Stella #3
Everyone else laughs, but I’m rapt. ‘So then by the time I’d finished this rotation system I understood what worked for me, what didn’t, what I had to offer, what I wasn’t able to compromise on.
It’s essentially an accelerated study programme for dating.
And if you’re someone who hasn’t had a lot of experience but wants to be ready for a marriage, I feel like this is a great way of hacking the system. ’
Dozens of hands go up with questions for Lexie. Louella pokes her pointy, red fingernail into my leg. ‘You should do that,’ she mouths at me.
The Mexican-Iranian place has a queue around the corner when we arrive, but Louella knows someone and, apparently, we magically have a reservation at a place that doesn’t do reservations.
Inside it’s just loud enough to be buzzy but not so loud you can’t hear each other talk.
The windows are steamy and the tables are made of dark wood, and everyone looks deeply attractive because of the warm, yellow lighting.
We order a load of small plates; I get the margarita I’ve been dreaming of, and then she inevitably returns to the subject of the mantourage.
‘I’m sorry,’ she says, which means she’s absolutely not sorry. ‘But I feel like that was fate. We were literally supposed to be at that talk – that was meant for you.’
‘It’s not fate,’ I counter, secretly thinking she might have a point. ‘It’s generic advice that is demographically appropriate for us.’
‘Potato pot-ah-to,’ Louella replies, scraping the last of the Baharat guacamole out of the bowl. ‘You know that Gavin will be porking someone else within weeks. If he isn’t already.’
Over dinner, I put up a massive resistance to the idea of trying Lexie’s method.
I claim that I don’t want a relationship ever again, which we both know isn’t true because I’m painfully co-dependent and I’m desperate to have more babies before my uterus shrivels up.
I claim I don’t know how to date, that I don’t want to date, that I’m scared of dating, that I’m not ready.
But a bit of research isn’t going to kill me, is it? At home the next day, I dig through the bright pink goodie bag we were handed on the way out of the event (allegedly worth ￡299, mostly full of tiny samples of beauty products I don’t want) and pull out the copy of The Mantourage.
At the back of the book it has a sort of section of worksheets, as if I’m nine, and I find the idea of filling it in deeply humiliating.
It’s phrased the same way that my Teen Dream Diary was, when I was eleven.
In fact, if this book were pink and fluffy with an extremely breakable padlock on it, then they’d basically be the same thing.
But Rose is napping, and I said I was going to do this properly, so I’m filling it out.
In a swirly, patronising font, Lexie Leung has invited me to assign archetypes to the men that I’m seeing.
There’s no need to fill every archetype, Lexie says, helpfully, as if I could date twenty men at the same time.
But try to pick one from each category and keep at least three people in play at any one time.
Three is a magic number for a reason – it’s the perfect way to keep your rotation fresh, but allows time to forge a connection with any worthwhile potential partner.
Okay. Fine.
Category One:
THE PROVIDER
THE FATHER FIGURE
THE LEADER
THE TEACHER
Half of these sound like they should be on a register.
In what world do I want to date someone who could be my dad or my teacher?
Like, there are literal laws in place to prevent those things from happening.
I mean, obviously back in the day I wanted to snog my history teacher but I’m an adult now and I know what statutory rape means.
Category Two is basically impossible, because there’s no one I know who is meaningful or likely to turn into anything meaningful.
The options are: THE WORKMATE, THE FOUNDER, THE ARCHITECT and THE CHEERLEADER.
I read the descriptions, all of which focus on the idea of building, creating and supporting each other.
Once upon a time, I would have put Gavin down for this.
He’s the one who was so sure we could make this house beautiful, that it might finally be the career transition I’ve been talking about for years, the way to jump from writing about other people’s houses to designing them, that maybe I could use it as a shop front for making and selling things.
Only it turns out that the tool he’s best with is a fucking sledgehammer and his pet project is smacking it into our lives.
I feel cross with the book. How are you supposed to know this many people well enough to be able to fill each category?
If Category Two was hard, Category Three is even harder:
THE POET
THE THINKER
THE ARTIST
THE DREAMER
Arguably all synonyms for much the same thing but at this point I’m picking holes in the book because I’m cross with myself, not Lexie Leung.
I look up from the book, up at the house around me.
Entirely empty, walls still unpainted, drying racks loaded with even more tiny clothes.
The silence is enormous and I keep replaying all the things Lou said, things I already know.
I take my make-up off, put my pyjamas on, get into bed and then, for the first time in my life, I download a dating app.