She’s Ended Up Middle-Aged MP3
Read by Charlotte Worthing
Netflix is like fireflies in my boyfriend's glazed eyes. He's had a hard day at work. I've had a boring, overpaid one. We've been sat in silence for maybe an hour while a binge-watch mends our relationship. I'm nursing a smudged, warm glass of wine, flashing a flirty glance at him now and then, wiggling my feet on his lap, peeking up from my phone.
Am I paying attention? Am I being mindful? I'm not sure. Scrolling through Facebook, I'm half-heartedly wondering whether to go plant-based.
Hmmm. Let's think about this. I don't know if it suits me.
See, I’m that kind of mid-range millennial, around 30 (but in denial); sure, with a sustainable conscience but a reluctance to get rid of single-use plastics and a fear that zero-wasters are coming for our fun. That does not a vegan make.
That kind of person.
I throw down my phone in a strop and finish my wine. My boyfriend looks at me briefly, in acknowledgement, not affection, and returns to the TV.
I fetch another glass.
I pick up my phone again, annoyed at Facebook, so switch to Instagram, thumb through the rabbit hole.
Gets me thinking.
I had a friend once. Nice girl. She's older than me. Hated kids. Hated marriage. Called herself a Marxist. Went on a few demonstrations in her college days. Even protested outside parliament once – I don’t think she ever knew what she was protesting against, but she said it was one hell of a good time. Then one day, many years later, good career, good apartment, good friends, good partner, she found herself with an empty diary – Good Lord! – stretching empty blocks of days like a vacant periodic table, flipping the pages, flip, flip, absolutely nothing; nothing, nothing. Daily work, weekly shop, visit brother, de-clutter wardrobe, that kind of thing; on and on until she hit her summer holiday in June. Something to look forward to. But apart from the errands, there was nothing but white space from February until June. She was horrified. Absolutely horrified. Even the approaching weekend contained only: buy birthday card for Holly. Monday. Post it. That was the lot. Was Holly even celebrating? When would they get together? What was happening?
My friend had found herself, as if by accident, organised but unhappy. When her partner, Jason, got back from work that evening, she said to him, ‘Let’s go down to the pub tonight. Have a couple of drinks. I need to let my hair down,’ and Jason replied, ‘Not tonight, love, it’s a Wednesday. And I’ve got a busy day tomorrow.’ So they stayed in and had a jacket potato and went to bed at a reasonable hour. She had a good day at the office the next day and even toyed with the idea of asking her colleagues if they fancied a drink, but she couldn’t risk it, she wouldn’t dare, in case she got horrendously drunk and had to face these people in the morning. No. So she decided against it. At home, she put on her running kit and forced herself out for a run, around the park in the sunset.
There were dog-walkers, toddlers, parents arriving home from work; there were baby-bumps and gossipers and schoolchildren on corners; there were buggies on pavements and pensioners in gardens, and it was a good run, a productive run; the world was nice, very, very nice; and she thought to herself that she was still young, fit, and healthy, and this was a thoroughly good life, a nice life. She got home pleased with herself, feeling unstoppable and grown-up, even accomplished, and Jason was already there, with his feet up watching a talk show. They kissed, and she showered, and this was a thoroughly good life indeed. She ate smashed avocado on rye bread that night, and feeling cleansed and fashionable, she decided to message her friend Holly and ask when she was celebrating her birthday. But Holly answered back, many hours later, saying that she just didn’t have the time – Barnaby was teething and her husband was away for the week. Forget her then. Remember to buy the birthday card.
So my friend asked her partner: ‘Jason, why don’t we book a table for Friday night and ask a couple of the guys round?’ to which he replied, ‘Yes, absolutely, let’s go for it.’ So come the Friday morning, she told her closest friends she’d booked a fancy restaurant and who was free for a spur-of-the-moment slap-up-meal? But nobody was. Everybody was busy. With kids, with work, with whatever. So she cancelled her reservation and they had fish and chips at home. She went for five runs the next week and then had a binge on chocolate fudge cake. Felt bad. Felt fat. Felt like a failure. Got promoted at work.
Holly had a gathering on the Saturday, kids welcome, and she’d set up a buffet in her living room, prosciutto, cheeses, freshly baked rolls, and then everybody went home. A baby had burped in her face and the wine ran out at two. Before she knew it, eight months had passed like that, and after some inheritance from Jason’s side, they had enough for a down payment and they secured a mortgage, moved out of London. She would never see her friends more than three times a year again.
By the December, she had tried to arrange a Halloween extravaganza, a bonfire night, a wine-tasting event, and a Christmas meal, but nobody had ever turned up. On New Years’ Eve, they had a takeaway and watched it on television. At eleven, she asked Jason if he wanted to go out, and he said, ‘No.’ She was tumbling, tumbling, tumbling, everyone around her stooped and suffocating, simplicity gone, just ‘no, no, no’, and there, in that moment, she found herself – thirty-four and desperate for a party.
So she turned to Jason that night and said, ‘Will you marry me?’
And he said, ‘Yes.’
The following summer they were wed and her diary had been full the whole time. She’d had a hen weekend and rehearsals, table plans and outfit designs, celebration meals and catering samples. And for the ceremony – everybody came. Somehow they found the time. They all danced and drank and sang, and onwards and upwards to the honeymoon. Beautiful, it was, all of it, and the afterglow lasted forever. Except it didn’t.
Three months later it was somebody else’s turn, and when she tried to organise her thirty-sixth birthday party, nobody could come because they were all saving for the weddings. Instead, she redecorated the house. When it was done she arranged a second housewarming, but nobody could come, what with work and the weddings. There just wasn’t enough time for everything to do; and yet we still spend time without ever doing anything. Minutes, and hours, and days, and weeks, and months, and years; new diaries. As the weddings subsided – they had started in her twenties – they were replaced with baby showers, and everybody else’s life was costing her a fortune.
But still she tried, she tried, she tried, having to run harder and for longer to achieve the body she once had for free; and she tried, she kept trying, to have that very last big-night-out, to have dinners, to have drinks, to have dancing and laughter and freedom; she wanted to be blitzed or to be bored, to have time to do nothing, instead of nothing and no time, with nothing ahead to differentiate the nothing behind. All the while her relationship dried and distanced. They loved each other, yes, but they were bound not by touch and rapture, but by habit and routine; and she longed for the days when their parties – when they had them – ended in paroxysmal sex, drunken and fully-clothed, too impatient to disrobe. But where now was the kinship and connection? Where was the understanding and affinity, the exchange of ideas, the interest? With anyone? It was like the days of her teens, through which she’d thought nobody had understood her - classic - except now it was true. And on top of that she was losing her face, losing her body, losing the things she’d never known were so good. She used to hate her arse, but now it seemed ten times bigger, baggier, bumpier. She used to hate her fake ID, but now nobody ever asked for her real one. We spend all that time trying to be older. Now she looked her age. She told Jason they should rediscover their sex life, and he said, ‘We will, we will.’ So they always set aside the time – this Friday night, that Saturday morning… – but the scheduling of it put her off and the expectation of it let them down. One evening she kissed his neck before realising he was engrossed in his phone. It was closeness and affection, intimacy, she needed, and there, in that moment, she found herself – forty-one and desperate for a fuck.
So she turned to Jason and said, ‘Should we try for kids?’
And he said, ‘Yes.’
Then came nights of entanglement and new positions, and exciting diets and parenting books and pregnancy magazines, and a positive result. There were scans and celebrations. There were friends rallying round and stroking the bump. There was hope and the happy unknown, and out there in that unknown was Now.
Today. The happy unknown. And a flat family portrait on her Instagram glowing up at me from my feed. I hover over it, before tapping my like. Is it me or is it my future?
I had a friend once. She’s ended up middle-aged, with an anxiety problem and an eye on retirement. That’s the end of it. I only ever see her online now.
I’d always thought she’d been robbed of her life. Never knew who the thief was. But I used to look at her and think: that will never, ever be me.
I turn to look at my boyfriend, beautiful but tired in the bare midwinter, Netflix in his eyes like fireflies, and say, 'Will you marry me?'
(c) Alix Owen, 2020
Alix is a writer/director from London. His work has appeared in paperback and digital anthologies and at the Camden Fringe Festival. You can find excerpts of his domestic dystopia on Instagram at @alixowenwrites.
Charlotte Worthing trained at The Oxford School of Drama. Her theatre work includes roles at Arcola Theatre, Southwark Playhouse, The Bush and Theatre503 as well as touring productions. Radio work includes BBC Drama series Chain Gang, The Private Patient and Road to St David’s in which she was typecast as a 10 year old Welsh boy.
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