The One - No one said it would be easy (18 page)

And that was that. I didn’t really want to accept it, but when one day I found his key to my flat in my letterbox – no card, no note, not even an envelope, just stark and naked and alone, oh terrible sight! – the truth of it started to slowly seep through to my poor love-and-war-torn brain cells. What followed were eighteen months of the worst lovesickness ever. I pulled the complete I’m-in-mourning bullshit. Had one or two little stories on the side but nothing worked. It didn’t get any better. I was totally addicted to Number Sixteen, like a drug, I wanted nothing and nobody other than him. I threw all his stuff away and hoped for relief but that didn’t help either. Whenever I saw a car like the one he had, it shot through me like a flash. I was a bundle of nerves, an easy victim to bullying by nasty colleagues, cried all the time and felt that everything sucked. I just wasn’t me anymore. Hadn’t been for a long time. I just wanted to be out of it, and that’s exactly what I did. I didn’t want to think anymore, or ponder and speculate. I just wanted to somehow get through the day. Every day. And so I started to smoke pot almost daily, just so my heart and brain could get knocked out for a few hours. This method is extremely reliable, as smoking pot will render you beautifully apathetic, which was exactly what I was aiming for. However, there are certain spectacular drawbacks. You stack on weight like crazy, from all those attacks of munchies. And you become very forgetful, have complete blackouts during the day, are unable to recall simple words and phrases. But I didn’t care. It was miles better than this unrelenting heartache.   

One night, fairly out of it at some boring party, I couldn’t restrain myself and dug out my mobile and sent him a yearning text message, that I was missing him so and blablabla. This was T H E worst mistake any ex can make. But, miraculously, it worked! He wrote back. And said I should come over, right this very moment. Incredulously, I stared at my mobile. My heart leaped and I raced out of there like a scalded cat, leaving a cloud of dust behind. I felt like a junkie preparing a shot after a long withdrawal. I just couldn’t believe my unexpected luck! I yelled at the taxi driver to please go faster. Breathlessly I stood in front of his door. The door I had missed so much. He opened it and we fell on each other. God it was awesome, it was so good, it all felt as hot, as amazing as it had done before, only now, practically illicit, it was even hotter. We had wild no-holds-barred sex, we drank, smoked pot and cigarettes, and did it all night. I couldn’t think of anything I wanted more than for time to just please please stop right now. In-between I kept bursting into tears, it was such a relief to lie in his arms again, to smell him, feel him, to have amazing sex with him and yet to know that nothing more than this one night will come of it.

Like being on drugs. You know that you’re only feeling this good because the drug has just kicked in, and when you wake up in the morning and the effect of the drug is gone, you’ll drop into such an abyss, you will hurt, you will suffer. And still you do it. And that’s of course exactly what happened. The next morning was sobering, the bright light as merciless as the march of time. Shit. I collected my stuff and left. Of course I hoped again that Number Sixteen might follow me or at least ring me a few days later. But it didn’t happen. I’m not Alice in All-My-Wishes-Come-True-Wonderland. But this sex-with-the-ex-attack was the beginning of our whenever-one-of-us-needs-to-s/he-can-ring-the-other-one-and-then-we’ll-meet-and-screw” phase. Even when we were both trying to have other relationships, we still remained faithful to our occasional tête-à-tête. Sex with each other was simply too good. We were the sexual dream couple par excellence. We met up regularly every six to eight weeks. I was still heavily in love with him, and I knew that each time the freshly healed wound would be scratched open yet again, and that it would take weeks for the bleeding to stop, but I didn’t care. Better this than nothing.

Once I met him in the same bar where we’d met and kissed for the very first time. He was there with his best friend, the one he hung out with regularly. The two of them appeared to have consumed a number of consciousness-expanding substances already, they seemed a trifle out of it. But they were very sweet together. Number Sixteen immediately pulled me close and kissed me, which always felt fantastic. It felt even more fantastic when I noticed that his friend was watching us with great interest, leaning back nonchalantly and enjoying our performance. Then his friend, who was very cute – dark buzz cut hair, dark eyes, olive skin, well built – started to compliment me: I smelled so nice and looked so nice and felt so nice. I only realized just then that he was stroking my arm. He wasn’t unpleasant or pushy, he was in fact very charming. My brain flew into action: if you play your cards right tonight, you might make one of your long-cherished sexual fantasies come true – sex with two absolutely lovely guys. The idea excited me very much, but panic wasn’t far behind. Fantasies are one thing, reality is something else all together. Did I really want this? I definitely had way too little alcohol in my system and way too many ruminative brain cells still working. They needed to be exchanged for Mojito. When I came back from the bar, my super-sexy ex boyfriend and his super-sexy best friend were making out. What a wondrous sight! Neither of them was gay, not at all, but they enjoyed confusing people. I was completely fascinated. It looked so delicious and so hot, they were kissing with their eyes closed, gentle and tender and demanding, they held each other’s head, an absolute dream kiss. I was extremely aroused. The both of them were so sweet, I would have loved to have thrown myself into the action and joined in. But I didn’t have the guts. At some point, Number Sixteen turned away from his sweet mate and focused his attentions on me again. His friend began to lightly stroke me.

Could these two spaced out sweeties become my personal sex Nirvana? All I needed to do was let go, down a few more Mojitos and just let things happen. The sexual situation intensified when a girlfriend of Number Sixteen turned up. Not just some girlie but a really cool woman whom I liked on sight. When the boys wanted to know what kind of underwear we were wearing, she immediately joined in and let the boys sneak a peek down her jeans, after which she insisted to check out my panties, which I let her do and which gave me a very strange and exciting feeling. No shit – would my sex fantasy for tonight maybe include doing it with two guys and a woman? I’d always wanted to have sex with a woman, and certainly sex with two men, and my sexual wish list also contained an orgy. Bloody unbelievable! It quite floored me. And yet – even though all these fantasies were mine for the taking, and the three of them were so yummy and exactly my thing, I suddenly panicked big-time. I said I needed to use the toilet, which I did, but then I just fled from the bar and ran all the way home. Ran away from my own sex fantasies just when they threatened to become reality. I’d imagined it so often, I’d been turned on like crazy watching videos of several yummy bodies doing it with each other. And now there was my one opportunity and what did I do? Stupid cowardly nutcase that I was, I ran for it. How unbelievably stupid. Could have been the night of my life. Ah well. Tough shit – I missed out!
 
Astonishingly, one day something happened that I’d never have thought possible: it didn’t feel so exciting anymore when I met him. I suddenly didn’t find him all that attractive anymore. He still had his spaced out all-over-the-place dope-heavy lifestyle, didn’t see the need to improve himself in any way and, when we had our next sex date, I realized it would be the final one. He had stacked on masses of weight, he seemed bloated and his entire body was covered with strange little zits. Shit, I thought, what the heck has happened to him? We kissed but the usual cheerful shower of excitement in my pants didn’t happen. It left me completely cold. He pulled me onto the bed and we did what we’d always done but it didn’t turn me on in the slightest. I said: “Stop, it won’t work. I can’t do it.” He was totally shocked. He whispered “but I’m so hot for you, I want you,” into my ear, because these words had always and reliably managed to make me melt in the past. I gave in. OK, one last time. I took a deep breath and let him do his thing, after all he knew very well where everything was. He became obsessed with making me come, I felt really pressurized to have an orgasm – it’s all very well that it’s no longer the guy having a quick in-and-out, and after the squirting interlude he just rolls off the woman and starts to snore.

All very well that men have decided it’s their duty to get every woman to come at least once. So they rub and stroke and lick and stick things in and use their fingers until the doctor, well, doesn’t come. At which point I really don’t want to, it’s just too much pressure. And I have no intention of faking it, either – that’s just too damn silly. But when you say: “listen up, just leave it, it won’t work tonight,” then they feel all hurt because their efforts go unrewarded. In such cases I forcefully assert my goddamn right to not have an orgasm. I don’t always want desert after lunch either. So I let Number Sixteen try his best for a while, but then stopped him and made sure that he at least achieved a satisfactory end, so to speak. It was a kind of vengeance on my part. I had pity sex with the guy who’d torn out my heart. I hardly participated at all and of course I didn’t come. He was quite confused. Ordinarily I go off like a rocket and we used to come together. But I didn’t want to leave him with that kind of farewell gift. When he was finished, he knew what to do and disappeared. And I lay in bed, grinning from ear to ear. I’d fallen out of love with Number Sixteen. At long last! Time really does heal all wounds. My heart was free again.

Number Seventeen: Blind date with an obviously gay guy who refused to believe he was gay

What a giant load of super-crap! After the disaster with Number Sixteen I was forced to join the ranks of those that not even wild horses could have dragged me close to voluntarily. The nasty S-word suddenly applied to me. Oh horror! For the first time in my life since discovering relationships, I was single. Eek! I was solitary and lonely and unhappy and frustrated. Yes, we all tell ourselves that we should be able to be alone and get to grips with our own little lives by ourselves, and that what is happening here and now is exactly the right lesson for acquiring this necessary skill. But I didn’t want to acquire it! Being single just happens to be the most gigantic pile of steaming manure ever. Basta. There’s no talking this up to make it better. I’ve always pitied my single girl friends and their panic-stricken attempts at finding Mr. Right and I certainly never wanted to be like them.

And every time I watched the girls from “Sex and the City” on their endless marathon of searching for love and happiness, I was so relieved that I’d been spared this dreary fate. I’d been lucky enough to have always had a boyfriend. This gave me a feeling of security and comfort. I never really bought the credo of single women, usually recited with little conviction by those with no steady partner: What’s-the-problem-it’s-great-being-on-my-own-I-can-do-what-I-like-and-nobody-tells-me-what-to-do. The idea of having to join my single girl friends in their hunt for suitable men filled me with utter panic. How do you even go about it? Party-party every night out there with all the other desperates, putting up with tired old routines like isn’t-it-hot-in-here? Anyway, how is that likely to net you a decent guy? And if not there, where? I was long out of university, which was a pity, because campus and courses and all the student parties were awash with stunning guys. But now I was a busy worker bee, caught up in the ten-to-eight work rhythm, living in an unfamiliar city where pretty much the only people I knew were my colleagues, and my friends from university had dispersed halfway across Europe. Wonderful. Finding a new man isn’t the only difficulty in a new city – making new friends isn’t easy, either!    

So what did I do, poor little freshly dumped relationship leftover that I was? In the darkest hour of my deepest heartache I did what countless statistics try to tell us results in ever such a high percentage of happy couples: sad little love-hungry sausage that I was, I actually enrolled with an Internet dating agency. I could hardly believe it myself, but there I was, filling out the pseudo-profile-questionnaire thingy that apparently had been devised by top-class psychology experts. I had to state whether I’d prefer to live in a country house or a cubic glass hut, whether I liked triangles better than circles, and select from a choice of answers what my spontaneous response was to a spidery glum pencil drawing.

Then I paid a hefty three-months membership fee. These dating agencies make an absolute killing – one ought to sue them all, for exploiting the emotional state of emergency of poor miserable lovelorn fellow humans. Anyway, I received a one-hundred-page analysis of my relationship profile, prepared on the basis of the questionnaire I’d returned. In other words: some cheap computer program with a modular psychology system pieced some stuff together – et voilà, there you have it: the heap of nonsense passed off as Your Very Own Unique Relationship Bible. I was horrified because the result of this serious and scientific analysis of my relationship profile revealed that I was a bitchy, introverted and unfriendly creature who should try to be more open and polite and needed to get out more. I was outraged. THIS I had paid 120 euros for? Moi, who was friendliness personified? And if I was introverted, Helmut Kohl was the emaciated primaballerina from the Russian State Circus! I hid the impertinent document in my bookshelf. Even though I was quite certain that the dating agency computer had goofed up completely, I couldn’t help but wonder: was I maybe really such a disaster?

But despite all that, I wouldn’t abandon my plan. I needed a new guy. And quickly! I checked out the profiles, initially without photo, of those guys who’d had the most matching points and would apparently suit me most brilliantly. Based on the answers from the questionnaires. Meaning, they had the same preference for circles instead of triangles as me. Well, if that isn’t a super basis for a great relationship! I sorted through the list of proposed potentially well-suited partners and caught myself nuking teachers, civil servants, sales guys and project managers. Which left pilots, doctors, entrepreneurs, artists and athletes. The guys’ profiles were masterpieces of idiocy. They all came out with the same trite mushy clichés. Asked how they’d imagine their perfect day, 95% of them replied: “Waking up next to my beloved, breakfast in bed, a walk on the beach, and falling asleep next to my beloved.” Not bloody likely! Only very few profiles made me want to find out more. I wrote to a few of the candidates, after some back and forth we exchanged photos and, hey presto, that was that. I just couldn’t believe it – no wonder they had to resort to the Internet in their search for women! In real life, they couldn’t even land a bit part on a ghost train. I’m truly sorry, but we all know that, where love and screwing is concerned, the eyes are involved too. And if the written foreplay didn’t exactly dazzle me with its wit and repartee, the photo of a wobbly beer-bellied guy sporting tinted gold-rimmed glasses wasn’t likely to improve matters. Luckily the site had a useful button called “automatic rejection” of which I made liberal use.

Since it turned out that those potential partners with the most matching points made me want to run for the hills rather than into their arms, and I was in anyway of the opinion that all this matching point stuff was but a load of marketing bollocks, I decided to approach matters from the other side. I scrutinized those profiles that, according to the agency, weren’t suitable for me at all. And found the profile belonging to Number Seventeen. Number Seventeen was a musical theatre actor. This should have set all my alarm bells ringing. I don’t know of any musical theatre actor who isn’t gay.

But I pushed that out of my mind: after all, exceptions prove every cliché. I thought Musical Theatre Actor sounded cute, and what he’d written about himself in his profile sounded funny and charming. Oh what the hell – you don’t know till you try and all that. And so I wrote to him. He replied promptly and we thought it amusing that according to our matching points – we’d achieved, I think, five out of a hundred – we ought to avoid each other like the plague. We sent a few emails back and forth and his were quite a nice read, and I was soon curious to meet him properly and in person. Could he be it, I asked myself, already jubilating surreptitiously. We exchanged photos and I pushed away the fact that he looked undeniably gay. He looked cute, no question, but my gut feeling yelled at the top of its voice: “Listen up, blind-as-a-bat, can’t you see he’s as gay as a tree full of parrots?” Of course I could see it, blind bat that I was, but I was so stuck in my need-to-find-a-guy-ANY-guy mode that I simply ignored it. Anyway, this was during the time of metrosexuality and lots of guys looked a bit feminine; that was quite OK. And so what if he sent me photos where he was dressed and made up as a belly dancer – that was because he’d worked on a cruise ship, and I thought it was funny.  

Number Seventeen and I arranged a telephone date. This was step two on the way to a real date – first photos, then phone, then the real thing. Again I managed to completely ignore how gay he sounded. He laughed in a girly, camp manner. But all the same, we chatted for a long time and recounted tales from our respective lives and I persuaded myself to think of Number Seventeen as interesting. And later I could tell my girl friends how we’d been on the phone for hours. That always sounds good, and so romantic! My feelings of romantic make-belief were shaken up some the next morning, when an email from Number Seventeen appeared in my mailbox. The opening line was: “Good morning my sugar-sweetie-bunny-bun” and my face immediately rearranged itself into a grimace of disgust. On his behalf, my entire body tingled with embarrassment – God, how cringemaking was that?! A whole cacophony of alarm bells was going off and still I wouldn’t leave it alone. Stupidity will reap its just rewards and that’s exactly what was happening to me. Which is fair enough, because if you are stupid enough to get involved in a wannabe romance with a musical theatre actor who is gay but won’t acknowledge it and pretends that he isn’t, you’ve got it coming.

My punishment arrived in the form of a truly terrible date. Yes, I actually agreed to a blind date with the non-gay gay waltzing mouse. I kind of knew that it wouldn’t lead to anything other than the immediate cessation of our email and telephone communication. But hope springs eternal and I didn’t want to have to think that I hadn’t even tried. I reached our designated meeting place, a bar, too early and decided to amble through the streets for a while. I saw him in the distance; he’d apparently arrived early as well and had decided on ambling around to pass the time, too. There was no mistaking him and the only thing I thought was, SHIT! He was distinctively, unmistakably gay. He looked as though he’d just turned seventeen and he pranced around like a gazelle. I wondered what he wanted from me and why he just wouldn’t allow himself to be gay. It was practically tattooed on his forehead. In giant bold letters. Did he want me to be his token girlfriend? Did he need to marry me to be able to claim his inheritance? I was baffled. We said hello and I covered up my resignation and mystification. He was very nice, no question, and he very much tried to impress me. But whatever he did, he was like the little gay one in a cast-for-TV boy band. Of course I don’t have a problem with gay men – but they are just not potential partner material.

Sadly, having a date with a guy who obviously prefers guys is a total waste of time. Number Seventeen and I chatted and, tense and uncomfortable as I was, I dredged up my entire repertoire of conversational topics. I kept looking surreptitiously at my watch but time just would not pass. Then Number Seventeen shared with me that he always had to fight the cliché that all musical theatre actors were supposedly gay. This made me choke on my apple spritzer that I’d been sucking on for a while now, bored stiff. I feigned surprise and understanding, saying: “Oh really? How stupid! I can well imagine that you get pissed off!” In reality, I could barely stop myself from dragging him off to the nearest gay bar. Where he would certainly have had a much better time than here with me. After wading through an endless hour and a half, I used my tiredness as an escape from this miserable excuse for a date. He said good-bye with a broad smile and a glint in his eyes: “I had a lovely evening, hope to see you again soon.” Thank God he made no attempt at kissing me and so I lied: “Yesyes, see you soon, very soon!” And breathed a sigh of relief when I was finally shot of him.

By next morning I had another “Hello snooky-pooky-honeybun” email in my mailbox. Oh my God! I didn’t reply. Only after he’d written umpteen emails asking how come I wasn’t getting back to him after the lovely time we’d had together, I finally had mercy on him and replied. I wrote that I was very sorry, that I thought he was very nice, but that there hadn’t been any kind of sparks for me. He replied by return, saying that he’d felt all manner of sparks and that he was very sad now. I replied one last time with some platitudes. And that was the end of it. I have no idea what that was about, this guy and his I-am-not-gay performance.

Number Eighteen: Blind date with a wannabe macho

In spite of this rather weird experience on the online dating circuit I wasn’t prepared to give up just yet. I still had one candidate lined up. Number Eighteen. I’d pulled Number Eighteen at random from the “recommended” pile and his profile impressed me with its wonderfully terse and ironic descriptions of himself. Sounded like sarcasm and a dry sense of humor. Excellent. I liked it. He wrote me an email that was simple, to the point and consisted of exactly four words: “Want to fuck? Regards, F.” Every halfway normal female would have slammed her laptop shut, screaming, but I grinned. Wicked! The guy is right, of course. To hell with all that small-talk and pseudo-romantic chatting up nonsense, we all know why we are hanging around this virtual dating cosmos – all our efforts concentrate on this one thing, so why not call it by its name: fucking. The man was right and I bought his reduce-to-the-max strategy. He sounded like a cool macho asshole. Brilliant. In fact, the exact type of guy I no longer wanted anything to do with. Still, I’ve always been consistently inconsistent and so I replied with a curt “When? Where? Regards, M.” The gentleman took his sweet time with replying, of course. Macho assholes don’t jump when a mere female offers to put herself out.

Days later, the reply. He’d been so surprised by my response, I’d been the first not to swear at him. Aha – he’d tried this little number before, then. I could just imagine the kind of emails he’d get by return: “You pig, how dare you, why don’t you go to a brothel, how dare you reduce women to sexual objects, blablabla.” I guess my brief note must have been a bit of a surprise. Number Eighteen and I sent a few more emails back and forth, it turned out that he was the marketing manager for a well-known British luxury fashion label. He sounded good, like a man of success, a man of the world, a man with good taste. Exactly what I was looking for. The photos he sent were promising too. Tall, very short dark hair, dark eyes, well-dressed, clear-cut features. He reminded me of Haakon, Prince of Norway, who had married the gorgeous Mette-Marit and would hopefully live happily ever after with her. I had no problem with dating a Prince Haakon look-alike. Rather the opposite – it lent a certain added excitement to the matter. Our first telephone conversation was promising, too. He sounded nice and witty and had a good sexy manly voice. Maybe he was the one? I could practically smell it, the sweet smell of success.