Fuckboi, Actually.
If there’s one thing Love, Actually forgot to cover, it’s fuckbois. Think about it. There are so many storylines in Love, Actually – porn actors this, prime minister that – but no fuckboi. The only boy in the whole thing is so nice that when he likes someone he takes up drumming and jumps airport security (sadly not at the same time). But a boy who fucks around, then fucks off? No sign.
According to urban dictionary, a fuckboi acts like they’re in love with girls so they can get something out of it. Famous fuckbois include Alfie, James Bond and Tony from Skins (IRL they’re usually not as sexy). And, like a childhood disease, most of us need to experience fuckbois at least once before we know what’s up. So to honour the true Valentine spirit, I thought I’d share my favourite fuckboi tale – after all, it’s the only fucking thing I ever got out of him.
It was 2011. The Strokes were a thing and people still used Blackberries. There was no such thing as a ‘fuckboi’ in those days, making it way more difficult to diagnose them. At 16 my romantic CV listed a two year relationship and the entire box set of Sex and the City, so I thought I had guys figured out. In reality I was a spring chicken, sitting blind at the heart of a huge hormonal shitshow.
Keanu was dark haired, quiet, and played guitar. Remember Midnight Mark from The Boat That Rocked? The guy who gets all the girls by playing tunes and not saying anything? That was Keanu. Next to other 16 year olds whose passions included drinking, shouting, and sports, he seemed mysterious and interesting. He was in a band. Even his name seemed mysterious and interesting. Ke-ya-nu. To make things worse, one half of his face was a bit paralysed (the result of a minor childhood accident, I was told) so he always looked at least 50% devastatingly nonplussed. If he made even the slightest expression my ovaries started picketing and demanding their rights. I was toast.
One particular night soon after meeting and exchanging numbers, our phone conversation became so long, we only hung up so we could meet for breakfast. Until then I’d been wary, but that was a game changer. My *extensive* experience with men had taught me that all-night phone calls are, like, number ONE on the list of ways to tell someone’s in love with you (a fact I liked to remind my friends of repeatedly over the next few weeks). So I made up my mind: he was A Nice Guy™. We texted regularly, even when I was on holiday. I didn’t care about my massive phone bill. To hell with my phone bill! All you need is love, man! At least that’s what I was thinking when I took my first pill with him, two weeks later at Reading Festival.
After that, fully rinsed by what I didn’t yet know was a come down, I began to have doubts. I didn’t feel that great around him – in fact, I felt kind of needy and pathetic, like a three-legged Bichon Frise. What was happening to me? Slowly I realised we probably weren’t right for each other, and that’s when he asked me to be his girlfriend.
I had just embarked upon a three-month crash course in fuckboi dating. We consistently met at the pub by his school, or near his house, and the only time he agreed to come to mine for dinner he didn’t show up in the end because it wasn’t in his postcode. We hung out with his friends, which was not my favourite thing to do because his friends were blisteringly cool and I spent every second around them feeling like Ralph from The Simpsons. Whenever I was with my friends, of course, Keanu became mysteriously busy. He didn’t say much, but when he did I hung on to his every word. We smoked weed – a lot – and he’d play guitar for ages while I watched and tried not to be paranoid.
For one particularly random date he invited me to play golf (no I haven’t skipped forward: we’re still in 2011 and I’m still 16). I couldn’t think of anything worse but that didn’t stop me from taking the stupidly long bus ride with him to his local golf course. We travelled in total silence and he stared out the window for 45 minutes while I tried my best to look like this was a normal way to go on a date with someone. My picketing ovaries were angry and confused, holding up signs that said both “Keanu Out!” and “What Do We Want? Love! When Do We Want It? Now!” Looking back, I think I knew deep down I was just an extra in his indie arthouse vision of himself. But I also thought maybe I didn’t know how to be in someone’s indie arthouse vision, and that if I tried hard enough, maybe I’d get it one day?
Alas, our relationship became that bus ride. Our WhatsApp conversations slithered into extinction, leaving remnants of chat so obviously dead it was actually more enjoyable not speaking at all. When we eventually broke up I laughed so I’d come off as aloof and independent, like, “we cool! There’s other fish in the sea!” But I cried the whole way home and then watched the sad scene from Disney’s Alice In Wonderland on repeat for three hours (the one where she sings about being lost to the weird pencil creatures. That’s a three minute scene so it’s kind of mental I watched it for so long).
And that was the last I ever heard from him.
Don’t worry, just kidding! Imagine a fuckboi letting you just get on with your life?!? Fast forward a year of heartbreak and listening extensively to The Cranberries, I received a call at 2am, and picked up to the sound of Keanu crying and spluttering that our break up had been a mistake. Would I give it another go?
And so I enrolled in the Pass Plus scheme of Fuckboi Dating, another month of painful instant messaging and faux-relaxing spliffs. My education was summed up by my 18th birthday drinks (held hopefully at a pub not too far from his). He arrived at the only time fuckbois ever arrive anywhere – as I was leaving – and took the bus home with me. In an outburst of drunken honesty I told him he was useless but it didn’t seem to affect him as he was busy looking out the window. It wasn’t long before we broke up again, and I told him he had the emotional range of a teaspoon which is something Hermione says to Ron in the 5th Harry Potter book (I really don’t know where these coping mechanisms come from).
But it was all ok because that was the last time I ever heard from him.
Owh, only joking!! Keanu reappeared a few months later, talking to me like he had thoughts and feelings and stuff, saying we had a special bond and he’d only been insufferable because he was going through a tough time. Ah, the fuckboi is strong in this one: “I am a wounded soul and you’re the only one who understands me”. Had I got him all wrong? Was he not the same deep, mysterious, emotionally fragile boy I’d initially fallen for? How could I be so insensitive?!
I was so down to embark on an Odyssey of changing Keanu that, after weeks of charged messaging between us, I ended my relationship with someone else. I was ready! Ready to smoke weed and pretend not to be paranoid and hang out with people who made me feel like dogshit on the bottom of someone’s shoe! We would laugh about all this in ten years’ time as we ate breakfast in bed, bathed in the crisp sheets of a Parisian hotel and shafts of mid-morning sunlight!
Luckily for me that didn’t happen because if it had I wouldn’t be sitting here writing this beautiful memoir. Fuckbois do not disappoint when it comes to being disappointing, and Keanu was an ambassador in that field. As soon as I told him I was single and ready to goddamn mingle, his interest dried up faster than a wet wipe in a Dyson airblade. We became almost neanderthal in communication, exchanging spectacularly small messages that revolved around “lol” and “come chill” in a standoff to say the least amount of words. Finally, drawing on generations of ancient fuckboi logic passed down and preserved through the annals of time, Keanu told me it was disrespectful to be together in front of my ex. Anyway, he was going to university soon so there was probably no point.
I’d like to be able to say it all ended there and I had nothing more to do with him, but that’s just not the way fuckbois roll. It took another year of irregular meetings, me moving abroad, and experiencing better pastures for me to understand what Keanu truly was. He was neither poetic, nor misunderstood: he was just a fuckboi.
Eventually the day came when he asked me how I was in the only way fuckbois know how – out of the blue – and after a short pause, I closed the message and deleted him off Facebook (he still comments on my SoundCloud though).
I had learned that like exotic pets or double-dropping LSD, fuckbois can seem like a good idea at the time but usually end up in regret, confusion, and someone getting hurt. Unlike exotic pets and double-dropping LSD, though, fuckbois leave you with stories that everyone knows the ending to: stories that excite their victims at the time while getting really fucking repetitive for everyone else. So now I think I know why Richard Curtis didn’t put a fuckboi in Love, Actually: nobody has time for that shit.
-By Katia Mullova
