A month ago, whilst on the sandy beaches of Adelaide, someone asked me if I had a boyfriend. I replied ‘No, I don’t’. They replied “Oh. You seem like the type of girl who would have a boyfriend”.
Now, any sentence with ‘You seem like the type of girl...’ immediately makes my fangs appear. I had no idea what this meant. Was this a compliment? Was this an offense? Was this like that time when someone said to me at a party “I love the way you disguise your beauty” and I had to explain that this wasn’t a compliment. This was in fact the compliment equivalent of saying to someone “I love your haircut, it really brings out your head” or “Oh wow! You look so much thinner since your mum died!”. It’s a negg.
So, re boyfriend. I was for a second, mildly confused. Do I look like ‘the type of girl’ that has heaps of admirers to the point I’ve just had to GRAB ONE for my own safety, or do I look like ‘the type of girl’, like Anastasia Steele circa 50 Shades of Shit, who literally cannot stand on their own two feet without the testosterone presence of another person to lean on? God kill me if that is the case.
This then got me thinking, about my dream man if I had one. I have three crushes: The Goblin King from the Labyrinth (*cough* Bowie in leggings *cough*) Justin Timberlake and Marc Bolan from T-Rex. One is fictional, one of them likes cargo shorts and the other is dead. So there is little chance of a future love there.
But then, I looked down at my beverage in my hand. Coffee. Tall, grande, filtered, strong.
“If only coffee was a man.”
I love coffee. It’s one of my favourite things next to codeine and drinking proseco on a train*.
And you hear it all the time:
“I like my men like I like my coffee. Black, strong, hot”
“I like my men like I like my coffee. Able to keep me up for hours”
“I like my men like I like my coffee. As far away from my vagina as possible”
etc etc.
It’s a positive idea. But then, imagine for a second, coffee WAS a man.
Imagine, he turned up at your door:
“Hey sugar... you seem a little tired... want me to perk-u-late you up?”
A beautiful tan, soft skin, silky smooth. He's an entrepeneur. A city man but with links to the countryside. Worldly. He can speak different languages and has strong family heritage all over the world. He’s always banging on about ‘Fairtrade’ and farmers rights. He’s incredibly wealthy. He knows loads about milk. He’s simply diverse. Sharp wit but also sensitively creamy when you need him to be. You would have him in short espresso bursts in the morning, and then for long latte-urious afternoons. You’d laugh together in cafes which resemble Apple Stores with open brick work, wooden tables and young self-employed people typing on mac-book pros in the corner. Young mums with screaming children would LOVE him, Business men would respect him, teenage girls would look at him outside Starbucks and imagine him covered in strawberries, whipped cream and rubbed in ice.
He would be Perfect.
But then...
After an intense fun-filled weekend together, Monday would come round. Dreaded Monday. The working week. You’d wake up once the iphone alarm sounds. You’d feel a bit bitter, your tongue would be furry, your breath would smell, you’d be bloated.
But it’s fine, you have your man, your gorgeous cafe-au-lait creation. He's all you need. But you look around... your bed is empty? Panic. WHERE IS HE? Suddenly you start sweating. You feel like Jodie Foster in almost every film she’s been in after 1991. You run out of bed, but you can’t, as suddenly you’ve got crippling diarrhea. You sit on the loo, look at your watch and the headaches kick in.
“WHERE IS HE? I HAVEN’T SEEN HIM SINCE I FELL ASLEEP.”
You call him. He's at work. Obviously. He's probably out saving the children and putting the world to rights one tired, depressed self-employed person at a time. OR MAYBE HE IS CHEATING ON YOU???? YOU KNOW HOW POPULAR HE IS. God, you're paranoid.
Sure, you have work to do, but you couldn’t possibly do it without him in your life. You’d fall to sleep with boredom. Your brain doesn’t work as fast when you’re without him. He’s your adrenalin, your life force.
Your friends call and ask you to come out with them for a healthy walk around the park...
“FUCK OFF. I NEED COFFEE.”
“No you don’t. Come out with us. We have de-caffinated. He’s a complete babe”
“He’s a FAKE. I’ve NEVER liked him. His muscle definition is pathetic. I bet he likes soya. I HATE SOYA”
You’re irritable and you have heart palpiations. You walk around your appartment and realise your boyfriend Coffee has left weird brown stains at the bottom of the bath for reasons you can’t fathom. Your vagina feels grainy.
Then finally, after a day with Tea and that bitch Water, he returns.
“OH MY GOD I MISSED YOU”. Your heart-palpitations subside.
You have to have sex IMMEDIATLEY otherwise your headache won’t go away.
You bone so much you don’t get any sleep...
Weeks pass.
Then one day he goes to work, you're paranoid, you go to his desk, and realise that, oh god.. he’s not fair-trade at all... that was all a guise in fancy packaging....
His suit is actually made-in-china by someone younger than your sister...
He leaves the tap on in the kitchen for no explainable reason...
You look at his bills.
He’s a tax-evading emotional drug-dealer who gets his money from the exploitation of Peruvian workers! Most of his colleagues are on zero-hour-contracts...
Oh god you realise, I bet he votes UKIP....
That’s right guys.
Coffee is Adam Levine’s character in the Maroon-5 music video: ANIMAL. But with better dress sense. Like Christian Grey. Forget that. HE IS CHRISTIAN GREY.
And what’s worse, he turns you into a weaker willed version of ANASTASIA STEEL. Oh no.
Put the coffee down. Find tea. Good ole tea.....
Perhaps I should try and do black magic to raise Marc Bolan from the dead after all…