A rule of thumb.

As a rule of thumb, I tend to stay away from creative men. Painters, musicians, directors, writers; even those guys in shopping centres who make balloon animals for wide-eyed kids, to the horror of their weary-eyed parents. No good can come from those type of men. I have my reasons, of course. Art demands that your ego comes first. If it didn’t demand that of you, you couldn’t make good art. Ego and romance doesn’t mix – ego makes you selfish, it makes you unable to think of yourself, it makes you disappear up your own arse until you’re unable to see anything else. Try getting a man like that to remember date night; you might as well forget it.

Most men are essentially scarred by society’s ideas of masculinity. The way they treat women has been warped and wrinkled by fear of how they will be perceived by other men. The way they think of themselves has been shaped and shattered by what they believe women want. The way they act has been distorted and deformed by centuries of conscription laws and emotional repression. Add an artistic sensibility and a dash of childhood trauma into the mix, and you’re headed for a train wreck of a relationship. That’s why I stay away – I have enough ego all on my own, thank you very much. All I want is a man who likes football, or hand gliding, or model railway sets, something like that. Now, that I can get on board with. I would much rather have a prosaic man than one who sees poetry in everything he touches. I would much rather have a man who’s never read Norman Mailer than a man who can’t do anything without analysing it to the nth degree. I would much rather have a man who you practically have to shake to get a sentence out of than a man who waxes lyrical about Wez fucking Anderson on a bi-weekly basis.

Any relationship I have with a creative man would end up like an echo chamber, for sure. It’d be like fucking myself. If I wanted to fuck myself, I’d get a full-length mirror above my bed and make eye contact whilst I masturbate. I want a man who obsesses over Recaman’s sequence rather than Rimbaud’s Vowels. A man who is fascinated by the life cycle of parasitic wasps instead of the life and times of David Foster Wallace. If you’re ever on a date with a man, and they mention David Foster Wallace, I advise you to excuse yourself and promptly... run for the hills. You’ll be on the night tube home before he can say, ‘have you read The Girl with the Curious Hair though?’. And you’ll be safe in the knowledge you dodged a bullet that only would’ve ended up with twenty unanswered calls and an unwelcome diagnosis of gonorrhoea.

A mathematician, or an economist, or a scientist, would be perfect for me. Someone with an appreciation for intellectual pursuits, but without the intimate understanding of mid-twentieth century French cinema that screams ‘I will tell you I love you and then block you on Whatsapp’. Been there - done that - got the t-shirt. All the guys I dated at uni were literature undergraduates who had dreams of moving to Prague and reading Kafka in the original language. They were all too busy modelling themselves as a sort of twenty-first century Serge Gainsbourg (but without the talent and girthy genitals) to realise I’d zoned out about twenty seconds after they started talking. Each time, I kicked them out of bed before they kicked me out of theirs.

I fell flat on my face a couple times before I learnt though, I’ll tell you that. It took me a little while to realise that just because someone says something, doesn’t mean that that’s what they’ll do. As a teenager, the media hoodwinked me into thinking that women were the ones who played power games and hid covert meanings within innocent requests to pick up milk on the way home. I was yet to be acquainted with the sheer force of the ‘I think you’re dazzling (but I can’t get too invested in anybody until I’ve finished my novel)’ man. It enrages me to think that men have collectively given women a reputation for manipulation and deceit. The truth couldn’t be further from it. Men are the absolute apex of hidden meanings within texts. Moreover, men are expert at the ‘I’ll say this now and think about whether I mean it later’ method of getting into a girls’ pants. The patriarchy is truly a conspiracy to rival Q-Anon, I’ll tell you that. Except the patriarchy is real, and has less furry horned-deerstalker hats.

It infuriated me until I realised that all I needed was a general rule of thumb. Every girl should have one. A rule of thumb is a sensible way to ensure that you will not be hurt in the future by the lead singer of yet another all-white jazz/hip-hop fusion band. Whenever I’m at a bar and I ask a man what he does, I brace myself. I expect him to say something like "I’m in email marketing" or "I manage the Carphone Warehouse on Sutton High Street; do you know it?". I have rehearsed my ‘that sounds interesting’ face, or my ‘yes, I was in there just last week’ face, as he bangs on about how much he loves WeWork on a Friday, or how he attended the University of Life and that’s why he ended up the manager of the Carphone Warehouse on Sutton High Street.

Of course, I hope he’ll say something like "I’m an associate professor of Environmental Science at Imperial", or "I am J.P Morgan". Alas, I am (at the time of writing) yet to find such an ideal specimen of a man. However, as soon as they say, "I have really high hopes for my latest short film" or "have you read my zine?", I back away slowly and hide in the loo until they realise I’m not coming back and wander off to all their other zine-writing buddies. I have my general rule of thumb, and I will stick to it. That is the very essence of the rule of thumb method of dating. If you break it, you really have only yourself to blame. No amount of Cutters Choice rollies and peanut butter cup Ben and Jerry’s will make up for the fact that you failed to heed your own warning. Now, that is a truly bitter pill to swallow. Far more difficult to take than the fact he didn’t even write a song about you.