Dinner for Two

by Mike Gayle

  There’s a long silence from Izzy and then, with a sigh, she turns towards me. ‘You know I love you, don’t you?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘You know we have this little thing called a mortgage, don’t you?’

  ‘We have?’

  ‘Yeah, we have. Apparently the way it works is that every month we pay the bank a certain amount of money not to take away our home from us. It’s a relatively simple arrangement – well, except that it requires us to have money in the bank in the first place.’

  ‘You want me to get some work?’

  ‘That’s exactly what I want.’

  ‘I shouldn’t worry,’ I reply nonchalantly. ‘I’ll get some work. I mean, think about it. Between us we have enough friends working in the business – one or two will throw a bit of freelance stuff my way.’ I think for a moment. ‘Tell you what, just to show you what a good sport I am, I’ll even have a go at writing a relationship feature for you.’ I wink at her in a manner clearly intended to wind her up. ‘Something nice and touchy-feely about men. I mean, how hard can it be?’

  ‘Harder than you think,’ she replies.

  ‘What do you want me to write about?’

  ‘Anything you want.’

  ‘How much do I get?’

  ‘Three hundred and fifty pounds. That’s the standard rate for new freelancers.’

  ‘I’ll do it for four hundred.’

  ‘Three hundred and fifty. Take it or leave it.’

  ‘Okay, I’ll take it on one condition.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I get to sleep with my commissioning editor.’

  type

  I begin to write the feature late on Sunday afternoon while Izzy is working her way through the Sunday papers. At first I don’t take it seriously and my early drafts are terrible but then I add more to it, editing and deleting copy that no longer fits. By the time I finish it, on Monday afternoon, it’s 1200 words too long because I’ve got so carried away with it. It feels strange to write this kind of article for this kind of audience: I feel like I’ve been using a different part of my brain. It’s such a relief not to have to search for some pompous alternative to the word ‘crap’, and not to be transcribing the utterance of some dreary musician and trying to make them sound interesting. In fact, for the first time in a long while I’m genuinely excited about the work I’m producing. By about three o’clock I’ve managed to trim the piece to roughly 800 words. I entitle it: ‘The Art of Talking Without Talking’, and e-mail it to Izzy at work.

  speak

  To: izzy.harding@bdp.co.uk

  From: dave_atch01@hotmail.com

  Subject: Femme article

  Dear Babe,

  Here’s the article I promised you enclosed as an attachment. It is to be truthful a little cliché d and not at all me. I’m not a big fan of invoking sexual stereotypes but I reasoned for this kind of thing I had to be a little extra blokey, and while you’ve never been much of a practitioner of the art of talking without talking I’ve known plenty of women who are.

  love you

  Dave X

  PS You’ll notice that I’ve used anecdotes from our friends to illustrate the various points. I thought about changing the names to protect the innocent but it’s a lot funnier if I don’t . . .

  The Art of Talking Without Talking

  Here’s the scene: my mate Trevor is standing in Wax Lyrical with his girl friend when he gets the Look.

  ‘What?’he responds.

  ‘You know,’ she replies.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he protests.

  ‘If you loved me you’d know,’ she says. Then Trevor’s girlfriend storms off leaving him holding a box of scented candles.

  When, days later, he shares his story with me and the rest of our mates down the pub we all nod in silent recognition. ‘It’s the female art of talking without talking,’ I say. ‘It can really bugger up your day.’

  The art of talking without talking (henceforward known as ATWT) has long been a source of fascination and fear for mankind. I remember when a group of us were at the pub when one of our friends (a woman) came in crying. She exchanged one glance with my better half, then disappeared to the toilets.

  ‘What was that about?’ I asked my good lady.

  ‘She’s split up with Tony, she’s just had an argument with her mum, her cat’s sick, she can’t make her mind up about a strappy floral print dress she saw in Kookaï . . . oh, and she hates her job.’

  ‘You got all that from one look?’ I asked.

  ‘Of course,’ she replied. ‘Isn’t it obvious?’

  Okay, so that might be a slight exaggeration of what happened but it wasn’t far off. When the ATWT is used for the power of good it’s amazing, but when it’s used for the power of evil (i.e., against me) it’s truly scary.

  My first encounter with the ATWT came in my teenage years while I was hanging out in the park. I was minding my own business when a random girl appeared from nowhere, stood next to me, without saying a single word for half an hour, then disappeared. Next day at school I discovered that Melanie Chissock and I were now officially ‘going out’. How did this happen? The ATWT, that’s how. In her world, standing next to me was a declaration of love, while in my world it meant that she was either lost, bewildered or waiting for a bus. It was all very confusing.

  In the last fifteen years I’d like to think I’ve become more worldly wise, but when it comes to the ATWT I’m as hopeless as the teenage me. For example, I was at a party recently with the woman in my life. I’d chatted to a few people I didn’t know, had a bit of a dance and we’d disappeared home just after two. All in all I’m thinking it was a good night. In the car, however, I got the silent treatment. After much begging and pleading on my part I discover I’m guilty of being flirted with. ‘Who was flirting?’ I asked.

  ‘That trollop in the boob tube.’

  ‘Which one was that?’ I asked.

  ‘You don’t even know?’ she cried.

  The thing you have to realise about us men is that we’re very simple creatures: what you see is what you get. When it comes to reading between the lines we can’t – we’re illiterate – which is why having a go at us for not understanding why you’re upset when you refuse to tell us is both cruel and mean. It’s like smacking a puppy for leaving a deposit on the carpet when you had clearly stated in a seven-page document left in the kitchen drawer why it’s not the done thing. Men, like puppies, can’t read seven-page documents or find anything located in the kitchen drawer and, most of all, they can’t read women’s minds. Which is why if you ask us to guess what’s troubling you we will invariably get it wrong. We don’t do this on purpose: what we do is work on the assumption that, mentally speaking, you’re a bit like us. This means that there’s not a great deal on your mind to ‘read’ other than endless lists of top-ten favourite things, pictures of naked women and fluffy clouds. Even if we tried to put ourselves in your shoes there’d be problems. Have you ever tried walking in a pair of kitten-heeled mules that are several sizes too small? Exactly.

  The answer to the problem is, I’m afraid, a little obvious. In a straw poll of my mates down he pub six out of six of us agreed that the one thing we’d love the women in our lives to do is just tell us what’s wrong rather than us having to guess all the time. As my mate Trevor put it, ‘We’re reasonable people. If they just talked to us with their lips instead of their brain waves we’d know exactly what to do.’ So, there you have it. Save the guessing games for Christmas Day at your gran’s, the psychic exchange for Uri Geller and start talking to your man like a regular human being.

  post-it

  Izzy likes the article. In fact, she likes it so much that she forwards a copy to everyone in the Femme office for their amusement. Apparently it’s a job so well done that it’s going to be used in the next issue. I feel good. I feel like this is the beginning of something new. I’m so inspired that over the following week I make all the calls to friends in the trade that
I’d promised Izzy I’d make. I’m offered a reasonable amount of freelance work: a couple of gig reviews for a national newspaper (which I accept), a couple of shifts’ holiday cover next week at Loop, a music magazine that used to be one of Louder’s main rivals (which I turn down out of pride) and endless offers to help out on ailing music websites (which I also turn down). None of it really interests me in the way that writing the article for Femme had. It all seems so dry and overly familiar – so seen-it-all-before – that I can barely motivate myself. I’m even thinking seriously about a career change – something different from music journalism, such as becoming a secondary-school English teacher or going back to university to do a postgraduate degree. Anything seems to appeal, apart from what I’ve been spending the last ten years doing.

  select

  It’s eight o’clock on the following Friday night and Izzy, our friends and I are standing in our local video shop: Blockbuster on Fortis Green Road. The shop is full of people like us: a slightly older crowd for whom staying in and watching a video has become the new going-out-clubbing-and-drinking-too-much. We’ve been here for over half an hour without reaching a consensus. Lee has seen everything in the entire shop. Stella and Jenny had seen Gladiator twice when it came out at the cinema and say they want to see it again. Izzy is voting for Perfect Storm because it has some of the best cinematography ever seen and not because, as she points out to everyone with a smirk, she fancies the idea of ogling George Clooney in a wet T-shirt. Trevor, who is a huge fan of Hollywood gross-out comedies, can’t make up his mind between There’s Something About Mary and American Pie, but says he’s not bothered either way.

  The only person who hasn’t voiced an opinion is me. I haven’t decided yet because I’ve been wandering around the shop looking at the shelves housing all the videos that came out years ago, making a mental shortlist of how many I can find about babies. So far I’ve counted: Three Men and a Baby, Raising Arizona, Look Who’s Talking, Nine Months, Rosemary’s Baby, She’s Having a Baby, The Rug Rat Movie.

  My list would actually be funny if it wasn’t quite so sad.

  day

  Later that night, after an evening of Gladiator and Domino’s pizza I can’t sleep. I’m trying to get to grips with why I’m so desperate to be a father. I conclude that perhaps it’s less to do with the ticking of an imaginary biological clock – although that would make some sense – than my relationship with Izzy. After all, it’s classic TV-movie-of-the-week fodder: woman gets pregnant in the hope that it will bind her closer to her husband – but in this scenario I’m the woman. As far as I’m aware there’s nothing wrong with my relationship with Izzy. I love her. She loves me. We row occasionally about stupid things but always make up. Where’s the problem?

  I wonder if I’m bored because I’ve been with one woman for so long. But, again, the answer is no. I’m happy with her. I’m happy with just the two of us. We have what many people tell us is an enviable lifestyle. We both have (or had) cool careers, and, thanks largely to the money Izzy inherited when her father died we’ve got a foot in the property market without mortgaging our souls. In a lot of ways we have it all – but it doesn’t seem to mean anything any more.

  It isn’t that I think our life together is pointless without a baby. It’s rather that I feel having a baby would give us an extra reason to get out of bed, an extra reason to make things work. Some people don’t need that extra reason for their lives to be okay. I know this because I used to be one of them. But somewhere along the way I’ve switched sides: I’m now one of those who needs to have children, like I need to breathe. I’ve never been a big fan of the word ‘need’. I’ve never liked to need anything or anyone too much. One of the things that had first attracted me to Izzy was that she was so strong, so independent. Maybe this is my problem: after all this time as individuals I want us finally to be one.

  youth

  It’s Tuesday morning and I’m sitting at the kitchen table with my laptop, writing up a gig review from the previous evening, when my mobile rings. The display says: number withheld.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Hi, Dave, it’s me.’

  It’s Jenny.

  ‘Hi, Jen. What can I do for you?’

  ‘What are you up to?’

  ‘Writing a gig review.’

  ‘Were they any good?’

  ‘The band?’

  She laughs. ‘Yeah, of course I’m talking about the band.’

  ‘They were okay,’ I reply. ‘A bit derivative.’

  ‘Is that what you’re going to put in your review?’

  I laugh. Jenny never asks me anything to do with music unless she wants something. ‘What are you after?’ I enquire.

  ‘I need to ask you a massive favour.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘I’ve just seen that article you wrote for Izzy and, well, I was wondering if there was any chance you could do something for me?’

  ‘On what?’

  ‘It’s only a short piece. Four hundred words or so. I think you’d be really good at it. It’s easy money.’

  I can hear desperation in her voice.

  ‘It’s a teeny-weeny article about the lies teenage boys tell,’ she continues. ‘It won’t take you long and I know you’ve always made fun of what I do and everything but . . .’

  ‘I’ll do it,’ I say.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I said I’ll do it. I’ve just got this gig review to finish. It’ll take me half an hour and then I’ll start on your thing.’

  ‘Dave,’ says Jenny, ‘you are an absolute life-saver.’

  write

  To: Jenny.ottaker@peterborough.publishing.co.uk

  From: dave_atch01@hotmail.com

  Subject: Teen Scene boy lies article

  Dear Jen,

  Here’s the piece you wanted. I am pleased with my words of wisdom. Teenage boys won’t know what hit them when girls armed with my inside info lay into them! You’ll be pleased to know that I’m now taking myself off for a well-earned lunch at Café Crocodile on the Broadway. Mail me back when you’ve had a read.

  Yours with an invoice

  Dave H X

  Live and Let Lie – the top five tall tales boys tell

  LadLie:‘It’s just a scratch’

  The Total Truth: Boys are immune to pain. We stare anguish in the navel and tweak the chest hairs of affliction. From the lethal dangers of paper cuts to the touch-and-go nature of carpet burns, we’ll wince a bit and grit our teeth, but never ever admit we’re actually hurting. Why? Well, by pretending it doesn’t hurt we’re informing you by way of pantomime that we’re on the verge of blacking out from the pain. The result is that we get to look manly while you lavish love and sympathy on us like latter-day Florence Nightingales.

  LadLie: ‘My last girlfriend broke my heart’

  The Total Truth: Sometimes this is a lie and sometimes it’s more a bending of the truth. For instance, maybe his last girlfriend hurt him because she caught him kissing her best friend and whacked him in the shins. These are the kind of boys who think that if they say this type of stuff you’ll be extra nice because they’ll seem cute and vulnerable. The truth is that even if his last girlfriend did hurt him there’s a pretty strong chance that he hurt her too.

  LadLie: ‘I don’t care what I look like’

  The Total Truth: The messy hair, the untucked T-shirt, the smell of Polo Sport in the air – boys spend five minutes getting ready and they still manage to look great, right? Wrong! Welcome, girls, to the latest fashion trend in boys: The ‘I don’t care what I look like’ look. Boys spend hours in the bathroom scrubbing, cleaning, dousing and shaving. Then they take ages deciding what to wear. The result is a very studied state of cool. And you fall for it every time.

  LadLie: ‘I’ll phone you, honest’

  The Total Truth: This has to be the oldest untruth in the book of Lad Lies. Boys were using this one even before the invention of the telephone. In the Dark Ages knights out on a date with a da
msel would say, ‘I’ll carrier-pigeon you, honest,’ only for the damsel never to hear another word. Any boy who uses it knows that you know that it really means: ‘Thanks and everything, but I WILL NEVER SEE YOU AGAIN.’ No boy who really likes you will ever say it. And if a boy does say it, the best way to counter it is to respond: ‘That’s sweet of you, but I think you ought to know that I’m busy for the rest of my life.’

  LadLie: ‘It’s not you, it’s me’

  The Total Truth: It’s not you. It really is him. It’s the fact that he’s a useless lump. It’s the fact that he’s always eyeing up your best mates. It’s the fact that all the little things he used to do that you thought were charming are actually annoying. Yes, all these things are his fault. He knows this. Which is why he’s using the classic double bluff to make you think that it’s all your fault. They say, however, never bluff a bluffer – so bluff back. Tell him you know that it’s his fault, and that’s precisely why he’s being dumped.

  more

  When I return to the flat after lunch there’s a message on the answerphone from Jenny. I call her back and her assistant puts me through. ‘Hi, Dave,’ she says. ‘I absolutely love your piece. It’s really good stuff.’

  ‘Cheers,’ I reply. ‘Is that all you called to say? I thought for a minute there might be something wrong with it.’

  ‘No. It was perfect.’

  I can hear an element of uncertainty in her voice. ‘So what’s the problem then?’

  She sighs lightly. ‘The thing is I’ve got another favour to ask you and I feel bad asking because we’re friends and I don’t want you to think that I’m emotionally blackmailing you into doing it, even though I will really be in the crap if you don’t.’