Ten Men E-Book

Kitty Ruskin

• Herausgeber: Icon Books
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 300

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

'BOOK EVERY YOUNG WOMAN SHOULD READ' Daily Mail 'BOLD AND THOUGHT-PROVOKING' Glamour As heard on BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour A Stylist pick of the best non-fiction for 2024 A Cosmopolitan and Glamour best new book for April 2024 TEN MEN, MANY STORIES. At the beginning of the year, Kitty Ruskin decided it was time to embrace her sexuality, taking advantage of all the joys that being young, free and single bring and having fun, easy, no-strings sex with whomsoever she desired. She got on the apps and started swiping. What followed was sometimes sexy, frequently funny, occasionally shocking and, sadly, all too often fraught with pain and danger. It was not the carefree adventure she had envisaged; it was something altogether darker. Ten Men is one woman's tale told with searing honesty. It's an exploration of the 'blurred lines' that even seemingly nice guys can exploit, a meditation on the lack of clarity around consent and a call to arms to combat a culture that seems to thrive on women's vulnerability.

Leseprobe

 

 

Published in the UK and USA in 2024 by

Icon Books Ltd, Omnibus Business Centre,

39–41 North Road, London N7 9DP

email: [email protected]

www.iconbooks.com

ISBN: 978-18773-068-1

ebook ISBN: 978-183773-070-4

Text copyright © 2024 Kitty Ruskin

The author has asserted her moral rights.

This is a work of nonfiction, but the names and some identifying details of characters have been changed throughout to respect the privacy of the individuals concerned.

Every effort has been made to contact the copyright holders of the material reproduced in this book. If any have been inadvertently overlooked, the publisher will be pleased to make acknowledgement on future editions if notified.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, or by any means, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

Typeset in Bell MT by SJmagic DESIGN SERVICES, India.

Printed and bound in Great Britain

CONTENTS

Before the Ten

CHAPTER 1 Joel

CHAPTER 2 Jack

CHAPTER 3 Conor

CHAPTER 4 Leo

CHAPTER 5 Owen

CHAPTER 6 James

CHAPTER 7 Freddie

CHAPTER 8 Harry

CHAPTER 9 Ollie

CHAPTER 10 George

Afterwards

TW: Sexual assault, suicidal ideation

BEFORE THE TEN

At ten years old, I pulled up my jeans and walked away from my first sexual experience.

It felt like everything in my head had been rearranged. One moment, the boy down the street was asking me to be his girlfriend. The next, we were crouching in the bushes at the bottom of a field, and he told me to touch his penis. ‘This is what girlfriends do,’ he told me.

I tried to get out of it, insisting again and again that I didn’t want to.

‘Why?’ he asked.

I scrambled around for an answer. For some reason, ‘I don’t want to’ didn’t seem to be enough.

‘Well, what if someone sees?’ I shrugged.

‘They won’t, I promise. No one can see us here.’ His tone turned urgent. Dismissive. ‘Come on.’

I continued to shake my head, but he refused to take ‘no’ for an answer. After a few minutes, I decided that I had no choice – I’d do what he asked and get it over with. This turned out to be something close to oral sex. Then he asked me to pull down my trousers and underwear so that he could repeat the act on me.

Buttoning my jeans afterwards, I felt the worst feeling I’d ever felt. The ground beneath my trainers felt strangely unsteady, the trees leaning at funny angles all the way home.

When I got back to my bedroom, every stuffed animal and doll seemed to know what I’d done. How I’d ruined myself with no return. Their faces, once so cheering, now seemed to look away. Getting into bed, I tried to forget it with immediate effect.

But I couldn’t. Not entirely. And, without really realising it, I became obsessed with the idea of ‘purity’ from that day onwards, clutching at mine like a flimsy cardigan the wind was trying to pull away. During the transition from pre-teen to teenager, then teenager to young adult, I grimaced at the thought of kissing strangers and one-night stands, thinking that this represented resilience and lofty morals. Some feminist streak in the face of the hyper-sexualisation of women. I would never be like that, I told myself. I’m not that kind of girl.

The actual source of my disdain was fear, confusion and, above all, shame.

As I entered my early twenties, I began to cotton on to the fact that this rigid attitude was rooted in guilt and anxiety. Finally, I came to terms with the fact that something bad had happened to me years ago. Something which was wrong and that shouldn’t have happened. Most importantly, I understood that it was something I no longer needed to feel ashamed of or push down or ignore. I didn’t need to bury it. The shame wasn’t mine to bear.

I finally realised that the experience had made me sex-averse not, as I once thought, because I was principled, but because I was traumatised.

Moving through this trauma was like walking through mud, each step sinking a little deeper than I had anticipated. The epiphany came, at first, like a light bulb moment; a switch flipped inside my head. I’d been watching a documentary about sexual assault survivors, and unexpectedly found myself relating to their experiences. To the misplaced guilt they felt; to the way they retreated from loved ones; to the black hole of misery that threatened to swallow them up. Feelings of shame had been tormenting me for years, and in the space of a few minutes they dissipated. I realised that, like those people, I had nothing to be ashamed of. I had done nothing wrong. I didn’t need to keep the assault a secret anymore.

So I told people close to me, and the relief was incredible. The more I processed, the lighter I felt. In those first few months, sex gradually stopped being a frightening, impure thing. Unfortunately I couldn’t afford therapy, but through conversations and self-reflection, I was able to separate sex and shame, sex and fear, sex and secrecy, and started to look at it anew. Far from an ominous threat, sex began to morph into an exciting, tantalising prospect. I had to take it day by day, but as the months passed I felt secure in my newfound attitude.

2018 ended, and as 2019 began, I had one goal, one New Year’s resolution: to stop being so precious about who I had sex with. I decided to have sex with as many people as I wanted to. To taste different mouths; to feel different bodies. There would be no more clutching of the pearls.

Coincidentally (or perhaps not), it was during this time that I started binge-watching Sex and the City. Samantha became my shining example, with her upturned nose and flicked blonde hair; her hand around a man’s tie as she pulled him inside. As Samantha declares in one of her most iconic speeches, I told myself that, from now on, I would blow whomever I chose.

No more guilt. No more self-loathing. No more self-limitation.

It was quite the baptism of fire. I’d only lost my virginity two years prior, and I’d felt very differently about sex back then.

There had been plenty of tension building up to the night Matt and I slept together (and I finally lost my virginity). Eight years of it, in fact.

I met Matt when I was in Year Nine at school (aged fourteen), locking eyes with him on the other side of the common room. Glancing down at my hot-pink iPod, I quietly filed away his thick, dark curls and yellow-brown eyes, eventually mentioning him to a friend. I tried to sound casual, but she saw right through me.

‘He has a girlfriend,’ she told me mournfully, and I shrugged off my disappointment. Oh well, I thought. That’s that!

Years later, however, I saw on Facebook that he was starting his master’s at Edinburgh University at the same time I was. Some quick sleuthing (read: stalking) also revealed that he was single. So, I dropped him a friendly, casual message, my heart in my mouth.

Ten minutes later, Matt replied.

Thus began the pointless ping-pong of messages: ‘How are you?’, ‘How’s life?’, ‘Kept in touch with anyone?’ All the questions neither party really wants the answers to, until someone finally plucks up the courage to ask the other person out. At last, Matt asked if I wanted to go to a gin bar near George Square. We spent one night at this bar, the following Friday at a restaurant, and the Thursday after that in an Old Town pub.

He didn’t kiss or touch me on any of these dates. But every time I took the bus home, silently concluding that our relationship was platonic, he messaged and asked me out again. For our fourth date, he suggested that we go to an Italian restaurant a stone’s throw away from his flat.

We could go back to mine and watch a movie afterwards, he added. I could hear the tentativeness in his voice, even over text.

Go back and watch a movie? I repeated to myself, raising my eyebrows as I looked down at my phone. I may have been a virgin, but I knew what that meant.

A week later, we talked about our friends and childhoods over a carbonara, attempting a breeziness which felt forced. I revealed my own anxiety by dropping a knife on the floor with an almighty clang, streaking pasta sauce across a waiter’s shoe. He revealed his when the same waiter asked him to tap his card and he tossed it between his hands, eventually dropping it into his lap. The poor man must have been glad to see us go.

When Matt and I finally left the restaurant, it was with a shared nervous energy that was hard to ignore. It hummed beneath our tipsy conversation and quick, sidelong looks.

‘This is a nice area,’ I said mildly.

‘Yeah. Very nice,’ he told the pavement. ‘No complaints here.’

‘Quite far from campus, I suppose?’

‘Yeah, true. There’s the bus, though.’ Matt jabbed a thumb in a vague direction. ‘The 21?’

‘Oh, yeah. I know it. I think I’ve been on it once. Can’t remember why.’

As we climbed the steps to his stone-grey townhouse, my nerves reached a fever pitch. Did I tell him I was a virgin? I wondered. Could I, at the age of 22, or would he run a mile? Maybe he wouldn’t be able to tell. If that was the case, I’d say nothing, I decided, my mouth a straight line.

Heaving open the door, Matt let us in, the sound of our footsteps bouncing around the high ceilings inside.

‘Oh, wow. Big in here,’ I observed, craning my neck. With a nod, he led me up a set of tiled stairs, rooting around for his key.

His face lit up when he finally found it.

‘In we go!’ Matt exclaimed, holding the key up proudly. I glanced at the back of his head as he unlocked the door, registering how enthusiastic he sounded. Strained, almost.

God, my heart was straining too – desperate to spring out of my chest and patter down the hall. Stepping over the threshold into a boy’s flat for the very first time, I looked around the cavernous hallway. More high ceilings, the walls a dull grey; white mouldings at each corner. A muddy bike leant against the wall, and I could hear faint rumblings of a movie from a flatmate’s bedroom. This had probably been nice once, I thought. Fancy and Georgian with a piano tinkling away in the living room. It was so studenty now, ghosts probably didn’t bother haunting it. The whiskey bottle line-up along the floor was too depressing.

‘That’s my room, go on in.’ Matt pointed to a door at the end of the hall. ‘I’ll be in in a second.’

Drifting into his bedroom, I took stock of the red candles and white tea lights scattered across his desk and bedside table. Well, he was either attempting romance or about to host a séance, I thought.

Candles aside, it was a pretty bog-standard student room. More high ceilings with chipping wallpaper, along with broken blinds, a flimsy poster, a neglected keyboard and a stack of earmarked textbooks. I was thumbing through one when Matt exclaimed ‘So!’ from behind me.

‘So!’ I returned nervously, wheeling round. ‘This is, um, a nice room?’

Looking askance, I dropped down onto the bed. I hardly knew what else to say, so thought I’d just keep saying that things were nice. This could only tide me over for so long, I thought with rising panic.

‘Thanks,’ Matt smiled. God, how was he so calm all of a sudden? Had he taken a shot in the kitchen? When he settled down on the bed, resting back on his elbows and looking at my mouth, I felt my body spring back up like a jack-in-the-box.

‘Where’s your loo?’ I could feel my face pinkening.

‘Second door on the left.’ Matt reached under the bed and produced a toilet roll. He smiled. ‘Bring this back when you’re done.’

I looked down at the toilet roll in my hand and nodded, shuffling awkwardly out into the hall. Romance now well and truly dead, I took my toilet roll to a narrow bathroom with no mirror and sat down on the cold toilet seat. For a moment I stayed very still, willing my thoughts to quieten. Closing my eyes, I tried to settle into the black, but the silence was short-lived. Thoughts crowded into my mind, rushing past each other like clouds on a windy day. Oh God, is this the night? my scattered brain asked. Is this the night I finally have sex?

Tonight could mean so many things … No more lying to my friends about all the phantom sex I said I’d had. No more praying that people wouldn’t ask for details when I drank during Never Have I Ever. No more knowingly nodding when a friend was telling me about penises or blow jobs or 69’ing. I was actually going to see a penis in person. I was going to find out what sex was really like.

Yes, I was potentially about to lose the chains of my virginity in that bedroom down that hall. And I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. Excited, relieved, overwhelmed …

Horribly, horribly nervous?

Yeah, I was scared shitless. I wasn’t sure, at this point, why sex frightened me so much. My revelation about an earlier trauma hadn’t arrived yet – it wouldn’t come for years. At this stage, all I had was a sneaking suspicion that the Bad Thing had happened, but I wasn’t ready to face up to that suspicion yet. It was far easier, back then, to pin my virginity down to being awkward and frigid. And if my awkwardness was the only thing stopping me from having sex, why couldn’t I just push through it? Why couldn’t I get it over with?

Having sex certainly seemed like something I should have done by now, I thought miserably. As much as I silently judged the people who slept around, I was ashamed of my virginity; embarrassed by my lack of experience. I was sick and tired of being shut out of conversations, terrified that I’d be discovered if I tried to join in. More than anything, I just wanted to join the club of People Who Had Had Sex. Only then would I become a proper adult and a real woman.

And Matt was nice, right? Safe, kind Matt, who I’d known for years … why shouldn’t I lose my virginity to him? He was a very respectable choice.

With a sigh, I got up to wash my hands, trying to swallow a fresh wave of nausea. That was all very well and good, but if you’d never had sex before, how did you know how to do it?

My face hot, I realised that I wasn’t even sure what a penis and ball sack looked like. Not in detail, anyway (I’d blocked out the memory of what happened to me at ten). I flashed back to my classmates doodling penises on each other’s books in Year Nine. My terror of drawing one wrong.

If I didn’t know what a penis looked like, how would I know what to do with it? Sure, I knew in principle about hand jobs and blow jobs, but I’d never practised on a banana, and I’d never watched porn. Oh, why hadn’t I watched porn in preparation? I asked the ceiling. Why hadn’t I gone to Sainsbury’s and bought a bunch of practise bananas?

Shaking my head, I shut off the water, the tap shrieking in protest. What mattered tonight was losing my virginity, I reminded myself. And that was just a case of him putting his penis in my vagina – surely I could manage that. Surely. I’d lie back and think of England, as they say.

But what if I bled? a small voice asked. I grimaced, imagining a torrent of red bursting out like water from a dam. His sheets had been very white. Oh lord, would he expect me to pay for them? I could hardly afford my own bedspread, let alone someone else’s.

And what if the sex was insanely, unbearably painful? another one chimed in. What if it was the worst pain I’d ever felt? Worse than the time that boy sat on my finger in judo and nearly broke it clean off?

I gave myself a few moments to calm down. Breathing in deeply (in for eight, out for ten, in for eight, out for ten), I fixed my eyes on the floor and prepared myself like a soldier leaving for battle. No matter how painful, I’d persevere, I told myself. I would lose my virginity tonight, come hell or high water.

Slightly green, I returned to Matt’s room and handed him back his toilet roll. As I settled down next to him, I registered that every candle and tealight had been lit in my absence. Well, this had better not be a séance, I thought grimly.

‘You ready?’ Matt asked me.

‘For what?’ I baulked.

‘The movie.’ Chuckling, he nodded to the laptop in front of him. ‘We said we’d watch Anchorman 2.’

‘Oh, yeah.’ My chuckle was more nervous than his. ‘Yeah, sure.’

With another nod, Matt hit the space-bar on his laptop and the movie began.

To my surprise, we didn’t just watch some of it – we watched all of it. Not only that, but Matt didn’t touch me once. Not once! Not so much as an arm around the shoulder or a squeeze of the knee. Glancing at his profile, I thought, I don’t get it. Wasn’t ‘watching a movie’ codeword for ‘sex’? Had I come all the way across town just to watch Anchorman 2?

I fidgeted, my frustration mounting. Was sex going to happen at all tonight?

When the film ended and Matt still hadn’t touched me, my nerves shifted into resignation. Well, here it is then, I thought glumly. Another night of no sex. Perhaps I’d misread the entire situation and he really did just want to be friends. Oh, I was an idiot.

‘Well, what do you want to do now?’ Matt asked when the credits finished, oblivious to my tortured inner dialogue.

I looked away, mocked by the waning light of half-a-dozen tealights.

‘Er, I should probably go home. I have a meeting with my tutor in the morning.’

‘Oh no! Really?’ Matt sat up as if a bolt had run through him, his voice rising in panic. ‘No, well, you … you don’t have to.’ His eyes were insistent. ‘Why don’t you stay the night?’

I considered this for a moment, looking down at his white sheets warily. If I stayed and this became some weird, platonic sleepover, I could sleep more comfortably at home. But I was still a little tipsy and my flat was all the way across town. And there might be hope yet …

Well, I might get a kiss, at least.

‘Okay,’ I smiled unenthusiastically. ‘Sure.’

‘Great!’ Matt settled back onto the bed, his face softening as he looked at me. ‘Wait here. I’m just going to go and brush my teeth.’

And with that he shimmied down the mattress and into the hall, the buzz of his toothbrush groaning from the bathroom. Feeling a bit of a lemming, I wondered whether he expected me to brush my teeth as well. I hadn’t even thought to bring a toothbrush. Oh dear.

With clean teeth and no trousers, Matt eventually returned. I tried very hard not to blink with surprise when I saw him. There was my old school friend, stripped down to a T-shirt and boxers, all hairy knees and purple socks and a very discernible bulge. I felt silly by contrast, sitting there fully dressed. Should I have stripped as well? Was ‘cleaning my teeth’ code for ‘getting undressed’?

Well, I didn’t have long to dwell on it.

With a final smile, Matt turned off the light. A moment later he was on top of me, his hands in my hair and his tongue in my mouth.

I blinked in the dark, kissing him back. Okay, okay! So this wasn’t a platonic sleepover, after all. I felt a cold rush of both anxiety and relief, feeling around for his hair. This is really happening, I thought frenziedly, my heart beginning to pound. Sex is really happening. Right here, right now.

As terrified as I was, I couldn’t help noticing how nice it was kissing Matt. I hadn’t kissed anyone in a long, long time, and this all felt wonderfully easy. I closed my eyes as he pulled my dress over my head, his fingers fumbling for the clasp of my bra.

For a while it was just writhing around and snogging (very nice). And then:

‘Kitty,’ Matt said breathlessly between kisses. ‘I have a question.’

‘Oh yeah?’ Now is not the time for talking, I wanted to say, but asked: ‘What’s up?’

‘Well, are you—’

He stopped suddenly, and my heart quickened. Surely he couldn’t tell I was a virgin? I asked the ceiling anxiously. Surely he couldn’t know?

‘Well,’ Matt resumed, lowering his mouth to my ear, ‘are you a … married lady?’

Silence.

‘What?’ I giggled uncertainly, staring at him in the dark. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean: are you a married lady?’

‘No, I’m … not.’ My laughter became unsure. ‘Otherwise I wouldn’t be doing this, would I?’

Matt’s body tensed. Confused, I frowned. According to his body language, ‘no’ wasn’t the answer he wanted. Was this some kind of weird roleplay, then? I wondered. Should I just … go along with it?

‘Er, yes, I’m married?’ I ventured.

‘I see.’ Matt let out a low chuckle, pulling me closer. His body eased, melting around me like butter.

‘With … four kids?’

His chuckle darkened, and I cocked an eyebrow, glad that we were in the dark.

At the time, I didn’t consider how weird it was to roleplay during our first night together, especially as we’d only just started kissing. For all I knew, this was perfectly normal foreplay.

It was not, however, and sadly, only got weirder from there. I’m not sure what sub-category of porn he’d seen, but soon enough Matt started kissing the length of my body and turning me over, before repeating the process on the other side. He did this again and again. On the fourth turn I felt like a pancake on Shrove Tuesday, flipping about in the pan. By the fifth I was dizzy, confused and struggling to hold in a hysterical bout of laughter. By the sixth I was sure he wasn’t going to flip me over again, but around and about I went.

Finally, he gave up this strange song and dance, and we returned to kissing. That’s better, I chortled to myself. What in God’s name was that?

Well, never mind. The kissing was nice, and his hands were nice and, soon enough, I got my first hint of the Main Event. With a small thud, Matt paused to open a draw beside the bed, followed by the crackle of plastic. Here it came, then, I thought, with a flood of nerves. The condom. Intercourse was looming, just as Matt was looming over me in the darkness like an enormous bat. Biting down on my lip, I attempted a quick pelvic floor exercise in preparation.

Another panicky thought occurred to me, then: what if he asked me to put the condom on and I couldn’t do it? What if I tried to put it on and inadvertently flicked it back into my face? For goodness’ sake, why hadn’t I practised on a banana?

But to my relief, the gentle rustling that followed suggested he was putting it on himself. It occurred to me then that it might be a good thing I couldn’t see his penis, dark as it was. My fourteen-year-old friend Ida (a beautiful, peroxide-blonde Swede) had told me in Year Eight that penises were hideous and that vaginas were much nicer. She was probably right about that, I thought in a measured way, and I didn’t want it putting me off.

Latex on, Matt resumed kissing me. Then he ran his hands up my neck and into my hair as he tried to pull himself into me. Oh, fuck, I thought weakly. Here it came!

I sucked in a quick breath, blinking hard. It was a bizarre sensation, and not the one I’d imagined at all. I wasn’t in searing pain, but my body seemed to be seizing up below the belt, resisting his penis like it was a battering ram and my vagina was a pair of unyielding doors. He tried to break through again without success, and tried again after that. After the third attempt, the air between us became thick with embarrassment.

We paused for a few, long moments, and then with a cursory kiss on the neck Matt tried again. At last he broke through, and a sharp rush of pain made me bite down on my tongue. Oh, fuck, I thought. But also: hooray! Hooray and ohmyGod: I had a penis inside me. A penis inside me! Also: ow.

Biting harder, I gripped Matt’s shoulders.

‘Sorry, but can we stop?’ I winced.

‘Oh!’

Horrified, he pulled himself out, and my body almost crumbled with relief.

‘Are you okay?’ he asked me quietly, resting back on his haunches. I could faintly see his eyes widen with shock.

‘Yeah. I’m so sorry.’ Now would have been the perfect time to tell him I was a virgin, but instead I said: ‘It just hurt a little. I’m sorry.’

‘No, don’t be sorry!’ Matt insisted. I smiled up at his vague outline. Though he was still looming over me, his kindness was reassuring. ‘Shall we just … stop then?’

‘Um, yes. If that’s alright.’

‘Of course it is! Of course …’

Rolling over to lie beside me, Matt tucked me into his arms. And that’s when I felt it: safety, when I lowered my head to his chest, the warmth from his skin mingling with mine. In spite of the flipping (which did, ultimately, earn him the title ‘Pancake Man’ among my friends), I was grateful for the experience. Grateful to have lost my virginity to someone so patient and understanding.

I was shocked by how easy it was, lying with him like this. How pleasant it was, touching his arms and running a hand over his ribs; brushing his dark hair out of his face and kissing his mouth. Folding my body into someone else’s like this wasn’t frightening, it was comforting. Like coming in from the rain.

As I listened to his gentle heartbeat under my ear, the sky lightening to a dusty blue outside, I felt another swell of relief rise inside me. Finally, I had confirmation of what I’d only hoped before: that I could have sex without shame.

What a revelation.

In spite of all that gratitude, I decided not to see Matt again. I don’t think either of us saw our relationship blossoming after that night, so I slipped out the next morning, regurgitating my lie about an early-morning tutor meeting.

‘Oh, yeah,’ he yawned, his mouth huge and round. ‘That’s fine. I’m going to get in the shower. You can stay here if you want and we can have breakfast, or you can leave if you’ve got to run.’

‘Sure,’ I smiled, sitting up in bed and patting my matted hair. ‘I might be gone when you’re done in the shower. I’ll just check how long it takes to get home.’

As soon as I heard the rush of water, I stopped pretending to look at my phone and sidled out of his room and into the hallway, snatching my bag as I went. Standing in my sweaty dress and with scarecrow hair, only half an eyebrow still filled in, I glanced at my reflection in the mirror and thought, fucking hell. I looked terrible. It was kind of fun though, in a horrifying way. I’d never seen myself so bedraggled.

With a small smile, I made my way to the front door. Only it wasn’t the front door, I realised, upon opening it and finding a man in his boxers, a bowl of cereal in his lap.

‘Shit,’ I said to the floor. ‘Oh God. I’m sorry.’

After yanking the door closed, I cracked it open again.

‘Which one’s the front door?’

‘Next one,’ Matt’s flatmate told me witheringly.

With a grateful nod, I blundered out of the dark flat and into the white morning light. Looking around, I remembered that I was in Haymarket — an area heaving with young suits on their morning commute. Conscious of the fact that I didn’t blend into this crowd in my day-old clothes and messy hair, I made the humiliating yet exhilarating journey back to Old Town.

Because yes, there was something delicious about the embarrassment. Something thrilling about the fact that people would look at me and see sex. Here I was, a woman who had had sex last night, I thought with relish. Finally, I was part of the club.

A few moments before I reached my flat, I crossed paths with two actual nuns and decided that this was the most appalling walk-of-shame possible. I grinned, already messaging three different group chats.

Gradually I felt my anxieties around sex melt away. Matt didn’t just show me that I could have sex without shame; he also showed me that I could lie in bed with someone and feel safe. It really was a revelation – that intimacy could feel comforting, rather than compromising. That there was nothing inherently wrong or dirty about sex. And it’s something I could enjoy, too, I discovered at the age of 24.

Finally free of my hang-ups at the end of 2018 (or so I thought), I decided to have a one-night stand with someone I’d met on a dating app. It was my first real foray into casual sex; the first time I loosened my grip on the pearls. And it was a slightly awkward, but kind of wonderful, experience.

I smiled broadly when I left his flat the next morning, convinced that I’d been wrong about sex for years. For so long I’d seen it as this dangerous, frightening thing, but I decided that the Bad Thing was a one-off. Nobody would ever make me feel that way again.

It was a deeply encouraging thought.

Thrillingly, I also discovered that I could find power in sex. Power and fun and self-actualisation. So I could live like a man if I wanted to, I concluded. From this day forward, I would have my cake and eat it.

When the conversation fizzled between the one-night stand and I, so did my obsession with ‘not being that kind of girl’. If people called me a slut, who cared? I’d wear that word like a badge of honour. Yes, as 2019 opened before me, I decided to have as much sex as I wanted, and with whoever I wanted to have it with. All I needed was mutual attraction, a glass of wine, and my (now) lucky black dress.

I felt exhilarated; born again. I wasn’t Sex and the City’s discerning, careful Charlotte anymore. I was liberated and fearless. I was Samantha.

CHAPTER 1

Joel

One thing you must never, ever do, is write on your dating profile that you are a model. Especially when your modelling credentials are tenuous, as they always are.

Not that this discouraged me. Joel was, in fairness, very modelesque. Athletic build, big, brown eyes, 100-megawatt smile. And if I was to be a connoisseur of casual sex in 2019, he fit the bill.

Joel was also the most promising man I’d encountered in what felt like years. I’d been dating in London for a couple of months now, having thrown myself into the dating pool, and for a while the waters were generally grim. One of my first Tinder dates was with a musician who, at first, seemed so appealing. He was a handsome, impressive Australian, who was studying at the Royal Academy of Music; pounding a piano in his black-and-white profile picture, a bouffant hanging over his eyes.

But he painted a very different picture when I saw him in person. Hunched in the corner of the pub we’d agreed on, Max was tense, diminutive, and pressed as closely to the wall as he could manage. He stuck out a hand when he saw me, the other arm still pinned to the wall. Shaking it, I smiled down at two saucer-like eyes almost overspilling with fear.

Mutually baffled by the formality of the handshake, we took each other in.

‘Sorry I’m late,’ I opened nervously, pulling my skirt down as I sat. ‘Have you been waiting long?’

Max considered the question, staring out into the middle distance.

‘No,’ he answered at length.

‘Oh. Okay, good,’ I smiled.

Silence. Glancing from his blank expression to the menu between us, I tried to get a read on the date. Would this be unbearably painful, I wondered, or would Max’s nerves thaw with a drink? Seizing the thought, I said: ‘I’m going to the bar. Would you like anything?’

He nodded slowly, a strange, unreadable expression on his face.

‘Yeah. Pint of Amstel, please.’

When I returned to the table, Max accepted the drink with another stoic nod, and silence returned. I shuffled awkwardly in my seat, asking him a question about his degree and what it was like at the Royal Academy of Music. He responded by staring past my shoulder for a full ten seconds, eventually replying with a handful of words, uttered in that same, lulling monotone. Our evening continued in this agonising vein for a long, long time.

An hour later, I crouched in a toilet cubicle downstairs and wondered how I’d make my escape. This wasn’t like the movies, I realised. There were no windows to crawl through. I’d have to return with some sort of shaky excuse – an early morning, perhaps, or a bad stomach.

Approaching the table, I sheepishly opened my mouth just as he asked if I’d like another round.

‘Oh! Thank you,’ I replied, my stomach sinking. ‘Maybe just a half pint, though. I’ve got an early morning tomorrow.’

‘Sure,’ Max nodded. He looked at me then with a small smile, his eyes expectant.

Baffled, I stared back at him.

‘Oh … did you – did you want me to grab it?’

He shook his head furiously.

‘No, no. But maybe come with me so I get your order right?’

‘Oh! Okay, sure.’

At the bar, Max ordered a half pint of Amstel for me and a full pint for him.

‘£7, please,’ the barmaid shouted over the music.

And suddenly, my date was staring at me. I turned my head to find two pleading eyes burning into mine.

‘Would you mind?’ he mouthed.

Heat crept up my neck and into my face. ‘Sure,’ I said, fumbling for my purse. Back at the table, I drank my half pint as quickly as I could. More questions came and went to pass the time, all directed at him. He didn’t ask a single one in return.

And at long last, we parted at Camden station. Straining under the weight of this God-awful date, we promised to speak soon, but more or less ran to our respective modes of transport. I shook my head as I rushed through the tube barriers, wondering what on earth I’d just experienced. Wondering, also, if I could cope with dating in London.