No name talk. No job talk
No story about the week. Just a dark room and a warm body that does not need a biography.
That is the whole mood. I can dress it up if you want. I can pretend it is about liberation or being sexually evolved or whatever people put in captions. It is not that tidy. Some nights I am knackered from the warehouse, my face is done, the flat is loud, and I do not want to be Ellie with the rota and the overdraft and the little speech about what I am like. I want the lights down. I want hands. I want the kind of quiet that only works when somebody else is in it with you.
I know how that sounds. Fine. I said it anyway.
I am so sick of introducing myself
You know the bit. What do you do. Where do you live. How was your week. Oh warehouse, that must be physical. Oh London, that must be expensive. Oh you are funny. Then they wait for the sad chapter like it is included in the ticket price.
I can do that conversation. I do it at work. I do it with dates who want a person, not a night. I do it with my flatmates over tea when someone has used the last of the hot water. I am not mysterious. I am just tired of being a profile.
Some nights I do not want my name in his mouth unless he is saying it for the right reason. I do not want to explain the promotion I am chasing. I do not want to joke about rent and then watch him file me under girl who is fine actually. I do not want to be asked what I am looking for, because the honest answer is nothing you can put on an app.
I want a door that shuts. I want a mouth that does not interview me. I want to be a body in a room and still feel chosen. That last part is the problem. I have not worked it out.
Nobody is not the same as nothing
People hear anonymous and think empty. Like I am offering myself as a service. Like I do not have standards. Like I will take anyone with a pulse and a free evening.
No.
Nobody tonight still means I clock the way he talks to staff. Still means I notice if he laughs at his own joke too hard. Still means if he mentions an animal like it is a punchline I am gone, immediately, no debate. I will be filthy. I will not be stupid.
It means I do not want the CV. I do not want his five year plan. I do not want to hear about his ex unless it is the kind of sentence that tells me he is going to be weird later. I do not want to perform the charming warehouse girl who did maths and English and somehow ended up on the floor with a radio in her ear. That girl is real. She is also heavy. Some nights I put her down by the door with my bag.
You can want sex without wanting a witness.
The week sits on me
By Friday my head is full of other people. Who called in. Who left the pallet short. Who talked about me like I could not hear. Who I was slightly too flirty with and then hated myself for, because I actually want that title and I am not trying to become a story on the floor.
Then I come home and the flat has its own noise. Someone in the bathroom. Someone asking if I am going out. The mirror. Another coat of product because if I look finished I can keep being the fun one. I catch my own face and think, there she is. Els. Smug on purpose. Happy enough. A bit much.
And underneath that is the other thing. The bit I do not put in group chats. The week gets in. The quiet gets in. I can put the telly on. I can write in the diary and call myself dramatic. I can tell myself I am fine because I usually am. Fine is not the same as switched off.
Sex switches it off. Not forever. For a bit. Long enough that my brain stops doing the accounts. Long enough that I am not thirty and calculating and performing. I am just in it. Warm. Wanted. A bit ruined in the good way.
If you have never used a body to make your head shut up, lucky you. I am not going to pretend I am above it.
What I actually want in the dark
Not a speech. Not a ranking. Not someone asking how many and then looking pleased with themselves for asking.
I want him close enough that I can smell his neck. I want hands that do not hesitate and then do not get sloppy. I want filthy talk that sounds like him, not like he watched something and took notes. I want to laugh once, properly, so it does not feel like a job. Then I want him to mean it.
I want my name only if it comes out like he cannot help it. Otherwise keep it. Call me babe. Call me nothing. I am not collecting identity points.
I want the lights low enough that I do not start checking my face in the wardrobe door. I do that enough in daylight. Tonight I do not want to manage the picture. I want to be in the picture and not look at it.
And after, this is the bit people skip, I want the daft softness. Water. A hand on my back. Not a relationship meeting. Not what are we. Just proof I was not a task he completed. If he rolls over like the shift has ended I feel it in my stomach. I can still leave. I just leave colder.
Why I do not tell the whole story
Because the whole story invites caretaking. And caretaking invites questions. And questions drag the week back in.
I have a dad shaped hole I do not do speeches about. I was eight. The house went strange and nobody used the right words. I got good at being funny so the room would move again. That is old news. It still makes silence feel like a threat. It still makes me fill a quiet man with jokes and sex and noise. I know the pattern. Knowing it has not retired it.
So no, I do not want to lie in the dark and explain why I flinch when someone goes quiet. I do not want a stranger to hold that. I barely want my flatmates to hold that, and they have seen me in yesterday’s makeup eating toast over the sink.
Tonight I want the medicine without the consultation.
Is that healthy. Probably not always. Is it honest. Yes. I would rather be honest and a bit messy than spiritual about my coping.
The fear under the cocky bit
Here is the part I do not say when I am being alluring in a kitchen at midnight.
I am frightened that if I stay nobody for too many nights I will forget how to be somebody in the morning. I still want the boyfriend I pretend I do not want. I still want money that makes a cab feel normal. I still want the promotion so I am not doing mental maths every time someone says pub. None of that disappears because I had a good time with the lights off.
Nobody tonight is a holiday. It is not a personality. If I make it a personality I start treating people like rooms I can enter and leave without wiping my feet. I have been on the other side of that. It is grim. I can be filthy and still have manners. Those are not opposites.
Also, wrap it up. I am not doing a tragic film about consequences. I like my life. I like my body. I like waking up as me, even when me is a lot.
How the night usually goes
I leave the flat already performing a bit. Hair done. Playlist in. The smirk on because it works. By the time I am on the street I am Els again, the one people get. Cocky. Fun. A bit arrogant if you need a word for it.
Then at some point the talking starts to feel like work. I can feel myself handing over chapters. Work. Flat. The funny version of being skint. The sexy version of being single. I watch his face for the slot he wants me in.
That is when I want the room to change temperature. Less interview. More mouth. Less who are you. More come here.
If he needs my whole biography to get hard, he is not for tonight. If he cannot say a single kind thing after, he is not for any night. There is a gap between those two and I live in it more than I admit.
Sometimes I go home anyway. Trainers under the dress. Cab I should not have got. Makeup in the window. Quiet. That is also nobody, just the lonely version. I like the other version better. At least someone is touching me.
If you are the person in the room
Do not ask me what I do like you are ticking a box. Do not tell me your job like it is foreplay. Do not make me into a story you will tell your mates with the names changed.
Look at me. Mean it. Use your hands. Check I am still in it. Laugh when it is funny. Be filthy without being nasty for sport. Stay for the glass of water. Then we can be strangers again in the morning without either of us acting like we invented heartbreak.
I will not owe you a second date because the sex was good. You will not owe me a speech because I stayed over. That is the deal when I say I want to be nobody. It is not a trick to make you fall in love. It is not a test you fail by being decent. Decent is welcome. A thesis on my childhood is not.
If you want a girlfriend, say so in daylight. I might panic. I might still say yes later. Do not smuggle that request into a dark room and then look wounded when I keep the lights off.
Morning always comes back
That is the joke of it. I can spend a night being nobody and I still wake up as a warehouse manager with blonde hair and a spider problem and two flatmates who know too much. I still put product on. I still check the mirror. I still want the raise. I still hope, stupidly, that someone will text and not vanish.
Nobody tonight does not delete me. It just gives me an hour where I am not carrying the whole week in my mouth.
If that makes me sound cold, you were not in the room. I am not cold. I am specific. I am tired. I am horny in a way that is not always about the other person. I am also, under all of that, a woman who feels safest when she is wanted without having to explain why she needed it so badly.
So yes. Sometimes I want to be nobody tonight. No name talk. No job talk. No story about the week. Just a dark room and a warm body that does not need a biography.
Then I put my face back on and go to work. That part is still me. The night was me as well. I am allowed both. I am not applying for permission.
