» I wanna text you up
Katie says that texts with the ex is worse than sex with the ex, especially if that’s all that’s on offer
It’s 1.26am when the text message from my ex arrives. You know, the ex. The ex I was with for four years. I dumped him, he ran off to a cider festival, met a girl, married her two weeks later, broke my heart and now thinks we can just be friends. That ex.
"Fancy a game of friz?", the message asks, as if none of the above had ever happened. I could kill him. I try not to notice my heart leap, my stomach clench or that my lips break into an involuntary grin. Instead I remind myself of the party line on this particular ex: that I hate him. That he ruined my life, my bank balance and possibly my liver. And that when he gets in touch with me I am cross about it.
You must remember to be cross, I tell myself, fumbling around in the darkness for a cigarette and a Sinead O’Connor single. Perhaps, I think, climbing out the window and sparking up one of the Camel Lights I had hidden under my mattress (I’m trying to give up), that I am still in love with him. Either that, or I’m just not getting laid enough.
I look at the message for a good ten minutes. I read it backward, in search of cryptic clues – like a Metallica single.
"Zirf fo emag a ycnaf," it says. Now I do feel cross.
"The only time he came to the ballet, he got drunk and started a football chant from the balcony"
Eventually, when I have decided it will yield nothing more, I tiptoe across the corridor and into my flatmate’s bedroom. Simon is sitting, playing guitar on his bed. I show him the text message and he looks back at me wearily.
"Do you think it means he still loves me?", I ask, throwing myself dramatically onto the bed. "No" Simon replies, pulling his guitar slowly to safety, "I think it means he wants to play frisbee"
I discuss potential replies with Simon, or at Simon. All of them sound too needy, too bitchy, too friendly, too unfriendly or just too pathetic. I try for neutral. But "I’m busy right now" just doesn’t seem to cut the mustard when you’re dealing with the ultimate pain and solitude of losing the only man you’ve ever loved.
I walk back to my room thinking about what to write. By now half an hour has elapsed since the original message arrived. This will only look worse, I think, in panic. I sit on my bed and toy with the options. I considered ‘loving’, ‘small talk’, ‘flirty’ and ‘normal’. But finally, I decide to go for ‘bitter’.
"Polite notice," my text reads, "please delete my number from your phone as I have deleted yours from mine". I refrain from adding, "because I have your number memorised"
Beedibeepbeepbeep, a text pings back almost immediately. "That’s not very polite. Are you sure?"
Am I sure? Am I sure? I can’t believe he’s treating me like an indecisive five-year-old. Of course I’m not sure. I’ve never been more unsure of anything in my life. And then suddenly, here in the middle of the night, I have a revelation. An epiphany. And it’s about to change the whole course of my life: I hate frisbee. And I have always hated frisbee. I spent four years flinging myself hopelessly towards a flying disc, only to land in the mud beneath it. And I hated every minute of it. In fact, come to think of it, I hated most of the other things me and The Ex did together too.
I hated the pubs, the lounging around getting stoned all day, the working as a waitress, the waiting for him to come home from the pub. I hated his friends, his collection of 2000AD comics, his obsession with pinball. I hated the fact he always thought we’d move back to where we grew up – ideally next door to his parents.
I hated Lynyrd Skynyrd, the days out in Weston-Super-Mare, the polyester football shorts, the bad haircut, the bagatelle, the shoe boxes full of memorabilia, the stupid, dusty, little plastic toys he’d insist on keeping around the house. And I hated the drinking, the drinking, the relentless drinking.
I hated the sci-fi, the crime fiction, the obsession with Walter Mosley. I hated the fact he’d moan when I bought new clothes and that he never had the money, the time or the enthusiasm for any of my interests. I hated the fact that the only time he came to the ballet, he got so drunk that he started a football chant from the balcony. I never loved this bloody man – I just fancied the pants off him. And now he’s married, the only thing we ever had in common is out of bounds.
I realise, just as Sinead reaches the final chorus, that I only ever wanted one thing from H, and it wasn’t bloody frisbee. Overcome, I grab my phone, my thumb moving like lightning and tell him what I should have told him months ago. I finish my text and look down at it, triumphant: "Call me when you’re divorced".
Comments, queries and general chitchat can be sent to: katie@thelatest.co.uk
