The Dating Detox (2 page)

Shampoo, condition, scrub with exfoliating gloves and body wash, brush teeth, shave armpits, then shave legs (one razor in each hand so each leg is done in about seven seconds—that’s an as-yet unpatented time-saving move I invented when I was 14). Towel, hairdryer once-over, moisturiser, deodorant, perfume.

Throughout my morning routine, my brain is on a loop titled ‘disbelief’. Because I just cannot believe it’s happened again. I picked the nicest guy I could fucking well find and it fucking well happened again.

Let’s start at the beginning.

Break-Up No.1:
Arty Jonathan. I was 22, and had been living in London about a year. (No one ever dates in their first six months of living here; they’re too busy avoiding psycho flatmates, drinking in bad chain bars and getting the wrong District line tube.) I met Arty Jonathan at a workmate’s party one night in Café Kick in Shoreditch, which was cutting-edge-indie cool at that time, rather than yuppie-indie cool as it is now. Arty Jonathan was gorgeous in a shaven-headed, mockney kind of way. He teased and flirted and flattered me, and I became helplessly giggly in his presence. He said he was an ‘avant garde’ artist—which meant he’d secure deadlines for shows at a ‘space’ and then throw something together last minute out of whatever rubbish he found on the way there. Avant garde, I now know, is French for pretentious, and any
mention of the phrase makes me want to laugh hysterically. He’d had various jobs over the previous few years (producing indie films that never got greenlit, managing bands that never got signed) and had lots of stories that made me laugh.

You’re right, of course: he was a talentless cockmonkey. I’d like to blame inexperience, or perhaps I’m just a bit thick, but he seemed interesting…I think I was probably looking for someone unlike every good public school boy I’d known at university. And his self-belief was stupendous. I’m a sucker for a confident man.

Looking back, I cringe at how green I was to be impressed by a dude like that. I was an art groupie for an artist who hadn’t really created anything. I’d sit quietly in the Bricklayer’s Arms in Hoxton, buying way more than my fair share of rounds, listening to Arty Jonathan and his friends gossip about Young British Artists that I’d never heard of and they didn’t actually know. We’d snog. He’d draw doodles for me. They made jokes about the establishment, some of which were very funny, even though I didn’t know what the establishment was yet. Then, after about two or three months of this, and just as I was starting to wonder why Arty Jonathan never did any of the things he talked about doing and notice that he recycled all his best lines and jokes, he ended it. He looked at his watch when we were walking towards the Barley Mow one Saturday lunchtime and said: ‘I have to go to King’s Cross. My girlfriend is arriving from Leeds in an hour. We’re going to Paris for the night.’

I was sledgehammer-stunned by this, rather than heartbroken. There is a difference. What hurt more was that he was a bit of a freeloader, and in fact, two days before he dumped me, he’d ‘borrowed’ £200 off me. He said his bankcard was broken. But clearly, he wanted the money to take his girlfriend to Paris. And I was too timid/stupid/polite to ask for it back. I just nodded and walked away as quickly as I could and never contacted him again. (I’ve never liked confrontation.) My friends from university started
to move to London soon afterwards, so life improved immeasurably, and I tried to chalk it up to experience. At least it knocked some of the naivety out of me.

God, Arty Jonathan was a long time ago. And yet here I am. Single. Again.

What shall I wear today?

Unsurprisingly, given my newly single status, mild heartache and general blues, I feel like being an Urban Warrior today. I throw on blacker-than-black opaque tights, black boots, a black dress and a black motorcycle jacket with studs. Hair in a ballet bun, some scary black undereyeliner and a few careful minutes with my eyebrow pencil. (I’m obsessed with my eyebrows. They are my bête noire.)

Outer Self is thus prepared for the day. Check with Inner Self. Inner Self is not as prepared. Inner Self would like to curl up at home and watch
Gossip Girl
on the internet all day, despite fact that Outer Self is old enough to play a mother on
Gossip Girl.

I eat a banana, standing up in the kitchen(ette), noting happily that my never-home flatmate/landlord Anna has left the dingy little 60s-era front room as pristine as ever. I’ve rented a room here for years. The shower is dreadful, the carpets are worn and the furniture hasn’t been changed since Anna’s parents lived here in the early 70s. But Pimlico is a good area: no real personality (it can’t decide if it’s posh/scuzzy/boring) but it’s about 15 minutes from Oxford Circus, home of practically every flagship high street fashion brand and tourist hell. My room is very quiet and light, Anna and I enjoy a good flatmate relationship (friendly without being in each other’s pockets), and it’s très, très cheap. She could actually get more for it, even given the shittiness of the place, but she doesn’t seem to care. Most of Anna’s time, when she’s not away for work, is spent with her boyfriend, who I’ve never met. I get the feeling she’s hoping to move out soon and in with him.

I give the kitchen a quick once-over with a dishcloth, ignore
the huge pile of my unopened bank statements on the breadbin, grab my lucky yellow clutch and head out the door to the tube. I would try a skippy-bunny-hop on my way out the door, but I don’t think I can manage it today. Sigh.

I swing into the newsagents to buy
Grazia
for a little pick-me-up. As I’m waiting in line, a 20-something guy walks in. He’s wearing rugby shorts and a T-shirt with ‘I taught that girlfriend that thing you like’ written across the front. I lower my gaze behind my sunglasses and check him out. Big strong thighs, good chunky knees like huge walnuts. Mmm, the rugby-playing man. Shame it comes with a predilection for obnoxious T-shirts and ‘boys-only’ nights out that end with pissing in the street.

Break-Up No.2:
Rugger Robbie. He played rugby—obviously—with some of the guys in my newly-arrived uni crowd, and after three months of random snogging, we started going out. Rugger Robbie was a classic Fulham rugby boy: easy-going and actually very sweet. You know the type: intelligent but not introspective, good humoured but not humorous. (Yep, the antithesis to Arty Jonathan.) We mostly hung out in our large group of friends; we were all earning money for the first time in our lives, and life was one long party. (Which was fortunate, as Robbie and I would quickly have run out of conversation at one-to-one dinners.) He shared a horrifically messy flat off Dawes Road with three other rugby guys, and got so shit-faced with the rugby boys every Saturday night that once I met up with him at the Sloaney Pony or Crazy Larry’s, I’d have to carry him home practically straightaway and take off his shoes and jeans for him. One time, I woke up to find him pissing on the curtains. ‘At least I got out of bed,’ he said apologetically the next day. For some reason, this didn’t bother me at the time.

I liked Rugger Robbie despite his habit of getting apoplectically drunk because he just seemed so straightforward and familiar after the strange, intimidating pretensions of the East London
crowd. And he had a really, really good body. (Ahem.) So I settled into it and decided he was an excellent boyfriend, and was quite content with life. Until, after about three months of properly being together, he said, ‘I’m going to Thailand for Christmas. I’ll call you when I get back.’ And then texted me in mid-January:

I met someone else in Thialand I’m sorry I’ll see you around

Dumped via text. With a misspelling. Or typo, to give him the benefit of the doubt.

Sure, it was no great love affair—Rugger Robbie never really made me laugh and frequently responded to things I said with ‘you’re bonkers’. (I’m so not, but since he had no imagination, I blew his fucking mind.) But I’d grown quite fond of him, so it hurt. That’s the thing about being dumped. Even if you don’t care about him that much, it still hurts. Because if you don’t care much about the dude and you’re still dating him, he must not care about you far, far more to actually go to the trouble of dumping you.

I did have boyfriends at university, since you ask, but they hardly count. It was so much easier then. You’d see them in lectures or at parties and get a crush, and know them via their friends so you could weed out freaks, and flirt for ages and then finally snog, and once you snogged three times, boom! You were going out. Then you’d both agree it was over and move on to someone else. It was easy. Not anymore.

Oh fuck me, again. I can’t believe it’s happened again.

As I walk up towards Victoria station,
Grazia
tucked underneath my arm, I decide to call Bloomie. She gets to work by 7 am every day, because she has a high-flying job. In a bank. (Note: despite high-flying job in aforementioned arsehole industry, Bloomie is not an arsehole.)

‘Mushi mushi?’

‘You know, Bloomerang, you’re not Japanese.’

‘You better now, Sassafras, my little drama queen?’

‘Dude, I give up. If you pick someone interesting, they’re a bastardo and they’ll dump you. If you pick someone kind, they’ll be boring and, apparently, they’ll still dump you. What. The. Fuck.’

‘So you are better, darling?’

‘Yes. I’m
fine.
I’m just fucking over…this…shit.’

Sometimes when I’m upset I get dramatic. It makes me laugh. And that kind of makes me feel better. Even when I’m lost in Break-Up Memory Lane.

‘Sass, darling,’ Bloomie whispers. I don’t think talking on the phone is really approved of in her office. ‘I thought we agreed last night that it was better you stopped toying with Posh Mark? You would have thrown him back into the sea sooner or later.’

Bloomie is one of my best friends, and manages to say ‘dahling’ at least four or five times a minute. It’s not pretentious from her, for some reason. She grew up in Chicago, as her dad’s American, but her parents moved to London when she was about 16, so her accent is a bit of a mongrel between East Coast USA and posh London. She’s been exactly the same since the first time we met, on the first day of university.

Bloomie is also a total alpha: always leading the way, immensely more self-assured, together and tougher than I am, and sometimes—and she knows this too—rather spiky. But she’s utterly lovely and funny, of course. Why else would I be friends with her? And since I’m the kind of person who’s quite happy standing on the sidelines smoking fags and making quips rather than leading the pack, we fit together very well. Together with Kate, who I’ll tell you more about later, we’ve seen each other through about 19 boyfriends, 16 holidays together, probably over 250 coffee-and-fags-and-shopping Saturday afternoons, and truly countless hangovers, yet we still don’t run out of things to talk about.

‘I must be doing something wrong. I’ve been dumped six times in a row, Bloomie!’

‘Darling…it’s just really, really, really, really fucking bad luck.’

Suddenly the reality of both statements hits me. I really have been dumped six times in a row. And it can’t just be bad luck. I must be an absolute loser and no one will ever love me again. (Why would Bloomie say I am a drama queen? I mean really.) So I start to cry, ish. Mostly I snuffle into the phone. Bloomie makes soothing noises for a while, and then she clears her throat and says abruptly:

‘Darling, seriously, I have to work. Let’s have a drink tonight. We can talk about this properly…I’m not being, you know, negative, but I don’t want to see you get into a post-Rick spiral…’

How could she remind me of that? ‘Sheesh, of course I won’t. You’re on for drinks, though.’

‘Good, darling, that’s the spirit. I’ll ask Katie too, and email with detes later. Sayonara.’

This perks me up, naturally, and I stride, like the Urban Warrior my outfit makes me, to the tube station, with a cheeriness I don’t really feel. Despite my heartbreak/ache/mild graze, I can’t help but notice a few good-looking men as I walk through and down to the Victoria line. They’re all heading towards the District line. I wonder where they go.

Where was I? Ah yes. Now, on Break-Up Memory Lane, we come to a large speedbump.

Break-Up No.3:
Clapham Brodie. I met him in the Bread and Roses pub in Clapham just after I turned 25, following a long dry spell during which I had an excellent time and met no one I really fancied. At all. I had lots of flirtations, of course, and still went on a few dates—just to keep my tools sharp. When none of the guys tried particularly hard to keep seeing me after one or two (or three or four) dates, however, it was actually more depressing than if I’d actually liked them, if that makes sense.
But I really liked Brodie. Damnit, he was cute, with perfect teeth, like an American. And he really made me laugh.

Clapham Brodie was a product manager, whatever the hell that is, and lived in Clapham. (Clapham is an area in South London that is popular with young people because it’s quite affordable, quite safe and quite nice…oh God it’s boring.) All his friends lived in Clapham, and every restaurant or bar he ever went to was in Clapham. ‘I will never leave Clapham,’ he said on our first date. ‘It is the centre of the universe.’ He was full of quips that tickled me, though looking back, I’m not sure he was joking about that.

So. Clapham Brodie. Very funny guy. He kept up a running patter of playful silliness that I adored. We had long, giggly dinners at Metro and the Pepper Tree, where he made up food voices (‘don’t eat meeeeeeee!’ squeaked pasta, ‘who are you callin’ chicken?’ barked stirfry—I know what you’re thinking, but it was funny at the time). We danced to 80s music in Café Sol on Fridays and bad dance music in Infernos on Saturdays (if we were drunk enough to consider it), and spent Sundays in the Sun pub, people-watching and making up voice-over conversations for strangers. I found him hilarious, if a tiny bit deluded about his own intelligence (he once corrected my pronunciation of hyperbole, incorrectly). And we never talked about anything serious, ever. I’m not a particularly serious person, so that was fine by me.