The Dating Detox: A laugh out loud book for anyone who’s ever had a disastrous date!. Gemma Burgess
quite fond of him, so it hurt. That’s the thing about being dumped. Even if you don’t care about him that much, it still hurts. Because if you don’t care much about the dude and you’re still dating him, he must not care about you far, far more to actually go to the trouble of dumping you.
I did have boyfriends at university, since you ask, but they hardly count. It was so much easier then. You’d see them in lectures or at parties and get a crush, and know them via their friends so you could weed out freaks, and flirt for ages and then finally snog, and once you snogged three times, boom! You were going out. Then you’d both agree it was over and move on to someone else. It was easy. Not anymore.
Oh fuck me, again. I can’t believe it’s happened again.
As I walk up towards Victoria station, Grazia tucked underneath my arm, I decide to call Bloomie. She gets to work by 7 am every day, because she has a high-flying job. In a bank. (Note: despite high-flying job in aforementioned arsehole industry, Bloomie is not an arsehole.)
‘Mushi mushi?’
‘You know, Bloomerang, you’re not Japanese.’
‘You better now, Sassafras, my little drama queen?’
‘Dude, I give up. If you pick someone interesting, they’re a bastardo and they’ll dump you. If you pick someone kind, they’ll be boring and, apparently, they’ll still dump you. What. The. Fuck.’
‘So you are better, darling?’
‘Yes. I’m fine. I’m just fucking over…this…shit.’
Sometimes when I’m upset I get dramatic. It makes me laugh. And that kind of makes me feel better. Even when I’m lost in Break-Up Memory Lane.
‘Sass, darling,’ Bloomie whispers. I don’t think talking on the phone is really approved of in her office. ‘I thought we agreed last night that it was better you stopped toying with Posh Mark? You would have thrown him back into the sea sooner or later.’
Bloomie is one of my best friends, and manages to say ‘dahling’ at least four or five times a minute. It’s not pretentious from her, for some reason. She grew up in Chicago, as her dad’s American, but her parents moved to London when she was about 16, so her accent is a bit of a mongrel between East Coast USA and posh London. She’s been exactly the same since the first time we met, on the first day of university.
Bloomie is also a total alpha: always leading the way, immensely more self-assured, together and tougher than I am, and sometimes—and she knows this too—rather spiky. But she’s utterly lovely and funny, of course. Why else would I be friends with her? And since I’m the kind of person who’s quite happy standing on the sidelines smoking fags and making quips rather than leading the pack, we fit together very well. Together with Kate, who I’ll tell you more about later, we’ve seen each other through about 19 boyfriends, 16 holidays together, probably over 250 coffee-and-fags-and-shopping Saturday afternoons, and truly countless hangovers, yet we still don’t run out of things to talk about.
‘I must be doing something wrong. I’ve been dumped six times in a row, Bloomie!’
‘Darling…it’s just really, really, really, really fucking bad luck.’
Suddenly the reality of both statements hits me. I really have been dumped six times in a row. And it can’t just be bad luck. I must be an absolute loser and no one will ever love me again. (Why would Bloomie say I am a drama queen? I mean really.) So I start to cry, ish. Mostly I snuffle into the phone. Bloomie makes soothing noises for a while, and then she clears her throat and says abruptly:
‘Darling, seriously, I have to work. Let’s have a drink tonight. We can talk about this properly…I’m not being, you know, negative, but I don’t want to see you get into a post-Rick spiral…’
How could she remind me of that? ‘Sheesh, of course I won’t. You’re on for drinks, though.’
‘Good, darling, that’s the spirit. I’ll ask Katie too, and email with detes later. Sayonara.’
This perks me up, naturally, and I stride, like the Urban Warrior my outfit makes me, to the tube station, with a cheeriness I don’t really feel. Despite my heartbreak/ache/mild graze, I can’t help but notice a few good-looking men as I walk through and down to the Victoria line. They’re all heading towards the District line. I wonder where they go.
Where was I? Ah yes. Now, on Break-Up Memory Lane, we come to a large speedbump.
Break-Up No.3: Clapham Brodie. I met him in the Bread and Roses pub in Clapham just after I turned 25, following a long dry spell during which I had an excellent time and met no one I really fancied. At all. I had lots of flirtations, of course, and still went on a few dates—just to keep my tools sharp. When none of the guys tried particularly hard to keep seeing me after one or two (or three or four) dates, however, it was actually more depressing than if I’d actually liked them, if that makes sense. But I really liked Brodie. Damnit, he was cute, with perfect teeth, like an American. And he really made me laugh.
Clapham Brodie was a product manager, whatever the hell that is, and lived in Clapham. (Clapham is an area in South London that is popular with young people because it’s quite affordable, quite safe and quite nice…oh God it’s boring.) All his friends lived in Clapham, and every restaurant or bar he ever went to was in Clapham. ‘I will never leave Clapham,’ he said on our first date. ‘It is the centre of the universe.’ He was full of quips that tickled me, though looking back, I’m not sure he was joking about that.
So. Clapham Brodie. Very funny guy. He kept up a running patter of playful silliness that I adored. We had long, giggly dinners at Metro and the Pepper Tree, where he made up food voices (‘don’t eat meeeeeeee!’ squeaked pasta, ‘who are you callin’ chicken?’ barked stirfry—I know what you’re thinking, but it was funny at the time). We danced to 80s music in Café Sol on Fridays and bad dance music in Infernos on Saturdays (if we were drunk enough to consider it), and spent Sundays in the Sun pub, people-watching and making up voice-over conversations for strangers. I found him hilarious, if a tiny bit deluded about his own intelligence (he once corrected my pronunciation of hyperbole, incorrectly). And we never talked about anything serious, ever. I’m not a particularly serious person, so that was fine by me.
After a few months of what I considered to be a rather nice relationship, I heard him refer to me as ‘a friend…with benefits’ when he was talking to his mates in a bar. A cold chill ran over me, but I was too chicken to bring it up that night. (The ol’ fear of confrontation strikes again.)
‘How do you…uh, feel about, us, what’s going on with us?’ I asked his teddy bear Ivan the next night, as we watched DVDs in his bedroom. (Clapham Brodie liked to chat via the medium of the teddy.) ‘I am bear. I feel ggrrrrrrrrrrreat!’ growled the toy. (Ivan was Eastern European.) I glanced at Clapham Brodie. He kept his eyes on the TV. I decided to try again, in a silly way he might respond to. ‘Do you think…are we…you know, officially going steady? Like, swinging hands?’ I asked in an American accent that I hoped belied my hopeful tone. Clapham Brodie put the toy down and looked at me. ‘I was wondering when this would come up…’ he said, and promptly dumped me. If I hadn’t asked him, he would have let us keep wandering on for months. Friends with benefits infuckingdeed. Bastardo. I was quite upset about Clapham Brodie, I must admit. The ability to be silly is so attractive and rarer than you might think.
Shall I just tell you about Break-Up No.4 quickly? Go on, then. We’re nearly done in my Tour O’ Heartbreak.
Break-Up No.4: Smart Henry. A bit less than a year after Clapham Brodie, I met Smart Henry at a BBQ in Putney. (People who live in Putney have to bribe you to come and visit them by offering you food.) I was there with Bloomie, who was dating the BBQ host, a man now known as The Hairy Back. Smart Henry was The Hairy Back’s cousin. Smart Henry lived in Putney too, in a grubby little terrace. He was very tall and thin and scruffy, and always wore a battered tweed jacket that had belonged to his father, which made him look like a genteel English professor-in-the-making. Smart Henry