#23 Whackadoodle City
about channeling your inner Feta man
Morris and I were walking to the Tower Bridge last week, on our last night in London. I’d been there for three weeks, the last of it spent with him. Besides that, I was on my own in the city, taking walks and exploring the many boroughs, drinking loads of cappuccinos, and overall contemplating every single life decision I’ve made up to now. Super casual.
We got on the bus stop home after crossing the bridge, city lights peppering the horizon, a clear June night. It was breezy and mild and perfect, Summer evening without the stickiness or the overwhelming balmy feeling you get after being out in town all day. As we got on the bus I witnessed something I think is emblematic of London’s spirit (yes, I will be insufferable and call it the city’s spirit, why not, humor me): a middle-aged man, standing at the bus stop, Feta block from the supermarket in hand. Peeled halfway from its wrapping (as you would peel a banana), a chunk of it was gone, the shape of a bite: he was chewing on it then, waiting for the next bus as you would any other day in the world.
I was shocked by how natural he looked and felt, eating a Feta block in the middle of the city at midnight. I couldn’t take my eyes off him. He was just doing his own thing, and it’s not the weirdest or craziest thing I’ve ever seen on the street —far from it— but something about his attitude stuck out to me. The unhinged vibes, yes. The unapologetic energy, though, I envied it slightly. He really didn’t give a fuck about the high sodium index of cheese he was consuming or his water retention (my first thoughts). He was just eating his feta, a Feta man in the city. Something about it was oddly refreshing. Even inspiring. He had a desire, and he went along with it.
I’d just told Morris a few days prior that I christened London as Whackadoodle City in my mind. You just never know what’s waiting around the corner (in a chaotic funny way, albeit sometimes in a slightly fear-inducing way - the way it can be for a woman traveling on her own). And it’s entertaining and very wacky, and sort of funny to see people just being people in the world.
Anyway, I talked about the general vibe and overall existentialism of my time alone in London recently so I won’t repeat it all and bore you with it. But I will definitely try and say that I struggled to be on my own, nonstop, for those two weeks. It kind of gave me cabin fever except I was out all but for 2 days when I maniacally scrolled through job openings on LinkedIn and cold-emailed companies offering my services. #Girlboss but also #PanickyInTheUK. I’m still looking for gigs! So… hire me, btw!
Spending time on my own was weird this time around, and oddly surprising (and very unsettling, to be honest) because it was the first time I realized I didn’t want to be alone. Not in an existential way (maybe a little bit), but I digress; I’ve taken a few solo trips since I was 20 and skipped a couple of years lately for more obvious reasons (who wants to be on their own after 2 years of lockdown and isolation?).
I thought this solo part of the trip would be way more enjoyable in the solo aspect than it actually was. Instead, I walked through neighborhoods and streets, wishing I could stop for a photo with my travel partner. I dropped Google map pins on cafés I thought Morris would like. I added other locations as I walked, foregoing a visit so I could explore them with him for the first time. He’s one of my best friends and a kind of soulmate, someone who’s understood me for close to a decade, and I told him about my anxieties and my sudden realizations once he arrived. I told him that I was excited for the trip to turn around with his arrival, and for things to feel lighter. I told him everything I’m telling you now.
It’s always been unsettling to me when what I want doesn’t align with what I actually need. I am always taken aback, surprised to find that my wants can change in the span of weeks or months, and when I arrive at where I’m supposed to go, things look and feel different. I planned this trip with the idea of waking up bright and early every weekday, sit down to finally write for hours and hours on end, a result of not having much paid work during the month of June. I pictured drinking coffee by the river and going to all the possible museums I could fit into my visit, all the ones that were for free, at least. I pictured taking photos and silly selfies and going out on luxurious, one-person dinners, happy and content to toast to myself, to this long-awaited holiday, self-assured and relaxed and complete.
Instead, I was met with weird pangs of loneliness on the first couple of days, then replaced by the curiosity at finding that I wanted to share this, this trip and this place and all these things, and was feeling so out of place with just having myself to hang out with. I haven’t been a stranger to alone time and I’ve always valued my space. I used to relish the idea of doing things my way on these solo holidays, not having to wait for anyone, not having to decide based on someone else’s preferences and going wherever I wanted to go.
The subtext of that is fairly clear now: I didn’t always want to compromise, to share, to co-create something with someone (whether that was a trip experience/holiday, or more broadly, even a relationship - more on that later). I wanted to just do things I wanted to do, in the way I wanted to do them.
But being on my own then wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. I kept wanting to share it. Share the experience, go somewhere new I wouldn’t have considered going to, try out different things from the menu, and share those, too. (And I’ve always been someone who hates sharing food. Notoriously. My friends are always making fun of me for it and I only learned to share it very recently). I was confused.
What is this about? Why do I want to share it all so much? And it wasn’t the kind of situation where I resented being single or complained about having nobody to love (I did that a lot in my late teens). It was about seeing the practical, everyday aspects of what it’s like to share your life with someone —my friends who I flat-sat for were a couple, living together for close to two years— and it made it more obvious; it was something I’ve grown to want without even consciously thinking about it, deciding it. Somewhere along the way, my needs changed. And now my solo trips and adventures are not something I crave so much, or something I enjoy as much as I did when I was 22 in Prague. Or when I was 21 in Verona. I want to share the meal and take the photos and go to bars together, take rests from the heat in the park, scroll TikTok before bed together and belly laugh at delaneyrowe videos.
In the middle of the existentialism road I was on for those two weeks, I also understood that this liminal period was something necessary: I wouldn’t have been able to predict how I’d feel or what I’d need until I got there. It was another way to learn about myself that’s been changing and molding and growing inside me, something other but still very me. It made me think about the nature of romantic relationships —something I ask my coupled friends about a lot— and something I’ve been observing for a long time, including the journey of loving the people I love better while understanding that we can learn a lot from friendship, the support it gives us, how they’re also worthy of being the loves of our lives.
In that weird in-between pocket of time, I understood that the same mechanisms of friendships apply to all relationships, really; compromise, co-creation, decision-making, building things together. And I suddenly had this huge craving for it. To have someone else in the picture who I decide things with, enjoy something new with, someone who wants to do things together, start something new, and make it different than I ever would alone.
I always have loved (and truly adored) my friends, have always loved (even when I can’t stand) my family. They’ve been essential to my life, and have helped make me into a better person, someone more open, more compassionate, more humble, more understanding. And even then, I’ve been someone who prides herself in her independence a lot, in her strength, in her (sometimes) iron-clad will to shape situations and opportunities to make my life one that I’m happy with. But being on my own during those weeks, in a flat shared by a friend with her partner, I noticed all these other little things —the bottles of wine he’s picked out, lining the wall— her favorite granola box in the fridge, his tennis t-shirts in the laundry room, their books lined up on the shelf. I noticed their plants and their couch, how they picked out the chairs to match the drapes. And I noticed that, for having things my way all this time, the result of making something with someone you love is beautiful, too.
I know this doesn’t sound like something super earth-shattering or profound. They seem like everyday things. But I think the reason the bouts of loneliness and my need to share these experiences rose wasn’t because I didn’t already love my friends or valued their relationships, or what we already share. It was because I understand now that even though I oscillate between enjoying my singledom and craving a partnership depending on how I’m feeling, nowadays I think I see the value of a partnership a lot more clearly; I can understand that it’s not only about the fun parts of it but also the practical ones (laundry, taxes, little tensions about who’s doing the dishes, going grocery shopping, etc). And wanting those, too. That was extremely new.
For a very long time, I’ve pictured myself as someone perenially in my late teens —forever on the cusp of my 20s— flat-sharing with other young people figuring out Big Things like a career and making a name for myself and going to clubs and planning my summer holidays. Before this trip, I didn’t picture myself as someone who would want to share a house with a long-term partner, or even someone with a long-term boyfriend at all. And maybe part of that was thinking that maybe that wasn’t possible for me, or like it’s not the right time, like I should enjoy my solo travel and my career and my flat-share era. Yet that was giving me some kind of subtext I didn’t know I carried; a long-term partner is where all this freedom ends, where you don’t get to do things “just for yourself” anymore, where you have to share. Like a plate of food or like Björn asking to try a bite when I’ve oooonly started on my dish, what the fuck!
I sat at a pizza place one particularly hot day in Bethnal Green, sipping on a glass of wine and slicing it by parts, taking half of it home. I wondered what it’d be like if Björn was there to ask for a piece and I could try one of his. Or what it’d be like to argue about the inevitable face I always pull when I oblige to share, despite my selfish habits at the dining table. I think about how Morris would arrive some days later, suggesting we go to a park and sit on top of Primrose Hill, and we’d stop to get wine on the way. All those little, everyday things feel so much more whole, so much more sweet than they did when I was younger. I feel more free, more myself. I think about how surprising it is that even though I readily recognize how much I need the people I love in my life, how essential they are to me, I now need them even a little more now. How that can be a little scary. I think about what that might mean.
I think about Feta Man again and how he wants what he wants and there’s no shame, no guilt, no burden in it. As Morris and I get on the bus, he takes another bite from his Feta block, still waiting for his ride by the stop. I widen my eyes to an even bigger size. He’s so confident about it. He woke up, had the desire to eat a block of cheese, and went home. His desires change and he changes with them. (I should be a little like Feta Man). Maybe we should all be a little like Feta Man.
Thank you for being here! Clem