The Dating Detox Read Free

condition, scrub with exfoliating gloves and body wash, brush teeth, shave armpits, then shave legs (one razor in each hand so each leg is done in about seven seconds—that’s an as-yet unpatented time-saving move I invented when I was 14). Towel, hairdryer once-over, moisturiser, deodorant, perfume.
    Throughout my morning routine, my brain is on a loop titled ‘disbelief’. Because I just cannot believe it’s happened again. I picked the nicest guy I could fucking well find and it fucking well happened again.
    Let’s start at the beginning.
    Break-Up No.1: Arty Jonathan. I was 22, and had been living in London about a year. (No one ever dates in their first six months of living here; they’re too busy avoiding psycho flatmates, drinking in bad chain bars and getting the wrong District line tube.) I met Arty Jonathan at a workmate’s party one night in Café Kick in Shoreditch, which was cutting-edge-indie cool at that time, rather than yuppie-indie cool as it is now. Arty Jonathan was gorgeous in a shaven-headed, mockney kind of way. He teased and flirted and flattered me, and I became helplessly giggly in his presence. He said he was an ‘avant garde’ artist—which meant he’d secure deadlines for shows at a ‘space’ and then throw something together last minute out of whatever rubbish he found on the way there. Avant garde, I now know, is French for pretentious, and anymention of the phrase makes me want to laugh hysterically. He’d had various jobs over the previous few years (producing indie films that never got greenlit, managing bands that never got signed) and had lots of stories that made me laugh.
    You’re right, of course: he was a talentless cockmonkey. I’d like to blame inexperience, or perhaps I’m just a bit thick, but he seemed interesting…I think I was probably looking for someone unlike every good public school boy I’d known at university. And his self-belief was stupendous. I’m a sucker for a confident man.
    Looking back, I cringe at how green I was to be impressed by a dude like that. I was an art groupie for an artist who hadn’t really created anything. I’d sit quietly in the Bricklayer’s Arms in Hoxton, buying way more than my fair share of rounds, listening to Arty Jonathan and his friends gossip about Young British Artists that I’d never heard of and they didn’t actually know. We’d snog. He’d draw doodles for me. They made jokes about the establishment, some of which were very funny, even though I didn’t know what the establishment was yet. Then, after about two or three months of this, and just as I was starting to wonder why Arty Jonathan never did any of the things he talked about doing and notice that he recycled all his best lines and jokes, he ended it. He looked at his watch when we were walking towards the Barley Mow one Saturday lunchtime and said: ‘I have to go to King’s Cross. My girlfriend is arriving from Leeds in an hour. We’re going to Paris for the night.’
    I was sledgehammer-stunned by this, rather than heartbroken. There is a difference. What hurt more was that he was a bit of a freeloader, and in fact, two days before he dumped me, he’d ‘borrowed’ £200 off me. He said his bankcard was broken. But clearly, he wanted the money to take his girlfriend to Paris. And I was too timid/stupid/polite to ask for it back. I just nodded and walked away as quickly as I could and never contacted him again. (I’ve never liked confrontation.) My friends from university startedto move to London soon afterwards, so life improved immeasurably, and I tried to chalk it up to experience. At least it knocked some of the naivety out of me.
    God, Arty Jonathan was a long time ago. And yet here I am. Single. Again.
    What shall I wear today?
    Unsurprisingly, given my newly single status, mild heartache and general blues, I feel like being an Urban Warrior today. I throw on blacker-than-black opaque tights, black boots, a black dress and a black