Is it strange to be in crush with not just a celebrity but a celebrity couple? As much as I love love love Drew Barrymore, to the point where I own the autobiography she wrote as a teen I think I actually love her more when she’s dating Justin Long. Something about the completely unabashed way they are together makes me grin childishly everytime I see a picture of them, and so it was with great pleasure I read that they were back together (again). So many celebrity couples, and normal ones too(!), seem to look so bored when they are with each other, or just like they are putting on a show for people around them but these two look so bloody in love that I want to reach into my computer screen and give their cheeks a big old pinch.

Here are some gratuitous images of them being adorable together:

Do you have a celebrity couple crush? Or is it just me and my sentimental heart?

During London Fashion Week there are only two things to do: work like a donkey and drink to celebrate no longer working like a donkey. Though my involvement in LFW has, until recently, been fairly minimal I can’t refuse a party with free booze and so it was at one of these strange sleep deprived designer and half starved model filled do’s that I saw him: Brody. Until that night he had been someone I had googled, who’s picture had lurked in a folder to peek secretly at when I was bored, and who I had stared at blissfully across party after party. It was time to make this real. High on sugar and rum I shambled over to say hello and told him I was a friend of his friend Audrina’s. We chatted until everyone sane had left then stumbled upstairs to his car. Foolishly we drove around all night until 5.30am when we found ourselves alone in Hampstead: too far for me to go home and too close to his house not to pop by…

When I woke up from my couple of hour’s sleep, and some sloppy drunken making out, I was dizzy with excitement. This guy, the same one who I’d been dreaming about for months, was here with me and mostly naked! I leapt on top of him and kissed him, grinning from ear to ear like a maniac. He just lay there. Last night’s sugary drinks had made me insane and I bounced up and down gleefully as if two hours sleep was no thing. In my head fireworks were exploding by the dozen: me! him! here! together! Everything was going to be amazing!! As I darted around gleefully putting my clothes back on Brody stared silently. Just as I was about to leave I asked for his phone number. He looked confused but gave it anyway. I chalked it up to tiredness and walked to the tube station high on alcohol and seratonin.

A week later I was sitting at lunch with Audrina discussing what would happen next with Brody. He had been in touch yet only seemed faintly interested in meeting again. Audrina shrugged, “I don’t know what his problem was. He really liked you when I showed him your picture.” My fork stopped in mid-air. “What? You know I did this! You told me to!” The fork was stuck there. “You said you liked him, so when I ended up back at his house I told him, do you remember when I called you all drunk?” I remembered. “And you told me to tell him you liked him.” Did not. “So he asked what you looked like, and I showed him a picture …” Oh god. “… and just to be sure he wouldn’t forget you I gave him your number.” It’s all a dream, a horrible dream. “You asked me to help set you up! I was helping!”

I sat there thinking while Audrina fiddled with her phone. A man, a quiet, shy man, is accosted by Audrina who is a ditzy, babbling, girl. She tells him her friend fancies him and shows him a grainy picture, then proceeds to save the random girl’s number onto his phone. Later, while standing soberly at a party, said girl comes up, blithely introduces herself, then goes home with him, and proceeds to deny him sex but be happy to roll around in her underwear. The next morning she leaps around like the Tigger of romance and giggles like a giddy teen. It’s mind boggling just to think about never mind live through.

Audrina shrugged off the silence easily and we wandered to the video shop when she darted down an alley saying she’d meet me in a minute. Two doors later I ran smack into Brody and his best friend. We exchanged awkward hugs and I asked what he was doing so far from home. “You should know,” he replied curtly, “Audrina asked me where I was having lunch then said you might both pop by.” Brody looked over my shoulder. “I think she was hoping we could all bump into each other by ‘accident’.” He looked back over his. “That would have been brilliant.” His voice was becoming steadily more monotone. “I’d have really enjoyed something as unexpected as that.” After scanning the street comprehensively he looked back at me. No matter what I said he would never believe I hadn’t followed him here, or asked Audrina to paint me as a desperate harpy, it was pointless. While I gawped, trying to find the right phrase, he squeezed my arm and said goodbye. Then he, and the friend, ran until they were out of sight, never looking back.

Photos by Terry Richardson, and Alex Prager.

Six months or so ago I quit the internet. Technically I just left Facebook and Twitter but that constitutes 90% the internet so it’s the same thing to me. As an intensely competitive person I was spending too much time trying to figure out whether my life tallied up to that of my old school friends. In my head lived a constantly updated bar graph where points were earned and lost according to how well you were doing in your work, love, and social life. Every time I logged on it felt like the game was bogging me down with pluses for beautiful children and minuses for going to All Bar One after work. Turning on my computer was a depressing chore.

Worse than the game was my secret shame: stalking boys. Everyone’s looked someone up once or twice. You might have even googled someone’s name to see if they were a registered paedo or really into WoW. That’s all fair game. Once I start though I can’t stop. It’s not just boys: once I was searching for Jean Varon dresses on ebay and found a girl who looked familiar. After 30 minutes of searching I found out she was the child of a Tatler regular and where she worked. See? My stalking is inclusive! Everyone can get involved! It’s a multi-cultural multi-denominational multi-sexual kind of thing!

Upon my shameful return to Facebook I vowed that I would not make the same mistakes again. No more late nights figuring out our mutal friends or squinting through 10 pages of party pictures, none. But like an alcoholic who reckons they can have that one glass of champagne and still be fine, I slipped. During a bout of insomnia I found myself searching for my first ever boyfriend. Then random boys I’d crushed out over the years. Then someone who was a friend of an ex’s friend. Then someone who had looked hot in a photo of said ex’s friend’s friend. I developed e-crushes on them and started checking their profile when I was bored at work. Seeing what they were up to, whether we were going to any of the same events, that sort of thing. I tried to guess if they were single by how close girls stood to them. People I had never met became real-er than real. My own friends barely seemed as close as these boys with Flickrs, Twitters, Tumblrs, Last.fm’s, and Facebook pages constantly pinging the world with their every move. It didn’t feel wrong, not at all. Not even a tiny bit.

And then I would see them in the street and suddenly it was back to square one. They were still a pretty boy who didn’t know me and I was a pretty mental girl who knew what they ate for lunch. All the information gathering I’d done was useless because I couldn’t admit to it. What could I say that wouldn’t be creepy? “So, you like Chris Ware? Me too!” or “Did you see HEALTH play the other day? I missed them.” For fuckssake it freaks me out when my friends remember what I put on Twitter, never mind strangers.

The more I checked-in on these boys the quicker my crush wilted: the more irritating they seemed and like a real relationship it faded and died before it had time to be anything good at all. After 2 months back on Facebook I got bored and started hunting for Jean Varon dresses anew. Everything was rosy. I felt like a normal non-psychotic person again and then I met my kryptonite: the boy who cannot be found. The most recent photo I can find of him is from 2 years ago. No matter what clever scheme I hit on I can’t find him; after 2007 he just disappears. My competetive nature has me combing my brain, and Facebook, for clues, pictures he might be in, places he might have been, and nothing nothing nothing.

Though it burns so bad to even consider admitting defeat I think I am going to have to. And next time I see him I’ve promised myself I’ll say hello and ask if he wants to talk about Uncanny X-Men.

Photos by Richard Kern and Marija Strajnic.

When I was younger and had only just started dating boys the time spent waiting for a phone call or text message was almost unbearable. In fact I can remember vividly, aged 14, before teenagers had mobiles (!) spending a weekend sitting by the my house phone. When he finally called and my mum handed me the phone I was so terrified I could barely talk. Our one date at Finchley cinema was such a let down.

For years I subscribed to the ‘he has to call you first’ mantra and handed my number over with gravitas then pretty much stapled my mobile to my head to make sure I didn’t miss the call. Everything I’d ever watched, read, or heard, said that if he didn’t call me within 3 days then he was obviously not interested. Or just wanted a shag. Boys who were interested in me were supposed to try and get in contact the minute the left my prescence. If they lost their phone, or the paper I’d written my number on, they’d find my facebook, or ask a friend to ask a friend until they got to me again. After all, those five minutes they’d spent in my company were so damn amazing they’d be crazy to let me go. What a dick I was.

Forgetting that other people have lives or other things on their mind besides calling me meant that when someone took a week or more to get in touch I would ride a rollercoaster of emotion ranging from being elated someone liked me, to crushed that they had obviously led me on, to pissed off that they had listlessly texted now they were horny and desperate. Worse was when boys volleyed messages back and forth for a day or two then fizzled away. They were just being polite. Oh the shame. This idea had been drummed into my head: if he liked me he’d do anything to get in touch with me. Anything. Even if it involved calling my work place to find me. ANYTHING.

These days I can’t say that I’m some girl who throws her phone number around like confetti but when I do I try and be zen about it. If someone wants to get in touch with me, they will, but they also have a job, a life, a family, and friends. Sometimes these things will stand in the way of sending me sugary text messages no matter how excited he is about all my charms. Of course people can lose their phones, or pieces of paper, but I believe that if something is meant to be, then God, the universe, or whatever, will make it happen, loss not withstanding. Sure sometimes when you’ve met someone who you want to spoon with for hours then it sucks if they don’t call you, and you can find yourself wanting to bombard them with “Why don’t you love me?” style text messages, but it never works out. Patience is not my forte but I just try and erase them from my mind and get on with my life as if they had never existed. Does that sound heartless? It’s just easier to let it go and expect nothing at all sometimes, so that if something wonderful happens then you are pleasantly surprised. When you expect the moon on a stick from everyone you’re only going to be let down.

This isn’t to say that you have to sit at home waiting for someone to contact you, not all! Text them if you want or if you’re brave call them! Just let it go if they don’t reply after two calls or texts. You don’t want to be that crazy bitch who kept calling just to ‘hang out’ for months. And we’ve all been that person at least once.

Photos by Natasha Kaser and Matthew Genitempo.

P.S If you are the boy I met who liked Acme Novelty Library and helped me take my bike to get fixed, then didn’t text me for 2 weeks, who’s phone number I consequently deleted because you ‘obviously were just bored and thought I might sleep with’ you I’d like to say that I’m sorry.