I'm a Fan

by Sheena Patel

Is the need for fervent fans a deeper expression of the fear of being anonymous because we know in an uproar there is protection. We do not want to disappear inside a nameless mass if Something Bad Were To Happen.

You hear people you don’t know, in living rooms you’ll never be invited into, preparing meals you’ll never eat.

It’s clear he doesn’t view women he is romantically interested in as people and we treat each other the same way. I wonder how so many intelligent women who claim to be for women’s stories and promoting women’s lives and women’s independence, can be this cut-throat and possessive over a man. In public we would all decry this behaviour, we would shout, dump him! to our friends. It’s so archaic and humiliating to realise nothing has changed despite all the rhetoric suggesting it has. We will still turn on each other.

Over the course of the first few months, I give in to him, give up my scepticism and think, if he wants me this much and only this way, ok fine let’s see what happens. However, as if aware of my softening towards him, aware the chase is over and he has me, he initiates gaping silences, he tells me to get in touch with him in a week, in a month. His absence becomes intoxicating and feeds my obsession. The distances mean I can fill them with whatever projection I want him to be.

She posts this weekly shop on the grid of her Instagram and she will get dozens of comments filled with heart-eyed emojis as if she has solely invented the concept of shopping for vegetables rather than do what we all do which is buy food without needing to tell anyone about it.

I fantasise and fall in love with a version of him I’m not sure exists outside of my imagination. He is constantly failing in comparison to this person I know he could be. If he could only stop being exactly who he is, we could be happy.