Beta Male

by Iain Hollingshead

  The crowd booed. I hushed them. ‘It’s a noble gesture. And I accept your surrender, Jeremy.’

  As I stretched out my hand to meet his, Jeremy swung with his left and caught me across the temple. I punched back, weakly, connecting only with air, and fell to the ground. The last thing I remember was Claire’s face looming, concerned, over me, the stars above Edinburgh dancing in a halo around her head. She looked like an angel.

  ‘Sam,’ she said, ‘I could have kissed you just then.’ And I think I could have kissed her, too. I think I wanted to kiss her. But I couldn’t. I didn’t. For at that moment, a wave of nausea swept over me and I rolled over, vomited and passed out.

  Curtain.

  Chapter Four

  ‘You punched a guy?’

  ‘Several times.’

  ‘And he went down?’

  ‘He went down and he stayed down. Seriously, mate, if you think this black eye is impressive, you should see his.’

  I was back in my flat in London with Matt, giving him an edited version of my time in Edinburgh. It was a Thursday afternoon in August and neither of us had much to do. Most of the firms that normally took on temps were employing keen, cheap university students instead. I’d had to resort to working occasional early morning shifts in a coffee bar in Camden and applying for a fifth credit card, which was granted with surprising ease – ironically, the only company which had ever refused to give me credit was the parent firm of the Greek card I’d once done a TV advert for. Maybe they knew just how likely actors were to default on their debt.

  Matt was also in limbo, kicking his heels in London while still waiting to hear whether or not he had a job for the next six months. It didn’t augur well. Last time their postings had been decided his then girlfriend had been shoved off to a dead-end urology position in the Scottish Highlands and he’d been given paediatrics in Devon. They’d split up on the second weekend after realising that even meeting halfway took twelve hours and cost £100 each.

  ‘Modernising Medical Careers’, the government had called it. ‘More like Mutilating Medical Careers,’ Matt had said on more than one occasion. He was right, too. The government spent hundreds of thousands of pounds training these bright young people and then couldn’t even find decent employment for them at the end. No wonder they were all thinking of doing something else.

  ‘So what kind of male does Claire think you are?’ continued Matt.

  ‘What?’

  ‘That conversation you had in the restaurant in Edinburgh. Does Claire think you’re an alpha or a beta? Are you “wild and unsuitable”? Or “kind, good father material”?’

  ‘God knows. Neither, probably. I imagine a true alpha male to be a City trader who gets up at 5am, kicks his lithe intern out of bed, stands under a cold shower listening to “Eye of the Tiger”, runs to work, makes a million pounds before his protein-shake lunch, loses a million in the afternoon, snorts his bodyweight in coke in the evening, sleeps for three hours – two of them with another intern – and then spends his weekends playing rugby with the Territorial Army.’ I gestured at Alan’s dressing gown, which I was still wearing at two in the afternoon. ‘I don’t think I’m an alpha male.’

  ‘And yet you’re not much of a beta, either, by Claire’s reckoning,’ said Matt. ‘You’re not even a safe, solid marriage bet.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘So, if you’re a fading almost-alpha stroke never-to-be-beta, what does that make you?’

  ‘The third letter of the Greek alphabet, I suppose.’

  ‘Whatever that is.’

  ‘Gamma.’

  Matt laughed. ‘That’s it. Sam Hunt. The Gamma male.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  Somehow, no one ever minds too much getting a ribbing from Matt. He’s solid, decent and utterly dependable; a man’s man without being too boorishly blokey; a natural, caring doctor who’s never too worthy. Every guy likes Matt, and every bloody girl wants to jump him. He has that kind of strong open face and short hair you associate with South Africans or Australians. He still plays rugby or football every weekend. He slept with so many girls at university that his nickname was Metronome Matt. He’s taller, blonder, trimmer and squarer-jawed than me. If he wasn’t so nice, he would be an absolute dick.

  It’s always been difficult for the rest of us to compete with him. You’re in a bar. A girl starts chatting to both of you.

  ‘What do you guys do for a living?’

  ‘Well, last week, I pretended to be someone else for £50 per week in an empty theatre above a pub.’

  ‘Hmm, and you?’

  ‘Me? I saved four babies’ lives before lunch.’

  ‘Okay, see you, Sam, I’m off to bed with blond George Clooney here.’

  But nothing had been going that well for Matt either recently, and I cared deeply about it. It’s much easier being ambitious on behalf of your friends than it is on your own account. In any case, you’re unlikely to get jealous if they’re not competing directly with you. It wasn’t as if I wanted to be a doctor. I couldn’t even get a non-speaking part as a dead extra on Holby City.

  That afternoon, things took a significant turn for the worse when Matt’s mobile rang and he was rejected for the last of his potential jobs. There were now three options open to him: wait another year and re-apply; go abroad and become a doctor there; or give up medicine altogether. As none of them seemed very appealing at that particular moment, we took the fourth, more short-term option and opened the emergency crate of beer I kept hidden from Alan in a cupboard above my bed.

  A few hours later, at some point between the second airing of Neighbours and the first of Hollyoaks, the doorbell rang. We opened the door to find Ed standing in the pouring rain, looking even more bedraggled than usual. Poor guy; he really wasn’t aging that well, I thought. Too thin on top; too fat around the middle. Ginger, ballooning and balding. We’d been amusing ourselves recently cutting out Belgravia Trichological Centre adverts and leaving them around the flat he shared with his girlfriend. The previous week he’d finally snapped and told us he didn’t find it funny any more.

  It was only when I looked more closely that I realised Ed’s eyes were as wet and as red as his remaining hair.

  ‘Ed, what the hell’s happened?’ asked Matt, bringing him inside and offering him one of Alan’s accountant-weekend-wear jumpers.

  ‘Tara,’ he said, simply.

  We didn’t have to ask many more questions. Tara was one of those monkey-women who never let go of one branch until they have their hands securely attached to another. Ed was never going to break up with her and she knew it. So she’d strung him along until she found a replacement – a replacement, incidentally, that Matt and I had known about for a few months. After some debate, we’d decided not to tell Ed, in the vain hope that it would all sort itself out.

  ‘She’s run off with some lawyer bloke,’ said Ed, sounding strangulated. ‘Her partner and mentor at work or something. Twenty years older. Recently divorced.’ He gave up and buried his head in his hands. ‘What a fucking mess of a cliché.’

  Matt and I didn’t have to feign surprise. This lawyer bloke was news to us as well. We thought it was the banker bloke Tara was going to leave Ed for. You had to hand it to her. She’d been a busy little monkey.

  ‘A mortgage… We had a bloody mortgage together.’ Ed’s words came out in fitful chokes. ‘Four years… Four wasted bloody years.’

  Matt and I looked at each other helplessly while Ed got it all out of his system. You can know someone most of your life and still not know what to do or say when they break down like that. I would probably walk in front of a lorry, if it meant saving Ed’s life. But listening to him crying? No. It was a grief he would ultimately have to go through alone.

  Led by Matt, whose one-time job had at least given him some experience in dealing with difficult emotional situations, we both patted Ed awkwardly on the shoulder. Fortunately, Ed then saved us any further embarrassment by starting to laugh; a low, sorrowful
chuckle that began quietly and gathered pace into full-blown hysterics.

  ‘What is it?’ I demanded. ‘What’s so bloody amusing?’

  ‘It’s the mortgage,’ he said, his shoulders heaving through the sobs. ‘I’ve just remembered that it’s under Tara’s name. So I’m not going to pay the four months’ back-payments I currently owe her.’

  Matt and I did our best to laugh along. We’d been hoping for something a little more amusing, to be honest. Mortgage jokes have never really hit my funny bone. I also felt it would be churlish to point out that repayment worries were probably the last thing on Tara’s mind now that she was shagging her very wealthy boss. But for now, at least, none of that mattered. The important thing was that Ed had finally stopped crying.

  I opened another beer and handed it to Ed.

  ‘To Tara,’ I said.

  ‘The bloody slag,’ said Ed, chinking cans.

  ‘Tara the slag,’ chorused Matt and I.

  We slumped down on the sofa and decided to do the only sensible thing in the circumstances, which was to play a lot of Xbox and drink a great deal of beer.

  ‘What a bunch of losers we are,’ said Ed eventually, flinging down his controller after Matt had slotted another goal past his Argentinian keeper.

  ‘Speak for yourself.’

  ‘No, seriously, I’m speaking for all of us. Matt, you can’t get a job. Sam, you can’t even get a pretend job. And my girlfriend has just run off with her boss. We’re all pushing thirty, none of us shows any sign of settling down, let alone “making it”. We’re still in touch with friends from primary school. And what do we have to show for anything? Nothing. You remember four-eyed Rob we used to play football with on Sundays? He’s made a million already and got divorced. Twice. And what have we done? Diddly squat. We’re a complete bunch of losers.’

  ‘We’re beta males,’ said Matt.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Beta males. Sam and I were talking about it earlier. There are alphas, like Alan. Successful, dependable breadwinners. And then there are betas. Like us.’

  ‘I’d rather be me than Alan,’ I said.

  ‘We’d all rather be you than Alan,’ said Matt.

  ‘Who says Alan is an alpha, anyway?’ said Ed. ‘Look how much Jess has got him under her thumb. We barely see him any more, thanks to her. I call that fairly beta, if you ask me.’

  We all nodded encouragingly. It was good to see Ed distracted.

  ‘Actually, I’d call most males beta these days,’ continued Ed. ‘Compared to all the alpha females like Jess, Tara and Claire, anyway. One barrister, one solicitor, one management consultant. We don’t exactly measure up, do we? No, if you ask me, women have won the battle of the sexes. Hands down, across the board. They’re better at school and better adjusted socially. They grow up quicker and go on to perform better at university. They’re less likely to get mugged. They enter the workplace, where they get the best jobs because all the dinosaur male bosses fancy them – or at least they remind them of their daughters they never see because they work too hard – so they employ them at the expense of potentially better male graduates. And who can blame them? Everyone loves having pretty girls around in an office. Unfortunately, the pretty girls repay them by filing million-pound sexual harassment suits the moment someone so much as tells them their hair looks nice. Or alternatively, they wait until they’re thirty-five, squeeze out a kid and demand six months’ paid leave. If they marry well, they can choose to give up their jobs and potter around charity lunches. Or if they prefer, they can carry on working and everyone will think they’re a heroine, even though they do sod-all work, knowing full well no one can sack them without HR screaming “discrimination”. And then, just to cap it off, they live longer, having nagged their poor husbands into an early – ’

  I’d started an ironic, slow handclap three-quarters of the way through Ed’s tirade. He’d grinned and got faster and faster, eventually giving up when Matt joined in, our rhythm becoming increasingly manic until it was one continuous line of applause.

  ‘Excellent!’ I cried. ‘Tara has missed out on quite a catch with you, Ed. You are every inch the enlightened modern man.’

  ‘I’m serious, Sam. I’m going to become a masculinist.’

  ‘What the hell is that?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’ve just invented the word. But I’m going to be the male equivalent of a feminist. You’ll see. All of ’em will see. I’m going to stand up for male rights.’ Ed rose to his feet, as if about to address a grateful nation. ‘I’ll campaign to become the first Minister for Men. I’ll write a book called The Flat-Chested Eunuch. I’ll pitch a short and punchy column to GQ magazine – ’

  ‘Ed, aren’t you becoming a little emotional?’

  ‘No, leave him, Sam,’ said Matt. ‘He’s got a point. An exaggerated point, admittedly, but a valid one. I’ve lost out on my last two jobs to female doctors. They’re much better at the caring side of medicine. And Alan has to put up with Amanda, that dragon of a female boss who’s a thousand times better at office politics than any of the men. He’s always telling us how manipulative she is.’ Matt broke off to take another swig of his beer and looked across at me. ‘What’s up, Sam? You’re smiling inanely.’

  The partial truth was that I had been experiencing a pleasant flashback to my encounter with the dragoneous Amanda at Alan’s summer party. But that wasn’t the only thing making me smile. ‘I was just thinking how nice it is to have the three of us in the same room at the same time,’ I told them. ‘All of us together. Nearly all of us together, anyway. Talking rubbish. It feels like old times.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Matt. ‘You’re right. It is nice.’

  ‘So why does this have to end as we grow up?’ I said. ‘Why do I only get to see you two when something shit has happened? Or at weddings? Soon we’ll be seeing each other once a year, or once every five years, or we’ll just send Christmas presents to each other’s children and never actually meet up at all. Tell me: why do we all end up vanishing into tiny, tight-knit family groups as we get older? Aren’t friends supposed to be the new family for our generation? Even for men? Especially for men? Women have always had time to see their friends; men never have. But just look at how many people we stay in touch with now compared to our dads. They don’t have four hundred friends online. They don’t really keep up with people from their pasts. And it’s their loss because you guys provide me with far more support than any girlfriend ever has. And more fun. And more freedom. So why would we want that to end? Why would we ever think that two people are enough these days for the rest of our lives? Or two plus two, two of whom are entirely dependent on the other two? Why does it have to be like that?’

  ‘Does it have to be like that?’ asked Matt.

  I put my beer down. This was serious. ‘Maybe not,’ I said. ‘You see, I’ve been thinking a little.’

  The other two groaned.

  I continued: ‘You remember my views on holy matrimony, which I shared with you at Lisa’s wedding?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Matt. ‘They were very enlightening.’

  ‘And enlightened,’ said Ed.

  ‘Don’t take the piss,’ I said. ‘I mean this. Sharing those deeply held opinions about marriage helped seed an idea in my mind. I’ve been thinking about it ever since and have finally come to two conclusions, which I am ready to share with you.’ I held up a finger to aid my demonstration. ‘One. If we agree that marriage is a cynical sham, one logical option would be to have nothing to do with it. But although such a route might be fun and liberating for a while, the fun would never last. Friends will still vanish. Opportunities will slip away. Twentysomething girls won’t want to sleep with you for ever. Neither, eventually, will thirtysomethings. You’ll start going on holiday at Christmas to avoid being alone. You will never have children. You will die alone, prematurely, unloved and unfed. Therefore, I reject that option.’

  ‘Great,’ said Ed. ‘What about the second option?’

 
‘The alternative is to embrace the cynicism. If you reject the first logical conclusion, you’re going to want to end up married anyway. You just have to do it on the right terms. My theory is that the reason we find it so difficult to settle down is that there is just too much choice out there for the modern man. You might hold a perfectly good blackjack hand with cards that add up to twenty. But it’s still not perfect. She has a bit of hair on her upper lip. She’s high-maintenance. The last one you went out with was more intelligent. So do you stick or twist? You’re a man. You’re competitive. You don’t want twenty, you want the top prize. You want twenty-one, dammit. So you twist. Perhaps you’ll be dealt an ace. Or maybe you’ll fold and lose everything. But if you don’t try another card, you’ll always have to live with the niggling doubt that you could have done that little bit better.’

  ‘Even if you think you have a twenty-one, she’ll just run off with someone else,’ said Ed, morosely.

  ‘Or you’ll want to re-invent the rules of the game and get another twenty-one because you’re bored with the first one,’ said Matt.

  ‘Exactly,’ I said, no longer sure that the metaphor still worked, but willing to gloss over it for the sake of making my point. I tried another one. ‘Or imagine you’re sitting at one of those sushi bars, watching the colour-coded dishes go round the conveyor belt. That conveyor belt is the dating scene. So do you gorge on lots of the cheap ones? Or wait for just one of the expensive ones?’

  ‘The cheap ones, every time,’ said Matt. ‘I’m all about piling up the £1.20 “orange” girls.’

  ‘I’d rather wait for a £5 grey,’ said Ed.

  ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘But what if someone steals your grey while you’re waiting, Ed? Or Matt, what if you’ve over-gorged on oranges and don’t have any space left for the perfect grey when it finally comes along? You see, there’s no right answer because there’s too much choice. We’re doomed to be restless and unhappy either way. So what do we do? I’ll tell you. We narrow down the decision-making process to a single criterion.’