‘You must be Ed,’ she says to him, smiling. ‘I have some lovely girls coming for you this evening, you boys are going to have so much fun!’
That mischievous glint in her eye tells me everything I need to know. Through our masks we give each other an approving glance.
It’s not long before the first of the women start to arrive. Pippa is right, there are some fit looking girls. Although you can’t exactly be sure. The downside with the masked theme is that you don’t know what the girls actually look like. You have to go on her figure, I suppose. Briefly, a horrible image pops into my head; that one of these seemingly delectable creatures whips off her Venetian mask to reveal Richard Blackwood sneering back at me licentiously. And they say adverts don’t affect our subconscious.
‘Ed, what happens if we spend ages chatting a girl up, putting in the ground work, and then she turns out to be a bit of a hound?’
He thinks for a minute, and then says, ‘Well, pull her anyway, and when you get back to hers, ask her to keep the mask on.’
The girls have all made a tremendous effort, with lovely dresses and an array of fanciful masks. I feel shabby in my homemade job. All of a sudden there are mutterings from the other side of the bar. The mutterings become giggles. Someone must have arrived. Sure enough, moments later a new addition to the party is cutting a swathe through the bar. The person is wearing a brightly coloured papier-mâché mask that looks like a clown, with a very long red nose. Two round helium balloons, both gold, are tied to the back of his belt (it’s clearly a guy) and are caused to hover a foot or so above his head. He is heading towards us.
‘Hey, what’s happening knob-jockeys?’
We should have known it would be Raj.
‘Ha, what on earth are you wearing?’ Ed inquires, justifiably.
‘It’s a Latino carnival mask,’ Raj begins to explain. ‘I thought the long nose would infer length in other, more important areas.’
Raj looks up at Ed, ‘See you had the same idea, mate, but I guess you’re making an ironic statement.’
Raj starts laughing but Ed just acts aloof, drawing himself up as if to rise above the quip. I can tell Raj is smiling cheekily, just like his Venetian mask; its large red lips are shaped into a perpetual mischievous grin.
‘Same with the balloons,’ he points upwards, as if we hadn’t noticed, ‘subliminal messaging.’
‘Yes, very subtle,’ I laugh.
Having furnished the latecomer with a whiskey and coke, we stand in semi-silence, just scoping out the joint. We perform the ritual that all men go through they enter a bar or club or, for that matter, anywhere – the Rating Ritual. It’s an automatic procedure I’ve performed since puberty, when I stopped screaming “yuck” at the television each time I saw a couple kiss. I’m like an automaton, a sleazy Robocop. And when you’re part of a group you all do it at the same time, in silence. There is an unspoken understanding that we all have to complete this ritual before the evening can continue. The odd nod or wink is permitted, to draw your fellow Neanderthals’ attention to an especially hot target. Other than that there is no talking, no discussion. This is something we have to do for ourselves. Once the first round has been bought, and we’re steadily sinking our first bottle of beer, only then will we compare notes.
Now my eyes flit from one girl to the next. The rating begins. Yes. No. No. Definitely not. Ten pinter. Body yes, face no. Face yes, body no. Respectfully doable. No. Dear God, no. Eminently doable. And so it continues.
After a few minutes of this we enter the conflab stage of the ritual. After much weighing up a consensus is reached and we agree to head for a group of girls standing on their own, by the far side of the bar. The four girls are all holding masks to their eyes, the types on sticks that provide just enough mystery to the bearer. Their masks are an elegant tease, which reveal enough of their pretty faces to let you know they are attractive.
‘Hi, we thought we’d come over and mingle, my name’s Max and this is…’ Before I can complete the introductions, the girl on the left chips in, ‘Hi Max I’m Mandy, and this is Claire, Sarah and Zoë.’ë
Okay, wait a goddamnpickinminute. This is not normal. The party has only just started. And this is the first group of girls we have approached and they haven’t told us to get lost, or given us the collective cold shoulder. Where are the incredulous looks that say ‘Er hel-lo, as if we’d be interested in you.’ In fact, unless I’m mistaken, they seem keen to chat. Incredible. This is a good start and far better going than I remember. Perhaps this will be easier than I expected.
‘Hi, this is my friend Edward.’
They all gape at the nose, and smile sweetly. In unison they say ‘Hi’ to Ed, like competitors harmonising for a girl band audition.
‘So what do you do?’ Mandy asks.
And there it is; a question that I would grow to hear and recognise for what it truly is – a part of a girl’s own Rating Ritual. There’s a silence that always follows this most loaded of questions, which is so incredibly uncomfortable and embarrassing. Even now their eyes are wide open and they are leaning ever more slightly forward, in anticipation of our answer. I could swear that they are chanting under their breath ‘Let it be good; doctor, lawyer, banker, millionaire.’ Later, I would learn that the answer to this question can, but not necessarily, change your fate for the entire evening. But at this early stage in my new dating life I didn’t think anything of it. In the future I would see this curveball coming a mile off. I answer honestly and innocently.
‘Well I’m in PR,’ I say.
‘And I’m a barrister,’ Ed adds.
Like spectators on Wimbledon’s centre court, the girls shift their focus from me to Ed and finally rest upon the ridiculously dressed Raj.
‘Yeah, and I’m Ron Jeremy’s body-double,’ Raj blurts.
The girls don’t laugh. I don’t think they had even noticed him, which isn’t easy. They are almost startled by the enormity of his mask’s nose. Their eyes, now wide open with intrigue, move from his face to the two floating golden globes, bobbing arrogantly above his head. The mask smiles back at them.
‘Seriously though, I’m in advertising, I work at Saatchi’s,’ Raj decides to tell the truth, he must have spotted the loaded question too. At hearing our professions there had been a sudden release, you could almost hear their whoops of joy. It was a sort of climax, a euphoria at the promise of a man with cash. Once they regained their composure and the initial excitement had passed, we moved onto other important topics like where do we live, have we bought or do we rent, do we have life assurance?
Before we knew it, the three of us had separated and were holding court with our own little harem of attentive listeners. This can’t be right, they are giggling in the right places at our inane jokes and surprisingly, my own group of three masked beauties genuinely seem interested in my story of how I fucked up my interview with Max Clifford. The next thing you know, they’ll be joining me in playing ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ on air guitar or offering to sort my FHM back catalogue by the Dewey Decimal system. Something is up. This has never happened before, that’s for sure. I actually think that these very attractive girls are all really keen. I look over to Ed, who is sweet talking his own posse of lovelies. He looks up and, tipping his bottle of Bud in my direction, acknowledges our initial success. I look towards Raj. He is lost in play with two blonde girls and his balloons.
It is at this point that a girl to my left grabs my arm.
‘Hi honey, how ya doin’?’ she says.
Her voice is like a lullaby. I can’t quite place her accent, it is clearly antipodean, but I never know the difference between the Kiwis and the Aussies. She is a tall, deep-tanned girl with an abundance of tight blonde curls cascading around her shoulders.
‘Hi, I’m having a great time, thanks. How about you?’
‘S’alright. I like your mask by the way.’ Her lips curl upwards at the corner. ‘It is supposed to be a Maori war mask, isn’t it?’
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��Er, yes, precisely,’ I say bluffing. ‘How did you know that?’
‘Well I grew up with the Maoris,’ she says, smiling again, this time to reveal a row of perfect white teeth.
Shit, are Maoris from Australia or New Zealand? It’s like that popular factoid; are polar bears from the Arctic and penguins from the Antarctic, or vice versa? I can never bloody remember. Wait, A for Aborigine and A for Australia, that means Maoris are from New Zealand. She’s a Kiwi.
‘So how long have you been over from New Zealand?’ I ask, as if the possibility that she is an Aussie had never entered my mind for a nanosecond.
‘Wow, I’m impressed, most people think I’m from Australia.’
‘Huh, well, how could they?!’
And we both share a contemptuous laugh at those ignoramuses.
‘Sorry, my name’s Max.’
‘Hi Max, I’m Leticia,’ she says.
We lean in and exchange kisses, her skin is so very soft. As we move apart, Leticia places her hands behind her head and undoes the black satin ribbon of her powder pink mask. The mask is like something Zorro might have worn, although not in pink, of course. She draws the mask from her face to expose a dainty nose and high cheekbones. Her blue eyes flash with passion.
This is the first time that this has happened to me. That a girl has approached me. She is the one that grabbed my arm. She came over here expressly to talk to me. She is attracted to me. Ed and Raj were right, we’re equals. We all want the same thing, London women are the way forward.
‘So Max, are you single or attached?’ and then she pauses, her gaze intensifies, ‘or attached and looking?’
Bloody hell, this girl doesn’t mince her words. So, I proceed to tell her about my recent release, sorry I mean the tragedy of my recent break up with Jessica. Then we get onto the age thing. She’s surprised that I’m only 26. I didn’t realise then that age could be such an issue. As a 26-year-old guy no one will look at you twice if you’re seen out arm-in-arm with an 18-year-old girl or a 40-year-old woman. But, it seems, the same thing cannot be said to apply to a woman in her mid-thirties upwards who is seeing a man ten years her junior. Other people judge her in a way that the man is never judged. I reckoned this girl is somewhere around my own age. I tell her that I have recently turned 26.
‘Oh, so what star sign does that make you?’ she asks.
Okay, I know what you’re thinking, that should have been alarm bell number one, cue for me to make that mad dash to my Benedictine Brothers. But for some reason I choose to ignore it.
‘I’m a Scorpio,’ I answer.
‘A Scorpio, eh?’ she shouts out, enthusiastically.
Leticia reels off all the qualities, and some of the flaws, pertaining to male Scorpios. It’s all the usual claptrap, but I’m enjoying it. I always think that talking about someone’s star sign is like palm reading at high school. It’s an excuse to flirt with the other person outrageously while maintaining the pretence of an interesting discussion. As she comes to the end of her list, she says mischievously, ‘And, as you’ll probably know, Scorpio is the sexual sign of the Zodiac.’ She pauses for a second, considering me, ‘Do you like sex?’
Holy crap where did that come from? I just about manage to keep down my swig of beer that I had been drinking coolly as she paddled her astrological mumbo jumbo.
‘Well, yes, I er, like it as much as the next guy.’
Okay, so I need to improve my chat. In fairness, I wasn’t expecting a glamazon from down under to take me by the scruff of my neck and out ante me in the flirting stakes.
‘C’mon Max, are you good in bed?’ She’s showing me no mercy.
Even I can see by now that this girl is clearly ‘up for it’. The thing is, it’s fazing me slightly to have a woman like Leticia talking to me in such a direct manner. Isn’t this my job, to try it on with the dodgy questions? There is a marked difference, however, when a girl flirts with a guy like this, the lines employed cease to be sleazy and pervy. In fact, they have a newly found air of acceptability about them.
I am not used to women being so direct, but this is nothing, she is just getting warmed up. I’m trying to act cool, as if I’ve been asked these questions by even more attractive women a hundred times before.
‘Well I guess you’d have to ask the women I’ve been with for the answer, I couldn’t say.’
I don’t think I’m succeeding. I thought that being coy would be the best tack to take. If I’m being honest, I’m probably hoping to avoid further uncomfortable questioning and bumble my way along to a cheeky snog. Somehow I don’t think that Leticia will let me off that easy.
‘Bollocks,’ she screams out. ‘You must know if you’re good or not?’
There’s no point in putting up a fight with a chick like this. There’s nothing for it but to be as frank in this as her. And I suppose that she has a point, I must have some notion of my sexual prowess, or the lack thereof. So, I tell her that I think I am pretty damn good. And what about her? What a surprise, she loves sex.
‘Max…’ her eyes look up at me seductively, she’s playing erotically with rim of her glass.
Dear God, it’s like something out of a cheesy Channel 5 soft porn film.
‘What kind of thing do you like doing in bed?’ she grins cheekily as she polishes off her question and devours the olive in her martini.
I don’t believe someone I have known for all of five minutes has ever asked me that before. I know what the answer is, but it feels a little uncomfortable coming out with it. After all, what is acceptable to some people isn’t to others. Will she judge me? I decide to couch my reply in non-committal phraseology.
‘Well, I think it’s important to be confident, find out what each other likes and most importantly, to be totally relaxed and utterly uninhibited.’
A good answer I thought. But it is clearly not sufficient for Leticia. She laughs, and I can’t help thinking that it’s partially at me. I feel about as composed as a 15-year-old who’s just caught a glimpse of a girl’s boob for the first time.
‘I agree,’ she says, ‘that’s all good, but tell me what you would do to me.’
Jesus. The only time a girl has asked me that is in the heat of the moment when things start getting a little dirty. And then it’s in the confines of my bedroom (or hers) rather than in a bustling bar. Each time I go to answer I stop, worrying again, what is acceptable, what isn’t. Do I mention positions, places, touching, kissing, penetrating? Fuck. I keep it quite romantic, and throw in the odd evocative word like mouth, lick, penetrate and taste. I try and repaint the Hollywood lovemaking scene. She’s groaning and murmuring as I tell her. It’s kind of getting me going, I have to stop myself before I go too far and introduce vegetables and whisks into my list. For the first time, it seems to satisfy her.
Now it’s her turn.
‘I like to use all different types of sensations, hot…’ there’s a pause as she sips her drink and allows one of the ice cubes to flow between those luscious lips and loll around on her tongue, ‘… and cold!’
All of a sudden she loses control of the ice cube, which, having a mind of its own, escapes her ample mouth. It dribbles down her chin like a small glacier before dropping to the floor. We pretend it hasn’t happened. Trying to regain her cool composure the little hussy returns to her sexual fantasies. The words she uses are considerably more explicit than mine. Phrases like ‘on my knees’ and ‘taking you all in’ seem to crop up at regular intervals.
‘Ultimately, I like to take control, and do every position possible.’
When you are making a move on a girl, or as in this case when she is about to devour you, there is nothing quite as annoying as when her single friend(s) interrupts your pathetic flirting. Where a girl is out on the pull with a friend who is attached or has, herself, been unsuccessful in pulling, that friend is the antithesis of the guy’s wingman. If I’m out with Raj and he is about to score with a girl by the bar, but I have had no luck of my own, I will still do everyth
ing in my power to make his journey to the honeypot as slick as possible. Sometimes, if they come as a pair, this will require me to take one for the team. This is a particularly unpleasant task if the subject of my friend’s lasciviousness has a moose for a mate who is acting a gooseberry. To help him out you are obliged to crack on to the minging friend. Another time springs to mind, my old friend Dirty Dave saw me getting it on with a girl on the dancefloor of a club in Marbella. Knowing that I had no local currency of my own, my brother-in-arms brushed past me and shoved a wad of euros into my sweaty palm, enough for a taxi ride back to her hotel. Women don’t seem to operate like that. Unless the girl’s friend has scored herself, the jolly green demon possesses miss singleton and she will do everything in her power to derail your attempts to get into her best friend’s knickers.
A girl has suddenly interrupted our salacious banter and half-wedged herself between Leticia and myself. With her back to me, and ignoring my very existence, the girl says, ‘Leticia, I think I’m heading off now.’
It’s the unsuccessful best friend.
‘Oh great,’ I’m thinking. ‘We get this far, being as erotic as hell, and now she’s going to sod off.’
‘Are you coming with me?’ the thoughtful bint asks Leticia, continuing to ignore my presence.
Leticia’s gaze hasn’t left mine since her friend appeared. I know that I’m probably looking downright despondent at the thought of her going home. A man may like to think of himself as the predator, and on the whole it’s true, but when a woman knows what she wants then nothing will stand in her way. Not that I’m complaining, of course.
‘Am I leaving now?’ my little minx asks me.
Without any pretence of politeness the friend finally reels round and scowls at me. It’s as if she’s saying ‘How dare you speak to my friend, she can do ten times better than you, you little sex obsessed shit!’ I look from Leticia to the unimpressed mate, and back to Leticia, who is still smiling mischievously. I’m sure she’s wanting me to say ‘No, you’re not going yet, I want you to stay.’ But I can’t. I’m not sure why exactly. The friend has now replaced the scowl with a look of sheer contempt, her hands are on her hips. I imagine her calling out, like an audience member on the Ricki Lake show, ‘Girlfriend, ya shud leave him!’ Leticia gets bored waiting for me to answer, I think she can sense the animosity in the air. In the end she answers for me, ‘No, I’m not leaving yet, he’s coming home with me.’
Single White Failure Page 3
