I want very little
I can tell a man I want him on top of me in a voice that would get me fired if I used it at work. No problem. Filthy is easy. Filthy has a script.
What I cannot do, apparently, is look at someone in daylight and say I like you without my mouth going stiff like I have been caught nicking something.
Which is mad, when you think about it. I am thirty. I manage a warehouse. I have a degree. I split a flat with two people who have heard me through a wall. I am not shy. I am just allergic to the sentence that makes it real.
Vulnerability is treated like an ick now. So I joke instead. Then I want to say it properly and my whole face does that stupid freeze.
How we got here
You learn it on the apps first. Be funny. Be hot. Be busy. Do not be the one who names it.
The talking stage has rules nobody wrote down and everybody enforces. You can send a filthy voice note at one in the morning and that is banter. You can send I had a nice time and that is needy. Same thumbs. Different crime.
I have watched grown men treat a soft sentence like I have asked them to meet my mum and pick a colour for the hallway. All I said was I like you. Not marry me. Not delete your other chats. Just: this was not nothing to me.
And the room changes. You can feel it. Like someone opened a window in winter.
So you laugh it off. You say relax, I am taking the piss. You put another coat of product on in the bathroom and come back as the fun one. The fun one does not get left on read for three days. The fun one gets another night. The fun one does not have to sit in the quiet.
I am very good at being the fun one.
Sex is the loophole
Here is the bit I will not dress up.
Sex feels safer than liking someone. I know how that sounds. I also know it is true.
A body is honest in a way a text is not. You can be wanted for an hour and not have to file the paperwork. No labels. No Saturday plan. No little speech about what this is. Just heat, and a mouth, and the kind of attention that shuts my head up.
Then it is over and I want the other thing. The daft thing. Tea. A look that does not slide off me. Someone who does not treat a feeling like a trap.
I never ask for it in the moment. I put my heels on. I do the face in the mirror by the door. I leave before the quiet can start, because the quiet is where the sentence lives, and the sentence is where I come unstuck.
My flatmate clocked it once. She was making toast like a saint after a thin wall night and she said, you know you are allowed to like them, Els.
I said, I do like them. I like them best when they are horizontal and not asking me how my week was.
She did not laugh as hard as I wanted.
The freeze
It happens in normal places. That is what gets me.
Not candlelight. Not some film ending. A pavement outside a pub. A night bus. His kitchen with the cheap kettle and last night still on my skin. He will say something easy, something almost kind, and I will feel it rise in my throat like I am about to tell the truth at work.
I like you.
Three words. I have said worse in front of a supervisor. I have said worse in a club toilet. And still my mouth does the freeze. Smile first. Joke second. Subject change like I am late for something.
I have said you are trouble instead. I have said do not get clingy, which is rich, coming from the girl who checks if he viewed the story. I have said I do not do boyfriends, which is a lie I keep in my bag next to the lip product.
What I meant, every time, was: I like you and I would like you not to vanish when I stop being entertainment.
That is the illegal bit. Not the feeling. The asking.
Why an honest sentence feels like a threat
People have started talking about vulnerability like it is a kink you should disclose up front. Capacity. Timing. Do you have the bandwidth. As if liking someone is a group project with a risk assessment.
I get it. Nobody wants to be the mug who caught feelings in a situationship that was only ever going to be a Tuesday night. I have been that mug. I have also been the girl who kept it light because I could feel him flinch before I even finished the thought.
There is a look men get. Not cruel. Worse. Careful. Like you have put something breakable on the table and they are deciding whether to pretend they did not see it.
Once you have seen that look, you start packing the truth away. You become fluent in almost. You become the person who can do chemistry and cannot do a straight sentence.
And the culture helps you stay there. Soft launching. Benching. Breadcrumbs that feel like affection until they do not. Everyone keeping one foot out the door so nobody has to be the one who cared first.
Caring first is the new coming on too strong. Ridiculous. Also effective. I have watched it work on me.
The bit I do not put on a night out
I do not trust silence. That is the simple version.
If a man goes quiet I assume the worst and I fill the gap with jokes, sex, telly, a full face in the bathroom like armour. I have reasons. I am not doing the whole childhood speech in a dating article. Just know this: quiet in a house teaches you that feelings are a thing other people disappear inside.
So I learned to be loud. Funny. Up for it. Easy to have around and hard to hold. It works in a warehouse. It works in a club. It works in a bed.
It does not work when you actually want someone to stay.
Wanting a boyfriend still sounds embarrassingly soft in my own head. I can hear myself saying it and I want to take the piss before anyone else gets there. That is the freeze too. Me, beating the room to the punchline.
What I am trying instead
I am not about to become a woman who sends paragraphs. I would rather clock in hungover than do that.
But I am bored of winning the night and losing the morning. I am bored of men who can handle my mouth in the dark and cannot handle three words in a kitchen. I am bored of myself, a bit, for making it so easy for them.
So here is the unglamorous practice.
Say the small true thing while the kettle is on. Not a speech. Not a trap. Just: I had a good time. I like you. I do not need you to propose. I need you not to treat that like a problem.
If he goes weird, that is information. Not a personality test I failed. Information.
If I joke it away, that is information too. About me.
Last week I nearly said it on the pavement by the bus stop. Proper daylight. No drink to blame. He had that look people get when they are about to be decent, which is somehow more frightening than when they are about to be filthy. I felt the sentence stand up in my throat.
I said, you are all right, you are.
Cowardice in a nice coat. He laughed. I laughed. The bus came. I sat upstairs and redid my lip in the window like that was the point of the whole evening.
In the diary I wrote the real line and felt like a child. Then I wrote: say it next time, you wet wipe.
Next time is always available. That is the con. There is always another night, another body, another chance to be brave when the lighting is better and my face is done.
The lighting is never better. The face is a distraction. The sentence is the same in a bathroom mirror and on a night bus.
I like you.
It should not feel like I am breaking a law. It feels like I am taking my coat off in a cold room and hoping the other person does not open the door.
I still want to say it. That is the part I keep coming back to, even when I am being cocky about not doing boyfriends. I want to say it in daylight, with my mouth working, and not immediately turn it into a joke so I can survive the answer.
If that is illegal now, fine. Charge me. I am tired of getting away with the safer crime.
