Bitchell: Going Home with my Flatmate’s Fuck Buddy

I should expect the night to end in disaster—I drank an entire box of Tesco Every-Day-Value wine—but right now I don’t realize that, because, as usual, I am only thinking about myself.

Earlier in the night I went for nachos with my flatmate Kennedy. I am a good friend, but I can’t respond to Kennedy venting to me about being on “the outs” with James, his on-again/off-again sort-of-boyfriend, because I am too absorbed in my own problems.

Later, I am listening to my friends drunkenly decide their new year’s resolutions. One of my friend stares at James in his purple suit, as he debates with an Anna Nicole look-a-like about how James should change. Eventually they decide he should love himself more. There is no debate about my resolution.

“You should probably keep things to yourself more often.”

“Sharing is caring!” I drunkenly shout, but even I know that sharing might only be caring till you share too much.

Mitchell with the friends he’s managed to keep

Sharing has always been my coping mechanism, but lately its started to cause problems.

I moved my personal blog from my Tumblr, which had two hundred something followers, to my friend’s website, The Homo Life, which receives close to a 100 thousand page views a month, and my magazine writing has become more popular, making strangers believe it’s totally appropriate to approach me on the street to let me know they saw me “fucking a sex toy” online.

Middle-aged men email me telling me I lied about my sexual assault; teenage boys add me on facebook to solicit advice. I’m unsure if I’m the immoral cunt haters-love-to-hate or the public-good lonely teenagers thank.

I’m partially happy, partially miserable, and completely overwhelmed. I come to my friend’s house boat to escape and luckily, Tesco wine eventually knocks me out.

Sometime later, I open my eyes. I see James’ purple suit. He smiles and puts on a Bat for Lashes song. He knows I like Bat for Lashes. I hum along.

I rise from the pile of fur coats and stumble to the floor. James laughs as he picks me up. “There’s no way you can walk home,” he says.

“I know. I know. Could I sleep on your floor?” I ask. My mind flashes back to sending him semi-flirty text messages over winter break; part of me wants to hook up with him, but I know I won’t; despite what strangers say about me on the internet I am a good person.

I walk into his bedroom and strip down to my underwear and then ask if I can borrow a pillow for the floor. He tosses his comforter on the floor. “I have to sleep on the floor,” he says.

“Why?”

“You’re my guest!”

“Let me get on the floor!” I scream. “If you visited someone in America, they’d make you sleep on the floor. Let me sleep on the floor.”

He lifts his head off the pillow. “No!”

“Why don’t we just sleep in the same bed,” I say.

What happens next is a blur, and really boring. We listen to Lana Del Rey. Somehow, we start making out and underwear starts to come off, but while licking my ear, he says, ‘This is a bad idea.’ So we go to sleep.

Waking up I assume we will decide to talk to Kennedy, but James asks me if I want tea. He asks me questions about Bat for Lashes. Then he asks that I keep my mouth shut. I consider objecting, but then I remember the emails from strangers.

Our columnist in happier times

When I walk into my flat,  Kennedy says “you look wrecked”. I haven’t had a secret since the ninth grade. A few days later, Kennedy tells me James told him what happened.

“He said, you told him we were on the outs,” Kennedy says, as if I seduced James. I tell James that everyone knows I have no game (see: anything I’ve ever written) and I had drunk a box of wine—there was no way I seduced anyone. I yell at him.

When I see Kennedy a few days later, he says I misinterpreted what he said. He never meant for it to sound like I seduced him.

But I still feel like they used my reputation as a wild loud mouth against me. I know I’m not – and the people that know me don’t think I am – a bad person. But lately it’s getting harder to believe.