Ghosts

by Dolly Alderton

I already felt grooming took up far too much time and was a constant source of feminist guilt, along with my total disinterest in all DIY and all sports.

I’d noticed this was a thing that people did when they got into their thirties: they saw every personal decision you made as a direct judgement on their life.

How clear it suddenly was that we are all the same organs, tissue and liquids packaged up in one version of a million clichés, who all have insecurities and desires; the need to feel nurtured, important, understood and useful in one way or another. None of us are special. I don’t know why we fight it so much.

I also resented how much the visibility of his ageing seduced me – had it been worn by a woman, I might have found it haggard rather than weathered. Only a species as accommodating and nurturing as women could fetishize the frame of a sedentary middle-aged man and call it a ‘dad bod’ or rebrand a white-haired, grumpy pensioner as a ‘silver fox’.

He said he’d felt untethered in recent years – unsure of the sort of life that would make him happiest. He felt like he had to escape something, but he didn’t know what and he didn’t know where to go. I told him I thought that was the sensation commonly known as adulthood.

The sexiest, most exciting, romantic, explosive feeling in the world is a matter of a few centimetres of skin being stroked for the first time in a public place. The first confirmation of desire. The first indication of intimacy. You only get that feeling with a person once.

he moved me so he was standing on the outside of the pavement. I was reminded of how annoyingly delicious these patronizing traditions of heteronormativity could be. Of course, the rational part of my brain wanted to tell him that he was no more capable of receiving the oncoming blow of a crashing car than I was, and his act of supposed chivalry made no sense. But I liked him standing on the outside of the pavement. I liked feeling like I was a precious and valuable thing to be guarded, like a diamond necklace in transit with a security guard. Why was a sprinkling of the patriarchy so good when it came to dating?

Katherine always made me feel like I was taking part in a competition I couldn’t remember entering.

It’s so hard to trace which memories are yours and which ones you’ve borrowed from photo albums and family folklore and appropriated as your own.

I’m dreading it as much as I’m excited about it. I think watching my friends have babies has made me want them more and less in equal measure.’

‘I’ve noticed women using gin as a personality replacement before. There’s an implied sophistication with gin.

Men always have to keep a low flame burning for every ex. It will be flickering in there for him, even if he doesn’t know it is. Whereas women always have to extinguish it.’

I don’t think it’s that we stopped finding each other attractive, I think we stopped seeing each other as gateways to a place of excitement or stimulation. We became each other’s portal to comfort, familiarity and security, and nothing else.

‘I think something happens in your thirties where you slightly let go of this idea of the perfect career.

I had never known a feeling as unbearable – as sour, wrenching and unshakeably sad – as pity for a parent.

Being a heterosexual woman who loved men meant being a translator for their emotions, a palliative nurse for their pride and a hostage negotiator for their egos.

‘Men of our generation often disappear once they’ve got a woman to say “I love you” back to them, because it’s almost like they’ve completed a game. Because they’re the first boys who grew up glued to their PlayStations and Game Boys, they weren’t conditioned to develop any sense of honour and duty in adolescence the way our fathers were. PlayStations replaced parenting. They were taught to look for fun, complete the fun, then get to the next level, switch players or try a new game. They need maximum stimulation all the time. “I love you” is the relationship equivalent of Level 17 of Tomb Raider 2 for a lot of millennial men.’

The contents of supermarket baskets are surely evidence that none of us are coping with adulthood all that well.

‘Women with degrees will only rarely marry men without them, but men are less fussy,’ he explained. ‘Because Tony Blair made more people go to university, there are loads of university-educated women who struggle to find suitable long-term partners. This cohort is the Blair Bulge.’ ‘So basically, we’ve become too smart for marriage.’ ‘Precisely!’ he said.

‘I’m fiscally conservative but socially liberal,’ he said within the first two minutes of me asking him about his job. I wouldn’t be surprised if right-leaning thirty-somethings received a script in the post to prepare them for social situations. ‘I’m not sure if I believe that really exists,’ I replied. ‘I know what you’re trying to say. But “I love the gays but don’t care about the poor” can’t be described as liberal in any sense.’ ‘I do care about the poor.’ Katherine looked across the table at us. She hated anyone talking about politics. ‘I just think that politics can’t be governed by emotion, progression happens when effective economic systems are in place.’ ‘You’re lucky,’ I said. ‘Why?’ ‘To feel unemotional about politics.’ My eyes were distracted by Katherine, who picked up her glass and put it under the table, next to her chair, and nodded at Mark. He filled it with white wine. ‘That’s a luxury.’

Jethro was clearly a man who thought he knew the female body better than any woman; that it was not only his job but his gift to the world, to educate us on how it all worked.

when someone stands at the end of an aisle aged twenty-seven and says “in sickness and in health”, and they mean it with all their heart, no one specifically imagines this.’