The Neuro and The Neurotic

I don’t mean to brag but possibly one of the greatest things about my body is my period cycle syncs up perfectly with the full moon. Call it coincidence. Call it oestrogen. But I am quite literally a lunatic. It’s written in the stars.

I’ve always had a lot of respect for the people who make it their life’s work to try to understand the human body through science, and don’t just attribute everything to the planetary movements. But I never quite realised how much I wanted to date a doctor until I dated a doctor.

Like all good almost-love stories, ours started on Tinder. The app where dreams are made, then destroyed.

His astute observations early on in the piece about my personality flattered me because I am like a dog – I respond well to praise and I am also quite scared of thunder and lightning. It also helped he was a good looking English Neurosurgeon.

People sometimes ask me if Funnellism impacts my dating prospects. To which I respond, No. More than anything, it just weeds the cunts from the pussies. Authenticity either compels, or it repels. My whole life people have fallen into one of those two categories.  As my friend said the other day: “everyone gets what they deserve. In Funnellism.”

We messaged for a week, during which, I felt like he was prying into my brain. He obvs reeeeally liked people’s brains, considering he looked at them for a living. He found Funnellism and read every single bit of it, start to finish ‘like a legit psycho’ (his words, not mine). He sent me screenshots of his favourite bits and generally just seemed really horny.

From the moment we met, I felt exposed and intimidated by him.

I think part of it was because I was intellectually out of my depth. I know. I know. I am genius, how on earth is that even possible?! Well, turns out as clever as I think I am, a brain surgeon is significantly smarter than me. Who would have thought?

He would regularly quote me, to me, and fuck! Why do you people let me spin SO MUCH FUCKING SHIT? He tore shreds off my sweeping statements and generalisations, but considered himself a fan. He was kind of obsessed with my writing. It was flattering, but he made me feel uneasy.

I think he felt like he knew me better than he did and was convinced there wasn’t much of separation between my internet alter-ego and my true personality. He used it to manipulate me. Knowledge is power.

As to be expected, his bedside manner was very good. Until I noticed two Saké cups in his room – one on each bedside table. It didn’t take a genius to figure out he’d been Saké and sucking with another woman. It wasn’t my place to say anything though. So of course I said something. He said I was crazy, they were both his, and he wasn’t banging anyone else. I’ll never know the truth, and I don’t care.

One of the exciting elements of the inundation of sex apps is the fun little game I like to call: ‘Finger In The Game, Dick In The Pie’. Basically it just makes two timing the norm. I’ve written about this at length and I’m not going to harp on about it.

The Renters: A term coined by me about five minutes ago, used to describe the growing trend of men who will happily rent a vagina for a few years without the intention of ever purchasing the uterus.

Everyone knows all a woman really needs,  and wants, is to put her uterus to good use. 🙄🙄🙄

Now, there’s nothing wrong with renting. Renting is great. You can rent whatever you want, wherever you want, whenever you want.

But to me, rent money is dead money. I’ll fucking kill you.

Now, I’m not comparing myself to a bit of property. But old doc man didn’t seem too privy to wasting his money on rent. He was definitely looking to buy a uterus. I discovered this one day when our conversation turned to how many  of his babies he might be able to park in my uterus.

One of the benefits of being a woman is that it’s still relatively socially acceptable for us to  give up on our hopes, dreams, aspirations and independence in the event a man is willing to subsidise our lifestyle in return for premium access to our uterus. It’s a small price, really.  I’d never considered the option of filling the role as “doctor’s wife” but when he told me – “You wouldn’t really need to work, you could just do your little blogging all day” – it got me thinking, “Why the fuck have I been wasting my goddamn time with media men and creative cunts, when all this time, I could have just shacked up with a Neurosurgeon?”  Sure, he was patronising as all hell and he thought his time was more important than mine, buuuuut in his defence, it kind of was? I mean, he did 15 hour shifts and performed life saving surgeries.

Would it be suuuuuch a life fail if I just relinquished a little bit of independence to become a doctor’s wife? WOULD IT?! Working is hard. And tiring. When a man mooches off a female, he’s considered a loser. But when a woman marries rich and doesn’t really work, it’s considered fine. Maybe, just maybe, I could make this sexist societal inconsistency work for me?

We did not spend much time together at all. But oddly, he spoke of marriage and babies. I remember he once referred to me as his ‘wife, Alexandria’ to a taxi driver and joked about our wedding speeches. The fandom was laid on, thick and fast. I lapped it up like a thirsty, horny little Pomeranian on heat.

I have no idea why but one night he chucked his dirty scrubs at me and said: “Here, take these, you can have them”.  At the time I thought he meant take them home as a present, but I think what he actually meant was, “you better get used to washing my dirty scrubs and also all the dirty nappies and clothes from the 50 million white privileged mini-male doctors I am planning to impregnate you with before your 30th birthday”.

As per the song, I indignantly told him I didn’t want his scrubs. He must have known me better than I knew myself though, because I went home and did a fashion parade in his dirty fucking scrubs. Like a little freak. Does chemistry fry the brain?

He joked that I could sniff them when we were apart and do you know what? I did. I fucking sniffed them.  As suspected they smelt like him with a hint of spinal fluid and heroism.

But the thing was, he could and would, go days without responding to texts because well, sometimes he was in surgery and “No, I didn’t get your meme tag, Alex, I did a 17 hour shift!”.

Whateverrrrr 🙄

It also meant he could cancel our dates with less than 30 minutes notice and I had to be fine with it… I need you to listen to this voicemail to get a sense of how lovely he sounds because a little further down, you’re going to be asking yourself why/how I liked him?

So his literal unavailability, the fact he saved lives, his generosity, chemistry and intelligence made me feel pretty keen on old doc man. Like a little idiot, I held onto that romantic narrative he’d planted in my brain very early on, and replayed it in my head. Even when all the signs were screaming: FUCK NO!

The narrative went like this: Maybe after all these years, this is how it ends? Maybe I end up marrying a rich, English surgeon and we move to London and I do my ‘creative writing and crafts’ and basically just be a good wife? Fuck, how hard can that really be?! All I would need to do would be to sacrifice a little bit of my ambition and independence…Maybe,  it’s time to hang up my heels and put the apron on?

Just as I was starting to get used to the idea of compromising part of myself to walk in a man’s shadow as a baby making machine and my Facebook worthy life as a doctor’s wife, one drunken evening brought out a side to him I wasn’t too pleased with.

This is how it all panned out:

A resolution was near. It might not be what you want, but it’s what I needed read Part 5: The Only Way To Respond To A Breakup here.