I’ve Found The Perfect Boyfriend – He Just Isn’t Real

I’m in a chicken shop at the end of a night out when some guy walks over and starts
flirting with me while I’m standing in the queue. “Can I take you out for dinner?” he
says, and points up at the neon board. I laugh, and tell him I want a number five: two
pieces of chicken, a portion of chips and a drink. When our order is ready, the man
behind the counter asks “Any sauce?” and my guy says he’s got too much sauce
already. I laugh again and give him my number.
I take my meal over to my friends’ table and sit next to Tom, the guy I’ve been sleeping
with on and off for months. We ended it a few weeks ago because I have feelings for
him and he doesn’t want a relationship right now. Tom picks up a chip, covers it with
enough ketchup that it droops over, points it in the direction of the guy who got my
number, and shakes his head. “Seriously? That guy?”
“He’s cute!” I say.
“I’ve got too much sauce,” Tom says, repeating the other guy’s chat-up line in a higher-
pitched tone. He’s jealous because the guy was hot in that extremely obvious way –
like Brad Pitt topless, glugging from a Diet Coke. I look over at Tom and his face is all
twisted up with the words he can’t say. A red light shines across it from the brake lights
on a nearby car.
A few days later I’m about to go on a date with the guy from the chicken shop. I’m
wearing patent over-the-knee boots and a black unitard with big silver hoop earrings.
There’s a knock at the door. It’s Tom. I tell him my Uber is arriving soon. He says
that’s fine. I ask him if he wants a beer and he says yes. I throw him a can and then
reach up to the top cupboard to get a wine glass for myself. That’s when I feel him
behind me. His breath brushing past my ear. His two hands reaching either side of me to
rest on the cabinet so I’m boxed in. I turn around.
“I…” he begins, but the sentence doesn’t turn into words, they melt out into heavy
breaths. He rubs his forehead with his hand. “I don’t want you to go on a date with that
guy.”
“Why?” I ask.
He turns away, holds his head as though there was something caving it in. It’s like I’ve
done something wrong but I don’t know what. “Fuck!” he shouts.
Then he turns around, fast. “Because I love you!” he says. “I’ve always loved you! Ever
since I sat opposite you in that library and I winked at you over my laptop screen. I love
everything about you! How you always set off 10 minutes late to everything because
you gain some weird satisfaction out of making up the time. I love that you get cold
when it’s 71 degrees out. I love that you’re always tidying your room and yet it’s never
tidy. I love that you always have your shopping list written all over your hands in pen. I
love that you believed me when I said that it’s cruel to buy micropigs because they’re so
genetically modified they explode. I love that it takes you an hour and a half to order a
sandwich. I love how you never pick up your phone. How you have all those cute
freckles over your nose.”
Except this never actually happened. Or it did, but not in the real world, only in my
head. That’s why some of his lines are taken from When Harry Met Sally. Tom is my
imaginary boyfriend, and I’ve been dreaming of him most of this lockdown.
I think of him all day, on walks, while waiting for the shower to warm up, but mostly at
night when my head is against the pillow and I’m trying to sleep. I’ll make up different
scenarios, Tom meeting my friends, Tom and me at dinner, Tom and me at Ikea, Tom
being my plus one to my best mate Vicky’s wedding. The way he looks changes
depending on who I fancy, face snatching from different actors or football players. His
personality is patched together out of other men I’ve known. He’s funny, kind of mean,
doesn’t appear to be interested in me at all. He’s unnecessarily tall. The last girl he
really liked cheated on him loads so he’s afraid to love again. He’s like that guy who
you think you can change but never does, except this time he really does change. I dress
him in white T-shirts because I always think men look hot in white T-shirts. I conjure
him up and escape with him to somewhere I want to be.
Most psychologists agree that kids make up imaginary friends for two reasons. One,
because they’re lonely, and two, as a way of feeling in control. The world is so out of
reach when you’re young and the pandemic has placed it out of reach again. Once
again, I am like the child who makes up a friend because they want to feel less lonely,
like they can affect something, watch it bend and snap beneath their hands.
Right now, there’s this big romantic void in my life, shadowy and gaping, cutting right
through me. Tom colours that space with dinners out and pensive stares. I decide to
repaint my living room in this soft dusky rose colour – I’ve bought a house in the
dreamland – and he comes over to help me. I’m bad at decorating and I get paint in my
hair, on the end of my nose. He laughs, flicks some more onto me, I flick it back, then
we’re throwing it all over each other out of the cans and it’s splashing onto the floor –
for some reason, the carpet isn’t damaged afterwards – and then he wrestles me onto the
ground and there’s paint in our kisses – and for some reason it doesn’t taste of
chemicals, it tastes like sweets.
I used to hate it when people explained their dreams to me. “I was fighting this tiger,
and it went to bite my arm, and I kicked it away and then it was swinging around
with…” I always zone out because they didn’t really fight a tiger, they just feel like they
did.
But my dream is starting to feel very real. I became genuinely stressed when a friend
said she can’t wait to have a dinner party in her new house when this is over and I
wondered who I should bring to it as my plus one, and if she would be annoyed if I
brought someone else. Tom is starting to blur into the part of my brain where real
memories exist. The first time I went sledging, that night out where I completely
embarrassed myself, the first time Tom and I kissed. I’m worried that when I see my
friends again after lockdown and they ask, “What have you been up to?” I might
mention him by mistake, bring him into the real world where people will laugh at him.
Maybe it doesn’t matter if Tom is imaginary. He’s fulfilling most of my needs either
way. He does the same things that a boyfriend could do, only better, because I
choreograph his behaviour to suit my preferences. He’s a build-a-boyfriend. He’s
bespoke. I can make him really good at cooking butter chicken because it’s my
favourite curry. I can give him a six-pack, or I can make him narrow and lanky, or I can
give him a dad bod, depending on my mood at that precise moment. I’m not sure what
will happen when I meet an actual human man again. Maybe we’ll meet on a boring old
app. Maybe he won’t wear white T-shirts or make long speeches declaring his love.
Maybe he will feel just a little too real.