I'm a Fan: A Novel

by Sheena Patel

Would I move in closer to smell her and feel what he felt when he felt her—would I taste the inside of your mouth to find out what was so compelling, would I press into you, I want to know exactly how your body moves when you are turned on—to know for myself why he cancelled fucking me to fuck you.

I fit into spaces which already exist and contort myself to fit a shape which has been allocated for me.

Over time, I’ve learnt I need to ask very specific questions because the truth fractures in his mouth.

He tells me a version by omission, which puts the responsibility onto me to ask the right questions in just the right way, almost as if I am a lawyer grilling a witness in court.

We are all of us engaged in a collective self-harm by trying to love him, seeking to be loved by him.

first of all i didn’t miss the red flags i looked at them and thought yeah that’s sexy

My childlessness and my endlessly empty hours mean I work around them,

They have families and serious lives.

I am wearing a sensible Adidas swimsuit and he is in a bad mood. I empty myself out in order to appear as his ideal, whatever it is, I’ll be.

I thought time stretched out forever, I thought I had the rest of my life to make this decision but I realise I am on a clock and it runs differently for me. I am female. There was never much time and I’ve wasted so much already.

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.

The thing is I don’t even hate-follow the woman I am obsessed with, I don’t follow her at all. I don’t follow her and I hate her—what’s that called?

when you miss your man that’s not your man but can’t trip cos he ain’t your man but he is your man

The company that sells the top have this frolicky white girl cottage core aesthetic. In June 2020 they post a black square and from then on, they post frolicky Black women in the company’s cottage core aesthetic and say they acknowledge they have to do better.

I have to position myself as the friend because it seems it is the only spot open. It is romantic elsewhere. He wants a platonic place to time-out so I decide this is what I’ll be.

It takes me a long time to realise that when the man I want to be with tells me he likes being seen with me in public what he means is, he enjoys what my skin colour says about him to other people.

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.

At this point I am trying to come across as chill? Like I’m absolutely chill with everything that is happening because it’s chill? As if demanding better behaviour or putting down boundaries would mean that I am not chill? And I want to be a cool gal? So I am without boundaries and watchful instead.

I wonder if I will have enough cultural capital to keep her awake at night.

What if it is experiencing something good and fresh that has become the more traumatic thing. I do not want to be awake to my deadness. I want to remain asleep.

I try to make her laugh because I am a clown and it is what I do when I am nervous.

I am performing all the time, performing being myself, what is myself, who is me.

It leads me to believe with dizzying certainty that when there is a man involved, and a rich one at that—especially with a dick like his—there is no such thing as a sisterhood. It’s every female for herself.

our value is tied to our small window of production and it is a daily effort to fight the fear we have no value outside the parameters of marriage and children, if it is possible to do this at all.

He wastes women’s time, which to me is the most heinous crime he commits and the second is his lack of remorse.

It’s only when you are apart that you realise you are apart because the relationship is not real but by then he’s onto the next thing and the next person and you are something far away again. You have to maintain the illusion all by yourself and like a surveyor, he may come back to check it’s all still running the way he left it but he won’t do the heavy-lifting.

My life isn’t busy enough for me to be sexy and I don’t know what it is to play hard to get.