WHITNEY RICKETTS

Friends + strangers! My 1st solo show ‘Aspirational’ is opening on 1st June at @kkoutlet in Hoxton square and will run until 2nd July 😎 there’ll be new paintings & printed textiles on display.

The state of things is nearly the same. If I pillaged my drafts, I could come up with a lot of wrenching prose, about Almosts and For A Whiles, and the men who in the end, didn’t want to be there.

I wish that Men did not occupy my thoughts, and I have other thoughts, judging myself for ending up in a place I never thought I’d be in. Weary.

Acquaintances will Facebook message you to let you know that a friend of theirs whom you’ve never met is coming to town and would like to ‘take you out’ after seeing your photo, would you be interested in that? No other information, no other vetting. He’s not a good guy, he’s not really cool, he’s not loved. He’d simply like to meet with you for the night. Would you like to be an unpaid escort for an evening? Some little Ariana Grande he can tuck under his arm and roll into his hotel room, or Air BnB?

I was a late bloomer. I spent my early twenties cocooned in fat and jolly, good humor. I baked birthday cakes for everyone, smiled a lot, listened more. When I lost the weight that all went away. With cheekbones came courage. And I remember thinking, “Okay, just in time”. I was ready, finally, to see what the rest of the world was about. And I arrived just in time for its astringency.

If you are unmarried or unattached in your early thirties and not running around in animal print, tear-streaked, listening to Adele’s latest without headphones, wafting Nicki Minaj’s latest Olfactory offering and screaming ‘BUT WHERE IS MYYYYYYYY CAKE, MUMMY?’, it is thought to be by strident choice. Friends plan couples dates and one will bemoan the burden of it, telling you they wish they could skip out, or tell you over drinks that they would invite you to their NYE parties, but it will be ‘All Couples’, their lips turning upward at the corners. What can you do? I can decline. So I do.

The men you date want to know your past, why you’re single – ‘I was a late bloomer. I don’t date men I work with. I love my friendships with men too much to mess with them’. It is all true, because it has all been done. You are reporting from canvassed land. One line, no details, no one in the world besides you has earned that filler.

You see it in their eyes, as they try to reconcile who they are sitting with with you who you reveal yourself to have been. ‘Is she still in there?’, their eyes ask. It is so simple. It is very simple, and it is never enough: I was that, but now I am this. I wanted more, so I decided to carry less. It was worth it, except for days when I look at everything that fell away and feel the gaping, endless loss. Friendships, love, safety. Tenderness. Naivete. Pity. Pity is great. Because when people pity you lovingly, you are shielded from so much. It is a kind, horrifying act of service.

I do not drag my history out for others this easily. I do it here, where I don’t have a name, where there’s little context. I don’t bemoan who I was, what I knew of the world, what I was sure about. I miss it, sometimes, because it was delightful, and could fit in my hand. It was wide enough, but seems quaint now. Some real Jo March shit. 

And so much of what I have now is lonely, and hard, shitty, lonesome, quiet, contemplative, and unsure. Who am I to ask the Universe for a man who wants to hold my hand, and not a stranger who slips his wedding ring off and tell me his assumptions about me at a bar, moments after responding with my name when asked, that I would surely be down to be a horrible person tonight, right? Who am I to Facebook Message the Universe like that?

So I listen. I lie next to the men who are reeling from their own losses, who map out their sadness and yearnings after devouring your body, your own chemical and emotional tides stifled for the moment. For the next ten, fifteen, twenty. I sit across from men who will tell you so much if you listen, encouraging one more drink so they have the space, the time to fill with all the reasons you will never see them again after tonight. I hold hands with men who are so happy to have a hand to hold that you realize you are just that, and you feel even stronger for them – what else do we really want? How complicated are we?