‘Look.’ For a second, I swear he couldn’t remember my name again. ‘You’re a great girl. I just don’t think you’re ready for this. I don’t want to feel responsible for upsetting anyone. Let me put you in a cab for tonight and, yes. I’ll call you.’
‘OK,’ I said miserably, then followed him, nodding mutely as he said his goodbyes. He put me in a taxi. I turned to wave and saw him going back off towards the party.
CREATE BEAUTIFUL MEMORIES
Caught a glimpse of myself in the taxi mirror. My hair was all messed up, I had the same Alice Cooper eyes with smudged mascara and deranged expression I had left him with in the Stronghold.
11.20 p.m. Have just ended up creeping back into the house, so Chloe wouldn’t find out the date was a disaster.
Sunday 30 September 2012
133lb, minutes slept 0, pounds lost through stress and misery 2, pounds lost in parking/towaway fines 245.
5 a.m. Have been awake all night. Am horrible failure, revolting, old and crap with men.
8 a.m. Just attempted to creep out to get the car before it was towed away, only to be caught by Mabel, Billy and Chloe coming up from the kitchen to go to the park.
‘Mummy,’ said Billy, ‘I thought you’d gone away for the night.’
‘Didn’t go so well, then?’ said Chloe sympathetically, looking fresh-faced and perfect.
The car had been towed away and had to go to a hideous trough between the A40 and the main train line to Cornwall to pay more than Chloe’s wages for a week to get it back. Am so sad, the one time I found someone I liked, I completely messed it up. I’ll never find anyone again. I’m not only man-repellent, I’m incompetent. But maybe he’ll text. Or call.
Friday 5 October 2012
134lb, calls from Leatherjacketman 0, texts from Leatherjacketman 0.
9.15 a.m. He hasn’t.
Monday 8 October 2012
130lb (wasting away, look old), calls from Leatherjacketman 0, texts from Leatherjacketman 0.
7 a.m. He still hasn’t. Must throw self into work and get on with screenplay.
Tuesday 9 October 2012
Texts to Leatherjacketman 1, texts from Leatherjacketman 0, number of words of screenplay written 0, Dating Rules broken 2.
He still hasn’t.
IF HE PULLS AWAY, DON’T FIGHT IT. STEER INTO THE SKID
11 p.m. Maybe I will text Leatherjacketman.
BE AUTHENTIC
2.30 a.m. Me:
Wednesday 10 October 2012
Texts from Leatherjacketman 0.
No reply.
Friday 19 October 2012
Texts from Leatherjacketman 1, encouraging-in-any-way texts from Leatherjacketman 0, words of screenplay written 0.
10 a.m. Leatherjacketman:
Saturday 27 October 2012
No communication from Leatherjacketman.
Sunday 28 October 2012
DO NOT TEXT AT ODD TIMES OF DAY OR NIGHT IN MANNER OF STALKER
5.30 a.m. Maybe will text Leatherjacketman!
One soul reaching out to another, I thought, amid the smouldering remains of the silly old mess we’d accidentally created, like silly billies in the midst of a deep unbreakable connection: Leonardo da Vinci’s Adam reaching out, in that painting, for God’s fingertips.
Friday 2 November 2012
Possibilities of anything ever happening with male of species again 0.
11.30 a.m. Text from Leatherjacketman.
And that was the end of that.
‘ You have to laugh about it,’ said Talitha. ‘Don’t let him have possession of your self-esteem. Or your sexual viability. Or anything.’
Clearly, however, something had to be done.
INTENSIVE DATING STUDY
Night after night, when the children were in bed, I studied, as if for an Open University course on how to get off with people. The children seemed to sense that a great project was in the works, and treated it with appropriate respect. Mabel, when she burst into my bedroom at midnight, clutching Saliva and saying she’d had a nasty dream, would whisper, ‘Exthcuthe me, Mummy, but a giant ant ith eatin’ my ear,’ whilst peeping respectfully from the tangle of hair, at the piles of epic tomes all over the bed. I did of course tweet as I went along, increasing my Twitter followers to a staggering 437.
Bibliography:
I started with my historical archive – the obvious classics from my thirties:
* Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus
* Finding the Love You Want
* Letting Love Find You
* What Men Want
* What Men Secretly Want
* What Men Really Want
* What Men Actually Want
* How Men Think
* What Men Think About When Not Thinking About Sex
But somehow it just wasn’t enough . I went on Amazon and there were seventy-five pages of dating self-help books to choose from.
* The Single Trap: The Two-step Guide to Escaping It and Finding Lasting Love
* The Three Most Successful Online Dating Profiles Ever
* Quadruple Your Dating
* It Takes All 5: A Single Mom’s Guide to Finding the Real One
* Make Him Beg to Be Your Boyfriend in 6 Simple Steps
* 100% Love: 7 Steps to Scientifically Find the True Love of Your Life
* Fearless Love: 8 Simple Rules That Will Change the Way You Date, Mate and Relate
* The Love Laws: 9 Essential Rules for Lasting, Loving Partnership
* 10 Dating Lessons from
Sex and the City
* Attraction Magnets: 12 Best Conversation Topics for Dating and Pickup
* 20 Rules of Internet Dating
* The Red Flag Rules: 50 Rules to Know Whether to Keep Him or Kiss Him Goodbye
* The 99 Rules of Online Dating
* The New Rules: The Dating Dos and Don’ts for the Digital Generation
(same authors as the original
Rules
)
* The Old Dating Rules
(different authors from the original
Rules
)
* The Unwritten Rules
* The Unspoken Rules
* The Spiritual Rules for Dating, Relating and Mating
* Changing the Rules
* Love Has No Rules
* Breaking the Rules
* Dating, Fornication and Romance: Who Knew There Were Rules?
* The Anti-Rules – Now That You’ve Got Him, How Do You Get Rid of Him?
* The 30-Day Dating Detox
* Zen and the Art of Falling in Love
* Geisha Secrets
* Why Men Love Bitches
* You’re Irresistible
* He’s Just Not That Into You
* The Strategy
* The Automatic 2nd Date: Everything to Say and Do on the 1st Date to Guarantee a 2nd Date
* Getting to Third Date
* Date Dream Girl: Third Date and Beyond
* Getting to Fifth Date after Fourth Date and Sex
* Now What? Getting Beyond the Fifth-Date Hurdle
* When Mars and Venus Collide
* The Art of War for Dating
* The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook: Dating
* Dating Dead Men
* Romantic Suicide
* Dating: It’s Not Complicated
It might sound confusing, but actually it wasn’t! There was more consensus than disagreement amongst the dating masters. I studied diligently, marking up the books and making notes, searching for commonalities as if between the world’s great religions and philosophical tenets, distilling them down to a molten core of key principles:
THE DATING RULES
*Do not text whe
n drunk.
*Always be classy, never be crazy.
*Be on time.
*Use Authentic Communication.
*Do not go to the wrong place.
*Do not confuse him. Be rational, congruent and consistent.
*Do not obsess or fantasize.
*Do not obsess or fantasize when driving.
*Respond to what is actually going on, not what you wish was going on.
*On first date just go along with whatever he suggests (unless Morris dancing, dogfight, obvious booty call, etc.)
*Be sure he makes you feel happy.
*Try to retain some vestige of objectivity.
*When he comes we welcome, when he goes we let him go.
*Don’t get stoned or pissed out of brain.
*Be calm smiling goddess of light.
*Allow things to unfold like a petal at their own pace, e.g. do not demand to make third date in insecure panic in middle of sex on second date.
*Wear something sexy but that you feel comfortable in.
*Stay calm, confident and centred re whole thing – consider meditation, hypnotherapy, psychotherapy, antipsychotic medication, etc.
*Don’t come on too obviously strong, but do do sensual things like stroking stem of wine glass up and down.
*Don’t pre-arrange first-time sex.
*Don’t try to have sex too soon.
*Don’t make him feel caged.
*Never mention any of the following: exes, how fat you are, how insecure you are, problems, issues, money, cellulite, Botox, liposuction, facial peels/lasers/microdermabrasion, etc., control undergarments, possible shared parking permits when married, seating plans for wedding reception, babysitters, marriage/religion (unless you’ve just realized he’s a polygamous Mormon, in which case get blind drunk and bring up all of the previous in one hysterical gabble and excuse yourself because you feel fat and have to get back for the babysitter).
*Create beautiful memories.
*Do not text while drunk.
Of course this immense body of knowledge was entirely theoretical: rather as with a philosopher who sits in an ivory tower (NB an actual ivory tower, not IvoryTowers.net, the dating website), developing theories about how life ought to be lived, without actually living it.
The only thing I had to work with was the experience with Leatherjacketman. Examining the mistakes I made there, from my newly well-read perspective of informed understanding, allowed me to heal my sense of incompetence, grossness, failure and unlovableness and give me hope that, even if all is lost, if indeed it had ever been found, with Leatherjacketman, it was perhaps not lost with all other males of the species for ever.
However, there was another section – RULES FOR GETTING DATES – which was entirely empty.
WALLOWING IN IT
Monday 26 November 2012
132lb, Twitter followers impressed with knowledge of dating self-help books and Dating Rules 468, romantic prospects 0.
12.30 p.m. Just got back from Oxford Street. Whole thing is mutated as if by an avalanche of lights, sparkly baubles, romantic shop-window tableaux and festive songs on a loop, inducing the panicky feeling that Christmas has suddenly fast-forwarded itself and arrived, and I’ve forgotten to buy the turkey. What am I going to do? I’m not ready for the impending hysterical-taste-of-others exam, the sense of needing to do all the things you already have to do plus another twice-as-big layer of Christmas things on top. Worse, the forcing down the throat of perfect nuclear family, hearth-and-home tableaux, the tragic emotions, the helpless flashbacks to Christmases past, and doing Santa on your own and . . .
1 p.m. House seems dark, lonely and forlorn. How can I possibly get on with writing screenplay when feel like this?
1.05 p.m. That’s better, was wearing prescription sunglasses again. But still cannot face the thought of getting the tree, and getting out all the decorations that Mark and I bought together and . . . at least we have the St Oswald’s House cruise to look forward to . . .
1.20 p.m. Oh God. What am I going to do about that? I have to let Mum know in just under four weeks. The children will drown, and it’ll be impossible, but if I don’t go, I’ll just be on my own with the kids, trying to make it all work, and I’m just alone. Aloooone!
Sunday 2 December 2012
9.15 p.m. Just called Jude and explained psychological meltdown. ‘You have to get online.’
9.30 p.m. Have signed up for a free trial on SingleParentMix.com. Have followed Jude’s advice and slightly lied about my age as who is going to even look at a profile over fifty? Though don’t tell Talitha I even thought that. Have not put a photo up or a profile or anything.
9.45 p.m. Ooh, I’ve got a message! A message! Already! You see there ARE people out there, and . . .
Oh. It’s from forty-nine-year-old man called ‘5timesanight’.
Well, that’s . . . that’s . . .
Just clicked on message:
Just clicked on picture. Is of a plump, heavily tattooed man, wearing a short black rubber dress and a blond wig.
Mark, please help me. Mark.
9.50 p.m. Come on, come on. Keep Buggering On. I have just got to, got to get over this. I MUST stop thinking, ‘If only Mark was here.’ I must stop thinking of the way he used to sleep with his arm across my shoulder, like he was protecting me, the physical intimacy, the scent of the armpit, the curve of muscle, the stubble on the chin. The way I felt when he answered the phone about work and went into his busy and important mode, then he’d look at me in the middle of the conversation with those brown eyes, so sort of smouldering, yet vulnerable. Or Billy saying, ‘Do puzzles?’ and Mark and Billy spending hours doing incredibly complicated puzzles because they were both so clever. I can’t carry on having every sweet thing which happens with the children tinged with sadness. Saliva being picked to play the little baby Jesus in Mabel’s first nativity play (Mabel was a hen). Billy’s first grown-up carol concert. Billy and Mabel buying me the Nespresso machine I’d been wanting for Christmas (helped by Chloe) as a ‘surprise’, then Mabel telling me about it every night in a furtive whisper. I can’t have another Christmas like that. I can’t have another year like this. I can’t carry on like this.
10 p.m. Just called Tom. ‘Bridget, you have to grieve. You haven’t grieved properly. Write Mark a letter. Wallow in it. W.A.L.L.O.W.’
10.15 p.m. Just went upstairs. I found Billy and Mabel cuddled up together in the top bunk. Awkwardly I climbed up the ladder and got in with them and then Billy woke up and said, ‘Mummy?’
‘Yes,’ I whispered.
‘Where is Dada?’ Feeling my insides wrenching apart with pain for Billy, I pulled him to me, terrified. Why were we all feeling like this tonight?
‘I don’t know,’ I began. ‘But . . .’ Billy had fallen back to sleep. Stayed squeezed in the top bunk, holding them close.
11 p.m. In tears, now, sitting on the floor surrounded by cuttings, photographs. I don’t care what Mum says, I’m just going to wallow in it.
11.15 p.m. Just opened the cuttings box, took one out.
Mark Darcy, the British human rights lawyer, was killed in the Darfur region of Sudan when the armoured vehicle in which he was travelling struck a landmine. Darcy, the internationally recognized authority in cross-border litigation and conflict resolution, and Anton Daviniere, a Swiss representative of the UN Human Rights Council, were both killed in the incident, Reuters reports.
Mark Darcy was a leading international figure in victim representation, international crisis resolution and transitional justice. He was regularly called upon by international bodies, governments, opposition groups and public figures to give advice on a broad array of issues, and was a leading supporter of Amnesty International. His intervention, prior to his death, secured the release of the British aid workers Ian Thompson and Steven Young, who had been hostages of the rebel regime for seven months and whose execution was believed to have been imminent.
Tributes have been pourin
g in from heads of state, aid agencies and individuals.
He leaves behind a widow, Bridget, a son, William, aged two, and a daughter, Mabel, three months old.
11.45 p.m. Sobbing now, the box, the cuttings and photos fallen on the floor, memories, sucking me down.
Dear Mark,
I miss you so much. I love you so much.
It just sounds trite. Like when you try to write a letter to the
bereaved. ‘My deepest sympathy for your loss.’ Still, when people wrote to me after you died, I was glad even if they didn’t really know what to say and stumbled around.
But the thing is, Mark, I just can’t manage on my own. I really, really can’t. I know I’ve got the kids and friends and I’m writing
The Leaves in His Hair
but I’m just so lonely without you. I need you to comfort me, counsel me like we said at our wedding. And hold me. And tell me what to do when I get all mixed up. And tell me I’m all right when I feel I’m crap. And do my zip up. And do my zip down and . . . oh God, the first time you kissed me and I said, ‘Nice boys don’t kiss like that’, and you said, ‘Oh yes, they fucking well do.’ I so fucking miss you and miss fucking you.
And I wish our life . . . I can’t bear that you’re not seeing them grow up.
I JUST HAVE TO GET ON AND MAKE THE BEST OF IT. Life doesn’t turn out how everyone wants and I’m very lucky to have Billy and Mabel and that you made sure we would be all right, and the house and everything. I know you had to go to the Sudan, I know how long you’d worked on getting the hostages out, I know you did everything to make sure it was safe out there. You wouldn’t have gone if you’d thought there was a risk. It wasn’t your fault.
I just wish we could do it together, and share all the little moments. How is Billy ever going to understand how to be a man without his father? And Mabel? They don’t have a dad. They don’t know you. And we could have just been at home together for Christmas if only . . . stop it. Never say could’ve, should’ve or if only.
I’m sorry I’m such a crap mother. Please forgive me. I’m so sorry I spent four weeks studying dating books, and making a fraudulent cyber version of myself available to a man wearing a rubber minidress, and for being upset about anything which isn’t about not still having you. I love you.