by Holly Bourne
I can’t tell myself lies any more.
I’m lying in bed. I stare at the ceiling. I can’t see the cracks but I know they are there. And I’m finally hardening. Not because of Simon. (I admit that, yes, maybe I am overreacting to Simon. Simon is just a man. Yet another not-good-enough man.) I’m hardening because I’ve realised something.
I actually, physically, mentally, spiritually, can’t do this to myself any more. I can’t put myself through it. It’s not worth it. Because what is the prize? A man? A man who will never quite give you what you need, and never quite do enough around the house, and never quite comfort you in the way you need comforting, or fuck you in the way you need to be fucked, who will never quite deserve you but yet believes he deserves the medal for staying with you, a man who will always prioritise sport, who will smell and shit and burp and fart and lie and cheat and be lazy and get complacent, even if he wasn’t to begin with, who will inwardly roll his eyes over time, who will let you take the strain if you’re stupid enough to have children with him.
That’s not a prize.
It’s how to ruin your life.
‘I let go of this,’ I say out loud, to my shitty cracked ceiling. My heart is closed for business. And not in a when-I-meet-the-right-guy-I’ll-take-it-back way. I’m honestly done.
I’m not just done. I’m angry.
So. Fucking. Angry.
I mean, aren’t you?
I hate men.
I hate how annoyed they get when you dare show any negative emotion – usually triggered by them. Acting like you’ve let the side down with all your pathetic emotions and ruined the fun. How they secretly think you shouldn’t be upset because they wouldn’t be. The judgement that lingers like putrid BO whenever you confess an anxiety or sadness.
I hate how they don’t believe you. That if you’re ever stupid enough to tell them about something another man has done, how they look for the holes in your traumas and widen the hole until you doubt it really happened – sometimes without even saying a word, just by pulling a face they don’t even realise they’re pulling. How sometimes they just ignore what you’ve said. Block it out because it ruins their day that you dared to get yourself violated by one of those nutcases who definitely isn’t them or anyone they know and now you wanna talk about it, goddammit?
I hate how sometimes when they tickle you in a play fight, they hold you down to show off their superior strength and you squeal like it’s funny but also the threat is there.
I hate men because the threat is always, always there.
I hate men because they’re so lacking in exhaustion from not constantly feeling in danger. They walk with this general easiness, like they’ve earned it, rather than taking a moment to examine their luck that they’re not terrified of violent rape whenever they leave their house.
I hate men because they only ever want you for the idea of you – all the good, sexy bits and not the messy, traumatised bits. Bits that are traumatised BECAUSE OF MEN.
I hate men because they’ve made me hate myself. I hate men because I could’ve been someone so much better, and greater, and cooler, and comfortable if it wasn’t for them. I hate men for not loving me when they’re the ones who made me unlovable. I hate men for making me hate myself for wanting one to love me. I hate men for the amount of time and energy they take from my life in the quest for it.
I hate.
I hate.
I hate them.
I don’t want them to love me any more.
I want them to feel as powerless as I’ve always felt.
I want them to pay.
I go out the next morning and get to the shops just as they open. The air con of the book store is so welcome that I want to pitch a tent and live in there. Though, after the pitying look the bookseller gives me ringing up my purchases, I’d be too embarrassed to stay.
‘Where have you been?’ Megan asks when I return home, sweating. ‘You seem happier.’ She’s sitting in a nest she’s made on the sofa – her favourite thing to do. She drags all the covers off all the beds and arranges them around her like a spiral of puffy candyfloss while watching Dawson’s Creek and doing impressions of Joey Potter’s wayward mouth expressions.
‘I am happier, thank you.’ I dump my heavy shopping bag down on the table, lean into a back stretch, and wince as I smell my already-smelly armpit. ‘Isn’t it a bit hot for the nest?’
‘I need the nest,’ she says. ‘My manager just told me I have to arrange the freaking launch event for our new jewellery line in only six weeks’ time. Because, you know, emailing your employees with giant projects on a Sunday morning is totally normal.’
‘Hon, that’s amazing.’
‘It’s terrifying and stressful, is what it is.’
‘So you thought the best way to tackle this challenge was to wrap yourself in my duvet and watch an episode of Dawson for the eight trillionth time?’ I perch on the edge of the sofa.
‘I’ve given myself this sacred Sunday to pretend it’s not happening, then I’ll have the nervous breakdown tomorrow.’ She looks up at me from her array of blankets and taps a space next to her. ‘Joey’s about to slouch her way through a horrific rendition of “On My Own”, care to join?’
I do. I’ve seen the Beauty Pageant episode countless times before, but I flop down next to her, though not under the blankets. We wince our way through her cover of Eponine, Megan pausing it at random intervals to yell ‘ERGH DAWSON IS THE WORST!’
When it finishes, she’s up right away, digging through my shopping bag.
‘Megan! No!’
‘What did you get? You never buy books! Oh my God, April,’ she digs one out and holds it like it’s contaminated. ‘What the hell? Is this a joke?’
I grab the book off her. ‘No.’
Her mouth drops open, and she digs into my Waterstones bag to unearth worse books with even worse titles. I try to stop her but I can’t. Megan gets them all out, turning each one over and reading under her breath and then staring up at me. ‘Is this what Simon has done to you? I didn’t realise it was this bad.’
‘No! It’s fine. It’s nothing. I’m fine, honestly.’
‘Yeah, you’re clearly totally sane. All these books are signs of such high self-esteem.’ She jabs at them with her finger. On the floor lie six books with the following titles:
Why Men Love Horrible Women
How to Win Him
Calling in Your Soulmate
The Laws of Love
Make All Men Want You
How Not to Scare Off Your Soulmate
All of them have various grand claims on their covers. Things like ‘Find the love of your life within 30 days’, or ‘Use the law of attraction to pull in lasting love’. Even Oprah has endorsed one.
‘I’m just trying something out,’ I tell Megan. ‘I’m doing some research.’
‘For what?’ She picks up Calling in Your Soulmate and holds it upside down, like it’s a dead mouse. ‘Are you method acting in a play called The Importance of Being Basic?’
‘Ha. Something like that.’
‘Honestly, what’s going on?’
Do I tell her?
Because I know what I’m planning is mental. And mental in a way that’s so mental that even your best friend isn’t going to pretend it’s OK.
‘Nothing’s going on. I’m just interested, that’s all. In all this stuff you’re told about how to meet guys. I thought it might help the relationship advisor part of my job.’
‘So it’s nothing to do with getting dumped yesterday?’
‘No!’ It’s to do with getting dumped consistently throughout my entire life. ‘And it’s just for work.’
‘I don’t believe you and neither would the most gullible person in the whole of gullible land.’
I shrug and pluck the offending book out of her hand. ‘Please, just leave it?’
She must see the pleading in my face. ‘OK then,’ she relents. ‘As unhealthy coping strategies go, reading is bett
er than doing smack. That stuff is all bullshit though, you know that, right?’
I nod my lie. ‘Total bullshit.’
She looks up at me with wide, kohl-lined eyes. ‘Are you OK though? Seriously? You’d tell me if you weren’t, wouldn’t you?’
‘I really am all right, I promise.’ And it’s the truth. I reach down and begin to pick up my shopping. ‘In fact, despite these books looking like evidence to the contrary, I actually feel the best I’ve felt in a very long time.’
As the sun steadily bakes the city hotter and stinkier, I stay indoors, flipping through the pages of the books that will help me. The hours smudge into one another, lost in a haze of sweating my way through the earnest pages, stopping here and there either to make notes, or to get ice cubes out of the freezer and squeeze them under my armpits.
‘Great idea,’ Megan says, spotting me in the kitchen and coming over to copy me. She gasps as the ice hits her. ‘You sure you don’t want to come back into the nest?’
‘I’m fine. I’m just chilling in my room.’
All of the advice in the books, I find, I kind of knew already. What with all the panic pre-date googling I’ve done over the years. Plus my 33 years living life as a woman. Since the moment I plopped out of my mother’s womb, I’ve absorbed through osmosis how a woman should behave if she wants a man to put up with her. From the passive princesses winning princes in fairy tales to the magazines I read as a teenager, telling me what hairstyles boys liked, what their body language meant, if our star signs were compatible, and how to talk to them at parties, to every film I’ve ever watched, where the girl has to chill out and get over herself and give up what she really wants in order to win his heart. I mean, if Grease taught me anything, it’s that you need to get the ratio of Madonna:Whore perfectly right before you’re allowed to float off into the clouds with some jerk who tried to date-rape you in a car park. The books all confirm my suspicion: in order to be loved by a heterosexual man, you must not need or want to be loved by a heterosexual man.
As I turn the page of each one, I feel more and more alive. It’s like I’ve finally taken the red pill and woken up in some pod that reveals just how ludicrous it all is. If these books are to be believed, all men are the same and none of them want a woman who is real in any way. It makes my past dating nightmares become so much clearer. No wonder I’ve been so ‘unlucky’ – I’ve been too honest, too myself, not seeing it as a game to win.
It gets dark but the heat doesn’t relent. Megan puts the last of the ice under her armpits around eleven o’clock and calls ‘goodnight’ before heading for her room. The city around me is hushed – the neighbours quiet and sleeping or getting ready for the week ahead. Even with my windows wide open to try to keep cool, it is tranquil. I feel like the only person awake, which is ridiculous because it’s London and if I got up and put some clothes on I could probably find some open club nearby, snort coke and jump into an adult ball pit or something.
I put my last book down and try to prepare myself for the unattainable idea of a good night’s sleep. A fantasy comes into my head, clear as a drawing scratched in sharp pencil. I’m sitting across from a faceless man, at some nice little place somewhere. There are candles on the table. I can sense his nervousness. There’s sweat on his forehead. His hands tremble on his knife and fork as he cuts into an artichoke.
‘Are you OK?’ I ask, serene and peaceful and radiating a glow that you just cannot bottle. ‘You’re being weird.’
He laughs, all bahaha. ‘Am I? Sorry, there’s just … just … something I want to say.’
‘What’s that?’ I look over at this man, struggling to eat his artichoke, and make it as easy for him as I can. ‘You can tell me,’ I say. ‘Whatever it is, you know you can tell me.’
The man sighs and puts his fork down, and reaches over to clasp my hand. ‘I know I can. Sorry. I don’t know why I’m so nervous. The truth is …’ he looks up into my eyes, so wide and open and vulnerable, ‘I … I … I love you, Gretel.’ He gets it out. He squeezes my hand tighter. His voice is thick with emotion, eyes wet, vulnerability bleeding out all over the table.
‘Oh,’ I say.
‘Look, you don’t have to say it back. It may be too soon for you.’
I reach out and take his other hand. ‘It’s not that, it’s just …’
‘What?’ he asks desperately. ‘What? What is it?’
I look over at this man, who stands for every man who has ever broken me. Who has ever told me I’m not this enough or that enough. Who has made me feel defective for wanting to love them, for wanting anything from men at all in exchange for my body and my thoughtfulness and my energy and time. He’s taking the hit for them all. Like Jesus – the Jesus of Tinder. I let go of his hand and I tilt my head. I say his name.
He’s on the edge of his chair, his artichoke forgotten. He’s waiting for the ‘I love you’ back, for his life to finally begin with this unicorn of a woman he’s found.
‘Yes?’
‘My name is not fucking Gretel.’
Then I stand up, and I leave him with his confused broken heart and his unfinished artichoke and I never see him again. How powerful I feel, for once.
I don’t see any reason not to start right now. So I sit up in bed, the sheet sticking to my stomach with sweat. I lean over and pick the phone up from the floor where it’s charging, squinting as my eyes are hit with its white light. I turn the brightness down and re-download the dating app I deleted after my third date with Simon. But this time I set up a different email address for it, and, when asked for my details, I type out a different name.
• Gretel’s Guide To Getting Your Guy
* * *
Feeling lost in love? Trapped in a powerless cycle of endless dates? Desperate to finally have a man drop the big L?
Hi, my name’s Gretel, and I’m here to help you finally cross the finish line. All you have to do is pretend to be someone else … Me.
You see, I’m just your regular everyday Manic Pixie Dream Girl Next Door Slut With No Problems. i.e. Exactly what all men want.
I’m a high-worth woman who is independent but still really needs a man Only when he’s in the mood to feel needed that is. When he’s not in the mood to feel needed, don’t worry, I’m off backpacking somewhere and whoops-a-daisy he misses me now. Who would’ve thought? I have such a strong character, but don’t worry, it’s not too strong. It includes things like having a dirty laugh, and standing up for refugees. Don’t panic, I don’t stand up for anything that makes him feel personally uncomfortable because he’s slightly guilty of being problematic in that way. I won’t go all ‘strong’ on him about sexual violence, or the pay gap. Nah, I’ll stick to Malaria, or homelessness, or something.
I’m excited to wake up every morning. I have such a fabulous life, filled with exciting but non-threatening things, and he feels so lucky to be part of it. My resting face is serene. I glow. Everything about me just glows.
I don’t really nag, because I don’t get upset by the stupid stuff. He never has to worry about upsetting me because I’m never insecure. However, every so often, I will lightly whimper on him, just so he can feel manly when he snuggles me into his arms. He’s so good at comforting me about the mild thing I’m upset about that doesn’t freak him out or make him feel helpless. I won’t have PTSD from a rape or an eating disorder or anything – I would never get raped, that’s totally not my thing. And I won’t have any serious mental health problems that require patience. I don’t even get PMS because I’m on hormonal contraception so he also never has to use a condom. What a win.
I’m feminine, of course. Not in an obvious, insecure way. We’ve established already that I’m not insecure. How repulsive, for a woman to be insecure. Not me! Where were we? Oh yes, I’m feminine. Don’t worry, I never take too long to get ready. I’m naturally beautiful. I don’t realise it, of course, that would be egotistical, but I’m also confident in how I look. I’m feminine in an effortless way. I’ll randomly
shove on some flowery dress and I’ll reek of womanliness so much that the flowers may just float off my dress and follow me around like Pocafuckinghontas.
I’ve got an edge to me though. I can totally be one of the guys. In fact, he loves to bring me out and watch how well I fit in with them and how they all look at me and wish I was their girlfriend. I make the perfect crude joke. I have an interest in whatever boring-as-bollocks sport he’s into. Not because I’m pretending to – I actually find it interesting.
I’m one of those people who will wake him up one morning and say, ‘let’s go on an adventure’ with a glint in my eye, and both our passports in my hand.
I’m not a pushover, that’s important to note. I won’t let him walk all over me. I completely and utterly know my worth, and, if he doesn’t show me the respect I deserve, I will let him know it. Somehow I manage to do this in a magical mystical way that never feels like ‘nagging’.
My cool job means I have money, so I don’t need him in that way. But, I don’t have a silly, intimidating amount of money. Maybe just the same as him, ideally a tiny bit less.
I always smell good.
I dance like I’m lost in the music.
I’m not fussy about where I sleep.
I have a brilliant appetite but I’m never fat.
