by Mike Gayle
“Ah!” I said knowingly. “But how do we know if we look like we’re on a date? We’ve only got each other’s opinions to verify that.”
“Let’s find out.” Alexa turned to her left and tapped a stocky man in a long leather jacket on the shoulder. He was in the middle of a conversation with a young blonde dreadlocked woman in a trouser suit. “Excuse me?” said Alexa. “My friend and I were wondering if we looked like we were on a date. Do you think we are?”
Bloody TV presenters! While the rest of us were content to tell people what kind of a fun personality we have, people like Alexa always felt a need to prove it. I cringed with embarrassment. Fortunately, the man recognized her and couldn’t wait to flatter her ego.
“You look like old college friends,” he said, humoring her. “You look way too comfortable to be on a first date. What d’you reckon, Olivia?”
“I think you’re wrong, Jez,” said his companion thoughtfully. “They’re definitely a couple. Look at the way they’re sitting, look at the body language. This is more than companionship: this is about sexual chemistry.” She began laughing. “I feel quite flushed just looking at the pair of them!”
“Thanks,” said Alexa. She turned to me in order to flash a wide, astonishingly suggestive grin in my direction. “You don’t know how useful your comments have been.”
I see a couple
We left the bar and Alexa put her arm through mine as we walked along leisurely in pursuit of food. She led me to a down-at-heel Indian restaurant off Charing Cross Road called Punjab Paradise, which according to her had become cool with TV and music-business types bored with posh expense-account restaurants and celebrity chefs. Over a distinctly ordinary chicken sagwalla and prawn bhuna we talked avidly about our lives, exchanging stories of our past that presented us in the best light possible. A few times I noticed she tried to steer the conversation on to past relationships, and when I could no longer avoid the issue without appearing rude, I told her simply that Mel and I had broken up because I couldn’t marry her. She didn’t react, and I think the serious tone of my voice revealed that I was far from over Mel, so she let me change topics.
At about nine-thirty we left the restaurant and she suggested we go for a coffee somewhere nice. We reached a coffee bar in Soho, but it was packed full of the type of beautiful people that even she found tedious, so reaching for my hand she suggested that we go for a walk through Leicester Square instead. Convinced this was her being all TV presentery again, I tried to put her off the idea, reminding her that this late at night Leicester Square was turned over to an outlandish collection of tourists, bongo players and pickpockets, but she wouldn’t listen. And anyway, a small shallow part of me was flushed with pride at the thought of being out and about in the center of swinging London holding the hand of one of the most lusted-after women on television.
We walked around for a while, then Alexa said she wanted to sit down for a minute, so we bought two ice creams while we looked for a bench that didn’t have someone sleeping on it. A few minutes later and we were sat down watching the crowds pass by. She turned to me fixing me with her deep brown eyes just a moment too long. “You’re quite a laugh really, aren’t you?” she said.
“Really?”
“Not like you are onstage though.”
“What am I now?”
“The stand-up you is sharp, funny and slightly irreverent in a good-natured kind of way. The real you is more serious, more awkward, like you’re in a permanent state of embarrassment.”
“So, you’re a TV presenter and an amateur psychologist. An interesting combination.” I smiled knowingly. “You like to suss out people don’t you? You’ve been doing it ever since I met you.”
“It’s true,” she admitted. “I like to know what makes people tick. It’s the key to being a good interviewer.”
“So now that you’ve got me in a box, are you happy with what you’ve found?”
“I think so,” she said, and smiled sweetly. “But I need to do some further investigations.”
Needing no further encouragement I weighed up the pros and cons of attempting to kiss her right there. (Pro: it was a warm night so she might think it was romantic; con: it was a street bench and she might think it was a bit juvenile.)
Before I could come to a conclusion she turned to me and with a mischievous glint in her eye said, “Let’s play Couple Analysis. Like those two people did with us in the bar. Let’s make wild, completely unfounded assumptions about couples based on what they look like.” I have to admit I was a little disappointed that she was more excited at showing off her predisposition toward the wacky than having her wicked way with me, but I didn’t let it show. In fact I found it amusing because it wasn’t the sort of thing I’d ever have suggested doing with someone as gorgeous as her.
Alexa nudged me playfully and pointed to our first victims. They were both about eighteen, and wearing baggy T-shirts, jeans with large turn-ups and brightly colored trainers. He had on a floppy hat that I suspected he thought made him look like a bit of a hard case, and was carrying a rucksack that probably had his sandwiches in. She was dressed exactly the same, but had a skateboard tucked underneath her arm.
“They’ve been going out for six months,” said Alexa between licks of her ice cream. “It’s the longest relationship he’s ever had. He thinks she’s the best-looking girl in the world. They are in love without a doubt.”
I disagreed. “Note the way that she’s walking just that little bit faster than him. I think they’ve been going out about a year, but she’s been seeing someone else called Darren for the last three weeks. She’s just working up the strength to tell him.”
“That’s a bit cynical, isn’t it?” Alexa pulled a face. “Give them a chance.”
I shrugged my shoulders. “I’m just telling it the way I see it.”
She nudged me in the ribs again. “Okay, your turn.”
I scanned the crowds for a suitable couple. “Okay, how about those two over there?” I pointed to two Spanish kids who looked like they were fourteen, tops. “They’ve been a couple for exactly four weeks. He’s fancied her for the last two years. He’ll be grateful for this moment for the next ten years. She’s the one who’s going to establish his pattern. Every girl he goes out with after this will in some way be compared to this one.”
Alexa laughed. “You’re serious, aren’t you? Who am I going to be compared to?”
I smiled but didn’t answer.
“I think you’re wrong,” said Alexa. “He’s too pretty not to have queues of girls chasing him. I think she’s been after him for ages, making subtle hints and suggestions, desperately hoping that he’ll get the message. But he’s too thick or self-absorbed to notice until now. So she makes her move because they’re on holiday and he thinks that it’s just a spur-of-the-moment thing.”
“Okay,” I said. “It’s your turn. Only one more couple, though, and then we’ll find somewhere to have another drink if you like.”
“Sounds good.” Alexa nodded in agreement. “I see a couple.”
“Where?”
She ignored me. “She’s been very keen for a while. Dropping some serious hints, like that Spanish girl, but he doesn’t seem to notice.” I couldn’t see the couple anywhere. There was a shady-looking pair standing next to a nightclub entrance who looked like his ’n’ hers drug dealers. “He’s not her usual type. He’s a bit more down to earth, but she thinks that’s good.” I watched a tall dark-haired woman in her late thirties walk past with her young lover. “She likes him because he makes her laugh and because he’s got a look in his eyes that’s kind of keen, but then there’s something about him that’s not quite there.” A young couple with a terrier loitered in front of us as if waiting for friends. “Like she’s not got his full attention. She likes it though. Makes him more of a challenge.”
Well, of course by the time she’d stopped talking I’d stopped searching for this phantom couple and after a token deliberation I commenced what w
as to become my first public snog on a bench in well over fifteen years.
Like crazed adolescents we kissed in the taxi all the way back to Alexa’s flat in Camden. All the time I was thinking, This is fantastic—I’m snogging an intelligent beautiful woman who not only is not Mel, but has the added benefit of being TV’s Hottest Totty. I was okay with this thought for about ten seconds but then I let my imagination run away with me, wondering what would happen when we reached Alexa’s flat. Inevitably, as happens in these situations, she’d invite me up for coffee. And though I hated coffee I’d agree to the idea, and as I sipped my Douwe Egbert’s, she’d slip on Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue and we’d take our clothes off and . . .
“What’s up?” said Alexa. The taxi jolted as we pulled up sharply outside a large modern-looking apartment block. She was looking at me intently. I’d been so deep in contemplation that I’d failed to concentrate on the business at hand.
“Nothing,” I said quietly. “I’ll be all right.”
She stepped out of the taxi, paid the driver and held open the door for me to get out. “Are you coming?”
“Where?”
“Up.” She pointed to her flat in case I didn’t believe her. “Fourth floor, on the right-hand corner, the one with the lights on.” I followed her finger with my eyes, and I couldn’t have been more terrified if it had been a moonlit Transylvanian castle, surrounded by dark clouds, thunderbolts and lightning, with the screams of the undead rending the air.
“I don’t drink coffee,” I confessed hesitantly. “Hate the stuff.”
Alexa adopted a suggestive smirk, squinted her eyes and purred, “Who said anything about coffee?” She lowered her voice to a stage whisper. “I’m inviting you upstairs to my flat for”—she paused, briefly, barely able to control her laughter, and yelled—“hot sex!”
I coughed nervously for the benefit of the cabbie. “This is all a bit . . . what I mean to say is . . . listen, I’ve got to get up early in the morning . . . work and all that. I’ll call you. Okay?”
“No way,” she said, grabbing my hand. “You’re coming with me.”
Alexa’s bathroom was roughly the same size as my flat. It was huge. It had a large circular sunken bath with steps up to it in the middle, and mirrors and chrome just about everywhere. From my position by the washbasin I could see at least fifteen different views of myself, which was disconcerting, but not as disconcerting as what would happen when I left this safe haven.
Alexa was busy in her kitchen actually making coffee, but I knew she was going to become suspicious if I didn’t come out soon. The thing was, I didn’t want to come out. I was prepared to stay in the bathroom until she fell asleep, got bored or retired from show business at the age of sixty. I wasn’t built to sleep with fabulously beautiful women. I was built to sleep with Mel. Not that Mel wasn’t fabulously beautiful, especially when she wore my favorite dress. It’s just this was definitely a case of more being less and Alexa was definitely too much.
Ridiculous things were going through my mind like, “Could I survive the jump from a fourth-floor window?”, “I wonder if there’s an air-conditioning tunnel I can escape along like Tom Cruise did in Mission Impossible?” and most absurdly, “How many calories are in a bar of Ulay, because I’m bloody starving?”
Alexa knocked on the door sharply. “Are you okay, Duffy?”
I scanned the room for something to help me make suitable busy-on-the-toilet noises. “Yeah,” I shouted as I located a box of purple cubes by the bath, grabbed a handful and dropped them into the loo. “I’ll just be a minute,” I yelled and flushed the toilet. Big mistake. I watched in horror as wave after wave of dewberry-scented bubble-bath foam erupted from the bowl like lava from a volcano. When the water finally stopped churning, Alexa’s toilet and the surrounding area was covered in a mass of foam. Surely, I said to myself, scooping bubbles from the toilet into the bath and mopping the floor with a huge towel, things can’t get any worse.
Alexa and I were sitting in the lounge. The lights were dimmed and we were gazing out through windows that spanned the room and looked down on to the calming moonlit waters of Camden Lock. She’d laughed until her stomach hurt when I finally confessed the bathroom saga to her, and told me I was the maddest person she’d ever met. She got up and put on some music by a band that I’d never heard of. “They’re playing a gig next week, we should go and see them,” she said as the mellow vibes of the tune washed over us. “That is, if you fancy it.”
I nodded. “Sounds great.”
She kicked off her shoes, curled her feet up on the sofa and cuddled up to my chest. “This is nice, isn’t it?” she said, sounding smaller, more vulnerable, more real than Alexa the TV presenter.
I had to agree that she had a point: this was nice. I could smell her hair, and feel the warmth of her body, and in this setting, with this music, things couldn’t have been more ideal. We sat perfectly still for some moments, not speaking, barely breathing, just soaking up the atmosphere. And then she kissed me.
Then I kissed her back.
Then I kissed her front.
Then we fumbled about with each other’s clothing.
Then we fumbled some more.
And then I noticed something I’d never noticed before.
As a semi-clad Alexa led a semi-clad me to her bedroom, I came to realize that “something” was wrong, and that the “something” resided in the department marked Boxer Shorts.
There was nothing going on.
Nothing.
N.o.t.h.i.n.g.
N-o-t-h-i-n-g.
As barren and lifeless as the surface of Mars.
I wasn’t just being pessimistic. I’d had this body twenty-eight years. No one knew it better than me. And I knew that no amount of coaxing, jostling or shouting was going to make a jot of difference to the situation.
“What’s wrong?” said Alexa as we reached her bedroom door.
Everything, I wanted to say. Everything.
“Look,” I said, panic now having worked its way fully into my voice. “I can’t do this.”
“Yes, you can,” she said, smirking. “It’s really quite straightforward.”
“No it isn’t,” I remonstrated sadly.
She tugged my arm. “Of course it is!”
I’m going to have to tell her.
“Alexa?”
“What’s wrong?”
“It,” I said, looking down at my groin.
“What?”
I pointed silently.
“Oh!” she exclaimed, casting a pity-filled glance at my boxer shorts.
“Oh, indeed.”
“These things happen, don’t they?”
“Not to me they don’t,” I said despondently.
“I mean . . . I’ve read in magazines . . .” Lost for words, she tapped her finger on her lips as if thinking of a solution. She had none. “Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m sure,” I snapped. I apologized immediately. “Look, I’m sorry, this is just too embarrassing for words. Why don’t I just go, eh? We’ll put this down to experience.”
“Is it my fault?” asked Alexa. “Have I done something wrong?”
I really did want to go home now. Go home, get into bed and never get up again. Ever. I did not want to stand here, in this flat, with very few clothes on, talking to a virtual stranger about something so intimate that the very thought of it had me reeling in anguish. “Look, Alexa. In case you’ve forgotten, you’re TV’s Hottest Totty. It’s not likely to be your fault, now, is it?”
She looked crestfallen. “Well, I’m sorry anyway.”
“Not as sorry as me,” I replied, searching around for my trousers. “Believe me, no one is as sorry as me.”
Not a sausage?
“Are you okay, Duffy? You seem a bit odd.”
It was the day after the sleepless night before and I was round at my sister’s, lying across one of her armchairs pouting like a toddler who’d just broken his favorite toy. Charlie was in t
he garden mowing the lawn, while a now visibly pregnant Vernie was sitting with me, eating a bowl of ice cream and staring at me like I was slightly touched. Not many men would’ve gone to their sister’s to talk over this sort of problem, but I had to talk to someone and there was no way on earth I was going to mention anything this sensitive to Charlie or Dan.
I needed a woman’s perspective on this, because women, I reasoned, were more at ease with their bodies. Vernie certainly was. From the day she hit puberty she was forever discussing periods, swollen breasts and the benefits of evening primrose oil. I tried to tell her that as a young boy not even into his teens, I wasn’t even vaguely interested. I used to cover my ears and sing loudly, but somehow the information seeped into my consciousness. Over the following years I eventually became so well-informed about the technicalities of so-called women’s problems that girlfriends had in the past asked me for advice. It therefore required only a short leap in the imagination to conclude that although Vernie wasn’t in possession of the same equipment as me, she might have a handy miracle cure or words of advice that would make everything all right.
“No, I am not okay,” I said, answering her question grouchily. “I am not in the least bit okay. In fact right now I believe this is the abso-bloody-lutely least okay I’ve ever been.”
“What’s wrong?” Vernie asked.
“Everything,” I said dejectedly, and proceeded to tell her about my evening with Alexa in all its gory detail.
Perched on the edge of the sofa my sister listened to my tale of woe carefully, and occasionally, in between huge spoonfuls of ice cream, let out gasps of “Oh!”, “How awful!” and “Poor you!” When I concluded my narrative she put down her empty bowl on the carpet and stared at my groin in disbelief. “Are you sure?”
