People love a girl who is easy to plan around
I have taste. I have a body. Wanting both respected is not me being difficult.
I have lost count of the nights that were going fine until I said a real sentence. Not a speech. Just a preference. Then the air changed, like I had asked for a mortgage instead of a different pub.
Easy is the girl who never needs anything. Specific is the girl who still wants to come out, just not as a prop.
They liked me better as a mood
When I am easy I am a vibe. I will go where you are going. I will eat what is there. I will stay later than my rota should allow and laugh like I do not have an early. That version photographs well. She does not interrupt the plan.
The second I say I do not fancy that bar, or I need to be home, or I am not drinking enough to pretend this is spontaneous, I become a problem to be managed. Not a person. A kink in the evening.
I work with rotas all week. I know what it looks like when someone is treated as an obstacle. I did not come out to be an obstacle in my own night.
Taste is not a penthouse
Let me be boringly clear, because this is where people get cheap.
I am not asking to be flown anywhere. I live in a London flat with two friends and a fridge that starts wars. I have eaten toast for dinner and called it a choice. Taste, for me, is smaller than that.
I do not want a date that feels like he shut his eyes and pointed at a map. I do not want to shout over a speaker that is cooking the inside of my skull. I do not want to stand outside a place he picked because it was close to him and then watch him get offended that I have a pulse.
If you can choose a warehouse layout you can choose a room that does not make me feel like an afterthought. That is all. A bit of thought. A bit of heat. A bit of food that is not beige with regret.
Call it picky if it helps you. I call it not spending money I do not have on a night I already know I will want to leave.
My body is not a group project
This is the other half, the one that makes people cough.
I like sex. I am not shy about that. I also like being asked. I like pace. I like you looking at my face when you change something, not just carrying on because it is working for you. I like filthy talk that sounds like a person, not a script. I like the bit after, the water and the quiet, so I do not feel like equipment that has been put back on the side.
If I say slower, that is not a review of your whole character. If I say not that, I am not ruining the mood. I am using the one bit of power I actually have in the room. You can want me and still take instruction. Those two things are not a fight unless you need them to be.
I have been the easy body. Laugh, keep going, do not make it awkward, get yourself home and write it off as a good time. It is not a good time. It is a disappearing act with nicer lighting.
Difficult is a word for women who answer
Have you noticed men do not get called difficult for having a favourite takeaway. They get called particular. They get called they know what they like. I say I do not eat there, I do not stay if there is no plan, I do not share that, and suddenly I have an attitude.
Attitude is often just a woman who stopped translating.
I used to pre-edit. Soften it. Make it a joke so he could still feel in charge of the night. Shall we maybe not, I am being annoying, ignore me. That is not cute. That is me paying in self respect so he does not have to feel told.
I am done paying that bill every time I want a different table.
Work understands specific. Dating pretends not to
On the floor, specific is competence. Put it there. Not there. This time, not that time. Nobody weeps. Nobody says I am a lot for needing the job done properly.
Then I take the same brain into a kitchen at 11pm and I am too much for wanting the night to have a shape. I want the promotion because I am good at shape. I want a man who can handle shape too. If a warehouse can take instruction, a date can take I would rather not.
The double standard is not subtle. Useful at work. Decorative at night. I am not willing to split myself like that any more. It is the same mouth. It can say the stock is wrong and it can say this is not working for me.
What I will bend, and what I will not
I can be flexible. I am not a hotel review account. I will try your place. I will walk further. I will do the cheap night if the company is right. I will stay in and watch something rubbish if the alternative is a room I already hate.
I will not pretend I do not have a body with opinions. I will not smile through a plan that treats me as extra. I will not let you call that intimacy. Intimacy is when my preferences can exist without me having to apologise for the space they take up.
If your idea of a good woman is one with no texture, you will find her. She will be exhausted. She will be very easy to schedule. She will also, at some point, go quiet on you for reasons you will call crazy. That is what happens when someone spends a year being a gap in their own life.
I would rather be left than sanded down
There are men who heard one no and decided I was a project. There are men who liked me until I had a taste they could not be bothered to meet. There are men who wanted the filthy and not the care. I am not collecting them. I am not campaigning for them either.
If I am too specific for you, go and find the girl who says anywhere is fine and means it because she has given up. I am not her. I still like going out. I still like being wanted. I still like a look across a room. I just want the rest of me invited too.
Taste is not a tantrum. A body is not a buffet. Wanting both handled with a bit of attention is not me being difficult. It is me arriving as a whole person and staying that way when the night tries to sand me down.
Easy to plan around is a lovely quality in a bus timetable. It is a grim ambition for a woman.
