Mr. Commitment

by Mike Gayle

  “A boys’ night out,” I said encouragingly. “It’ll be just what the doctor ordered.”

  Getting ready for our night out brought back a flood of memories. Memories of before Mel. In fact before the girl before that and the one before her too, right back to when I was seventeen and every Saturday night had the potential to be the best Saturday night of my life. The ritual was exactly the same every week:

  1. Watch Blind Date.

  2. During the ad break one of my more organized friends would call with a suggestion of where we could go.

  3. Me and Vernie would get into a fight over who was next in the bathroom. I’d lose and have to wait an hour for her to finish, only to discover she’d used all the hot water. While I had a lukewarm bath, another mate would call and leave a message with my mum saying who was going, where and when to meet.

  4. A whole gang of us would arrive at the Hollybush—just around the corner from our sixth-form college—half an hour later than we’d arranged, wearing clothes we thought made us look eighteen and reeking of Paco Rabane.

  5. After a few drinks, loud conversations and several rebuttals from the convent school girls who frequented the pub at the weekend, we’d get the bus into town and head off to a club, knowing full well that three quarters of us wouldn’t get in.

  That was what Saturday nights were supposed to be about: friendship, dressing up and boundless optimism.

  Dan and I met up with Charlie in the Haversham at 9 P.M., half an hour later than arranged. I could tell by the look on Charlie’s face that despite his earlier reluctance he was just as excited as me. Even Dan, whose Saturday nights had never been all that mundane, had something about him that bit sharper tonight. It was as if we’d all agreed to pretend that the last ten years hadn’t happened to us. For the next few hours we were seventeen again and up for it. It felt great. Such were our good moods that we even invited Greg, who’d dropped into the Haversham by chance, to join us. He was so enthusiastic about the idea that he took a taxi home, showered, and was back in the pub in under half an hour. All present and correct. We were ready to go.

  I love this!

  The club, just off Leicester Square, was called in predictably kitsch fashion “Boogie Nights.” The decision to go seventies had been unanimous. We’d briefly considered trying to get into one of the capital’s trendier clubs, but the feeling amongst the superstuds of seduction (i.e., me and Dan) was that the women in clubs like those tended to be of the choosier variety. So, for a night of guaranteed good times with the kind of girls whose expectations were as low as our own, the seventies night was ideal.

  Walking through the double doors into the main room of the club was like stepping straight into 1978. Here was a world where the Bee Gees were groovy, John Travolta was an icon for disaffected youth, and bell-bottoms were so hip it hurt. As we strode determinedly across the scarlet carpet to the bar, the strobe lighting making us look like we were walking in slow motion, I just knew the night was going to be one to remember.

  “What are you drinking?” bellowed Greg in my direction.

  I scrutinized the optics for inspiration and found none. “I’ll have a Stella,” I replied.

  “Me too,” said Dan, checking his reflection in the mirror behind the bar.

  “I’ll join you in that,” said Charlie, edging out of the way of a gang of women dancing a drunken conga. He let out a yelp of surprise as they passed.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked, turning to Charlie.

  “One of them just pinched my bum!” he said incredulously.

  Hearing this, Dan turned round and gave Charlie a playful wink. “What can I say, mate? You, my son, are dynamite!”

  Dan went off in search of a fag machine and Charlie disappeared to the toilets, leaving me alone with Greg, who was now unashamedly scanning the room for “talent.”

  “Look at the arse on that,” he said, pointing in the direction of a group of attractive girls who had just walked in. I smiled weakly so that he didn’t feel totally stupid, but refused to indulge him any further. While I was all for the appraisal of the feminine form, Greg’s tabloid manner lacked any subtlety or grace at all. When Dan and I went on the prowl, we’d never say a single word to each other, we just knew—it was a mixture of Jedi mind tricks combined with a unique sense of timing. Greg’s coarseness made me feel as far removed from the purpose of coming out tonight as possible. Now I really did miss Mel.

  While Greg disappeared to the toilet, leaving me to stand guard over the four pints of Stella on the bar, I thought about Mel, or more accurately Mel and her new man, Rob 1.

  They’re bound to be together tonight. I can picture them perfectly: Rob 1’s being really attentive, telling her amusing stories, making her feel special—doing all the things I used to do when I first met her. Mel’s looking into his eyes, hanging on to his every word, wallowing in that buzz of excitement that comes from anticipating the unknown.

  I stopped thinking and felt lower than ever.

  By midnight we’d all run out of steam. Charlie had spent the last hour looking at his watch, moaning that he’d served his time in nightclubs and wanted to be in bed with his wife like any normal thirty-four-year-old married man. Next to him, a very disgruntled Dan sat on the arm of a sofa, occasionally sipping his beer. He’d spent most of the night scowling in the general direction of Greg, who was on the dance floor in hot pursuit of some helpless girl. The irony wasn’t lost on Dan and me that Greg—the only one of us who was engaged—was also the only one to have spoken to a member of the opposite sex all evening. Even Charlie—a married man—had had his bum pinched. So much for the superstuds of seduction.

  “I can see it a mile off,” said Dan irritably. “Greg’s going to get off with that girl. It’s amazing. Why can’t women smell a loser when one whiffs by?”

  “Depressing, isn’t it?” I said in agreement. “Here’s us, two young, free, single guys, and there’s him, not so young, certainly not so good-looking, and engaged to be married. I dunno what the lovely Anne sees in him.”

  “That’s women for you,” pronounced Dan. I could feel one of his this-is-how-the-world-is speeches coming on. “They believe that inside every heartless bastard is a small boy yearning to be loved. But their theory falls short”—he glared over at Greg again—“because what they don’t understand is that there are certain types of heartless bastard who if hacked in two would only be found to contain yet more heartless bastard.”

  As if taking his cue from Dan, the DJ played Gloria Gaynor’s aptly titled “I Will Survive” and the place erupted in unison. A studenty girl wearing a neon blue Afro wig approached the sofa of doom, and without saying anything, grabbed my hand and pulled me onto the dance floor. It was a split-second decision: resist and show a modicum of self-respect or surrender and let everyone know how desperate I was. In the end I surrendered, because desperate or not, in spite of the wig I could tell that she was far from ugly.

  She grinned at me dementedly and began gyrating as if her life depended on her performance. She knew all the words to the song and was even clicking her fingers in time to the music. It was as if the concept of embarrassment was completely unknown to her. Her confidence was infectious and within seconds I’d lost all my inhibitions as I strutted, boogied and generally got down with my bad self in time to the music.

  “What’s your name?” yelled Blue Afro Girl, over the music.

  “Duffy!” I shouted back. “What’s yours?”

  “Emma!” She held out her hand for me to shake. “Emma Anderson. Nice to meet you, Duffy!”

  As we continued dancing I noticed that not only had she got the most beautiful greeny-gray eyes I’d ever seen, but in addition to this she was using them to draw me into her funky world. I tried desperately to remember what I was supposed to do in this sort of situation. The procedure for pulling a member of the opposite sex was supposed to be like riding a bike—something you never forgot—but somehow I’d managed it.

  As the song fin
ished I turned to escape, but she grabbed my shirtsleeve and refused to let go. I looked over despairingly at Dan and Charlie, who were clearly enjoying the floor show. Greg, still dancing with the same girl, smiled smugly over her shoulder as if to say, “Wa-hey! We’ve both pulled!”

  Just as I was convinced that things could get no worse, the Village People’s “YMCA” came on—my all-time least favorite record. For her tenth birthday, my auntie Kathleen had given Vernie a double compilation album of disco hits called Boogie’s Greatest Hits Vol. 2. For the next few months my sister constantly played “YMCA” whilst pretending to be the kids from Fame. Every time, she got to be Coco while I had to be Leroy or else suffer the harshest of Chinese burns. It wasn’t fair. I knew Coco was a girl, but she was just so much more exciting than bloody Leroy. This was why I hated the Village People. Looking around the club, I realized I was in a minority. Like a clarion call to the inebriated, the record’s opening trumpets drew the merry throngs from the bar, the toilets and the sofas to the dance floor.

  “I love this!” screamed Emma excitedly.

  “Me too!” I shrieked back. “Me too!”

  My sweat-soaked shirt was clinging tightly to my armpits and back by the time the song came to a close. Emma dragged me determinedly by the hand to an empty sofa at the edge of the dance floor, lodging herself as close to me as possible without sitting on my lap. “It’s hot, isn’t it?” she said feverishly. She peeled off her Afro wig and ruffled her cropped sandy-brown hair. “I bet you thought I really had blue hair!” A wide smile lit up her elfin face. “What kind of a name’s Duffy, then?”

  “Duffy’s my surname,” I admitted timidly. “My first name’s Ben but I don’t like it. Sounds too much like the name you’d give a Yorkshire terrier.” Out of the corner of my eye I spotted Dan surreptitiously walking past. Seeing him brought me to my senses. This just didn’t feel right. Sitting here with a strange, slightly mad girl who wasn’t Mel. It was time to admit to myself that I was no superstud of seduction.

  “Listen,” I explained. “My friends and I have to go soon.”

  “Anywhere interesting?”

  I shook my head vigorously. “Home.” She raised her eyebrows suggestively. “Work in the morning, you see,” I added quickly, and then for some unknown reason mimed digging actions.

  “So you’re a laborer?”

  “Yes. Amongst other things.”

  “What sort of laboring do you do?”

  “Oh, you know . . . a bit of moving heavy stuff here, a bit of moving heavy stuff there. The work of a laborer revolves around shifting heavy stuff.”

  She licked her lips provocatively and squeezed my right arm tightly. “Hmmm. That must be where you get this wonderful physique from.”

  Realizing that I was now officially out of my depth and unable to tread water, I made a move to escape before I drowned. Her hands, however, were firmly gripped around my arm and she was using all her weight to keep me anchored to the sofa. “I haven’t finished with you yet,” she said slyly. “And you’re not going anywhere until I have.”

  Surely things haven’t changed this much since I last went out on the pull? I told myself. Surely I was the hunter and she the hunted? In an attempt to calm myself down I considered my options:

  a. I could escape her advances (and no doubt regret it the next day);

  b. I could succumb to her advances (and no doubt regret it the next day);

  c. I could defer her advances (and work out what to do the next day).

  It had to be “c.”

  “I really am going to have to go,” I said firmly, “but do you fancy meeting up for a drink next week?”

  “Yeah, brilliant,” she said, nodding enthusiastically. “Whereabouts do you live?”

  “Muswell Hill,” I replied. I couldn’t believe it. My first real live date in four years, without even trying! Maybe I was a superstud of seduction after all. “How about you?”

  “Hornsey,” she replied, stroking the hair on her Afro wig playfully. “Do you know the Kingfisher in Crouch End? It’s nice in there.”

  “I don’t, but I can find it. Sounds great. How about this Tuesday?”

  “No can do,” she said, shaking her head.

  “Wednesday?”

  She shook her head again. “And before you say it I can’t do Thursday either.”

  “Busy with university exams?” I asked, hoping that she hadn’t changed her mind about fancying me.

  “Not exactly,” she said coyly. “It’s just that my parents will go mental if I start going out on school nights again.”

  If it had been possible for the earth to have opened up and swallowed me in my entirety, there would’ve been nothing that could have made me happier. I’d given this life thing a good try, but this time fate had gone too far; now I was reduced to chatting up a girl for whom seventies nights weren’t just an evening of kitsch fun but a lesson in ancient history.

  “I think I . . . I—” I didn’t manage to finish my sentence, as a sudden commotion across the dance floor grabbed our attention. We stood up to get a better look, and I saw that it was Dan and Greg grappling on the floor. I took the opportunity to slip away from Emma and over to Charlie, who was standing, pint in hand, watching events unfold before him.

  “I knew tonight would end in trouble,” said Charlie, motioning to Dan and Greg.

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  Charlie took a long, slow sip of his beer. “Greg was snogging that girl he was dancing with, Dan went off on one, and there you have it.” He pointed at our two friends on the floor again. “Like I said, I knew I should’ve stayed home.”

  The club’s door staff, eager to justify their existence, were over in seconds and dragged out Greg and Dan with the minimum of fuss. Charlie and I followed them, and while they were forcibly ejected we pooled cloakroom ticket stubs and handed them to the woman behind the counter. As I turned to leave with Greg’s coat in my hand I was stopped in my tracks.

  “Were you going to leave without saying goodbye?” said a voice from behind me.

  I turned around. It was Emma. In the bright fluorescent light of the lobby she was quite obviously a lot younger than she’d first appeared, but that didn’t stop her being pretty. In fact she was just the sort of girl that the seventeen-year-old me would’ve gladly laid down his life for, and now here I was eleven years later turning her down. At the end of the day it seems everything is a matter of timing.

  “I’m sorry,” I apologized. “As you can see, my mates got themselves into a bit of trouble. I’m going to have to go.”

  “I suppose going out next week is off too,” she said quietly.

  I nodded. “Yeah, I think so.”

  “It’s because I’m sixteen, isn’t it?”

  I nodded again. “You could say that.”

  Reaching up, she straightened the collar of my jacket and kissed me gently on the cheek. “You’d better be going, then.”

  “Yeah,” I said, as the sensation of her kiss slowly faded away. “I suppose I had.”

  By the time I got outside Charlie and Dan were nowhere to be seen and Greg was attempting unsuccessfully to hail a black cab. “Taxi drivers aren’t that keen on customers with blood across their shirts,” I said, handing him his coat.

  “Cheers,” he said, and snatched the coat from me. “If you’re looking for your mates, they’ve gone.”

  “What was that about, then?” I asked, studying his bloody nose.

  “Hadn’t you better ask your mate Dan?” He searched through his pockets. “I was minding my own business when he came over and started spouting off about how I shouldn’t be cheating on Anne, like it’s any of his business.” He finally located what he was looking for. He pulled out his lighter and lit a cigarette. “Then it all kicked off. He’s a nutter.”

  Dan was totally in the wrong having a go at Greg like that, but he did have a point. I was tired of humoring Greg and his outmoded ways but I wasn’t about to lecture him on his stupidi
ty—I just wasn’t going to bother seeing him anymore. I held out my hand. “Look, I’m sorry for what’s happened, okay? Let’s shake on it.”

  Ignoring me, Greg threw his cigarette onto the floor and climbed into the back of a red Datsun Cherry—quite obviously not a minicab but some dodgy geezer on the make—and was whisked away into the night.

  Alone and a little bit cold, I thought about what to do next. I didn’t particularly want to go home, because even though the night air had taken the edge off the alcohol, I was still on a high of sorts. I’d achieved my goal. I was seventeen again—chasing girls and getting into scrapes—and it had felt so good that I didn’t want to go back to being Mr. Twenty-eight, single and boring.

  Desperate to keep the night going a little while longer, I decided to drop into the Comedy Cellar, a small club on Long Acre that Dan and I sometimes played. I knew the guys on the door quite well and there was bound to be someone around to kill time with.

  Without hesitating I walked briskly through the crowds in Leicester Square and was about to cross Charing Cross Road when my eyes locked on to a man and woman in the middle of the street holding hands, waiting for a break in the traffic.

  I looked at the woman and was horrified.

  The woman stared right back at me, also horrified.

  The man looked at the woman and then looked at me, equally horrified.

  I looked back at the man and the woman and outdid their combined looks of horror to the power of ten.

  What were the chances of this happening? A million to one. If only, I thought, this kind of luck could be utilized for the forces of good rather than evil.

  “Duffy,” said an obviously shaken Mel, coming to a halt right in front of me.

  “Mel,” I said distractedly.

  “Just come from a gig?”