No Sex in the City

Stay friends? Listen here, you moron, I’m almost thirty, I have all the friends I want in my life.

How naive she must be to think that life is so safe and predictable that you can survive without some level of independence and autonomy.

As I speak I realise that all the words in my vocabulary still can’t begin to convey my feelings over the course of the last year. Words will only get me so far. The girls’ capacity to empathise will take me a little further. But there’s still a gap filled with a complexity and incongruity of emotions that I can’t verbalise. How do I articulate that I’ve felt both confused and flattered? Ashamed and sexually empowered? Enraged and self-pitying?

But I also know this: I’m whole, whether I’m single or married, in love or out of love. And I’m determined to be my own person no matter what.

So were there times you fell out of love with Dad?’

She ponders my questions. ‘No. Love can exist, even if it’s wilted and dehydrated. It’s not ideal, but that’s life. Love is the hardest thing in the world to keep in bloom. It needs attention every day. Some days I tried. Some days your dad tried. But that’s okay. Because we both knew we’ d never both give up trying.’

Once she’s left I ask Nirvana if she still loves Anil.

‘Yes,’ she answers emphatically. ‘But so what? Since when is love enough? I didn’t ask for this, but the reality is that if he really loves me, he has to hurt his mother. If I push him to stand up to her, and in the end he does, it won’t matter, I’ll still lose.’

‘Exactly. I know how hard it is to comprehend that even the smartest, most sensible women can find it difficult to leave. Sometimes the first instinct is to try to fix what’s broken, not throw it away. It can take a long time to realise that some things can never be fixed.’

She didn’t want to terminate the pregnancy.’

‘Of course not. That would be awful. Which is why women shouldn’t get themselves into that kind of situation in the first place,’ Anil says solemnly. ‘If you’re in an abusive relationship, you shouldn’t allow yourself to fall pregnant.’

Lisa is momentarily speechless.

‘Anil, you can’t just make blanket statements like that,’ I say. ‘There are so many factors involved. And it’s not all about the woman preventing pregnancy – you need a man in order to fall pregnant, remember.’ I struggle not to groan. ‘Don’t forget what kind of relationships these women are in. There isn’t a lot of self-determination in the first place. It’s been beaten out of them.’

Especially for girls. There’s no room for learning from your mistakes if that mistake happens to involve sex before marriage. That’s just the way it is.’

‘For girls. Not for guys.’

‘Yeah, well, there’s the double standard.’

t’s funny but sometimes you can get along with somebody, overlooking their sleaziness, or sloppiness, or any other annoying aspect of their personality, and then suddenly, at some random and inexplicable point, you just can’t stand them. You can’t stand the sight of them. You can’t stand to be in the same room as them, and when they talk to you, their voice grates on your nerves. I realise, then, as I reflect on how excited Danny was at my agreement to work at the weekend, that I’ll never go back to liking him as I did when I first started work, or even tolerating him as I have lately. I now can’t stand him.