There’s mostly silence
We swap memes and late voice notes. Nobody asks what this is. The talking stage is just two people auditioning without agreeing the job exists.
I hate that I know the difference between a voice note sent at 11 and one sent at 1. Eleven is cute. One is a man in bed, bored, keeping the thread warm so it does not go cold overnight. He does not say come over. He does not say I like you. He says something about a bath, or a shift, or a song, and I listen to it on the night bus like it is a document.
That is the talking stage. Noise. No talk.
It looks busy. It is not.
On paper we are in contact. Reacted to a story. Sent the video of the dog in a pram. He dropped a voice note walking to the shop and I sent one back from the warehouse toilets because the floor is loud and I wanted to sound like I have a life.
If you screenshot the chat it looks like something. Colour. Little play buttons. A heart on a photo from three days ago. My flatmate glanced at my phone and said you two talk a lot. I nearly laughed in her face.
We do not talk. We maintain.
Talk would be: what do you want. Are we dating. Did last Thursday mean anything or was I just convenient and dressed. Talk would be a plan that survives daylight. A Tuesday. A table. My name in his mouth when someone else is in the room.
Instead I know his Spotify moods and I could not tell you if he likes me enough to cancel a pint for me. That is not intimacy. That is admin with flirting on top.
Auditioning for a job nobody posted
Here is the bit that makes me feel stupid, and I do not enjoy feeling stupid.
I am performing. He is performing. We are both very good at the version of ourselves that works in a chat. I am funny. I am light. I am the girl who will send something filthy and then a photo of her tea like nothing happened. He is interested enough. Busy enough. Soft enough that I can invent a future in the gap.
Neither of us has applied for anything. There is no job. There is just this endless interview where the panel never calls you back and also never lets you leave the building.
People online call it the talking stage like it is a real room you walk through. Like you do six weeks of memes and then you graduate. In practice it is a car park. You sit there with the engine on, pretending you are about to go somewhere, burning petrol so the other person does not think you have gone home.
And if it dies, you do not even get dumped. You get discontinued. No row. No speech. The voice notes just stop and you are left holding a chat full of dogs in prams, trying to work out when you became optional.
Why nobody asks
Because asking makes you the desperate one. That is the whole sport now.
Say what are we and you have shown your cards. You have admitted the memes were not enough. You have admitted you were building a little life in the pause between his replies. He can smile and say he thought we were keeping it easy. He can say he does not want to rush. He can say he likes what we have, which is a sentence with no furniture in it.
I do the same trick from my side. I keep it cocky. I keep it breezy. I will send a voice note that sounds like I am walking into something better. I will not ask. I would rather look shiny and unbothered than sit in that quiet, waiting to see if I matter.
That is not mysterious. That is fear in a decent coat.
I can sit on the edge of a bed with someone and be filthy and specific. I go quiet when the question is small and ordinary. Do you want me in the daytime as well. That one still catches in my throat. I will write it in the diary and then go back to sending memes like I am fine.
The late voice note is not a personality
Let me be fair for a second, because I am not innocent.
I like the 1am ones. I like being chosen when the rest of the city has gone flat. I like his voice when it is tired and a bit stupid. It feels closer than text. It feels like a person, not a performance. Then morning comes and we are back to reactions and I have to remind myself that a warm voice in the dark is not a plan.
A man telling you he is running a bath is not intimacy. It is content. You can get the same hit from a stranger if the timing is lonely enough. I have. I am not proud of how well I can turn a nothing message into a mood.
If the only time we sound like ourselves is after midnight, we are not talking. We are using each other as company because the flat is quiet and the day was long and wanting a real boyfriend out loud still feels like I have dropped my armour on the kitchen floor.
What actual talk would look like
It would be shorter than the performance. That is the joke.
I like you. I want to see you this week. I do not want to be one of three chats you keep on a low heat. Or: this is sex and memes and I am not offering more. Either sentence I can work with. I have a high drive and a low tolerance for being managed. Tell me the job and I will decide if I am applying.
What I cannot do, not for another month, is keep rehearsing. I cannot keep being charming on demand for a maybe. I clock in. I do the rota. I already spend enough of my life being useful and pleasant for other people’s comfort. I am not doing it in my own bedroom, in my own chat, for a man who has not even agreed we are in the same scene.
If you want casual, say casual and mean it. Do not send the soft voice note that sounds like a door opening if you are going to shut it every time I take a step.
If you want me, put it somewhere the sun can see it. A time. A place. My name without a punchline after it.
How I know it is empty
When I try to tell a friend what he is like, I run out of facts.
I can tell them the jokes. I can tell them the bit where he laughed at my story about the air fryer tray. I cannot tell them what he does on a Sunday. I cannot tell them if he would come to Tesco with me after a late. I cannot tell them if he thinks this is going anywhere, because I have not asked, and he has not offered, and the whole thing is built to punish the first person who gets honest.
That is not chemistry. That is two people being very careful not to lose.
I used to think I was good at this. Keep it light. Keep it sexy. Leave before anyone can go quiet on me. Lately it just feels like I am doing overtime in a role that was never signed off. Auditioning. Smiling. Waiting for a callback that is never going to say the word dating because the word dating would mean he had to turn up as himself in the day.
So no. We are not talking.
We are sending proof of life back and forth so neither of us has to admit the job does not exist. And I can do memes. I can do late voice notes. I can do the version of me that sounds like she does not need anything.
I would just like, for once, an actual sentence. In English. Before midnight. About what this is.
Until then I am not in a talking stage. I am in a holding pattern with better lighting, and I am getting bored of how pretty I can make a waste of time look.
