Louise Leverett - Love, and Other Things to Live For

We live in the digital age of a steady stream of information right there on our computer screens, influencing our relationship to commerce, the food we eat and now, even our love lives. We can flick through the online catalogue of human faces, swiping left or right depending whether we like what we see, in exactly the same way our grandmothers picked out a cut of meat at the butcher’s. It’s safe, sterile even, but not quite real. Before we’ve even met them we know a person’s age, occupation, habits, likes, dislikes – basically all the information our ancestors would have found out across a table in the romantic haze of candlelight and that second bottle of wine. We look to our ancestors with a smug confidence that we know better. We live safe in the knowledge that while the notches on the bedpost rack up, no one ever has to get bored with each other.

But through the bright lights and heavy laughter of a fun night out, a little voice of truth inside knew this wasn’t for me. I couldn’t even handle a man not texting me back, never mind flicking past my face amidst the scores of other women, ten or even twenty at a time. In this twenty-first-century world, I’m almost embarrassed to say that I have remained tied to the notion of monogamy, or old-fashioned love, as it’s now known. A stagnant belief that I should probably keep to myself, not exactly like the love we see in the movies but in my heart of hearts, not far off either. I bet Tom Hanks didn’t have to ask Meg Ryan if she was still seeing other people as they made their way down from the top of the Empire State Building.

For both sexes, it’s certainly been a transition. Although every generation will say they were witness to an epic change in cultural climate – the Thirties’ prohibition, the world war of the Forties, the sexual revolution of the Sixties and Seventies – I still maintain that the biggest change, both in the cultural and social climate, was the dawn of the digital age. The invention of the Internet brought along with it a speed of living beyond anybody’s imagination. We have the ability to remain in touch with lost friends, lost colleagues… even past loves. But I can’t help but think that there are some people who were just meant to be left behind.

As we look around amidst the sea of fast culture, our minds and hearts are expected to keep up with an ever-changing, ever-evolving landscape. Fast love turns to fast disappointment – a speedy turnover in a global economy piling pressure on those struggling to keep up. Me being one of them. We’ve lost the element of fear that drives us to do the unimaginable, the senseless. We must focus on those spectacular and rare moments when our hearts overrule our heads and swiping a screen is revealed to be just that, a perfunctory movement completely separate from the glimmer of excitement that the sound of a voice brings or the way the heart beats when a certain person is near.

Instead, we keep ourselves at a distance through computer screens, safe inside the trenches, afraid to advance towards enemy lines. But within this battle of dating warfare it is sometimes hard to work out who the real winners even are. It certainly wasn’t me and it certainly wasn’t now.

And where else do we set this tale of the digital age but in the vast, diverse, empowering city of London. She is the modern-day metropolis inhabiting a wilderness of magic, mystery and intrigue. To me, London is the only permanent fixture within the landscape of movement, bright lights and imagination, a heady mix of corporate business and artistic dreaming: an odyssey of restaurants, bars and nightlife and people… oh so many people, all collectively inhabiting as a bottleneck of strangers, roommates, bedmates and friends. It is the man-made land where the lonely find company and the unemployed find jobs amidst part-time renters and full-time problems.

And it isn’t so bad: except the overcrowding, the pollution and the house prices because here, anything is possible, and as much as I wanted to stay under the duvet and come out once the storm had passed, I knew that I had no other option but to set sail. I had a career to find, a love to forget and a future to behold.

So as I stand on the precipice of a year so unpredicted, I’m going to ask a small question to the universe and see what I get offered back: why do I feel so unshakeably restless and what will inevitably be enough ? And if, as I anticipate, the road gets a little bumpy, my armour will come in the form of my friends. The collection of people whom you choose to ride the wave with: the truth-tellers, the heart-menders, my people to live for.

I met Amber at an after-hours course on corporate law. I was failing my second term quite badly by then and had embarked on some extra-curricular activity in a desperate attempt to boost both my grades and my passion for the subject. Amongst the rows and rows of twenty-year-olds in suits, Amber sat perched on a stool diligently scribbling into a hot pink notebook. She smiled and waved me over.

‘Weren’t you here last week?’ she said. ‘Bit dry, wasn’t it…’

‘A bit,’ I said, looking around at the huddles of people talking confidently about shareholder’s rights.

‘I’ve got a party later – correction – I’m working at a party later, it’s this launch for a cosmetics line. They’re going to use my face as a guinea pig. Fancy it?’

She asked me in a way that left me feeling as if I had no option.

‘There’s a free bar?’

And that wasn’t a question.

‘Sure, sounds good,’ I said.

She smiled. ‘Great. I’ll see you outside at nine.’

I learned on the way to the party that her name was Amber. She was funny and sharply clever – the type of clever that scared you into not talking, knowing you’d only come off worse in a discussion. Since she couldn’t afford law school, she’d been forced to undertake night school as a sideline to her modelling – a part-time arrangement that wasn’t going to be forever, she said.

I followed her black ponytail through the crowds and soon found myself sandwiched between the trays of complimentary champagne and a group of shoppers eagerly awaiting the tutorial. I watched Amber, seated on a high stool, her long black hair swept clean off her face, as the make-up artist demonstrated contouring for the less attractive people who believed they needed far more make-up than she did. To my surprise they actually looked interested. I still didn’t know who she was, but I’d been able to find a seat next to a real palm tree, shipped in specially for the launch, and I was already three glasses down of the free champers. Gradually, our eyes kept meeting in the midst of face priming and bronzer application and a shared look of disdain proved instantly that we could be friends.

‘Where in God’s name did I put my phone?’ she yelled once the crowds had dispersed, demonstrating the feistiness that she would inevitably need to become a lawyer. As we both began lifting coats and scarfs she emptied out her handbag onto the counter, sorting through the contents, with strips of white tissue paper still clipped in her hair.

‘I think it’s next to your coat.’ I nodded as I downed the rest of my champagne.

‘Thanks,’ she said, pulling it free. ‘I’m supposed to be at another night class but skipped it to be here. Do you think that’s bad? They offered me fifty quid an hour so I couldn’t say no, really.’

She smiled at me, a smile so full and disarming that it is rarely seen between two women – especially in a big city.

‘What are you studying?’ I asked, looking at her large black leather bag, bulging with a ring binder and textbooks.

‘I want to work in e-commerce,’ she said, pulling out a hair tie and wrapping it around her wrist. ‘It’s retail, essentially, but covering trade laws. Apparently in five years we’ll only be buying online and since I won’t be able to model forever I thought I might need a Plan B before my face sags. Do you smoke?’