Single White Failure

by G. J. H. Sibson

  ‘Christ where’s Rocky, Bullwinkle!’ Raj blurts.

  You have never seen a bunch of such unappealing insipid looking girls. This is getting worse by the minute. I think to myself how harsh I’m being but, after all, this is not a show on how to make friends and delve into each other’s great personalities. This is brutal honesty. We are all here to see if we can meet someone we are attracted to. And in the fancying stakes, it is a serious consideration whether the person sitting opposite me is cute or downright minging.

  If I say they are all short and dumpy with greasy hair, I’m being kind. They are dressed like 15-year-old schoolgirls who haven’t made the transition from troubled teenager to young woman. It’s as if they don’t know what looks good on them or what goes with what.

  What am I going to do? We sit, dumbfounded. After a few more minutes my two git mates realise it doesn’t affect them in the slightest and, actually, it just makes the situation all the more entertaining. I now have to chat up a gaggle of unattractive 16-year-olds.

  How can I do this? I am stuck between a rock and a hard place. The cameras will record me chatting up these girls before I am required to give them either the thumbs up or the thumbs down.

  ‘Guys,’ I plead, ‘there isn’t one girl here that I’d like to go on a date with.’

  ‘Don’t worry Max,’ says Ed, ’I’m sure they’re all very nice.’

  ‘You know that’s irrelevant. I’m sure they’re all very nice but I’m supposed to actually fancy one, some, of them. But if I say that on national TV, all the viewers will think that I’m a right arrogant wanker.

  ‘You could just lie,’ Raj says, like he’s discovered the theory of relativity.

  ‘Yes, but if I pretend to like one or two, this results in several problems; firstly a serious loss of cool points and further ridicule at the hands of the likes of you two. Secondly, I would be acting. I’d have to pull it off first time round or I’d look insincere and appear a wanker all over again.’

  TV producers are powerful people, it’s so easy for them to edit the film in any light they choose, they are Gods. They can make you look however they want, this is the stuff that Big Brother and all the other fly-on-the-wall docusoaps are made of.

  I’m buggered.

  There is nothing for it – I have to run.

  ‘Guys, get your coats we’re leaving!’ I babble desperately.

  They are plunged into silence.

  ‘You can’t leave, they need you for the show, who else will do it?’ Ed says, with an air of genuine sobriety.

  ‘Ed, I don’t give a rat’s arse, look at those women.’ He peers over. ’Do you want to chat them up on TV?’ I say.

  ‘But you’ve already done the pre-date interview thing, you can’t leave now.’

  ‘If I’m not in the rest of it, then they won’t use the interview part, will they?’

  ‘That’s not the point.’

  ‘Mate, this isn’t the time for unwavering loyalty, I’m not about to make myself look like a twit on national television for that moron Gary!’

  At that moment, from the basement, the producer, Mike, emerges with a pair of sound recorder’s headphones around his neck. He comes bounding over towards us.

  ‘Right Max, we’re ready for you if you want to come down to the Speed Dating room.’ Mike says Speed Dating as if he’s a gameshow host, the only thing missing are the pistol shot hand gestures. Twunt.

  ‘Yeah sure, we’ll just finish our drinks and come straight down.’ I stand there smiling, knowing inside that he’d be ranting, raving and cursing my name in about five minutes time. Still smiling, I watch him descend into the basement, or the torture room, whichever way you want to look at it. As soon as his receding foppy mane disappears out of sight, I dart over to my near-pickled mates, ‘Right, we have to go now, he wants us down there asap.’

  Raj pipes up with the gem, ‘The only problem is that my jacket’s down there.’ He looks over towards the stairs that Producer Mike has just descended.

  ‘Shit,’ I say, despairingly. ‘Well you’re going to have to go down there and get it!’

  ‘What am I gonna say, it’ll look a bit suss?’

  ‘I don’t know, say you need to make a phone call and your mobile’s in your coat,’ this is the first helpful thing that Ed has said all night.

  As Ed and I put our coats on, we watch a rather sheepish Raj tread carefully down the steps into the makeshift studio. A few moments pass, before he reappears, clutching his Aquascutum three-quarter length.

  We saunter over to Raj. Without speaking, we just nod to one another. I throw back the remainder of my G&T, Ed opens his gullet and downs the dregs of his Guinness. Coolly, we breeze out of the bar into an unusually quiet Leicester Square. It’s around eight o’clock, and there’s a continental warmth in the air. We stand for a moment with our backs to the glass door. We must look as if we’ve just stepped out for a final fag. None of us actually smoke. I look casually to my left and take a step in the direction of the main square. The three of us walk along the length of the bar’s plate glass window, resisting the urge to look back inside. After five or six regular paces, and what seemed like several minutes, we pass the end of the window. Finally, we are out of sight.

  ‘Peg it!’

  10

  Mr Nice

  Why is it that moths are attracted to the flame of a candle? Even when they see another one get its wings burnt, it doesn’t seem to teach them a lesson, they still go at that flame. Despite the inevitable, something draws the moth to the golden flickering warmth. Perhaps it’s the excitement or the danger, your guess is as good as mine. Maybe the masochistic moth knows it’s fatal, but thinks, ‘What the heck, my wings need a good singeing.’ Women, like these [fragile] moths, can be masochistic in that way too.

  I’m sitting outside a pub in Camden Town in the early evening watching such a moth flirt with a nightlight that the waitress has just brought to my table. It has always foxed me how women can be attracted to the bad boy type. The male offspring who is of dubious parentage – the bastard. They love the idea of the guy that treats them, well frankly, like shit. And yet, simultaneously, they hate the idea of being used, of being treated like crap. But they’re not interested in Mr Nice. Perhaps he appears sexually less endowed or he doesn’t provide enough of a challenge. Perhaps, the girl thinks that this time, the flame won’t burn her wings, or that deep down, El Git has a heart of gold and that she will be the girl to set it free. However, I’m sure that if she did actually tame the male shrew, the attraction would instantly disappear. Unless, of course, the affair prompted frequent trips to Tiffany’s, by way of compensation.

  I have an old friend who is the biggest shit to women that I have ever come across. Due to his legendary exploits he is known simply as ‘Dirty Dave,’ or just plain ‘Dirty’. Dirty is a tall guy with a flanker’s build and all the arrogance of a drunken rugby player. His hair is a ruffled mop of clipped brown, complete with that public school waxed quiff at the front – you know, Tintin with big balls. He works in advertising and while he’s not at all creative, he drinks and lunches all day as if he were born to it. I suppose he was, sort of. He constantly has that dress-down-Friday look about him. When you have a conversation with Dirty, everything is a bit of ‘something-action’ or there has been a ‘schoolboy error’.

  Dirty was one of the guys that made up my close circle of mates at uni. He was a year ahead of the rest of us and he played the role of the rebellious prefect at boarding school who took you under his wing and showed you the tricks of survival: how to roll cigarettes, how to smuggle drink into the dorms and how to conceal a blow-up doll about your person while still inflated. He was a good teacher. He’s also a good friend and generous in everything he does, even with his women – what’s his is yours. Dirty is always single, even if he happens to be attached. And the thing is, most of his women know that this is the case, even the serious ones. Dirty is one of those guys who is firmly of the opinion that if it’s
the end of the evening and you haven’t scored with the cute chick, or the next one down the food chain, then grab the munter. In fact, at the beginning of the evening, why not head for the munter anyway because she’ll be standing next to her cute friend who is expecting to get all the attention. According to the Dirty school of thought, Miss Hound of the Baskervilles will be so pleased to have you fawning over her, that you’ll be getting your rocks off in no time. After all, man cannot live on gourmet meals alone – occasionally you need a microwave meal for one, or even the odd kebab that you know is nothing more than dog meat. In short, a hole is better than your hand! That’s Dirty.

  He once went out with a girl whom he himself described as so fat and ugly that he could only have sex with the lights off. He dubbed her Jabba the Hut t. Once she questioned the lack of soft lighting during their nocturnal acrobatics and asked if, just for once, they couldn’t make love with the light on. Eventually, by way of compromise, Dirty flipped her onto her front, and only then turned the bedside lamp on.

  There was another time when he had been shagging one of his lovely lasses for four nights on the trot and somewhat bored he managed to negotiate a night off with the boys. This delightful girl had recently given Dirty a set of keys to her Notting Hill flat. When he staggered in at 3 am, a little worse for wear, there she was, being humped by some random bloke. Dirty, far from being annoyed, hollered a ‘good effort’ to the chap, doing the wheelbarrow with his girlfriend around the living room floor, and invited him to help himself to a beer in the fridge when he was done. With that he simply closed the door and headed across town to boff some other girl he was seeing on the side. That’s Dirty.

  Dirty and I have spoken many times about the anomaly of women being attracted to Mr Bastard. During these discussions he usually shakes his head at me in despair, much to my annoyance. He criticises me for promising women too much, maintaining that he’s always up front with women, that he promises them nothing other than sex and the odd nice dinner. And they’re always more than willing to accept. To Dirty, dating is like prostitution; money is invested by way of dinner and your dividend is received later that night, in the form of good old-fashioned fellatio. Dirty can have sex with a girl one night and fall asleep after he has climaxed only to kick her out the next morning so that he can breakfast in peace. The lucky lady will probably not hear a thing for a week or two and then receive a call out of the blue from Dirty to arrange another romp. Invariably she’ll be up for another session. If not, she certainly won’t hold a grudge against him. She may moan to her friends, but she certainly won’t talk to him about how she’s feeling.

  With me, I make love to them at night, pay attention to their wants and desires, make them breakfast in the morning and bring them freshly ground Jamaican coffee in bed. I’ve always been a candles-and-petals-man, I’m not a fan of the straight to it shagging. The difference is, if I don’t call for 24 hours I’m Satan incarnate. The fact I was probably averting some kind of domestic disaster, helping in the homeless shelter or giving blood is neither here nor there. Granted, none of us are quite el virtuoso but, Dirty aside, we aren’t necessarily into the four F’s (Find ’em, Feel ’em, Fuck ’em, Forget ’em).

  On one memorable occasion, Dirty and I were on holiday in Barbados, staying at a family friend’s apartment, as we tend to do each year. It’s a sort of high-class bloke’s holiday. Actually, who am I kidding?! Posh location, agenda always the same, be it Mullins or Magaluf. One particular evening, we went out partying at Harbour Lights, a nightclub by the beach on the outskirts of Bridgetown. It’s a tourist pleasure spot, and a major pick up joint on the island. It wasn’t long before we hooked up with a couple of English girls. Predictably they were air hostesses, Virgin girls, on the island for a few days layover before flying back to London. It didn’t take much convincing to get them back to our amazing sounding gaff. Now this apartment has to be seen to be believed. It is set into the shallow coral cliff overlooking the narrow strip of marching powder sand and azure sea. Under the lounge a whitewashed terrace with plunge pool has steps that lead down into the water. This place is the perfect pulling pad.

  The engine of our yellow Mini Moke cut, and we free-wheeled through the palm trees that surround the condo. Dukes of Hazzard-style, we scrambled out to the clicks and screeches of tree frogs and crickets – a Caribbean welcome.

  The girls made an ungainly exit, their short skirts really weren’t made for being cramped in the back of an open top jeep. Both the girls had dyed blonde hair. To be honest, they looked as stereotypically air-stewardess as you can get. Hair, body, tan, clothes – the whole shebang. Frankly, it was quite a relief, because Dirty and had only been commenting on the flight over that the standard of air hostesses has deteriorated rapidly. They all seem to be hefty trolls and no amount of foundation will disguise the ugliness. Gone are the busty, aloof model types – the new breed of trolley-dollies can hardly fit down the aisle, you daren’t refuse their pack of nibbles on take-off.

  Slightly tipsy, with the girls holding onto our arms for support, we staggered up the path to the front door. Dirty, after several attempts, managed to get the key in the lock. As we got in, I headed straight for the fridge to get the Pouilly-Fuissé that we’d left chilling. Unbeknown to me, as I was rinsing the glasses, Dirty was unceremoniously dragging his bird off to the bedroom. I think he must have left his troglodyte’s club in the lounge. I returned to the living room to find my girl peering through the white jalousies, out at the moon, whose reflection was flirting with the inky Caribbean sea. Dirty was nowhere to be seen.

  ‘Shall we go down to the terrace for some wine?’ I said to her.

  As we’re leaving, who should fall out of his bedroom but Dirty, stark-bollock naked save for a towel the size of a small flannel, which just covered his essentials.

  ‘Hang on, hold this,’ despairingly I passed the bottle and second glass to Ann. We only got chatting to her because Dirty had noticed her name badge – ‘Hey, you’re a one-woman airline… Pan Ann – I always wanted to get my wings with them!’

  I wandered over the white tile floor to Dirty, who was stifling a laugh while appearing desperately agitated. He whispered frantically in my ear. Having answered his plea, he winked and slapped me on the back affectionately. I returned to where Ann was standing at the top of the steps to the terrace and pool.

  ‘Is he alright, what did he want?’ she asks.

  I couldn’t think of a good lie that quickly, ‘He wanted to know your friend’s name.’

  See what I mean? Within seconds of getting back to the pad, Dirty was humping her brains out, while I was another two hours before I even got to frenchy Ann. Instead, we talked all kinds of crap under the stars, sipping our rather good Fuissé.

  ‘Look, girls love the bad-boy type, they like being treated like crap. It might be a cliché, but there’s some truth in treating ’em mean to keep ’em keen.’ Dirty tried to explain the concept of being a bastard to me for the umpteenth time the next day, over flying fish and a cool Banks beer. Apparently, by the time I was uncorking the vino last night, Dirty had already shot his load and was drifting off to sleep. According to Dirty, I promise women what they want from a long-term boyfriend. They get pissed off with me because I am attentive, because I’m romantic. When things inevitably don’t work out they are seriously pissed off. Whereas they never expect anything from him, the Bastard. They know what’s going to happen.

  ‘You see, they treat you better, the worse you treat them. Mate, they lap it up,’ Dirty tried to convince me further.

  ‘So let me get this right, you’re telling me that if I treat women like shit, they’ll love me for it and come back for more?’ I asked in disbelief.

  ‘Precisely,’ Dirty said, sipping his rum punch chaser.

  ‘The thing is though, I’m not naturally an arsehole,’ I pleaded.

  ‘So learn to be one – give ’em some bastard action, you fucking woman!’

  So, in short, I love to cook meals for
my woman, I take pride in my personal grooming, and clothes are of the utmost importance to me, I even buy flowers (okay so sometimes they are for me). And, what’s more, I have a caring nature, I am a considerate gentleman, I respect women and I am both thoughtful and romantic. And yet, I can’t find a woman who has her sights set on anything but waltzing me down the aisle.

  I am the ineligible bachelor.

  Perhaps there is something in what Dirty was saying, for once. My renaissance man side is clearly a fundamental flaw in my game plan. I think of Ed and Raj who are fellow Mr Nices, in fact all my friends apart from Dirty are decent blokes, and none of them can find a nice girlfriend either.

  Ed had been obsessed with a girl for years, from our uni days. He had idolised this girl, worshipped the ground she walked on. In fairness, Sara was pretty foxy, although perhaps a little full of herself and certainly ‘more R than F,’ as my mum would say. I’ve never known what that means exactly, but in other words she was a promiscuous hussy with style. Ed had been there for this girl when she had had family problems, he had all but done her degree for her, in general he had been her rock during those impressionable and formative years as an undergrad. Of course, I appreciate that this is no reason for her to date Ed but you have to ask yourself, why would you pass up the chance to go out with a man who respects you and has your best interests at heart in favour of strange looking bastards that treat you like dirt (her usual types) – only to complain about how you can’t find a nice guy?

  Like me, Ed is getting annoyed at hearing female friends talk of their attraction to rough bad boys and how they’re not attracted to nice men. I think that a few years of Sara had left him with a bitter taste in his mouth, somewhere between pure tannin and lime pith. Ed had made an assertive choice upon coming to London: he wanted to make a new start. He was fed up of being used, derided for his gentlemanly attitude to women and having his sensitive advances brutally turned down. To put it bluntly, he wanted pussy and he wanted it now. He decided he would become a bastard.