‘Huh, hmm, yeass,’ I mutter, nodding and realizing that the Tellytubbies are currently more articulate than me. He is so close to me I might actually melt into a heap of desire on the floor. His hand on my back guides me out of the bar and into the crisp Soho night. The cool air is lovely on my sweaty armpits.
‘Thank you for getting me away from the psychotic gnome.’ I’m sure I’ll blush if I look into those eyes again so I look down at my fuck-me shoes instead.
‘Your shoes are really sexy,’ he says.
‘Oh, do you like them? They’re things of beauty, aren’t they?’
‘I tell you what, if you tell me all about shoes I’ll buy us a bottle of wine in Soho House.’
The combination of the words ‘shoes’ and ‘bottle of wine’ and the mention of Soho House, an exclusive members’ club, said by that voice with those eyes causes me to make this little squealing whinny of pleasure. He puts his hand in the small of my back. I feel a stirring in my tummy.
six
I am already regretting rule number 1. Paul and I are sitting on a battered brown leather sofa in a dark corner of Soho House. On the table in front of us is an ice bucket holding a bottle of Pouilly Fumé, two nearly empty wineglasses and a candle. This is unfamiliar territory for me. I have only been here once and that was when Julia was sleeping with a barman. We drank the house wine and she stole the elegant candleholder. It appears that Tuesday night is the new Thursday because the place is full. Paul has been gushing about my acting capabilities for the last ten minutes. He has to lean very close to me when he speaks so that I can hear him above the boisterous din. I suspect that I might be in heaven.
‘Do you know what I loved in that ad? The bit where you had cheese down your chin and you tried to wipe it off with your hand and then you got it on your sleeve, and I pissed myself when you took your shirt off and it was covered in grease and you just tossed it over your shoulder.’
‘Thank you.’ I blush.
‘Shame we couldn’t keep that bit in. It was very sexy,’ he says.
‘Thank you,’ I say, embarrassed and unsure of how you should respond when a handsome man tells you that you are sexy.
‘Bit risqué for Pizza Hut.’
‘Hmm. I got carried away. So tell me about you. Where do you live?’
‘Mortlake.’
‘Where the bloody hell’s that?’ I exclaim.
‘Near Barnes.’ He laughs.
‘Oh.’ I nod but I’ve never heard of Barnes either.
‘So, are you really single?’ he asks me. ‘It’s just I never would have expected to meet you at a speed-dating event. I thought I might meet you again on a shoot at some point.’
‘Er, yeah, I’m very single. I’ve been a spinster for years. I’d sort of given up on the whole love thing,’ I stutter. I wish I hadn’t mentioned the word ‘love’. I hope I haven’t scared him.
‘Hmmm.’ He nods. ‘I know what you mean. You don’t see a lot of happy relationships, do you?’
‘Exactly! My parents are the only happy couple I know.’
‘Same here, but that’s a rarity. Most people I know are miserable in relationships.’
‘I’d got to the point where I was mouthing the words “It’ll end in tears” when I saw happy couples kissing.’
‘Did you? I wouldn’t want to take you to a wedding!’ he taunts.
‘I’m great at weddings, I sing “This Is the Road to Hell” as the couple walk down the aisle and then drink a lot and talk about divorce statistics before dancing terribly and then vomiting.’
He laughs and then looks at me and says, ‘I had this break-up a while ago and I worry it’s put me off relationships for life.’
‘Oh no, what happened?’
‘I was going out with this girl for years; I thought she was the one, we were living together and then she came home one day and told me she didn’t love me any more and moved out.’
‘Ouch.’
‘Yeah.’
I look at Paul’s gorgeous sad face. I want to hug him and take his pain away. Instead I resort to inappropriately insulting his ex-girlfriend, whom I have never met.
‘Bitch.’
‘Hmm.’ He nods. His eyes are glazed as he remembers the devastatingly beautiful woman who savagely broke his heart.
‘Evil twisted daughter of Satan and, and . . . George Bush,’ I blurt.
Paul looks at me, shocked.
‘Sorry. There is a lot of inappropriate bollocks going around my head and sometimes it comes out of my mouth. I shouldn’t have said that. I’m sure she’s very nice.’
Paul smiles at me and places his hand on my knee.
‘I think that summed her up rather marvellously actually, and I’m a huge fan of inappropriate bollocks.’
I look at him with eyebrows raised.
‘In a conversational manner as opposed to being a fan of that part of the male anatomy.’
I nod at him, smiling.
‘It’s good that we both speak a lot of bollocks, isn’t it?’ he says.
I keep nodding and smiling like one of those dog statues that you see in the back of car windows.
‘So what made you decide to meet someone?’ he asks me.
‘A bizarre near-miss with a reality TV show, of all things.’ I sigh and then explain the series of events that led me to speed dating. When I get to the end I jump up and say, ‘I really have to go for a pee now!’ and try to winch myself off the sofa I have sunk into.
I sit on the very clean toilet and ponder. It is imperative that I don’t get too excited. If I get too excited I shall jinx it. He is not shamelessly flirting with me at all. We have simply bumped into each other after a long time and are catching up. I reapply make-up in front of the huge mirror and emerge into the foyer. Paul is standing in front of me carrying his coat.
‘You’re looking really great, by the way,’ he says.
‘So are you.’ I smile. He blushes. I find a man blushing almost as sexy as a man vacuuming.
‘I’m still shocked you’re single,’ he says.
‘What about you? You’re gorgeous and funny and successful. What’s wrong with the women of this town?’
‘I’m quite picky, I suppose, and, oh, I don’t know, it’s quite rare I really connect with someone.’ Then we look at each other for ages. Inside my inner demons are saying, ‘Don’t be stupid, Sarah, you’re a knob, a man like this could never be interested in you, you have the biggest bottom in the world and you’ve done a staggering amount of nothing in your life.’ But at the same time I am thinking, Kiss me, please, sod my own rules, shove them up the arse of dating, please just cup my face in your perfect hands and kiss me for ever.
‘We have to make a move. I just spotted a client in there. Dreadful man! How will you get home?’
‘Night bus.’ I smile.
‘I’ll get you a cab on account. I’d worry about you on the night bus.’
On the street we stand like teenagers, him with his hands in his pockets, me applying lip gloss. He pulls out a piece of paper. It’s the speed-dating comments sheet.
‘Show me what you wrote about me!’ I squeal.
‘No, I want you to write your number and email and address on here.’
‘Oh. OK then,’ I say. I take a pen and write all my details down for him. Then I unfold the paper and spot my number on the page. Next to it he’d written, Says ‘cunt’ a lot.
‘Oh my God, I’m so ashamed!’ I say, hitting him. As I do bits of my hair stick in my lip gloss.
‘Don’t be,’ he says. He picks two strands of hair from my sticky lips. ‘I think you’re lovely.’ Then he puts his hand to my cheek. The tips of his fingers feel lip-gloss-sticky. I wish I had applied Superglue rather than lip gloss so he could be welded to me for eternity. He bends his head slightly towards me. I watch his slightly parted lips moving closer and closer to mine. The most handsome man in the world is going to kiss me! Thank you, God! I close my eyes just as his warm wet mouth gently meets mi
ne.
‘Cab for Camden – is that you, mate?’
Paul takes a step away from me and puts his hands in his pockets.
‘Er, yeah,’ he says, turning to the taxi driver.
Before I know it I’m grinning in the back of a very clean taxi listening to Magic FM. Foreigner’s playing. Foreigner’s always playing on Magic FM. Normally I call it Suicide FM and switch it off. Now I get it. ‘I Want To Know What Love Is’. Blimey.
seven
I am a slothful, flabby, fetid lump of female waste. I don’t leave the house. I don’t get dressed. I have been wearing the same pair of pink Primark pyjamas for three days. (I did change my knickers yesterday.) I am tea-stained and toast-crumbed and I itch. There are three reasons for this:
1)
Leos are lazy and this is because they are the lions of the zodiac. Lions apparently spend twenty-three hours of the day sleeping and the rest of the time looking for food and sex
2)
I am an addict and a slave to the Internet. My computer is always hot. This morning she groaned when I turned her on. She fears my abuse, but as there are no legal guidelines stipulating working conditions and breaks for laptops she must continue to work for her smelly mistress
3)
I while away hours simply daydreaming about Paul. I keep imagining him naked. I think I may be entering my sexual peak. I took the vibrator my sister bought me for my last birthday out of the box yesterday. I had been thinking about doing unspeakable things to his body after kissing him all over and I decided to get the massive fuchsia battery-operated plastic willy out. I turned it on. It sounded like a lawnmower. Simon was home. I put it back in the box quickly
The current mess in my room frightens Simon. He doesn’t understand that I have found order in chaos. Everything I own is strewn across my room so that I can see it and know exactly where it is. Simon came into my room earlier to give me my post and look in the mirror and he wasn’t armed with the knowledge that underneath my favourite T-shirt there was an opened tub of hummus. He trod on the T-shirt and the sensation of chickpeas and plastic and acrylic underfoot caused him to shout that I was a ‘dirty goat’.
There is a masculine knock on my bedroom door. I don’t answer. I count to one and Simon enters carrying my newly washed favourite T-shirt. He moves a dirty plate from the bed, sits down and carefully says:
‘Are you depressed?’
‘Not clinically so,’ I tell him. ‘Although do you think if you haven’t heard from a man after three days he’s not interested?’
‘I’d say if you haven’t heard from him after a week then he definitely thinks you’re a minger.’
‘Hmmm, well at least I’m still in with a chance. But he should have at least texted me by now. Don’t you think?’
‘Sare, I’m getting worried about you. You need to get out, or at least open the curtains. Why don’t you come for a run with me?’
‘Everyone laughs at me when I run.’
‘Only when you run in high heels, and you’d be wearing trainers and no one gives a damn about anyone else anyway.’
‘Simon, I’ve run with you before. It’s up there as one of the singularly most disturbing experiences of my life so far.’
A few months ago Simon and I went running in Regent’s Park. People who witnessed it probably still talk about the time that fit bloke sped around the park with that wheezing, pleading woman following ten yards behind him. Every so often I would stop and pant, ‘I can’t go on. It hurts. I can’t breathe,’ and Simon would run back to me and say, ‘OK, we’ll stop and do some stretching. Gotta stretch, Sare.’ Then he would lie me on my sweaty back on the cold pavement, pick a leg up and pull it about until I screamed. When we eventually got home Simon was barely clammy. I was red and wet. I looked like a glistening hog on a spit. I was just thinking how nice a bath with a gin and tonic would be when he said, ‘Now the abs,’ and made me do a billion crunches on the kitchen floor with him. We finished. I lay whimpering, unable to move. He sprang up and said, ‘Thanks for that, Sare, that was a good warm-up. I’m off to the gym now.’ I shudder at the memory.
‘Now then, Sare, the thing is, you’re nearly thirty.’
‘Ahhhh,’ I scream, putting my hands over my ears. ‘Please don’t say that! I’m in my twenties, I’ve told you!’
‘What you need to understand is that when you get to your age your metabolism slows down.’ He casts his eyes around my room and says, ‘Actually yours might have stopped already. The point is you need to do some cardiovascular exercise.’
‘Cardiovascular exercise’ is my worst pair of words after ‘last orders’.
‘I just don’t think that sitting in a darkened room all day on the computer is healthy.’
‘Look, Si, I love the fact you care. But I’m doing very important blogging work here.’ I click the Refresh button on my laptop and gasp at what the screen is telling me.
‘What’s the matter?’ asks Si.
‘I’ve got a comment,’ I squeak.
‘What?’
‘A comment,’ I whisper. I gape at the screen, agog.
‘What the fuck?’
‘I write my blog, but there’s a button on it that says Comment and people can click on it if they want to post a message. Someone has left a comment.’
Simon shakes his head and then bends down and reads my first comment aloud.
Hello Spinster, I have just read your blog, I like you am a spinster, your speed dating exploits have inspired me to have a go at it too, I hope I meet someone as nice as P. Wish me luck!
‘I can’t believe people actually read my blog. The only people I told about it are you and Julia and Mum and Dad but they don’t even have a computer! Oh my God, strangers are reading my blog.’
I feel overcome. I want to cry with happiness. I won’t because Simon has seen me blub far too often recently. But getting a blog comment oddly feels like a seminal moment in my life. Someone I have never even met has read about my quest and taken the time to write to me. And best of all says that I inspire her.
‘Si, I’m, like, an inspiration to women,’ I gasp.
Simon looks at me in my dirty pyjamas nearly moved to tears by a blog comment. He shakes his head and repeats the word ‘crazy’ three times. He leaves me and I close my eyes tightly and quickly whisper, ‘Please, God, let me get some more comments. Please.’
eight
I am standing in Soho Square with my hands on my hips. Yet again I am trying to dry two enormous sweat rings under my arms. These have been created by my fear of Quest No. 2: Pulling at a Big-Screen Showing of a Football Match. I reasoned that a big screening of a big game would mean a lot of predominantly straight men in one place. I confided in my blog my meticulous three-part strategy:
1)
Thoroughly scope the venue – I have chosen to go to a cavernous pub in the West End. Simon comes here sometimes. When he does he stands on the mezzanine level and looks down at all the girls in low-cut tops. He calls this Booby Heaven. I believe that Booby Heaven will give me a perfect vantage point for scoping
2)
Select a subject and approach – I will pretend that I have lost a friend. I will walk around scanning the room for my ‘female friend’, thus getting myself up close to my subject. Then I will stand near him looking neither desperate nor alarming but quietly concerned for the whereabouts of my friend
3)
Follow up with a good opening line of conversation – my dad maintains that you should always start a letter or a tricky conversation with something that the other person wants to hear. So ‘You’re the best-looking person in here, can I chat to you until my friend arrives?’ or ‘Are you in a band?’ seem promising
I felt like an invincible pioneer for women when I lay in bed in my pyjamas and posted this strategy on my blog. I now feel like a terrified five-year-old who’s just wet herself on her first day of school. I blame Paul for this entirely. It is a week since I met him. Not a call, not a text, not a
bunch of flowers, not a proposal. Rejected again.
I hear my mobile ringing. I try to extricate it from my bag while still airing my armpits. ‘Please, please, please be Paul,’ I whisper at it. It isn’t Paul. It’s my agent.
‘Hello, lovely agent. Has Kiefer Sutherland asked me to play his sex slave in the next season of 24?’
‘Not today, Sarah, but you do have a casting tomorrow for Casualty.’
‘Oh my God! I LOVE Casualty! What’s the part? Please say it’s a midwife, please,’ I plead, crossing my fingers.
‘No, you’re a woman whose son is ill. It’s only three lines. I’ll email all the details.’
‘Great! I’m actually just about to watch the football,’ I say, feeling like one of the boys.
‘I didn’t know you were a football fan. Who’s playing?’ I can’t believe I omitted to find out that information. I decide against saying, ‘Fuck knows! I’m only going there to pull.’ Instead I say what I often say when someone asks me an uncomfortable question on the mobile phone: ‘Oh, I’m losing you, Geoff. Geoff! Geoff ?’ and hang up.
I enter the bar. It is an ocean of men and lager. I feel my knees start to shake.
‘I have one anonymous blog reader whom I inspire, I must do it for her,’ I tell myself.
‘Excuse me, sorry,’ I repeatedly say as I try to negotiate my way to the bar. Men part and smile at me; they say, ‘Sorry, love’ and ‘Hello, gorgeous.’ I suddenly feel like a lady.
I buy a classy Hoegaarden. It proves not to be the best choice as I had some of Simon’s healthy mackerel pasta for dinner and the gas has made me belchy. I sip it and try to stifle my burps.
I start my ascent to Booby Heaven. It is a dicey pilgrimage as I am trying not to spill my beer or bang my handbag into anyone else’s beer while also scanning the room. I am hoping I’ll see Paul amidst the faces and he can tell me that he was mugged on the way home from speed dating and lost my number. Suddenly I feel something cold and wet and abundant spill on to my fuck-me shoes. I look down and there are my beautiful suede shoes covered in white foam.
50 Ways to Find a Lover Page 5
