Entertainment Circle16 min read
I Don't Like Men — Until One Took My Song
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"I don't like men," I said loud enough for the room to hear.
They all laughed. I wanted them to laugh.
"That's a lot of words for a singer," Jacob Hawkins said from the booth. "Who's the lucky man who broke you?"
"Nobody," I said. "Nobody is allowed."
I had just finished a set at Jasper's bar. The lights were low. The crowd was kind. I had sung my throat raw for thirty minutes and the applause still felt like a warm coat. I liked that. I liked work that paid bills and left no room for thinking about boys.
"You're Ella then?" a rough voice asked from the edge of the table.
I turned. Tall man, dark shirt, white tee with a giraffe print I couldn't forget. He stood backlit by the bar window, leaning like he didn't mean to.
"Yes," I said. "Can I help you?"
He smiled a little. "You have a fierce voice."
"Thanks."
He didn't give his name. Men like him rarely did. He dropped some cash on the table for the band and walked out with two others. I didn't think about him again.
Until the next night.
"I told you," Ellis Murray said, tossing me a brow. "You survived a road with ten men and came back looking cute. Who would have thought your fists would be sharper than your head?"
"I didn't mean to kick anyone's head," I said. "He shoved me."
"You shove my friend and I'll punch you," Jacob joked. "That's the rule."
"You two are ridiculous." I tightened my jacket. "I have a day job. I wake at five. I don't need drama."
Ellis laughed and pushed her phone in my hand. "Look, you have a fan."
On the screen was a message. "Nice voice tonight." A name I didn't know. "Tate."
I read it twice. My throat felt like it closed for no reason.
"Don't get cute," Ellis said. "He could be a weirdo."
"I said I don't like men," I reminded her.
"That wasn't a request," she shot back.
We went on with our lives. I took groups on tours by day and sang by night. I ate instant noodles in a small yard house. I kept my head down. Men were loud, and fragile, and often meant something messy. I had learned that early.
At the bar, Jasper introduced me to his crew. "Ella can sing everything," he said. "She can make a whole room quiet."
"Keep humble," I told him. "I'm barely paid and always late."
He laughed and handed me a pot of rose fruit tea. "You deserve more. Sing tonight, Ella. Sing for the people."
I sang for the people because singing kept my hands busy. Money came in. People took pictures. I left without meeting the giraffe T-shirt man again.
A week later, I ran into him on a street corner.
He had stepped out of a black car and stood staring at a shop window window like a man who had wandered into a memory. He wore an expression that I couldn't place.
"Hey," I said before I could stop myself.
He looked at me like he had been waiting for a name. "You are the singer from Jasper's."
"Yeah." I shrugged. "You are—?"
"Tate." He stretched the name out low. "Tate Cash."
"Cash?" I repeated. "Is that a joke name?"
He smiled. "No joke. Sorry. You okay? You look like you have cold feet."
"I just have cold weather in my bones." I stepped around him.
"You should warm up," he said softly. "Come sing at my friend’s bar sometime. He said he wants a resident who can make the crowd stay."
I blinked. "You know Jasper?"
"We had coffee once," Tate said. "I like honest voices."
"I like money in my pocket," I said. "But I don't like taking favours."
"Then let it be a paid gig."
He took out a card. It was simple. Just a number and a note: "Ask for 'Jasper's red table.'"
I left with a card burning in my pocket and a rule formed like a stone in my throat: don't accept help you didn't earn.
Days ran into each other. I taught tour groups at dawn and rehearsed songs at odd hours. My friends—Ellis and Kamryn—made jokes about me and boys. Kamryn, who had sharp eyes and a softer laugh, used to say, "You are a magnet for trouble."
"Because you are trouble," I told her once.
"Because you are loud," she said.
The world moved. A student named William Dalton came into my life like a bad season. He had joked with me for months and then placed himself between me and the future like a dark cloud. He called and promised, then left rooms empty when I walked in.
"He's not for you," Ellis said when I told her my worry. "Stop carrying things that don't belong to you."
I tried. I really did.
One night at lunch, I went to the old courtyard we shared with Kamryn and Ellis. There was food on a wood table and gossip in the air. I laughed louder than my appetite. We were happy in the way people in bad apartments can be: full of small things.
"Do you want to go to a bar later?" Ellis asked.
"I'm working at Jasper's tonight," I said. "I'm singing red songs tomorrow for a week. Jasper said locals might come in with requests."
"That's what you want, right?" Kamryn said. "This job gives you a calendar, a roof, and small pay."
"Yes," I said. "That's enough."
Ellis made a face. "You always say 'enough' like it's a poem."
"Enough keeps the roof over our heads," I said. "That's not poetic. It's practical."
That night at Jasper's, the room filled with the kind of crowd that pays and forgets. People asked for songs and tipped green receipts. I sang war songs, old anthems, a lonely pop tune, and then, finally, a quiet "Dream Wake."
"That's for Wang at table six," the cashier said.
I took the stage and breathed. My voice held like a handrail, steady and plain.
Tate was there.
He sat in the corner, like a shadow someone had dressed. For a second our eyes met. He smiled as if the smile was a small agreement.
"Good song," he said when I finished, after the crowd clapped and left.
"Thank you," I said. "You waited through the whole set."
"I waited for one song," he corrected. "I wanted to see how you sang it when no one was watching you cry."
I blinked. "I don't cry on stage."
"You did," he said. "On 'Dream Wake.' You held something back but your hand shook."
I wanted to hit him.
"So you watched all the shows to see me get worse?" I asked.
He laughed. "No. I watched because I'm a bad judge of my own mornings and because friends told me to watch a girl who sounded like she meant every word."
"That's poetic," I said.
"I try," he said. "Will you have tea with me after?"
"Why?" I asked.
"Because I don't like to be a mystery," he said. "I don't like people who are a puzzle. I like things that are simple."
I almost said no. But then I looked at my watch and thought about the bills and how much coffee I could buy with something easy. "Fine. Ten minutes," I said.
We walked to his hotel, a place that said "new money" without the taste. He offered me tea. He talked about cities, hotels, and a brand he was building. He talked about details like lobby tiles and breakfast menus. He used words that meant nothing to me.
"You are into hotels?" I asked.
"I work on projects," he said. "I have plans. Hotels grow cities. Cities grow money."
"A lot of people grow money with hotels," I said.
He leaned back and watched me like someone observing a bird decide whether to land. "You will sing at the hotel after the holidays," he said. "You will get paid. You will not owe me a favor."
"Is this a way to keep me quiet?" I asked.
"No," he said. "I don't like secrets. I like honesty. I prefer to be clear when I help."
I should have said no. Instead I said, "You don't know me."
"True," he said. "But I like honest signs."
We left with nothing decided except a date. I told myself it was only work. I told myself Tate Cash could spend all his money and still not buy my silence.
The days moved like a train. I took gigs, sang at Jasper's and a new hotel, and I kept the word "enough" like a shield. Word spread. Having a hotel gig meant tips that could pay rent for months. My voice filled other rooms. I learned to smile at men and keep my mouth shut about things that mattered.
Then the trouble began.
"Your boyfriend's in my lobby," Jacob told me one night, flashing his phone. "Says he's 'Tate' or something."
"He's not my boyfriend," I answered. "He is the man who made me a gig and didn't say 'thank you.'"
"Is he the one who gives big tips?" Jacob asked.
"Yes."
"Then he's good."
My friend Kamryn came by to practice lines for a new job. We rehearsed songs and heaped our words on thin plastic chairs. We made plans to save money. We were chasing small dreams, like picking berries.
"You should meet my cousin," Jacob said out of the blue. "He knows a chef who might give you a part-time."
"I have three jobs," I said. "I don't need more friends with ideas."
"You always think you know what you need," Kamryn said. "Stop being so sure."
The weekend came; the bar got busy. I sang and leaned on the microphone like a lifeline. I felt sharp and tired. After the last song, a man from table six insisted I sing one more. I climbed the stage and did a slow "Waking Dream" that pushed at the room like water.
Afterwards, a group of people came close. Jacob's cousin Jacob—no, Jacob Hawkins—is confusing; my bad. But anyway, a group.
"Great," a man said. "You can sing for us this weekend at Green Gate."
Green Gate was a big club, more shine than heart. "I don't do guest work without pay," I said.
"Pay," the man said. "We can pay."
I looked at them. I looked at the bar's tips jar. I looked at my bills.
"What's the deal?" I asked.
"A table buys half the room," the man said. "You sing. They tip. You make a night."
I thought of that. I thought about the long months where rent was a rumor and phones had low bars. I took the job.
At Green Gate, a fight broke out.
"Don't touch her," a voice said.
"Who are you?" someone shouted.
"She's mine," another voice said in a way that meant "not yours" and "I can't have her."
"Enough," I roared. "I don't belong to anyone."
Two men shoved, and I shoved back. Hands, shouts, crowd noise. A man hit the floor. Someone filmed.
I didn't plan this. But people cheered. They always cheered when a girl defended herself. I felt rough glory. I felt foolishness. A man—William Dalton—was shoved and then left. Police came. Drinks were spilled. Someone shouted "You can't hit a man like that!"
Jacob and Ellis and Tate—Tate reached for me like he might help, but he stayed back. For a moment I thought he would leave. Then he stepped forward and said, "Stop."
He spoke to the crowd like he spoke to a quiet lobby. People turned.
"Okay," he said. "We stop."
The manager of Green Gate wanted to cause trouble. The men pressed charges against the club for damages. The owner called the boss of the district. A man with the name Simon Benson came. He moved like a winter wind.
Later, in a back room, Simon Benson said, "You caused trouble on my floor."
"No," Jacob said. "They came in looking for trouble."
Simon watched us. He offered a deal: pay. Or get worse. Tate paid something from his phone and the cameras shut off. I felt like a puppet whose strings had been bought.
But someone else was watching.
A week later, William Dalton’s other half—people called him a boyfriend—showed up at my yard with a phone and a pattern of lies. He tried to make peace. He tried to say, "It was a mistake." He cried like a child.
I had no time for tears. I had a stage to stand on. I had nights to pay for.
Then the night changed to a scene that would not leave me. My friends had planned a sting. They used a hotel room and a fake text and a note. They set a trap like one sets a net. For reasons I didn't fully understand, they wanted to catch a man in the act.
We waited. People drank. I stayed calm.
When the door opened, the man who had said "I'm yours" and "I'm sorry" went white. He had been caught. He tried to say he meant nothing. He begged. He looked small.
I did not flinch.
"Get out," I said. "Get out and never come back."
They filed papers. The man gave money. He left with his dignity in pieces.
That should have been the end.
It wasn't.
Word spread. The jars at Jasper's started to look heavier. People came to hear me sing like I had put a mark on my forehead. I kept working. I still did not like men. I liked thank you in tips.
Tate watched from the doorway. He came to the hospital when one of my friends got hurt. He sat far and did not say much. Once, in late hours, he called and told me to get checked.
"Why?" I asked.
"Because you got hit," he said. "You should make sure nothing is broken."
I saw a side of him then. He was not loud with his wealth. He was patient and quiet, like a careful engine. I started to let him into the place where I kept small trust. But I did not tell him the truth of my rule: don't love a man who can leave.
He was working on projects at the hotel and at banks and meetings I could not name. He was busy, but he always knew when I went on stage. He always left one chair at the red table empty and paid a little more than the price of the seat.
"Why do you do this?" I asked him once.
"Because your voice makes spaces cleaner," he said. "It makes the air better."
I laughed. "You talk like you own spring."
"Maybe I can buy you a coffee sometime," he said.
"Coffee is small," I said. "Give me a room that pays enough for the year."
He smiled. "Done."
He kept his promise. My calendar changed. I had fewer late nights waiting in alleyways, fewer cold dinners. The hotel gig paid. I paid rent. The roof did not leak.
It should have been a simple trade of work for money. Instead, something awkward happened. We began to spend quiet time.
"Tell me about your father," I said one morning as we walked through a hotel corridor.
"I will tell you," he said. "But not now."
"Why not?"
"Because you're a singer, not a spy," he said.
"That's fair," I said.
"I am also hiding something," he said. "People who know me often act differently."
"Like what?"
"They call me Tate and then they call me Mr. Cash," he said. "I keep it simple."
"That's not hiding," I said.
He stopped and looked at me. "I'm not the man I am at home," he said. "There are rules."
"Rules are for people who break them," I said. "Most rules are."
He smiled. "I like singers who break rules responsibly."
I snorted. "What does that mean?"
"It means you hold your own," he said. "You don't take a fake apology."
I thought of William. I thought of how small he looked being forced to pay for what he had done. I thought of the sting. My chest tightened.
"Do you think I am hard?" I asked.
"No," he said. "You are precise."
That word stayed with me. Precise.
Then something happened I did not expect. One night at Green Gate, a video went up. It was of me kicking a man and three seconds later a man in a giraffe T-shirt stepping in and stopping the fight. The video called him "Tate Cash." It called me "The Girl Who Fights Hard." People commented. People cheered.
I felt raw. I felt embarrassed. I covered my face and told Jasper to give me the back room.
"I don't like this," I said later, to Tate who had shown up and shut the door like a friend.
"You should not care," he said. "You sang. You survived. That's fine."
It wasn't fine. The video had changed them. Men made jokes. Women made up stories. My life became a headline.
"Did you do that on purpose?" I asked.
"Do what?" he said.
"Save me so the video would go up so the world would call me brave?" I sounded like a woman who had been everywhere.
He laughed. "I just didn't want to see you hurt."
"That's the same thing, isn't it?"
He seemed to think about it. "I suppose."
The days moved on. The man who had hurt Kamryn—William—went quieter. The law did its small work. He paid. He cried. People watched his father’s phone calls. The city learned about his mistake. He left work and I thought him finished.
Then the bigger wave hit. A rumor about me being "special" in the hotel went around. A tabloid wrote that I was seeing the heir and that I had been given the residency because of relations and not talent.
"Why would anyone think that?" I asked Ellis as we walked home.
"Because people are lazy," she said. "They prefer short answers."
"They would say anything to make their lives simpler."
"They would," she agreed.
I wanted to fight them all. I wanted to shout, "I pay for my own life." But how to fight a rumor? You couldn't. Rumors move like water. They find low places to hide.
Then came the night every rumor fears: proof.
I was on stage. I sang my heart into "Dream Wake." At the end, I stepped down, and Jasper said, "We have a surprise for Ella. If you don't mind, Tate wants to say something."
My throat tightened. "I mind," I wanted to say.
Tate came forward. He did that thing leaders do when they have to make words simple. He took the small microphone and said into a room suddenly very loud, "Ellis Gordon sings like she paid to learn honesty. She does not owe me anything. The hotel paid her because she is good. The guys who think it's a bribe can go check their facts."
The crowd applauded. People clapped. Some cheered. It felt like being wrapped in a blanket.
Afterwards a man from the tabloid was waiting, a face with a pen.
"Tate," he said. "A few questions."
Tate didn't answer. He turned to me and said quietly, "Do you want me to speak?"
"No," I said. "I want to sing."
He looked at me like a man asked to go to war. "Then sing."
I did. I sang the truth into the microphone: small, honest notes. No trick, no waver. The room listened.
After that, the rumor lost its steam. People like big lies until someone tells the real story loud enough. Tate said his name; my voice said the truth. It was enough.
He started to appear more. He offered help with a tour, paid for a small practice room, and once he brought me a U-shaped pillow because I had said my neck hurt when I slept on trains.
"Stop buying me things," I told him.
"They are small things," he said. "They are practical."
"Half my life is practical," I said. "The other half is songs."
One night after a long set, as we walked out into a wet street, a car honked and a man in a suit threw a coffee cup at me. It splashed on my clothes. The suit man shouted something about "not letting singers get cozy with owners." My rage returned with black speed.
I grabbed the man and pulled him down to the pavement. I didn't kick. I didn't want more trouble. I wanted the man to feel the weight of being small in his noise. People recorded. The usual. The videos came. The comments came.
This time Tate did something different.
He stood in the video and said, "Enough."
Fifteen cameras watched him talk to the owner who had thrown the cup. He did not shout. He did not buy off the other man. He offered a public apology, signed a promise, and gave me a check for the damage done to my dress and to the nights I'd lost to shame.
I looked at him and felt something like danger and something like relief. I hated relying on men who could pay things to make me safe. But I also saw how the world learned fast when someone with a name used it for truth. The check paid months of rent.
"That's not why I am here," he said later. "Just pay me back with a beer if you like."
"Keep your money," I said. "Buy someone a better cause."
He didn't argue. He handed me a small paper bag of pork buns.
"Are you owed an apology?" he asked.
"Not by men with coffee cups," I said.
"Then let's eat," he said.
We sat on hotel steps with warm bread and slow steam. He looked at me as if I were a chapter in a book he wanted to read slowly. I felt like a woman with one hand on my life and the other reaching for a new thing.
"I shouldn't like you," I said.
"Why not?" he asked.
"Because I don't like men," I said. "I said it loud and I meant it."
"Maybe you don't like boys who pretend," he said. "But maybe you like men who open doors."
"That's a small difference."
"Small things make big rooms," he said.
I laughed. "You sound like you sell hotels."
"I do," he admitted. "I also build them."
We ate quietly. For the first time in years, I let someone walk with me most of the way home without feeling like I might trip.
The summer light grew thin. The hotel gave me a weekly slot. Jasper booked me for a festival. My voice grew steadier. I learned to take money and keep my head. I learned the small trick of letting men help without letting them change the rules of my life.
Then the day came when William Dalton posted a long apology. He said he had been wrong. He said he begged for forgiveness. He said he had been young and foolish.
"Good," I thought. "Say it."
I knew he would not get what I wanted: an honest shame. I wanted a public apology with consequences. I wanted him to be small and to stay small. Justice, to me, meant not that he suffer forever but that he stop hurting people.
Tate did more than I asked. He called a small press conference at the hotel lobby. He invited the crowd and the cameras.
"Miss Ella Gordon," he said into the microphone with a charm like a door being opened so people could walk through it, "has asked the city for a safe night program. We are launching a fund to pay for security for performers for three months. I will add the hotel's support. Mistakes should teach, not destroy."
The cameras blinked. The crowd cheered. The fund was small but real. William paid a sum to the fund as part of his reconciliation. He agreed to public service and gave music lessons to kids.
People liked a neat ending. I liked a fair one. My justice did not have flames. It had structure. It had a chance for the wrong man to change.
After the conference someone asked me into the lobby. "Why did you let Tate do this?" they asked.
"Because it helps," I said. "Because sometimes the only way the city listens is when money buys a microphone."
They frowned. "You're not just in it for the money."
"Neither is Tate," I said. "He can buy silence. He bought a program instead."
Time marched. My songs made me a small name in a big city. Jasper recommended me for a TV spot. I sang on a morning show. I met more people. I traveled. I kept my rule: keep my life. Do not let a man write the story.
Tate kept showing up. He would stand at the back of the room, a safe shadow, and then vanish. Once, when a reporter asked him if he wanted to date me, he said, "I'm learning. People who know me don't expect me to be simple. But I like brave people."
"Are you brave?" I asked.
"I can be," he said. "I have money. That does not make me brave."
"Then what does?"
"Standing where you stand," he said. "And singing the song you sang."
We both understood that the city is full of men who use coins for power. We also understood that coins could be used to make rooms safer.
The last part of our story was not fireworks. It was small and true. Tate did not buy me, he paid for a stage I could keep. He did not make me his. He asked, many times in small ways, and I answered in small ways.
One evening on a cold street when everything smelled of rain, he took my hand.
"Do you want more?" he asked.
"No," I said at first.
"Then what do you want?"
"I want to sing without being used," I said. "I want to keep my own voice."
"You will," he said. "If you want me, I will be here. Not to buy you, but to stand and listen."
I would not make a vow. I had made promises to myself that I intended to keep. But I let my fingers rest for a beat in his.
"Listen with me then," I said.
He smiled like someone whose name had been kept clean. "I will."
A week later there was a small ceremony at the hotel. People stood around in soft suits and plain shirts, the kind of mix that city life makes. A plaque was placed on the wall that said: "For safe nights and honest songs."
I touched the plaque with a small, precise finger. I looked at Tate and at my friends—Ellis and Kamryn and Jasper. They smiled in ways that meant "we knew you would." Jacob winked like a guilty uncle.
"We did it," Ellis said.
"We did," I said.
At the end of the night, as I walked home, someone shouted from the taxi line. "Ella!"
I turned. A woman held a small flyer paper in hand. She was a singer in training, eyes wide and nervous. "Your song saved me one night," she said. "I want to say thank you."
I looked at her. I looked at Tate, who had walked halfway with me.
"Thank you," I said. "Sing loud."
She hugged me quick and left. I felt like the city had folded me into a small map. I was precise. I was honest. I was careful.
I still didn't like men as a rule.
But I did not mind one man who had learned to open doors and leave them unlocked.
When he walked me to my little yard and I found the U-shaped pillow by my door, I laughed.
"Stop," I said. "You cannot buy every small comfort."
"I didn't buy comfort," he said. "I bought you sleep."
We sat on the step in the night and ate cold pork buns. The lights of the hotel were distant like a story. He took my hand again, careful and steady.
"Tell me a secret," he said.
"I don't keep secrets from friends," I answered.
"Are we friends, then?" he asked.
"We are people who stand for each other," I said. "That may be enough."
He looked at me long enough to hold the look like a small treasure.
When he leaned in and kissed my forehead, it felt like someone handing me a warm scarf. I did not ask for forever. I did not give it.
"Good night," he whispered.
"Good night," I answered.
I went inside with my pillow and the small certainty of my voice in my chest. The city hummed with the sound of things that had to be managed. Men shouted. Rain fell. A man slept in a hotel with a name like cash in his pocket.
I slept like someone who had found balance desk by desk, song by song, small truth by small truth.
And in the morning, I woke and sang.
The End
— Thank you for reading —