It is a trick.
If I look busy and shiny, rejection cannot land. That is the logic. That is the whole costume. Lip on, smirk on, phone face down on the table like I have somewhere better to be. Then I am on the sofa later with one sock off checking whether he viewed the story.
I wish that last bit was a joke.
The version of me you meet first
People clock me fast. Blonde. Small. A bit much. I talk like I have already decided you are lucky I stopped. I will hold eye contact a second longer than is polite. I will laugh at my own line. I will ask you what you are drinking and then not wait for the answer before I tell you mine.
That girl is not fake. She is just first.
I work a warehouse floor all week. Radios. Rotas. Men who still look surprised when I can add up a pallet count without blinking. By the time I get out, I do not have the energy to arrive somewhere looking unsure. Unsure gets treated like an invitation to mess you about. So I do the face. I do the voice. I make it look like I could walk at any second.
And look. It works. People come over. They buy the drink. They think they have clocked me. Cocky girl, easy night, no aftermath. I let them think that because it is simpler than saying I would like someone to text in the morning and mean it.
Busy is a kind of armour
There is always something I can put between me and the bit where I look like I want it.
A story. A voice note to the group chat. A look at my phone as if the warehouse is on fire and only I can save it. A laugh that says I am already amused without you. I have watched myself do it so many times I could write the instructions on the back of a receipt.
Look taken. Look away. Say something filthy enough that they think you are unshockable. Leave a gap. Do not fill the gap. Let them fill it.
If they do not fill it, I pretend I did not notice. That is the important part. You cannot be rejected by a person you were barely looking at. That is what I tell myself while I am looking at them the entire time.
My flatmates have seen this routine from the kitchen. One of them does the face. The face that says Els, you are not subtle. I tell her to mind the kettle. Then I go and redo my lip in the bathroom because the first coat was for leaving the house and the second coat is for courage.
Shiny is not the same as fine
I know how I come across. Done hair. Done mouth. That little tilt like I already know the ending. People call it confidence. Sometimes it is. Sometimes it is just product and practice.
I check every reflective surface. Shop windows. The black screen of my phone. The grim little mirror above the sink at work. It is not vanity in the cute way. It is a check. If the face is holding, I can keep going. If the face is slipping, I fix it before anyone else sees the slip.
This is the bit I do not put in the flirty version of the story. The flirty version is funny. The flirty version has me as the one who does not wait around. The real version is me on the night bus with my trainers under a dress, replaying a sentence I said too quickly, wondering if it landed as cool or as try-hard.
Cool and try-hard are neighbours. I live on that street.
Then I go home and ruin the act
This is the part that makes me want to throw my phone in the bin and also sleep with it under my pillow.
I get in. Lights on in the hall. Someone’s washing on the airer. I make a tea I will not finish. I sit on the sofa like a person who had a lovely night and is now peacefully existing.
I open Instagram.
I do not post. I am not that obvious. I just check. Did he view it. Did he view it from last night. Did he watch the one of me in the pub toilet mirror where I looked like I was not thinking about him at all.
If he has viewed it, I feel a stupid lift. If he has not, I invent ten reasons that are not about me. He is busy. He is at work. He does not live on his phone. He is a serious person with a serious life. All of that might even be true. My stomach does not care.
I said I did not care. I said it with my whole chest. Then I sat there in yesterday’s mascara doing admin on a man who has not even earned a nickname in the group chat yet.
That is the trick turning around and biting me.
Why I started doing it
I can dress this up as strategy. Dating in London is a contact sport. People disappear. People keep you in a pocket. People like the idea of you until you become a Thursday with feelings attached. If you look like you need it, some of them use that. I have watched it. I have been it. I got bored of being the one who texted first in daylight and watched the spark die on impact.
So I flipped it. I became the one who looks like she has options even when she is eating toast over the sink.
There is another reason and I do not love saying it. Quiet from a man still does something old in me. I fill quiet. I fill it with jokes and sex and a face that says I am grand. I learned early that if you look like you are coping, people stop asking. That lesson has a long shelf life. It followed me out of childhood and into every almost-relationship I have had since.
I am not asking for a violin. I am just telling you why the smirk is so well rehearsed.
The men who believe the performance
Here is the joke on me.
The act attracts the ones who want the act. They like the girl who will match them for filth and then not ask what Saturday looks like. They like that I can leave first. They like that I laugh when they say they are bad at texting, because the laugh sounds like permission.
It is permission. That is the problem.
I have had nights that were excellent and mornings that were nothing. I have been the secret and told myself I preferred it. Secrets are shiny too. They photograph well in your head. They are rotten in the actual week, when you are on a late and he is free and he still does not say come over unless it is late enough that it does not count as choosing you.
Then I flirt harder the next time, with the next one, because if I can get ahead of the feeling I will not have to sit in it.
My type is trouble with nice eyes. I know. I still say yes. Chemistry feels like proof. Most of the time it is just a familiar mistake wearing decent aftershave.
What I actually want, which I will deny in person
I want someone who can take the smirk and not be fooled by it.
I want dinner that is actually dinner. A table. A time. Not drinks that pretend they might turn into a plan. I want a person who views the story and then says something, even if the something is stupid. I want to be chosen in public, which still feels rare. Anyone will touch you in the dark. Fewer people will hold your hand by the bus stop.
I want a boyfriend. There. I said it on the internet like a coward.
I also want the promotion and enough money that a cab home does not need a committee meeting in my head. I want both. Wanting both does not make me greedy. It makes me thirty in London with a degree and a warehouse job and a mouth that gets me into trouble.
None of that fits on a story. So I post the shiny bit and hope the right idiot can read between the lipstick.
I am trying, badly, to stop doing the bit
Last week I nearly texted first in the afternoon. Proper daylight. No drink in me. I wrote it. I deleted it. I wrote it again. I went and put mascara on to send a message. That is unwell behaviour and I did it anyway.
Then I sent it.
It was not even filthy. It was just hey, how was your shift. The kind of ordinary line that used to feel like handing someone a weapon. He replied. It was fine. The world did not end. I still checked if he had viewed the story two hours later, because progress in my life is not a straight line. It is a loop with better lighting.
I told my flatmate. She said, finally. I told her not to make it a thing. She made tea and made it a thing anyway. That is why she is allowed to stay.
If you have met me out
If I clocked you and looked away like I had better options, I probably did not.
If I was funny and a bit rude and then went quiet when the conversation got sincere, that was not boredom. That was me hitting the edge of the costume.
If I left first, it might have been the rota. It might have been pride. It might have been me liking you enough that staying felt like too much information.
And if you viewed the story and did not say anything, I sat on that sofa and invented a whole personality for you. That is not your fault. It is also not attractive. I am working on it in the same way I am working on not buying lip product I do not need. Inconsistently. With evidence to the contrary all over the bathroom shelf.
The honest ending
I flirt like I do not care because caring, out loud, still feels like standing in a kitchen with no script.
I can do sex. I can do banter. I can do the look. I can do leaving before sunrise with my makeup still decent. What I am worse at is the ordinary bit. The seen-your-story-and-thought-of-you bit. The stay-and-have-breakfast bit. The I-liked-that-and-I-would-like-it-again bit.
So I keep the trick in my pocket. I will probably use it tonight if I go out. I will look busy. I will look shiny. I will make it seem like rejection could not find me if it tried.
Then I will come home, put the kettle on, sit on the sofa, and check anyway.
If that makes me a hypocrite, fine. At least I am a hypocrite with a good mouth and a working theory. The theory is this. One day I will meet someone who sees the act, laughs at it, and does not use it against me. Until then I am thirty, I am knackered, I am hopeful in a way I do not advertise, and I am refreshing a story like it is going to tell me the truth.
It will not.
I still check.
