I can do drinks.
I can do the walk back. I can do the bit where nobody asks what we are because the answer would ruin the mood. I have been very good at that. Too good, if I am honest.
What I cannot do any more is the almost. The man who is all mouth on a Friday and all fog by Monday. The one who will have me in his bed and still cannot put a restaurant name in a chat. The one who says soon, and later, and we should, and then never opens the calendar.
I want dinner. Not as a princess act. Not as a bill test. Dinner means you planned me into the day on purpose. Dinner means I am not a mood you fit around after the pub.
Book a table or do not get me tonight. That is the whole article, really. The rest is just me explaining why I am finally saying it out loud.
What an almost actually looks like
It does not look dramatic. That is the annoying part. Nobody is throwing glasses. Nobody is writing a speech. It looks like a voice note at 11.42 that says you around. It looks like me doing my face in the bathroom mirror like I have somewhere proper to be, when the somewhere is his sofa and a bottle that was already open.
It looks like sex that is good enough to keep saying yes to. Then a Sunday that evaporates. Then a week of half replies. Then me telling my flatmates I am fine, which is code for I am checking my phone in the kitchen like a teenager.
An almost is a person who wants the benefits of knowing you and none of the inconvenience of choosing you. They like the version of me that arrives already warmed up. They go quiet when I ask a simple question like Thursday. Thursday is not a wedding. Thursday is pasta and a table and the chance to look at each other with clothes on.
I used to call that easy. I called it grown. I called it not being bothered. What it actually was, most of the time, was me making myself convenient so nobody could leave me first.
I am not suddenly a different woman
Let me be clear, because people love to hear a filthy girl ask for dinner and act like she has joined a convent.
I still like sex. I like it a lot. I am not ashamed of that and I am not going to start pretending I only want candles and a shared starter. If the night ends in my room, fine. If it starts there and never leaves the building, that is the problem.
There is a difference between being up for it and being available on tap. One is appetite. The other is a rota you never agreed to.
I have a job. Warehouse floor, early starts, a promotion I actually want. I have two flatmates and one bathroom and a life that already takes organising. I do not need a third job managing a man who cannot decide if I am a date or a secret.
So no. I have not become delicate. I have become impatient with vagueness. Vagueness is not chemistry. Vagueness is someone keeping the door open in case something better walks through it.
Why dinner is the test
Drinks are cheap courage. Everyone looks better under pub lighting. Everyone is braver after two. You can pretend a drink is casual even when you have already memorised his lock screen.
Dinner is slower. Dinner has a time. Dinner has a place other people can see you. Dinner means you thought about me before you got bored in your flat.
I do not even need it to be expensive. I am a warehouse manager in London, not a girl waiting to be flown to Rome. A booth in a noisy place I like is enough. A table where we have to talk with our mouths empty for a minute is enough. The point is the booking. The point is that I existed in your head at 3pm, not just at 11pm when the options thinned out.
If you cannot put me in a diary, you do not get me in a bed. That sentence would have made younger me laugh. Younger me thought asking for a plan was how you scared them off. Younger me was busy being wanted in the dark and calling it freedom.
It was not freedom. It was a loop. Wanted, then unsure, then checking the chat, then telling myself I did not care, then saying yes again because the sex shut my head up for an hour.
The calendar never lies
People can perform interest with words. They are very good at it now. You are so fit. I cannot stop thinking about the other night. We should do something this week.
Something this week is not a plan. Something this week is a balloon. It looks full until you try to hold it.
A calendar is rude in the best way. It asks a yes or a no. Friday 8. This place. I have booked it. That is a sentence with a spine. If he cannot send a sentence with a spine, he can keep his hands to himself.
I have had men tell me they are busy like they run the city. Fine. I am busy too. I do lates. I do early clocks. I do Tesco at ten and a night bus that makes my makeup look like a warning. Busy is not the issue. The issue is that they can find a gap for me when they want my body and lose the ability to read a clock when I want a table.
That is not mixed signals. That is a signal. I was just refusing to read it because I liked the attention.
Sex is easy. Choosing is the work.
This is the bit my friends already know and still let me forget.
Sex is the language I speak fluently. I know what I like. I will say it. I am not shy once the door is shut. That part has never been the problem. The problem is what happens after, when the room goes ordinary and somebody has to decide if this is a person or a habit.
Almost relationships live in that gap. They keep the heat and starve the rest. No daytime. No friends. No boring chat about the week. No I will meet you after work. Just the highlight reel, on demand, with no credits at the end.
And yes, I used that. I used the highlight reel when I did not want to sit in the quiet. I used a body against mine to turn the volume down. I am not going to lie about that and then act shocked when men clocked I would accept less than a date.
If you train people that you are available without a plan, they will keep offering you no plan. That is not villainy. That is pattern.
I am changing the pattern. Not with a speech. With a standard. Dinner. A time. A place that is not automatically his bedroom.
What I am not asking for
I am not asking for a boyfriend on the second drink. I still flinch at the word some days. I know that about myself. Wanting one and being ready to say it are not the same job.
I am not asking to meet his mum. I am not asking for a spare drawer. I am not asking him to fix my rent or my head or the fact that quiet men still make my stomach drop.
I am asking not to be a secret that only comes out after dark. I am asking for the minimum courtesy of being scheduled. I am asking to sit opposite someone who can look at me over a plate and not treat that like a trap.
If that is too much, say so. Say you want casual and mean it. I can respect a clean no. I have given plenty of them. What I will not do is keep translating we should into a future that does not exist.
How I am doing it now
If we match, I am still going to be filthy in the chat. That is me. I am not sanding myself down so I seem more bookable. I am just not letting the filthy chat replace the plan.
If you want to see me, pick a night. I will tell you if I am on shift. I will not rearrange my whole week for a maybe. I will not sit in the flat doing my makeup for a you around that arrives when I am already in bed.
If the night is good, I still might go home with you. I am not playing a points system. I am not withholding sex like a voucher. I am withholding the almost. That is different.
My flatmates have heard this speech before, by the way. They give me the look. The one that says Els, you will last four days. Maybe they are right. I have a talent for talking a big game and then folding when someone is fit and the lighting is kind.
So I wrote it down. Publicly, on purpose. Harder to wriggle out of when it is sitting here in black and white.
The bit I did not want to admit
Dinner is not really about food.
I can feed myself. I have been feeding myself for years. I can get a meal deal and call it a night and be fine. What I want is the feeling that I was chosen in daylight. That I was not an impulse. That someone looked at their week and left a space with my name on it.
That is the soft part. The part I used to hide under jokes and a high slit and a very convincing I do not do boyfriends routine.
I do want one. Not tonight, not from a stranger with good arms and no follow through. I want the kind of person who can book a table without treating it like a proposal. I want the kind of almost to die off from lack of oxygen.
Until then I will still go out. I will still be cocky. I will still like what I like. I will just stop calling a vague plan a relationship because the sex was good and I was lonely enough to translate it.
Book the table. Put it in the chat. Show up.
Or do not get me tonight.
