“Pardon?” I asked.
“For this week, Queenie,” Gina explained. “It must have been hard, but you did it. And you did it well.”
“I was slow, though,” I reminded her.
“Well, it’s not a race. You’ve only just got back, and you’ll get quicker. You were at your desk, doing the work, and that’s what I want from you.” Gina turned back to her computer.
“Okay?” I said, suspicious. “Thanks, Gina.”
“Word of warning,” Gina said, standing up. “Ted is back from holiday on Monday. Avoid.”
“You don’t need to tell me twice.” I nodded.
“I’ve signed off your time sheet for the week and sent it to HR. You can go home now. You look absolutely shattered. See you on Monday.”
* * *
Two weeks of full work passed. Two weeks of completed time sheets, two weeks of to-the-brink-of-death exhaustion, two weeks of deep breathing in the loo, and two weeks of avoiding Ted.
The less I thought of him, the better; but still, I was doing a lot of ducking and diving around the office in an attempt not to bump into him. I could cross that bridge when I came to it, even though I was doing everything in my power to ensure that I was taking every alternative route that I could in order to avoid bridges.
It was a Friday night, and I was bored with my grandmother asking when I was going to get a pay rise as we watched the news.
In an attempt to actively move myself away from married men, and from men who just want to have sex with my body as and when it suits them (admittedly, the two are not mutually exclusive), this time when I go on OkCupid I am going to talk to somebody who is normal and nice-looking, and who talks to me in a normal and nice way.
As I brushed my teeth, I thought about the men I would avoid even messaging, let alone meeting, on OkCupid this time around:
? The ones who mention my “black curves” as though I’ll be flattered by the suggestion that curves are in this case only acceptable because I’m nonwhite.
? The ones who completely bypass any of the varied films, TV, and music I have listed on my profile. Not acknowledging that I might have interests beyond your dick is a real red flag.
? The ones who want to migrate to WhatsApp a little too soon after starting to chat. It’s obviously because you want to send and receive X-rated pictures.
? The ones who I can tell are using pictures from at least three years ago. Unless you can send me a picture of you holding a newspaper from the day we chat, I’m going to assume that the ones you’ve posted are from Fresher’s Week.
? The ones with x’s in their profile. Cutesy doesn’t tend to equal somebody who is going to want to have a discussion about intersectional feminism.
? The couples who want someone for a threesome. Obviously. Though I’m not ruling that out for the future when I’m a bit more stable. Life should be about experiences, after all.
I washed my face, put my headscarf on, the usual ritual, and got into bed. It was 7 p.m.
I reinstalled the app and logged in, lying on my back in the reclining butterfly pose (knees apart, feet together), a yoga move I’d seen on the Internet that guaranteed opening some sort of chakras. I woke up an hour later, phone in hand and hips as stiff as boards. I turned the lamp off and crawled under the duvet. Three hours later, I was still awake.
Courtney86: Hello, how are you? My name is Courtney, nice to meet you. Having a good night?
NJ234: You’ve got a really nice smile. Hope you’re having a good evening.
Maybe God has been listening to me, even though I haven’t attempted prayer since midnight mass? Maybe she sees that I am on the path to recovery and am ready for a nice person who’ll treat me like I’m more than an orifice.
I replied to both, being very well-behaved and not saying anything remotely sexy to either of them. Maybe I was a changed woman? It was hard to be so restrained, yes, but the smut can come later once they’ve proved that they’re able to talk to me for a day without telling me that they’re wanking over the pictures on my profile.
Two days later and many messages from NJ234 telling me that his “cock’s big enough to split a girl’s cunt in two” or thereabouts, I blocked him, and arranged to go on an actual date with Courtney86 (aptly named, as he is called Courtney and was born in 1986). I so desperately wanted to feel like a normal girl again, and it was worth it, even though I had to do lots of seeding with my grandmother by telling her that I’d be working a bit late on a new project and that Darcy would be with me in case I had some sort of episode.
* * *
I was nervous about this date because we hadn’t spoken about anything rude at all. I was trying to move away from the belief that my only conversational currency with men was sexting, was why.
So far, Courtney86 is unlike anyone I’ve experienced before in that he’s thirty-two, owns two houses, is bald, and has a beard, but, crucially, asks normal questions about normal things.
He seems polite, and quite possibly somebody that I could spend nonsexual time with. He’s passed the Darcy test—she was at first apprehensive because he’s bald, but when Leigh came to meet us for lunch and referred to him as a “Balding Alpha,” she laughed so much that she came round to the idea.
Come Thursday, I was toying with the idea of canceling because surely an actual adult handsome man with two houses wouldn’t want to spend any time with me, a weird flailing baby who had basically just had a nervous breakdown. I went to a quiet area of the cafeteria and called Kyazike for some help and support.
“Help me. What if he’s one of those white guys who likes black girls who are properly put together, and not ones like me who are a bit ‘alternative’?”
“What?” Kyazike asked. “What do you mean, fam?”
“You know, like what if he expects me to turn up wearing Louboutins and a bodycon dress and have, like, contour on my face? And fake eyelashes? And a lace-front wig?”
“You don’t need to go, you know,” Kyazike said. “You’re stressing about this when you could just go home after work.”
“I know! But I need to prove to myself that I can do this. That I can be a normal girl and go on a normal date, and maybe that normal date will help to cancel out all of the very, very bad dates,” I explained.
“There are ways of being normal that aren’t dating,” Kyazike told me.
“Please can we get back onto the topic of me not being black enough, please?”
“Fine.” Kyazike refocused. “So, you started chatting on OkCupid, yeah?”
“Yes,” I confirmed.
“And on this app, you have pictures of yourself?”
“Yes. Five of them.”
“And in these pictures, are you standing on one leg showing off the red sole of your Louboutins and wearing a bodycon dress the way I do on Snapchat?” Kyazike continued with her line of questioning.
“No.”
“And in any of these pictures, do you have contour on your face, or fake eyelashes?”
“No. And no,” I told her.
“Are you rocking a lace-front wig?”
“I’m not, no.”
“So you see my point, yeah?” she checked. “Or do I have to keep on?”
“I do. You don’t.”
“And you don’t have to dress like the black girls you see on Insta to be bla—” I looked up from my seat and saw Ted standing in front of me. As we locked eyes, guilt settled on his face. In direct response, my throat seized up and I dropped the phone on the floor. It clattered by my feet, and he walked over, reaching down to pick it up.
I grabbed at it and looked at him, shaking my head. I put the phone back to my ear and walked away, my legs working very hard to carry me off in a straight line.
“. . . wear what makes you comfortable, innit. Just do you,” Kyazike said. “Remember that time in the playground in year nine, when Tia asked me in front of everyone why I was friends with you when you were white on the inside and black on the outside like a coconut?”
“Why are you bringing that up, Kyazike?” I asked, letting myself into the first-aid room and sitting on a pile of blankets in the corner.