Anyone will touch me in the dark.
That part has never been the problem.
I can get a hand on my waist in a queue. I can get a mouth on mine outside a club while the bass is still leaking into the street. I can get the whole performance, filthy and flattering, and still be walking home with my trainers under my dress like nothing happened. Private wanting is easy in this city. It is cheap, even. You do not need a plan for it. You just need lighting that is bad enough and a man who has decided he is brave for one hour.
What still feels rare is the other bit. The daylight bit. The bus stop bit. Someone holding my hand like they are not doing me a favour.
The gap I keep clocking
There is a gap between how people want you when nobody they know can see it, and how they act when the world is watching. I notice that gap more than I should. It sits in my stomach like a stone I keep meaning to spit out.
Late texts do not close it. A late text is just proof he thought of me when he was bored, or hard, or walking home from someone else’s night. I used to treat those like evidence. I do not anymore. Or I try not to. Then I am on the sofa with my makeup half off, checking if he viewed the story, and I have to laugh at myself because I am thirty and I still do that.
A hand on the small of my back in a Tesco at ten is different. Introducing me to the mate who turned up unannounced is different. Not flinching when someone from work walks past is different. That is being chosen in public. It is small. It should not feel like a prize. It does.
I made private feel safer
I know I helped build this. I flirt first. I joke first. I make it easy to keep me in the dark because the dark is where I am best. No breakfast negotiation. No what are we. Just the version of me that looks finished and leaves before the kettle.
It started as a trick. If I look like I do not care, rejection cannot land properly. If I am the filthy one, the funny one, the girl who does not ask for Saturday, then I cannot be left in the quiet. That is the logic. It is not good logic. It is just old.
Men clock it. Of course they do. They get the night, the mouth, the confidence, and they never have to decide if they want me in daylight. I hand them the loophole and then I get annoyed when they use it. That is on me as well. I can admit that without making it a speech.
Still. Wanting sex is not the same as wanting to be a secret. I can be both things at once. High drive and a bit soft. People act like those cancel each other out. They do not. They just make the mornings more complicated.
What public actually looks like
It is not grand. I do not need a man announcing me like I am a promotion. I need the ordinary stuff that says I am not a draft.
Walking on the inside of the pavement. Waiting while I redo my lip in a pub toilet instead of scrolling like I have vanished. Saying my name to someone without lowering his voice. Sitting next to me on the night bus and not leaving a seat between us like I am a stranger he has not decided on yet.
Last month I was with someone who was brilliant in a bedroom and careful in a street. Not cruel. Just careful. The second we were around other people his hand dropped. His laugh got smaller. He looked at his phone like it might rescue him. I felt myself get louder to fill the space, which is what I do. Cocky. Jokes. A bit too much. Then I hated myself for performing while he got to be discreet.
I did not row. I went home and wrote it in the diary like a coward and put the telly on. Next day I was at work with a radio in my ear acting like I had slept.
Late texts are not a substitute
You can send a goodnight from anywhere. That is the problem with phones. A man can make you feel chosen at 1am from a cab he is sharing with someone else. The words still land. Your body still reacts. Then morning comes and there is no plan, no public, no proof except a grey bubble.
I used to answer those fast. I liked the heat of being wanted even if it was thin. Now I leave it a bit. Not as a game. As a check. If he only ever finds me when the city is empty, I already know the shape of it.
Some of them get offended by that. They say I am being cold. Mate, you had me in the dark. You can survive an hour without a reply.
The boyfriend I will not say I want
I tell people I do not do boyfriends. It comes out like a punchline. It is not. I want one. I want the boring bits as well as the filthy ones. I want someone who comes to Tesco and does not treat it like a secret mission. I want money and a door that is mine and a person who does not flinch when the lights are up. That last one is the one I wrap in sarcasm so nobody can use it against me.
Being chosen in public is the closest I get to saying it. If you will stand next to me in the day, I can believe I am not just a mood you had. If you will not, I can still enjoy the night. I am not above the night. I am just tired of pretending the night is the whole thing.
My flatmates see it before I do. They clock the hour I get in. They clock whether I talk about him in the kitchen or only after a drink. One of them asked if I was actually seeing someone and I said no so quickly I nearly laughed. Then I spent the rest of the morning doing my face like it was armour, which it is.
It is not about being respectable
This is not me suddenly wanting to be good. I am not auditioning for a quieter personality. I like sex. I like a lot of it. I like being the girl who can ask for what she wants with the door shut. That does not mean I want to be parked in the shadows until it is convenient.
Respectability is a boring word anyway. I work in a warehouse. I split a flat. I have a degree and sore feet and a mouth on me. I am not trying to become somebody’s secret nicer version. I am trying to be the same person in the street that I am in the dark. If that scares someone, he can go. I have been left in quieter ways than that.
How I can tell
If he only wants me after midnight, I already have the answer.
If he will walk me to the bus and stay until it comes, that is information. If he introduces me without the pause, that is information. If he can sit in a greasy spoon with me looking rough and still talk like I am the point of the morning, that is the whole test. I do not need a speech. I need him not to shrink.
And if I catch myself shrinking first, making it easy, offering the loophole, I have to stop. That is the bit I am actually practising. Not becoming less filthy. Just not pre-rejecting myself so nobody else has to do it.
Public is not a proposal. It is a man who does not need the cover of noise to admit I am with him. In this city that still feels rarer than it should. I keep looking for it anyway. Quietly. Then I redo my lip and go to work like I did not.
