The Bullet Biter

A few days ago, I got a text from my good friend Maria, lamenting the fact that she’d been ghosted (again) by the fuckboy du jour .  I got to thinking about a worrying pattern of behaviour that I’ve observed in some of my friends, brilliant and beautiful people who insist on dating frankly disgusting men and women, refusing to admit just how awful their partners are. This is not a millennial trend per se. It’s something that even our ancestors got caught up in. Even freaking Anne Boleyn had the guts to call her husband Henry VIII the “gentlest prince that is” moments before he had her head chopped off just so he could legally get in bed with Jane Seymour. Anne, dear, listen to me: your man is about to let the crowd play bowling with your head and you’re still fawning over our royal fatness? Snap out of it! But then again who can judge her? I like to think I am too self-respecting and dignified for that but I must admit that I have, on more than one occasion, pulled an Ann

Today I came across a faded pink post-it note in an old book of mine. I recognised my own handwriting, hasty and unintelligible as ever. It was a Maya Angelou quote, sieved through the filter of a shaky, sceptical hand: "There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you." This got me thinking. About life, literature, and the importance of good stories. You’ve heard this before: life cuts me, and I bleed stories. They’re the backbone that holds my sense of self. Without them I would shrivel and collapse, calmly but steadily implode. I like to think I’m able to amass the chaos, the facts and the anecdotes, the places and the people that come crashing in and out of my life, and shove them into the reassuring boundaries of a story, the straight lines of an archetypal narrative, the solid silhouette of pre-written characters. It’s a tool for survival, the shelter in which I seek refuge during the storm of the week. I have been accused of living in

I used to think I was quite good at reading people. In my daily interactions with other fellow humans, I’ve always found it relatively easy to get the right message, read between the lines and limit the potential for misunderstanding. Recently, though, I’ve come to the realisation that my reading super-powers, attained through years spent watching Ted Talks on emotional intelligence, immediately vanish when I’m near someone that I am romantically involved with. You could go as far as to say that dating is, indeed, my very own kryptonite. I could illustrate my point by sharing a couple of personal anecdotes, but too many of the “persons of interest” read this blog and I can’t deal with another angry Whatsapp voice note today. Luckily for me, however, my friends allow me to exploit their experiences with dating and turn them into cautionary tales for my readers to cringe on. So here goes. My friend Greg from back home dated a girl named Hannah for a couple of weeks. She mes