The boys all biceps and the girls all chest

just hanging out

Free loader subscriber Steve complained that I write too much about politics, and I am nothing if not audience-captured and eager to please. So, this weekend, you all get a treat and have grumpy ol’ Steve to thank.

1: This weekend

Somewhere in North Wales, driving with three men in their mid-20s.

What'll you do when you get lonely
And nobody's waiting by your side?
You've been running and hiding much too long
You know it's just your foolish pride

Theodore: Eric Clapton wrote Layla because he wanted to fuck his best friend’s wife.

Victor: And eventually he did.

Ieuan: Damn, I hate people like these, you know Victor??? People who sleep with their best friend’s women.

(Ieuan was cucked by Victor when they were in high school).

Theodore: This is just proxy sex, men should cut the middleman and admit they want to fuck their friends.

The young boys were getting rowdy, so I pulled out my Driving In A Car With Men playlist to pacify them:

• Stacy’s mom

• Teenage Dirtbag

• Money for Nothing

• Rock the Casbah

Their spirit lifted again. Males are simple beasts.

Theodore: Ieuan, can you drop me at this massage parlour and come pick me up in like half an hour?

Ieuan: Don’t think you’ll need more than 3 minutes, mate.

BBC push notifications flash on our phones: India and Pakistan agreed on a ceasefire. I am relieved because a few hours ago, I was texting my Pakistani best friend, who was telling me they are targeting the military base in his city, barely an hour away from his home, where his family still lives.

Ieuan: Is there a way for both sides to lose?

Oh yeah, just a heads up- Ieuan is a racist.

They see me noting down their lines and protest.

Stella: Ieuan, stop nagging like a little bitch. I ditched my spot on Michael Portillo’s show to take a three hour train from London to stay in a cabin in the middle of Satan’s asshole with three men in their mid-twenties I barely know. I met you on the internet. Do you know how many simps would pay to be in your place?

Ieuan: I don’t actually, how many Stella?

He refuses to give credence to my humble brags.

Stella: I get handwritten letters in my mail.

Ieuan: Do you now.

Stella: Once, a man from Ireland sent me a very polite letter with 5 professionally printed photos of me and asked me to sign them and send them back. He even included an envelope with paid postage for me to put them in.

Ieuan: I wonder what he wants those for. Fucking voodoo doll photos. Poor git will be tossing himself silly at 3 am and you’ll wake up with a sore throat and sticky eyes.

2: 6 months ago

One hot August morning, I open my DMs to find this:

“Two thousand years ago whole generations of men would’ve been sent to their grave just to settle a point in your honour”

Over the next three months, Ieuan, a man I have never met and with no connection to me, standing on the shoulders of giants— the patriots who colonised my defenceless teenage brain with English stanzas —launches his campaign through DMs.

“I would do my ablutions in an active volcano to have a spritz with you.”

“Someone call the CMA, because this market just isn’t fair.”

“Nurse - I’m yearning. Give me pills, drips, tablets, whatever would free me from this cage of desire
For it is better to have clambered inside a great wooden mare on the orders of another’s want than for men to have neutered and nullified their own urge to reach out and change all the world before them”

“So incredibly beautiful, the glimpse of the spirit de corps of the younger men

Each and every one focused on taking you home”

“I would lay my life down for you, externalities and all”

“Ik whoever’s watching that CCTV is bricked up big time”

“My god, I am obsessed, I will willingly and unashamedly line up behind the great bayin’ masses of simps”

At this point, I have not yet met Ieuan in person, but he delivers the final blow to get him from an online simp to a real-life acquaintance. He starts reading my Substack and messages me notes about one of my horny love poems:

“This is actually brilliant, only points that need reworking are; /country you werent born in/ far too on the nose when the rest is so well done /last chicken wing/ just annoying, neither larkin nor kaur, just in the annoying middle /Running my fingers through the bulgar wheat/ its in packets so obviously can’t run your fingers through it. Otherwise, genuinely, honestly brilliant, almost a perfect (if larger, but that fits the theme) complement to Talking In Bed”

3: Two months ago

On the last day of Winter, Garry, a man I first met at an election night party where he freaked me out because he started telling me how he ‘shagged’ a woman we both work with texts me “Stella, I am out with one of your simps”.

Ieuan. You bastard.

They text me an address, and I join their boys’ night out. They spend the first half hour metaphorically slapping their dicks on the table and handing me a measuring tape. They talk about money, mostly, and body counts. I’ve seen this play a thousand times, but only the artless complain that the National Theatre still commissions Shakespeare. They calm down once they realise I am innumerate.

Ieuan, a gentleman, never lets the horny chat into the physical world and the band adopts me as one of the boys.

4: One month ago

Some weeks later, I arrive at Ieuan’s BBQ party.

I look in horror as they unwrap cornettos before they’ve eaten any food.

Desert before supper? Were you raised by wolves?

No, just Mancunians.

The first guests arrive, they are Italian, investment banker colleagues of Ieuan.

Two girls, one boy, skinny and tan, they look disgusted at our feral state.

One of the girls holds a cyan-blue Balenciaga. I eyeball the guy’s lean mass. He is one bag of amphetamines and a heartbreak-fuelled YouTube binge away from sub-10 %. They tell me they graduated recently and will stay in London till they get their British citizenship, at which point they will move back to Italy. The nation-state puritan in me winches. Why would they want a British passport if they don’t plan to live here? They say it is so that their children can come to London to work for a bank. I start the night as I aim to continue, and glare at them. Citizens of nowhere. Ieuan, an honest fascist if I ever met one, concurs.

I open a bag of Doritos, and the Italians jump for it. Amiche mie, is it time to break the keto fast? I realise the girl’s bag is not Balenciaga, but a dupe from Zara.

They continue chatting amongst themselves in Italian, presumably judging us, when a gorgeous slender fuckboy appears. Hello Sweety. I abandon the posh skinny Greeks (the Italians) to their bitching to corner the fellow 10.

His name is Alex and he is 24. He is 6 ft something, with boy band hair and a baby face—the type you have to pluck early before it goes down the Zac Efron path.

He is about to start his training contract as a solicitor but says he wants to go into politics after a few years. With the Conservatives, I tell him I assume. What gave it away, he blushes. At 30, I have learned to play the long game. I spare him the answer. When Ieuan wants to be cruel to me, he tells me he will run with Reform- if they still exist when he is ready, or if they still hold elections.

Alex was with Ieuan in Cambridge University’s Conservative Association (CUCA). Ieuan will later boast about all the shagging they were doing, once with the same girl on two consecutive nights. Zoomers are animals. I make a mental note to ban porn when I enter Parliament.

Unprompted, Alex tells me he heard a certain politician has a massive dong. I can see he takes pride in being privy to Westminster gossip. “Famously”, I respond and smirk at his opening the floodgates of name-dropping. I was hoping for an opportunity to flex my SW1 BNOC muscles. Westminster clout is the kind of key that opens Alex-shaped locks.

Eventually, keen beans like these learn it is dangerous to name-drop politicians’ names in front of size 10, D-cup Westminster women. You had a drink with the former PM’s son? That’s sweet. She probably fucked his dad.

A bunch of euro-skinny finance girls show up in their Gucci belts and softly plumped lips. They are in Alex’s age group, and his gaze leaves the warmth of my bosom for the perkiness of theirs. I accept the circle of life and my place on it and retreat to the lads’ corner. Alex goes on the prowl. They may yet send him packing back to me. He is fresh out of law school, so won’t be on six figures for a while.

At the lads’ corner, Garry starts flipping the meat and drops a chicken leg. He moves to throw it away when Ieuan stops him.

Give it to me you fucking fanny. I will have it.

He puts the grassed chicken leg back on the grill.

I am horrified but say nothing. Boys’ club memberships take years to be earned and seconds to be revoked.

Garry says he hates people who come to the UK and think it is just London, gesturing at the lesser immigrants of the party.

“I was with you on the first four words” says Ieuan (as honest a racist as you will ever meet).

The type of mouse girl that has historically deprived me of boys with Justin Bieber hair continues to arrive in droves. Damn Ieuan what that DM game do.

I am taking notes on my phone of this scene. Alex is engulfed by a blob of European pussy (not including myself, even Pimlico Journal would concede I am an honorary Brit in this context). At least the elderly men (30-year-olds) sharing screenshots of my paywalled posts in their racist WhatsApp groups will enjoy this.

Like a Deus ex machina, Garry starts boasting on my behalf about how famous and respected I am. Alex’s ears prick up. Garry, a legend and a high-T woman’s best friend, knows. CUCA boys always want to fuck the famous lady. Alex joins us in the lads’ corner.

The sausage platter is overflowing, and Garry is not even done grilling yet. The Franscescas and Ludovicas seem unbothered, they continue picking at salad leaves. Is it just me getting stuffed tonight?

Garry barks at Alex to invite the girls to the sausage feast.

“I don’t want to socially engineer a free market for sausages, but

Alex, can you tell the girls if they eat a sausage you will touch the clit.”

“We have too many sausages, they have infiltrated the UK on a small boat.”

“We need a net-zero sausage policy. One in, one out.”

“Sausages have too much fat, they are probably scared their Oz-ectables will give them heartburn.”

Alex asks for a way to get in touch with me. Are you on … Facebook?

Facebook is for old people. The disrespect is palpable. I give him my number.

I had to wake up early for my media grift shift the next morning and was preparing to play the ‘old people need sleep’ card when I noticed a young woman eying Alex. Wow. I haven’t even left yet. King Solomon, tear this boy in half. I’ll have the bottom bit.

We leave together. I will sleep when I am dead.

On my way out, I look at Ieuan awkwardly. He spent months working down the mines of my DMs, analysing my poems like a council estate A-levels student fighting for an Oxbridge spot (which is what he once was). He compared me to Larkyn for God’s sake. And what did I do? I showed up to his party and picked up his metrosexual CUCA nemesis from the shires. This is why working-class boys turn to Reform. This is what they mean when they say Labour betrayed them. I am the problem.

Love again: wanking at ten past three   
(Surely he’s taken her home by now?),   
The bedroom hot as a bakery,
The drink gone dead, without showing how   
To meet tomorrow, and afterwards,
And the usual pain, like dysentery.

Someone else feeling her breasts and cunt,   
Someone else drowned in that lash-wide stare,   
And me supposed to be ignorant,
Or find it funny, or not to care,
Even ... but why put it into words?
Isolate rather this element

Back at mine, I pretend to be an older version of the girls we left at the party. I mentally rewrite every sentence I speak at a sixth-grade level. I lock Alex in my room with the cat and run to the bathroom for a touch-up. He thought I lived in Chelsea, so my act must have worked. I rent in Waterloo, but would frankly sleep in the Thames if the price were right.

The wonderful thing about being alone in a room with a 24-year-old is that every minute is accounted for. You are put to work. No rest, no phone breaks. But the truth is, as much as I complain about the monomaniacal men my age and beyond, I have long since joined their ranks. My flesh submits to my spirit, rarely the other way around. I enjoy the night and morning like a sugar baby enjoying a meal at a Michelin-starred restaurant. Was that beef tartare with mustard emulsion and quail egg coulis nice? Sure, it was, but it was one and done. Can’t afford it again, can’t make it at home. People have a go-to pasta sauce, not a go-to amuse-bouche.

5: Back to today

We are in a cottage in the middle of nowhere in North Wales, close to where Ieuan grew up. Passing through his hometown, he shows us the pub where he was born, now abandoned, and the council estate where he grew up with his 5 siblings. One of his teachers had been to Cambridge, and he thought he was smart, so he encouraged him to apply. Next time he starts spelling out his six-figure bonus, I will let him have it. Might even gasp, for effect. I let the jokes about retards pass too, when he tells me his eldest sibling is disabled. He once showed me a photo of Garry smiling at a restaurant with a waitress. They lied that Garry is their retarded son so they gave them all their drinks for free.

Theodor puts on a song called ‘born to fuck’.

Came out my momma's pussy with my dick in my hand
Slapped the nurse's ass and said, "I'm your man"
By the time I got to juvie, I was knockin' 'em down
I was a teenage pussy hound

Theodor: There are two types of men. Those who can't get it up and those who can't finish.

Ieuan: Marcus Aurelius ?

I attempt to elevate the discussion from sex to love.

Stella: Do you have an ‘one that got away’, Ieuan?

Victor: He has three.

Stella: And what happened to them?

Ieuan: For the first two, I would cheat on with the next one. The last one is a long story. I got this job in investment banking, and I started working 15-hour days, drinking most nights, and gained weight.

Stella: You were becoming an asshole and God made you fat to put you in your place.

Ieuan: The more weight I gained, the worse my character became.

Stella: I only got lovelier with age, so God left me untouched.

Ieuan is 6’5” and on the Oxbridge to City pipeline- divine intervention was necessary. I know many Larkyn-level intellect Westminster men who would be insufferable if they were over 6’ and ripped. God, in his wisdom, kept them short and fat and made gorgeous women like me discernible with taste and insight into the human soul so that one day I can partner with one of these silver-tongued plain Johns and repopulate these barren lands—my looks, their brain, etc.

It’s our final night, and we are reading poems out loud. Victor, Ieuan’s childhood friend, who’s been with the same girl since high school and moved to Wigan to be with her, asks why we like poems and reading so much. He lights the fireplace, actively demonstrating the skills we failed to develop, blinded by our love of letters.

We are at the stage of the team-building weekend where we openly insult each other. Ieuan is sitting on the couch opposite me and points a pair of binoculars at my chest. ‘Nope, can’t find any tits’.

‘You are just salty I let your CUCA rival rip the rewards for your craftSimpship.’

Theodore mouths at me to shut up.

Ieuan recites Larkin by memory. He has the voice for it. I am depleted by the boys, but squeek out my favourite poem by W.H. Auden.

Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That, for all they care, I can go to hell,
But on earth indifference is the least
We have to dread from man or beast.

How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.

Admirer as I think I am
Of stars that do not give a damn,
I cannot, now I see them, say
I missed one terribly all day.

Were all stars to disappear or die,
I should learn to look at an empty sky
And feel its total dark sublime
Though this might take me a little time.

I look up for reactions, aware that at 3:00 am, I no longer speak but slur. My accent is heavy at the best of times, but when I am tired, I sound fresh off the boat.

Ieuan is on his third bottle.

‘This is lovely, but unfortunately, your asylum application has been rejected’.