In which an admirer angles for a visit
I’m writing this just before Christmas. It’s freezing, so cold even the water in the stables has frozen. The horses’ poo is frozen to the ground, so you have to chip away at it. I feel like a miner at a coalface; I even have a head torch. Gracie is wearing her fluoro warm coat; she looks like a policewoman: I half expect her to start directing traffic. I’m facing Christmas on my own. Until…
Him. The writer. ‘What are you doing at Christmas?’
Bear in mind that we haven’t been on a single date. I think this is a little bit forward, like meeting someone for dinner wearing no knickers, brandishing a condom.
Me. Also a writer. ‘Um. The usual. [The following list is the dating equivalent of turning up with hairy armpits.] Feeding the horses, changing their rugs, poo picking [mining], putting hay out, turning out, mucking out, changing water, getting them all in without being murdered by Swirly [she is way more excited about coming in than she is about going out for some reason], changing rugs, feeding, skipping. Walking my dogs. Trying to squeeze in Top of the Pops [is that even still a thing?]. Eating nut roast made by my local deli, as they feel sorry for me.’
Him: ‘Do you fancy Christmas lunch somewhere festive? Claridge’s? Locanda Locatelli? Moro?’ He has been googling.
Me, swooning with nostalgia: ‘I would love that more than anything. To be warm and have someone bring me food! To wear something other than wellies and a jerkin. I simply can’t. I have four dogs, really naughty horses.’
Even though he didn’t reply, I could feel his thoughts in the ether: her bloody animals. She’s not normal. A day later, he sent this: ‘I could come to you. I could bring a Daylesford hamper.’
I’m too ashamed of where
I live, and so I say it’s too soon. I don’t even know if I fancy him, as his face is a blur. Plus, it’s awkward given I write about my life. Even though he’s a writer, he won’t enjoy it. I’m reminded of a piece that went viral a month or so ago, entitled: ‘My boyfriend, a writer, broke up with me because I am a writer.’ The author Isabel Kaplan wrote: ‘I promised I wouldn’t exploit our child’s privacy; he worried I would some day change my mind. He wanted more than a verbal promise, which I didn’t know how to provide. I asked him to trust me. Flowers from my
British publisher arrived later that morning; my book was published the day before in the UK. I didn’t ask my boyfriend to celebrate that publication. I thought I had already asked for too much.’
What a wimp! If a man can’t deal with your success, dump the chippy bastard! Her boyfriend joked that if she wrote about him, it would be the end. He brought up Nora Ephron, author of When Harry Met Sally. The woman who came up with the phrase ‘Everything is copy’.
‘Nora hurt people with her writing, you know,’ her boyfriend, a writer, said. All of which makes me want to stab him, and wonder what on earth he writes about. Perhaps he’s a biographer, writing about Meghan Markle, whom he has never met. Or he pens fantasy novels set in outer space. He is so disparaging of women writing about their feelings he calls it ‘militarised vulnerability’. Why not tell the brave women of #MeToo about your small-penised treatise. See what their response is.
Then she writes the most apposite sentence in the whole essay. ‘In any relationship, there is an expectation of privacy. There is also an expectation of respect. Violate the latter and you relinquish your right to the former.’
EXACTLY! THANK YOU! All the anger I’ve faced for decades over my writing – from family, friends, partners, the chubby husband who was a novelist – has been because they failed to show respect. Not me. I am but a mirror. I will weaponise my misery because I have a right to express my own feelings, my own hurt.
I email him the viral essay as background reading. He replies: ‘I’m not jealous of your success, your talent. I’m in awe of it. And I won’t do anything to piss you off.’
Well. He would say that, wouldn’t he?
I will weaponise my misery because I have a right to express my feelings