By Emina Sabic
When one of my closest friends and I were in New York in May, we decided to get our fortunes told, for poops and giggles. The lady that read our palms glanced at my right hand for about a second before loudly exclaiming: “You have been very unlucky in love, haven’t you? That’s only because you haven’t met the right man.”
No shit. Two years ago, I ended a near four year relationship with a lovely lad, and happily embarked into singledom. After ten months of all those clichés about not having to think about anyone but yourself, wild nights out, new friends and self-discovery had been worn out, I was ready to meet someone again. Besides, I’d known who I was since I was fourteen years old and an unattainable boy with deep brown eyes put his hand near my ribs as the rest of the world turned into a hazy blur. I’m quite simply someone who loves love. The more fucked up, the better. Cue Andy number 1, also referred to as Countdown Champion of 1984 by the other members of Team Bad Salad on account of his terrible taste in jumpers, blinky NHS specs, and generally looking like one good sneeze would kill him.
Andy No 1 and I had our first date at the Bath Arms in Brighton. I wore a red beret and sipped gin while admiring his brogues and we ended up going out for 8 months. We were about to move in together and everything seemed, for lack of a better word, rosy. God damn it, I even read Prufrock out loud to him by candle light, but as you’re trying to keep your dinner down, let me assure you. Things fell spectacularly to pieces, as these things always do.
It was all over on a November morning and a month later he was on a first date with someone else while I cried constantly. I woke up crying, made breakfast that I didn’t eat, cried on the street, at my desk at work, cried myself to sleep. All the passive aggression and complete selfishness of Andy No 1 had completely escaped me during our romance but I finally realised who I was dealing with when a month ago he told me he didn’t even want to be friends. Because I had hurt him by some of the things I said when we were breaking up. I was very much in love with him but oh, the talent this man has for always turning himself into the victim, it boggles the mind. Here I had convinced myself that everything that went wrong was my fault and turned a blind eye to his shortcomings throughout the whole relationship, but with that one statement the penny finally dropped. The cows came home, the fat lady sang, if you will. And what better way to finally come to terms with a broken heart than to spew about it on the internet?
On to Andy No 2, the only decent one out of the bunch. I met him on a mild January night, the barman with the big beard, Nirvana shirt and kind eyes, also referred to as Beardo. A friend kindly took it upon himself to act as matchmaker, and reported that Beardo was even more freshly heartbroken than I was, but nevertheless as I left with a piece of paper with his number on it, I felt strangely exhilarated. We snogged on Ditchling Road in the middle of the night and he tasted of cigarettes. Besides from feeling like I was nineteen years old again, I felt nothing. Too much, too soon. Apparently, this was also the case for him because a day or two later he was back together with his ex-girlfriend, and jealousy roared inside me so viciously that I hardly knew how to sit still. Not because of Beardo, but because I wanted Countdown Champion 1984 back, for him to take it all back too. Scenarios of grand gestures where he declared his undying love for me played in my mind on repeat, almost as much as The Smiths and other such music of self-pitying ilk did on my Spotify.
After another few months of licking the proverbial wounds and banning Morrissey from my earshot I plucked up the courage to walk up to a rather handsome young man in a pub and ask him for his number. Anyone who has done that can tell you that it requires a certain amount of balls; in my case they were courtesy of Bombay Sapphire, but it did its job.
“Hi, I’m Emy.”
“Hi, I’m Andy”.
Andy? Andy. The man with a band. Bandy. Bandy wins the prize for flakiest Andy, after a bank holiday and, apparently, a flood stopped him from showing up for a date. They say guys love it when a girl makes the first move. They lie.
So here I am, navigating my way through the post-apocalyptic wasteland that being single in Brighton is all about, and where I will attempt to report back from, weekly. In all seriousness, I actually quite enjoy the single life, I love that I can see my friends whenever I want without taking someone else into consideration, I love that the mess in my flat is just my mess and I love the fact that the possibility of the next great shag is just around the corner. Although, I will admit that the dull Sunday evenings would be a bit more pleasant with someone next to you on the sofa. Not if his name is Andy though. If the next guy I meet answers to this name, I’m turning around and running away because fourth time is not a charm…. Right?
