He turns and I can see into every deep line on his face.
JOE. Oh no, darlin’. People are amazing, but… when will people realise… that people are all we got?
FLEABAG. He smiles, but I feel a bit ambushed. I pretend I have to wash the cappuccino machine, go inside and wipe the nozzle a bit.
–
Five o’clock. Northern line. I’m trying to read an article about how the word ‘feminist’ has apparently become dirty. I try to engage, but it just makes me think of a bunch of dirty little feminists. I snort-laugh at myself, and then catch the eye of an Attractive Looking Man. Oooh. Well, he is attractive when holding his paper up to here – it all gets a little rodenty from the nose down, but good enough for some eye-fucking on the Tube. He smiles with his tiny mouth. I smile back.
He looks down. I look down.
Then we both look up at the same time!
Little giggle. Other people in the carriage start to notice, charmed by the moment.
It’s revolting.
The Tube is pulling in to Tottenham Court Road.
We both stand up at the same time.
I could vomit.
He says
TUBE RODENT. This doesn’t happen very often, does it?
FLEABAG. I give a horribly giggly ‘No! No, I suppose it’s… quite… rare… yeah…’
He says this may sound crazy, but he has this crazy idea and the crazy idea is to take my number.
We give credit to the moment and exchange numbers.
–
I come out of the Tube and have a Harry panic. He just – won’t be there any more. Madam Ovary is telling me to RUN BACK TO SAFE PLACE. YOU CAN MAKE BABY IN SAFE PLACE. But I’ve got to ride it out. He’ll text me later. The fridge means nothing. Ride it out. I met a nice rodent on the Tube. I have a lot to be thankful for.
–
FEMALE VOICE. Welcome to Women Speak. The lecture will commence in five minutes. Please have your tickets ready.
FLEABAG. I find my sister outside the lecture hall. She is uptight and beautiful and probably anorexic, but clothes look awesome on her so…
Mum died two years ago. She had a double mastectomy and never really recovered. It was particularly hard because she had amazing boobs. She used to say I was lucky because mine will never get in the way. When I asked her what she meant she used to demonstrate by pretend-struggling to open the fridge door, or pretending not to be able to see what’s on the floor.
My sister’s got whoppers. But she got all of Mum’s good bits.
Dad’s way of coping with two motherless daughters was to buy us tickets to feminist lectures, start fucking our godmother and eventually stop calling.
These lectures are every three months. It’s virtually the only time I see my sister. She looks tired. We sit in the waiting room. I realise I’m wearing the top that she ‘lost’ years ago, so this is going to be tense.
She really fucking loved this top.
Her eyes fix on it. But – and I can see her brain ticking – she decides to bank it for later. Makes me nervous. Ammo.
She’s reading her ‘Kindle’.
She’s done her hair a bit fancy, I wonder if she’s going out after the lecture or if she’s just got her period. She always does something a bit different around her period. She gets really bad PMT. Mum called it a Monthly Confidence Crisis, but it was PMT. The only way she can get through it is to reinvent herself in some small way. One particularly bad month, she came into the kitchen on the brink of tears, in full Lycra. Even Dad had to leave the room. She looked like she’d climbed into a condom. It was an emotionally complex couple of days, which we’re not allowed to talk about any more.
She’s sitting so still. She’s definitely having a monthly confidence crisis. I mean it’s in plaits. Either side. Sort of tied up at the top. It’s unbearable. I can’t resist.
(To SISTER.) Hair looks nice.
SISTER. Fuck off.
FLEABAG (to audience). Brilliant.
She asks about work and I get all spiky. I tell her the café’s lease is up in two days unless I can find at least five grand, which is impossible. So I’m having to deal with letting go of the only thing I have left of Boo, and the only thing that’s going to save me from becoming a corporate lady-slave like her, and that I know everyone thought I’d fuck it up, and now it looks like I’ve fulfilled everyone’s expectations, which I didn’t mean to say, it just falls out, and now I’m gonna get her smugness all up in my face.
She just looks at me. No reaction.
I know the rules, so I ask her about her super-high-powered, perfect job-work-super-life. She tells me she’s finally been offered the wet-dream of a job in Finland. Apparently they want to overpay and underwork her and she won’t have to wear power suits any more.
(To SISTER.) Wow. Finland!
But she’s turning it down, because her husband says she shouldn’t go, because of Jake.
Jake is her stepson. He’s really weird, probably clinically, but no one talks about that. He freaks out if she’s away longer than a day and he’s got this thing about trying to get into the bath with her. He’s fifteen.
No. He’s seven.
No, he is actually fifteen.
I tell her
(To SISTER.) He’s not your son.
SISTER. That’s not the point.
FLEABAG makes a face.
Don’t make that face.
FLEABAG. I didn’t make a face. Go! This is about you.
SISTER. I knew you’d say that.
FLEABAG. I tell her she’s making a mistake, she shouldn’t let other people get in the way of what she really wants and Finland is what she really wants.
She told me her husband isn’t ‘other people’. That her husband is her life.
I tell her her husband tried to touch me up at Christmas.
I don’t know why I said it. It’s true, but he was drunk so…
Martin’s always drunk. Which is odd because she is so straight. Maybe that’s not odd. But he’s very good at being drunk, in that he’s FUN DRUNK! No one wants to admit there’s a problem, because then they don’t get to have ‘crazy nights’ with ‘fun drunk Martin’ any more.
(Scottish accent.) Martin.
He’s one of those men who is explosively sexually inappropriate with everyone. But then makes you feel bad if you take offence because he was just being FUN. You can tell him you are ‘popping to the loo’ and he’ll say –
MARTIN. Aye you pop to the loo, then pull your knickers down and I’ll come and FUCK you!
FLEABAG. Claire always tries to sort of laugh like she gets the joke, which isn’t even a joke.
FEMALE VOICE. Welcome to Women Speak. Sorry for the delay. The lecture will begin shortly. There is no food or drink permitted in the auditorium.
FLEABAG. She just stares at me.
Her neck goes red. I’ve only see that happen once before.
Then she stares ahead of her.
I give her half my sandwich. Which she eats. Maybe she isn’t anorexic… maybe clothes just…
Bitch.
We just sit and wait. Eating the sandwich.
Can’t read her. Never been able to read her.
She pulls out a card from Dad and puts it on the seat between us. It’s probably still there.
FEMALE VOICE. Women’s Speak is about to commence. Please enter the auditorium.
Sound of hubbub.
FLEABAG. The lecture hall is huge. We go right to the front and sit down. Still can’t read her.
Suddenly she says
SISTER. I’m going to go to fucking Finland.
FLEABAG. Okay.
SISTER. I hate these suits.
FLEABAG. Okay.
SISTER. How much do you need to save Boo’s café?
FLEABAG. About five grand.
SISTER. Okay. I’ll transfer it tomorrow. But I don’t want to come to these any more.
FLEABAG. Okay.
SISTER. And I want my top back.
>
FLEABAG. Okay. Thanks, Claire.
Sound of a female lecturer testing the mic. FLEABAG pays attention.
LECTURER. Gosh look at you all! Thank you so much for coming. I am overwhelmed by how many faces I see before me. I hope I do your efforts justice with what I have to say this evening. But before I begin, I want to ask you a question. The same question that inspired me to give this lecture. The same question that was posed to women all around this country with, well frankly, shocking results. Now, I don’t know about you, but I need some reassurance. (Little laugh.) So, I pose the same question to the women in this room today: please raise your hands if you would trade five years of your life for the so-called ‘perfect body’?
FLEABAG throws her hand in the air.
FLEABAG. Both of us.
Four hundred women stare at us, horrified.
We are bad feminists.
After the lecture Claire says she’s going home to talk to Martin.
I want to ask her if she’d have a drink with me before she goes, but I don’t know how, so I just watch her plaits disappear into the crowd outside the Tube.
–
Text from Rodent
TUBE RODENT. Still smiling! Smiley face.
FLEABAG. Aw.
I text back: You free now?
He is. We meet up and get very, very drunk. I can’t stop staring at his tiny mouth – he is telling me a story like he doesn’t want to let the words out.
He tells me his sister is deaf, which is his way of letting me know he is interesting and sensitive. Which is fine. But then he is the only one in his family who didn’t learn sign language so… Apparently, because they grew up together, she can lip-read him. Which makes me wonder what she thinks he is saying all the time, because to me it looks like Oooo OOOoo Oooo.
He says his sister is so instinctive. She can read people brilliantly. How she’d be able to read me.
He’s having an excellent time.
–
Harry has terrible instincts. Once – I think this may be the best thing he has ever done – Once, he went to a restaurant – he’s quite shy really – he went to a restaurant having had a filthy night out with me the night before. I mean, the man was hanging. He was having lunch with these important website bods, when it hit him. Halfway through the starter. Yeah. He was gonna be sick. Like, now. He excused himself, and hurry-walked to the loo. He burst in – knowing by now that this was going to be a projectile affair – but all the urinals were taken and all the cubicles were locked and he couldn’t bring himself to spew in a sink so, in a panic, he kicked down the door of one of the cubicles revealing a man having a shit. Then boom. It just aaallll caaaame ooouuut – he puked all over the guy sat there, all over his shirt, his cock, his legs, his hands, his boxers, the wall, round his ankles, drenched him.
But then – the best bit – in the frenzy of it all, Harry thought –
HARRY. Oh God, I’ve just puked on this guy – he is going to punch me.
FLEABAG. So he smacked him in the face.
Isn’t it beautiful? It’s even better because when he told me and Boo he didn’t know it was a funny story. It will never be heard like that again. It was such a serious story. He was mortified. Boo loved poo stories, so couldn’t actually deal with the glory of this one. She just stared, mouth open, paralysed with joy as he told it.
–
A few weeks ago, when Harry thought I was sleeping he rolled over and stroked my hair, whispering
HARRY (whispered). Where have you gone? Where have you gone?
FLEABAG. He thinks I’m neglecting him, but when your heart is – wish he’d just fuck me. All he wants to do is make love.
He’s wasting me. I fucked a man once who kept breathing, with each thrust, ‘you’re so young, you’re so young.’
I masturbate about that all the time. I masturbate a lot these days. Especially when I’m bored or angry or upset or happy.
–
Sound of the Tube.
Last Tube. Attempting to kiss Tube Rodent. It’s like target practice with a very small moving target.
I ask him back to mine, but he says he has work tomorrow.
I say I can come back to his, but he says it’s an early start.
I say I’ll get him a cab to work in the morning, but he says that’s ridiculous.
I say ‘what the fuck’s your problem’ and he says nothing he’d just like to see me again, not rush.
I tell him he’s a prick. He says he’s ‘not sure what’s going on’.
I tell him he’s a pathetic excuse for a man and leave him at the barriers. Ha.
It’s a bit weird then, because we have to come down the same escalator. Push my bum out a bit. Give him some perspective.
I turn around at the platform, but he’s gone.
–
At the end of the platform, sat on the bench thing, was the drunkest girl I have ever seen. Head rolled forward, tit hanging out, bag sprawled. Nicely dressed, normal-looking girl who had clearly just had one hell of a night. Last Tube rolls in. She doesn’t move. I nudge her awake and she stumbles onto the carriage only to slump into a seat, head rolling, other tit folding out now, bag tangled in her feet. I ask her where she is getting off, she says
Slumps back, mouth open. No movement.
DRUNK GIRL. ‘Waterloo.’
FLEABAG. Okay, my stop. I help her off, I ask her where she needs to get to next.
DRUNK GIRL. London Bridge…
FLEABAG (to DRUNK GIRL). Okay.
DRUNK GIRL. And then Kent.
FLEABAG. Tubes are finished, so we are finding an Overground to London Bridge. At one point, we are walking, and she just falls flat on her face. Boom. Get her up. Keep going. Her head is going all over the place. I’m trying to keep her talking. After about forty-five minutes – forty-five – we are on an escalator, and there is a little lull. Then she turns to me and says
DRUNK GIRL. Aw… you’re such a lovely man.
–
FLEABAG. Her train pulls in. I don’t let go of her.
I ask her if she’d rather come home with me, but she just says
DRUNK GIRL (grinning). How dare you… Naughty boy… no!
FLEABAG. So I push her into the carriage and she’s gone.
–
I leave the station and think, ‘what’s one more’. I go into a bar. It is a business bar. People are doing business. I drink a lot and pretend I am in business. A sweaty, bald man cups my vagina from behind at the bar. But he buys me a drink so – he’s nice actually. He disappears after a while. Then the business bar closes. (Slurring slightly.) Closed for business. Shutting up shop.
That’s what Boo said every time we closed the café.
BOO. Shutting up shop!
FLEABAG. Like she was drunk. Which often we were. We’d close up, sink a bottle of wine. Boo would play the ukulele and we’d make up filthy songs. For hours.
(Singing.)
‘Another lunch break, another abortion.
Another piece of cake, another two, fuck-it, twenty cigarettes.
And we’re happy, so happy to be modern women.’
–
Suddenly I’m at a familiar doorstep. I ring the bell. And ring the bell. And hammer at the door. And yell like a goat. This should be humiliating. Howling through a man’s letter box in the middle of the night, but I’m rolling with it.
A light goes on. I see his silhouette as he trudges down the stairs. He must recognise mine through the door, because his body language changes suddenly. He slowly unhooks the latch and opens the door.
He looks like shit.
I put my hand right over his face and push it a bit. Strikes me as something I’d never thought I’d do to a parent, but it feels right at the time.
He stands in the doorway in his boxer shorts and a T-shirt. I can see the shape of his little manboobs.
(To DAD, very drunk.) Alright, Dad!
DAD. What’s going on?
FLEABAG. I’m abso
lutely fine.
DAD. Okay.
FLEABAG. I just –
DAD. Yes?
FLEABAG. Nothing.
DAD. Okay?
FLEABAG (drunkenly). Okay… I don’t…. yeah… uh… what? It’s a… hm… okay fuck it. Okay.
I have a horrible feeling I’m a greedy, perverted, selfish, apathetic, cynical, depraved, mannish-looking, morally bankrupt woman who can’t even call herself a feminist.
He looks at me.
DAD. Well… You get all that from your mother.
FLEABAG (to DAD). Good one.
I wonder if he’d find me attractive. If I wasn’t his daughter.
(To DAD.) If you saw me on the internet. Would you click on me?
DAD. I’m going to call you a cab, darling.
FLEABAG. He lets me wait in his living room while he calls one. I can hear my godmother trying to be quiet at the top of the stairs.
When the cab comes he gently puts me into it and gives me twenty quid.
–
I’m in a cab. I can go anywhere. So I tell him to take me to… my flat.
Already thinking about what I’m going to look up.
–
Back at the flat. I turn on the TV and cry for a bit.
–
I think about a girl called Lily, who I used to touch a bit when we got drunk. Harry didn’t know, but girls don’t count. I text her. She lives quite close, I think.
Suddenly I’m on PornHub, wet as a beach towel, but I can’t get there because the girl has spots on her arse. Some of them just don’t make the effort.
–
Nothing back from Lily. I start thinking about this ginger guy I met at a festival last summer.
It was a month after Boo died. I’d taken a pill, and flown off into the woods. I was desperate to get away from Harry. He had started to hug me relentlessly, always telling me how much he loved me, asking how much I loved him, checking if I was ‘okay’. There was a rave in the wood. I was panicking and touching my face a lot. Suddenly ginger guy was there. He told me to follow him. That he’d take me back to my tent. We were walking for ages. He was holding me by my wrist. At one point he picked me up. It was very dark. I couldn’t work out where we were. He wouldn’t put me down. He was holding my legs really tightly. Said I was too weak to walk and that I had to trust him. Eventually we stopped. I felt him lie me down in a tent on my back. And then he… he…
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