When he got to the party, we went into the kitchen and I sat on a cabinet. I was excited to flirt with him, tell him stupid stories I’d saved up about how The Killers had sent me a personal message because I was in their top fans on Spotify. I thought he might say something about the blue eyeliner I was wearing, or maybe the smiley-face stickers on my nails.
Instead, he told me about something difficult that was happening with his family. As he went on, I mmmed so he knew I was still listening, and a few times tried to relate to what he was saying, but mostly I just waited for it to end. I didn’t know why he was telling me all this when we’ve only hung out a few times. I wanted to run down to the bottom of the unusually big garden, jump around on the trampoline for a bit, flop down exhausted, and make out on there. I wanted to dance around under the colored streamers. I wanted us to end up in a conversation with someone annoying that we could laugh about on the way home.
He saw someone he knew, and I went off to the bathroom and bumped into my friend. “Nothing even happened,” I said when she asked me how my chat with the guy went. “He was just talking about his family loads.”
I’d heard about men using women for free therapy, but it had never happened to me. On the internet, women speak about the “emotional labor” they end up doing in relationships with men, helping them process feelings they can’t talk about with anyone else. One girlfriend of mine will come away from dates knowing about some trauma that happened to the guy as a teenager and how it’s impacted his life since then, while he won’t even know whether she has any siblings. When I told her later about the conversation in the kitchen, she couldn’t stop laughing. “How?” she asked. “How has this never happened to you?”
In the past, I’ve wondered if I come across as shallow or stupid or something, and that’s why men don’t tend to divulge this stuff to me. In retrospect, I think it has more to do with the sorts of questions I ask, or don’t ask. I steer away from anything to do with past relationships, when or how they ended, If I mention their dad and they look uncomfortable, I change the subject. I don’t dig, I keep things light and easy, talk about films or books, times when I embarrassed myself—announce my theory that, inside of our bodies, everyone is basically soup.
I was annoyed after what happened with that guy. I thought he owed me fun, that we weren’t on a level yet where he could dump his shit on me. That’s what his friends are for. I wondered why he wasn’t trying to impress me, spinning me around on the dance floor and making me laugh with impressions of celebrities. I spent the rest of the night not exactly ignoring him, but trying to demonstrate how great I am, how hard he should feel he needs to work for me. I learned into people’s ears to whisper and threw my head back and laughed at their responses. When he came over, I pretended to barely notice him there, and when he said bye, I didn’t act like I cared at all.
The next day I felt like shit. My mouth tasted of something sweet and rotting and my face was swollen up like a pool float. I drank some water but couldn’t keep it down, so spent the first part of the day—or afternoon (I woke up at 2 pm)—vomiting. I think we honestly need to have a national conversation about how bad being sick is. I can’t believe some people have to go through this every time they drink. Thankfully, at about 6 pm I started to feel better. I managed to eat some tomato pasta, then found this video of a guy who kept falling over in the mud that cheered me up. I began to be able to think properly, which was nice at first, but then bad, because instead of focusing on my nausea, I thought about the night before: the rude things I said, the people whose names I forgot, and then the guy. What happened, the way he left, how I handled it when he opened up to me. I wanted to know how he was today, whether he felt any better.
I don’t know why I thought it was such a bad thing that he wanted to talk to me. All it meant is that he saw me as someone he could trust. And I don’t get why I feel like everything has to be fun, why I move around parties like this crazed banshee who can’t find comfort anywhere. Irrespective of fancying him, this guy and I have spent enough time together now that I do actually care about him and want him to be happy and settled, and I don’t like the idea of him dealing with his family issues on his own. Of course I have the ability to be there for him in the same way that I am for my friends, so why was I so hesitant?
I don’t know why I find it so hard to be genuine with men, to express how I actually feel and allow them to do the same. Part of the problem is that I put men on pedestals. They’re not people: they’re these magical, perfect things. If they make jokes I don’t find funny, it’s because I wasn’t smart enough to get them. If the conversation is a bit flat, it’s because I wasn’t being exciting enough. They’re not allowed to be weak or have problems; they must be infallible or I lose interest. My friend is the opposite; she always sees men as flawed, as weapons programmed to crush her sense of self, to hurt her. So much so that she has a new year’s resolution to make friends with a straight man. Both approaches are equally dehumanizing in a lot of ways.
I would normally wait until the guy messaged me, but that felt stupid in light of everything. So I sent him a video from The Kardashians where Kourtney congratulates Kim on being able to make her own instant ramen. But then, almost as soon as I sent it, it seemed completely pointless because I didn’t want to chat about the Kardashians. I wanted to ask him how he was; I wanted to be there for him in some way. So I sent him another text, which said what I really meant, and I tried to talk to him like I would a friend. Like someone with feelings.