Single in the City

by Unknown

  He’s standing in the hallway where I left him, looking a little out of sorts. ‘Is something wrong?’

  ‘Well, no, it’s just that when you went into the bathroom, I didn’t know what to do. Jumping on my bed seemed a little presumptuous, and going back into the kitchen would mean we had to start all over again. So here I am, uh, waiting to–carry on.’

  He’s too adorable for words. What kind of guy actually thinks about these things? He’s like a girl with testicles. We’re in his bedroom by the time I get his shirt off. He didn’t mention he worked out, but six-packs like this don’t sprout naturally from men’s bodies. He’s fascinated with my skin. He keeps stroking his fingers up and down my side. It tickles. Deliciously. A little tentatively he unbuttons my jeans. I do the same and we wriggle out of them at the same time. We don’t stop kissing, lying there in our underwear. Then he starts to kiss all the way down my body. The song ‘Going to the Chapel’ suddenly pops into my head. Not now!

  Sam slides down, down, down. And then he comes up, up, up, with a funny look on his face. He kisses me for a few more minutes, then says, ‘Why don’t you relax and I’ll check on dinner.’ He jumps up and goes into the kitchen.

  Oh no! I smell. I’ve disgusted him. This is the most humiliating moment of my life, worse than the time my father found me naked on the bathroom floor where I’d knocked myself out when I was fourteen. Of course Sam’s never going to want to have sex with me now. I smell like Potential and his chillibeer festival Port-a-Potty. I need to call Stacy. Slinking to the hallway, I snatch my phone and race back to the bedroom before Sam can see me. ‘Stace?’ I whisper.

  ‘Tell me everything!’

  ‘It’s awful! You won’t believe it.’

  ‘Are you okay? Why are you crying? Did he hurt you? I’ll kill him!’

  ‘He didn’t do anything. We were fooling around, and everything was going so well–Stace, he’s the best kisser I’ve ever met, but anyway, then he starts to, explore…’

  ‘Explore how? Hannah, this sounds like a crisis. Now is not the time for euphemisms.’

  ‘He goes down on me.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘He comes back up in, like, three seconds.’

  ‘Ow, that’s not good.’

  ‘I know. Then he got up and started cooking dinner.’

  ‘That’s not another euphemism?’

  ‘No, he’s mashing potatoes as we speak.’

  ‘When was the last time you waxed?’ Only a best friend would ask this question.

  ‘Last weekend. Things are pretty trim down there.’

  ‘You don’t think that freaked him out, do you? Wait, did you get a Brazilian?!’ We’ve dared each other to do this for at least two years. It sounds good in theory until you realize you have to lie there with your legs wide open while some Eastern European pulls all the hair off your crotch by the roots. And I’m suspicious of guys who want their grown-up girlfriends to be bald as an eight-year-old.

  ‘No, no Brazilian…I think I might smell.’

  ‘Well, have a sniff.’

  ‘What am I, a contortionist?’ Honestly, sometimes I wonder why I ask for advice.

  ‘Use your hand, you dope.’

  So I do. Now I really want to die. My hand comes up covered in wet, white balls of goo. ‘Oh no.’ I start pulling on my jeans. There’s no recovery from this humiliation.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘The toilet paper.’ This can’t be happening.

  ‘What?’

  ‘When I cleaned up, I used wet toilet paper.’

  ‘What–oh no. A dingleberry?’42

  ‘Worse.’

  ‘What’s worse than a dingleberry during oral sex?’

  ‘Clumps of gooey toilet paper that looks like a very bad infection.’

  ‘That is worse. What are you gonna do?’

  ‘I’ve gotta go.’ The apartment is on the second floor. Maybe I can jump out the bedroom window without breaking a limb.

  ‘Wait, aren’t you going to talk to him about it?’

  ‘Are you kidding? It’s over.’

  ‘I thought you were crazy about this guy.’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘Then talk to him.’

  ‘I gotta go.’ I hang up just as Sam pokes his head in the doorway. ‘Ready for some dinner?’

  ‘Uh, actually, thanks, but I’ve gotta go.’ What with the years of therapy to book, the memory-erasing hypnosis…

  ‘Don’t you trust my cooking?’

  ‘It’s not that. I forgot. I have something to do. Listen, thanks for a great day. I’ll talk to you later.’ I grab my handbag and break for the door. I wish that, just once, I didn’t burst into tears during a crisis.

  ‘Hannah, wait. Don’t leave like this.’ His face is so earnest, it’s making me cry harder. ‘Listen, I’m sorry about my reaction before. If you’re sick or something, I–it’s okay. We’ll deal with it.’

  Suddenly the utter ridiculousness of the situation knocks the self-pity out of me. He thinks I have an incurable disease. He’s mistaking toilet paper for syphilis. I start to laugh. Then I start to hiccup.

  ‘Are you all right?’ He’s concerned the syphilis has infected my brain.

  ‘It’s toilet paper!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Toilet paper. Little balls of toilet paper that got stuck when I cleaned myself up before we, we, you know.’

  ‘Oh, thank god,’ he says, as if he just realized he didn’t lock his only set of keys in the car.

  ‘But Sam, it doesn’t matter. Today it’s toilet paper. Tomorrow it’ll be something else. I’m a mess. Not fit to date. Stuff like this happens to me all the time.’

  ‘Like planning a death-theme party for a terminal cancer patient?’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘Or motoring through London with your skirt over your head? Or not knowing how to ride a bike?’

  ‘Yeah, like that.’ You don’t know the half of it.

  ‘Want a glass of wine?’

  ‘Please.’ Just pass the bottle.

  He pours. We clink. ‘I don’t know how many more…fuckups…you have in store but Hannah, I like you. I’m not interested in you because you’re perfect. I’m interested because you’re you. Hey, hey, what’s wrong?’

  Crying, for me, has always been a little like washing my hair twice–I lather up much quicker after the first rinse. ‘Nothing’s wrong. I’m happy.’ I’m aware that this may not be obvious from my sobs. I’m bawling because Sam is The One. Capital T, capital O. I want to tell him this instant. It’s like knowing that someone won the lottery. You’d want them to know right away, right? Not that I’m comparing myself with a rollover jackpot. What am I saying? I’m not even thinking straight. It must be love. So it’s true, then, being in love is like hitting the sweepstakes. It doesn’t happen to everyone, and there’s no way of saying who’s going to win, but it changes your life when it does.

  25

  Sam is lingering by my desk, fidgeting as the legions of colleagues march by on their way home for the night. Finally, a break in the commuter parade.

  ‘What’s up?’ I’ve been grinning semi-permanently since dinner at his place. Even Felicity’s usual malice didn’t dim my mood, though after a week, my facial muscles are feeling the strain.

  ‘I’m asking you out. You like fancy shoes, right?’

  ‘Naturally.’

  ‘Thought so. Let’s go, before the champagne’s all gone.’ He hands me an invitation.

  Jimmy Choo preview event? Drinks? Nibbles? Twenty per cent off? ‘Where’d you get this?’ I don’t mean to sound ungrateful, or quite this incredulous, but really. Sam has admitted that his most fashionable moment involved a pair of Chuck Taylor All-Star high-top sneakers at age eleven.

  ‘Relax. It’s not stolen. I pulled in a favour from a friend.’ As he steers me towards the Tube, his hand now enveloping mine, I nearly have to stop for breath. To go from complete hopelessness to such dizzying heights is enough to make anyb
ody lightheaded.

  It’s only the clipboard Nazis, in position at the door, that give me pause. Something tells me that Sam isn’t going to get the same red-carpet treatment that Barry did. They see him. He squares up. ‘Name?’

  ‘Parker.’ He doesn’t look the least bit intimidated. I wish I had that confidence in the face of such condescension. Warily, they eye each other. Somewhere in the distance I hear the spaghetti-western music that often accompanies a shoot-out.

  ‘I’m sorry, sir, you’re not –’

  ‘Right there, ma’am. Beneath your thumb.’

  ‘Oh, did you say Parker?’

  ‘Plus one.’

  I’m his plus one!

  ‘I don’t know why you’d want to be around people like that,’ he says, shifting from one foot to the other like a child in need of the facilities. I love him for taking me here, when he clearly feels so out of his element.

  ‘I don’t want to be around them. I just want them to let me come to these parties. Look at these!’ Gingerly, I cradle a hot-pink patent peep-toe stiletto. I admit it, I’ve held babies with less care.

  Stacy would go absolutely mental in the face of all this footwear stimulation…I’ve missed her so much since she left. I was a little surprised by the intensity of my emotions (since I went days at a time without even thinking about her once I settled into London); I assumed I’d cry heartfelt tears at the airport that dried into a few wistful memories. But I find myself thinking about her a lot and wishing she was here to share things with. Like this.

  ‘I thought about giving you both tickets and letting you take Chloe.’

  ‘Wish you had?’

  ‘At the moment?’ His teasing face is absolutely adorable. He looks like he’s about to laugh, which of course breaks me up every time.

  ‘Okay, we don’t have to talk about shoes. Let’s discuss what you’re interested in, like economics or something.’

  ‘Do you know much about economics?’

  ‘Probably as much as you do about shoes…Are we really so incompatible?’ I’m smiling, but…Are we really so incompatible? In fact, we don’t have very much in common. He thinks fashion is silly and I don’t understand what he’s trying to be (a blah, blah, blah economist).

  ‘Hannah, it doesn’t matter that we have different interests. We like each other. That’s what matters, right? We’ll find things in common.’

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘Sure. Listen, I’ll prove it. What kind of movies do you hate?’

  ‘Hate? Or like?’

  ‘Hate.’

  ‘Movies about war.’ I didn’t sleep for a week after watching Born on the Fourth of July, and not just because Tom Cruise was ugly and bald.

  ‘Hmm. What else?’

  ‘Cop movies.’ Or any of those 1970s flicks with the bad acting, bad clothes and porn-film soundtracks. You know the ones I mean, bom-ba-ba-bom-bom, bowww.

  …‘One more?’

  ‘Costume dramas.’

  ‘Me too! See? We have that in common.’ He looks pleased to have made his point so definitively.

  I’m not sure we can base an entire relationship on a mutual disdain for bustles and butlers, but I feel a little better. At least, I feel better that this isn’t an issue for him. Besides, our presence here proves that he’ll be happy to indulge me even if whatever he’s indulging isn’t something that’s personally interesting. And I’ll do the same for him. That’s what real relationships are all about. ‘To us,’ I say, raising a sparkling glass of not-very-good-but-free champagne.

  ‘To us…And to my new job.’

  ‘You found a job? Really? That’s so great!’ I don’t care if I’m causing a stir in this temple to beauty and bunions. I’m going to kiss my boyfriend. My boyfriend. He really, truly is, isn’t he?

  ‘Really. Congratulate me. You’re looking at the newest low man on the totem pole at the Center for Asian Policy Studies.’

  This is wonderful almost beyond words. He must be so happy to have landed a job right out of school. As I’ve mentioned, I wasn’t as lucky, so, by inverse extension, I can appreciate how worthy it must make him feel. And there can’t be many jobs out there right now for, er, whatever it is that he’s going to be. ‘Sam, really, that’s so great. You should be very proud of yourself. When do you start? And when are you quitting?’

  …‘Not for a few weeks. And I did, today. I never have to face Felicity again. That’s something to celebrate, eh?’

  So we can goof off together every day until he joins the ranks of the working wounded. Now that my own job holds virtually no prospects for advancement, I feel no obligation to work a full eight-hour day. I can easily skip out to meet him. We could have long, boozy lunches, wander through the museums –

  ‘I’m really excited. Hong Kong is one of my favourite cities.’

  ‘You’ll get to travel to Hong Kong?’ Wow, vacations on other people’s money. Where do I get one of those jobs?

  …‘That’s where the job is.’

  This has to be a misunderstanding. Hong Kong was a colony. Please god, let there be a Hong Kong just outside London. ‘You’re taking a job in Asia?’

  ‘Well, I took it, yes. Are you okay?’

  ‘Er.’ I’m shocked. My face speaks for me.

  ‘Hey, don’t worry. I don’t leave for almost a month. We’ve still got time.’

  Time for what, actually? He can’t sweep me off my feet from a different time zone. And more importantly, how can I allow him to sweep me before he goes? I can’t handle a long-distance romance. I’m obsessive enough about boyfriends who live in the same postcode. ‘I don’t think so, Sam.’

  Now he looks shocked. ‘Why not? I like you. I’ve liked you ever since you flashed me on my Vespa. I want to go out with you. What’s wrong with that?’

  ‘What are we supposed to do, go out for a month and say goodbye at the airport?’

  ‘Well, no, not if we like each other.’

  ‘What are you saying? You’d stay here?’

  ‘Why do you have to think so much? Can’t we just see what happens?’

  Why do I have to think so much? He really doesn’t know me at all. And what exactly is he proposing? I thought I had a future with him; he’s telling me this is just a fling. ‘When did you know about the job? When did you find out you had it?’

  ‘A couple weeks ago.’

  ‘Before or after you asked me out?’ Please say after, please say after.

  …‘Before.’

  ‘And you asked me out, and you led me to believe’–tears are leaking now–‘you led me to believe that there was something here, that we maybe had a future, and we nearly slept together?!’ People are staring at us. I don’t care. ‘Did you lie just so that I’d sleep with you?’

  ‘I haven’t lied!’

  ‘Oh no? You knew you were moving when you asked me out two weeks ago.’

  ‘That’s not lying!’

  ‘Then why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘Because I didn’t think of it.’

  ‘Bullshit. It’s because you knew I wouldn’t sleep with you if I knew.’

  ‘That’s what you think of me?’

  ‘What am I supposed to think?’

  ‘How ’bout that I didn’t tell you because I was afraid you wouldn’t give me a chance, and I like you, and didn’t want to lose that chance.’

  Oh, again with the missed chance. That’s what Mark said. Don’t men have more than one excuse? Do they all default to flattery? It is flattering, assuming it’s true…‘I can’t do this. I can’t. Goodbye, Sam.’

  ‘Don’t leave like this.’

  It’s too late.

  26

  Edinburgh may not spring to mind when thinking of exotic locales, but it’s the best I can do on short notice. I had to get as far away from Sam as possible without leaving Britain, lest the immigration officials ask some rather uncomfortable questions upon my return. I toyed with Land’s End, for its name has a certain air of hopelessness about it.
It’s the sort of place where women dying of consumption would go. Unfortunately for those of us without driving licences, they don’t seem to go there by train. So I’m on the Caledonian Sleeper instead, which, as the name implies, is an overnight service and presumably passes through Caledonia. Though after my bus ride to the distinctly ungreen Camberwell Green, I’m not taking anything for granted. And this business with Sam has proven how foolish it is to make any presumptions at all. I didn’t expect him to consult me in his career decisions, given that our official, i.e., kissing, relationship is a week old. But I hoped he’d at least consider staying in London. Surely someone who claims to have liked me for months, and to like me a lot, and now has the chance to be together, would at least think about it. Why did I hope that? Because I know I’d consider it for him.

  I’m excited, at least about my physical progression, if in two minds about my emotional one. I’ve never ridden the rails before. Amtrak may connect major US cities, but our collective love of the automobile ensures that only foreign tourists recognize its full potential. As I remember, I did plan a trip around the country once, but chickened out when Stacy said she couldn’t go. In any event, a route like the ‘Heartland Flyer’ may have a tantalizing ring to it, but in reality, it just carries passengers in airline-sized seats from Oklahoma City to Fort Worth.43 Surely an overnight train has luxury written all over it. Imagine how the Orient Express or the E&O from Bangkok to Singapore must hark back to the glory days of travel, when the journey was as important as the destination. Why, women had entire wardrobes just for touring. In honour of those itinerant ghosts, I’m wearing my 1940s-style swing coat in a very wealthy shade of burgundy (in case anyone is in doubt about my suitability for such an extravagant train). I even have a jaunty make-up case, which the airport safety people cruelly rendered obsolete with their edict against reasonably sized toiletries. Using it on flights to carry my sad single Ziploc bag full of 100ml shampoos is just an insult to its craftsmanship.