Joe Stone Is On It: ‘The series of unfortunate events that occurs every time I fancy a boy’
By Will Stroude
This column first appeared in Attitude issue 274, September 2016.
So this is what I do pretty much each and every time I fancy a boy: Find him on Instagram. Scroll through every single picture, then go to tagged ones to confirm that I’m not being misled by good lighting. Find him on Twitter. Check that he’s not slightly racist.
Find him on Facebook. Throw a tantrum if he has a private account. Weigh up whether it would be appropriate to add him/if we have any mutual friends that I know well enough to ask if I can stalk him on their account. Go to his most-recently tagged picture and hit the back arrow. Decide he looked pretty bad in 2007, but still kind of adorable. Take this as a sign that we’re meant to be together. Imagine him in middle age. Yep, still hot. Miss the days when it was socially permissible to poke someone. Remind myself that even when it was (was it ever?), I never poked anyone. Feel slightly proud about that until I remember that I am a psychopath with nothing to be proud of.
Listen to songs which remind me of him. Occasionally, and I’m sorry to have to admit this, I’ll mentally storyboard whole music videos in which we co-star. My current favourite song with which to do this is Ariana Grande’s ‘Into You’.
Indulge in far-reaching imaginings of our life together. Sometimes these will be in the form of a vignette, for example that moment we realise we share a favourite Spice Girl and celebrate with blow jobs. Other times, particularly on long train journeys, I’ll run through the whole relationship, from our first argument to his untimely death and my star turn at his funeral (so brave, so strong). Miss my stop. Realise that it’s highly likely I have narcissistic personality disorder.
Whenever we’re together, refuse to look at, or talk directly to, him. Persist with this course of action until he assumes we’re engaged in some long-running feud of which he has absolutely zero knowledge. Wonder, why am I like this? Are other people like this? Mention to friends that I really fancy him. Get really offended if they don’t think he’s hot or territorial if they do. Blindly hope that nobody is telling him how obsessed I am. Resolve not to mention him. Fail.
Obtain visuals of his ex-boyfriends and previous conquests. Compare them to myself. Speculate about who was the top and who was the bottom. Imagine us as a celebrity power couple, attending red-carpet events, opening up about our life together on Oprah.
Sleep with him.
Become immediately and irreversibly repulsed by him.
Hate myself.
Repeat.
You can check out Joe Stone’s latest column in the new issue of Attitude, available to download now from pocketmags.com/attitude, in shops, and to order from newsstand.co.uk.
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