Film Noir

I rarely feel relatable neurosis. I don’t sit down when I’m at restaurants and panic about not knowing what cutlery to use. I just kind of go with it. I feel a sense of isolation when this ‘situation’ is repeated in most films and amongst people who have made something of themselves, still wanting to seem accessible. Accessible to whom I haven’t figured out. People who weren’t raised with table manners or adaptable social skills perhaps…

My neurosis is often rooted in noticing other people’s oddities and wondering if mine are as transparent. I accept that I am only human, however, humans, in particular, are the most unforgiving of this quality. I have always been acutely aware of this, though events like this evening make this concern impossible not to confront.

I make the unloaded comment that he never mentioned that he had a cat. A brown Persian cat with a white mark on its tail circles in and out of my legs, as he hands me a drink. Cheap shiraz in an expensive-looking glass, I clock the bottle on the kitchen counter. “Persian cats are gorgeous!”, I babble. He nods indifferently. We are on the second date.

“It's a Himalayan Persian”, he corrects.

Salty…

“Oh right….whats her name?”

“He doesn’t have one”

….What the fuck.

“Oh, how comes..?”

He then, without breaking eye contact, tells me that he visited his, now ex, girlfriends family about eighteen months ago. The father had this highly intelligent indoor cat. The cat was even trained to use the toilet. It had escaped because my date left the backdoor open and he had to frantically search the garden, then town for it. He ended up going to the pound (yes he uses that word) and found this “little guy” to replace Jinx (the ex’s family cat), he smirked and chuckled to himself regaling how he even spray painted the distinct white mark on this cats tail…whilst unnaturally attempting to stroke the nameless swishing tail in between us. He clearly doesn’t feel any affection towards this animal. The real “Jinxy" turned up two days later after this one had clawed everything in sight and pissed all over the house. The father, who had never been keen, asked him to leave and take this imposter with him. The girlfriend said it was best they go their separate ways. He decided to keep this replacement pet for himself and that he wasn’t really a ‘cat person, so he just hadn’t gotten around to naming him yet.

I cannot refrain from saying

“isn’t that the plot of Meet the Parents, without the happy ending?”

He laughs - a dismissive snort, shaking his head, in faux disbelief. I should not have said that. He is irked that I have challenged this, but he hasn’t left too much choice. It’s such an indisputable lie. Isn’t the whole objective of lying to deceive and conceal. To lead one down your made-up path, a scattered fabrication of breadcrumbs, and if they aren’t mystified into drinking down your tall tale then why put in the fucking effort in the first place. I understand lying. I’ve lied all the time. And if you’re judging me and try to tell me that you have never lied, you’re a fucking liar.

Those who object to liars so passionately I believe lack core empathy. I am more than aware that it’s not nice to be lied to, but if you do lie to me I recognise there was a very inward reason for it, probably down to your own complexity from your childhood. I am a cheap date and even cheaper Freud.

During my first year at university, I used to tell people that I had won a competition to attend a party at the Geordie Shore series 2 house. I don’t know why I did it, probably just for a lack of colourful anecdote. When anyone asked me questions about it I’d act irritated and haughty - just like this evening’s man. Lying of course takes craft but if you get to the age my date has and lie so poorly, I will call it out. I, on the other hand, am far more sophisticated with my deception now I have blossomed into an intelligent young woman, balancing in the middle of her twenties. When I find myself in a public place where a lot of people are wearing headphones, say a waiting room, I like to mime a big sneeze and look around to see if people notice. If they were really listening to headphones they wouldn’t hear my “sneeze” I do this charade to see if anyone is just pretending to wear headphones. I guess I tell this lie because I am suspicious of other peoples lies.

Later. I am jiggling my body next to him in bed. It’s the only way I can relax. The date has made me restless but I have stayed over in the hope that the spark might be delayed, so it doesn’t all feel like a waste of time. We are in his bed, pretending to sleep after clumsy intercourse. The kind that doesn’t last long but still feels like it goes on for more than it should. The kind you don’t really think of during but realise you really didn’t like much later. The kind people have when they barely know each other.

Before this fumble, I tell myself that our first and this second date maintained a sense of sexual tension, which usually really turns me on. But it hadn't and I was not turned on.

I feel my eyes well up for the rush of crushes I got when I was virginal and 14. When a text message from a particular person would make my cheeks hot and my thighs sweat. You get told a lot when you’re a young person but nobody tells you that this kind of sexual tension stays in your past. The man doesn’t notice my nostalgic tear in the darkness of his bedroom.

Even later. Still in his bed. I am bored so I jiggle my legs. He probably thinks I’m gyrating. I don’t care what he thinks. I then remember when I was 19 after a house party I shared a blowup mattress with an older boy and girl, both beautiful creatures. Now that was sexual tension. I was attracted to them both in every superficial sense and there was an atmosphere, like something cinematic and awesome could happen, I had only had sex with two people and was nearly trembling with anticipation of the new experiences I was so hungry for. But I realised that I was really shaking, mainly from alcohol and caffeine poisoning. Vodka with Red Bull. I was making the whole deflating mattress rock and the boy kept asking me if I was okay. I feigned that I was fine and crawled to the kitchen, shakily making myself a stained coffee cup of tepid Thames water with a plastic straw. I stumbled back and clung to the sofa, knowing my magical moment had passed.

I watched the contortions of their entwined bodies rising and falling under the one tog spare duvet. I sipped water with a plastic straw, willing my body to stop shaking. I don’t know what I feel worse about today, years later, the voyeurism or the plastic straw.

In this man’s bed I cringe at this, and the Geordie shore memory from earlier. Why was I so weird and awkward. And then I look over and my date and realise that he is older than me and is even more weird and awkward than I was when I was 19, with his nameless lie cat. Maybe some do stay 19 forever.

I feel like I don’t sleep but I must do when I find that I have dribbled all over the pillow and feel the man's erection being pushed into my lower back. My moment's gone, and he is too late. Romance is dead - deadwood, Morning Wood. The sheets feel starchy, the flat smells stale and his cheap shiraz stained lips don’t look as appealing as they did yesterday, in this grey morning light.

I step out of his door after a politely stilted farewell and tread to the tram station. I will never see him again. I won’t remember his name.

I sit down on the tram with a slump. I haven’t fallen in love in the last twenty-four hours like I had hoped - as we all subconsciously hope, let's face it. I am depressed. I am disappointed.

I do my pretend sneeze on the tram to find my liar this morning. Force of habit. “False” of habit even.

I find them. He is a tall man, with eyes that contrast so strikingly with his skin. He looks baffled, removes his headphones and his lips curl into a flirtatious smile. The spark I’ve spent the last 12 hours hunting for is in the eyes of this mornings liar. My liar. He sees me, he understands what I am doing. He winks. He gets off the next stop, looks over his shoulder and smiles again. And I have fallen in love at that moment, he sees the real me, he sees my lies and he sees my truth, and I know that I will love him forever.

I will never see him again. I won’t know his name.