by Holly Bourne
Oops.
Better Out Than In
April: Any of you ever been told to use the container method? It work for you?
Anya: Ahh, that old chestnut.
Anya: It only works for me in the first two weeks of my period cycle.
Anya: But then again, that’s the case with every positive thing in my life.
Charlotte: OMG! The same! I feel like such a kick-ass trauma-annihilating warrior, then I get PMS and suddenly it’s like I’ve never had any therapy at all.
Hazel: Yep. Me too! All my emotional spirals come in the days leading up to my period. Why do they never tell you this in therapy?
Charlotte: Recovery tip no.1: Never judge your recovery on days 26-28.
Hazel: I’m so jealous your cycle is only 28 days long.
Hazel: Since having Jack, I’ve literally never had a regular period. It’s so hard to tell if I’m legitimately going mad or not.
Anya: In short, April, the container method is OK. But nothing works as well as coming to class and kicking the shit out of a punch bag.
Charlotte: Seconded.
Anya: You coming this week?
April: Hell yes.
When five thirty eventually comes around, I’m feeling much better. After a day of standard behaviour, no one’s acting like I could spontaneously combust any more. I’ve dragged myself out of email backlog hell. I’ve organised the rest of my workload for this week, and I have messages pinging in from my new boxing friends. Even Megan seems improved. She emails to let me know she’s managed to send two whole emails.
Gretel: I’ve got a hankering for some ramen. Fancy changing plan to suit my urges?
Joshua: You want soup?! It’s 30 degrees!
I’m applying my not-there make-up in the bathroom when I get his reply. ‘Yes, in this heat,’ I say to my reflection, before blotting my just-bitten lip stain. ‘Gretel is just random like that. She’ll be eating ice cream in winter next, crazy cat. Doesn’t shit like that just make you feel aliiiiiiiive?’
Gretel: Eating hot food cools you down. Science.
Gretel: Carpe diem, Joshy. YOLO. #BeARebel
Joshua: OK OK, O Captain, my Captain! Let’s go for spicy soup.
He’s there before me when I bluster my way into the empty noodle house, sweat pouring down my body from the long bus journey. He’s sitting nursing a beer under the ceiling of fans, and he stands when I get in, looking slightly unimpressed.
‘Gretel, hi.’ He kisses my cheek formally. ‘They wouldn’t seat me until you arrived.’ Pass-agg laces the sentence and I raise an eyebrow, looking around the deserted restaurant.
‘Well, it’s totally empty so I wouldn’t panic,’ I say.
‘Hmm.’ He turns his back to me, alerts the waiter. ‘She’s here now,’ he says conspiratorially and I raise my eyebrows again as we’re led past long tables with high stools to a little set up in the corner.
‘Right under a fan, perfect.’ I smile over, but Josh just picks up the menu. ‘What are you drinking?’ he asks it.
‘Um, a white wine maybe?’ I eyebrow him once more but he’s too engrossed micro-reading the descriptions of extras. Something is up and I panic for a moment that he’s found out somehow – my stomach turning itself into cinnamon rolls laced with anxiety.
‘Your housemate any better?’ he asks the menu.
‘A little better. It will take a while.’
‘Yeah.’
The waiter reappears with a notepad. She hasn’t left us very long but it’s not like there are any other customers to wait upon. ‘You guys know what you want to drink?’ she asks, pen poised.
I smile with all of Gretel’s charm. ‘A white wine please.’ I gesture towards Joshua, who is forced to look up.
‘Another of these please.’ He points to his pint.
‘Great. Coming up.’
Before I have a chance to make eye contact, Joshua’s vanished behind the menu again. I scratch my neck, wondering what Gretel’s done wrong. If he did know, I reckon he’d be less passive aggressive than this and more aggressive aggressive. My stomach loosens slightly.
‘You know what you’re going to get?’ I offer one last olive branch for whatever crime I’ve committed.
‘Well, ramen, clearly.’
That’s enough now. Time to take the power back. I shake my head then jump off my stool, and, without saying a word, I walk out of the restaurant. I’m enveloped by the steam of heatwave Soho as I walk away slowly, waiting for him to inevitably follow. It feels deliciously overdramatic, but also fitting considering his behaviour. I wish I’d thought to do this all the moments in the past when I’ve been cold-shouldered. I’ve just reached the corner when I hear him.
‘Gretel? Wait! What the hell?’
I keep walking a few more steps. One … two … three.
‘Gretel!’ There’s urgency to his voice. The squeak of surrender as the power floats through the city’s mugginess and lands back into my hands. I turn around, looking bored.
‘Where are you going?’ he asks.
‘I don’t do passive aggression,’ I say. ‘Don’t meet me for dinner and then not speak to me. I won’t stand for that sort of crap, Joshua.’ I put my hand on my hip. ‘We’re not 12. If I’ve pissed you off, tell me.’
He glows red with guilt. ‘I’m sorry.’ He offers up the apology instantly. ‘I’m, well, can we just go back inside?’
‘I don’t know. Are you going to make eye contact?’
‘Yes.’
‘Are you going to explain to me what’s going on, like the grown adult man that you are?’
He stares at his feet, looking nothing like a grown adult man. ‘Yes.’
‘All right then. Let’s go back in.’
The waiter’s holding our drinks patiently when we return – nonplussed, unbothered – this city rendering her unshockable. I take my wine, thank her, and drink a giant glug as I clamber back up onto my stool. Joshua’s still blushing as he sits. He takes a sip of his pint and places it down, before squeezing his hands together like he’s trying to juice them.
The waiter holds up her pen again. ‘You guys ready to order?’
I shake my head. ‘Not quite yet. Maybe give us a few minutes?’
She nods and exits stage left. We’re left alone and I lift my face to the ceiling fan, letting it whip my fringe off my forehead.
‘I didn’t mean to be weird,’ Joshua starts. I don’t say it’s OK because it isn’t.
‘I just, well, I’m a little bit upset to be honest.’ He looks up earnestly, still attacking his hands.
‘Upset about what?’
‘It’s just … I know we’ve not talked about it, but, well, I mean, you met my friends the other day. And I don’t just, like, let them meet anyone. I thought that went without saying. I thought we were on the same page.’
I catch an inkling of where this is going, and, when I realise I’m right, a mist of surreal descends down on me. I’m in the middle of a ‘what are we?’ conversation and it’s the first time in my life I’ve not started it. I am never, ever, on the receiving end of these kinds of desperate-but-pretending-they’re-not chats. I take another sip of wine while my stomach tries to figure out what emotion it’s feeling. Excitement that I’m winning? Or guilt? Or, maybe even excitement that he likes me this much?
Not me, I remind myself. Gretel.
Joshua stumbles in to fill the silence. ‘Anyway, when your housemate turned up on Saturday, I know she was upset and everything but, well … Gretel, it was clear she’d never even heard of me.’ He makes eye contact and it hurts to look back at him, confirming the emotion I’m feeling as ‘guilt’. Guilt mixed with admiration that he’s brave enough to say all this. ‘She hasn’t, has she? You live with her. You’re clearly very close friends. Have you ever mentioned me at all?’
I shake my head and tell him the truth. ‘No, I guess I haven’t.’
His face collapses. ‘Right.’ He says it again. ‘Right.’ Another sip of beer as
he faces the bittersweet relief of knowing you’re not being paranoid after all.
‘I mean, I’ve mentioned you now.’
‘Because you had to.’
‘It’s not like that. Why are you being weird about it?’
Joshua flinches and the guilt intensifies, the surreal mist getting thicker. I’ve had that hurtful collection of words chucked at me so many times and now I’m the one saying them. I panic. I do not like to hurt people. I start backpedalling. ‘Sorry,’ I reach over my hand and take his. ‘I didn’t mean that.’
‘No, its fine,’ he says, when it isn’t.
‘I don’t know why I didn’t tell her. I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.’
His chest inflates as he tries to puff it out. ‘You didn’t.’
‘Right.’
The waiter reappears and jolts us back to societal appropriateness. ‘Ready to order?’
We both want ramen – Josh orders the beef, me the chicken. ‘Want a side of edamame beans?’ I ask as we hand over the menus.
‘Yeah, sure.’
With no laminated A4 to use as conversational shields, we both start plucking ramen accessories out of the tray as a distraction while I wait for Joshua to explain. I snap chopsticks in two, rubbing them together to get rid of any splinters. Joshua grates peanut dust into his hand. The childlikeness of it throbs something in my gut.
I am hurting this man.
This is the first time I can see the hurt from my lies first-hand. He swipes the peanut dust into a napkin and smiles as he looks up at me, and the guilt sinks into my bones. This power doesn’t feel liberating like I thought it would. It feels confusing, like a dull ache, like I’ve let myself down. End this, I think to myself, smiling back. Now is the time to end this.
All I need to do is say it’s not working. Say it’s not me it’s you. Say we’ve just met at the wrong time. Say I’m not over my ex. Say I need to focus on work. Say there just isn’t a spark. Say it say it say it. His heart will be mildly bruised. He may not want to frequent this particular ramen place for a while. It will hurt for a day or two but his heart will receive minimal damage. Say it can’t go on. Say you’ve met someone else. Say you’re emotionally unavailable. Say it say it say it.
But I don’t say anything.
And, once more, Joshua flings himself into the silence. ‘Gretel, I’m not seeing anyone else,’ he says plainly. The man returned. Sitting up in his stool. ‘I know we’ve not had this conversation. I thought it was kind of implied, but now I’m not sure. So we need to talk about it, I think. Are you seeing anyone else?’
I have a split second to grasp Gretel’s answer. ‘No.’
He takes a breath of relief which he tries not to show. ‘Cool. OK. I mean, it would be cool if you were. As I said, we’ve never spoken about it.’
‘I don’t sleep around.’
‘I know, I wasn’t suggesting you do. Sorry, I mean, even if you do, that’s fine. Gah. OK, look …’ Josh picks up my hand and inhales courage from the air around him. ‘What are we, Gretel?’ he asks.
‘What do you mean?’ Though I know what he means, of course I know.
‘I mean, are we together? Not together? Seeing each other?’ He laughs. ‘I’ve been out of the game a long time. I’m not really sure how any of this works.’
End it end it end it my conscious screams, as I watch his hope and his heart being offered out, flecked in peanut dust. This is the line I can’t cross. This is where staying makes me a bad person. Makes this social experiment something with serious collateral damage. Joshua and Gretel can’t be together because she doesn’t exist. The poor guy just asked a phantom to be his girlfriend. He doesn’t know this, however. He’s just thinks Gretel is Gretel. Why wouldn’t he? I must stop this, stop hurting him. But I can’t. And not because I just want revenge. I hate to admit it, but part of me can’t stand the thought of not seeing him again.
‘Joshua, are you asking me to be your girlfriend?’
‘Well, I mean, I’m not sure what the term is when you’re our age. And I know we’ve not known each other a huge amount of time. But I really like you Gretel.’
I clamp down on his fingers, feeling the pulse from his wrist beat through my hands. ‘I really like you too.’
‘So?’
‘So, I guess that means we’re “going steady”.’
He digests what I’ve said and then his face splits into a smile, carving through the stubble on his cheeks. ‘Really?’
‘Of course.’ My smile matches his. I laugh. He laughs. Happiness spews out of us. Our hands mesh. I feel like a confetti cannon should fire out over us. Joshua leans over to kiss me. He leans over to do it again. He’s a different man – changed, loosened. We’re interrupted by the food arriving, forcing us to release one another’s grip.
‘Coming out for ramen was a brilliant idea,’ he says, picking up his chopsticks. ‘The things you make me do, Gretel.’
I pick up my own chopsticks, smiling back. He’s different because he’s relaxed. Because I’ve reassured him. He has pinned Gretel down. We are on the same page after all.
He, quite cutely, checks a few times. ‘It’s not too soon? I keep counting how many dates we’ve had and thinking maybe it’s too soon.’
‘It’s not too soon.’
We kiss again. We slurp our ramen and giggle about how unattractive we both look. We order more drinks. We kiss more over the table, knocking over the nut grinder. We kiss out in the heavy air of Soho, pressed against a wall. We hold hands on the Tube. We stumble into his flat laughing and kissing.
The way he looks at Gretel … If only I could be looked at like that by a man. I pretend I am her, because it’s easier, because it’s nice to pretend for myself sometimes. Pretend I am fun, carefree, that I’m not dragging myself through life with tonnes of trauma and baggage trailing behind me like chains, pinning me to my sadness. I need a cold shower, I say. He needs one too. We shower together, shrieking at how cold we can make the water go. Kissing with our bodies slick, him looking like a child with his hair wet, teeth clashing with teeth, laughter turning into shivers, wrapping ourselves up in his towels and rubbing one another dry. We inevitably make love, and I not-so-inevitably find myself climaxing again. Clutching onto his hair and turning my head into the pillow.
‘Are you OK?’ he whispers, between my legs.
‘Yes.’ It’s the truth.
We lie together afterwards like pretzels that weren’t separated properly in the factory. A tangle of limbs. He keeps stroking my face. I can feel so much love coming off him, but it’s not for me. It’s not for the person I am. I want to hide in this moment. Curl up in it. Pretend it’s the truth. Pretend a man is capable of loving me the way Joshua seems to love Gretel. Does any woman get to feel like this? Better women? Ones with less raggedy edges? It seems so unfair that the people who deserve love like this the most, the ones who have gone through the most torture, are the ones who are the least likely to get it. How the legitimate need for it repels it, and increases the odds that you’ll never get it. We reward simple people with love. People without trauma. And we punish those who dare to get scathed by life, even when it’s not their fault, like their pain is a contaminant.
I lie in Joshua’s arms and focus on his touch as he traces my stomach with his thumb. ‘I’m going to miss you this weekend when you’re away on this hen do,’ he says.
‘I’ll miss you too,’ Gretel says.
I will miss him.
And what that means scares me.
• Gretel’s Guide to Becoming The Girlfriend and Staying The Girlfriend
* * *
You’re a girlfriend now. That changes things. Girlfriends have different requirements from girls who are merely dating. You’ve made it past the first round of tests, but the stakes are higher now, and therefore the prizes better.
Girlfriends need to be that bit more nurturing than dating girls. You need to cook him meals and rub his head and ask how his day was and actually give a
shit about his response. Don’t nurture too much though, it annoys them. If you overdo it, they will flinch and act like you’re trying to break them. ‘It’s not a big deal, don’t make it into a big deal,’ is a sign of over-scrambling the nurturing eggs. Best not to talk too much when you’re nurturing. Stick to the cooking and the head rubs, the silent nodding, and the occasional bland words of encouragement. Less of the hardcore talking, you annoying bitch.
You can be dirtier in bed now. In fact, it’s good to save the filthier side of you for the Girlfriend Zone. He’ll be worrying slightly that, if you do indeed pass all the invisible tests, he’ll be stuck having sex with just you for the rest of his life. This will concern him, poor thing. I mean, he deserves a life of good, filthy sex. Can’t give that up for just anyone, especially not you. Amp up the whore to counteract all this new commitment. You need to reward him for declining his natural impulses for the compromise of you, and reassure him that, if you do end up getting married, he can still slap your arse or jizz across your chest or do it hanging upside down, or whatever the hell it is he needs to do to feel like he’s not sacrificing any of his sexual self by agreeing to put up with you.
By the way, now that you’re his girlfriend, you have to be totally OK with every single thing he’s doing with his life. Do not expect too much quality time, certainly don’t need it. You’re his girlfriend now, God, isn’t that e-fucking-nough?
The elephant in the room at this point in proceedings is pretending you don’t know that he’s looking at you and thinking ‘are you Wife Material?’ That’s the test. If he can’t see you as Wife Material, you’re out on your ear, sista. Table for one at Spinstersville. By the way, Wife Material is slightly different for every man so have fun figuring that one out. But being a girlfriend = imagining a future, so make sure you’re fitting his version of what his future can be. Paint a masterpiece every day of the life he could share with you.
When it comes to kids, he’s thinking about you and them now. Wondering how you’ll mother up. How much you will fuck up his precious children – without considering whether he’ll bring any fucking-upness into the equation. But he’ll be looking for signs in you. So don’t have any mental health problems, or hereditary diseases if you can possibly help it. Remember though, he may not be ready for children. He certainly doesn’t want you to be ready for them until the exact moment he’s ready for them. So, maternal-wise, walk the tightrope. Sure, yes, you want kids ‘some day’. I mean, the man has to spawn his replicates and you are the vessel to provide that. Don’t not provide that, you selfish twat. Don’t be one of those weird women who hate children. I mean, there’s just something wrong with women who don’t want children, isn’t there? But don’t be too maternal either, jeez, that will freak him out. He doesn’t just want to be a sperm donor, how hurtful is that to his feelings? ‘I want children when I’ve lived my life enough,’ is a good thing to say. Nice and vague. Say that a lot. When and if he brings it up.