When is it okay to ditch my friends for a boy?

crisis alert: I have a crush

I’ve been staring at half-written pieces for several weeks. I’ve been busy with actual work (read: on deadlines set by someone else) and everything I wrote in my downtime sucked. Don’t get me wrong, I think writing is more than anything, an exercise in discipline. I’ve heard my peers and mentors and idols confirm what I already suspected: a blank page never gets any less intimidating. We’re all collectively being victimised by a blinking cursor. We endure the moments of softcore torture for the high that comes with getting into a flow state. Of having an idea that makes you lose track of time and stay up writing into the wee hours of the morning. Not everything that comes from that flow state is good, Substack is home to many of my half-baked ideas, proof of my commitment to the exercise of writing (and lack of an editor).

The best writing comes from not writing

Or at least this is what I kept telling myself to feel better about being everywhere but the damn studio desk. Drinks, pub quizzes, runs, raves, boat races, salsa classes, reorganising my bookshelf, purging my closet. I embarked on every available side quest under the guise of gathering material. I wasn’t procrastinating, I was looking for inspiration. My friends are all too familiar with me pausing mid-sentence to jot down a potential title on a pocket-sized red Moleskine. I’m trying to be better about the graveyard of ideas that is my notes app. I went through every item on the list, scoured my emails for rejected pitches, but nothing stuck out. Then, as the universe always delivers, my friend Zee had a day off, and we went back to our favourite bar for a coworking day. I was overcaffeinated and practically crawling up the walls from listening to my voice whilst trying to clean up a transcription of an interview for a profile I should be working on instead of writing this very piece. I’d downed three coffees and an order of fries, and my favourite bartenders were all busy. When her phone died, I took it as divine intervention and was already halfway out the door when she suggested we hang out at her place down the road instead. As I caught her up on my busy weekend, she pointed out that I’d been spending a lot of time with a new boy I’m seeing. I dropped my voice, though we were alone in her flat, and confessed, I feel so guilty, I was at my friend’s housewarming and kept checking the time to see when it would be appropriate to call my Uber back to his place. I had witnessed countless friends’ sparkle dimmed by loser boyfriends. I was a closing this place down and securing an afters kind of girl. I was devoted to my girlfriends and to the night out. What was happening to me?!

My Dating Style – An Interlude

For you to understand why this was such a departure from tradition, I will illustrate my approach to dating. I think it’s meant to be fun, I’m at a net positive, good dates are thrilling and bad dates at least make for good stories. I enjoy a girl’s night that wouldn’t pass the Bechdel test, but these men were never central characters, they were plot devices. My great love stories were always about my friends. I kissed strangers at parties and went on weeknight dates, saving my weekend primetime for the people who mattered the most.

RIP The Bolter

I never spend the night. When The Tortured Poets Department first came out, my friend quickly declared that The Bolter was my personal anthem. I didn’t want a man breathing down my neck. I run hot, I have a multi-step skincare routine and a specific brand of toothpaste I order online. The collection of labelled toothbrushes stored in the drawer underneath my sink are not evidence of a hearty roster but instead of being the designated crash site for my friends after a night out. Bought in a multipack and likely to make your gums bleed, after all, drunk beggars can’t be choosers, these generic toothbrushes offer them a shred of dignity after being sick in a club bathroom (and maybe on the tube home). When the same friend texted me in the morning to ask how my date had gone, I summarised my feelings in a way that someone who knew me intimately would immediately understand:

I asked him to stay the night. And I gave him a toothbrush. A soft bristle one, not a shitty one from the multipack. And I didn’t make him take it home with him.

Oh you’re down bad lol.

To another friend I explained, confused, I don’t want to fuck this up. What is going on?! I have never worried about fumbling a boy! It wasn’t that I was cold and callous. I’m a capital R Romantic, I’m inherently curious and enthusiastic. I want to know people intimately, I memorise details, I like doing things just because. If I meet someone and we click, I make a point of texting them, let’s hang out!! I bring my friends coffee in bed when they stay the night, I make them dinner, I plan days out when they’re down. I tell them how much our friendship means to me, not only after two bottles of wine, but also whilst we run errands together in the middle of the day.

When it came to dating, I often told myself it wasn’t too different from making new friends. My litmus test for gauging acceptable interactions with someone I was recently dating was always what would I do if I just wanted to be their friend? This strategy quickly fell apart when my friends pointed out that I was going to end up doing the most for a guy who thought getting me a glass of water after we had sex was the pinnacle of chivalry.

Is this Bad for the Brand?

I am so good at being single. I’m really good at not really caring. I’ve gotten the maximisation of fun down to an exact science. When my recently single friends would tell me how excited they were for their newfound freedom, they often spoke of drunken dancefloor make outs. Not wanting to dull their excitement, especially for the ones who had been in the same relationship since middle school, I tactfully told them that wasn’t even the best part of it. I’ve been single for 23 years, that’s way more than the 10,000 hours it takes to become an expert. I’ve dated, but never seriously. I get to be selfish, I have so much time for my friends, for my hobbies, for myself. I have free reign to do stupid shit “for the plot.” My wifed-up friends live vicariously through me, I keep the girls entertained at brunch and litter their inboxes with my escapades. When I guiltily told Zee that I was starting to like this guy, she laughed at my panic. I didn’t mean for this to happen!! It’s still very new. I’m mortified at the fact that he will probably read this, because even though I’m not particularly good at playing it cool, it’s one thing to gush about a crush to your friends, and another thing entirely to write about them on the internet (even if it is the cure to your writer’s block).

I don’t usually write about things as they are happening. There’s something comforting and slightly sanitising about having some distance. Writing about my personal life doesn’t come without consequences. What goes without saying for my friends in the biz has to be spelled out to the people who dissect my writing as if they were sneaking a look into my journal. To quote Olivia Petter, personal essays are not diary entries. There is a narrative arc. I’m telling a story. I found myself revisiting Antonia Bentel’s “The perilous act of writing about someone who’s going to read it” after making a booking under my first and last name and realising that the guy I was seeing was one Google search away from knowing too much, too soon. People sometimes roll their eyes when I say that I’m a private person, you write about your personal life for a living! I understand where they are coming from, but I’ve always been in control of how much I share. When writing about other people, it’s still never about them, but about my experience with them. All you really know about this boy is that he exists and has a toothbrush at my place.

P.S. to the boy who pulled me out of a month-long writer’s block: if you’re reading this, I hope you’re not offended. For what it’s worth, I don’t think you’re a plot device. Also I reposted Bea Isaacson’s I Admit It: I Love Situationships piece on my stories because I think it’s so cool that she’s writing for Vogue, and not as a weak attempt at subliminal messaging.