Slowly, then all at once
Or: On knowing when to leave a party
It dawned on me slowly, and then all at once: I’d had enough. After nearly a decade, the time had come to leave the world of ‘high-class companionship’ behind.
It has been mostly good to me. This work has given me the kind of independence a woman like me was always going to need, allowing me to build a life that was weird, expansive, and entirely free of offices, parochialism and buggies. It’s provided me the freedom to pursue education and creativity, and the resources to support the people and causes I care about. It has introduced me to other workers, who became best friends and cherished lovers, and furnished me with enough wild stories to rescue even the most boring pub session, when required. I wouldn’t have stayed so long at this party if I wasn’t enjoying it, but the trick is knowing when to go home.
Because there is a fair bit I’ve grown tired of, with my frustrations calcifying into something more existentially troubling over time. I’ve had enough of being looked at for a living, of forever being an object. Even when you control your own image, it is inevitably alienating (and also very boring) to appraise yourself from the outside as much as I have. To know, very precisely and at all times, exactly how to compose yourself to appear not just pretty but unaffected, as if you do really recline on a bed with a natural arch in your back, or trace your finger around the rim of a wine glass when lost in thought, or allow the strap of your dress to fall delicately off your shoulder when you’re knelt in front of him. All women understand what it is to feel observed and scrutinised, but only those who go pro know how strange it is to pilot your own body like a coquettish marionette. I have reduced my personhood to a pantomime of femininity, performed in little outfits bought from sweatshops, and then wondered why I felt disassociated.
After spending so long naked on the internet, I’ve had enough of translating my body through analytics and engagement, searching the algorithm’s constant fluctuations for meaning like tea leaves at the bottom of a cup. Is this too much nipple? Will this word flag my account? I’m old enough to remember when being a slut on the internet was fun. Now it’s reduced to tricking a machine owned by the world’s cringiest billionaire into thinking you’re wearing clothes, and writing captions so bland that hopefully people won’t notice you’re a whore.
