This boy was perceptive as hell. Helistened. Hepaid attention.
‘You answered my question with another question,’ I said, smiling at him, ‘so I think we’re even.’
Murray smiled back. ‘Touché.’
He took another sip of his coffee. ‘I don’t. Have a big cause, I mean. Nothing specific. But I like the thought that I could tell a story, and it could do something. Mean something.’
He brushed that errant curl out of his eye again, and I decided.
This boy was going to be mine.
He was still talking – something about a lecture he’d been to on how reality TV was trashy, but it was also watched by millions of people, which meant it had the power to deeply influence the way they thought – and part of me was still listening, but most of me was scheming.
Whether it happened in the next three months, or the next three days, or even the next three hours, I was going to have this boy. I was going to tangle my hand in that pullable hair and direct him where I wanted him to go. I was going to exploit the fact that he paid attention and make him pay all his attention to me. I was—
‘So why are you here?’
I was going to take the fact that he seemed genuinely interested in what I had to say, and I was going to tell him to do a lot of things to me that I would find genuinely interesting.
‘Well, I’m not noble and virtuous like you, sir.’
Murray snorted. ‘No one has ever accused me of being either of those things.’
Good. Nice boys were boring in bed.
‘I like control,’ I said.
This was another line that always,alwaysworked on boys.Oh, do you now?they’d say.You gonna tie me up, princess?Sadly, it only had short-term effectiveness (mostly, they thought it was funny that a tiny Asian girl had such top energy, and wanted to turn the tables on me and teach me my place), but you could achieve quite a lot in that short period.
Murray, though, just raised his eyebrows, the barest glint in his eye, the merest hint of mischief. ‘I’m not sure how much control we’re going to have as PAs.’
‘It’s a long game,’ I said. ‘First, we learn the rules. And then—’
‘—we seize the means of production?’
‘See!’ I said brightly. ‘You get it.’
‘Of course I do. Why, though?’
‘Why do I like control?’
That was a complicated question. In my few brief flirtations with therapy, it was something the therapist would always try to get to the bottom of.Why do you think you try to control people?they’d ask.Why men, in particular?
And then they’d go digging and digging and digging, trying to get me to crack and have some revelation like, ‘Oh my god, I must do this as a tactic to fight back against all the racist, sexist bullshit people heap on Asian women!’ or, ‘Oh my god, I must do this because some part of me thinks I’m fundamentally unlovable and I want to feel like I’m the one pulling all the strings!’
None of them ever really accepted me shrugging and saying, ‘Look, I don’t think it’s that deep, I think I just like it.’
‘No, not that,’ Murray said, surprising me again. ‘I mean – why reality TV? There are lots of things you could go and figure out how to control. Why this?’
God, this boy asked good questions.
‘I like mess,’ I replied. ‘I like drama. I’m a messy bitch who lives for drama, and I like watching messy bitches who live for drama. I like it when you break something apart and there’s something juicy and complicated and exciting inside and it falls all over the floor.’
‘Like when theDesert Island Castawayvoting alliances splinter and reform?’
‘That’s one example, sure.’ Or the mess I was going to make of this very intriguing boy, and I was going to let him make of me.
He grinned. ‘I like that too. And speaking of mess—’ He gestured to his upper lip.
