Stand-up Sam - Part One

Sam was a stand-up guy. Not the type that performs amateur comedy sketches you confidently show off at friends parties, and instead the kind that convinces you to travel 300 miles and then stands you up at Liverpool Street station (cue applause).

Now, if this was a friend, on a catfish type Tinder date, of course I’d say: “what did you fucking expect!?”, but this was a guy I’d known for 2 years.

I met Sam starting work for an over-sold brokers firm. He was the ugliest guy I’d ever purposely laid my eyes on – and I’m not saying that in bitter hindsight – he knew it. So, to make up for it he dressed like an investment banker and made himself known with a heavy Essex accent. He was a cunning little creep that utterly intrigued me.

He gave me undivided attention, stared at me for hours on end as we trained sales together until we were eventually lead into different teams. Initially I was glad. I couldn’t say I was reciprocating his behaviour, but it was nice to know he wanted to fuck me.

I had a boyfriend to go home to. I had that fish-wife lifestyle (that’s my term for a woman who waits on her husband (of sorts); serves his dinner, picks up his dirty clothes and doesn’t say a word unless spoken to. No, I don’t mean all housewives, just the few that haven’t had the update that the war is over and women can roam the streets independently at free will). As you can tell, it wasn’t aspirational, but I had something solid in place with someone who cared for me – even if it had been so long since my boyfriend said I was pretty, or more importantly, good at anything.

It helped keeping Sam at arms length – he had a girlfriend – no fish-wife either by the sounds of it. I remember he convinced me to download Snapchat (before people used it for personal porn), and the first snap I got from him was on a lazy Sunday morning: three seconds of messy “I love you” scroll. The three seconds became a reoccurring theme, not just on Snapchat. I shit myself, almost throwing my phone and never replied. I was so worried my boyfriend would see it and think I’d been up to something when I genuinely had not entertained this clown. On the other hand, I was worried he would keep snapping this crap!

I never acknowledged it, I was intrigued but not stupid. Sam seemed all over the place too. Sometimes we bumped into each other when we were stuck in a heard of people shuffling outside the office at 5:01pm. He would tell me tales of how he didn’t want to go home to his girlfriend as she’s lazy and lives off of his money, that she’s a bitch to him since she “trapped” him into moving north. I told him to leave her, but he said there was so incentive to, unless I…..and the rest. I said it wasn’t going to happen. I wasn’t going to throw away my (mundane) life for the ugly ginger guy at work.

Then, I quietly kinda thought about it; the fantasy of it all, but the thought of being thrown out the house by my boyfriend while torched as the village scarlet woman would not bode well in my favour, and where the fuck would I live!? I moved my whole life to be with this guy! Keeping busy cures boredom I thought. I did the cliché thing of wearing tight little blouses and pencil skirts to work. I accented my outfits with bright red lips to match my red hair and undeniably draw attention to my mouth – a statement so powerful once upon a time that women were accused of practicing witchcraft. Every time he saw me pass he would say “WOW” loud enough to make my face also match my lips. I’ve never been the shrinking violet, or Rachael Leigh Cook type in She’s All That (what the fuck happened to her!?), but I couldn’t handle his attention. I remember coming home one day, triumphant from his cat calling and seeing my boyfriends face drop. “You look like a drag queen.” is what he said to me. It’s funny how one man’s trash is another mans treasure.

Sam text me time to time; explicit texts out of the blue, one time when I was endlessly cleaning black glass furniture on a Saturday afternoon. I replied something to the affect of: “Don’t you fucking dare text me anything like that ever again!”, but I didn’t block him, and it didn’t stop. I changed my phone settings not to display the sexually violent content of his horn-driven texts. I felt like I was cheating, hiding something, quite literally. I knew I had feelings there, of both lust and disgust for this fool.

His moment finally came at a company awards evening. Sam had asked a million times if I was going and if I was staying at the hotel. Yes, and no. I remember his face when I walked in. We were seated at opposite ends of the room, but every time I looked over my shoulder he was fixed on me. I remember thinking he looked nice in his suit. That it didn’t matter if he didn’t have the most handsome face in the room, he had the charm and charisma (text messages aside) to carry himself. I mingled later in the evening and he was never too far behind me. After a bottle of wine (and about three for him), we sat together at his table as drunken souls cackled and slurred around us. He told me to my face he utterly loved me, that he would leave his girlfriend and all his belongings just to be with me, all I had to do was say ‘the word’. I didn’t admire him at all for that. I told him I had feelings for him but I was not prepared to leave my boyfriend, my (mundane) life. He nodded and I don’t know if it’s my slightly fuzzy memory at this part, but I could have sworn he cried.

My boyfriend had arranged to pick me up that evening, and there he was frantically beeping the horn outside (fucksake). Sam insisted on escorting me out. I remember secretly cherishing the moment as he was so brazen and my boyfriend so unimpressed (not that he got his uptight arse out of the car to greet me). When I got in my boyfriend laughed and said how pathetic the “ugly little guy” was, and how he would never have a chance with me. There was a compliment in there somewhere. Although, hearing him say Sam was ugly aloud made me sad. He was no longer just a face to me.

A few months after that, after the silent acceptance of defeat, Sam left his job and his girlfriend, and moved back home. It wasn’t of course all about me, but I do think it forced him to assess what he really wanted. His second love was London. We didn’t speak, and I resumed to routine. I remembered him grabbing my hands that one evening as he evoked the fantasy of how we could move to London together, how we would have nothing but each other. It wasn’t real and I wouldn’t allow it to be.

Time moved my thoughts on, until there it was, that dreaded friend request.