“Look, the thing is, you’ve just got to make yourself less available”
Lizzie says, sat opposite me, taking a leisurely sip of her mocha frappucchino.
In the time she takes to have a sip, several texts have come through on her phone. I watch her read them, the glow lighting up her face. I sit glaring at her in the dark.
“Be casual.” She concludes.
One of my eyelids is twitching and both my thumbs are bleeding because I’ve peeled the skin clean off.
“Ah, right” I say, like I know how to do that.
Yesterday I was so desperate for something to do with my hands that I actually shaved my entire vagina – the whole thing – for literally no reason other than in the vain hope that it might bring me good fortune, like a rain dance before a bountiful harvest.
The harvest is over now. I’ve got a clogged razor and a barren wasteland.
I will launch myself on anything shiny or a bit reflective, in the hope that it might be a text. I am a magpie on a mission. Yesterday I caught myself trying to press the unlock button on a particularly shiny bit of crisp packet.
I just have no idea what I’m doing when it comes to men. Which is frustrating, because all men seem to have the same, profound understanding of the exact move that works on me – complete indifference.
Tell me more
I don’t have a move. I wish I did. Unless a move counts as providing a semi-ironic commentary through out sex. In which case, I have one move.
The closest thing I’ve had to flirting this week is with my cross trainer.
I have attachment issues when it comes to boys. I’m not sure where it comes from, but once when a boy was all the way inside me he paused to say “sorry, I just really don’t want to lead you on” and I reckon that might have something to do with it.
If I do meet someone I fancy though, and I’m not sure when I’ll see them again, I’ll sneakily obtain an item of clothing they own. Then I get home all like, “oh no, I’ve got your jumper, sorry!!! I’ll give it back – when are you free??” and then they have to meet up with me again.
This technique has not worked once and I now have a sad museum of items men have decided they were better off sacrificing to avoid spending any more time with me.
It spectacularly backfired last week when a boy was particularly determined to locate his hoodie. I was fully aware I had it in my bag.
“Have you seen my hoodie?” He asks.
“No!” I say back. Of course I had. I had seen it inside my bag.
“Can you just check you’ve not packed it?”
“Well, yes, I can check, but I don’t know what that’s going to achieve!!!” I say, knowing full well it would achieve. It would achieve lots because it was inside my bag.
After pretending to look in several different bags for a very long time, I retrieved his hoodie and handed it back to him. I hold out his jumper. My thumbs were bleeding, but I might as well have been handing him back my still bleeding heart.
Lizzie said be casual, and this is me flirting, through casual theft. I am a lovesick house elf, and this hoodie was the sock I needed to be freed from terminal singledom.
“Were you trying to steal my hoodie?” He asks, half jokingly.
“NO!” I say, very quickly.
I’m assuming he needed my dignity for his museum.
Kat Sadler 