sex in the suburbs
trying to get some during the london rental crisis
Sex isn’t like it is in the movies. Obvious, I know.
I’ve seen too many films where scenes seamlessly cut straight from the dancefloor to a suspiciously spacious flat where the happy couple rip each other’s clothes off. No logistical negotiations. Then, throwing each other into walls and knocking things over. Utterly inaccurate.
For those of us who are young and living in the city, there is not a chance in hell we’d get away with that.
There’s no tumbling through the front door, keys clattering to the ground. There’s no dry humping in the kitchen or loud laughter. Every move is calculated. How do we make the least amount of noise? How do we leave no trace, no crime scene to be discovered by unsuspecting parents the following morning?
Clothes aren’t ripped, they’re peeled carefully off of one another’s bodies. Stifled giggles take the place of obnoxious moaning and it all starts to feel rather teenage.
I’m lucky enough to have been able to leave home and move to London, where I houseshare with three of my best friends. But the walls are thin. And we all have jobs that demand we get out of bed before 9am every morning. So, sometimes, I don’t fancy jeopardising everybody’s sleep schedule in the name of a likely-mediocre one-night-stand.
“Where are you based?” I’ll ask. I’ll try to play the “living south of the river” card (i.e. an area in London that’s poorly connected and not particularly appealing in the early hours of the morning).
Several times, this question has been met with an apologetic “ah, I’m sorry, I live with my parents.”
“Are they heavy sleepers?”
“Not especially.”
Then, to ease the tension – of being all horned up with nowhere to go – I’ll do my usual spiel; god if my parents lived in London and I could save all of that money then of course I would! I don’t blame you. Yeah, the rental market is total shit right now. We have RATS in our house.
You’re lucky, really, you are.
Truthfully, I don’t envy them. Much as I do love my mum and our quaint Victorian terrace in Derbyshire, I love my urbane independence more. Even if “independence” in London costs, on average, £983 per calendar month. Excluding bills. And the exorbitant cost of pints.
“What if I promise to be really, really quiet?” This question gets batted back and forth between myself and the other twenty-something-year-old of the night. Each of us bartering for the other’s residence.
“I’ll take my boots off at the door!”
“I’ll be silent. Like a church mouse.”
Sometimes I win this battle and find myself journeying outwards, to London suburbia. I ruefully calculate the hours I will have to spend getting home the following day as a bus or a tube or an uber takes us out of zones one and two.
One time, in Angel, there was a boy who – defeated – texted his mother to request she make up the sofa bed downstairs (ick?). I don’t know what his reasoning was, whether or not he was blatantly matter-of-fact about his imminent shag with the stranger he’d found in Simmons. If he had conjured up some elaborate lie, the illusion was shattered the following morning.
I emerged from the downstairs room (which was stacked with board games and other familial paraphernalia) in nothing but his t-shirt and my pants. I didn’t quite know where I was, but I knew it was far from the “home” I share with my peers. So many anoraks. Framed family photos on the walls. I averted my gaze from the childhood apparition of last night’s shag.
Breathless and jittery, I blindly scaled the stairs, in search of a bathroom. During this hungover pilgrimage, I was intercepted by a small, yapping dog. Fuck. Fuck. Shut up.
“Oh god, I’m so sorry about him.”
It was his mother. Standing in her dressing gown, Sunday Times tucked beneath her arm and a cup of coffee in-hand. I tugged the hem of her son’s t-shirt down as far as it would go, squatting a little in the stairway. I didn’t have to ask her where the bathroom was. She pointed me in the right direction.
On my way back down, I couldn’t resist popping my head through to the kitchen/lounge, where she was sitting with the crossword. I’m not sure what came over me, but bottomless and brutally hungover, I approached and sat for a moment with the dog.
“Can I get you anything? Tea?” You’d think I was a guest in her house, not some rogue 23-year-old her son had pulled the night before. I politely declined her offer and, at an utter loss for words, crept back downstairs to reassemble last night’s outfit.
And I try not to study their childhood bedroom too hard in the cold light of day. Brightly coloured walls, YA fiction on the shelves, other pieces of the puzzle that comprise the adolescence they’ve been forced to re-inhabit post-uni.
Another morning, I woke up in a single bed deep in West London. There wasn’t quite enough real estate to comfortably go around, so our bodies lay clammy and vigilant against one another. Our breath baited, we tuned into the typical hustle and bustle of suburban Saturday mornings.
Footsteps approach. There’s a knock on the door. It’s his dad.
“[Redacted]! There’s a quiche Lorraine in the fridge with your name on it!”
A quiche Lorraine. With his name on it.