Single White Failure

by G. J. H. Sibson

  ‘Of course, you’re right Chantal,’ I say finally, ‘I also want to go out with you and for us to spend more time together; as something more than friends but less than a couple. You must know that my priorities at the moment lie with my work and my friends.’

  There, it wasn’t that tough.

  ‘That’s fine, I don’t especially want a relationship either.’

  Something in her voice didn’t sound right. It was that last bit, that seemingly innocuous declaration. Chantal was lying. It’s the worm wriggling on the line to reel me in. Once I’ve bitten, she thinks that she will be able to change my mind, that she will change me. Normally, she wouldn’t have had to lie because, as the man, I would never normally have been honest, I would have lied before she did. I would have falsely accepted her intentions of us heading towards something vaguely serious, only to extract myself from the ‘relationship’ at some future, not-so-far-off point in time. This was the reverse – Chantal agreeing to a casual affair with a view to turning it into a committed monogamous relationship at some future not-so-far-off point in time.

  But I didn’t fully realise that then.

  I wade in and kiss her, as I had wanted to all evening, and with a guilt-free conscience. I have taken the bait.

  The following week, Chantal is going away on a skiing holiday with friends to the Trois Vallées. Things have progressed but everything is as we agreed. The night before she leaves for the Alps, we see each other for dinner and to take in the new version of The Nutcracker.

  The next morning, I walk her to the tube station. We stand on the platform for the Northern Line. A train is one minute away, according to the display. With a swoosh of cold air it enters the platform.

  ‘Well, have a fantastic time,’ I hug her.

  ‘Oh I’m sure I will, it’s a shame you can’t come along, if we’d been seeing each other earlier you’d be coming!’

  ‘Yes, I suppose so,’ I’m not sure what else to say to that. ‘I’ll call you when you get back then.’

  ‘Okay, bye,’ she gives me a kiss and jumps on the train.

  Every day that Chantal is away, I receive a text message from the slopes. It’s touching base romantic stuff. But it’s not even one text a day, it’s several texts at all hours, giving me updates of her day.

  A week later, she gets back. Her flight arrives at midday. The overhead seatbelt light can only have just been turned off when she sends me a text from the tarmac.

  ‘I’m back,’ she announces.

  ‘Okay, good for you,’ I think to myself. I reply, ‘Gr8 hope u had a good time ☺ x.’

  Twenty minutes later my phone beeps at me again, ‘So wot r u up 2?’

  It’s a Sunday but I’m working. She knows that one of my filming projects at work has taken off, I told her this during our text-fest earlier in the week. I reply anyway, ‘I am waiting 4 a friend to call – we r doing the film thing I told u about – I am waiting for his call – otherwise we could have gone for coffee later.’

  I’m sending so many bloody text messages my thumbs are more blistered than a leper with a Gameboy. I thought that my message was clear. That I am busy right now, but that we’ll meet up another time. Bugger me, if she doesn’t write back with, ‘What number does he have 4 u? – home or mobile? U could come out with me and he could still call u.’

  ?

  This is neurotic. She is driving me insane, and it’s exactly the thing that I wanted to avoid. I don’t want someone questioning everything I do. My wife will be able to do that. It will be her God-given right as mother to my children, but not someone I have snogged once or twice.

  She had expected to see me the day she got home. None of my reasons as to why I couldn’t see her seemed to be acceptable.

  The next day at work I receive the email I was fearing, ‘Hey, how’s it going, really peed off at this end…’

  I know where this is going. I can’t ignore it, so I play along with it in the hope that we might reach the inevitable all the quicker. I do that aggravating guy thing of pretending that I don’t know what she is getting at and that I haven’t remotely sensed she might be annoyed.

  The next email arrives in my in box, ‘Yeah just lots of crap but I don’t want to bother you with my whining while you’re busy at work!!?!?!?’

  ‘Don’t worry, go on,’ I type back.

  Ping, the next email arrives, ‘Well if you insist (1) I may get the sack (2) I think you have gone AWOL on me (3) a close family friend is dying (4) I have twisted my neck and it hurts.’

  I come in second above the dying age-old family friend, a guy you’ve dated for a week, you have got to be kidding me.

  Eventually, she abandons the texting and emailing, and calls me.

  ‘So what am I, a girl you can call up whenever you need sex or to have a pretty woman on your arm?’

  Of course she isn’t, she is my friend above anything else. We haven’t even slept together yet. This is what I had wanted to avoid all along. Imagine if we had slept together. I wanted us to enjoy each other’s company without the commitment of a serious relationship.

  ‘Chantal, I told you where my priorities have to lie at the moment. I am not looking for a serious relationship.’ I hear her sigh on the other end of the receiver, as I pause before continuing, ‘Clearly, you weren’t being honest with me when you said that you weren’t either. I feel you have deceived me, I have been used.’

  Okay, so I added the last bit. The truth is, I didn’t want to make her feel worse, as she was clearly upset, but she was starting to blame me for what had happened. Normally, that blame would be justified because through non-malicious deceit, I would have painted a false picture of promises that I never intended to fulfil, by the things I said or didn’t say. But not this time. This was me reminding her of what we had agreed and that she should respect my honesty.

  I realised that she had no comeback whatsoever, and so did she. I hadn’t been a so-called bastard. Chantal had decided to take the plunge, knowing all the facts. Any deception had been on her own part against herself. I think that’s what might have made it worse. Perhaps it’s a comforting thought that a guy is a lying bastard, a woman can apportion blame for her own mistakes.

  If there’s an inkling that the guy wants ‘fun’ but nothing more, and yet he smooches his way into her La Perla undies, when it all goes Pete Tong, the man can be blamed as a love rat for tricking her into bed. But if the man says, ‘Honey, we can knock bones but we won’t be doing this with a view to becoming serious,’ then it’s there in black and white. You’re giving the woman the choice, with full and frank disclosure – take it or leave it. If either party wants more and it’s not reciprocated then you can’t blame the other person for your own change of heart when those feelings aren’t returned.

  For the first time ever, I feel totally empowered. There is no self-doubt, no guilt (some men, like Dirty Dave, couldn’t give a monkey’s either way, but some do). I could hold my head high, I’m not a bastard. This is pro-choice. If someone exercises their prerogative to change their mind, it’s not right to make the other person feel bad if they don’t want to follow suit.

  Honesty, I discovered, is the best policy.

  6

  A little less conversation

  Holly 07811444097: ‘Yes I’m fine – if u just wanted us 2 b a physical thing I wish u had been honest about it in the 1st place – that’s all’

  If language is the dress of thought, then conversation must be the glue that holds a relationship together.

  Text messages are a wonderful thing. They allow you to regulate your social relationships without any personal interaction whatsoever. You can pick up people in bars without hardly talking to them. You can have sex with them without uttering more than a few sweet nothings and, thereafter, the whole relationship can be conducted with the press of a few buttons. It’s no wonder that, in an increasingly hectic life, people are relying on the text message. The result is that relationships suffer; people are losing the
ability to talk to each other.

  ‘Hi Max.’ It’s Ed, phoning from what sounds like a busy street.

  ‘Ed, mate, how’s things?’

  ‘Shit!’

  ‘How come?’

  ‘You know that girl I was seeing – the one from Coffee Republic?’

  I remember her, a small girl with red hair, ‘Yeah, Julia right?’

  ‘Yes, well the cow just dumped me.’

  ‘No way, I’m sorry mate.’

  ‘But that’s not the worst bit, do you want to know how she dumped me?’ he asks.

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘By fucking text message.’ I just about manage to stifle a laugh, ‘She said “I can’t c u any more”.’

  ‘I’m sorry, buddy. She was cute too.’

  ‘But she couldn’t even be bothered to write the words out in full!’

  Typical Ed. He finds it a greater affront that she has corrupted the English language than the fact that she has dumped him.

  You have to ask yourself though, why couldn’t she have made one quick call? I thought it was just guys that were cowards in this department. It’s not an enviable task, dumping someone, but it is important to do it properly. It’s important to the dumpee and the dumper. No one wants to be kicked into touch but you do want to hear it, from a living person, not that the first you know about it is from the beep emitted by your Nokia.

  It made me realise how relationships are also a vehicle for self-development. Going through the tough times is just as important as enjoying the good ones. We all need to learn from our experiences, it’s what makes us who we are. If we rely on the easy way out all the time, instead of facing the hard crap, we’re just going to make it difficult for ourselves in the future. What will happen when we are with someone who does matter? It’s a case of not sparing the rod for the good of the child. Picture it, ten years from now, you and your future partner are having an argument, perhaps you have money problems or they’re having an affair – are you telling me that you’re going to sort out your problems by sitting in different rooms of the house texting each other? The reconciliatory electronic appendage. Is it possible to sum up all your feelings, beliefs, emotions, anger in a one-line text of mangled English shite? So how are you going to know how to say the right thing?

  That’s what Holly’s text message made me think. Clearly, she had issues to discuss. I could appreciate that there was some anger lingering behind her message, and hurt and dismay, perhaps even a little desire. But there is so much more surrounding this one-line text than the simple content of the message. How could we talk about all her concerns? We couldn’t. If I had lacked understanding, then by not talking about it, I couldn’t learn from my mistakes. Likewise, she could not learn from her own misgivings, maybe that she had misread my feelings or that she had, at least, shut her eyes to them. Perhaps, if we had talked about it, we would be better prepared for the next time we meet someone.

  Later that night, Ed, Raj and I meet at one of our regular haunts for a few beers. Milk & Honey is a private member’s club in Soho. The club’s entrance is a blacked-out fire door on Poland Street. If someone hasn’t taken you there, you would never know it existed, it’s like something out of the Prohibition era. It’s not a pretentious bar, you pay a small annual fee for the privilege of drinking until the wee hours without being shoved like you’re constantly in a rugby scrum.

  This evening it’s fairly quiet. A few women have gathered at the other end of the bar for what sounds like closing-the-deal drinks. The vaulted stone ceiling and soft red lighting gives the bar a warm and friendly feel. Ed has just bought a round.

  ‘Why is it that flaws in men’s characteristics are to be admonished,’ he says suddenly, ‘or where possible eradicated, while flaws in the female of the species are tolerated, nay embraced, even encouraged?’

  We squeeze our limes and push the wedges down the necks of our beer bottles. We take a few gulps, pondering Ed’s last comment.

  ‘Flaws are flaws,’ he continues, before one of us can reply, ‘they shouldn’t be encouraged, try to overcome them.’

  ‘Yeah, you could be right,’ I take another sip of my Corona. ‘Jessica told me six months after we broke up that she had been a difficult bitch – her words, not mine – because she loved me so much, because she didn’t want to lose me, because she was insecure.’

  ‘Oh well, that’s ok then,’ Raj laughs.

  ‘It’s a bit like a wifebeater slapping his wife around. It’s his problem, and he can’t use love and the insecurity of losing his partner as an excuse for such unacceptable behaviour,’ says Ed.

  ‘Mate, it’s a bit of an extreme example, but I know what you mean.’

  ‘The same goes for “that time of the month”,’ says Raj. ‘How the hell does a hormone imbalance justify treating your nearest and dearest like crap!?’

  Likewise, I have tried as hard as I can to accept the side effects of this monthly phenomenon, but my understanding and tolerance is never reciprocated when I have my own hard times. On the rare occasions that I’m stressed at work, or having a hard time in life generally, that is no excuse for short temper, apparently.

  ‘Yeah, and it doesn’t even stop there,’ says Raj. ‘As well as putting up with a miserable troll for one week out of every four, I am supposed to appreciate everything that goes with it; the fem-products, the adverts, the women talking about it. And yet, I go to scratch my nuts once or delve into my pants to rearrange the family jewels and I invite a volley of abuse. Suddenly, I am a disgusting bloke. You try having a ten-inch salami and a pair of plums dangling between your legs and tell me it’s not a little uncomfortable from time to time. Sorry guys, I’m starting to rant, it’s just been bugging me.’

  ‘No, you’re completely right,’ Ed agrees. ‘Those bloody Tampax adverts are completely misleading. The women in those ads are all happy and smiling. They’re running around in tight white hot-pants on a beach playing Frisbee. None of my girlfriends have been like that when they’ve “had the painters in” – it’s greasy hair, wearing old trackie bottoms and a constant scowl that says “come anywhere near my breasts, even mention the act of sex or say anything that might upset me and I will cut off your balls”.’

  ‘And girls can’t even throw a Frisbee,’ laughs Raj.

  Allegedly, we live in an age of equality. The behaviour of men in the pre-fifties had been criticised heavily by women, and I suppose by many men as well, let’s say society in general. It was agreed that women should no longer be beholden to their husbands – this was the twentieth century. Society was tired of men taking women for granted, with some having a wife at home while boffing their secretary on the side, knowing the financially dependent wife would never leave him. Prior to marriage, the guys would try it on with the women; a guy who succeeded was a stud but a woman who played along was a tramp. With the sexual revolution came free love and from that a form of sexual equality where the women wouldn’t be stigmatised by going out on the pull. The guys were supposed to take on board some of the traits that women naturally nurtured, like the desire for commitment, respect, consideration, openness and discussion. It seems ironic that the qualities which feminism tried to curb in men have become the norm for society at large; infidelity, personal drive and ambition at any cost, placing work above the family, materialism and envy.

  ‘We talk about love and emotion and commitment,’ says Ed.

  ‘Sure we do.’

  ‘So why are we always criticised for only thinking about sex. I’ve had monogamous relationships.’

  ‘The difference is,’ I begin, ‘as men, we can distinguish between love and sex.’

  ‘True,’ says Ed, ‘there’s not necessarily emotion involved when we have sex. It seems women find it hard to do that, even though they’re told they can, by all the girlie propaganda.’

  ‘Girlie propaganda?’ says Raj, quizzically.

  ‘Cosmo.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘They don’t seem to be able to handle
this sexual freedom, the type of sexual freedom that us men enjoy and yet that is exactly what they are told to pursue,’ says Ed. ‘That’s why Holly sent you that text.’

  It’s true. When I see a girl that I find attractive, and I want to sleep with her then I can do so without feeling any guilt for the lack of strong emotional feelings towards her. Obviously, if I am going out with a girl I love then I’ll have sex with her, but it’s quite different. I realise that it’s also possible to come across a girl who I find physically attractive but who I don’t want to date (sometimes good looks aren’t even a prerequisite, but let’s leave Dirty out of this for a moment). It’s a natural desire. And If you both want to enjoy a purely sexual relationship, then you should be able to do so without any self-deception, guilt or other sentiments imposed upon you by the shackles of emotion. Isn’t that what we’ve all been told.

  The point is that for men there is a big difference between love and sex. The former will incorporate the latter, but the latter can be enjoyed for its own sake. Morally, it may be wrong, but this explains why in television shows the guy who has had the extramarital affair speaks those immortal lines, ‘Darling, it didn’t mean anything.’ A man will often have an affair because he is tempted by simple shallow reasons, i.e. the temptress is cute. A woman is more likely to have an affair because of deep rooted problems in her marriage; the fact she doesn’t feel like she is respected by her hubby, that she is taken for granted, that he doesn’t appreciate her or acknowledge her worth etc. It might not be right, and I am in no way condoning affairs, in fact I hate them, but the man isn’t lying, he’s being totally honest.

  ‘You think that’s it then,’ says Raj, ‘that women find it difficult to distinguish between love and sex, which they rarely see as being mutually exclusive – the two are the same thing, they come hand in hand.’