Love by the Book (11 page)

Push-ups and pull-ups: none (all energy sapped from amazing display of willpower)

 • • • 

Lucy was perched on the edge of my bed, the hour hideously early for a hung-over Saturday. I was lacing up my sneakers while she poured black coffee in my mouth and pumped me for details.

“So? Did you sleep with him?”

“Lucy Hunter! What kind of girl do you think I am?”

“I know exactly the type of girl you are, so don't play coy with me. You reek of whisky and you look like the cat that got the cream. Give it over!”

I took a gulp of coffee and grimaced as it burned my tongue. “I am pure as the driven snow.”

Her blue eyes widened. “Fuck off!”

“It's true! My honor is intact. Chastity belt still firmly locked. Are you ready to go?”

Lucy tucked her iPhone into her sports bra and tutted. “This bloody thing never stays put. Right, let's go. You can explain on the stairs how you managed to spend time with Adrian without shagging his brains out.”

“It was a feat of enormous self-discipline. I almost caved, but then I ran away at the last minute.”

“What do you mean, ran away?”

“I mean I physically ran away from him. It was the only way to save my pure soul.”

“How did he react?”

“I didn't turn around to see.”

“How do you feel?”

“Disgruntled, mainly, but also kind of smug? It's weird. Obviously I wanted to sleep with him, but there was something kind of liberating about waking up alone. I feel like I have the upper hand back or something. Of course, I'm sure he'll never speak to me again considering the ungodly case of blue balls I must have given him.”

“I suspect Adrian's cock will survive.”

“Mmm. It's resilient, I'll give it that.”

“Anyway, I'm proud of you.”

“Thanks, man. Me too. C'mon, help me sweat all this booze out.”

 • • • 

When we got back to the apartment, I found a text message waiting for me.

I've been very distracted this morning thinking about you, you little tease. A xx

And that, my friends, was the exact moment my brain exploded. Somehow, it had worked. After months of trying to get Adrian's attention by having increasingly imaginative and acrobatic sex, it turns out that the best way to turn him on was by not sleeping with him. Go figure.

I spent the rest of the day highlighting passages from
Close Your Legs
and rereading the text from Adrian (to which, being of a sexual nature, I naturally did not reply).

Tonight, I broke out in a rash; the result of a valerian root overdose.

Push-ups: thirteen (huge burst of strength)

Pull-ups: two-fifths (better)

 • • • 

Three days have passed without a word from Adrian and without so much as a whiff of sex. I've spent much of my time doing laundry, rewashing the several white high-necked shirts I've been wearing all month. I've also reorganized the cupboard under the sink, painted one wall of my bedroom purple and embarked on an ill-advised curtain-sewing project using some Liberty print scarves I found at a vintage shop. My bedroom now looks like a
1970
s bordello.

I have done so much exercise I nearly passed out from dehydration at work yesterday. Cathryn took one look at me and told me to go lie down on the sofa in our office, but we're working on a huge new exhibition on microbes and I had to finish drafting the press release. I've been working more hours than God gives us and my desk has never been more organized.

In short, going for this long without sex has made me a more productive, fitter, neater and more diligent person. It has also made me really, really fucking boring.

Thank God for cigarettes and booze, and for the light at the end of this very long tunnel.

A breakthrough: managed three-quarters of a pull-up before my hands slipped off the bar and I fell to the floor. I also did fifteen push-ups. I am basically bionic.

After weeks of arranging and rearranging plans, Running Man and I finally went on a date today. Well, sort of a date. We went for a bike ride after work.

I know: people are actually doing this now! Instead of sitting in a nice cozy pub and guzzling attractiveness-enhancing alcohol down their necks, people are opting to sit on bicycles and stare at each other's spandexed asses for long stretches of possibly deadly road, reach the designated point, briefly discuss the scenery, share a Power Bar, turn around and go home again.

Normally I would balk at the suggestion of going on such a clearly ridiculous and un-fun date, but I figured that nothing dampened passion like cycling gear and the smell of bike oil, so when Running Man suggested cycling along the canal to Hackney Wick, I agreed. I was almost a month into celibacy and couldn't be trusted to keep my underwear on in almost any circumstance.

Unfortunately for me, Running Man happened to have a seriously excellent ass, so I spent much of the ride thinking about biting it. As a result, I nearly ran over several small children and one very irritated goose.

When we got there, it took us fifteen minutes to find somewhere to lock up our bikes because of a Hackney-wide cycle-polo tournament, by which point I was half-starved and—thanks to a freak heat wave—had a tongue like a dried sponge. I suggested we go to Crate Brewery for a beer and a slice of pizza.

He looked at me with surprise and—if I'm not mistaken—a tinge of disappointment in his eyes.

“Do you mind if we go somewhere else? I'm in training for an ultramarathon so I'm really trying to hold off on eating any processed carbs.” He punctuated the statement by patting his admittedly slim torso. “There's a macrobiotic place around the corner that does an amazing quinoa salad. We could pop in there if you'd like?”

My heart sank. I like quinoa as much as the next woman (by which I mean that I have trained myself to like it over years of enforced consumption) but I wasn't so hot on a guy who shunned pizza and beer for whole grains and green tea. I know I'm being sexist, but it just seemed . . . prissy.

Nevertheless, I was going to pass out if I didn't eat something soon, so off we went to the macrobiotic cafe, where Running Man promptly had a shot of wheatgrass and asked for a grilled chicken salad (no dressing, no croutons). I had a piece of organic carrot cake with tofu frosting (just about as gross as it sounds).

“When's this ultramarathon of yours?” I asked as I speared a runaway raisin.

“Next month. I'm fired
UP
!”

“How long is an ultramarathon again?”

“Hundred K. Can't wait.”

“Jesus. That's a long trot.”

He nodded enthusiastically. “I think there's something almost spiritual about running that far, you know? It's like you're one with the gods.”

“Mmm. The longest I've ever gone is a half marathon, and I didn't feel particularly spiritual toward the end of it.” In actuality, I'd pissed myself on the last mile, but I thought I'd keep that to myself. (Hey, you try running
13.1
miles without a bathroom break and see how you fare.) “I'm doing Tough Mudder in a couple of days, though, so that should be a challenge.”

He looked disgusted. “Tough Mudder is nothing. It's just a little mud and a few hills.”

“And barbed wire.”

He waved me away. “Those things are just distractions. What you want to do is distance. Pure distance. Just you and the road. Once you free this—” he leaned over and tapped the top of my head—“you can run forever. Did you know that there's a group of Japanese monks who run forty thousand kilometers over a thousand days?”

“Yeah, but they're monks. What else do they have to do?”

“Lauren, they're
spiritual beings
. They understand that pain is purely physical. To achieve true enlightenment, you have to transcend that pain barrier. I ran the Three Peaks marathon in Wales last summer, and within the first mile I tripped over a root and fell off the trail.”

I bit my lip to stop myself laughing. The image of people falling over does it to me every time. “What happened?”

“There I was, lying in a ditch, my ankle twisted, watching all the other fellas tear down the course ahead of me. And then I heard this voice.”

“A voice?”

“From above.”

Here we go. “What did it say?”

“It said, ‘Stay the path. Feel no pain. You are a warrior.' I got up and started running. The front of my trainer was torn, so I ripped it off and ran on without it.”

“So you basically ran a marathon in a sandal with a sprained ankle because a voice in your head told you to?”

He nodded solemnly. “Yes. At the final mile, I collapsed. I had lost several toenails by that point, and what remained of the trainer was soaked in blood. People were shouting for me to stop and get help. A medic tried to pull me off the course and into a waiting ambulance.”

“It sounds like you needed it. You could have really hurt yourself.”

“That's a loser's attitude. I knew that if I just transcended the pain, I could finish.”

There was a long dramatic pause as his gaze locked onto mine, his eyes burning.

“And so I finished. It was a new personal best. I still don't have feeling in the toes on my left foot, and it's taken a year for the toenails to grow back. But it was worth it.”

“Fuck.”

“Yes. You see? It's all in the mind.”

“Maybe, but I'm still not sure I would want to lose toenails over it.”

“You hardly miss them when they're gone.” He took another swig of wheatgrass and looked determinedly into the middle distance.

We cycled back to Old Street and parted ways at the top of my street, him proclaiming that he was off to do a brief
50
K cycle before going home. He asked if I wanted to come along to his running club meeting on Wednesday, but I demurred. I wasn't ready for transcendence.

I crossed the street and went into the liquor store for a bottle of wine and a Milky Way. As I thumbed through a copy of
Vogue
, I realized I'd already forgotten what Running Man looked like.

He was a nice guy, sure, and part of me was strangely attracted to his fitness zealotry. His ass was certainly a selling point (I actually can't think about it too much right now for fear of boiling over) but with the prospect of sex off the table, his ass was a moot point. At the end of the day, I had found him kind of boring. It wasn't his fault, and I was sure there was a pert female ultrarunner out there waiting for him, her blond ponytail swinging in the breeze, but in the immortal words of Bob Dylan, it ain't me, babe.

Name: Running Man

Age:
37

Occupation: HerbaLife Sales Rep

Nationality: Australian

Description: Can't remember concentrating so much on his face, but he does have an unbelievable body

Method:
Close Your Legs, Open Your Heart

Result: If there's no chance of sinking your teeth into a banana cream pie, there's no point in going to the bakery

I thought about what Running Man had said about marathons, about hitting that point of clarity and everything else just falling away. That's how I felt coming to the end of this month. Don't get me wrong: I definitely missed sex, but at the same time, there was something liberating about not having to think about it. When I was sitting across from Running Man at that cafe, I wasn't wondering what he'd be like in bed or imagining that muscle right above the hip flexor, or wondering if I had any condoms back in the flat. I was thinking about how I was having a fairly dull time, and how I'd rather be at home with a bottle of wine, a Milky Way and a copy of
Vogue
.

This is going to sound a little corny, but I've really enjoyed concentrating all my energy on myself this month. I feel like a saner, stronger, more self-sufficient person. So while I wouldn't recommend abstinence full-time, I would say that there's something to be said for clearing the palate occasionally and just focusing on you. A little abstinence sorbet, if you like. And now that my mouth was all fresh and clean, I was ready to stuff my face again. Plus, as of this morning, I can do seventeen push-ups and seven-eighths of a pull-up: not bad for a month's work.

Works best on . . .

I didn't feel particularly more attractive to menfolk during this month, though I did end up feeling marginally more attractive to myself. And I guess to Adrian, though I don't think he can be considered an average test subject considering how deeply, deeply subnormal he is. So maybe it works best on yourself?

To be used by . . .

Anyone who enjoys feats of endurance, valerian root and their own company.

While I'd wrapped up the dating side of this month, I still had one more thing to cross off my list before I could officially move on to the next book: Tough Mudder, of course.

I turned up to a field in Sussex at an ungodly hour of the morning. I had two cups of coffee and a banana before I left the house, and I could feel both of them quietly curdling in my stomach as I lined up at the starting line. I was surrounded by groups of men wearing customized T-shirts heralding their local five-a-side club or their company name (almost entirely from the banking sector). I was one of the only women, and I was definitely the only woman on her own. There was so much testosterone in the air, I was worried I'd grow a beard.

And so, when the starting pistol fired, I wasn't feeling particularly confident.

But three hours and twenty-eight minutes later, covered in slime and with bruises blooming across every inch of my body, I crossed the finish line. I'd had some help up the walls from some of the banking bros, and one of my few fellow ladies gave me an energy gel when I was flagging post mud-mile, but I had done it. And that feeling of accomplishment, that rush of endorphins, that enormous surge of unfettered sisters-are-doing-it-for-themselves pride was better than any sex I'd ever had.