Confessions of a Serial Dater

by Michelle Cunnah

  “Well,” I take a deep breath.

  “No, let me,” Carmen says, grinning. “Please—it would make my year. What would you say,” she leans into Jess, “if I told you that Rosie threw Sidney violently to the floor when he tried to snog her, broke his toe, made a grand exit minus Jonathan, got picked up by a handsome doctor, and passionately shared tongues with him in Piccadilly Circus? And then forgot to ask him for his name.” Carmen falls back in her chair laughing.

  “No, no. You didn’t!” Jess puts a hand to her mouth.

  “Well, it wasn’t quite like that,” I say, squirming in my seat. “I didn’t actually push Sidney…”

  “But what about poor Jonathan?” Jess is highly invested in my relationship with Jonathan. She likes him and thinks he’s perfect for me. Also, there’s nothing she likes more than a good wedding. She spends a great deal of time fantasizing about them—especially her own.

  “I know,” I sigh. “I’m seeing him tonight. What am I going to say?”

  “It was only a kiss,” Carmen says. “Why say anything at all?”

  “With tongues,” I point out. “We exchanged body fluids.”

  “Darling, don’t get carried away by a bit of saliva.” Carmen starts the hair twirling again, and I think she’s about to get serious and meaningful.

  “You know, Aster has to kiss a lot of girls in his business.” Jess frowns.

  “Does he?” Carmen says, rather dangerously.

  “I mean, the girls kiss him. They just get so overcome by him on stage, they can’t help themselves.”

  “That’s…remarkable.” I just can’t see Aster’s appeal, myself. Despite his penchant for designer clothes, he is thin to the point of emaciation. But he does have an Iggy Pop thing going on.

  “I think that your brief encounter with Dr. Love happened at a crisis point in your relationship with Jonathan,” Carmen says slowly.

  “Well, I’d call Jonathan loving his boss more than me fairly crucial.”

  “No, that’s not the point. You’re at that stage where you have to think about the future, and you’re getting ready to move to the next phase. Quite possibly,” Carmen tells me, thoughtfully, “you were looking for a way out of your relationship with Jonathan before things get too serious.”

  “Exactly,” Jess jumps on the bandwagon. “You let a man get close to you, but once they start wanting more commitment, like living together or something, you find a reason to finish it.”

  “But on the other hand,” Carmen adds, “Jonathan does have a blind spot with his boss’s attitude to you, which pisses me off greatly on your behalf. And while Jonathan is a great all-round kind of bloke, I suspect that he could do with more backbone. I think that you need some risk in your life.”

  “But I hate risk.”

  “The sexual excitement doesn’t last forever, you know,” Jess adds. “Although six months isn’t very long for things to get boring.”

  “Jonathan’s not boring.”

  “I mean, Aster and I have been together for seven months now, and our sex life is really hot. Maybe you just need to be—you know—more adventurous in bed.”

  “Our sex life is exciting enough, thank you very much.” I blush a bit, but it’s true. Jonathan’s no slouch in that department.

  “But you plan it. You even know what nights of the week you’re going to have sex. Maybe a bit more spontaneity would help things along.”

  “What’s wrong with sex in bed?” I’ve just never seen the appeal of sex on the kitchen table. I mean, it’s just too uncomfortable.

  “Let me finish.” Carmen holds up a hand as she takes a sip of coffee. “This isn’t about sex at all. It’s about emotional commitment. And you don’t hate risk, you’re just conditioned to take the safe option every time. So what you do is opt for Mr. Nice Guy, because he’s Mr. Safe Guy.”

  “But that’s not—” true. Is it?

  “I think you should, you know, talk it through with Jonathan,” Jess says patiently. “I mean, if all that’s wrong with him is his need to please his boss overly much, then it’s hardly the end of the world. It’s not as if he’s, you know, secretly checking out pictures of naked grannies on the Internet.”

  Jess does have a point…and I am very fond of Jonathan—most of the time, when all’s said and done.

  “So—you’re saying I should stick it out with him?” I think I want to. And she’s right—I should give it more time. And it would be a bit of a relief to attend Christmas parties as a couple, rather than as a single…Besides, we’ve had a lot of good times together, and the Sidney thing is a minuscule part of our relationship.

  “Just for a bit longer,” Jess smiles with relief. “Talk to him. You owe it to yourself to see where it’s going. Take that risk. Take your relationship to the next phase.”

  I can see from her dreamy expression that she’s daydreaming about me in a puffy white dress, exchanging vows with Jonathan. I envy Jess a bit, truth be told.

  You see, I don’t daydream. Not really. Not unless you can count daydreaming about winning the lottery—not a huge amount, just enough to ensure financial security. Or of a peaceful weekend where Mum doesn’t get panicked about something or other. Or I dream of finding the perfect person for the perfect job. Not the most exciting of things, but then I’m not that exciting, and besides, that’s what I do at work. But it’s not exactly boring, either…

  Picture this: It’s a cold, rainy December day at work. The phone rings, and it’s, oh, some gorgeous, handsome actor. And he needs me to find him the perfect live-in assistant. He’s trusting me to find just the right person who, amongst other things, will…chop his broccoli for a late night snack after a busy evening treading the actorly boards of the West End…if he actually eats broccoli. Okay, so maybe my daydreams are a bit boring…

  “Hell, I wasn’t talking about Jonathan,” Carmen grins, and I don’t like her tone of voice. “I think Dr. Love is the most risky, exciting thing that’s happened to you in years,” she tells me. “I think you should track him down and sleep with him.”

  I think I need to go home and lie down. My brain hurts…

  Have you ever wondered at some of the squirrelly label warnings that manufacturers deem it necessary to include with consumer goods for the benefit of us poor, hapless customers?

  I mean, we don’t really need to be alerted to the fact that our food products “will be hot after heating,” or that we really shouldn’t attempt to iron our clothes when they’re actually on our bodies, do we?

  I kid you not, that’s exactly what the information pack that came with my iron warned me not to do. And let’s face it, if the company feels beholden to warn us of such antics, then at least one poor (although incredibly stupid) person must have tried it…the mind boggles.

  It’s the Swedes I feel sorry for. Poor, uninformed sods. Who knew that they were so sorely in need of being admonished not to attempt to stop their chainsaw blades with their hands. Or with their genitals…euck.

  But I do firmly believe that dishwashers should come with the warning “Do not under any circumstances whatsoever attempt to wash horticultural features in me,” just to make it abundantly clear to people like my mother, whom I love dearly, but whom I also suspect inhabits a parallel universe, that garden gnomes should be consigned to the garden.

  After Carmen’s rather shocking advice (which, no, I am definitely not going to take) and Jess’s more sensible advice (which I think I am going to take), and after elbowing my way through the Saturday morning chaos of Portobello Road market (otherwise known as Shopping with the World and His Wife), and chewing the fat about my forthcoming dinner with Jonathan tonight, because we always go somewhere nice for dinner on Saturday nights, and what the hell am I going to say to him, and what the hell is he going to say to me, I finally reach the sanctity of my house. And finally check my telephone messages.

  All ten of them are from my mother.

  Not a single one of them is from Jonathan.

  But b
efore I can worry about Jonathan’s silence, or wonder what new tizz my mother has got herself into, the telephone rings, and it’s my mother.

  “Darling, thank God you’re not dead,” is her opening remark. I’m pretty ecstatic not to be dead, too, but I don’t say this, because my mother doesn’t give me the chance.

  “Where were you? We’ve been so worried. You’ve been incommunicado since yesterday, and I’ve been calling and calling on your home phone and your cell phone,” she panics down the line at me.

  “Sorry, Mum,” I sigh. Because I am sorry. I truly don’t mean to worry her, but it doesn’t take much to get her going. She’s turned it into an art form. “I told you yesterday that I had to go to—”

  “Yes, but you should have called me when you got home. You could have been mugged by a drug trafficker on Lad-broke Grove, or dragged into Kensington Gardens by a serial rapist,” she says, building up to a crescendo of horrification.

  This picture of doom and desperation is in direct relation to her belief that the only safe place in London to live is Hampstead, where she lives, and her desire for me to sell my nice little house and move back in with her and Granny Elsie.

  Yet again, I thank God for the housing trust that got me onto the first rung of the ladder of home ownership. Six years ago, after a year of residence in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, as it is so grandly called, I was able to take part in a shared ownership scheme for young (and therefore unrich) singles. It was only one room, plus a small bathroom and kitchen area, but it was mine. And came with a huge reduction, thanks to the housing trust.

  I also thank God for the bequest that Granddad Mayford left to me, which enabled me to sell the studio apartment two years ago (at an astonishing profit) and plough all my money into my partnership in Odd Jobs and a huge mortgage for my sweet little terraced cottage. My haven of calm and serenity.

  “Please calm—” down, I don’t say, because Mum is barely pausing for breath.

  “I nearly called the police to report you missing, but Granny Elsie said that you can’t report a missing person until they’ve been missing for at least twenty-four hours. She heard it on Crime Watch.”

  Thank heaven for Granny Elsie, I think, rubbing my temple as it begins to throb in a familiar way.

  “But darling, you have to come over right now,” Mum tells me, her voice hitting a peak of panic. “Granny Elsie stuck Percy’s head to her hand with the superglue, and we can’t get him off.”

  Or maybe not…

  Percy, I should tell you, is one of Granny Elsie’s vast collection of garden gnomes. And Granny Elsie, although inexplicably potty about her garden gnomes (much to the horror of half of the posh residents of Mum’s Hampstead address), does not have the steadiest of hands when it comes to fixing things with superglue. She does not have the greatest eyesight, either.

  “How did it happen?” I sigh, because there is always a tale to tell.

  “The why doesn’t matter now,” Mum says very quickly, and I know that she is somehow responsible for Percy’s current predicament.

  “It was putting him in the hot cycle in the dishwasher as did it,” Granny Elsie pipes up in the background, and my temple throbs even more. “I told you, Sandra. Didn’t I tell you it should have been the cold cycle?”

  “Shush, Mother,” my mother tells her. And then to me, “The how we get Granny unstuck is the only thing that’s important.”

  “You put Percy in the dishwasher?”

  “Well, he was dirty, and I didn’t want him in the kitchen sink, did I? Everyone knows the dishwasher is more hygienic.”

  I don’t bother pointing out that she’s not exactly planning on eating off Percy and that a quick sluice down with the garden hose would have been just as effective. This will only add to her arsenal of weapons in the Why I Should Move Home war.

  “Have you tried soapy water? Or nail varnish remover?” I ask, remembering Jennifer Lopez’s nifty little trick in The Wedding Planner, where she removes a statue’s testicles from Matthew McConaughey’s hand. See, you learn so many things from movies. Thinking of Matthew McConaughey makes me think of doctors, which leads me inexorably back to Dr. Love…

  “She needs hospital treatment,” my mother insists, building up to another panic. And before I can tell her not to get carried away by a flight of fancy, I get carried away by one of my own.

  It ambushes my brain, and before common sense can overcome its surprise at being hijacked in such a way, and ruthlessly squash my flight of fancy, I’m off and running. In fantasy land.

  I’m in the hospital with Granny Elsie for emergency Percy removal. Of course, I’m wearing the gorgeous, unsensible, red crushed-velvet top I saw in Carmen’s vintage clothing store last week, which, although I craved, I dismissed as too revealing. I’m also wearing tight, sexy, distressed jeans, which I also saw in her store and didn’t buy, but which turn me into a sex goddess. My hair is glossy and immaculate, and in between the dash from Mum’s house to the hospital, I’ve found time to apply full makeup.

  I’ve just settled Granny Elsie in her cubicle and am making reassuring noises of comfort to her when the privacy curtains part. And there he is. Dr. Love.

  The harsh hospital lighting dims to a romantic glow. “Sweet Mystery of Life, at Last I’ve Found You,” plays in the background with full orchestra, because, of course, my astonishing daydream comes complete with sound effects.

  Dr. Love is instantly smitten by my sexy, glowing persona, combined with caring, granddaughterly concern. He’s a bit haggard, but in a sexy, rumpled kind of way because, apart from delivering Baby Woodbridge, he spent the night fraught with regret that he didn’t obtain my name or my telephone number, thinking he’d never see me again and had lost his chance of One True Love.

  “Darling, you’re so much better at this kind of thing than me,” my mother’s pathos-laden voice interrupts my daydream, just as Dr. Love has taken me into his arms and is about to kiss me.

  I kill the daydream.

  I would never use Granny Elsie in such a way. And besides, there are so many hospitals in London that the chance of me ending up in Dr. Love’s is, well, just not going to happen. Not that I want anything to happen, of course I don’t.

  “I don’t know how we manage without you,” Mum says, and I can hear the tears building in her voice. “It would be so lovely to see you,” she says plaintively.

  She saw me yesterday, but pointing this out will only lead to a further diatribe about being old and alone in this world, and what a comfort children should be to their poor, widowed mothers, even though she is only fifty-four and has Granny Elsie for company.

  I concede this round and fortify myself to do battle with the chaos that is the Northern Line.

  Better just call Jonathan first…I take a deep breath and dial his number.

  5

  Ties That Bind

  Rosie’s Confession:

  Banging your head against a wall apparently burns one hundred and fifty calories per hour.

  This is interesting, but I cannot help but wonder (a) why someone thought this would be a good measurement to test (I mean, how many people do you know who consistently bang their heads against walls in the first place?), (b) how they actually persuaded anyone to volunteer for this, and (c) if anyone has thought of measuring how many calories per hour it burns when dealing with a mother not quite in this reality…

  “You’re such a comfort to your poor, widowed mother,” Mum tells me two hours later, after I have successfully removed Percy’s head from Granny Elsie’s hand, glued his head back on his body, placed him in his familiar spot in the garden with all the other gnomes, and rinsed down all the other gnomes with the garden hose to avoid further disasters.

  And discovered the unpaid phone bill.

  Inexplicably, the thought of hitting my head repeatedly against a brick wall is very tempting….

  “Mum, you have to stay on top of things,” I say, checking through the heaps of papers on the kitch
en table. “This is a final warning.”

  “I know, I know, dear. I, er, just forgot. How about a nice mince pie?” She deftly changes the subject, whisking the pack out of the cupboard and placing it on the cluttered table.

  Odd that she worries so about the cleanliness of the garden gnomes. She doesn’t have the same feelings about the tidiness of the kitchen, that’s for sure.

  “They’re from Marks & Spencer—your favorites.”

  “But I set it up as a direct debit from your bank account so you wouldn’t have to worry about stuff like this.” Such as the gas bill, too, it suddenly occurs to me.

  After Dad died just over a year ago, I went through all the financial details with her. Apart from the Hampstead house, there is also a monthly pension and a government widow’s pension. It’s not a huge amount, but enough to cover bills and property taxes and leave her with enough money to spend on herself. And Granny Elsie contributes to the bills.

  “December is such a busy month, all that shopping to do—I’m just a bit overextended at the bank until next month,” Mum tells me, a bit flustered as she pours boiling water into the teapot. “I just—canceled it for this month, you know, to give me a bit of extra cash for Christmas.”

  “It doesn’t work like that.” I close my eyes. Mum and financial affairs are not a match made in heaven. “You can’t just not pay a bill for one month, then catch up the next. I’m guessing here—call it a wild stab in the dark if you like—but maybe that’s why the energy company got so upset yesterday.”

  I don’t suggest that she sell the house and move somewhere cheaper and smaller, thereby setting herself up with a nice lump sum to live off. We’ve gone that route before, and she just can’t bear to leave the house she’s lived in all her married life. I do understand, but am concerned that she’s getting even flakier.