by Neal Doran
FunnyGal483: I’m sure they regret whatever it is they’ve done.
SuperDan82: Then why haven’t they tried to contact me?
FunnyGal483: Maybe they feel bad? Don’t know what to say?
SuperDan82: I think that’d be letting them off the hook a bit too easily. And don’t they need to have the courage of their convictions, right or wrong? I thought we knew each other well enough to talk through these things, y’see. But listen to me — I’m beginning to sound like a girl (no offence). Where’ve you been tonight?
Maybe now would be the time to come clean, I thought. Stand up like Kirk Douglas and say, ‘I’M SuperDan82’, and then say sorry. That was what she wanted, right? We both knew who we were, didn’t we?
FunnyGal483: Oh y’know, drinks with my gal pals.
OK, so I chickened out. I’d make a terrible Spartacus.
SuperDan82: Gal pals?! I thought the only people that said that were trannies…
FunnyGal483: Get back to your cocoa, mister.
SuperDan82: So what does that involve? Sitting around complaining about men, or the lack of them?
FunnyGal483: Huh, you forgot to mention cooing over shoes and babies while you were stereotyping a gender.
SuperDan82: I’m sure you and your friends are very far from being stereotypical women. But while we’re talking ideals, what’s your perfect man like?
A man less secure in his own sexuality than me — there must be one out there somewhere… — might have worried that I knew my answer to this question about the perfect man quite so readily, but I was delighted to share my thoughts on this.
FunnyGal483: Oh, you know, someone who has a mixture of George Clooney’s looks, George Clooney’s personality, and George Clooney’s bank balance.
SuperDan82: Well, you’ve come to the right place.
FunnyGal483: How about you? Ideal woman that is?
SuperDan82: Hmm. Kind, funny, thoughtful, George Clooney’s bank balance… Tell you what, you go and marry George, get a big divorce settlement, and come back and see me.
FunnyGal483: Great plan! Although I think there might be a few fundamental flaws…
SuperDan82: I can think of one quite big one, myself, to be honest. But ideals are no way to live your life really. Life is rarely ideal, but you’ve got to muddle through.
FunnyGal483: Is that so?
SuperDan82: Yep. Even if you ended up with a gorgeous mega-star, you’d have to learn to put up with all sorts of bad habits.
FunnyGal483: And I guess there’d be the revolving door of starlets you’d have to deal with. These lLotharios don’t change their ways y’know.
There was a definite pause in a response coming in, that wasn’t just the time taken for typing. I muttered a ‘fuck’ that startled the guy sitting next to me as I thought about what I’d said.
SuperDan82: Yeah. Well… Everyone’s got to draw the line somewhere, I suppose. Anyway, I’d better go.
FunnyGal483: I’m getting near my stop too. Will you be around this week?
SuperDan82: Who knows? Depends if I’m still spending most of my time working on my sulk… OK, bye.
Before I could even say bye back SuperDan82, and Hannah, were gone.
I’d thought when I was being FunnyGal483 instead of being myself I wasn’t as tactless and inept as I was in real life. Bringing up shagging around while she’d got her problems with Rob was a bit mean. And the worst bit was I realised, a split second before I hit the send key. But I did it anyway.
‘Alone and unwanted,’ she’d said. ‘Angry and confused,’ too. Well, her and me both.
We’d gone beyond the point now where she was pretending to be me, I was sure, and it made me resentful of Rob all over again, sitting at poker cracking funnies and avoiding answering questions from someone supposed to be his best friend about whether he was having an affair. He doesn’t deserve her, I thought.
But then I thought about what I was doing, as his supposed best friend, and figured he probably didn’t deserve me either.
As the week went on at work, the party at Jamie’s increasingly became the only topic of conversation. But despite my enthusing along with everyone I was still reluctant to go, and was planning the out-of-work equivalent of a sickie.
Delphine had intimated heartbreaking stories of man’s inhumanity to beautiful Frenchwomen to be shared over plastic cups of red, but I’d discovered I was no longer thinking of these as an unmissable opportunity to deliver a sympathetic — potentially erotic — hug. Janice was looking forward to the promise of a good gossip away from the office, which would entail tiptoeing around any really salacious news, for fear of invoking her righteous wrath and finding yourself clearing the contents of your desk into a bin bag. Even Weird Boring Chris had been getting animated over lunch at the chance for ‘a bit of a boogie’, visions of which had made the sandwich man’s sandwiches even more unappealing.
I, meanwhile, was laying the foundations of my excuse not to go, coughing whenever I thought of it, and using my staple new excuse of headaches. That my black eye was tripping through an array of colours, but not seeming to fade, made that a bit more convincing. For a demented split second one day I found myself missing Sam, and the simpler times when I was on the run from the law with a straight-talking klepto.
I finally emailed Hannah. Well, OK, maybe not emailed as such, but forwarded a link to a clip of ducks and other cute animals waving their arses in time to Beyoncé’s ‘Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)’. I didn’t get a response.
I spoke to Rob at work, but he seemed distracted. A lot of new jobs on, he said. I didn’t mention the dating project, and, for the first time in ages, he didn’t bring it up either. Maybe the enthusiasm for it was fading already, I thought, and maybe that’d be no bad thing. Time to let dull old ordinary life resume again.
One thing was constant, and that was my enthusiasm for my job. I still had none. I spent the week just staring at the same incomprehensible documents. But this time I couldn’t even muster up enough energy to pass the time emailing the other guys. Delphine had argued with her family, but I didn’t respond to her 1,200 word essay on it. I didn’t sift through it for clues as to whether she might fancy me. I didn’t even finish reading it.
I spent a lot of time staring at the Joey badge I’d unhooked from my coat lapel and stuck on the cubicle wall. I got a strange, questioning look from Weird Boring Chris when he saw me stroking it one afternoon. Then he smiled and moved on.
I tried emailing Hannah again. It was a link to a video of what the show House, MD would be like if the cast, including its frequently drug-addled protagonist, were played by The Muppets. It showed a previously unseen side of Kermit the Frog that broke down barriers, and was just the sort of thing to bring people together after personal difficulties, in a way that only truly important great art could.
I didn’t get a response.
Delphine asked if I wanted to go out for lunch to have a bitch about the other women in the office. I said I’d already got my barbecue ham and raisin bagel from the sandwich guy.
Over the days I composed several emails to Hannah, wherein I tried a range of different ways to combine remorse with complete denial. The messages had been variations on a theme of an apology for potentially being an arse in an undefined way at an unspecified time in the recent past. I was trying to do what Hannah, or at least SuperDan82, had suggested, and be more accountable for my actions. But I’d get as far as the email subject header ‘About last Sunday’s unfortunate lunge…’ and get in such a state of panicked anxiety I had to hide in the loos for twenty minutes to calm down.
So I went back to my war of attrition built on forwarding edited clips of cartoon characters from my youth singing hardcore rap songs. In the end I’d had to stay a bit late at work on Friday, because I was finishing up stuff that I really should have been doing when I was searching for the latest irresistible viral video clip that would make Hannah speak to me again.
I’d been struggling to make a pie chart of p
references amongst mineral-water drinkers between the descriptions ‘lightly carbonated’, ‘gently sparkling’, and ‘fizzy’, when I felt a pair of hands around my neck. It was Janice, providing a surprisingly gentle and relaxing shoulder massage, and for a few seconds I forgot that she often claimed that her hands were registered lethal weapons. She mentioned some health and safety guidelines on working at computer screens all day and that the tension in my neck muscles showed I’d been working too hard without the right posture. She also said I should be taking regular breaks from all the intense Internet research I’d been doing this week. This last bit was said with a sympathetic conspiratorial smile. I hoped she’d enjoyed all the cute animal videos she’d been snooping on.
Finally I made it home in time to keep my date with the delivery driver from the Mahal Palace. Another night spent just casually checking in to soullyforyou.com, to find I wasn’t there. It was past midnight by the time revolving through flipping TV channels and mucking about online lost out to post-takeaway drowsiness. The telly went on standby and I was set to shut down the computer when I spotted SuperDan82 was back online.
My dhanzak rumbled nervously in my stomach as I dived in.
FunnyGal483: Hey you.
SuperDan82: Hello, stranger. :-)
That was the great thing about us being on here: we were different people, and nothing had happened.
FunnyGal483: So what are you up to?
SuperDan82: Oh you know, just hanging, checking out the scene on here. Seeing if there’s anyone about up for some fun in the wee small hours. ;-)
FunnyGal483: Seeing who’s drunk and desperate you mean?
SuperDan82: Lol. You sound like my kind of girl.
Winks and lols, I pondered. She was in a chirpy mood tonight. A bit flirty even. I hoped this meant that I was finally forgiven. I bit the bullet and delved a bit more.
FunnyGal483: So how’s your week been?
SuperDan82: Fantastic. But busy, y’know? It’s a hard life being a man in demand. But right now I’m just looking to forget what’s gone by and have a good time now.
Yes! Let’s let bygones be bygones, I said to myself as I studied the screen. I thought she was taking the piss out of me with the ‘man in demand’ bollocks, but, hey, I deserved it. I thought I’d try another veiled apology, and move on.
FunnyGal483: The week I’ve had, I know what you mean. And there were things I wanted to do, but just couldn’t work out how to do them.
SuperDan82: Sounds tough.
FunnyGal483: For others more than me. But now it’d just be good to blow off some steam.
SuperDan82: You’ve come to the right place. But I see you haven’t got a profile picture yet — that’s no fun.
FunnyGal483: I think Boots have confiscated my negatives.
SuperDan82: That’s my girl. Do you have a webcam? ;-)
That was an odd thing to ask. Was she trying to push me into coming clean? It wasn’t part of our deal on here…
FunnyGal483: Um, yesss…
SuperDan82: Why not just take one right now? I’d like to see if you’re as gorgeous as you sound.
Alarm bells started ringing in my head. Was she setting me up?
FunnyGal483: I dunno if that’s a good idea, I think they have to be cleared by a moderator anyway…?
SuperDan82: If you did want to send me a pic, I’ve got an email address you could send it to. Completely private.
This didn’t sound right. Then another message pinged in.
SuperDan82: I could tell you exactly what I think of it. Or show you ;-).
This really didn’t sound right.
SuperDan82: If you’re feeling shy it doesn’t even have to be your face. :-o
This wasn’t Hannah.
SuperDan82: I could go first…
It was Rob.
You’d come to a crappy point in your life when your supposed best friend thought you were a pissed vulnerable woman and was trying to groom you.
Suddenly, I was furious. He was using my dating account to try and get smutty pictures! God knew how many women he’d harassed who thought I was a pervert. If I get slapped unexpectedly in the street now I’ll know why, I thought. Then I couldn’t help wondering if he’d had any luck getting any… But that was beside the point! I reminded myself. This man was objectifying me as a woman. The laptop pinged.
SuperDan82: Are you still thinking about it, or are you getting ready…?!!
I did what any self-respecting female would do at that point. I sent a final message calling him a tiny-dicked creep, accompanied by a grumpy emoticon giving him the finger. Then I shut down my computer completely and glared at it.
Saturday morning was spent in very tired agony. I’d barely slept, trying to work out what I was supposed to do. Should I tell Hannah that Rob had been posing as me and asking for saucy photos of me with my top off? Or was it one of his jokes — did he suspect FunnyGal483 was me, and was playing me along? Had Hannah told him we’d been talking online? What would that mean if she had?
It felt like an endless cycle of questions that just kept coming back on itself, like watching repeats of repeats of QI on Dave. By the time Delphine texted about the party to say that she, Janice and Weird Boring Chris were meeting in the pub for a couple of drinks before going to Jamie’s, the idea of getting drunk with my clinically oddball colleagues seemed a lot more sane than sitting at home by myself trying to figure out what was going on in my own life.
I had hit rock bottom. I was voluntarily and deliberately going to a party.
Chapter Eighteen
I woke up with a start as I heard the front door to my flat pulled shut. I sat up in bed quickly, confused for a moment and fearfully suspecting it was someone coming in. Then the sound of the brushed whoosh and cracking hinges of the fire door on the landing let me know it had been someone leaving. There was a whoosh and a crack in my head too as my dehydrated brain caught up with the rest of my skull, which had been jerked into a vertical position much quicker than it was expecting, and collided like a gang of Keystone Kops into the back of my eyeballs.
It was Sunday morning and I was at home with a hangover that was already showing the intent to squat with me for days.
I was in a bed I wasn’t the only one to have slept in.
And I had no idea who it was that had just escaped from sharing it.
I closed my eyes for a minute and let the waves of pain washing through my head subside sufficiently so I could feel the roiling nausea in my stomach again.
‘Oh, Jesus,’ I said out loud.
With the back of my head leaning against my bed frame, I lay there and thought that I should get up and go to the living-room window to see who it was that was leaving the building. But it was probably too late, and the idea of moving on the off-chance seemed like too much to ask anyway.
I tried to think back over the night before, but even thinking about the noisy dance-music pulse of Jamie’s house party started my ears ringing, and the accompanying blur of faces and drinks forced me to hold my breath to stop myself from being sick. I gingerly stretched out my hand to clutch a glass of water, filmy from having sat on my cabinet for several days, and took a couple of sips.
I convinced myself I was feeling a bit better, until I began to feel intolerably hot under my duvet. I threw it back and was surprised to see myself naked. It had been a while since I’d woken up in that state, I thought to myself, with the first hint of optimism poking through the self-recriminating fug.
Then a voice in my head started whispering that, considering how pissed I was, things might not have gone as well as one would have liked, and it might not be the time to be pleased with myself.
Immediately feeling cold again, I pulled the duvet back, and tried to wind back to a time on Saturday when I could remember more than clinking Stella bottles, glasses of wine, glimpses of my acting out songs through dance, and rowdy boys cheering over something going on in another room.
Memories from the night kept washi
ng over me, some in clear bright high-definition clips, some shaky and interrupted by bad reception, and others just vague impressions as if heard on a tinny radio in the next room.
The party had come at the end of a rough day. By the time I got there a quickly downed beer or two had seemed a good idea, and then I’d switched onto wine. Well, mainly onto wine, but I’d taken whatever other booze I was given too, if a memory as shaky as my hands were to be trusted. The switch to wine might have been a mistake, as I was knocking it back at the same pace as the lager, filling awkward gaps in conversations with friendly strangers with prolonged sips, and escaping when I could find nothing else to say by running for refills.
I lay there in bed cold and sweating getting nowhere with the answers to the current big questions I was trying to answer, like what I’d done at the party, who’d come home with me, and how I was going to find the strength and courage to move again so I could go for a much-needed piss.
Summoning the strength to move, my bare foot landed on something rubbery and slimy, and my heel was tickled by a jagged piece of foil wrapper. Well, I guess that clarified one thing, I thought, and I could console myself I’d been what they like to call ‘safe’.
My entire face flushed red as a brief suddenly remembered clip of the night played in my head — of my fumbling with latex in the dark under the covers, shifting away from a grabbing foreign hand and saying, ‘It’s OK, I’ve got it,’ before yelping and complaining that a couple of hairs must have got caught.
Sitting on the edge of the bed, trying to work up the enthusiasm to move further, I then remembered Weird Boring Chris, looking mottled and sweaty after taking to the floor in the living room on his own and trying to get the dancing started. He’d failed to get anyone to join him despite his grabs for the hands of any of Jamie’s friends — pretty much all twenty years his junior — as they strayed anywhere into his vicinity. He didn’t seem to care too much when they escaped, sniggering, while he swayed and gyrated ecstatically but erratically, lost in the music to the point where he couldn’t even seem to locate its basic rhythm.
