theatre shows and I was fine.

  Why was I psyching myself out about romantic roles now?

  ‘Hey!’ Pip barked at Rooney. ‘Stop insulting Georgia!’

  ‘I’m the director! I’ve got to be honest!’

  ‘Uh, I’m also the director and I think you’re being a bitch!’

  ‘Drama,’ said Jason from the other side of the room. I turned to see Sunil raise his eyebrows at him, and then they both started snickering.

  ‘If you think Georgia is sooo shit –’ said Pip.

  ‘That’s not what she said, but OK,’ I said.

  ‘Then let me see you do it better, Rooney Bach. If you’ve got no problems with getting gay for a scene.’

  ‘Oh, I have no problems with getting gay, pipsqueak,’ said Rooney, seeming to imply something else entirely, which Pip noticed, and recoiled a little in surprise.

  ‘OK then,’ said Pip.

  ‘OK,’ said Rooney.

  ‘OK.’

  Rooney slammed her copy of Much Ado on to the floor. ‘OK.’

  I went to sit with Sunil and Jason so we could all watch Pip and Rooney act out Beatrice and Benedick’s first argument from Much Ado About Nothing. I predicted that it was going to either be absolutely hilarious or an utter mess. Possibly both.

  Rooney stood tall and sneered down at Pip. ‘I would I could find in my heart that I had not a hard heart; for, truly, I love none.’ She wasn’t even looking at her copy of Much Ado. She knew it off by heart.

  Pip laughed and turned away, as if addressing an onlooker. ‘A dear happiness to women! They would else have been troubled with a pernicious suitor.’ She turned back to Rooney, narrowing her eyes. ‘I thank God and my cold blood I am of your humour for that: I had rather hear my dog bark at a crow than a man swear he loves me.’

  Rooney’s mouth twitched. It was shockingly similar to the way it did when she wasn’t acting.

  She stepped slightly closer to Pip as if to emphasise her height advantage. ‘God keep your Ladyship still in that mind!’ She pressed a hand on to Pip’s shoulder and squeezed. ‘So some gentleman or other shall ’scape a predestinate scratched face.’

  ‘Scratching could not make it worse,’ Pip bit back immediately with a cock of her head and a cheeky grin, ‘an ’twere such a face as yours were.’

  How did they both know this scene off by heart already?

  Rooney leant right in, her face mere centimetres from Pip’s.

  ‘Well,’ she breathed in a low tone, ‘you are a rare parrot-teacher.’

  Pip took in a sharp gulp of air. ‘A bird of my tongue is better than a beast of yours.’

  And Rooney, the absolute maniac, let her eyes drop down to Pip’s mouth.

  ‘I would my horse had the speed of your tongue,’ she murmured, ‘and so good a continuer.’

  The silence that followed was earth-shattering. Jason, Sunil and I just stared, entranced. The air in the room was beyond electric – it was on fire.

  We waited for the moment to end, and it was Pip who finally broke. She wrenched herself out of the moment, red-faced.

  ‘And that’s how it’s done, kids,’ she said, with a bow. We clapped.

  Rooney turned away and started fixing her ponytail, oddly quiet.

  ‘So you two are gonna play Benedick and Beatrice, right?’ said Jason.

  Pip shot a glance at me. ‘Well, if Georgia doesn’t mind …’

  ‘No, of course not,’ I said. ‘It was great.’

  Perhaps a little too great, if the flush on Pip’s cheeks was anything to go by.

  ‘What?’ said Pip, looking back to Rooney, who was still busying herself with pulling out and retying her ponytail. ‘Was the scene too sexy for you?’

  ‘Nothing’s too sexy for me,’ she shot back. But she didn’t turn round. She was hiding.

  Pip smirked. I could tell she felt like she’d won.

  We spent our remaining rehearsal time helping Rooney and Pip plot out the scene, adding in a few props, before running through a couple more times. They seemed to get more flustered each time, along with increasing the amount of intense eye contact and touching in the scene.

  At the end of the two hours, me, Sunil and Jason stacked the chairs, then went to wait near the door while Pip and Rooney stood in the centre of the room and bickered over a couple of lines towards the end of the scene. Jason shrugged his teddy coat on.

  ‘So,’ he said to Sunil. ‘Regrets?’

  Sunil laughed. ‘No! It was fun. I’m very glad I got to witness …’ he gestured vaguely towards Pip and Rooney, ‘… whatever this is.’

  ‘We’re very sorry about them,’ I said.

  He laughed again. ‘No, honestly. This has been fun. It’s actually a welcome change to the general chaos and drama of Pride Soc. And the stress of third year.’ He put his hands in his pockets and shrugged. ‘I don’t know, I think – I think I’v
e needed to do something like this. University has been stressful. Like, when I was a fresher, I was just … in a really bad place, and then I spent all of second year doing things for Pride Soc, and … well, obviously that continued into this year. Orchestra is a good time but stressful as hell. I don’t think I ever really take the time to just … pursue something just because it’s fun. You know?’ He looked up, as if surprised we were still standing there, listening to him. ‘Sorry, now I’m oversharing.’

  ‘No, it’s fine,’ I said, but that didn’t feel like enough. ‘We’re … really glad you’re here.’

  Jason patted him on the shoulder. ‘Yeah, you need to come for pizza with us sometime. Cast bonding.’

  Sunil smiled at him. ‘I will. Thank you.’

  We said goodbye to Sunil, who had a tutorial to get to, and Jason and I leant against opposite sides of the doorframe, waiting for Pip and Rooney.

  Jason started flicking through the pages of his copy of the play. ‘Much Ado is such a good play. Although I don’t get the appeal of relationships where they’re mean to each other at the start.’

  ‘It’s all just build-up to the point where they inevitably have really wild sex,’ I said, thinking fondly of some of my favourite enemies-to-lovers fics. ‘It makes the eventual sex more exciting.’

  ‘I suppose it makes a good story.’ Jason flipped over a page. ‘It’s funny how much stuff revolves around sex. I don’t even think I’d need it in a relationship.’

  ‘Wait, really?’

  ‘Like, it’s fun, but … I don’t think it’s a deal-breaker. If the other person didn’t want to do it that much. Or at all, I guess.’ He looked up from behind the book. ‘What? Is that weird?’

  I shrugged. ‘No, that’s just a cool way to think about it.’

  ‘If you really loved someone, I just think you wouldn’t really … care so much about things like that. I dunno. I think everyone’s been kind of conditioned to be obsessed with it, when in actual fact … you know, it’s just a thing people do for fun. You don’t even need it to make babies any more. It’s not like you’d die without it.’

  ‘Die without what?’ asked Pip, who was suddenly only a couple of metres away from us, pulling her bomber jacket on.

  Jason snapped the book shut. ‘Pizza.’

  ‘Oh my God, can we get pizza right now? I will die without pizza right now.’

  They left the room together, chatting, while I waited for Rooney, who was tying her shoelaces.

  Was there some kind of third choice when it came to mine and Jason’s relationship? Could we be together and just … not have sex?

  I stood there in the doorway trying to picture it. No sex, but still a romance. A relationship. Kissing Jason, holding hands with Jason. Being in love.

  I’d spent a lot of time thinking about how I felt about love, but not much about having sex – I’d just assumed that sex would automatically be a part of it. But it didn’t have to be. Sunil had told me that some people didn’t want sex but were perfectly happy in relationships without it.

  Maybe I did like Jason romantically – I just didn’t want to have sex with him.

  Obviously, I spent the rest of the day thinking about sex. Not even in a fun way. Just in a confused way.

  I hadn’t given much thought to how I felt about sex until the prom afterparty. That had been when I’d started to wonder whether I was weird for not having done all the things other people claimed they’d done – including having sex.

  We all know that the concept of ‘virginity’ is dumb as hell and invented by misogynists, but that didn’t stop me feeling like I was, essentially, missing out on something really great. But was I missing out? Sunil said he felt indifferent about sex. I’d never heard anyone talk about sex like that before. Like it was a takeaway cuisine you thought was OK, but you wouldn’t personally choose it.

  All I’d felt about sex so far was shame for not having had it.

  That night, in bed, I decided I needed to talk to someone who actually knew a bit about it. Rooney.

  I rolled over to face her across the room. She was typing on her MacBook, most of her body concealed by her duvet.

  ‘Rooney?’ I said.

  ‘Mm?’

  ‘I’ve been thinking about … you know … my thing with Jason.’

  This immediately got her attention. She sat up a little, shutting her MacBook, and said, ‘Yeah? Have you kissed yet?’

  ‘Um – well, no, but –’

  ‘Really?’ She raised her eyebrows, clearly thinking this was weird. ‘How come?’

  I didn’t know what to tell her.

  ‘Don’t stress about it,’ she said with a wave of her hand. ‘It’ll happen. When it’s the right time, it’ll just happen.’

  This annoyed me. Was kissing really so vague?

  ‘I guess,’ I said, feeling like I should just be honest, ‘I … don’t even know whether … you know, I’m attracted to men in general, or … something like that.’

  Rooney blinked. ‘Really?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘OK,’ said Rooney. She nodded, but I could see on her face that this was a surprise to her. ‘OK.’

  ‘I’m not sure, though. I’ve been thinking a lot about, um … well, how I’d feel about … physical stuff.’

  There was a pause, and then she said, ‘Sex?’

  I should have guessed she’d just be blunt about it. ‘Well, yeah.’

  ‘OK.’ She nodded again. ‘Yeah. That’s good. Sexual attraction is just figuring out who you want to have sex with.’ She paused to think, and then she turned fully to face me. ‘Right. We’re going to figure this out.’

  ‘What d’you mean?’

  ‘I mean, let’s get to the bottom of your feelings and figure out whether you’re attracted to Jason or not.’

  I had absolutely no idea where this conversation was going, and I was scared.

  ‘Question One. Do you wank?’

  I’d been right to be scared.

  ‘Oh God.’

  She held up her hands. ‘You don’t have to answer, but I think this might be a pretty good way of figuring out if you really like Jason.’

  ‘I’m so uncomfortable.’

  ‘It’s just me. I’ve heard you fart in bed.’

  ‘No you haven’t.’

  ‘I have. It was loud.’

  ‘Oh God.’

  I knew I could just shut this conversation down if I really wanted to. It was a bit rude of Rooney to ask such personal things when, really, we’d only known each other for a month and a half. But I did want to talk about stuff like this with someone. And I did think that talking about it might help me figure some stuff out.

  ‘So,’ Rooney continued. ‘Masturbation.’

  I wasn’t the sort of person who thought it was a ‘guy thing’. I’d been on the internet long enough to know that masturbation was all-gender.

  ‘Doesn’t … doesn’t everyone masturbate?’ I mumbled.

  ‘Hm, no, I don’t think so.’ Rooney tapped her chin. ‘I had a friend back at home who said she just didn’t like doing it.’

  ‘Oh. That’s fair enough.’

  ‘So I assume you do it then.’

  Yes, I did. I wasn’t gonna just lie about it. I knew it wasn’t something to be ashamed of, obviously, but it still felt excruciating to talk about.

  ‘Yeah,’ I said.

  ‘OK. So, what d’you think about when you masturbate?’

  ‘Rooney. Oh my fucking God.’

  ‘Come on! We’re doing a scientific study to determine where your attraction lies. Oh my God, we should get Pip to help! She does science!’

  I didn’t particularly want Pip to get involved in this already awkward conversation. ‘No, we shouldn’t.’

  ‘Do you think about men? Women? Both? Any/or?’

  The honest answer was:

  Any.

  Literally anything.

  But I knew that would just confuse things. And here’s why.

  M
y usual masturbation situation was just whenever I was in the mood to read a smutty fanfic. It felt like a safe, fun way to get turned on and have a good time. So I would just think about the characters in the fic I was reading. Whatever combination of genders that involved – I wasn’t fussy, as long as the writing was good.

  It wasn’t about bodies and genitals for me. It was about chemistry. But that wasn’t anything unusual, I thought.

  People didn’t really just look at boobs or abs and get turned on. Did they?

  ‘Georgia,’ said Rooney. ‘Come on. I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours.’

  ‘Fine,’ I said. ‘I … the gender doesn’t really matter.’

  ‘Oh my God! Same!’ Rooney gestured between us. ‘Wank fantasy sisters!’

  ‘Never say that again.’

  ‘No, but it’s cool to know I’m not alone in that.’ She wrapped her covers a little tighter round her. ‘Like, I know I only go out with guys, but … you know. It’s fun to think about other stuff.’

  Maybe I was bi or pan, then. Maybe we both were. If gender didn’t matter to us, that would make sense, right?

  ‘There are still some specific scenarios I have to picture,’ she continued. ‘Like, I can’t just imagine myself doing anything with anyone. I still think I have … preferences. But not limited to gender.’

  Something she’d said struck me.

  ‘Wait,’ I said. ‘I-I mean, I don’t imagine myself with any gender.’

  She paused. ‘Oh. What?’

  It clicked in my brain what I was trying to say.

  ‘I don’t think about myself having sex,’ I said.

  Rooney frowned, then she snorted, and then, upon realising I wasn’t joking, she frowned again. ‘What do you think about then? Other people?’

  ‘… Yeah.’

  ‘Like … people you know?’

  ‘Ew, no. Oh my God. More like … made-up people in my brain.’

  ‘Hm.’ Rooney let out a deep breath. ‘So … you don’t think about having sex with Jason?’

  ‘No!’ I exclaimed. The thought of having sex with Jason freaked me out. ‘People don’t – people don’t actually do that, do they?’