Stood Up

STOOD UP

Perhaps one day life will curdle my face and sour my thinking, but for
now I will forgive you for leaving me out in the cold last night. I
waited for you, you see, as we had arranged.

This morning, I despise myself because whilst I was brimming over with
excitement and anticipation, our meeting obviously meant nothing to
you. Most likely, you haven't given me a second thought since the other
night when we met for the first time. Why then I wonder, did you even
bother asking me out for a drink?

How I wish I could be one of those women who wouldn't dream of waiting
any longer than five minutes for a date running slightly late. I should
have tossed my hair, snorted and leggily stepped out into the night,
strappy sandals clicking in defiance, not caring that there might have
been a valid reason for his lateness. Except that those sort of women
never get stood up and my sort do. By 9pm I finally realised that you
were not, as I had hoped, an hour late, you were just not coming at
all. I'd been stood up. Painfully.

Like a visitor from another place as I waited for you I watched the
kaleidoscopic world speed past in hazy colours. Enviously, I spied on
couples sauntering by wrapped up together in love and oblivious to my
hunched frame in the doorway, probably looking ridiculous in a tight
black dress and strappy sandals on such a freezing Autumn night. There
were young girls with skirts too short and voices too loud and young
men too drunk to see anything. Human chaos had unfolded all around me -
a fight breaking out outside the Sudan Chair, someone being sick in the
taxi rank, young girls running - where to? Or from what?

Some people threw me sympathetic smiles as they passed me by and tears
of humiliation and disappointment stung my eyes and threatened to ruin
my mascara.

"Got a light?" someone asked me before shuffling aimlessly off, head
bent against the wind, with the same question for someone else when I
ignored him.

The bitter Autumn wind stung my face and ankles and finally tore my
hair completely from the clip that had held it in some semblance of a
style earlier on in the evening, despite seeking shelter from it in the
chemist doorway which was littered with cigarette ends and bits of
kebab and smelt strongly of urine. Every now and again the wind wafted
up the smell of scented creams I had carefully rubbed into my body
hours earlier, my soft flesh, clean and warm concealed neatly inside my
new dress. All this for you. Make-up carefully applied - I can be
pretty when I try. All that effort - that's why I waited. And because I
liked you.

I'm not every mans ideal, but I turn heads. I turned yours. Now you are
somewhere out there in the world and I will probably never bump into
you again. We are strangers now, the chance of anything more is lost
but you have stolen a tiny bit of me. Chipped away at my self-esteem
and lowered it somewhat. I am questioning myself today because of you.
Was it my face? My figure? My hair? Was there just something
indefinable about me that you didn't like. I wish I knew.

I hate myself today.

Last night, I walked home with crusty leaves chasing my ankles, the
wind tangling my hair and smiled wryly to myself because I had had a
little fantasy whilst brushing it earlier in the evening that perhaps
you would be the one tangling your fingers in it. I imagined you
burying your face in its softness, inhaling its fragrance, grabbing
fistfuls of it as you kissed me.

My flat was warm and cosy. I had left the electric fire on just in case
you came back for coffee, the only two bars that worked hummed
comfortingly in the emptiness of my flat. Alone, apart from the cat,
who vibrates in purrs and sleeps with one eye open, I made a coffee and
sipped it, trying not to cry. Then I went through the process of
returning to the real me and stripped my face of make-up with a
cotton-ball and scraped my hair back in a pony-tail before pulling on
my nightdress and some socks and curled up on the sofa with a book.
This is the real me. You might have liked me if you'd given me a
chance.

Yes, I hate myself today.

Perhaps tomorrow I will have my hair cut short. Reinvent myself
perhaps.

Who knows?