Whenever she was in bed with him Aisling wondered what he was thinking. Perhaps it was pleasure that caused him to close his eyes, but she couldn’t help but suspect that he was lost somewhere in his own imagination – that she was a blank canvas unto which he projected his fantasies.

At first it had been easy. Outside of the bedroom he could not have been more considerate. He called when he said he would; held her hand as they walked down the street; made dates; sent emails and text messages. He was the very definition of keen, but the longer she knew him the more she began to suspect that there was an empty space in his life labelled “girlfriend” and that he liked her more for her ability to slot into this role than for anything to do with who she actually was.
Her suspicions were based on snippets and intuition. A clue here, a hint there as she tried to piece this man together, to figure him out.
Taken separately they meant nothing much, but when considered as a whole she wondered if, when Kevin looked at her, he saw who she was or merely a woman who could be moulded into something approximating what he desired.
“Do you ever wear high heels?” he asked on their third date.
“Not really,” she replied. “And certainly not to the movies.”
“You’d look good in heels.” He smiled and flashed his eyebrows. “With a short skirt.”
It would have been easy to please him. His requirements were typically male, mundane even – stockings, garter belts, revealing clothes. She considered dressing up for him, more than once, but it felt less like an outfit and more like a remodelling experience.
When she looked at herself in the mirror she had to admit that the shoes and fishnets showed off her legs to their best advantage, but his near constant hints and requests worried her. She felt like an escort dressing to please a client – less like a girlfriend, more like the girlfriend experience.
He rarely called her by her name. Instead she was ‘Baby’. A nickname she wouldn’t have minded, suggesting as it would have some sort of intimacy, but she disliked being addressed by an interchangeable term of endearment, stripped of personality and individuality, of adulthood – a mewling, helpless thing, a person but not quite fully realised, dependent on the whims of others.
But it was the posters and pictures that adorned his wall and his computer that really worried her. Warrior women and winged avenging angels, 3D heroines and anime drawings, each with pneumatic breasts in straining bikinis or tight rubber cat suits.
She was attractive, but the smooth perfection of his fantasy playmates seemed to throw her humanity into sharp relief. She was aware how far short she fell of his impossible, cartoonish ideals, and the distance between the idea and the reality made her unwilling to try.
“I can’t live up to this fantasy and I don’t think I should have to,” she said sitting in the coffee shop. “Why would you want a cartoon when you could be with a real person?”
I told her about the moe subculture of Japan – obsessive fans of anime, manga and video games who have ‘relationships’ with 2D characters, go on ‘dates’ with figurines and have ‘sex’ with pillowcases featuring their favourite anime girls. 2D characters don’t judge, never complain, never leave and are completely submissive. For those who find romance and seduction difficult to navigate, moe offers an alternative sexual lifestyle. For some people, fantasy is more appealing than a messy, emotional reality.
“Do you think he may be like that? Or am I being paranoid?”
I shrugged my shoulders. Our own motivations are often opaque, and other people’s that much more difficult to decode. Sexual relationships, at least in the beginning, are a patchwork quilt of blinkered enthusiasm, desire, lust and fantasy.
Aisling didn’t believe in fantasy – not when she was with another person at least. She believed in the Tantric principle of presence – to live in the moment. She wanted to fully connect with her partner – a mingling of both body and soul.
Fantasy was strictly for the erotic scenarios she created in her head. But even these were for the most part rooted in reality. She had no interest in celebrity lovers, exotic locations or impossible feats. She only dreamt of the people she knew, those that she someday might have and the things they might do.
“I want the person I’m having sex with to be the person I most want to have sex with, not use them as some kind of masturbatory aid,” she explained. “When you come right down to it, no matter how well you know someone, each person is still a mystery. Why would you want to create a two dimensional fantasy when sex gives you the chance to explore your partner on the deepest erotic level?
“It’s like I’m not there,” she complained. “At least not really. Afterwards he’s all smiles and cuddles, but it’s almost like an apology, like we both know there’s something missing, but we’re pretending that everything is just fine. I wish I knew what goes on behind those eyes.”
“You could always ask, I suppose,” I suggested, but she shook her head.
“What’s the point? If I’m right he’d never tell me and I don’t know him well enough to know when he’s lying.”
She couldn’t make up her mind whether to end the relationship or give him the benefit of the doubt. She broke dates, didn’t return his calls, but a day or so later she relented. Her uncertainty crept into the bedroom and she started avoiding sex. Her belief that she was nothing more than a placeholder for an idealised version of femininity that didn’t really exist meant that sex with him became less and less attractive. Instead of intimacy, she offered him excuses.
If she was being honest with herself, something she tried to avoid, she would have admitted that Kevin did not meet her romantic requirements either. She didn’t want to change what he was – she liked his looks, hair, clothes and body – but who he was. If Aisling was a substitute for perfection, then Kevin was a surrogate for the man she wanted, but had yet to find.
On a rainy summer’s day she met him at a café.
“I just don’t think I’m ready for a relationship,” she said.
He nodded. “Yes, I’ve realised that. I like you, but I’m not sure I am either.”
“We can be friends, if you like,” she suggested.
“I would,” he said.
“I’ll call you next week.”
She meant to, but she didn’t. She imagined she would, but she didn’t pick up the phone. Not that week or the one after that.
That’s the problem with sex. It makes fantasists of us all.