Ghosts

by Dolly Alderton

Time and time again I observed that most men think a good conversation is a conversation where they have imparted facts or information that others didn’t already know, or dispensed an interesting anecdote, or given someone tips or advice on an upcoming plan or generally left their mark on the discourse like a streak of piss against a tree trunk. If they learnt more than they conveyed over the course of an evening, afterwards they would feel low; like the party hadn’t been a success or they hadn’t been on good form.

Banger

We trick ourselves into being close until we really are close, then we trick ourselves into seeming distant to stay as close as we can for as long as possible. Sometime soon, our socks would no longer be seductive, they’d be a source of an argument (not rolled up, left on the radiator, left in the washing machine). For now, our socks were symbols of something secret and sacred.

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.

I would make a strong case for the argument that every adult on this earth is sitting on a bench waiting for their parents to pick them up, whether they know it or not. I think we wait until the day we die.

“I once read Freud say that when two people have sex, there are at least six people in the room. The couple and both of their parents.”

“Do you know, Nina, I’ve been doing this job a long time and if there’s one thing I’ve learnt, it’s that 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.”

“But I think you might be right, I think I’ve created a version of him too. Or maybe that’s all love is. So much is how we perceive someone and the memories we have of them, rather than the facts of who they are. Maybe instead of saying I love you we should say I imagine you.”