The sixteenth man I slept with, pressed play on the freediving documentary we were watching, 7 seconds after he came onto my belly. And yet, in the drive to the beach the day before, when he didn’t go down on me and seemed so allergic to touching my pussy you would have thought he had been fingering a chilli beforehand, I thought yep this one could really work. I don’t seem to have that differentiation worked out between someone who will one day tell their mum every detail about how and where you met, and the ones who just use you as a justification to themselves and others that their sex life isn’t that bad. At best, a figment in their imagination, at worst, a too young/too clingy/too intense name on their phone that can’t seem to be deleted.
The thirteenth man-child I slept with lived up to the unlucky omen. Thirteen would tell his friends about me – brag about his little blonde rattly. I never made it to referenced-by-name status, only a talking point into overpriced pints muffled by puffer jackets and silvered smoke. I never made it out the door with that one. Quite literally, being black listed by restaurant maître d’s all over the city for never showing up to the ever hopeful, always excused 7:30 dinner reservation. Dinner: forever my body. As equally available and inconsequential as the unwashed wine glass, filled with equal parts intention and neglect, upon their bed stand. I never made it known I stole two pairs of his underwear.
Fourteen I bought a fudge bar once. Mainly to round up my paracetamol and coconut water to the clean £5 note I had in change. I once melted twenty fudge bars to make one giant fudge bar for my dad’s birthday, back when I was whimsical and less fearful of men. 400 pennies to melt all 6 foot 11 of the fourteenth man I had slept with, as he tucked that chocolate bar far into his underwear drawer. Savouring something small and sweet the only way he knew how, by hiding her. Fourteen was nice until he wasn’t. He would listen until he wouldn’t. He would fuck me until he couldn’t. There seemed to be a running theme with men keeping me indoors during this period of collected red flags – would I wither to dust in the sun? Or were they scared that the real world could take away what had so unrealistically been formed?
The bag smelt of composted teabags and my name was spelt with one too few t’s. A wilted rose clung to the inside of the bag that had been bent in half and came with a hand drawn picture. There was also a poem that read Blue hour of the sun, the longest night is done – for gravity binds us. Nice, I thought. A rose. A poem. No one had ever sent me a singular flower before – even if the bag wrapped thrice over and squeezed all evidence of oxygen was enough to kill it. Blue tack grease haunts the poem’s pride of place above my pillow. Because then number fifteen then cheated on me with a girl he went to University with and my headboard now has scratches on it. This was two days after we drove back from a two day mini break to one of those cabins in the woods with a log fired hot tub and jigsaws with pieces missing. The Camembert we ate those forty eight hours re-surfaced. I wanted to call him a cunt but I was scared he might laugh at me. Erin, let’s call her Erin. Fifteen’s mark was as irritating as a drastically molding bruise; dull at the time, but determined to bloom like the rose he’d already suffocated.
Seventeen wore a flat cap and scraped out his fingernails using paperclips. Eighteen refused to go down on me so neither worked out before stating the obvious. It was around this time in my career I started speculating about the unity of a secret society named Real Men Don’t Eat Pussy.
Nineteen also got together with my friend. This was at a party to which I went as the Microsoft paperclip and she came dressed with intent. He was also to blame; his name badge read “Father Peter File”.
Twenty makes cacio e pepe during my luteal phase, which feels like witchcraft or worse, constituted effort. He encourages the use of the word sticky instead of keen as he prefers the idea of being stuck sweetly to someone rather desperate. He reads the same book as me so we can compare notes, though he underlines in pencil and I don’t trust anyone who edits life that lightly. He strokes my nose when I can’t sleep, which should be irritating but isn’t. He always claims baby spoon before I have time to pretend to protest. I woke up to him just staring at me once before his hands migrated down to my bleeding uterus, warm from the tea steaming beside me. Sometimes I imagine the calves of his legs to be filled with feathers of geese. Perhaps he can teach me how to fly as well one day. He might be lovely. I want to trust he’s lovely. Lucky number twenty perhaps. And I think I’ll stop counting here – if only because numbers, like men, have started to repeat themselves.
—Published 18th of January 2026
About Olivia Pockett