Chapter 3 Ed #3
I stifle my groan. Not because I disagree with the paedophile comment, but because she's, yet again, conveniently tarring all men with the same convenient brush. The untruth of it is...wild. And unintelligent. She is being wildly unintelligent.
"Women, on the other hand, are gorgeous.
We take every effort to make ourselves look nice, to look attractive.
Why? Why on earth do we do that when men make no attempt to reciprocate?
" She holds up a finger. "You know what I say?
Don't swoon, don't flirt, don't even look at them.
They're not worthy of our attention. Let's take a leaf out of their book and not bother to make any effort either. "
She ends the video and does things with her thumbs, which presumably means she's posting it to her TikTok channel.
Then she places the phone on the table, locates her liquid eye liner and compact mirror in her bag and carefully redefines her lovely eyes with her trademark winged flick at the edges.
"Some effort you're not making."
"What? I'm doing it for my benefit, not yours or any other man. TikTok viewers want real people, authenticity, not humans augmented with filters and the lie of a makeup face mask."
"But it's not real is it? You actually aren't being authentic on your videos, because everyday-life Bess wears 1950s eye liner."
"I take your point." She finishes her second eye and tucks everything back in her bag. "And I'm going to conveniently ignore it."
I laugh. It is as much born of defeat than amusement. Nothing I can say, nothing I have said, will dissuade Beth from her crusade.
I absolutely respect her right to have a life independent of men. She doesn't even need a reason. But if she is going to give one, it better be grounded on firm quantitative or qualitative data, otherwise the librarian in me cannot let it lie.
And, okay, maybe the part of me that's romantically invested in her also cannot let it lie.
Bess rakes a hand through her hair and settles back into her lounger.
"Look. Two weeks ago, before I became an unintentional BookTok star, my video would have got a dozen views and an equal number of disparaging comments.
Now, it'll hit the hundreds of thousands, meaning young women who previously didn't know they had a feminist lurking inside somewhere will realise I’m right – romance in the real world is dead. "
Shoving the librarian aside, the romantically-invested part of me says, "Are you sure this is the legacy you want to be creating? Decrying romantic relationships when you could fall in love next week, because, Bess, things like that happen when you least expect it."
"Yes, it is the legacy I want to be creating and no, I won't undermine it by accidentally falling in love, because I'm an –"
"Aggressively closed door," we both say at once.
"So you keep saying. But what if an opportunity does come along that's too good to miss?"
"It won't."
"But it might."
"But it won't."
A sigh escapes. I can't help it. "Not all men are as you say they are. Nowhere near all men. You might miss your chance at happiness because of the level at which you aggressively slammed your metaphorical door in his face."
"I'm perfectly happy as I am. And perfectly happy to take that risk."
"Are you though? You ever heard the phrase 'The lady doth protest too much'?" I flinch after I say the words. They were a dick move and she'll, rightly, call me out for it.
"Yes. And you're falling into that narrative groove set by patriarchal norms that women who speak up are either hysterical or don't actually know their own minds. I would have thought better of you Ed Chakrabarti. And besides, you're an aggressively closed door, too."
I open my mouth to protest, but before I can get any sounds out she says, "Guess which two words I'm thinking of right now?"
"'Colonic' and 'mucosa'."
Bess' face struggles to maintain its sternness. The corners of her mouth quirk upwards as she says, "No. 'Kettle' and 'black'."
I take a deep breath and a long exhale before answering.
"I'm more an extremely-cautious-door ajar.
I'm not looking, but if the right person comes my way, I'll...at the very least, pay attention.
" It's a partial truth. I'm not looking because Bess has eclipsed all other possibilities, and I am definitely already paying attention.
She knows the reason for my extreme caution. A relationship with a vivacious and controlling fiancée who slowly whittled down my self-confidence, then broke my heart by meeting someone else just as we'd paid our deposit on the wedding venue.
Developing feelings for Bess was wholly unexpected and fairly unwelcome so soon after that experience.
Bess eyes me for several accusing seconds, like I've betrayed the Aggressively Closed Door pact we never made. Eventually, she says, "I take it that means you're starting to do okay in recovery?"
"Yeah. I think so."
"Good. I'm happy for you, Ed. That lady did some damage."
"Let's not mention her. Even by unspecific genderisms."
"Okay. But I think we should mark your slight pivot in romantic aspirations." Bess holds out her glass for me to clink. "To Ed being a cautiously-ajar door."
I tap the thermos lid against her glass.
"And to me finally having the power to dissuade young, straight women from thinking their worth is determined through the behaviour of men."
This time, I hold my cup still so that Bess has to reach across to make the toast. "I'm always happy to celebrate self-empowerment, if that's what you're truly promoting, but if it's part of a misguided belief all men are interested in is taking advantage of women for their own gratification, I don't want to drink to it. "
Bess eyes me for a beat, then inhales in that particular way people do when they have something transformative to say.
"You know, only today Elly was telling me she couldn't remember the last time a man did anything genuinely nice to convince her he's worthy of shagging.
That they just rely on swagger and a misdirected faith in the power of their spray deodorant. "
"So you're basing your brand on a data set of two women's experiences."
"You're being deliberately obtuse. You know very well it's a common experience."
"But not a universal one. Plenty of men aren't like that. You think Lutek is like that? That I'm like that?"
"I'm thirty-three," Bess says by way of answer, because she knows I'm right, but it's not convenient to her conviction to acknowledge that.
However, redirection might just fool me.
"Thirty three and not a single man has done anything romantic out of a desire to get to know me better.
If there has been anything romantic, it's been minimal and designed to get me into the sack quicker. "
"Did it work?"
"Yes. And then they lose interest."
"Maybe you're just really shit at choosing men who can give you what you want."
"It's possible."
"What do you want? All I hear is what you don't want. What would the ideal behaviour of your ideal man look like?"
Bess lowers the angle of the leaner and clasps her glass over her chest with both hands. "I want to be wooed. Like in black and white Hollywood movies. Treated like I'm special and worth taking the time over. Men knew how to do romance back then."
I hold up a hand. "Okay. Please explain to me how a modern feminist, who yearns for a time when women were treated as second-class citizens and expected to be submissive home makers, is not at all hypocritical."
"Because I'm only a proponent of old-fashioned romantic behaviour, not old-fashioned attitudes towards women.
The two can be mutually exclusive." She closes her eyes.
"I want to be made to feel beautiful and that I have nothing lacking and that I deserve their interest and attention and that I am respected and that my interest in them is not presumed.
That they have to prove themselves worthy.
" She opens her eyes. "That's what I want.
I've never ever had anything remotely like that before. "
I mean, it's a pretty reasonable expectation. All Bess' bullshit aside – or even with it, because despite everything, I quite like her bullshit – she does deserve that. Of course she does. She's just going about it in the wrong way.
"What would you do if a modern man expressed his admiration in a romantic and respectful way?"
"I'd eat my own eyeball because it won't happen, but if it did, I'd be very happy."
"So...you'd be less of an aggressively closed door?"
"I might remove the chain and deadbolt. I'd have to see."
I'm...not sure what to do with that information. Acknowledge it and move on, or take it and use it and risk being that moth battering itself against the glass, desperate to get to the light on the other side?
Suppressing a sigh, I turn my head away from her towards the library and the port behind it. Out to sea, the solid bank of grey clouds that was on the horizon when I made my way to Bess' post-work debrief is now perilously close to making landfall. "Looks like rain."
"Shit," says Bess and downs her second gin in one. "I have a visit to make."