It’s unfair that the more you like someone, the less attractive you are around them. I fancy this friend of mine a lot, so my behaviour towards him is particularly weird. I’ve written a column about this guy before but I’m not saying which one because then he’ll know I’m talking about him. After we first kissed I left long gaps between my replies to his messages because I liked the idea of him becoming anxious waiting on me: lobbing his phone across the room because a Twitter notification got his hopes up; unable to concentrate on the sentences in his book because he couldn’t stop thinking about the cute way my nose flicks up at the end. When I saw him at parties I’d walk away from conversations with him while they still interested me because I wanted to seem aloof and hard to pin down. I rang him when I was drunk thinking it would be cute and crazy – instead I went on a rant about how carrots have too much of an overwhelming flavour and when he wouldn’t let me come over, dramatically announced: “I don’t even know who you are anymore.” I was always trying to make him jealous, putting my hand on other men’s shoulders, laughing like a witch at their jokes. I invited him to a party and then uninvited him, then invited him again. I acted very strangely.
I didn’t think there was much wrong with this behaviour bar my execution of it. Told myself I’d do better next time, and planned what I would wear while I was waiting for that next time to arrive. That is, until a couple of days ago when – about a year too late – I started watching Netflix’s Twentysomethings: Austin. The reality show centres around eight single guys and girls who’ve just moved into adjacent houses and who’re trying to find themselves in their careers and love lives.
Within the first 15 minutes, I was struggling to watch the way Abbey acted around Kamari – not because it was particularly inappropriate or upsetting, but because it reminded me so much of my own behaviour around this friend of mine, and other men. She adopted this very intense, combative flirting style. Leaning so far into Kamari it looked like she might fall over, staring at him with syrupy come-fuck-me eyes while licking his ice-cream off her spoon. She told him she didn’t want anything serious. Kamari said it was cool because he didn’t either. But then the first time he flirted with someone else, she walked right up to them and stood so close their shoulders were rubbing. When Kamari said hi, Abbey pretended to not remember who he was. “You know I know you,” he said. “Not that well,” she responded, rolling her eyes, running her tongue over her teeth.
It ended, eventually, and when it did, Kamari started flirting with Roxy. This second girl behaves completely differently. Rather than squashing their interactions down to barbed back and forths, Roxy cut them wide open, told him about being homesick for her grandma’s mac and cheese and gave him hugs that lasted longer than they’re supposed to. Kamari made shrimp and grits for Roxy and he looked so nervous when she ate it. After they had sex, she checked in, and even though there was a strong possibility of rejection, told him straight: “I like the way I feel when I’m with you.” I was practically screaming at the TV when he responded: “Whenever I’m around you I feel like I hold myself up to a certain standard because you’re passionate about everything from your family to standing up for what you believe in, the people you care about – and you’re going to go to war for them and yourself. It’s easy to be around you.”
In playing games, Abbey didn’t win anything, she only invited Kamari to compete and the game never ended, they just carried on going round and round the board. Roxy laid all her cards down on the table and he saw that there was so much great stuff on there. So much he picks her up and spins her around, burying his head in her hair like it’s the best smelling thing in the world. It’s shit always being the girl that men don’t take seriously. Someone to flirt with and not to wife. The starter before the main course. But a lot of the reason isn’t because you’re not funny or hot or smart or interesting, it’s the way you behave, the signals you give off (and also because a lot of men are awful).
I wasn’t like this with my friend before. In the lead up to our first, second, third kiss I acted around him the same as I always did – largely because I had no expectations of anything progressing. I told him about myself, like how recently I’d taken to listing the best possible scenario for the things I was anxious about to calm myself down. Like “I will go to the gym and the workout will be good and no-one will come up to me and tell me I’m doing it all wrong” and “I will look really nice in that dress and I don’t need to buy something else just so I feel like I have more options”. He told me to keep going because he liked hearing the things that managed to calm me down. We laughed about how the five minutes while you sit in a car and wait for the other person to come back with the parking ticket are the most blissful and warm on earth. I asked him about how decorating his room was going, told him his top looked nice. I guess somewhere along the way I just stopped feeling like myself was enough. I thought that in order to win his interest I would have to trick him into it because no one would do it by choice. But I’m sure he could smell the desperation on me like I could watching Abbey. In pretending not to care I only showed how much I really did.
“I’m going to apologise to him for making things awkward. Like ‘I started to develop feelings – I don’t think you’re into it – which is fine. I just want to draw a line under it now.’”
I could tell my friend Vicky thought it was a shit idea because her mouth bunched up at one side.
“Do you have to tell him? Can’t you just draw a line under it yourself? What if he didn’t even realise and now you’ve just embarrassed yourself?”
“I think I need to open myself up to the possibility of hurt,” I told her. “I think that will stop other bigger hurts from happening.”
That last thing I said made me think about when I got my first Covid jab. It really stung, and my arm felt like it was filled with concrete afterwards. When I went in for the second one the doctor told me it would have felt like that because I tensed my arm as the needle came towards me; he told me to relax by wiggling my toes. I barely felt it at all that second time, just a small scratch on the surface of my skin. It was unnerving opening myself up to the needle in that way, but in the end it reduced the overall pain I felt. I need to do the same thing with love, need to show people who I am, trusting that it will make them more accepting of me, knowing there’s a possibility that it won’t.
I’m not going to lie, I didn’t message him – I typed something out on the notes app but then I just left it there. But I did drop the act. I saw him at a party and told him that I really enjoyed the photos he’d been taking recently. I showed him a picture of this letter my grandad wrote that I thought he’d find interesting and stayed in the conversation until he left to go to the toilet. I haven’t seen him again for a little while. But earlier today when I was laying in bed thinking about him, rather than swallowing that feeling back down inside myself and letting it come out again via a drunken call, I messaged him to tell him that I was. It was so exposing I felt as if my skin was peeling away all raw and pink under the sun. I looked up to the sky and said give me all you’ve got.