I was due at a work drinks thing at 6.30pm. I thought about texting Sarah but felt guilty about my lack of contact and figured she’d still be at the office so I texted Rachel.
Me: ‘Am in Soho coffee shop and my good-looking guy is here with a friend and I am paralysed. He is smiling, I am smiling. We are getting nowhere. Ugh!’
Rachel: ‘Rejection therapy remember! Tell him he has a nice smile – v cheesy but if he likes you he won’t think so!!! XX’
Me: ‘Ughhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. I am so crap at this.’
Rachel: ‘Shut up and do it.’
Me: ‘I am too scared.’
Rachel: ‘You don’t have to see them ever again. If you make a fool of yourself so what? You have done speaking in public, stand-up comedy, posed naked . . . you can do this.’
But I really couldn’t, so at 6.20pm I left the coffee shop to go to the launch of a new mattress. Seriously, this is what the drinks were for.
As I walked out, I berated myself. You coward. Why didn’t you even say hello to him? Just hello. You bottled it. You bottle everything.
At the door of the fancy furniture shop, a man holding a tray offered me a glass of prosecco, I took one and stood by a four-poster bed hating myself.
Why are you such a fucking idiot when it comes to men? What is your problem? Would it have killed you if he hadn’t said hello back?
There were about twenty people there, well-dressed magazine women and a couple of suited men, who I guessed were from the mattress company.
‘Well, if you saw him before you’ll probably see him again – don’t worry about it,’ said Liz, who was organizing the event and therefore only half listening.
But I knew that life doesn’t work like that. It is rare to see the same person twice in the centre of London. I’d already been given a second chance, which is more than most people get. I had a choice – I could either stay with the warm prosecco and mattresses – booze and bed, a fitting representation of my comfort zone – or I could face my fear of rejection and head back to the coffee shop.
‘I’m sorry but I have to go,’ I said to Liz, thrusting my half-empty glass into her hand and marching towards the door before I could change my mind. Once outside, I crossed the road, darting in and out of cars, feeling like the heroine of a romantic comedy.
Am I doing this? Am I really doing this? Oh my God, I am . . .
Then I got to the coffee shop doors and froze. I could see him through the window, still chatting to his friend.
Keep going, don’t stop. Come on . . .
I pushed the door open and walked up to his table with no idea of what I was going to say. Before I knew it, I was standing right next to him. He looked up. His friend looked up. I froze.
‘Hello,’ I said – or rather croaked. Something weird had happened to my voice.
‘Hello,’ they both said.
I felt like I was looking down at the scene from the ceiling.
Say something, Marianne. Say something!
Then the friend, quick as a flash, announced: ‘I was just leaving. Would you like my seat?’
I said ‘yes’ and sat down. My guy looked a bit surprised but didn’t miss a beat.
‘Can I get you a coffee?’ he asked.
I said ‘yes’ – even though more caffeine was probably the last thing my system needed.
I looked at him as he walked back from the counter with our drinks. I couldn’t tell how tall he was – was he taller than me? – but I noticed he stood very upright. Like he was taking the world square on. Not in an arrogant way, just a ‘here I am’ way. Nothing to hide. I liked it.
He put down the coffees and held out his hand to introduce himself.
His name sounded Greek, so I asked him if he was Greek, and he said yes. He asked me if I spoke Greek and I said no.
‘But I went to Athens once – it was very hot. I basically sweated my way around the Acropolis,’ I said.
Why the hell are you bringing up how much you sweat, you moron?
My hand was shaking the coffee cup.
‘I went to university with a Greek girl and she used to say something when it was raining, I think it translated as “We are not made of sugar, we will not melt,” I said. I was manic and talking through my nerves but he laughed with me, not at me.
Then we were properly chatting.
Turns out he wasn’t a great author, but a PhD student studying something to do with psychology and he divided his time between London and Greece.
‘Do you have plans for the evening?’ he asked.
‘No, not really . . .’
‘Would you like to get a glass of wine?’
‘Yes, sure. That would be nice,’ I said.
The voice that came out of my mouth was, I hoped, cooler than the one in my head, which was screaming Bloody hell, this is happening! You walked up to a man in a coffee shop and now you are going on a date!
We walked out and I felt self-conscious. We were about the same height but he was lean and I felt chunky next to him . . . Pull yourself together, Marianne, stop doing this to yourself.
The streets were busy with after-work drinkers, so we ducked in and out of them. We looked like a couple. A couple going for a drink, as normal couples do . . .
He led the way to a wine bar I’d never been to before. It was busy but not too busy, fancy without being pretentious. He ordered the drinks while I sat on a squashy leather sofa by the window.
‘Cheers,’ he said.
Our glasses clinked.
He looked into my eyes and I felt shy.
‘Well, this is an unexpected surprise,’ he said.
We both laughed. Nervously.
‘I know,’ I said.
There was a second of silence.
‘I was stunned when you came to the table,’ he said. ‘And then when I went to the counter to get the coffee my heart was beating and I was worried that I’d get the wrong kind of coffee.’
‘You seemed very relaxed to me,’ I said.
‘I wasn’t,’ he said. ‘I’d noticed you and I would have gone home angry for not having had the courage to talk to you. I am bad at approaching women.’
‘So am I – well, not women, men . . .’
‘So you don’t make a habit of going up to men in coffee shops?’
‘No!’
I told him about Rejection Therapy.
‘But I didn’t reject you,’ he said.
‘That’s true.’
So I asked the barman if he could give us free drinks and he said he’d love to but he’d get into trouble with his manager. No worries. Rejection accomplished. It could not have hurt less.
‘If a woman smiles at me three times, I take it as a sign that she is interested and I will try to say hello,’ he said. I’d never smiled at a guy three times – I was too proud and scared and embarrassed. I’d spent my whole life thinking other girls get guys because they are skinnier and prettier, but maybe they were just smiling more.
He said he had been single for the last three years after coming out of a long-term relationship.
‘What about you?’ he asked. That standard first-date question that I hated. I cringed as I confessed that I had been single for most of my life and my relationships hadn’t lasted more than a few months.
‘Why’s that?’ he asked.
Such a simple question – the question really – and I didn’t know how to answer it so I took a sip of my drink and changed the subject.
He told me about his life: he was brought up between Greece and New York, his dad was a musician and travelled a lot. He was an only child.
After the bar closed he walked me back to my train.
‘You coming up to me like that is the loveliest thing to happen to me in a long time,’ he said.
I looked at my feet.
He laughed and leaned in to kiss me. It was a sweet kiss. A tender kiss.
I felt toe-curlingly awkward. Why do I feel like that? Why do these moments terrify the hell out of me?
>
When he stepped away we both smiled.
‘That was nice,’ he said.
‘Yes, it was.’ I laughed.
‘I am going back to Athens on Friday but I will be back in London in a few weeks.’
‘OK.’
‘My dad has not been very well, so I need to go home and help my mother,’ he said.
‘I’m sorry to hear that.’
‘That’s OK. It’s been going on a while. But would you like to meet again when I come back?’
‘Yes, that would be great,’ I said and got on my train home.
Rejection Therapy had been excruciatingly hard at times. I felt uncomfortable with the fact that the game asks you to get your rejection kicks at other people’s expense and I was shocked by how hurtful it was to smile at someone and be greeted by a steely downturned face – but I had gained so much from it. Not only had I had some small but heartwarming interactions with strangers, which made the world seem like a friendlier place, but I’d had some big wins too. After sending three examples of my work, I was given a newspaper column. Well, column might be stretching it. It was the size of a matchbox – but it was mine! Media domination, here I come!
I’d also had a date.
Mostly, however, I had come away with one profound, life-changing realization. I had learned that for all my fear of rejection, I’d hardly ever been rejected in reality because I’d gone out of my way to avoid it – at work, with friends, in love.
At the start of May, I’d come across this quote from JK Rowling: ‘It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously you might not have lived at all. In which case you have failed by default.’
I had been failing by default, rejecting myself by default. And that had to stop.
As I rattled away on the Northern Line, looking at tipsy couples and students, for once I felt like I belonged with the happy people around me. I thought about the fact that your entire life could change just by saying ‘hello’ to someone.
6
F**k It: The Ultimate Spiritual Way, by John C. Parkin
‘If you’re feeling stressed about something, say “Fuck It” and you will feel instantly better.’
Sarah’s text landed when I was at the Wetherspoon’s in Gatwick Airport. ‘Are you OK? What’s going on? We haven’t seen each other in weeks and any time I suggest meeting you don’t seem to want to. Have I done something wrong? Sx’
It’s true. I hadn’t set out to distance myself, but it had just kind of happened . . .
We were in different worlds. She was in the real world of work and broken boilers and I was . . . well, chatting up men in coffee shops and repeating affirmations. Even though nobody had said anything to this effect, I had started to get paranoid that my friends were secretly mocking me. Before January, I had been able to laugh at my extracurricular Oprah-endorsed reading habits but now, by the beginning of June, six months into my self-improvement mission, I didn’t want to hear anything even vaguely critical of it or me. Self-help no longer felt like a laughing matter; it felt very serious.
It was no longer a hobby – it was my life.
Pushing myself out of my comfort zone was taking up my every waking thought – and quite a few sleeping ones too. And it was changing me. I didn’t want to talk about work dramas the way I used to. I didn’t want to bitch about people and talk about stupid, unimportant stuff. I was trying to stay positive, trying to be a better person!
I looked around. Next to me was a sixty-odd-year-old man with long hair and a Hell’s Angels t-shirt. He was wearing sunglasses indoors and downing his pint like it was last orders. On the other side of me, a young couple, so perfectly tanned and buff they looked as if they were made of plastic, drank rosé. It was just gone midday.
F**k it. I ordered a glass of Chardonnay. Large.
As I drank the wine my guilt hardened into something new: defiance.
The old me would have said anything to make it OK with Sarah, apologizing profusely for everything I’d ever done or not done, but F**k It. I was so fed up of apologizing. I took another drink.
My phone beeped. It was a message from The Greek.
‘Have fun!☺’
I hated smiley faces. Do PhD students really use smiley faces?
I texted back: ‘I will!’
I overuse exclamation marks instead of smileys. It’s not something I like in myself.
I looked at the information board. Ryanair flight to Ancona BOARDING.
I downed the last of my wine, put my phone in my bag and made my way to the gate. I’d reply to Sarah when I got back.
On the plane I looked out of the window and opened my book. As we climbed higher into the air, home life vanished. It was just me. Nobody to think about but me. F**k It all.
A few years earlier, another stressed-out Brit had run away from his life. John Parkin was a London advertising executive when he had a life crisis. In his book, F**k It: The Ultimate Spiritual Way, he writes: ‘For the first time in my life I lost all sense of meaning. Every single moment I felt in pain . . . it was simply the pain of being alive.’
Things got so bad that one day he found himself lying in the gutter. Literally. ‘I lay in the gutter and curled up like a little boy and starting moaning. And that was the high of the week,’ he writes.
Who doesn’t love a dramatic rock-bottom moment?
After that John read every kind of spiritual book known to man, in order to find the source of his misery. He gave up his job and got into yoga, t’ai chi and shamanism before packing up all his belongings into a camper van and moving, along with his wife and two young sons, to Italy, where they set up retreats for other burnt-out executives.
It was at one of these retreats that an off-the-cuff comment ended up spawning a self-help movement. John was working with a thirty-year-old woman who was stubbornly refusing to relax despite a week of breathing exercises, yoga and visualization. Just as she was leaving to go home, with as much mental baggage as she had started with, John suggested that she just say fuck it to everything she was worrying about.
She wrote back a few weeks later to say that she had indeed said ‘fuck it’ and this simple profanity had changed everything. She no longer gave a fuck and life was much better as a result.
John recognized he was on to something. He wrote a book declaring that ‘F**k It’ is the perfect Western expression of the Eastern spiritual ideas of letting go, giving up and relaxing our hold on things’. He realized that the moment we say ‘F**k It’ we stop obsessing about things which are not important.
‘F**k It’ is an expression that says that – ultimately – nothing matters that much. Which, of course, it doesn’t. I knew this, intellectually, but in my day-to-day life everything mattered a lot. What people thought of me, how I was doing at work, how fat I was, how bad my hair was, my overdrafts and credit cards, my future, my love life, or lack of . . . it all swam around in my head in a giant soup of self-created misery.
F**k It was going to be the antidote to that – my way out.
I’d read the book years ago and liked it. But I am Irish, so anything with swearing works for me. It’s spiritual without being smug, new agey but full of common sense.
It’s self-help for people who don’t like self-help.
But the main reason I had decided to pick this book up again was because it came with a holiday attached. Week-long F**k It retreats take place in Italy. Soul searching in the sun . . . now that was something I could get on board with.
Mum had an issue with it, though.
‘Can you afford to go away?’ she asked.
‘Not really, but I need a holiday.’
‘Marianne, we all need a holiday. Last week you were crying at your credit card bills.’
‘That wasn’t last week, that was months ago – and I’ve been working a lot recently. I should be OK.’
I lied. I hadn’t been working a lot. And the reason I hadn’t been crying over my bank statements recently was
because I hadn’t been looking at them – not even to draw on extra zeros.
I tried to ignore the uncomfortable feeling that everything I was doing was self-indulgent nonsense. My sixty-eight-year-old mum worked full time as a teacher and her only holiday was two weeks in rainy Ireland every summer. When life was falling down around her, she just lay in bed and gave herself a good talking to. I was about to pay hundreds of pounds to fly to Italy to do it by a swimming pool.
I put it on the credit card. Obviously.
I fell asleep on the plane and woke up with dried dribble on the side of my mouth, as Ryanair’s tannoy system boasted about how many flights landed on time. The midday wine had knocked me out and so did the wall of heat that greeted us as we stepped off the plane. My jeans and cotton jumper, which had felt daringly summery in London, now felt like ski gear.
A couple in their sixties were standing in silence next to me, waiting for their luggage. She looked miserable. He looked red-faced and resigned. I hoped they weren’t on the retreat.
Across the carousel a tall, tanned blond man was picking up a North Face bag while a woman with dark curly hair stood next to him, pointing at a silver wheelie case. He picked it up for her and they walked out. They were a good-looking couple, clean, shining skin, with slim, fit bodies . . . off, presumably, for a romantic mini-break. I felt fat and sweaty and began the usual stream of thought about not having a boyfriend . . . but then I remembered The Greek and smiled. Maybe we would end up being one of those good-looking, mini-breaking couples? I could visit him in Greece and we could holiday on the islands . . . after I’d gone on a diet.
At the taxi rank I showed the address to a man with dark hair in a ponytail and a shirt that was a bit too open. It was as if the Italian tourist board had sent him especially from central casting. We climbed away from the coast and the white plastic rosary beads hanging from the rear-view mirror swayed as the roads got windier. Twenty minutes later we pulled onto a dirt track which cut through vineyards and olive groves before arriving at our destination.
‘Eez here!’ said the driver, pointing to the old stone building in front of us.
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