I can handle a lot
Thin walls. A man who takes his socks off last. The night bus. What I will not do is compete with a lock screen.
If your phone is face up on the bedside table, lighting up every time someone likes a story, you are not here. You are in a queue. I do not get in queues for free.
Eyes on me. Hands on me. If you can scroll, you are not as into this as your mouth is saying. And I can hear the difference. I have always been able to hear the difference.
It is not the phone. It is where your head goes.
I am not a nun about technology. I live on mine. Group chat. Rota. Bank app I open like it might have changed its mind. I will doomscroll under the duvet after a late like everybody else in this city, thumb going even when my eyes have given up.
That is my bed when I am alone. That is not the deal when I have let you in it.
The second that screen wakes up, the room changes. You do a tiny flick. Just checking. Just the time. Then you are gone for three seconds, which does not sound like anything until you are the one lying there with your makeup still on, watching a man choose a notification over a body that is actually in the room.
I have joked my way through worse. I do not joke my way through that. It makes me feel like furniture. Nice furniture. Still furniture.
Dates first, because that is where it starts.
Pub table. He puts it next to the pint, face up, like a third person who might be more interesting. Every buzz he glances. He thinks he is being subtle. He is not. I can see the light on his cheek.
I do it too, before I catch myself. Habit. The flatmates. Work. Some lad I should not still have in the chat. Then I turn mine over because I remember I asked to be here. If I wanted to sit next to a screen I could have stayed on the sofa with a meal deal and saved the Travelcard.
A date is already expensive in ways people pretend not to count. Time off the rota. An outfit. The version of my face that takes twenty minutes in a shared bathroom. I did not do all that so you could finish an argument with someone who is not even in the building.
If your mum is in hospital, say. If your kid is with someone. If you are on call. Use your words. I can be a person about a real thing. What I cannot be is the warm-up act for your lock screen.
The worst is when it happens once we are already going.
Clothes half off. Mouth on my neck. Then that little glass vibration like the universe has a joke.
Some men reach for it. Not even fully. Just the hand that was on my hip decides it has another job. I stop. I do not do a speech. I just stop, because my body clocks it before my pride does.
You can tell yourself you are still present. Your hand is still on me. Your mouth is still doing the sentence. But your eyes have gone to that rectangle and I am suddenly in the room with a man who is splitting himself in two, and I get the smaller half.
I like sex that is a bit filthy and a bit stupid. I come easier when I am not performing pretty. None of that works if I can see you reading. My head goes straight back into the mirror. Is my face doing the right thing. Do I look worth staying on. That is the opposite of hot. That is work.
Put it face down. Better, put it on the floor. Better than that, leave it in your jeans on the other side of the room like a grown person who can survive forty minutes without a hit.
Notifications have no manners.
Work email at midnight. A group chat exploding about nothing. An app deciding now is the moment to tell you your screen time is up, which would be funny if your hand was not where it was.
I once watched a man take a call. Not an emergency. A mate. I was still in the bed. He mouthed one sec like that was a personality. I got dressed in the time it took him to laugh at something I could not hear. He looked confused when I had my shoes on. He should not have been.
And it is not only men. I have been the problem. Voice note from a flatmate while I am in a cab I should be kissing someone in. I have checked a balance mid evening like the number would be kinder the second time. I know the itch. That is why I do not give it a pass when it is pointed at me.
If I can put mine down, so can you. That is the whole standard. I am not asking you to throw it in the Thames. I am asking you not to keep a door open onto the rest of the world while you are supposedly choosing this bit of it.
After is when the phone really tells on you.
This is the part people skip because it is not cinematic. Water. A stupid comment. A hand on my back. The room getting ordinary again.
That is when a lot of them reach for it. Like the job is done so the feed can come back. I am still in the bed and he is already half in someone else’s night. A story. A score. A scroll that does not even look like pleasure. Just the thumb on autopilot because silence makes him itchy.
I use sex to quiet the noise sometimes. I know I do. So when the noise comes back through his screen before I have even sat up, it feels like I lost. Not morally. Just in the simple way of having been in a room with someone and then suddenly being in a room with his attention going elsewhere.
Stay. Five minutes. Ten. Talk rubbish. Ask if I am alright without making it a performance. Then you can have your little rectangle. I promise it will still be there. The internet is very loyal like that.
What face down actually means.
It means you are not available to everyone else for a bit. That should not be a grand romantic gesture. It should be default, like shutting a door, like washing your hands, like not keeping your trainers on in the bed.
It means if something explodes you will see it after, and most things that explode on a phone can wait. The warehouse will still be there in the morning. The group chat will still be wrong. The lad you are half stringing along can sit in drafts.
It also means I do not have to clock your face changing because a name came up. I have been that girl, watching a jaw tighten at a preview I was not meant to see. I will not play detective in my own evening. If there is someone else, say. If there is not, stop making your home screen look like there is.
I am not competing with a machine.
That sounds dramatic written down. In the room it is small and sharp. I did my hair. I came over. I let the cocky version of me out, the one who can be filthy and still want to be looked at like I am the most interesting thing within reach.
A phone says maybe. I am not a maybe when I am undressed. I am here. You can meet me there or you can go home and marry the scroll. Plenty of people already have. They fall asleep blue-lit and call it winding down.
I wind down on people. Or I do not bother. That is the split.
So here is the rule, and it is not cute and it is not a test I will mark in secret. Phone face down before anything. Before the kiss that means it. Before my top comes off. Before you decide this is the bit where you get to be half somewhere else.
Eyes on me. Hands on me.
If you can still scroll, you are not as into this as you think.
Mouth shut, screen down, or do not start.
