The Most Painful Break Up Of All

If you are an ex of mine who just clicked onto this thinking it was going to be about hard it was for me to get over you then, really, fuck right off. I know at least two of you will have done it and you’re the two who I feel the most cold towards.

This isn’t, for once, the emotional pornography that I am prone to writing but rarely publishing after I’ve just been chucked. In fact, for once, I haven’t been chucked.

I am the chucker. The dumper. The cold hearted evil bastard of all that is dead inside who dumped someone a week before Christmas - that’s me.

And, exes, if you ignored my instruction to fuck off (and I’m assuming you did, because why break the habit of a reasonably long relationship with only four days to go before New Year, eh?), then I broke up with someone much, much better than you.

That’s what makes it so painful - he was perfect. Looks wise, he was Jamie Dornan. Voice wise, let’s say Jamie Dornan again. He was hilarious and kind and intelligent and held the door open for men, as well as women, and was super nice to all bar and waitstaff. He would let me read a book and not keep asking what it was about and would watch shit tv with me, happily taking the piss out of it with me and ignoring the fact that I am quite clearly emotionally invested in the characters.Also, not that I ever expected it, but he would buy me nice stuff from time to time too.

I was fifteen when we met, and my best friend and I were hanging around, killing £6 at the local shopping centre. We were being pursued by two boys that wore caps and three quarter tracksuit bottoms and after trying to lose them in the aisles of HMV, they caught up with us. Just as things were getting a little awkward and, for a girl who until that summer was only used to boys talking to her when they wanted the answer to question in French, a little scary, there he was - “Sorry, I have a boyfriend.”

We’ve been together ever since. Sure, his face has changed (from Orland Bloom, to that guy from The All American Rejects, to Gosling, of course and even, for a short period of time, skull-faced ITV detective drama actor, Laurence Fox) over the years, but whose hasn’t?

Recently, though, things started to get tough. I resented him; resented his...presence. His necessity. A guy who I’d politely chatted to for 7 minutes on a train would ask me out, or a guy in a club would find it appropriate to keep touching my waist whilst asking me if, as a copywriter, I had a law degree, before asking for my phone number, or a guy would GET HIS DAD TO COME AND ASK FOR MY NUMBER WHILST I WAS ENJOYING A QUIET MEAL WITH A FRIEND,  then I’d get all awkward and, before I knew it, Imaginary Jamie Dornan boyfriend would show up. Then, as is a pattern with most of my relationships (real or imaginary), he would make me feel bad about myself; I’d sit and brood and add to my mental list of why I didn’t have a real one of him. Or why real one’s of him had left. Or cheated and then left. 

Last month a guy who works at the wardrobe-sized coffee shop at the train station asked me out. Sometimes, I get asked out. Or asked for my number. It happens occasionally and, if I’m having a blue day, I spend the rest of the day walking around like the Sex and the City theme is playing from all speakers everywhere ever. We hadn’t really spoken, other than, you know, literal shop talk and so I was a little taken aback. 

“I was wondering if you were free this weekend? To do something? Maybe a country pub?”
I could see imaginary Jamie Dornan boyfriend approaching.

“That sounds lovely, but I can’t. I’m sorry!”

“Oh, how come? Maybe in the week, then?”

I turned my back on imaginary Jamie Dornan boyfriend. I was done.

“I don’t really think I can. Thank you, though. Sorry!”

I boarded my train feeling like a patronising bitch, but alighted it feeling ok. I’m not just going to wheel out an imaginary boyfriend that makes me feel lonely and insecure and blue just to spare an ego. I’ve asked guys out before and have been rejected -  it’s shit but I was fine. You will be too, men. 

Don’t you find it a little patronizing for me to assume that, without presenting a faceless boyfriend as the reason for rejection, you’ll crumble into the fetal position and give up on the quest for love entirely? If you do then, I’m sorry, you’re wrong - men are spectacularly shit at taking rejection. Not because it’s me in particular who’s rejecting you, and I’m so great, I would like to highlight, but just because you feel so...entitled? It must be very comfortable to think that the only reason I’m not going to go on a date with you is because I’m exclusively dating someone else - if it hadn’t been him, it would have been you. 

I won’t act like I’m in a low budget American high school drama and tell you to your face, by the lockers, the long list of reasons why I won’t go out with you; it probably isn’t that long at all (you’re fine, seriously, you’re doing great), I’ll just tell you that I don’t want to and that will have to be enough.

And girls, there is nothing more liberating than, when a group of guys have completely interrupted a night out with your girlfriends, and one of them asks you for the third time why you won’t give him your number, saying “I don’t want to.” Granted, he’ll call you a stuck up bitch but he’ll leave, and you can get on with your night. 

A few weeks later, when I thought it would be a good idea to buy a strawberry flavoured aloe vera drink from the wardrobe-sized coffee shop at the train station, the guy behind the counter asked me out again.

I told him I was really busy with work.

You have to choose ladies, and when it came to a choice between my imaginary boyfriend and my imaginary career, I chose my imaginary career. Even in our own heads, we can’t have both.

Curiosity Killed The Cat That Sexually Assaulted A Woman, Whilst Someone Else Was Being Racist Literally All Of The Time.

I watched CBB tonight and came away feeling, very much so, that pretty much everyone is shit.

Prefixed by the disclaimer that this episode contained ‘language that viewers may find offensive’ as well as ‘unwelcome physical interactions between housemates’, I knew that I was going to be cross at some point, but didn’t expect the show to unsuccessfully tackle more issues than a late-night episode of Hollyoaks.

It was an uncomfortable episode, which can best be summarised as The One With Totally Horrible Behaviour Bingo. It really was just a shower of shit right from the start. More so than usual.

Ken Morely, the man who shouts about double glazing, began the show by saying that he was off to the showers, like he’s at fucking Butlins, because you get to see ‘the most women’s arses in there’ - only to then repeat his comment to the two girls in the bathroom, just so they didn’t miss out on all of the feeling creeped out. Michelle smoothed the whole situation over though, by reminding the housemates that it was only the ‘young girls’ that found the remarks not okay. Well. She’s going. On. The list.

A little while later, after some face-to-face nominations that were the most boring (if racism and misogyny are your Breaking Bad) part of the show, Ken was chatting to Alexander O’Neal, I don’t know what it was about, but he used the word ‘negro’ (a word that I’m not entirely comfortable typing, let alone saying) so I pressed my face into my hands pretty fucking hard. Ken seemed a little taken aback by Alexander’s offence, possibly because he’s been operating under the misguided thought that saying the word with a Southern American accent makes it all playful and Michael Fassbender in 12 Years A Slave - it does not. But, it doesn’t get you kicked out of the CBB house either, apparently.

With Jeremy Jackson puking up his guts in the bathroom after a few wines, it was time for the much, kinda-grossly, hyped super offensive thing that producers spent the whole of the day making sure everyone was aware of. Ex Ex On The Beach cast member (contestant?) Chloe Goodman entered the bathroom to help Jeremy, only to flee in tears when he thought it acceptable to pull open her dressing gown and expose her breast.

Half man, half oversexed Rockhopper penguin, Calum Best helpfully reminded everyone to calm down, and that Jeremy thought that Chloe was wearing a bathing suit underneath her dressing gown - like that was at all relevant. I’m not sure how to say this in a way that Calum Best would understand, because I don’t have any crayons handy, but I don’t care if she had a suit of armour on under her fucking dressing gown - do not open, undo, tamper with a woman’s clothes just because you think you can.

Whilst Chloe had gotten to that stage of crying where you have to take a gasp for air after each word and was victim-blaming herself in the diary room, dickheads over on Twitter were accusing her of ‘milking it’. One arsehole tweeted, “In hockey, when someone fakes an injury, they get penalised too.”
Couple. Of. Things.

1. Unless they’re a girl in Year 8, no one plays fucking hockey.

2. What is an appropriate response? “Chloe, this is Big Brother. Do you know why we’ve called you in here? At 11:32 you were sexually assaulted by Jeremy. It’s now 00:02 and you’ve had your allotted time for feeling aggrieved. Chin up, love.”
The time I a guy pulled my top down and grabbed my breasts in a nightclub, I cried and stormed off to walk home alone. The time a man put his hand up my dress in a club I cried for two songs and then carried on with my night, getting more drunk than I have ever been in my life. The time a man honked my breasts in the street and tried to kiss me, I went home to sit in a hot bath and cry until the water went cold, like I was in a shitty drama. The time a man forced his hand between my legs on a date, I vomited and cried all weekend until I had to go into work on Monday morning. Which reaction was correct, pray tell?
When called to the diary room and asked, by an annoyingly calm and rational voice, to explain his actions, a now very sober Jeremy kept using the phrase 'curiosity killed the cat' - like he was a cheeky scamp in a children's book, who just had to know what was behind that robe. Once Jeremy had been removed to a separate part of the house, Ken then proceeded to tell Chloe to be careful, as Jeremy was a “big Jewish director” and she wouldn’t want to fuck things up for herself in “certain circles”. Ding ding ding - get your big felt tip out if you’ve got anti-Semitism on your card.

Tonight’s CBB was basically offensive behaviour packaged up as entertainment - and not offensive in the Geordie Shore, ‘Oh God, they’re being sick into their own hands’ way, but like, properly offensive, wrong stuff.

Spandau Ballet sofa salesman Martin Kemp even reviewed the show like it was an episode of Broadchurch, seeming to forget that it all actually happened and it bizarrely provoked a weird Twitter fight in which people debated which was worse - racism or sexual assault. Given that only Jeremy was removed from the house, and forgetting that our values aren’t intrinsically linked to those displayed in a MDF house in Elstree, the conclusion on Twitter seemed to be that producers viewed sexual assault as worse - BUT THEY ARE WRONG AND IT’S OBVIOUSLY RACISM, DUH.

Do I even need to say that both are wrong? That both should not be being done? That the examples shown on CBB of both brought out views and opinions that I don’t like from people who I thought I did, and left me wanting to watch Parks & Recreation for six hours in order to eradicate the bleak feeling that a late night, cheaply produced Ch5 show left me with?

Good.

Also, Ch5 - you say potato (unwelcome physical interaction), I say potato (sexual assault). Let’s call the whole thing off. Please.