‘I love a man in uniform,’ I tell the man standing in front of me
Is it obvious, from that terrible clichéd line, that I’ve always been crap at flirting? Everyone is bad at it when they’re a teenager, trying to get the attention of whichever horrible teenage boy they have a crush on, only for him to break their hearts because he prefers his PlayStation and pretends he doesn’t care. But when you get into real adulthood, the power is supposed to shift. Men have to grind to get the attention of women. Flirting as a grown woman should be as simple as existing, surely?
Unless, of course, you believe the old binary bullshit perpetuated by romcom movies that all women are either a Beyoncé or a Bridget Jones. A total goddess or completely hopeless. To be honest, I never really understood what was supposedly so unattractive about Bridget, to make her so solidly single for so long, which made me think the spinster trope was probably a figment of fiction too. But anyone looking at me now, attempting to flirt while this poor chap cringes in front of me, would almost certainly file me under: Bridget.
‘Erm, thanks,’ he says awkwardly. I’m surprised he doesn’t hear this more often – don’t all women love a fireman? – Then again, I suppose people don’t say it out loud, do they? They just buy the sexy calendar and hide it in a drawer.
This clearly isn’t working. And it’s reminding me why I’m single. But to be honest, I hadn’t been all that worried about it until the events of today.
I often wonder who decided that two’s company and three’s a crowd because, for some reason, they completely overlooked one. It’s not as though I need validation for my life choices, it just would have been nice to be included, that’s all.
It’s not all bad, being a ‘one’. I get to decide what I want to do and when I want to do it. I – and I alone – always get to choose what’s for dinner, what I want to watch on TV, whether I want the radiator on full blast or the window wide open. I am my own person, free to do whatever I want, accountable to no one apart from yours truly…
I grew up being told by everyone I knew, and every bit of media I consumed, that I had two options. I was supposed find myself a fella, asap, settle down, get married, have kids – you know the drill – or I could take the more modern, feminist-y route of shunning all of that in favour of being a ball-busting career woman who doesn’t need a man, or kids, who battles her way up the career ladder to smash the glass ceiling, and lives her best self-sufficient life.
There’s a third route no one talks about though, and it’s not so much the route I have chosen, more the road I wandered down, and now I think I’m probably too far along to turn back.
I know I’m not alone, as one of these third-routers, being in my thirties, unmarried, with no kids, not owning my own home, bouncing from job to job. There are plenty of us out there but many are too embarrassed to admit it. Well, of course they are; it’s the pitying looks that follow the prying questions. ‘Oh, has it not happened for you yet?’ – as though I’ve lived my every waking moment on this planet just searching for a man, any man, with enough sperm to keep me popping out babies on the regular, and for what? Sometimes people say, ‘But it’s your job, to keep the human race going.’ Well, guess what, I didn’t apply for that job (and I’d probably suck at that job as much as I do my actual job anyway).
I just wish people would stop making women feel like failures for taking the third route. You never know a person’s personal circumstances. You don’t know why they don’t have kids, or why they haven’t met the right person yet. And, I promise you, the further you wander aimlessly down the third route, the harder it is to turn around.
I’m just me, alone, with a low-paying job, a crippling rent-paying addiction, and no one or nothing to fall back on. And sometimes, when you are just you, alone, things can go wrong, and there’s no one around to have your back. That’s when you end up in big messes, like