Tall order

Something strange occured to me recently.

I was in the back of a black cab.

I'd been traipsing around London for the best part of the day on a mission to find something capable of covering up pretty much the entirety of my body, for my impending holiday to France. After almost five hours of relentless searching for an item that obviously doens't exist (the human tent is obviously not de riguer this season) I admitted defeat and hailed a cab. I stood around for a while, until one approched.

"Where do you want to go love?"

Yes the flat was in walking distance, but my feet could take no more. I jumped in, informed the driver I wasn't a tourist and told him I didn't want him to try and take me on some route around the houses and subsequently try and rip me off.

"It's alright love, I wasn't going to try and rip you off!", he retorted defesnively.

Realising how abrupt I may have sounded I apologised, "God, no i'm sorry. I've just been walking around for ages, and you know when you don't want to see another bloody persons face coming towards you? I didn't mean to sound rude. . . .There's a lot of traffic, are they doing roadworks or something?"

Sat in the back of the taxi, I switched off my thoughts and began staring through the crowds. Until I noticed someone. A tall guy. I didn't look at his face, nor at what he was wearing -just his height. Blink. He disappeared. We came to the end of the road and suddenly another tall guy appeared. He was walking in amongst at leat six or seven other people, yet my eye went straight to him. I couldn't see his face as he was walking away from the flow of the traffic. When the car evetually became parralel to him, I turned my body to catch a glimpse of his face.

Shit. He must have been over fifty. Yet, he was still attractive. Why?

Simple. He was tall.

It was then and there in the back of that cab that it occured to me: it didn't matter how many many walk towards me in a crowd. How many men there have been at a bar I've walked into, or how many men have approached me. It's always the six footers or above that I'm drawn to like a magnet. It doesn't even matter so much what their face looks like (the face has always been the deal breaker. Nice face, and I really don't care about anything else), I always notice their height first.

It's weird as I'm a tiny thing. But I've never been out with anyone less than six foot.

Regarding height:

I am not discriminating against short men. Oh no. Definitely not. I'll have you know I was very fond of a 5"9 er a while ago. Although it did scare me slightly that if I wore my six inch spiked heels I'd be the same size as him. Oh no no. Not good.

It's only really been in the last year that I've become to understand my penchant for a tall boyfriend.

Here it is.

I'm quite a girly girl. I'm not ashamed of it.

I like flowers.

I like the smell of perfume.

I like cooking.

I like making a man feel like a man.

I love getting dressed up.

Now don't get me wrong, I grew up with two extremely boisterious older brothers and I'm therefore well equiped in rolling around in mud, shooting, quad biking, off roading, etc - but all else aside I'm a girls girl.

Given the juxtapostion of my character and my slightly dominant demeanour in certain areas, it therefore sometimes takes quite a lot for a man to make me feel all girly and shy.
But being with someone whose sheer physical presence - his height- overpowers my own size, leaves me feeling like a smitten little kitten, curled up safe in the arms of her protector, or being made to meow for her dinner.

Either way, purring loudly.

So I need my man to be taller than me: the taller the better, six foot minimum. I want to feel that I am small and girly. I want to get a tired neck from leaning up to kiss him.

Besides, there has been no sweeter feeling- or one that made me more happy - than when the last guy I was seeing picked me up in his arms and carried me to bed after I'd fallen asleep at his whilst watching TV.

Ex Boy used to do this thing where he'd cuddle me from behind -my head would come to his chest - and he'd rest his head on top of mine, wrap his arms around my waist to pull me close into him, stroke my hair, and sort of make this "hmmmm" noise. It was sweet.

Speaking of Ex Boy. It's all been very interesting lately.

I have not seen him on my own for over a year now. The last time I saw him it was in a social situation, and it was all a bit strange.
I was with a girlfriend, he was with a friend. I didn't know I was going to see him. I had about ten minutes prior warning, and could not get out of it, as I had to drop something off to the friend he was with at the time.

In the ten minutes from when I found out I was going to see him (for the first time in about eight months) these were the thoughts that went through my head:

1. I look like awful.

2. What the hell am I wearing?

3. Why the hell did I decide to wear a flowery skirt with biker boots and flowers in my hair today?

4. I look like a hobo.

5. Where the hell is my lipgloss?

6. Hang on. Back up. Why do you care what you look like? You're seeing someone new now who thinks you're beautiful (he may be blind, i'm not too sure) and is incredibly into you. Screw wanting validation from this little idiot who's mucked you around for so long. You're not a little girl anymore. You know who you are now.

7. Be confident. Head up. Shoulders back. Smile.

It was all over pretty quickly really. He came outside to see me. I stayed in the car, only putting the window down to talk to him.
We made small talk, only, when I look back now, it's not the words that are ingrained in my memory. It's how he looked at me that has.

When we were together we mirrored each others gaze.
When he would look at me like he loved me and wanted me there and then, I always knew I was reflecting him. I could feel it. When I looked at his face, it was like looking into a mirror.

Only that night, when I was sat in the car, there was no reflection.

His gaze was the same as ever. But mine had changed.

"How was that? Butterflies?" my friend asked me as we left and drove away.

"Weird. Really, really weird. No butterflies. I feel like they all, just this second flew away." I replied.

From that day up until a few weeks ago we'd had sparce contact. Few texts here and there. Phone call every couple of months. All very generic.

Things finished properly between us a fair few months before I left for University. I'd got sick of feeling how I was feeling and knowing that he would never change, I found the strength from somewhere to put an end to a situation I had become entangled in for the best part of my life. A situation that was both strangley safe to me, yet incredibly destuctive at the same time.

Since I've moved to University I've changed a lot.
I know this.
It's not something I sit and think about on a day to day basis, and I don't feel i've changed into someone unrecognisable from who I used to be. My core beliefs are much the same, my principles are still the same, my morals are still there - to some degree anyway. Same sense of humour. Stupid things still make me smile.

It's only really when close friends of mine say I have with changed with a tone of pride in their voice and a huge smile appears on their face, that I think about it.

I have changed.

So it may have come as quite a shock to Ex Boy when we spoke properly on the phone a few weeks ago, that I am no longer the girl he used to know.

It was about 3:30 in the morning. I was alone in my house in Southampton and I couldn't sleep. Our next door neighbours were having a house party and I'd heard a barrage of noise outside my window for quite sometime. Intrigued and not really knowing where the noise was coming from, I got out of bed with not much on and pulled back my curtains.
Silly move.
Incredibly silly move.
There were no fewer than about ten men below my window.

"HELLO sexy!.....Come on down here gorgeous...." One chav said, drunl out of his teeny tiny little brain cell.

"Damn. Damn. DAMN. Close the bloody pissing curtains right now. Bollocks." I thought.

A few of them started banging on the downstairs window. Oh fuck I thought.

I can't sleep in empty houses, and I get scared stupidly easily at night when I am alone in one. Now there were about ten men outside the house drunk, banging on the window.

Sod it, I know what I'll do I thought. I'll get in my car and drive. I thought maybe I'd call Roxi and and crash at hers. Only when I went downstairs to the kitchen to go out the back door, I saw more men in my drive around my car.

"Bollocks! Bollocks! Back up! Back up!" I shouted, screaming to myself.

I ran upstairs quicker than my little legs would allow and tripped up the first two steps. Jumped in my bed and shut the door.

I felt surrounded by drunken men.

I sat up in bed for a while trying to calm myself down, and trying to block out the shouts of "Come on sexy, let us in...." coming from outside my window.
There was no way I was going to sleep until my housemate got back so, thinking of things that would calm me down - speaking to someone occured to me - I started to scroll through the contacts on my phone.

"No he'll be with his girlfriend. She'll be asleep. She'll be asleep and pissed off if I wake her up....."

Then I came across Ex Boys number.
One good thing about Ex Boy is that he is nocturnal.
I didn't think twice about texting him and asking if he was up. It was nearing four in the morning at that point. He text me straight away telling me to call him. Maybe I didn't reply quick enough, because he then called me straight away.
I don't know what it is about speaking to someone in the early hours of the morning, when i'm in a dark room and am in bed, but it always brings out the truth in me.

We spoke for nearly two hours.

First of all the conversation was just a friendly catch up, which inadvertedly led onto us reminiscing about when were younger.

"You haven't changed. I can tell you now you have not changed! It's ok, it's just what you're like. You can't keep it in your trousers." I said, in reply to him saying we'd "work" together now.

"Fuck off Steph. You're not giving me enough credit. I've grown up a lot in the last two years. I wouldn't do that to you anyway. I'd never cheat on you. If we were together now, I would not cheat on you."

"Babe! It's ok! If we were together, and you went out for a night, and someone prettier came across your path, you wouldn't be able to help it. That, and a bunch of other reasons is why I wouldn't want to ever be with you!"

"Steph. Seriously. Will you listen to me?"

"Ok OK....go on." I laughed.

"Ok. Steph, what you fail to realise is that you're not just 'some girl' to me. You're you. I mean. It's you. We've known each other how long now?"

"Ten years"

"Fuck is it that long?!" He asked.

"Yes, carry on...."

"Ok. Well, basically....I. I mean you.... Well apart from my close family and my best mate, there's no one else who knows me like you do, or that means more to me. You don't give me enough credit when I tell you I don't love anyone else like you, and can't love anyone else like you.

"Plus. Err, Steph you were always naughty! I mean it was always fun! Never a dull moment with you! Do you rememeber the time your parents had that party, and we went to the top of the house......?"

"Don't! I know what you're going to say. Don't. I'm embaressed." I laughed sheepishly.

Shouting at me he said, "Shut up! How can you be embaressed?! It's me! Anyway. We were at the top of the house...in the room at the top and the door didn't have a lock on it. Do you remember?"

"Yes." I said.

"People started knocking on it, so we had to lean against it. I mean it was always like that. I know you and I know what you're like. I'd have no reason to ever look elsewhere."

"Anyway, I know things went weird, and.....I don't know. I don't know if I should say."

Shouting, I cried, "What?! Go on. You can't not say now!"

"Well, It's just that. Well, I was going to say that, I've always known, well I've always thought....even though things went weird before and we were on and off for so long....well I just think that.....I've always thought that whatever we do in life or wherever we go.....we'll end up together."

I couldn't believe it.

Over a year ago when I was trying to find some strength to walk away from the situation, it was that thought that went through my head.

If it's meant to be, it's meant to be.

Don't get me wrong. I do think that if you want something badly in life you should fight for it with every fibre of your being, but, having done that for so many years with him, it was the other thought that was more prominant in my head when I was thinking how can I ever walk away from him.

"When can I see you? There's nothing more I want than to see you. I miss you." He sighed.

"I don't think that's a good idea. Look, i'm being honest when I say that I'm not in love with you anymore, and I don't even know that I look at you like that anymore. But i'm not stupid. If we were to see each other then something may happen, and I wouldn't it to. I've moved on." I told him.

"I wouldn't do anything. Seriously. I'd sleep on the floor out of respect....."

"Um Hello!? Who said anything about you staying!?" I laughed.

"Don't be silly! I'm just saying, I wouldn't touch you if you didn't want me to. I'd want to Steph, but I wouldn't want to fuck anything up. I just want to see you. I miss you."

"I don't know. I think it far wiser that we just chat on the phone every now and then."

"Don't you want to see me?" He asked.

"Yeah. I mean, I don't know! Yeah, there are times when I want to speak to you, or somethings on TV and I want to tell you to watch it, or I don't know....you know, things like that. There are times when I want to see you too, but what's the point?"

He sighed a little, then said, "Look, i'll tell you what. If it makes you feel better, we'll go out with other people. You can come out with me and some of my friends. That way there's no danger."

I sighed too and said, "Hmm, yeah that may be ok. It would be cool to see you. I mean all of your twatish things aside, I do still love you as a person. Ha ha. So we'll go out then. Are you going to be ok with me dancing with other men infront of you?"

"Fuck off. You're not doing that. If we're out together, we're together. I don't talk to any other girls and you don't talk to any other men. Ok? Look tell me when I can see you. I'll come anywhere. Anywhere you are in the country, you name it and I'll be there." He said seriously.

All this years after I'd wanted to hear it. All this and I wasn't in love with him anymore.

I do want to see him. I mean i'm not in love with him anymore, and for that reason alone it would be cool. But then I think how am I going to feel afterwards? I think I may feel sad, and I don't really want to subject myself to that.
But then on the other hand I may be perfectly fine, and we may be able to be friends (to some degree), which would be nice.

Out of all the men I know and have been out with, he is the only one that I could tell all my darkest thoughts to and confide in, and I know he wouldn't run away. In fact he does know dark things about me, and he's never gone anywhere.

He text me as soon as we got off the phone at nearly six in the morning, saying how nice it had been to hear from me. He then text me again the next day saying he meant everything he said and that he really wanted to see me.

How was he now more into me?

Thoughts :

1. I'm more confident now. Something he's attracted to.

2. He's dipped his foot into the dating pool / shagging pool and seen that it's pretty bleak.

3. He has realised that no other girl could ever love him how I could, or care for him as much as I did.

4. He can't have me anymore. I am therefore forbidden fruit to him.

5. He knows I've had other boyfriends since him and he doesn't like it. (An example of this may be his determination to not call any of my ex's by their names, instead referring to them simply as "prick number one", "prick number two", and so on.)

6. He misses me.


Who knows, and quite frankly who cares?