The Ex-Boyfriend’s Handbook

by Matt Dunn

  ‘I’m not sure that’s quite how it goes.’

  ‘Anyway, what’s a few days’ mild discomfort compared to a lifetime’s freedom from being called speccy four-eyes.’

  ‘You’re the only one who calls me that. You could just stop.’

  ‘And your vision’s only going to get worse, particularly now your girlfriend’s gone.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You know. It makes you go blind…’

  ‘Don’t be disgusting.’

  ‘Well, at least go for a check-up. It doesn’t cost anything.’

  I point to a paragraph in the brochure. ‘What about the fifty-pound consultation fee?’

  ‘Oh, yeah,’ says Dan. ‘Apart from that.’

  Wednesday 2nd March

  11.14 a.m.

  I’m in the office, dialing the number for Universal Laser Correction. After one ring, a girl’s voice answers.

  ‘Hello, ULC.’

  I suddenly wonder if they chose that acronym on purpose. ‘Yeah, hi, I’d like to make an appointment for a consultation please.’

  There’s a pause while she checks in the diary. ‘How about Friday?’

  ‘Friday? As in the day after tomorrow?’

  ‘That’s right. How does ten a.m. suit you?’

  With Natasha currently going through one of her nearly human phases, I think I should be able to get the morning off work. ‘Sounds fine.’

  ‘And do you wear glasses or contact lenses?’

  ‘Glasses. Does that make a difference?’

  ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘It means that if you want to go ahead with the procedure, we can do it on the same day.’

  I swallow hard. ‘The same day?’

  ‘That’s right. And just to let you know, we’re doing our special opening offer this week. One hundred pounds off if you have both eyes done.’

  I wonder for a moment who’d bother only getting one eye treated. It doesn’t occur to me until later that it might be because some people go in and have one done first, and find it so painful that they can’t bring themselves to go back in for the other.

  ‘Er…Great.’

  ‘All I’ll need is your credit-card number. For the consultation fee.’

  ‘I need to pay now? I can’t pay on Friday?’

  ‘We find it’s better if patients pay up front,’ she says. ‘Stops them getting cold feet and not showing up.’

  ‘That happens, does it?’

  There’s a pause, and then a very implausible, ‘No.’

  Friday 4th March

  7.21 a.m.

  When I tell Sam what I’m up to, she looks horrified.

  ‘Whew. I’m not sure I could go through with that. What if it goes wrong?’

  ‘Thanks a lot. Anyway—that’s easy for you to say. Your eyes are perfect.’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘Vision. You’ve got perfect vision.’

  ‘How long are you in for?’

  ‘Out on the same day, apparently. And they say I should be OK to train on Monday.’

  ‘Well, we’ll work you extra hard today anyway,’ she says, a glint in her eye. ‘Just in case.’

  Ten minutes later, I’m starting to regret telling her.

  ‘So tell me, Sam,’ I puff, in a vain bid to get more rest time. ‘How did you get into this personal training lark?’

  Sam effortlessly hoists a couple of weights up off the floor and hands them to me. I nearly drop them, they’re so heavy.

  ‘Well, I was a dancer as a kid, but then I got…’

  ‘Too old? Too fat?’

  Sam pokes me in the stomach. ‘No, injured. I broke my ankle, and after that I couldn’t really dance the same again. So I did an aerobics training course, worked in a gym for a while, and then this. Plus I’m a real sadist, and this seemed the only legal way to get money and torture people at the same time.’

  Sam moves me on to a set of what she tells me are called ‘lunges’, which basically means that I hold a heavy weight in each hand, step forward onto alternate legs, and bend at the knee. After ten, I’m struggling with even holding on to the weights, let alone the fact that the burning in my thighs is almost unbearable.

  ‘Sam, I don’t quite get the theory behind this. You get me to exercise so I can hardly walk, and then you make me go on a run?’

  ‘Ah, but that’s what you’re paying me for, you see. My expertise. I’ve spent years studying this so you don’t have to. And anyway, I’ve got a surprise for you this morning.’

  Oh no. Not another of Sam’s surprises. ‘An early finish, a taxi home, followed by a continental breakfast?’

  ‘No, we’re going to do a new kind of stretching. Passive stretching, to give it its full name.’

  ‘Whoopee,’ I say, deadpan. ‘That sounds really fun. Though I do like the word “passive”. That’s the opposite of “active”, right?’

  ‘Sit down, and try and touch your toes.’

  I do as instructed, and flop down onto the mat. Keeping my legs straight I reach forward and try and touch my toes, but only get about halfway down my shin before the pain in the back of my leg becomes too much.

  ‘Ouch.’

  ‘When was the last time you could do that, do you think?’

  ‘I dunno. It’s not the kind of thing I’d usually write in my diary.’

  Sam kneels down behind me. ‘Okay, well let me show you this. Try again, but this time, relax.’

  I lean forward again, wondering how I can possibly relax given how much it hurts. But suddenly, I feel the not unpleasant sensation of Sam’s chest pressed against my back, easing my torso forwards, and while it’s still sore, somehow it also seems easier. What’s more, I actually manage to touch my toes.

  Sam holds me in that position for a few delicious seconds, then lets me up again. We move through various positions, Sam taking the time to push me carefully to greater extremes of flexibility, and by the time we’ve finished, I’m feeling so loose that I could probably get out of the gym by doing the limbo under the door rather than walking through it.

  ‘There,’ she says, ‘that wasn’t so bad, was it?’

  Wasn’t so bad? It’s probably the first thing I’ve done in these sessions that I’ve actually enjoyed, although perhaps not for the most virtuous of reasons. I have to stop myself from asking whether we can do it again.

  9.45 a.m.

  I’ve only just got dressed when Dan arrives, ready to take me down to the laser clinic.

  ‘Bloody hell, mate,’ he says. ‘You look awful.’

  ‘Good morning to you, too.’

  ‘Ready?’

  ‘I’m not so sure. Maybe I’ve been a bit hasty…’

  Dan picks up my glasses and puts them on. ‘You really want to look like this for the rest of your life?’ he says, pretending to bump into things around the flat. ‘Fat arses, don’t forget.’

  I snatch them back off his face. ‘All right, all right. Point taken. Let’s go.’

  We get into Dan’s car and drive down Church Road towards the clinic; Dan presses ‘play’ on his stereo.

  ‘Got some special music to get you in the mood,’ he says, grinning as some old rock and roll that I don’t recognize fills the car.

  ‘Who on earth is this?’

  ‘Ray Charles.’

  ‘That’s not funny.’ I hit the ‘CD Change’ button, and the opening bars of Stevie Wonder’s ‘Superstition’ boom out of the speakers. ‘Don’t you have any music that hasn’t been recorded by blind people?’

  ‘Just trying to make you feel better about this morning. You know, that there can be life after losing your sight.’

  ‘Thanks, mate. Very considerate of you.’

  When we get to the clinic, Dan’s out of the car and marching through the front door before I’ve even got my seatbelt off.

  ‘Come on,’ he says. ‘Chop chop. Or should that be “zap zap”?’

  ‘What are you in such a rush for?’

  Dan sticks his tongue under his low
er lip. ‘Duh. A clinic? Nurses?’

  I follow him inside and give my name to the receptionist. She’s obviously having problems with her eyes, as she can’t seem to tear them away from Dan.

  We sit down to wait, and after a few minutes, I watch in horror as a woman comes walking out, led by someone who I guess is her anxious husband. She’s wearing bandages over both eyes, and looks even paler than me.

  The nurse calls my name, and I look anxiously across at Dan, who’s engrossed in a copy of Hello!.

  ‘See you later, mate,’ he says. ‘Not that you’ll be able to say the same thing.’

  Monday 7th March

  7.02 a.m.

  When I open my door to Sam this morning, she seems more than a little relieved that I can actually recognize her.

  ‘It went okay then?’

  I nod. ‘What do you think?’

  Sam studies me quizzically for a moment. ‘You look less…’

  ‘Nerdy?’

  ‘Yes. Well, not that you did before. You just look a bit…fresher. And you’ve actually got nice eyes. If a bit bloodshot.’

  ‘Thanks. I think.’

  ‘So, did it hurt?’

  I have to come clean. ‘Only my pride. I couldn’t go through with it.’

  ‘But…Your glasses?’

  ‘I went for contact lenses instead. When it came down to it, the thought of someone firing a laser into my eyes…’

  Sam grimaces. ‘Good point.’

  ‘And then, when I met the optician who was going to do the operation, something about her wasn’t quite right.’

  ‘Which was?’

  ‘She was wearing glasses.’

  ‘Ah,’ says Sam. ‘So, how do you find the contacts?’

  ‘Well, I normally just have to look in the little pot where I put them the previous night.’

  ‘No, silly. I mean compared to your glasses? The convenience?’

  ‘Well, I’ll probably have to set my alarm a little earlier every morning, because now I have to retrieve each lens from where it’s been bathing for the night, then pick it up and balance it precariously on the end of one finger, check it for fluff, fingerprints, and anything else likely to reduce me to a squinting, eye-watering wreck, before leaning as close into the mirror as I can, which because I don’t have my glasses on, usually means I bump my forehead on it. Then it takes a supreme effort of will to try and keep my eye open while I insert the lens, all the while making sure it doesn’t fall off my finger into the sink, which hopefully I’ve remembered to put the plug in to stop my lens falling down the plughole, and then making sure I don’t blink just as I’m putting it in, therefore knocking it off my finger and either into the sink or onto the bathroom floor, from where I have to retrieve it and rinse it again before starting the whole procedure once more. If, by some miracle, I do manage to get it into my eye first time, I then have to spend the next five minutes blinking frantically, praying that I manage to get the thing centered on my eyeball. And then I have to repeat the whole procedure for the other eye. So no, to answer your question, it’s not quite as simple as just picking up my glasses and putting them on.’

  ‘Well, it’s certainly an improvement,’ says Sam. ‘Jane’s sure to notice the difference.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  And I must admit, whenever I look at myself in the mirror, I do look younger. And better. And while this is probably due to the fact that I’m not sporting a large pair of untrendy glasses any more, it could equally be due to the fact that as my eyes are watering so much, this produces the ‘soft focus’ effect that you used to get on old films whenever the female lead had her close-ups. Whatever, but it seems to do the trick.

  Sam waves a hand in front of my face. ‘Now, if you could just see your way to coming out for a run?’

  We head off for our usual circuit, and I have to stop myself from continually reaching up to push my glasses back into place. When we get to the gym, Sy stares at me for a few seconds, before asking me whether I’ve had my hair cut differently, and that evening, it even takes Wendy a couple of minutes to work out what’s changed.

  Natasha, on the other hand, doesn’t even notice.

  Wednesday 9th March

  7.56 p.m.

  We’re sitting at the bar in the Admiral Jim, and I’m reading through a leaflet that Dan has just passed me on dance classes.

  ‘I’m not going to win her back if I can suddenly dance, am I? And what if she can’t? I’ll look a right idiot if I whisk her on to the dance floor and start to salsa on my own in front of a bemused Jane, won’t I?’

  Dan laughs at the image. ‘All women can dance. It’s genetic, like cooking and nagging and ow!’ He rubs his ear where Wendy’s flicked him with a beer towel. ‘And besides, the men are supposed to lead the women.’

  ‘As opposed to lead them on,’ says Wendy.

  I shake my head. ‘You’re missing the point, Dan. Jane didn’t leave me because I had two left feet. She left me because she’d got tired of us, and me making like Patrick Swayze in front of her isn’t going to make any difference.’

  ‘Looking like Patrick Swayze might,’ suggests Wendy, rather unhelpfully.

  ‘And it’s not really about how I look.’

  Dan frowns. ‘It isn’t?’

  ‘Of course not. And that’s what I’m starting to realize. It’s about how she feels, whether she thinks I care. And if she thinks I don’t care about myself, then she certainly won’t think I care about her.’

  Dan whistles ‘Blimey, Sigmund. You’ve really thought about this, haven’t you?’

  I nod. ‘Well, what’s the alternative? I teach myself ten new skills and expect to wow her with my newfound abilities? It’s not what I do—it’s that I think about doing it that counts.’

  Dan leans in towards me. ‘Speaking about learning new skills, what are you going to do about, you know, the other?’

  ‘The other what?’ asks Wendy. ‘Other man?’

  ‘Nah. The other. Sex.’

  I sit up, flustered. ‘What do you mean, “what am I going to do about it”?’

  ‘Well, you know, you’ve obviously got…’ He lowers his voice, though only to a stage whisper, ‘a problem.’

  ‘No, Dan, I don’t have a problem. We had a problem. Me and Jane, that is.’

  Wendy nods. ‘Sex is all about compatibility. Not performance.’

  Dan does a double-take. ‘It isn’t?’

  ‘No,’ she says. ‘In fact, as far as women are concerned, when it comes down to it, there are only two things a man has to be in bed.’

  ‘Really?’ says Dan, fascinated.

  ‘Enthusiastic,’ says Wendy, before heading off towards the other end of the bar, ‘and grateful.’

  ‘Or deaf and blind, in your case,’ Dan calls after her.

  ‘She’s right,’ I say. ‘The compatibility part, I mean. Whether you click in bed.’

  Dan smirks. ‘I would have thought “clicking” was a bad thing. Squelching, yes, but clicking, no.’ He squeezes his palms together to produce a series of rather disgusting noises.

  ‘Dan, be serious,’ I say, when I’m sure Wendy’s out of earshot. ‘Jane stopped fancying me. That means she didn’t find me sexually attractive any more. That’s why she didn’t want to sleep with me.’

  ‘Or cried when she did.’

  I find myself reddening at the memory. ‘How many times do I have to tell you? That was just the once. And anyway, that was probably hormonal, or some other emotional thing.’

  ‘What, like disappointment?’

  ‘Dan, please.’

  He grins. ‘Tell you what. All you need to do is get a woman who you know to sleep with you. Perhaps someone you’re friends with, who’ll be able to give you an honest assessment of your strengths and weaknesses in the bedroom department.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

  ‘Let’s ask Wendy.’

  ‘Dan, steady on…’

  ‘No, dummy. Ask her what she thinks of the idea. Not
whether she’ll be the one. Though come to think of it…’

  ‘Dan. Don’t you dare…’ I start to say, but it’s too late; Dan’s already beckoning her over.

  ‘Question for you, Wenders,’ he says.

  ‘The answer’s no,’ says Wendy.

  ‘Not that question’ says Dan. ‘Eddie-boy and I were discussing sexy women, and I said you…’

  Wendy blushes slightly at the unexpected compliment from Dan. ‘That’s very, er, nice of you.’

  ‘No—I said you might know someone who might be prepared to sleep with him. From a purely objective point of view, of course. Unless you’d be interested in the, ahem, position yourself?’

  ‘Shut up, Dan,’ I tell him. ‘Wendy, don’t feel you have to answer that. In fact, either of those.’

  ‘Why not?’ says Dan. ‘She’d be doing you a favour. Give you some pointers on your technique, and all that. And she’d only have to do it the once.’

  Wendy leans against the bar. ‘Dan, something you quite evidently fail to understand is that it’s not all about technique. Anyone can press the right buttons. It’s pressing them in the right order that’s difficult. And especially with a new partner.’

  ‘You’ve been going out with the wrong men, sweetheart.’

  ‘I’m serious,’ says Wendy. ‘For women, it’s never that good the first time, mainly because we’re too anxious to really let ourselves go. Sure, the excitement of the initial meeting can be a good thing sometimes, but it’s only further along in the relationship that you start to refine your skills together, and get really good at it.’

  Dan puts his drink down on the bar. ‘Bollocks. Whenever I get a woman into bed, she’s great. Really enthusiastic. Will do anything for me—and I mean anything. And do you know why I think that is?’

  Wendy rolls her eyes. ‘Please do educate us, O master.’

  ‘Because she’s trying to impress me. It’s her one big chance to show me what she can do.’

  ‘Kind of like an audition?’ I suggest. ‘To see if she can get the part, so to speak?’

  Dan sniggers. ‘Oh, she gets the part all right. And it’s a repeat performance.’