back up blog

I saw you, and you looked happy.  She wanted you in a way I never could. She nuzzled into your neck, lips-to-skin not enough so pressing her cheek to yours, her arm to your body, the length of her leg to the length of you.  When I had done that, I didn't mean it.   I tried.  I wanted to.  I wanted the mis-matched pieces to fit, because I wanted to be part of a two. I don't now. But back then, I did. I wish I had been kinder about explaining that it wasn't you. That is was the maths of it. The equation of our parts. I wish I'd been kinder in general. Because, that's just it: you are kind and gentle and sensitive and I treated you as "not enough", somehow, because you weren't what I needed in those moments, what I'd imagined, and I knew that if I came over to say hi you'd continue to be kind and gentle and sensitive and that, truth told, I don't deserve that.  Not from you. Not when she looked so happy, too.

I hung out with the girls used to nanny, because I love them and miss them and they teach me so very much, and the seven-year old fell off her scooter on the way to the cafe because of a Very Big Stone. She cried, it was the end of the world, and then we decided to take the stone home to (wash, first, and then) keep on a shelf, so that we could show it who the boss is. And you know what? Ain't that just it? You can get tripped up and be afraid, or you can get tripped up, wrangle the motherfucker that dared, own it, and then take it home to draw a moustache on in Sharpie, next to the word "LOSER". 

The message said, "I wonder about what you wrote, in your column, about the guy you dated who wanted to be friends - did it work? How did you do it? I'm in a similar situation, you see..." I didn't know how to write back that the man who "just wanted to be friends" sat across from me drinking wine and talked about how he thought what we'd like in the bedroom might "match", and who looked at my bum when I went to the bar but wanted me to know about who he'd been sleeping with. The man who "just wanted to be friends" stayed out until 2 a.m. in hotel bars and pressed his body up to mine, and my resolve was weak and I so desperately wanted to be the friend, you see. So desperately wanted the sense of self it takes to say you did not dent my fragile heart because I forgot that the biggest sense of self would be to admit it and walk away. When will I learn that I have nothing to prove? I wanted him to change his mind, I suppose. I did a

And the music plays and the moon peeks through and the darkness of outside means we see ourselves so very clearly in the giant glass doors. We play the song again and again and again, and we stretch and we spin and we kick and we do everything else we've seen on the television, on the internet, in that music video about loving deeply and wholly and for a very long time. I don't know much about romantic love. Not really. I'm trying to love myself into the answer and the question, I know that much. But with you three girls, in that house at the top of Islington and that song playing for the fourth time in a row. Well. My heart grew a size in a way no man has ever encouraged, and I overflowed in gratitude that three children who don't belong to me could remind me what it is, indeed, to love.

It's not the answers that impress me. It's the way you ask the questions.

They say to stick with the people who pull the magic out of you and not the madness. But darling, You do both.

We order the soft shell crab burgers with chilli mayo and fries and laugh because it's kind of hard to say "soft shell" quickly without sounding like Sean Connery. We're against the clock, which means we must focus, and I suppose that's helpful because it forces me to say the thing I'm afraid of. Embarrassed of. Shy about. I've got no business trying to do this thing I am so excited by, but she is kind to me, encouraging, tells me she wants to help. That she believes in me. That I am a storyteller, and I get to decide how each story is told, and if I want to stand on stage for this story, then that is okay. I can. I must. I don't call myself a journalist, because I don't feel entitled to. I didn't train for years in newsrooms, don't know how magazines really work, or what it is to file copy several times a day. I don't call myself an "author", really, because my books aren't fiction, they're "just" about me.

I watch them at the bar together, her hand on his knee and his foot between hers and the look that I have worn so very many times that the truth of it shocks me, that another woman owns it too – the look that says, “Please consume me.”

I sent flowers. I sent flowers because I am your feminist fucking Valentine, and I held my breath for a night and a day because I wasn’t sure why I did it and what you’d think it might mean and I guess I thought that maybe your reaction would help us both to figure it out. I wrote on the note that I am proud of you, too. I wrote on the note that I am proud of you, too, because there is a time delay to our conversations. I don’t trust you, yet, not even close, and sometimes you say things and because I try not to listen to what you say but rather what you do, it’s not until I get home that I realise. Piece fragments together – the parts of my grey-area subtext and your black-and-white words. You tell me often and easily that you’re proud of me. I don’t know why I don’t want to listen. I did it when you called me your friend, too. You said you’d marvel at seeing me collect a BAFTA, one day, one day soon, and you’d say-- but I interrupted you. You’ll say, oh hey! That chick sucked my dick

And then I had a thought: what if I don't have to attend the argument, just because I've been invited?

There’s a moment of weakness, when it could go either way. I could send the message that asks how you are after all this time half-hoping that you're different, now. That I’d gotten it all confused those summers ago when I didn’t want you inside of me but didn’t tell you no. I don’t like to think about it not too much because unpicking that night that was almost morning makes me feel like I did something wrong, except I didn’t. It was you. It was you and I only realised that for the first time when I saw your face on the telly. You became the poster child for something so very good and so very worthy and so very important. As I changed the channel I thought how strange it was that with an audience your compassion overflows  and I wonder how many us know that it doesn't spill past a closed door.

Darling, you feel like an imposter because you surrounded yourself  with the best.  The people you know,  the company you keep,  it’s in the top percent of what it does and it makes you feel like you don’t belong there.  You do.