I loved that Adam and I knew each other best at a time in our lives when we needed to get to know ourselves more than we needed to be in love with other people. I loved that in the period of time that our friendship was most intense we both had a variety of superficial romances that went nowhere because for that period of time, in that year, we probably did not need them. We did not need to invest that much in the future – not in terms of focus, or of worry.
In London I loved going to parties. I loved the time of our lives when every weekend night was a party. I loved that we went to the kinds of parties in East London that were so cool it took my breath away with amazement, that I’d achieved such a thing, loose associations with people who threw parties in warehouses where people did pole dances that were performance art and everyone was high on cocaine and MDMA. I loved that I got into these parties and I even loved that I kind of hated these parties, that once inside I never felt comfortable. I loved that I would then get on my heavy Dutch bicycle and ride home, at two or three or four in the morning, through the dark and empty streets of Dalston and Bethnal Green.
I loved that I felt safe doing this, even when I couldn’t get into the locked courtyard around the church and had to climb on top of a skip to jump over the fence in my green silky Primark shift dress. I loved that I dressed like an eccentric English person who anticipated a tea party around every corner, hence the reason that I was wearing a green silky Primark shift dress on that particular occasion.
I loved eating bagels on Brick Lane and debating which of the two near-identical bagel shops was the superior bagel shop, which was a question that could be debated for hours every hungover Sunday and never resolved.
I loved the rare times I saw my byline in print in the broadsheets. I loved reading newspaper articles that I’d written on the tube, spreading the paper in an inconvenient way, to see if anyone noticed. I loved feeling like I occasionally got away with being important because I was an outsider, and because I was an outsider people could not make decisions about the kind of person I was in the way that people in England seemed to like to decide about other English people.
I loved being young, although of course at the time I didn’t know that being young was what I was, or what I loved. Except for one time when a bendy bus nearly crushed me on my bike as I rode it up Oxford Street, I did not spend my time contemplating how and when I was likely to die.
For nine years I loved living in London. And then I didn’t love it any more.
7
Three things happened in the year that I turned thirty that made me know it was time for me to leave London.
The first thing: I broke up with Frank.
Frank and I had been together for a year when things started to unravel between us. The reason that they began to unravel was that we had been together a year. It was August when we reached the anniversary, a thing that seemed like it should be a milestone. In the time we spent together – one or two evenings a week, twenty-four hours over the course of a weekend – we talked about whether we should do something to celebrate. A weekend away. A fancy dinner. We talked and talked about how we should mark our time together, but we never got past the talking. Instead, we went to a wedding, the marriage of one of Frank’s friends from high school.
When Frank and I had gotten together the previous August, in 2010, it was because we were perfect for each other. That’s to say we were both at a point in our lives where we felt like we should be in a relationship. I was nearing thirty, Frank a year or two older.
We’d both spent years knocking around London with gangs of friends, but the gangs were thinning. The gangs were getting married, having children, leaving the city to go and live with the people they’d married and the children they’d had. Our friends were building lives around people they loved more than they loved us. This was only right, but it did not always feel good. I didn’t want to be the last person standing, and maybe Frank didn’t either, so when we met and there was a bit of an attraction, maybe that’s why it happened: we became a couple. After all the years spending time with men who didn’t love me, when Frank, a very nice person, showed interest in being my boyfriend, it seemed like the right thing to do. Frank didn’t love me either, not in the way that I needed, but unlike the other men, he was willing to stick around.
The thing that Frank and I seemed to have most in common was our mutual desire not to have too much feeling. As I watched my friends get swept up in grand romances and clapped while they walked down grand aisles at their grand weddings, I began to suspect that there was a problem with my expectations. Why should I be so lucky to meet the love of my life? I had tried that before. Maybe I’d tried that enough. If I wanted to be in a relationship, I thought, why shouldn’t I do it with someone who’s simply very nice? That’s what I was thinking when I met Frank.
I shouldn’t have been with Frank for a year: I should have broken up with him the previous Christmas. For Christmas I knitted Frank a tie, because knitted ties were Frank’s signature look, so much so that my friends called him ‘Knitted Tie’. Is Knitted Tie coming out tonight? they’d ask, and I’d usually say: No, because a thing about Frank and I that didn’t work very well was that I loved to spend time with other people and he did not. Sometimes, if I objected enough, if I wheedled and pouted, Frank would join some kind of group activity – that is, after all, how my friends knew that he wore knitted ties, because they had seen them knotted around his neck. But more often than I would have liked to, I would show up to places alone. And maybe part of the reason that my friends called him Knitted Tie was because they didn’t know him well enough to remember his name.
I knitted Frank a tie because knitting was something that I was good at and because I thought that handmade gifts were thoughtful, and also because I knew already that he loved knitted ties. It was early enough in our relationship that I still thought maybe Frank could grow to love me, and I could grow to love Frank. But Frank regarded my handiwork – it was purple, because that was my favourite colour, and he didn’t have a purple knitted tie already – and Frank said: Well, thanks. Later on, when I asked him why he hadn’t worn the tie that I’d knitted him, Frank said: It doesn’t fit.
It’s a tie, I said, of course it fits! but Frank said, It doesn’t. A couple of weeks later, in a restaurant with some of my friends – Frank had come to dinner, which was somewhat out of character, and maybe because he felt bad about the tie – Adam’s sister, who was a teacher and thus very good at expressing herself, said: Why aren’t you wearing the tie? and Frank said, again, It doesn’t fit! and she pointed at him, practically prodding his chest, and said, YOU WILL WEAR THE TIE, AT LEAST ONCE YOU WILL WEAR IT.
And still he never wore the tie.
I should have taken this as a sign that Frank wasn’t the man for me, that I should only love a man who would wear anything that I knitted for him. But still I thought maybe it was better to be with Frank than to be alone.
Although he did not love me, Frank was pretty kind to me, and I hope I was pretty kind to him. We enjoyed each other’s company, and when we were parted for longer than usual, we were happy to see each other again. But not hungry. We talked about books and art and work and friends. But we didn’t really talk about feelings.
In that August, at the wedding of his friends from high school, Frank and I were on the invite B-list: when we arrived, along with the other high-school friends, the ceremony and the wedding meal had already passed, the hem of the wedding gown stained green from wet grass, the eyes of the A-list guests – close family, closer friends – were a little misty, from alcohol and gravy and emotion. Some people seemed tired.
On the way to the venue, Frank and I had a small argument. We were ratty. It started on the train and then it escalated when we arrived. Something to do with taking a wrong turn from the station. We picked our way down a damp and thorny path, and then back again. I was wearing a blue summer dress and silver shoes, with stacked wooden heels. My legs were bare and the thorns scratche
d them. Frank was wearing a suit and a tie that I didn’t knit him. I sighed heavily at Frank, and Frank sighed heavily at me, but by the time we got to the wedding, we were friends again. Though maybe not much more than friends.
I asked Frank’s high-school friends to tell me about what Frank was like in high school, because that’s a thing that you ask high-school friends about your boyfriend. The high-school friends were friendly, and the wives and girlfriends of the high-school friends were kind and welcoming, as if I was now one of them. They suggested that Frank and I come to their homes for dinners or that we all go out for drinks, and I smiled and said that would be nice, though I did not think we ever would.
But I looked at my boyfriend, surrounded by people who had known and loved him for most of his life, and I thought about how he was pleasant and handsome and a good man. In a way, I thought, he is exceptional. When it started to rain we took our drinks from the outdoor bar and continued the conversations in a corridor of the stately home that was hosting the wedding, packed elbow-to-elbow like seatless passengers on a hot and overcrowded train.
Frank and I had spent a lot of time together on trains that year. By then I was working as a travel editor, and we went to stay in fancy hotels together: me, the professional; him, the plus one. We took trains to the countryside, to the Continent. And sometimes, somewhere in a posh hotel or an art gallery, or drinking coffee in a dirty Parisian tabac, I felt I adored him. I’d scrutinize him as he scrutinized a map or a menu and I’d think yes, maybe I could love you. And then we’d go home, and sometimes on the way we’d talk about whether we should move in together as if that was something we wanted to do, but we didn’t make any plans.
Eventually it was time for dancing. There was a live band, led by an aged Mancunian, with Rod Stewart hair. For some reason he was wearing army fatigues suitable for doing battle in a desert. The music was Northern Soul. The floor was packed with satin dresses and hair gel and beer-odoured breath. I want to have a soul-singing Rod Stewart lookalike from Manchester in desert army fatigues at my wedding, I shouted in Frank’s ear, and I grinned at him, and he grinned back at me, but I felt sad, and I think he felt sad, because I knew, and I think he knew, that we loved each other in the particular way that two people who were brought together by their mutual fear of love do. With restraint. Within reason. With no risk of the kind of love that might one day culminate in a wedding disco with a soul-singing aged Rod Stewart lookalike.
The band played ‘Mustang Sally’. I took Frank’s hand in mine and we danced some more. We stuck it out until November, because I think we both hoped that what we had was enough: that we could avoid the fear we shared of wanting more.
When he ended it, over the phone, it was because I had invited him to go to America with me, for Thanksgiving: I realized, he said, that I’d rather not go, that I’d rather stay in London and work on my art projects.
I cried and swore, but I was mostly angry with myself, for not getting there first. Three days later I felt OK about Frank. Free, in fact. So free that I began to wonder what, exactly, was the reason that I still lived in London.
That was the first thing that made me think: Maybe it’s time to go.
The second thing.
The second thing happened at work, not long after Frank and I broke up, after I started to feel very free. A month or so later.
I was working at an ad agency by then: I’d become a copywriter. And the thing happened at the office Christmas party.
When he heard what happened, my friend Rich remarked, If he was planning to grope some breasts, he should have known better than to grope yours.
This was true.
I’d worked in the ad agency for only five months, but had already established my reputation as a humourless feminist. Just a few weeks in, when I was the only woman in a team working on a project an art director made a rape joke to the room.
Hey, I said to the art director, do you know what jokes are never funny?
When someone played a song about sexual assault on the office loudspeaker one morning before lunch, I wrote an all-company email suggesting it be taken off the rotation.
Hey, I wrote. Can we not listen to songs about rape in the office?
I remained stony-faced in meetings while a member of the senior management team described new female hires with respect to their hotness, their blondeness, called out to the men who the company director reckoned would want to have a go at fucking them.
Is it normal, I said to my friend who also worked at a London ad agency, for a company director to describe how fuckable new women employees are? Do they do that at your company?
No, said my friend.
What I did not do was take the warning seriously. On my first day, the woman introducing me to the company walked me around the large open-plan office and told me everyone’s name. I shook their hands. Watch out for him, an account manager said, in a jolly voice, while I shook the hand of the man who would later assault me, he’s a sleazebag.
I laughed. I was a grown-up woman. I was thirty years old. I had some seniority. I was not worried. I was not scared of him.
I was not a seventeen-year-old girl being fondled from behind by another bit-part actor in the school play each time we stood behind the backstage curtains, waiting for our cue.
(You must be imagining it, said a friend, when finally I was brave enough to tell someone, to ask for help. Why would he touch you? my friend said. He has a really hot girlfriend.
I told no one else.)
I was not a twenty-three-year-old waitress whose manager was rubbing his hands down the front of her apron, below her waist.
(I waited until his shift was done, I immediately resigned to the deputy manager, I refused to make a formal complaint because it was just a waitressing job, because I couldn’t bear the idea of being made to see him again, or the idea of not being believed.)
I was not a twenty-six-year-old on work experience at a national newspaper, fetching coffee and opening post and being slapped on the thigh by the editor with a sex toy that he had lying around on his desk.
(Everyone saw it, everyone laughed, I did nothing because there was nothing official about work experience, it was not covered under the company HR policy, and because it seemed likely that if I complained I’d never work at the newspaper again.)
Of course it was an office Christmas party groping: and that’s what some people said to me immediately after it happened, when I pushed the man off me and fled to the other side of the room: It’s the office Christmas party. As if taking a colleague’s breasts, one in each hand, and twisting her nipples through her dress and bra is an appropriate way to celebrate the festive season. I’m American, I said, with the confidence of a woman living under the governance of Barack Obama. I’m American, and this is unacceptable. I left the party and I got in a cab and I called one of my friends and I told her what happened and I cried.
But I also knew that it was going to be OK: I was a grown woman. I was in a senior position. This time, no one would not believe me, and no one would laugh.
I made a complaint. I wrote the man an email, dripping with sarcasm. Non-consensual sexual contact with your female colleagues is not an appropriate way to celebrate the festive season, I wrote. I made an accompanying PowerPoint presentation, to illustrate my point. It was the second time in my life that I had made a PowerPoint presentation. The PowerPoint presentation had a Venn diagram, two circles. In one circle, I typed ‘appropriate behaviour towards female colleagues’. In the other circle, I typed ‘sexual touching’. I animated an arrow. It slid between the circles on a click. Underneath, I wrote ‘no intersection’.
I added an exclamation mark, for emphasis.
I sent the email to the man and I cc’d his manager. I have attached a short PowerPoint presentation, I wrote in my email to him, which may help to clear up any questions you have about appropriate ways to celebrate the festive season.
The manager came over immediately and apologized, as if it wa
s his fault. I’m so sorry, the manager said. Thank you, I said. I’m going to escalate it to HR, the manager said.
Thank you, I said, I don’t want him to lose his job.
Of course this was not true, but it is what I said.
(What I actually meant, I think, was that I didn’t want it to be my fault that he lost his job. I was a grown woman, I was in a senior position, no one would or could think that I was making it up. But I still felt at fault. I had attended the office Christmas party. I had drunk a cocktail. I had worn a dress with a neckline that dipped below my collarbone. I had engaged in a friendly enough relationship with a known sleazebag because the office manager had assigned me to sit at a desk next to his every day.)
He slunk into the office late, the morning after. I looked at him. I’m sorry, he said, I have no memory of what happened last night. I looked at him some more. Huh, I said.
Later in the day, he packed up to go home. It was the last day of work before the Christmas break. Merry Christmas, I said to him, even though I didn’t mean it.
We’re dealing with it, the company director said when I returned after the holiday break. I’m so sorry.
Thank you, I said.
A few days later, I was called to a meeting with the HR director.
There’s not enough evidence to fire him, the HR director said to me. I stared at the HR director. I blinked.
There are not enough witnesses, she continued.
I am a witness, I said.
We’ve given him a serious punishment, said the HR director. He’s on permanent probation, a final warning. I can’t tell you all the conditions of his probation for confidentiality reasons, but I can tell you he’s no longer allowed to drink at office functions. One drink and he’s out.
He’s still allowed to attend office functions? I said. You do realize this means I will never again attend an office function.
Oh, said the HR director.
I can’t work with him, I said.
We were told that you would be OK with working with him, said the HR director.
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