43.

Anna was enjoying a sleep, cuddled up next to her cat. The phone rang. English number. No one she recognised.

“Hello?”

“I’m fucked! I’m coming to yours”

“OK”, Anna mumbled, looking at the time, 1:16am.

He hadn’t exactly asked her. She didn’t have the heart to say no. Always eternally curious and always available to those that might need her. He arrived waving a bottle of Gin. The local rockstar. Lockdown had been cruel to him, with no gigs he was forced to take work on a construction site to feed his kids and in the process of breaking out of his abusive relationship with a woman that had him on a tight leash.

The only thing Anna did to ‘prepare’ for his arrival and make herself ‘presentable’ a habit far too ingrained by her mother, was to wash her mouth. In hindsight she wished she had not done that either. Perhaps it would have made her less attractive.

“I need some comfort,” Matt drawled. “Want some coke?”

“Not my thing” said Anna, thinking, no I just want to go back to that glorious sleep I was having.

Anna liked to process things in the third person at times, it helped her to have one step removed from the situation. Anna had had the strangest week. It was as if life was doing everything it could to clear out of her way anything or anyone that could be a distraction. It was also asking her to decide who she was.

A year ago Anna would have been flattered that he came to her door wanting comfort, wanting her body, choosing her. A year on and Anna was repulsed by the way men saw her only as a body, as if her head, heart and mind attached hardly mattered. He made it very clear that he wanted what he wanted and it didn’t even matter to him whether she wanted it too.

“I came here to be comforted. Comfort me.”

“Is that my job?” Anna said. How on Earth is this my job? Anna thought. I mean, I am good at this. If this were the middle of the day and in a professional setting I could certainly provide a safe space for him to share his problems and feel some sense of relief. I don’t think that’s the sense of relief he’s looking for, another voice inside her head answered back.

“Cuddle me”

Two years ago when she first met him, swooning from the bar as his gruff voice crooned out some familiar songs as he strummed on his guitar, one foot tucked up on the step of his bar stool, she had been vying for his attention. His weathered skin was less attractive up close, and yet she had a penchant for weathered men. She always had curious taste, you could say she longed after the bad guys, the unavailable ones that were available for only one thing. Anna had often confused sex for love. Physical touch was such an essential part of her makeup. She loved to be cuddled up skin to skin. She loved the thrill of touch. Not knowing where the next touch would come from and where it would land on her body. The excitement, the starvation between touch, where weeks and months would pass without intimacy until some showed up and her body would respond eagerly to every single anticipated moment.

Every night for the last 8 months Anna had fantasised of Noah’s touch. The only decent comparison had been her Spanish lover who she had also met on the island. Noah’s touch was something extraordinary. She had never taken ecstasy but she figured if she did it would be rather like this. They did acid together once and had walked to go see the moon from the Tower and had had sex standing up. Anna felt like an instrument that only Noah knew how to play. When he touched her, he touched every one of her buttons. Their ears alone could rub and it would be ecstatic. An improvisation of movement and touch that felt like an orchestra which had been playing together for years. Noah was an exquisite guitarist. One of the qualities that most attracted her to him was his humility to enjoy his playing in the absence of an audience. She had witnessed him a few times. One time had made her rather sad as he took up his guitar, immersing himself in music, his back hunched over and turned from Anna.  She lay on the bed, ignored and neglected. This had been a familiar pattern in so many of her intimate liaisons. Anna was often the one doing the hunting and she was starting to realise, far too late, that this was not the right way round. None of these men fell in love with her. None of them spoke about her the way she had seen other men light up when they spoke about their girlfriends. She had been noticing recently how many of her friends were in loving relationships. She would observe the way the men adored their women, the way they would sneak a soft touch, an intimate gesture, the way they were attuned to attend to every one of their needs and respond;

“Where’s my lighter?”

“I’ll get it”

“We’re out of juice”

“I’ll run to the shops”

Anna felt her insides fill with sadness. All Anna got was men who wanted Anna for her body and not much else. They weren’t all that interested in what she had to say, no chasing, no dinner invitations, no romantic surprises. Once they very quickly got what they wanted they would sober up from their temporary infatuation and return to business as usual. Noah had not even remembered her birthday, despite knowing the date because he had written it in her vedic astrology chart on several occasions, whilst Anna had sat attentively as he explained the movements of the planets and how it corresponded to her life.

“Your spiritual challenge is loneliness” he had told her.

No shit! Anna thought. Noah loved to be alone. Anna struggled. This was something that was recently changing in her life too. After 10 weeks living with three boys, Anna was craving solitude, something that was easily achieved during a lockdown. Unadulterated pleasure to Anna right now, was far less about touch, and far more about being alone. She wanted nothing more than to be immersed in her work, her art, her creativity and nothing else. Too many people already knew her new address where she now lived alone, and aside from her closest friends of which she only had a very small group on the island, she had little intention of revealing her location to anyone else. She liked the idea of being invisible. The irony of which had not been lost on Anna. The main reason for moving away from London, aside from the closed circuit surveillance that had left her feeling paranoid and scrutinised by those that deserved nothing of her attention and the weather, was the anonymity and invisibility that had made her feel so unwanted. After living on this nosy small island for 2 and a bit years, she was craving the very anonymity which she had rejected.

Anna was watching an old Carey Grant movie

“When love is right, everything is right” Ingrid Bergmann voiced.

How true, Anna thought, and how far from love did Anna feel. She wondered constantly why love surpassed her. No one knew how romantic she was. Her favourite movies were old ones where romance was sweet and dreamy. She had always dreamed that these kinds of romances would sweep her off her feet, but they seldom did, if anything she experienced the opposite.

Like early this morning where she had been awoken from her comfortable sleep by a rock star. The script didn’t go like this;

“Anna, I can’t stop thinking about you. I’m sorry to wake you. Can I come over tomorrow? I’ll bring breakfast, a picnic and we can take a long walk on the cliffs at sunrise and see the sun come up together”

It went like this:

“Give me a kiss. Give me comfort. I don’t care what you want. I came for comfort and you need to give me it”

The more Anna thought about it, the more anger she could feel inside her. How dare these men treat her this way. If this is my job, Anna thought, then pay me, like the prostitute you think I am. But oh no, they don’t want to pay me for my service, they want it free. It’s almost worse than being treated like a prostitute. It’s an unpaid prostitute, what even is that? Anna thought. She could feel the anger and indignation rising. She wanted to share this anger. She could feel the indignation of all the strange events that had occurred recently that left her feeling that the world and its dog saw her in this way; an unpaid prostitute, only here to satisfy the needs of all who demanded her. Few were willing to honour her. Plenty willing to exploit her. As her anger was rising she started to look at all the instances in her life to date where people were treating her this way and she knew she needed to somehow put a stop to it.

She had always been “nice” Ugh, Anna reflected. I hate nice. Nice is a biscuit. Certainly not a word she ever wanted used in conjunction with herself.

It was time to stop nice in its unrewarded tracks. It seemed to Anna that all the women around her never played ‘nice’. They played smart. Anna never like to play at all. She simply wanted to be truthful. If she liked someone she laid it out without disguise. That didn’t seem to be attractive. Her lack of disguise seemed to be the very thing men didn’t want. They wanted to crack open her mask, like Prince Valiant riding his horse through the tangles of thorn bushes gallantly fighting to be the one to kiss Sleeping Beauty and wake her up from her slumber. Maybe Sleeping Beauty put herself to sleep. Tired as she was of disappointment. Wake me up when you’ve tried hard enough were Beauty’s last thoughts before inducing herself into a coma.

You see?

It took one hundred years before a man would take her seriously. Why do they like to work so hard for their money? Anna wondered.

Thoughts of Noah arose again. He had not replied to any of her messages. She would not get the hint. Her love was stubborn and his was focussed elsewhere. A day ago she had learned that Noah had been visiting Malta more frequently to meet up with a woman. The man who broke the news to her was someone she had only spoken to twice. He smiled affectionately for his friend Noah, as he shared that this woman would most likely become Noah’s new girlfriend. Anna couldn’t hear anymore of his words, her stomach was turning upside down and she needed to get away and digest this terrible turn of events.

Only a week ago, Anna’s spiritual teacher had advised her to state her worst fears. One of them had been that Noah would fall in love with someone else. And then what? Her teacher replied. Life goes on, your worst fear is realised, it has happened, what next?

What next? Anna reflected.

Grief, sadness, loss. Acceptance that her infatuation must come to an undesirable end.

All of her love directed solely on one person to whom her love meant nothing. He felt nothing towards her, despite enjoying some physical touch, but even that sometimes was too much for him. Anna didn’t know if it was his religious conditioning that imprinted shame into him anytime he enjoyed bodily pleasure outside of love or whether it was something else. The last time they had got intimate Noah had suddenly freaked out and cut off the connection mid flow. Anna had silently pulled her clothes back on, hearing the silence pounding in her ears. Now she knew why he had shut down. Thoughts of the other woman he was in love with might have come to mind and he felt repulsed to be in Anna’s arms when he desired to be in the arms of another further away across the water.

Anna felt the pang of rejection. She knew she would have to feel it fully eventually. The sooner might be the better, for her unreciprocated infatuation had gone on long enough. It was time to stop playing the fool once and for all.

The rock star was calling. Sunday afternoon. She couldn’t bare to answer. Just leave me alone world. When I want you you’re not here and when I don’t you’re banging on my door. You can all just fuck off, Anna fumed. Quite honestly if he has a reason to call other than to profusely apologise for treating Anna like a free prostitute, wait a minute, let’s google that..there’s a term for everything, and if so, what am I in their eyes? Into google her words went unpaid prostitute and Anna felt sick to her stomach for the umpteenth time this month as she read the first words that appeared in the search A more polite way of saying "slut"; remember that a whore gets paid while a slut does the same work for free

Anna felt utterly sick. Utterly, utterly sick.

Finally, the truth resonated.

Anna is a slut.

That’s what people think.

Why such a shock my dear? You do dance around in your birthday suit for complete strangers. I didn’t mean to. I just enjoy being naked, I enjoy being watched, I enjoy sex, touch and everything that intimacy relates to, but slut? A girl enjoys sex and she’s a slut, a man enjoys sex and he’s a stud.

I don’t want to be either Anna decided.

I want to be loved.

She could not wait to put her new word into play. To explore this disrespected side of her identity into play.

Anna needed a shower. She wanted nothing more than to wash off the events of last night when she stupidly and ignorantly opened the door to this washed up rockstar. It should be me, she thought angrily, I should be a star, not him. I have all the qualities and all of the talents, and I treat myself like a washed up piece of nothing, treating myself the way others have treated me all my life. My own mother treated me like a slut. Dragging me here there and everywhere, pleasing only her own wishes, with complete disregard for Anna’s needs. Anna was always her little doll. Since Anna had quit ballet, her mother had wanted nothing more to do with Anna. She had never once enquired in Anna's whole life about Anna’s love life. She didn’t care for any of Anna’s human qualities. Anna’s only purpose as far as her disgusting mother was concerned was to be her little ballet puppet. Once that job expired, Anna had been silently fired without discussion. Anna had reacted by turning against herself. Punishing herself  all these years for failing her mother’s dreams. She never stopped to reflect that it was repulsive and violent of her mother to have used Anna to fuel her own unmet dreams on the stage. Anna was never meant to be a ballerina. She would have chosen to be a pop star if she had had the choice, either that or she would have returned to university and studied law. Some kind of studies that would have given her influence in making change in the world.

Anna received a text

“Hi, was just out the house. Please don’t call, my ex will be suspicious, have you seen my charger?”

Go fuck yourself, thought Anna.

This slut is unavailable. I’ll leave your charger outside on the porch, you can pick it up when you please she thought. Even better, she would leave it somewhere completely different away from her house. How dare he treat her this way and then expect discretion on top. To say he was asking a lot was an absolute underestimation. His behaviour was repulsive. She wanted nothing more to do with the man, and he hadn’t been the only one this week. Before she heard the news that Noah had fallen in love with someone else, she had had another encounter with a man she had once longed after, only to discover that he too, saw and treated Anna as a slut.

Anna needed a shower and a break from her painful thoughts.

One more thought came to her mind, from her former hero AFP.

“When will I stop doing this?”

“When it hurts enough, kid”

Had it finally hurt enough?

She believed it did.

Not only had she lost her chances with Noah but she was considered all over town as a slut, open at all times for free business.

Disgusted with this image, Anna removed her clothes and washed off all her thoughts, all her disappointment and all of her past in a very very long hot shower.