Eat My Heart Out by Zoe Pilger

don’t know.’ Samuel looked ashamed. ‘I didn’t read it.’
    Now Freddie and Jasper nearly killed themselves laughing.
    â€˜I’m calling William,’ I said.
    â€˜Ann-Marie.’ Jasper tried to slink one well-moisturised arm around my shoulders, but I punched him.
    â€˜Ow!’ He rubbed his gut. ‘You can take it as payment for all the times you fucked me and then left me and went back to your whirling dervish of a boyfriend. Like what about that time in Vietnam in the Agent Orange forest, where there were just stumps. That was fucking romantic. When Sebastian was supposed to be chugging that fucking dreadful cod trawler around the Thanet coast but he was off poking Allegra in Paris. Wasn’t she doing a summer school at Lecoq?’
    â€˜Yeah,’ said Freddie.
    â€˜For that one night at least,’ said Jasper. ‘You didn’t think about Sebastian. You didn’t care about Sebastian at all. Did you, Ann-Marie?’
    â€˜I always cared,’ I said.
    â€˜But you fucking loved it. Didn’t you?’
    â€˜Can we talk about something else for once?’ said Freddie.
    Jasper positioned himself over the billiard table and fired at empty space; no balls clicked. He turned to Samuel. ‘You know, one thing I will say. The problem with your big sister Allegra as a lay was that she was too damn pliable.’
    Samuel looked at Freddie.
    â€˜Jasper,’ said Freddie. ‘Dude. Don’t.’
    â€˜Yah,’ Jasper went on. ‘I mean, when I was fucking Allegra and I had her perfect fucking porcelain behind in my hands and I was squeezing her cunt, it was like trying to get blood out of a stone—’
    â€˜You’re disgusting,’ I said.
    â€˜Wait,’ said Jasper. ‘There’s a compliment for you.’
    I waited.
    â€˜She was never really there , you know what I mean?’ Jasper went on. ‘I felt like she could just be anything I wanted her to be like, like her buttocks were made out of running wax and I could fashion them into anything I chose. I felt like I was crafting a woman!’
    Samuel left the room.
    Freddie followed him.
    Jasper stared at me.
    I stared at Jasper.
    â€˜But with you at least I felt like you were with me,’ he said.

Five
What does it mean for a woman to submit?
    To submit is to lose oneself. To want to submit is to want to lose oneself. I’m talking about consent. We can lose ourselves through religion, alcohol, sex, drugs, political fanaticism, or love.
    Why would a woman want to lose herself in love?
    In short, why would she want to fall?
    Because it’s fun? Oh yes, it’s fun.
    Or because it offers her respite from the pressures of the meritocracy?
    The meritocracy demands that she alone is responsible – for her successes, yes. But also for her failures. Falling is a way of avoiding failure – or success.
    Falling is a form of submission.
    The modern woman senses that in order to win a man’s love, she must deny her capability and regress.
    Marge had left her copy of Stephanie’s book under the table. It was signed:
Dear Marge ,
    Sending you love from my (rightful?) place of exile. It’s cold here but the sistahood can’t get me from all the way across the Atlantic. I’m sorry again – if it’s right for me to say sorry ?
    In solidarity, as ever ,
    Steph
    I stroked the dust jacket, hoping to absorb the gravitas contained in those pages by the power of touch alone.
    I was sitting on the front step of the closed Barclays next to Leicester Square tube station, working my way through a family-size bucket of fried chicken, which I had purchased from the fake KFC over the road.
    A hen party wearing angel wings and devil horns staggered out of the all-night pizza place, clutching a long train of torn white netting. Fiona! Fiona! they chanted. Fiona grabbed a man wearing a pinstripe shirt who seemed to be attached to a stag do and shoved