"You
know what you need?" says Amanda, pointing a carrot baton laden
with houmous at me.
With
most people, one can guess the general direction they are going to
take when they say something like this. With Amanda, it could be
anything. I need...to get drunk? Eat more of the houmous? Buy
clothes? Have more sex? Self esteem? Drugs? A trip to Hawaii? A night
in playing Grand Theft Auto and drinking Malibu and cherryade?
Another tattoo? Whatever it is, it's not going to be anything I've
thought of, so I might as well just say no.
Also,
while this question is rhetorical, the answer is no anyway. I really
have no idea what I need out of life. I don't know what I want,
either. I know what I don't want, I'm fairly good at that, but what I
do want - actively want, as opposed to "can live with" - remains
a mystery.
"No,"
I say.
"To
sell your used knickers on eBay," says Amanda. "Alex has
made hundreds. Clear your credit card debt in no time."
The news that Amanda's new girlfriend is selling her pants on the internet does not do anything to get rid of my bad feeling about her. If anything, it makes my bad feeling considerably more pronounced.
The news that Amanda's new girlfriend is selling her pants on the internet does not do anything to get rid of my bad feeling about her. If anything, it makes my bad feeling considerably more pronounced.
"What
you do is, you buy a packet of three from somewhere like Primark for
a pound or two, and then you can sell them for anything up to fifty
quid a pair. Apparently it's a big thing. You can't actually say in
the advert but there are phrases you can put in - "
"Who
buys her knickers?" I say.
Amanda
eats the carrot stick and licks her fingers.
She says: "I don't know. People who have a fetish about getting transwomen to send them knickers in the post."
"Are
you cool with that?"
She
doesn't answer. She's not cool with it. But the problem with living a
lifestyle like Amanda's is that it's never cool to not be cool with
whatever weirdness your friends and acquaintances are getting up to,
because the whole point is they are all trying to outdo each other
and it doesn't do to look shocked. By anything. An air of having seen
it all before is the most essential accessory you can have.
Amanda
can't back down from something like this. The moment she says she's
not happy about it, she loses at the popular game More Bohemian Than
You. And she has a great deal invested in winning.
Amanda is not a
natural wild child. She has spent an enormous amount of time, money
and energy on creating herself. At this stage her pose has been going
so long it nearly is natural to her, but there are still moments when
I see the original Amanda, the first one, the Amanda I met all those
years ago, peek out.
In
my experience, this situation could well lead to Amanda selling her
pants on the internet herself just to prove the point that she's not
a prude and Original Amanda is dead.
"Course
I am," she says, eventually.
"Amanda,
this is me," I say.
"I
just - " Amanda pours another glass of wine. "I really like
her. But she's so -" She doesn't finish.
"I'm
not cool with it," she says, finally. "But she's so big on
freedom that she'd break up with me if I said something. I mean, I'm
not asking her to stop exactly, I just want to - talk about it."
Ah
yes, I know this version of "freedom", I've heard this
before. This blanket refusal to consider anyone's feelings but your
own. Selfishness masquerading as emotional maturity; meaning that if
you try and explain you think this attitude is selfish, they'll feel
able to retaliate by accusing you of being immature and trying to
control them.
Amanda
runs a finger round the inside of her wine glass and looks at me. Her
eyeliner is magenta, accentuating the deep blue of her eyes. She
looks sad. The sun slanting through the window catches the first fine
lines, forming across her forehead and under her eyes.
"Do
you still want to be in a relationship?" she says.
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