Queenie(93)

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.

“What did I say to Tia then?”

“. . . You said that I could be any type of black girl that I wanted to be.”



* * *



By the time Friday came around, I was so nervous that all I could eat were two tiny fruits for breakfast and half a carton of soup, sip by sip, at lunch.

Although Balding Alpha and I were meant to go to dinner, I panicked at 4 p.m. and asked if we could go for a drink instead. I still wasn’t great at eating, and a first date didn’t seem like the setting to accommodate that.

Darcy had to escort me to Brixton after work and sit with me in the pub opposite the bar he’d suggested until it was time for the date.

“But why are you so nervous? Balding Alpha seems like a nice guy!” she said, sitting down at the table.

“Exactly that, Darcy,” I said. “This one is nice. Plus, it’s been a long time since I went on a date! Don’t forget that since Tom, despite me wanting them to be nice and romantic, all of my dates have been sex appointments. What if my chat is all rubbish, and so he hates me and just thinks I’m annoying?” I groaned, suddenly regretting everything.