A DOZEN RED FLAGS

Romance wasn’t what it was. A thousand different monetised ways to find somebody who would never achieve the height, length, girth, and fiscal requirements of an unrealistic expectation placed upon them by social media. Swipe right, swipe left, swipe your credit card to pay for dinner and experience the brief heart-stopping moment before the screen chooses whether to accept or decline the payment. Some heterosexual men were led by the fallacy that they were supposed to be alpha males in order to attract the cream of society's women and spouted bullshit in order to appear to be something they weren't.

This cunt was no exception. He strutted in like he owned the place, wearing self-assurance like a tweed suit jacket that was two sizes too big, expecting applause and adoration for simply showing up. His grin was forced, his hair ridiculous, his laugh painfully hollow. Everything about him screamed I’m trying too hard.

When a waitress passed them, he fired the final bullet into her patience. The finger click. The smirk. Who did this silly cunt think he was? The arrogance rolled off him in waves, like smoke from an arson attack on a shit farm. Thick enough to choke and foul enough to taste for days. It was almost fascinating. 

His performance was akin to a children’s magician pulling a never ending string of flags from his sleeve, each one of them redder than the last. By the time he finished, she wondered how he made it this far without choking on his own ego.

But that wasn’t what really soured the night. It wasn’t him. It was her.

It hit her in the moments she wasn’t performing back. The way she nodded and smiled like a perfectly trained puppet, but only so she could mentally draft the tweet she’d write later. The scathing post about the worst date ever, and why could she never find a man that was normal? Women would pour out in solidarity that all men were wankers and men would emerge ready to tell her what a nice guy they were and they’d love to treat her how a woman should be treated. Win win. She didn’t give a fuck about him. He was just content; a prop in the narrative she was building for an audience she’d never meet that would drive her profiles one step closer top monetisation and influencer status.

And the worst part? She fucking liked it. She liked the power of framing a story about somebody who couldn’t offer their side, the brief high that came from attention. She’d spent years mocking men like him for their fragile egos, but she wasn’t much better. She wanted the retweets, the comments, the approval. She’d smile sweetly at him tonight, let him think she was just shy or kind, and then turn him into a punchline the second she got home.

The truth was, she was just as hollow as he was. Maybe even more so.

As the night’s hours ticked slowly on in her bed, her doom scrolling and the algorithm conspired to deliver to her a man. A man who seemed to speak sense and feed into her insecurities. A Union Jack filter on his profile picture which displayed him holding up a cold pint of British beer. 

He was the Alligator.