Dan Taylor Is Giving Up on Women

by Neal Doran

  @aDanTaylor: Soully what now?

  @Hannahmatic: soullyforyou.com. It’s an Internet dating site, for finding your soulmate.

  @aDanTaylor: Are you sure about that? It sounds like a ready-meal range for the lonely and desperate.

  @Hannahmatic: It looks good! It was featured in Time Out as fresh and new. Also it’s free, and the alternative costs sixty quid if you actually want to, y’know, arrange a date with anyone.

  @aDanTaylor: We’re really doing this? Isn’t this idea supposed to just quietly fade away like a usual drunken resolution to change your life?

  @Hannahmatic: No chance. You’re our project for keeping our marriage fresh and exciting. Rob wanted us to join the local swingers, I wanted a new puppy. You’re the compromise.

  @aDanTaylor: Jesus…And so far all you’ve got is average?

  @Hannahmatic: Oh no! Now I’ve got mediocre height, run-of-the-mill build and pedestrian hair. But I’m putting your eyes down as Mediterranean azure to pep it up a bit.

  @aDanTaylor: You realise everyone discounts all descriptions on these things by 20% to counter exaggeration? You’re making me out to be a bug-eyed asthmatic dwarf.

  @Hannahmatic: I was just joking, mister. I’m doing a magnificent sales job on you. Taking you down 20% would put you somewhere between Clooney and Gosling. I just realised we hadn’t asked you what kind of woman you’re actually looking for.

  There was a question. What was I looking for? What was my ‘type’? I wasn’t entirely certain. Existentially overwrought Parisians, currently juggling a string of humourless and borderline abusive international hunks?

  Drop-dead gorgeous IT experts who could learn to understand that their psychopathic tendencies are to the fore just because they’re in need of the love of a good man who won’t mock their choice of the latest reality TV ‘star’ as a personal role model?

  Cute PhD students that could excuse the use of a slightly exaggerated account of the loss of a girlfriend to get a hand inside their enticingly flimsy underpants?

  I could probably have kept going through the qualities of every woman I’d met in the past twelve to eighteen months, but instead decided to do a quick search on Google Images for the funniest photo I could find of a bimbo with anatomically improbable breasts to send Hannah as an attachment.

  What do you mean you knew that that was the time that my boss would obviously come and stand behind me for a chat?

  ‘Dan, I can see you’re very busy. But I’d like to introduce you to Jamie, our new graduate trainee. He’s starting today in Pharma, and I thought you might have time to show him the ropes a bit.’

  My boss, Nigel Pearson, was a scary man. When he got angry he didn’t shout or go purple with rage, he just smiled a bit more. When he was really furious his eyelids also fluttered. I sat, looked at him, then at the giant tie knot dwarfing Jamie’s head, then back at my computer screen with its photo of a famous glamour model, digitally enhanced with Photoshop® to take her chest way beyond the limits that nature imposed on even the most daring plastic surgeon. Turned out the image was also animated, and made giggly kissy noises while the gargantuan knockers jiggled saucily. I looked back at Pearson, whose lips were twitching upwards as my computer kept saying, ‘Mwah! Mwah! Mwah! Ooh!’

  I was paralysed with embarrassment, and it was only when a new instant message from Hannah appeared saying ‘Hey you! Don’t be shy! I need totty details!!!’ that I managed to spring into action and shut down all the windows on my desktop.

  I hoped maybe the other two hadn’t seen the message, but the cooling breeze on the back of my reddening neck appeared to be emanating from just below Pearson’s manicured eyebrows, and I heard a repressed snigger from the new guy.

  Mumbling something about doing bespoke research as a favour to an important client, I said I’d be delighted to give Jamie the low-down on how things worked around here. Not taking my eyes off the pair of them, I then casually leaned over and sharply tugged all the leads out of the back of my computer monitor as the model’s breathy exclamation, ‘Ooh my, what a big boy you are! Yummy! Yummy!’ let me know I’d not properly shut down, only minimised, my browser window.

  ‘Excellent, I’ll leave you to it,’ said my boss, ‘and can I assume that since you’ve moved on to new research projects it won’t be a problem getting me the presentation on the performance of lightly carbonated tropical fruit beverages against citrus-based market leaders by first thing tomorrow?’

  ‘Absolutely, no problem,’ I lied, taking like a man my punishment for spending his good money looking up smut. Pearson shimmered away with a noiseless tread, and Jamie grabbed a nearby chair and slumped down next to me, grinning from ear to ear as he swivelled from side to side. Jamie was unusual for a new guy in the office, as he appeared to be reasonably attractive. Not to me, I mean, obviously. But I wasn’t so insecure that I couldn’t realise what women might see in other guys without worrying that maybe I’d been suppressing a fundamental element of my sexuality for the past twenty years. I left that sort of anxiety to my mother.

  He wasn’t exceptionally good-looking, but women weren’t that different from men, and a bit of fresh-faced youthfulness could work wonders. He had a confidence that came from being twenty-three and pretty sure, if you could get your MA in consumer responses to corporate marketing practices, you could handle anything the world threw at you. Or maybe it was the energy and enthusiasm of a chirpy ten-year-old in the body of a man that evidently still did sport rather than just watched it that would do it for him. I’ll stop now, because there may be a point where I’ll start thinking my mum might be right. But I’ll just say that energy, positivity, and youthful physical confidence aren’t words you’d use to describe the rest of the male workforce around here.

  ‘So it’s pretty laid-back around here, then?’ Jamie observed.

  Ah, the eager young recruit, still giddy from the job ads and interview process, imagining it was all nice doughnuts in meetings and ‘working hard but playing hard too’ — innocent of the horrors of frontline office politics.

  ‘Yeah, it’s a great gang,’ I said.

  No sense in trying to warn them; they never believed you.

  I gave the new guy a quick rerun of the official spiel, told him where he could find the research library and let him in on the secrets of the sandwich man and his wares. I asked him a few questions about himself, and discovered he was the son of a business acquaintance of Nigel Pearson — which would explain how he got past the recruitment process — and that he’d just moved into a new place in Clapham with his mates from uni. They were thinking about having a party. It felt a lot longer than seven years ago when I’d been the same age, and had been planning parties with Rob and Angus for our new place. But I remembered how we felt as if we’d finally grown up.

  Jamie and I had a little chat about everybody else in the office, and I cagily tried to fill him in on which of his managers were useless, which were boring, and which were weird, couching everything in as diplomatic terms as possible, in case he became pals with them or it turned out they were related. Never let it be said that I didn’t learn my lesson last year after giving the new girl the inside skinny on Weird Boring Chris on what I later discovered was Bring Your Daughter to Work day. I felt awful, but she would probably agree with my assessment of her useless, boring, weird dad in a few months anyway.

  Meanwhile Jamie was most interested in asking — considerably less cagily — about the women in the office.

  ‘Janice seems really sweet. Is she seeing anybody?’

  ‘Yes, she’s a…sensitive soul. I think she’s single.’

  ‘And who were those two over in Mobile Phones?’

  ‘Monica and Jenny? Yeah, they’re really nice. Both engaged.’

  ‘On Reception?’

  ‘Jennifer and Mandy. Single, and just dumped boyfriend.’

  This wasn’t so much a conversation as an intro before we both went into a full musical production of ‘Mambo No. 5’.

>   As Jamie continued to enquire about the office talent I distractedly started reassembling my desktop computer, deleting all traces of the glamour model. Glancing at my email, I saw that the promised message on an emotionally traumatic Christmas from Delphine had arrived.

  ‘And who’s the one…?’ Jamie mimed an unmistakable expression of Gallic despair, followed by a Carry On look of ‘phwoarr’.

  ‘Delphine? She’s quite new too. Her life seems complicated,’ I explained.

  Just then, John the financial controller went speed-walking by us, and across the office a sudden migration towards the front door had begun. The sandwich man had come. I hustled the new guy to the door as quickly as I could manage, but we were definitely the stragglers, and would be left with the cast-offs of the more skilled lunch hunters ahead of us. Out of politeness I let Jamie have the last sandwich featuring something recognisable as ham, grabbed a tuna, cheese and coleslaw bap, and headed back to my desk to see what trauma had beset Delphine. And how I could best offer a shoulder, or any other body part of her choice, on which to cry.

  It wasn’t a short email, and over a couple of pages she explained — in detail I wouldn’t have risked on our internal email — exactly why Christmas had been so rough. To summarise, she didn’t really get on with her mum, who was apparently bewildered and angry because her daughter was nearly twenty-eight and hadn’t yet started producing grandchildren. She was also critical about Delphine’s weight, and every other aspect of her appearance, which she insinuated was why she wasn’t shacked up with a husband and two cute little girls like her younger sister. The sister was apparently smug and always taking snide little digs. Dad was distant and not how he used to be when she was a child, and she suspected he was having an affair. Then there was her own man trouble. When she was home there were a couple of guys she used to go out with who always got in touch and expected to see her. From what I could gather, they’d both been successful in their pursuit, which only made things worse.

  Then, back in London for New Year’s Eve, Delphine had had a huge row with her actual boyfriend, Alex, who’d abandoned her at some party. She couldn’t understand how he could be so mean. I couldn’t understand how either, mainly because he was a flabby, still acne-ridden, below-average-looking man in his mid-thirties, who was punching way above his considerable weight just by getting Delphine to speak to him.

  Not that I was jealous, of course.

  On top of all that she was struggling with work, claiming that she didn’t understand half of the things she was supposed to be writing about, and how stupid she felt working in English. And in a newsflash update she added that she was now starving because she’d missed the sandwich man. So overall 2013 had not had the best of starts for her.

  Chewing on my lunch, I set about writing a reply to Delphine. It took me a while as I worked up a response on how to sort out all the troubles in her life; I wanted to be sympathetic and supportive while showing her that she was making a lot of mistakes with her choices in life, without too obviously pointing to where I thought the answer might be sitting. There were compliments that I made as daring as I thought was advisable without being too obvious. I then finished with an offer to help out with her project, and what I thought was quite a good joke about British cuisine that might make her feel better about not being exposed to all the E numbers that were enhancing my tomato-sauce-flavoured crisps, the coating on which was currently making my fingers and keyboard radiate with a greasy red glow.

  By the time I was finished the main office was muttering back into life. I watched as Delphine and Jenny from Mobiles walked past my desk deep in urgent conversation, with lots of tutting and sighing.

  Ten minutes passed while I stared at a flashing cursor on an empty Word document and listened for a response to my message from the occupant of the cubicle four back and two across. All seemed quiet, but then I detected that rare giggle that always seemed worth working so hard for. It continued, and got louder. I must say I started to feel quite proud of how well my little ‘Cordon Bleurgh’ cooking joke was going down. I grabbed a piece of paper from my desk, and headed for the photocopier, which just happened to require walking past Delphine’s desk.

  As I got closer I could still hear her laughing — it was a gag that worked on many levels, I figured. I turned the corner and saw Jamie slouched against her cubicle wall while she leaned back in her chair, swaying from side to side and grinning at whatever it was he was telling her about. I gave them an eyebrow salute as I went by, but I don’t think they noticed, and I went back to my desk the long way around after photocopying a printout of an email on the office healthy posture guidelines. I got back to see that a response had arrived from Delphine. It said, ‘Thanks, Danny, you always know to say the right things!! If you could have a look at this pear cider report and let me know where I have stupid English you would be my hero in a shitty world!! D xxx’.

  Three kisses at the end. That was two more than usual, so I felt I was making progress.

  The rest of the afternoon just flew, and by the time I’d corrected a few grammatical mistakes, written a few pages of notes on the UK market for premium cider brands, added a commentary on the basic findings, and roughed out some charts, tables and graphs of available data, just to help fill out Delphine’s conclusions a little bit, it was just about home time. I headed to the kitchen for a celebratory filtered water.

  ‘Superman Dan!’

  Janice called out to me as I sloped back to my desk. She was using her nickname for me, which was a good sign. It took a while to get the Janice matey seal of approval, but once you got a special name, it was a handy indicator of whether you were in her good books, and whether she was in a good mood. Maybe it was her work that was keeping her cheerful. She seemed to be Photoshopping® a picture of her own head onto the head of a starlet emerging from a taxi with Harry Styles. I’m not quite sure which major client that would have been needed for, though.

  ‘Coming to the pub?’ she asked as she adjusted the angle of her grinning face so she was looking deep into Harry’s eyes. ‘We’re going for a swift one to welcome Jamie Jammie Dodger.’

  Hmm, quick work on the nickname front from Mr Dodger there.

  ‘Sure, the Zetland? I’ll be down in ten minutes,’ I said.

  ‘Luv-leee.’

  Back at my desk, it was just as I started to shut down for the day that I got an email from Weird Boring Chris. He was reminding me that he was to be cc’d in on the youth market fruit beverages report that apparently was going out today. Turned out that just because I’d forgotten all about my promise to the boss that I could do a week’s work in a day, didn’t mean that Nigel had.

  It was going to be a long night.

  ‘Good evening, Dan speaking.’

  ‘So according to my wife you’ve been in the office looking at porn sinceten-thirty, and you’re still there twelve hours later. There are clinics you can go to to get help with that kind of obsession, you know.’

  I said something rude about his mother and a webcam. Rob snorted, and, with the conversational formalities out of the way, he got down to the business of the call.

  ‘So, buddy, what’re your plans for Friday night, then?’

  ‘Well, unless Rihanna changes her plans and decides to come over to town to go clubbing, I would imagine it’d be a pint with Mad Janice and Weird Boring Chris and home for a Mahal Palace takeaway and season two of Glee on box set.’

  ‘You’re going to have to let the starlets down, sport, and Mick the delivery guy will have to live without your awkwardly generous tip for one week. You’re coming to ours.’

  ‘I’ll have to let people know. The last time I wasn’t in on a Friday night the Palace sent the police around, worried I must have been dead or trapped under the takeaway menu drawer.’

  ‘Well, notify the appropriate authorities, and practise being spontaneous and witty, because you have got a date,’ said Rob.

  My stomach plunged and an unexpected surge of adrenal
in shot through me. I was quiet while my internal organs finished their virtual roller-coaster ride and Rob filled in the details.

  ‘A friend of Hannah’s called Niamh. You might have met her at Eurovision? Same age as us, lawyer, loves old musicals. Right up your street,’ he continued.

  ‘I thought Hannah didn’t really have any single friends that were my type at the minute?’

  ‘New Year, Dan. Turns out it’s not just you that has realised it can be a good time to have a look at their lives and decide to try and change them. They’re calling them resolutions. I think they might catch on.’

  ‘So, um, is she…er, nice?’

  ‘You’d be the one that people think are doing better out of the deal, but not so much that they’d assume you must be very rich, if that’s what you’re getting at. Hang on…’

  There was a pause and I could hear, but not quite make out, Hannah saying something in the background.

  ‘I’m being told from the sofa to tell you she has the most beautiful skin. Because you know how all men are mainly looking for a really good epidermis.’

  There was a distinct sound of a raspberry being blown in the room.

  ‘This is all a bit quick,’ I said. ‘I thought it was going to be looking at dating profiles and making snide remarks about the hair on the profile pictures of my rivals for a while. I’m not sure I’m ready.’

  ‘Not your call any more, Dan — you sold your soul, or its DNA equivalent, to us. So Friday at eight you’re at our place, deodorant applied before you put on your clothes. Hang on…’

  More conversation from the sofa.

  ‘Angus and Sarah are invited too, so it won’t look too obviously like a date. Oh, and we’re also banned from saying Babah Ganoush in funny voices when Hannah’s serving her from-scratch appetisers.’

  We spent a minute or two saying the names of various Middle Eastern dips and accompaniments in a range of accents and tones, just to get it out of our systems.

  ‘Now, how come you’ve managed to get so far behind in your work when you’ve only been back one day?’ asked Rob.