Chapter 24
‘All of that stuff “Layla” has said about loving Ted Levy? Written by Gerald Bronstein.’ Violet’s really off on one now.
‘Who the hell is Gerald Bronstein?’ I reply. My mind is working overtime trying to absorb the last half-hour.
‘A guy in Amsterdam who is a SICKO and a PERVERT and a LIAR.’
Layla’s profile has disappeared from Facebook altogether. We must all have been blocked.
‘How did you even find this out?’ I type to Violet.
‘I have my ways,’ she writes back. ‘I asked Layla to Skype me, and she just wouldn’t.
So I knew something was up. There’s this new thing, Google Reverse Image Search.
I wanted to find out more about her as a person so I looked her up online and the pictures are of a girl called Ellie, from Scranton, who died in 2008. ’
‘Are you looking us all up?’ I type, then think better and delete before sending.
Later, I google the absolute bejaysus out of Alice Andre, trying to find any scrap of information on her that I can.
There are the two articles that mention her and Ted, as well as those detailing her relationships with Frank Bustard and Marc Benjamin, both of which seem to be not much more than momentary passing flings.
One headline from that report catches my eye and I feel inordinately pleased: ‘Gag Hag’.
It’s much easier to find breathless hagiography on her, mind.
Stylish Canada, 2008
‘Alice is a Wonderland’
Alice Andre walks into the Four Seasons Hotel, and all heads turn her way involuntarily.
Either the 26-year-old doesn’t notice the rubberneckers, or she is used to them by now.
After years of modelling in Milan, South Africa and Tokyo, where her gazelle-like proportions were especially well received, it’s safe to assume she is more than used to the attentions of strangers.
Gracefully tucking her tiny feet in under her lithe body and pulling her blonde beach waves into a loose bun, Andre orders a burger with the works and green salad, hands falling hungrily on to her plate when the meal finally arrives.
The model is energized, fresh from shooting her first major campaign for MAC cosmetics.
In her early twenties, Andre was lured away from a blossoming career in architecture to a life back in front of the lens.
‘I’ve always loved the brand, and when they said they would put me front and centre of the international campaign, I couldn’t say no,’ Andre says between mouthfuls of spinach.
‘The baby mall rat in me remembers seeing all those old ad campaigns – who wouldn’t want to get a piece of that action? ’
Growing up a shy outcast in Ottawa, Andre’s six-foot frame drew attention in her Catholic high school for all the wrong reasons.
‘I was a classic nerd,’ she explains. ‘Not classically beautiful, not cool or funny enough to run with the crowd that I wanted to. Instead, I drew and wrote. I would sneak into any available classroom and watch old movie clips on the VCR on my own.’
At 16, Andre was discovered by a model scout while queuing at a Weezer gig, and within months was living with four other would-be supermodels in an overcrowded apartment in Japan.
She is brilliantly indiscreet about model lore, unlike many of her contemporaries, lifting the lid on Japanese salarymen and being ‘too chunky’ for couture campaigns, at 6 foot and 110 pounds.
‘I found Polaroids from that time recently, and my heart nearly stopped, as I was painfully thin,’ she admits.
Andre recalls it as a difficult, toxic and lonely time, and the experience sent her running into the arms of York University in Toronto, where she studied architecture.
Andre also spent a year studying in Dublin, where her nascent dreams of becoming a writer began to take root.
By day, she worked in Café en Seine, close to the capital’s Grafton Street thoroughfare, but by night she had discovered a cohort of writers who lured her from her original vocation into the beating heart of a vibrant creative community.
I am still trying to wrap my head around the idea of this gazelle-like creature with her too-far-apart eyes walking down Dawson Street.
I am having an even harder time trying to think of someone like her at writing workshops in Dublin.
Heads would have blown clean off shoulders.
How did anyone get anything done around her?
Did the blood in everyone’s head just travel directly to their groins and no one said anything about it?
Still bruised from meeting Alice Andre and a bit woozy from the Layla revelation, I take myself over to .
And really, what is the harm in creating a profile to do a bit of looking around?
I find my best selfie, taken back in the flat in Stoke Newington, after a bottomless brunch morning with Brigitte.
It’s ten years ago, but still, I am aglow with prosecco and gossip.
‘New to town!’ I type. ‘Irish (not Irish-American, I grew up in Ireland) writer, 30s.’ I pause. Now is the perfect opportunity to build a whole new me from the ground up. ‘I love going to comedy gigs and festivals, and I enjoy cinema, theatre and writing … the usual stuff,’ I half lie.
I volunteer too, and DJ, so between that and the comedy script I am currently writing, I don’t have a lot of free time these days.
But I do enjoy meeting new people; if they’re like-minded, passionate about things, and in the driving seat of their own life.
And if they’re funny too, so much the better.
Job done on creating the profile, I decide to have a look around . I missed all this the first time around, so to be here in the swamp is quite the culture shock.
It will never cease to amaze me how many men put up a ‘will this one do?’ picture on their dating profile.
How do they not understand that the ghostly light from a computer, or a photo taken right under their chin(s), is about as unflattering as you can get?
Do they care? Are they looking for sex, or someone to join a cult with?
I automatically ignore the ‘Hi, I’ll write something here later’ guys and keep looking.
There are, I notice, lots of men who definitely Know Their Way to the Airport.
These are the guys who are the barely discernible speck photographed against some far-flung landmark like the Taj Mahal or the Sydney Opera House.
For some reason, men with possibly drugged Bengal tigers wrapped around their shoulders is also big noise around here.
I also can’t fail to miss the guys who are SERIOUS about meeting someone – there they are, holding babies and playing away with toddlers (the ‘About me’ lines read something like ‘This is my nephew’, or even more intriguingly, ‘This is my neighbour’).
As I am admiring the sheer volume of men who have posted photos from the gym, a message pops up from VelvetElvis100. The name of the production company that did one of Ted’s films, I notice. What kind of message this is from the universe, I cannot yet tell.
‘I’d really like to hear the elevator pitch of your novel. You sound really interesting.’
An altogether new feeling spreads right through me. It’s warm and soft, but as my spirit lifts, there’s also a guilt chaser. What about Johnny? What about Ted?
‘Hi, well, in a nutshell it’s about two sisters who fall out over a guy.’ I am improvising wildly here, but that’s not bad.
‘You’re Irish but not Irish-American. So no shillelaghs or bagpipes for you,’ VelvetElvis100 writes.
Now he has my attention. ‘OMG, you’re not Irish, are you?’
‘No, but I do know about cultural misappropriation when I see it.’
‘Well, that is good to know.’ I am strangely not good at dating site banter.
‘Listen,’ VelvetElvis100 writes back. ‘You sound interesting, you look cool, what do you say we cut out the bullshit back and forth and just get ourselves into a room together, try having a proper conversation?’
‘Wow, you really don’t beat about the bush, do you?’ I write.
‘Not sure what I do about bushes, but I know a really cool tapas place downtown. It would be my pleasure if you were free to hang out later. Let’s spin past the bullshit and get into a room together.’
Legs are shaved, pits are shaved. Also, reminder, I am bored.
‘Can you be there at 9 p.m.?’
‘VelvetElvis100’ turns out to be Ryan, a programmer from Saskatchewan.
I want to tell him all about my office days, but I remember that Toronto Esther is cosplaying as a cool, bohemian creative.
The thought of being a whole new person makes me feel slightly exhausted, but I tell myself that this is an exercise in creativity.
As I push the door into the very stylish Patria, near the CN tower, I feel lightheaded. I don’t know what this is, really. A date, an experiment, a way to run away from the weirdness out at Naomi’s house.
Ryan has a well-put-together and handsome, if strangely nondescript, face.
He could feasibly get away with murder because literally no one would be able to recognize him, his face is that ordinary.
As I sit down, he doesn’t look me in the eye.
He has the jaded mannerisms of someone who has done this a lot.
I suspect that for Ryan, this is like a job interview with patatas bravas.
A necessary, if inconvenient, part of adulting.
‘So, your accent is really cool,’ he offers.
‘Oh right, yeah,’ I laugh, amping up the Northside vowels.
‘I’d love to go there someday.’
‘Well, I normally live in London, so you’d have to give me some kind of notice if you’re looking for a tour guide for Dublin. And airfare.’
‘What kind of volunteering do you do?’
‘Whuh?’
‘Your profile said you volunteer.’
ARSE. ‘Oh, I did, in an animal shelter. It’s called … Battersea Dog’s Home.’
‘Right on.’
Four drinks in, Ryan has moved in closer so that his arm is resting on the small of my back. I have no idea how it got there. He didn’t make any big, grand move that I noticed. His arm was slowly, slowly inching, then all at once it was right there. I’m OK with it.
‘I love Richard Linklater,’ he is cooing. His face is square with mine, cocking back every so often, the classic prelude to a kiss. ‘I knew you would like him too. Chicks like you always do.’
What in God’s name is that supposed to mean?
I think but don’t say. I resist the urge to mention Ted.
It would just be too weird. Ryan is then telling me about how he thinks Catholicism is ‘way romantic’ (‘all those schoolgirl uniforms’), and I want to tell him that my school was about as romantic as a pap smear when Ryan’s head falls in for a kiss.
Another dizzying moment. Against my will, I think back to how deeply I meant those marriage vows when I said them to Johnny.
Mushroom vol-au-vent. I never expected another first kiss in my life.
I truly believed I’d had my last one of those.
Maybe all my great first kisses are ahead of me, not behind.
Ryan occasionally bites my lower lip, gently at first but then with more menace. It doesn’t exactly augur well, but I also feel powerless against this brand-new … whatever this is.
I blush as Ryan pays the bill with a gallant flourish – this is a first, when you’ve conducted most of your pre-marriage ‘dating’ life in indie clubs, skate parks and Chicken Cottage – and leads me wordlessly into a taxi.
He’s got that ‘need to pee urgently’ look in his eyes that some guys get before they get laid.
His apartment is sterile and monochrome – he has the good grace at least to have it smelling clean.
His bedclothes, in an unsettling shade of brown, definitely give me pause for thought.
The Patrick Bateman energy is way too intense here.
The apartment’s ‘accenting’ is, predictably, a wall of vinyl records, a lumpen beanbag in front of a TV screen the size of Brazil, some stark and hard-edged stuff by Bang & Olufsen.
Never a good sign, if it’s decent sex you’re after.
My instincts prove right and sex with Ryan turns out to be dreadful.
I don’t even get time to do my usual thinking, about who was the first person to ever think of giving a blowjob, or who was even the first person to ever say the word ‘no’ and the specific set of circumstances they said that word in, because this sex is hard work.
Ryan and I are not at all in synch, choreography-wise.
I feel like I’m trying to do a tango while balancing on an oil drum.
I am trying to learn the rhythms as I go, but then Ryan moves around this way and that, switching up positions after about forty-five seconds.
He switches the tempo without warning, and does this with the confidence of a man who invented sex all on his own.
Whoever told him this sort of variety amounted to good sex needs an almighty thump, I think.
I push the thoughts of Johnny’s sweetly sleepy sex away.
Instead, I tell myself that this is a good thing.
I find myself performing too, throwing porny screams at him for encouragement.
I kind of hate myself for it. I never thought I’d see the moment where I think longingly of the single bed back in Naomi’s house, desperate to be in among the hockey trophies and the lip-gloss pots.
Afterwards, I don’t feel like a cool sexual libertine at all.
I feel as though I’ve given a gift to someone who has taken one glance at it and decided it looks better in the bin.
Thoughts of being in companionable, cosy silence in the flat with Johnny – maybe it wasn’t that damp or cold, after all – start to form out of shadows.
I push them right away. The guilt is like sweat on my upper lip.
On the tram back into town, I check my mails, and find one from Violet, which is short and to the point.
‘Ted reported Maxi to the cops for harassing him,’ she writes.
‘She got hauled into her local police station and they talked to her for two hours, but they eventually let her go with a caution. She emailed me right afterwards. She told me that she has sent him like 700 emails, none of which he has responded to.’
‘What has she been writing to him?’ I reply. I’m genuinely curious.
‘Dunno,’ Violet replies. ‘Just some emails and texts and things like that. But nothing too harmful. She wasn’t abusive to him or anything.’
‘She has his NUMBER?’ I am incredulous, incensed.
‘I know! And she never said!’
I’ve kept it from Violet and everyone else that I’ve met Alice. It’s need-to-know-basis information, and somehow I suspect that if it got into the wrong hands, it would work out to be a problem.