It’s bloody ‘not’ again isn’t it…
It’s been a wee while since I’ve put fingers to keypad – I’m blaming my absence on this ridiculous cold weather and the fact that I’ve been shackled to a computer screen and telephone in a dull un-properly heated basement which has quickly birthed in me an allergic reaction to being anywhere near a glowing monitor screen in the bowels of anywhere unless I’m being paid (slightly above minimum wage) to be. But here I am – a call centre job down (this time not my doing you’ll be overjoyed to hear) and a blog potentially up. Oh happy days.
And even happier days – because I – Ms perpetually single Maggie Adams from Undatableshire – have a date tonight. With a man. With a pulse. And working parts.
I’m one of those girls – you’re bound to have a few within any group of friends – who seems totally incapable of falling into anything resembling a relationship. You’ve told them a thousand times that’s there’s no reason for it – that you can’t in any way fathom why they, or even how they, are single. They’re not unattractive – they’re maybe even somewhere on the pretty scale, they don’t have any severe hygiene issues – no halitosis here. They don’t, indeed, have any noticeable social pathology, and yet they totally fail to convince a man to sleep with them on a regular basis. My paranoid suspicion is that all you good friends do indeed have a toppling list of reasons of just why my fellow single cursed women and I are endemically alone. You talk about your theories to the other smug coupled up girls in hushed tones sipping your decaf lattes in cafe corners. You pity my lack of perception as to just why no self respecting man will look at me (for more than a fleeting glance at least) – but worry too much about crippling my self esteem to actually lay it on the table.
To dam up these paranoid floods of a single woman’s mind I reassure myself with the knowledge that I’m not a totally repulsive person. I have plenty of friends – they seem to like me – and plenty of them are men – so its not that I emit some high pitched wail only audible to the males of the species that sends them running screaming.
In fact to get morbidly introspective I think one of my major failings in the dating race is my winning ability to befriend the men I fancy. I can’t begin to tell you just how many unrequited love afairs I’ve had in my head with numerous male friends who have ripped my heart out by daring to date other women whilst I’ve been fully involved in a very rewarding imaginary relationship with them. The bastards.
For the past five years of my life (yes.. FIVE) I’ve been totally besotted with one particularly good friend. The only thing I’ve got going for me is that it’s been proven that he is indeed attracted to people in possession of a vagina. This has not always been a qualifying factor in my love requirements. I have the crushing awareness though that he still seems well and truly stuck up the pipe of a dream.
We met doing a play together just after I left drama school. It was an odious project – a pretentious bit of twaddle that was totally unpaid and averaged audiences of three – but the sheer horror of it welded me and my BFL (best friend love innit) together. He’s gloriously wicked with a cyncism that I’d wear like a designer coat and a heart big enough to wade about and get truly sticky in. We had a night, of sorts. After the show finished we got hideously drunk together and ended up in bed with drunken fumblings and quickly on route to nakedness until… I stopped it. WHY? Fuck knows why. Idiot. I adored him, I fancied the arse of him – and the moment that things got heated and on the cusp of something gloriously sexual I well and truly stomped all over the brakes. I mumbled something about not wanting to lose him as a friend. And he gentlemanly obliged. The horror. Of course in an ideal world he’d have have pinned me down and told me it was impossible to keep me as a friend when he wanted so much more – before ripping into my clothes and plunging into something far more satisfying that the frustrating platonic nothingness we have now.
But the truth, the real truth, is that I was terrified that he would indeed turn into just another one of the various wastrels I’ve had passing through my bed over the years. Here’s a man I would happily build a shrine to who had become terrifically important to me – I just couldn’t face the let down of him walking away after sex. We’re still friends, best friends in fact. I manfully bit my lip when he slept with my housemate a few weeks later (needless to say this is an ex housemate – not one of the two homosexuals I currently house with – if so that would be all levels of dark and confusing), and have counselled him over his various disappointments in love and life over the years- all the time resisting the urge to scream LOOK OVER HERE YOU BEAUTIFUL MAN I LOVE YOU – AND IN MY HEAD WE’RE PERFECT TOGETHER.
SO anyway – I digress. I have a date!!! Well – a sort of date. It’s a set up by one of my gay housemates – also (sigh) an actor (we flock together which distracts us from the reality that none of us are living particularly real lives). He’s been working with this bloke who he insists is perfect for me. I’m not sure to be honest he sounds a bit woefully avant garde (a particularly dodgy breed in the actor kingdom) but I’m being brave. Putting myself out there. That’s what you’re supposed to do isn’t it? Stay tuned – I’ll let you know how it turns out.
M xx
Diary of a Girl in Search of a Life 