Love Fail: Fantasy v Reality
In which I fall in love with a jacket, or possibly a man, and then certainly a fantasy of the man, which despite his being a pretty decent prospect, usurps any possible reality. In short, why I am fast approaching my 10 year anniversary of undisturbed spinsterhood.
I’m in the tube station leaving Oxford Circus and I see this amazing tan leather jacket ahead of me. It’s battered and faded, it has tabs and twists and buckles and it tapers at the waist with fancy stitching and I think: that is a hell of a jacket.
It’s a man’s jacket, and if I had a man, I would totally dress him in a jacket like that, and then I would have to fight every other woman off him. With a katana. It would be like Kill Bill, every day, only this Bride would be fighting for her man.
Behold, the blood of mine enemies (Photo: Victor Kurzweil)
It’s that sort of jacket.
The jacket is keeping pace with me through the ticket barriers, and is right ahead of me going down the escalator. Time to look beyond the tan leather: who could possibly be wearing this divine article? Turns out it’s not a bad profile. Not bad at all. Crafted. Stylishly styled medium length hair. Designer stubble.
No, I hadn't met Jake again, but you get the idea.
This is all fine, but what I really need is to tell him how amazing his jacket is. It’s a compulsion – admiration for an article of clothing this special must be articulated publicly. The words desperately need to leave my lips. But this may come across stalkerish, no? Or like a really, really bad chat-up.
Dilemma.
I stand on the escalator, quite paralysed. Fortunately, it’s a long escalator. I have time to notice the folder in his hands. Fancier than your lowly ring binder, and just about as battered as the jacket, which I have managed to look away from. Artist then? Attractive prospect. Under his grip, I can just make out the words ‘Milan – Paris – New York’.
Ah, not an artist, but a designer instead? Fashion. Probably gay. My gaydar is either broken or was never installed and there isn’t anyone around I feel it would be socially acceptable to nudge and do a ‘pssst! Dude in the jacket. Gay?’ to. Where is Trudi when you need her?
So we get to the bottom of the escalator, and he’s hovering at the turn to the central line. He glances my way – MOMENT! – but I brick it, drop the ball, epic fail. The usual sunny smiles refuses to appear. Suddenly – and it’s taken six years – I am a Londoner. I do not make eye contact or speak.
I am an idiot.
I could have stopped, helped him out, since he’s clearly clueless of his route, and then told him how amazing his jacket is. But the opportunity is lost. Alas.
For the first time in a very long time, I do not read The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes on my iphone kindle as I follow the maze of tunnels to the Central Line. Instead, I dally. I look closely at film posters I’ve analysed dozens of time. Viggo Mortensen is still in A Dangerous Method, and the picture of Kiera Knightly looks like it was lifted straight from The Duchess. Amanda Hocking – queen of the self-publishing revolution – finally has a commercially published book advertised on the underground. It looks like any number of other supernatural romance novels, but it’s there and I’m so pleased for her. I am less pleased for me though, because the jacket has not yet appeared on the stairs. Perhaps he did not need the central line, after all.
Travelling westbound on the central line, I always walk to the end of the platform, in the company of Mr Holmes, because the Queensway exit is to the rear of the train. Today though, I linger by the platform entry. My behaviour has been completely changed by the jacket.
Or so it seems.
An idea forms.
I am currently writing about two dysfunctional characters who express their emotions through displacement activities instead of traditional forms of emoting.
It occurs to me that the immediate attraction I felt for the jacket might be a defensive displacement for the attraction I feel for the man. They say attraction is an innate thing. I have very little experience on which to comment, but it seems possible I am, in fact, attracted to this man, and the jacket is just a maguffin.
I am still just hanging out by the station entry, bunched in with all the other idiots who can’t be assed to spread out down the platform, Just In Case He Comes. But since that’s looking increasingly unlikely, I allow myself the liberty of fantasy.
Who is he, my mystery jacket man?
I first try to place him in the context of one of my worlds. He’s a little too pretty for Vandal, and a little too old for Life In Me, but there’s a sort of Chris-Pine-as-Kirk edge about him. You know, the bar scene, when he’s got that slightly wild look about him and then a whole lot of FO attitude. So he fits Lien best – a knight, obviously. Probably freelance, couldn’t hold the discipline of the Order of the Coeur.
Obviously there was less blood involved at the time
What about his love life? Man like that, there’s got to be some action to note, although obviously I require him to currently be single. He left her? Maybe he has commitment issues. Not good. She left him? No, what is she, insane? Perhaps she was being bothered by her ex and he beat the tar out of the tool in a bar fight. Defending her honour and all that, but alas, she had not been so honourable in the first place, and deeply betrayed, he left her clutching the broken wreck of her ex and has been tragically yet defiantly alone since.
Which, admittedly, still leaves him with commitment issues. But hey – pot, kettle, black and so forth.
The train is pulling up. The jacket, plus wearer, enters the platform. This is destiny.
It’s the matter of a short shove through the crowd to enter at the same door. He’s taken the end seat, I’m standing next to him. I have the sunny smile on standby, and this time it’s ready when he glances up. He doesn’t offer me his seat, which is potentially a dash against my chivalrous theories – but then, this is a man who now lacks trust and possibly interest in women. Clearly what he needs is a woman who, like my good self, doesn’t really know how to be one.
Although what if I look something like his ex? Is that why he occasionally glances my way? He’s studying the tube map now. I casually reposition myself adjacent to him, under the map. I slightly hate myself for this. I wonder what kind of woman is attractive to a man who has been a knight and tasted blood and felt the bite of cold steel and been betrayed by the one he loves. I suspect she may not have a Tardis sticker on the back of her phone, would never dream of wearing an oversized cheap Italian bomber jacket which is frankly as far from his in awesomeness as is possible and probably doesn’t have a line of coffee running down her jeans. I try to read Sherlock, because staring is rude.
I decide that this is not meant to be, after all.
At Lancaster Gate, he gets up and stands by me. Asks: Is the next station Queensway? He’s getting off at my station.
This is definitely mean to be.
We are being thrown together by fate, destiny, chaos, god, the devil, whoever. He will show me a more dangerous side of life than I could ever imagine. He lives the lives of characters I can dream only to create. He has fought for his life, for his love, for the freedom of others. He has the kind of hair that would fall attractively half way across his eyes when he’s sweating in the heat of battle, from under which he would fix all of his enemies with a stony gaze that freezes the blood in their veins and looks particularly good on action film stills.
Just like this. Oh yes.
After all of these thoughts have sped through my head, I realise he’s Italian. That’s cool, Ezio Auditore da Firenze is Italian as well and he’s the bomb.
Also a deadly assassin with the blood of many enemies on his hands, but the man can DRESS
Finally, I tell him he has an amazing jacket.
It is done. It is said. I feel relief. Now I can relax, for the jacket has been revered. And everything starts to go wrong from there.
He seems genuinely surprised – and not overly concerned – by my comment. He bought the article of my affection in Texas. Then he starts complaining about how expensive the underground is. Not an unreasonable subject by any means, but not what I expected from a disgraced Knight-cum-Assassin. Now we’re heading down the platform (does he think I’m stalking him by getting off at the same stop?) and it turns out that he’s frightened of London. Frightened by what everything costs.
The man I have imagined does not get frightened by the prospect of violent and bloody death. He certainly does not get frightened by the price of underground tickets (although, again, I admit this is not an unreasonable fear for your average Londoner).
I need him to stop talking. It was all going so well to this point.
I ask why he’s in London. He is an Italian fashion model. He travels all around the world, but London, it is so expensive. It is no good. I break a little inside. Not an artist. Not a designer. On the up side, probably also not gay. Clearly he has not smashed a wine bottle over the head of an ex in a bar brawl defending the dubious honour of his love, and therefore may not be as emotionally scarred as I had envisaged. This is surely good.
But a fashion model. Of course. He is not a prodigal son, he is no Sergei Polunin, abandoning an exceptional career in his chosen field of chivalry. He does what I do on weekends, only he makes money out of it. He does make believe. Photographs lie – believe the model in me, because I know.
He continues to talk about how hard London is as we wait for the lift, and ride to the top. He loses me at the gates – or maybe I lose him. I catch his eye once more, as we leave the station in separate directions. I wave, and grin, and it is genuine. He is indeed absolutely beautiful, my Italian fashion model, and probably quite interesting once he’s got over how frighteningly expensive London is. But he has nothing on the man I have imagined.
I walk away, bemused by the whole experience. And a couple of hundred yards up Queensway, I suddenly realise that this says a lot about why I am single. I realise also that I simply do not know how to be any other way.