My toe is broken but you can still finger me

Ouchie! I’ve just broken my toe for attention! Not really, my mum dropped an iron trivet on it. NOT what you need when you’re hungover. A trivet is a thing you rest pots on. And a toe is that bit at the end of the foot that sometimes people suck for sexual pleasure. And a mum is any person that mutters ‘but is it a breathable fabric?’ whenever they go clothes shopping. (Or squeals ‘Oh, I say!’ when another family member farts).

Have you ever randomly felt guilty that the letters x and z don’t get used enough in the English language and wished your life could have a bit more of the grit of Misfits? Or any tv show written by John Greene or Jack Thorne, where there are these insanely messy characters, they get fucked all the time and they sleep with their friends’ partners and they have run ins in chippies with people they’ve shagged and then recklessly abandoned, that make you think, damn. But also, what a bellend. But then, they have that redemptive episode. Where all their dumb little behaviours become so insignificant because, suddenly, they take the fall for something they didn’t do to protect someone else, or, CLASSICALLY, they sneak someone terminally ill out of hospital or a care home who isn’t allowed to leave but really wants to see the seaside one more time before they die, and then the camera cuts, first to the lovable rogue speeding the oldie’s wheelchair towards the hospital doors, and then to them on the beach skimming stones together, the patient still in their gown but with a big puffy jacket over the top. I kind of want to be more like that. I want to be Jack O’Connell in Skins. Basically, I just need one of my friends to come out as ‘dying’ so I can take them to the seaside, and then I can stop feeling guilty for going 1 week without going to the gym.

I’ve always had an unhealthy relationship with guilt. And I’m not even catholic. Maybe its best exemplified by the fact that recently, when I hear a baby cry I often think it's saying ‘Indiaaa’. When I was revising for my GCSEs and I couldn’t concentrate I used to go outside and smoke a cigarette, not because I was cool, but because I knew that it would calculate such a level of guilt in me that I’d be motivated enough to spend the next hour compulsively writing out revision notes. A while ago I got a notification from my iPhone telling me that my headphone volume had exceeded the recommended level for the last 7 days, and I felt so guilty for destroying my body that I bought 2 innocent fruit smoothies afterwards and drank them back-to-back. This is why I’m so relieved about the existence of Phoebe Waller Bridge. now we have someone to save us from our own guilt, someone to make us feel ok about being a bit shit and remind us that its all part of being a young poor Londoner! When I do bad things nowadays, so long as I ensure that I’m slightly hungover, I can just say ‘this is just like Fleabag’.

I’m not sure I can handle any more Hinge. Any more people called Rupert wearing cycling shorts identifying as ‘spiritual’. I think Hinge should only be used in 2 scenarios: desperately needing to get over an ex, or a wait time of more than 4 hours in A&E. I’m feeling very at sea with it all. And by ‘all’ I mean caring about not being in a relationship for the very first time. I didn’t realise the divine position of privilege I was in being borderline a-sexual until the age of 20. Whenever someone liked me it never felt like an honour or anything, it felt normal. Not because I was a massive catch, but because I just thought people like people all the time because they just do. Between the ages of 15-19, the idea of being tied to someone felt like an unnatural interference. Like the 5th or 6th day of being on holiday with one other person. Constant exposure and total torture. Never a moment to feel truly alone. I was painfully aware of the communication demands of adult relationships from a very young age. Aged 8 I was asked out by a boy in my reception class, and aged 8, I told him that I ‘really needed to be single right now.’ I just needed to work on me x

The older you get, the more it seems like that ‘allure’ has lost its pull-power. Like that borderline creepy magnetism you used to get for people, the kind that would make you purposefully hang around after parties for a bit longer until the person you liked was leaving too on the chance you could at least walk home NEAR them, is becoming a rarity. Which seems wrong because if anything I’ve become LESS picky, so the invisible allure should be dragging me all over the place! I’m the most prone to being icked-out out of anyone I know. My current biggest ick is anyone holding a cafeteria tray. I find it humiliating. That pathetically dorky grip of both hands either side of the tray, and that meek little search for a seat. I literally can’t bear to picture it.

Nowadays, the mere thought of being liked by someone I like, feels like a prize. Even on Hinge, I get the most horrendous cocktail of emotions: excitement, relief and apprehension when the person that, from behind my phone, I’ve decided is the perfect balance of funny, hot and kind (probably because they’ve mentioned a zany story, wear a vintage shirt/small hoop earring combo, and have a picture of them holding a farm animal) matches with me. And then an immense feeling of sadness when I find out their surname, find them on Facebook and see something I really can’t get on board with. Or, we get relatively far down the line when something deal-breaking happens, like…. we have sex, and he’s halfway through going down on me when he stops to express then and there, ‘oh by the way, I’m not a feminist.’ Just in case I so hubristically thought him giving me head made him one, I imagine!!!!!! How presumptuous of me!!!!! (I wish I was making it up!)

Despite what you might think, I don’t think Hinge is for the lonely. The lonely can’t handle the disappointments. Hinge is for the horny. And Tinder is for the absolute sexual warriors. The ones that treat it like a bloodsport. The ones that cum and then bite into an animal carcass. For a while I really didn’t get it. I genuinely worried there was something wrong with me. That I didn’t know how to like anyone despite wanting to shag everyone. But these days, it feels like something inside my brain has woken up. Is this how literally everyone has felt since their teens?! Guys I just got here!!!

I’m trying to get better at sparking up conversation with hot people. Not apocalyptically sexy they/thems with shaved heads OBVIOUSLY, I’m only a novice! That will be my final challenge. My sexual Trifecta-Cup-maze-quest. And this time, Cedrick Diggory will not die. He will come on my tits. Some time soon, I’d like to be able to say something more than ‘What you drinking?’ when standing next to a hot person at the bar, and then actually say something else when they tell me the answer; not nod then spend the rest of the time looking away in painstaking silence. Otherwise it just comes off as more an inexplicable genuine curiosity about what they’re drinking, as if I’m doing some kind of survey for TimeOut London- trendiest drinks in the trendiest bars 2020.

Fuck Hinge, it’s not called that because it metaphorises a ‘door of possibility being opened’. It’s called Hinge because no matter which way the door swings it will still hit you in the face (with its metal knob???). I guess what i'm trying to say is, cover your fucking ears this autumn. I’m gonna melt all your ear drums like hot caramel with my slip and slide of aural SEX!!!! Buckle your fucking belts!!!!! Sorry if this last bit seemed aggressive!!!!!!!!!