What’s the deal with me and posh English men?

Answering your biggest question

me and who

I was home for Christmas for the last two weeks and saw many people who knew me as a teenager but have since only known my Instagram version. At a reunion party, I met a girl who was a fellow ‘outcast’ in my high school. We have both changed substantially since. We both used to be emo/goth in high school. She had waist-long straight black hair and piercings and would wear all-black. Now she’s upgraded to platinum blonde, wears blue eye contacts, has a nose job, fillers and (I think) a boob job and wears tight-fitting dresses. She used to go to punk clubs and listen to heavy metal; now, she tells me she likes to go to multi-course dinners with her boyfriend.

I was happy to see her and was flattered that she followed my online presence closely. She said I was her only friend from high school there. I nodded, but we were no such thing. She seemed uncomfortable in the crowded bar. Her self-consciousness reminded me of me in a previous version of myself. Her gaze pinponked across the narrow walls of the abandoned warehouse, and every time her stare crashed on a man, she’d ask me, ‘Who is he?’ ‘ What do you think he does?’ ‘Do you think he’s any good?’. Any good? What do you mean?

“I mean, is he upper class?!!!”

EEEEEERK, I waited for the punchline or the knowing wing letting me know she was joking. It didn’t come. She said she can’t date someone who is middle class. I sized her up and down. At best, she’s a C1 on the NS-SEC¹ scale. I told her off mildly but ultimately gave her the benefit of the doubt and did not prode further.

I expressed my confusion to my friend the next day. Why would anyone think I sympathise with classism? Who OPENLY discriminates based on class these days? If you want to be a snob, there is a list of socially acceptable cultural signifiers on which you can base your high-mindedness. Judging on money is so Fergie 2008. In my quarters of London, some fellow politicos would *KILL* to appear less middle class (Labour landslide imminent, lots of Northern seats up for grabs, etc.).

“She probably thinks you really mean what you write about posh English men on your Instagram”, said my friend.

Shit. He is right. For the last decade of posting about my dating history on social media I have developed a comedic persona that tip toes between reality and myth, but mainly reflects my experience. People who know me from university will tell you my usual type was posh English men. Pale and chinless. Who spoke to me like characters in an 18th-century novel. Red trousers and Barbour jackets galore. The Eton Reunion Committee for the 2009 class wouldn’t go amiss inviting me²;

who can blame me?

I will tell you how I got there first, then lift the irony veil and tell you what I mean.

and most importantly, who can blame them?

I was an avid reader when I was a friendless recluse as a teenager. Not much was happening for me on the streets, so I would find refuge in literary sheets. For English class, we were advised to start reading English literature. Most students ignored the advice as their English wasn’t good enough to make reading a full book enjoyable. I would have followed suit, as at that point, I was still at the bottom of my class, were it not for the fact that as soon as I started reading in English, the language pulled me in like quicksand.

In a foreign language, everything was new and exciting. As I was not a fluent speaker, reading in English was shrouded in mystery, giving every story an erotic twist. Online international shopping was not yet a thing; the only English books in Greek bookstores were the classics. I took to Jane Austen like a neglected mom of four takes to Arlekin. I know when my ‘imprint’ on English men happened. I was stuck in my mom’s village on the island of Crete. We had no computers. I was 13, horny and emo. I was reading David Copperfield, which I am now authoritatively informed is meant to be a FUNNY book. I missed that. All I knew was a fallen boy whose father had died, in need of affection and love. I remember tiering up reading about the cruelty shown to him and thinking, “English people suffer so much”. Other women develop a saviour complex for drug dealers, as I did for colonisers. My Greek motherly instinct was activated every time a pale weakling coquettishly purred in my arms while recounting how he cried himself to sleep as an 8-year-old on his first night in boarding school. These motherless freckled whippets need me to feed them feta and inject vitality and colour into their claustrophobic bloodlines.

He can talk down to me if he wants

When Ebay arrived in Greece, I ordered my first English young adult chick lit: ‘Angus Thongs and full-frontal snogging’. Apart from Angus, which is a name, every other word in that title was a foreign word (and frankly, practice- I was a late bloomer) to me. The book series had nine sequels. I was off to the races. Englishmen entered my fantasy well before I gave them access to anything else.

While Greek men³ were my original bullies and trolls, English men were my first lovers - as gentle as the English roses they eventually left me for. There is a lot to comment on an English lover, and for one, I always took pleasure in a man who looks like my photographic negative (I am athletic and dark, with thick hair and perfect teeth, do the math).

I also benefit from the counterbalance in emotional expression. They are repressed. I could use some control. They are the onion I return to peeling even when it makes me cry because its flesh, when seared with skill, turns into caramel and transforms the most mundane dish into a five-star experience. And boy, do I fancy feasting at that fucking restaurant.

But the thing that lured me in was the writing, the texts. Like many bullied teens, I lived in my head. An experience skillfully described was as good or better than the letdown of flesh and blood. My first boyfriend was convinced I was out of his league (he was wrong) because I was hot shit in uni. I was the Socialist Princess of East London. In contrast, he was the public school boy pariah, member number two out of a total of four, at best, in our uni’s Conservative Association. He got into my pants by spending a whole summer drafting me evocative descriptions of his holidays in the Provence. He’d describe everything: the food, the surroundings, the people. No man talked to me in such lurid detail. I mean, until then, no man talked to me, period.

He was also incredibly considerate in his communication with me. He would always address every point I’d make in my texts. Say all you want about private education. I will probably agree, but they make some A* students. I’d text back like a lazy immigrant child: misspelling, lousy grammar, internet slang. He’d type out sentences in full and use punctuation. He would never use a generic word to describe something for which a specific one existed. He was equally hard-working in all the other parts of our relationship.

no chin = no problem

This is not about being English or posh (though it probably is about being small ‘c’ conservative and old-fashioned). Some of my favourite posh English men are neither English nor posh. My favourite posh English man is the one I created: my online straw man. Most English men wouldn’t exhibit those qualities to the degree I want them. On social media, it was funny to create the persona of an immigrant left-wing girl who seduces conservative English men. I have posted ridiculous things about my personal life online, and people who know me take it in good humour. But it’s an exaggeration. Unless I adopt a lukewarm, politically correct sense of humour, the danger that someone takes my jokes seriously will always be there. Fuck that.

The other point I would like to address here is the experience of reading about yourself. I don’t write fiction yet. I write and comment on actual events, be it politics, pop culture or my life. We have been through this with my previous stories. It is difficult to read about oneself in a cutting narration, but no one is identifiable. Feelings may get hurt, but truth hurts. I never lie. I manipulate, sure, but I do that through narrative. The facts are 100% true every time.

I will also repeat what I said the first time all hell broke loose over my writing; as far as I am concerned, it is an honour to be written about by anyone. It shows that the person paid attention to you; you left an impression. Most importantly, I have always concealed the darkest things people have told me/done to me. I could be writing very different stories, but I chose to keep anything that includes a third person light and generous. Above all, my substack is not about gossip but about finding my voice.

A friend who cares for me said I may be driving people away by writing about my personal life. The Last Psychiatrist used to have a vendetta against a 40-something-year-old female author who self-described as hot, intelligent and successful (remind you of anyone?) who could not understand why she was still single. The Dr opined that she was the creator of her loneliness. She was publicly displaying her worst self, practically daring men to reject her. He is right; My friend is also correct, but what can I do? Live a life suffocated by the shame and guilt of a culture I wasn’t raised in? Not write, or worse, not publish my writing?

To date, when the phone rings in the living room, my mom will run in her knickers to pick it up, topless with a towel held over her front. My ex used to tell me that his parents would not let him leave his room in the morning unless he was changed from his pyjamas into day clothes. That home environment is on another planet from the one where I was raised, yet the merits of that life are not beneath me. My life has space for that civility as long as the people embodying it have patience for my shamelessness. After all, history tells us they might enjoy it.

1. National Statistics Socio-economic Classification.

2. I promise an unforgettable night for everyone involved.

3. Except every man in my family who are/were models of benevolent masculinity.