How Do You Like Me Now?

by Holly Bourne

  It’s only 6a.m. by the time I step into the shower to wash off my shame. I shampoo my hair twice with volumising shampoo that’s specially formulated to work in hard water areas. I put in an intense conditioning mask that will nourish my hair without weighing it down. I sit on the shower floor while it penetrates my hair shafts, smooth on sensitive shaving-foam and shave my legs with a razor head containing five blades and a ‘Goddess’ moisturising strip. I tidy up my triangle of pubic hair. I have enough that I can still feel like I’m a feminist, but not so much that I’m one of those feminists. I exfoliate my face with a scrub that doesn’t use the plastic beads that kill all the fish, and, when I’ve washed out my conditioner, I finish on a cold rinse to lock in shine and close my split ends. I dry my body with a clean towel and rub organic coconut oil all over my skin. I step into the yellow summer dress that Tom always says he likes. I apply light-reflecting foundation and under-eye concealer. I use a yellow-tinted primer on my eyelids so they look less red. I apply only minimal make-up after that. A lip tint, some black mascara to my curled lashes. A stroke of blusher to my cheeks. When Tom wakes up, I will not be the mess he had last night. I am together Tori. I am let’s-talk-about-this-and-then-laugh Tori. The Tori I’m looking at in the mirror doesn’t believe in weddings. She doesn’t need an expensive ring to know a man is committed to her.

  It’s only 6.45a.m. by the time the bedroom is cleaned and aired. The vomit is hiding in the washing machine. I save the word document I wrote into a crammed tax-folder in the depths of my saved items. I call it ‘Dee’s Baby Shower Planning’. I write while I wait for him.

  Tom doesn’t wake until ten. It is the most agonising wait of my life. I run through every single possible alternative of our first interaction. I rehearse what I’m going to say. I reapply my lip stain. I tie my hair back in a ponytail because it makes me look younger. I hear him shuffling around the kitchen and I quickly close the word document and open a game of solitaire. My laptop is balanced on my outstretched legs and I’ve almost won when he appears in the doorway.

  He just looks at me.

  ‘Hi,’ I say.

  ‘Hi.’

  I’ve never felt further from him. The entire dynamic between us has shifted with just one evening of me telling the truth.

  ‘I’m glad you’re OK.’ His voice is so hollow you could curl up and hide in it.

  ‘Tom, I’m so sorry.’ I stand up and walk over to him. I want to touch him but I’m not sure if it’s allowed. ‘I don’t know what got into me. I just drank too much. I don’t want to get married. You know me, I don’t believe in any of that nonsense. And, it must’ve been embarrassing and …’

  He holds up a hand to stop me. ‘Tor, it’s fine,’ he says.

  ‘It is?’

  How can it be fine? I set off a grenade.

  ‘Look, you were just wasted, that’s all. You had too much to drink because Dee’s pregnancy is freaking you out a bit. It’s fine. It’s nothing. Have you cleaned up the sick?’

  I nod solemnly. I was not expecting this to be fine. We need to talk about it. Surely we need to talk about it? ‘Are you not mad at me?’

  I swear I see him roll his eyes – ever so slightly – before he says no. But he still says no.

  ‘I am really sorry.’

  ‘I know.’

  He squats down and starts pulling running clothes out from the drawer built under the bed. He shoves a T-shirt over his head. He pulls on his special running socks. I watch him carefully tie his Adidas trainers. ‘I’m going for a run,’ he says, unnecessarily.

  ‘OK.’

  I follow him to the door like a puppy who doesn’t want his owner to leave. He turns the knob without looking at me. ‘I love you,’ I call after him, my throat catching. He stops. I cannot cry. I am together Tori. I have red lip stain on.

  Finally, he turns. ‘I love you too.’ He leans in to kiss my forehead and I keep my eyes open to watch his facial expression. His eyes look right past me, unfocused, like he’s trying to make a Magic Eye pattern reveal its secrets.

  Then he turns.

  Then he is gone.

  Month Six

  Taylor Faithful’s Fan Page:

  ARE YOU A DIFFICULT WOMAN?

  Do this simple relationship test to find out.

  Answer yes or no to the following:

  – Does your man regularly bring up imaginary glory days of your relationship and ask where ‘Old You’ has gone?

  – Does he claim he is impressed by your career success but then goes quiet whenever you mention a new milestone?

  – Are the things he used to love about you at the start of your relationship the things he now continually asks you to stop doing?

  – Does he get really excited on the rare instances you bake for him?

  – Does he use a minor insecurity you’ve admitted to him as ammunition in arguments? And, if you ever try to tackle him about his behaviour on anything, by the end of the discussion has it been decided that it was your insecurity that was to blame, not his behaviour?

  – Do you worry a lot that you’re such a crazy woman and that no one else will want you?

  – Are you called ‘needy’ when you ask for essentially anything from your relationship?

  – Do you sometimes feel like he’s embarrassed by you at social events? Do you see him wince when you talk?

  – Does he boast about fancying strong-willed women, while his celebrity crushes are actually all on fictional film characters who are docile as fuck?

  Answered ‘Yes’ for three or more? Congratulations! You are NOT a difficult woman. You are just in a really bad relationship – probably with a narcissist.

  Here’s the thing guys: every woman is difficult. Every woman is spiky. And you need to find someone who wants to hang decorative freaking baubles off your spiky bits, not try to sand them down until they’re smooth.

  3645 likes.

  Tori Bailey likes this

  Comments:

  Tori Bailey: Amen sister! :) :)

  *

  Google search: Am I in a relationship with a narcissist or have we just been together a long time?

  *

  Nigel Tucker

  Look at my glowing golden girl and her golden glowing bump in this autumn light. I am the happiest man in the world right now.

  24 likes.

  *

  Dee: DO NOT JUDGE ME FOR NIGEL’S STATUS UPDATE. HE’S GOT SYMPATHY PREGNANCY HORMONES I THINK.

  Tori: I have no idea what you’re talking about.

  Tori: Golden girl …

  Dee: I hate you, right? You know that I hate you.

  Tori: I hate you too Golden Girl.

  Tori: The Golden Girl on the Train

  Tori: The Golden Girl with The Dragon Tattoo

  Tori: Hey now, hey now, what’s the matter with the Golden Girls just wanna have fun now. Come on.

  Tori: Who run the world?

  Dee: I hate you.

  Dee: …

  Dee: Golden Girls?

  *

  I have a young friend.

  She is twenty-four and we met when she interviewed me about Who The F*ck Am I? for a ‘zine’ she has launched. She was very nice when I politely asked her what the hell a ‘zine’ was. She has taken me out dancing.

  The music here is incredible and I don’t even have to pretend as much. We are in a basement somewhere just off Covent Garden. The toilets are disgusting but the cocktails are insane. There are over twenty-five different types of gin to choose from.

  ‘This is my friend Tori,’ Tiff yells at her friends over the thud of the music. ‘She’s written an amazing book about how fucked up it is being in your twenties.’

  The cluster of young people cheer and all put their grotty glasses forward to toast me. One girl disentangles herself and launches at me, smacking into me for a hug.

  ‘Oh my God, are you Tori who wrote Who The Fuck Am I?’ she squeals into my ear. The sweat from her face is now partly on mine. ‘I can’t b
elieve it! I tried to get tickets for your London show but it had sold out.’ She grabs at my shoulders, her eyes moist with excitement. ‘That book changed my fucking life! I swear I’ve read it a million times. I was working in finance before I read it. I was twenty-two and so stressed and miserable and I earned a lot of money but it wasn’t where my heart was, you know? Anyway, I read your book and now I work for this zine with Tiff!’

  I smile. I switch into professional Tor mode. The one who is humble yet powerful. The Tor she expects me to be. ‘I’m so happy my book had that impact on you,’ I tell her, hugging her again because she’s pulling me in and I don’t have a choice. ‘It’s so important to follow your dreams.’

  I worry about her as I go to the bar. How is she ever going to afford a mortgage if she works for a zine? If she wants a baby, I bet the zine has a really bad maternity package. Finance would’ve been a much better long-term option. She’d have got regular pay rises and job perks and, by the time she was my age, would be on well over eighty thousand pounds. Being bored in your job is not cool, but she’ll one day realise it’s much more uncool to be constantly worried about money and still be in a flat-share aged thirty-three. I pay for a round of shots to secretly apologise to this girl. I’ve not done a shot in forever but I’ve not forgotten how to do it – how not to wince, so you look like one of those cool girls who can handle alcohol. I tip back two Jägerbombs and yell at the group, ‘I HAVE A FUCKING WEDDING TO GO TO TOMORROW,’ and they all cheer me like I’ve announced I’m going to prison in the morning.

  I am dancing now. It feels so good to dance. I move my body and I swirl and I twirl. I giggle and I cup my hand over people’s ears and yell stuff into them and we both laugh. The youth glows off my new friends. Their skin is so plump and smooth. Their bodies are so taut and look good in the current fashions. Some of them are in couples and some of them are single but none of them are worrying whether this is The One or if they’re going to die alone. I cannot tell you how good it feels to dance to music when you know there is no chance of ‘Agadoo’ cropping up at some point between ten and eleven. Or that some dude is going to pop up with a fiddle and a kilt on and demand I strip the willow. I only dance at weddings now, I realise. Apart from tonight, I only move my body to music when I am at a wedding. That awful, in-an-awkward-circle ‘yes, we look just as bad as our parents used to’ dancing that weddings inspire. My counsellor is right. Tonight is just what I need.

  Oh yes. I have a counsellor now.

  Tom and I finally, finally, had a talk. A talk about our relationship. About us. About what is going on. About why he won’t have sex with me.

  I broached the topic. I followed all the advice online. I did not bring it up at a bad moment, or in bed. I used ‘I feel’ statements rather than ‘you always’. We were walking around the park to admire the first twinges of autumn – it’s best to talk to men when you’re walking along side by side because their hunter-gatherer caveman instincts favour side-to-side communication.

  God I love this song. Tiff holds my hands and twirls me round and round and we’re all laughing and d’you know what, I don’t think one of them is thinking I’m old at all.

  Oh yes. So I brought things up with Tom and I was just about to suggest couples therapy when he came out with it all. He admitted it was clear that I was very unhappy and he’d noticed how thin I was getting and how I was projecting all my own personal unhappiness onto the relationship. Which wasn’t what I was thinking at all. But after he had given me lots of evidence and reasoning, I was left thinking he could actually be right. I brought up the sex thing, and how he would never touch me and he admitted, he finally admitted, it was happening. And, again, he had a very convincing argument that I’d become too needy. And that he was worried about me and felt sorry for me because of all my unhappiness and that it was very hard to be aroused when you were feeling sorry for someone. He couldn’t find me sexy because I was too needy. ‘That is normal,’ he said. ‘You would be worried if I wanted to have sex with you right now.’ So, now I have a counsellor – Anne – and we’ve had two sessions. She asked me why I was there, and I told her I needed to sort out my eating and stop being so needy so my boyfriend would love me again and she seemed to find that very interesting. Anyway, here I am because of her. She has suggested I’m too hung up about the number of my age. Yes, there are biological factors to consider when you hit thirty, but that doesn’t mean I have to limit my friendships only to people who are in their thirties too. So I’m here with Tiff, and yes I’ll get another round in. Yes, I have some tissues in my purse because the toilets have run out of loo roll. God, her skin. Why didn’t I appreciate my skin when it was like that? Why was I so busy being miserable and writing my book when I could have just been looking at my skin in the mirror and stroking it and pushing it to see how firm it was?

  I’ve stopped dancing and I’m having a very intense conversation with Tiff about weddings. I’m smoking again apparently. I’ve really missed smoking. Why did I ever quit when it’s such a brilliant thing to do? Tiff smokes roll-ups and I swear that’s so cool. She has rolled me one and I’m smoking it.

  ‘The first wedding is really exciting,’ I tell her, spelling indecipherable words in the darkness with the glowing end of my cigarette. ‘You can’t quite believe that you’re grown up enough to be doing all this yet. You spend ages planning what to wear and the whole thing is a huge novelty. It doesn’t seem real. You all get so drunk. It’s so much fun, the first one, Tiff. It’s so much fun.’

  She’s nodding. ‘I’ve got my first one next year. I’m so excited. It’s my housemate’s from uni. She’s a Christian so she has to get married to have sex.’

  We laugh and we suck from our papers wrapped around Golden Virginia.

  ‘Enjoy it,’ I tell her. ‘You’ll have a great time. But this is the start of the trickle, Tiff. Have you ever been in a tropical rain storm? It starts with a few, welcome droplets from the sky. In your twenties, weddings are like that. A few pitter-patters of bride raindrops. Then you turn thirty and BAM—’ Tiff jumps as I yell and almost drops her cigarette —‘the downpour of weddings hits you, soaks you through instantly, Tiff. And do not forget the hen dos. Every single weekend you’ll be dragged to overpriced cottages or pole-dancing lessons or hilarious activities where you make fucking pants. You will feel dead inside whenever you see an L-plate. Then there are the weddings themselves. You’ll eat so much chicken, Tiff. You’ll eat chicken wrapped in ham almost every Saturday from April until September. You’ll have so many packaged-up sugared almonds you’ll find them at the bottom of every handbag for the rest of your life.’

  Tiff sucks at her fag, her eyebrows furrowed. There isn’t any wrinkling between them yet. Sooner than she thinks her face will stay like that, even after she relaxes it, like a creased piece of paper you try to flatten out again. ‘I don’t want to get married,’ she declares. ‘I’m never going to do it. Do you know they did this study and found men are made happier by marriage, but women end up less happy?’

  ‘Amen, sister.’ We chink our roll-ups in the dark like they are champagne glasses.

  I am back inside and I can hardly hear myself speak. I’m leaning against this gorgeous man’s long body and we’re shouting at one another.

  ‘I think it’s so amazing that you write books.’ I can feel his groin pressed against mine. This is the hottest thing to happen to me in at least three years.

  I throw my head back, laughing. ‘You think that now. But if we went out, you’d resent my success in time.’

  He shakes his head, maintaining direct eye-contact throughout. His eyes are green. He’s wearing the most adorable glasses. He is so well dressed and his skin. So young. I want to reach out and touch it. I do. He smiles and leans his face into my hand. ‘I like successful women who know what they want,’ he calls into my ear. His breath is hot; my entire neck tingles. Every part of my body is pinned against the exposed brickwork of this club. ‘I’m a feminist,’ he says simply. ‘H
ow can I not be?’

  I shut my eyes, feeling the room tilt. I open them. He is still there. ‘I’ve never heard a man call himself a feminist before,’ I admit. ‘My boyfriend says the word itself is sexist.’

  He leans so close that he can whisper. ‘No offence,’ he says, ‘but your boyfriend is clearly a dickhead.’

  I am so close to cheating on Tom. I just need to turn my head and this boy will kiss me. I just need to turn my head and I will have done something that is so big and so permanent that Tom and I will be annihilated within a second. I know it would be such a good kiss. I’ve not felt like this in so long. Powerful and sexy and playful and fun.

  ‘How old are you?’ I ask him. I’m not sure why I ask him.

  He smiles, pushes his adorable glasses up his nose and presses his body closer into me. ‘Twenty-three.’

  I let out a shrill laugh. ‘I’m old enough to be your … your …’

  ‘Sister?’ he offers. ‘You’re not old anyway.’ He leans closer and closer. I can’t be certain, but I think I can feel his erection through his jeans, pressing against my thigh. ‘You’re so hot.’ His lips are almost on my lips. He’s holding them there, seeing if I respond. He’s not pushing it or plunging his tongue into my mouth uninvited like the boys I remember from my twenties, the modern feminist boy that he is – and he really is still just a boy. Our foreheads are the only part of our faces that are touching. I am so full of desire. I can’t believe someone wants me. The thrill it gives me. The unashamed thrill. Tiff catches my eye as I look over his shoulder. She gives me the thumbs-up before launching her face into the face of another young gorgeous man. But I can’t … I can’t do this.

  ‘I have a boyfriend,’ I remind him. Our lips meet just from me speaking. My entire mouth tingles. I hate myself for saying it. I hate Tom for existing, inconveniently, in this moment. The boy withdraws. I realise I don’t even know his name. He leans back slightly so he’s no longer pushing me into the wall. I worry now that he’s going to vanish. Find another girl, one who is young and unburdened with long-term partners and shared cats. But this boy doesn’t vanish. He takes my hand and leads me to a quieter part of the club and we have brilliant conversations about polyamory and whether it’s the future, and the flawed institution of marriage, and the crisis of masculinity. When he goes to the bathroom, I sink into the disgusting sofa and marvel at him.