Modern Dating III

Well, it’s a clear sign times are getting desperate when I’m writing a second sequel to an already self-indulgent and conceptually desultory series of blog posts. Yes, it’s time for recent tales of wearisome dating disasters and romantic remonstrations.


Despite the assertion in my last dating post (the critically panned Modern Dating II) that I had retired from the Internet dating scene, I have in fact done the complete opposite. There is only so much crying and masturbating (sometimes simultaneously) a guy can do before the siren-song of the dating profile lures him back.

Dehydration is no laughing matter

The return has given me the opportunity to realise how, even when competing in the arena of the sick and the lame, I cannot pick off even the sickliest antelope (a warning: there are many poorly thought-out metaphors ahead). There is too much competition. I have now spoken online to enough women to know that they are inundated with messages from guys. Approximately 60% of these are dick pictures; another 20% unwitting derogatory slurs; this still leaves the remaining 20% as actual guys trying to meet people. Guys like me. 


It is empirical fact that if there is competition for a girl I like, I will not win. Life has vividly affirmed this fact, ever since my very first crush. I engaged in my usual technique of hanging around her, playing it cool, the sort of thing that in movies results in final reel kissing but in reality bottoms out with accidental asphyxiation while suspended naked from the light fitting by underwear you stole from her bedroom. She promptly shagged my best friend at the time. At university I was wildly in love with a girl who, two days after I confessed this, pulled my best friend (a different one). About a year after that, another girl I was madly transfixed with, and who showed unequivocal signs of reciprocity, subsequently got with my other best friend.


It’s a cheery odyssey of success.


Online dating is a horrible intensification of this competition. For every girl, there are ten guys vying for her attention, like foxes trying to knock over a dustbin (I thought of at least five other similes but they all included the phrase ‘circle-jerk’). We all flaunt our exaggerated and often outright mendacious dating profiles like those monkeys with the hyperbolic technicolour butts.

This is why I'm single

And, if somehow my woefully unimpressive profile makes it through this bestial process unscathed, there’s the date itself. It has come to my attention that I have the personality of a perforated windsock. Even if prior communication goes terribly well, it will all judder to a halt the moment a girl meets me. Even if we seem to get on really well. Each and every time the messages stop dead or peter out, because the girl has lost interest and wandered into the embrace of a finer male with a more impressively engorged rump.

That's man code for 'someone with a bigger penis.'

It can prove altogether disheartening. Some instances, in hindsight, don’t bother me. But sometimes I develop a fondness for someone. It’s not that I expect instant love. I’m not the creepy sort of guy you find on your doorstep at midnight carving your initials into his arm with a ballpoint pen. I’d just like, for once, for that early promise to be fulfilled. And I really don’t know what I’m doing wrong. 


See me whine more about dating! Read Modern Dating I and Modern Dating II!

Public Toilet Disasters

The vet stares down at my penis and pushes his glasses further up his nose. I’m still leaning over, both hands gripping the trousers bunched around my ankles. For a moment social convention fails us both. It’s impolite to stare. It’s unacceptable to bare your junk to men you hardly know. Our senses return at the same instant. I pull my trousers up around my waist. The vet makes a hasty retreat.


There are few places in everyday life less agreeable than a public toilet. They rank just above sexual humiliation dungeons, the showers in Wormwood Scrubs prison, or Essex; but these are places you can usually avoid.

Definitely avoid Essex

I won’t get into the issue of an increasing number of public toilets in London charging for the ordeal of using them, as this would quickly depreciate into a quivering abortion of apoplectic rage. Instead I’ll mention the inevitable macabre innards of such places: the stench of ammonia as if you’ve just penetrated Satan’s urethra; skid-marks so ingrained in the bowls as to predate Aboriginal cave paintings; men in long raincoats who don’t even pretend they’re in attendance for any other reason but to glimpse your testicles (this is particularly disturbing for women, for a number of reasons). 


The worst public toilets are on British trains, with doors purchased wholesale from a clear-out of the old Star Trek set.

Not pictured: space torpedoes launch button

A button-press slides the door open. Inside, another button-press slides it closed. In theory, this is functional for disabled users. In practice, it’s a source of never-ending embarrassment for most of us and illicit fetishistic pleasure for everyone else. While people search for the button that fires phasers at the Klingons, they forget to press the button that locks the door. 


This is why I found myself standing directly outside the toilet on a crowded train as the door slid open to reveal a middle-eastern man in mid-bowel movement. He lunged forward, swearing profusely, one hand vaguely covering his equipment, and slapped the Close button.


He still forgot to lock it.


When the door opened on him again two minutes later he stayed seated to launch a volley of abuse. The guy who had opened the door grabbed hold of it and tried to wrench it shut while screaming ‘sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry!’ I decided to find somewhere else to sit.

This'll do

My downfall came at work. I had returned to the toilet to complete the necessary paperwork after having previously been prematurely called away. The lock on the door was broken. I was facing the bowl, trousers and pants around my ankles, one arm behind me in mid-wipe, when the door opened.


I avoided the vet, an unremarkably stoic Swede, for the rest of the day, fretting wildly over what he might be telling his harem of attractive nurses. When I later encountered him, I was again just coming out of the toilet.


‘Don’t worry!’ he laughed. ‘I spend all day neutering dogs. It’s nothing I haven’t seen before.’


To this day, I wonder if this was a veiled comment about the nature of my penis.

Gay Date

‘Is this a gay bar?’ asked my date.


I glanced around at the startling magnitude of homosexual stereotypes in the room. There was a nagging sense that we had stumbled into Elton John’s baby shower.  


‘No,’ I answered defensively. ‘Don’t be a homophobe.’


My usual technique before messing things up is to get a drink into the girl’s hand, therefore at least trapping her with me for its duration. So this immediate setback of sexual confusion was something of a new record. This was the first time I’d ever chosen a date venue; with a social life akin to that of an agoraphobic table leg, it’s unsurprising I chose poorly.


Every other night I had been there it had not been a gay bar. The way I saw it, as long as our drinks weren’t served clenched between the buttocks of oiled beefcake, the mistake could be forgiven. 


It was now abundantly clear that my date suspected me of being a closeted homosexual. My order of rose wine only exacerbated such conjecture. As we pushed through the crowded bar she paled when I squeezed past anyone crotch-facing-butt. That I did not order whisky decanted in a human skull and navigate the room by garrotting anyone in my path is proof irrefutable that I must be a flagrant gay. Undoubtedly the following song looped in her head.






I launched into a number of masculine topics. Red-blooded action movies; my predilection for the breasts of the human female; the structural integrity of Stalin’s moustache. Rather quickly, her eyes began to wander. This is hardly unusual for a girl who has somehow found herself in conversation with me. However, I noticed her paying particular attention to the low neckline of my t-shirt.


Suddenly she grabbed my collar and fastened the buttons at record pace. Before I might mistake this for intimacy she took flight to the toilet.


It’s then I noticed that the others at our table, aside from a pair of attractive girls beside me, were gay men. All sporting low-necked t-shirts. Wine and outrage gave me the confidence to broadcast my dismay. I turned to the girls beside me.


‘Excuse me?’ I gave the nearest girl an ignominious poke. ‘Is it me,’ I whispered, leaning in conspiratorially, ‘or are there a lot of lesbians here?’


‘Yes,’ they replied in unison. ‘We’re lesbians.’


A sensible man would have evacuated this conversation, bundled up his scant remaining dignity and simply fled the bar before his date returned to find him being assaulted by a pair of affronted lesbians. I am not a sensible man.


‘No way! I bellowed. ‘You look so normal!’


She didn’t punch me so I continued to dig my grave.


‘No offence or anything, but lesbians are always a bit of a disappointment, you know? They’re never like the porn.’


This was the juncture whereupon I should have been knocked unconscious and my anal virginity removed with shards of glass. Instead, they decided to humour me.


‘We agree with you. That’s why we watch porn together.’


Giddy excitement forced me to my feet. I pulled the nearest girl into a hug and then showered them both with badly-aimed but supremely enthusiastic high-fives. If only my date could have overheard my profound sexual ignorance! This whole misunderstanding would be cleared up!


Unfortunately, she returned to find me jumping vigorously up and down, flapping my wrists, and hugging a pair of lesbians.


The date lasted ten more minutes.

A Farewell to Armchairs

There are events in life significant enough to give pause. The day you leave home for university. Your very first kiss with another human. That moment you look into the eyes of your newborn son and...

The optimism alert has just started flashing on my desktop. That opening really is more suitable for BT internet adverts or group therapy. I’ll try again, and try to stick to my hackneyed blend of self-deprecation and unnecessary profanity.

Ahem. There are events in life significant enough to give pause. The day you discover masturbation. Your very first kiss with a picture of Baby Spice torn from Smash Hits magazine. That moment when the itching becomes so unbearable you simply have to let a doctor see that rash.

As the very existence of this blog testifies, I am something of a sucker for nostalgia. Although I in particular am bad for it, everyone suffers from nostalgia of one sort or another. This most commonly manifests itself as perceived sentimental value; a particular pricelessness assigned to objects in our life that were present at a particular event, perhaps, or gifted by a particular person. More often than not it’s an item that has long outlived its purpose, or that never really had one in the first place. This is why our homes are full of bedraggled toys belonging to long-ago run over cats, tins bearing pictures of monarchs before they became national laughing stocks, or pictures of friends we no longer see or speak to because they slept with your wife or ran over your cat.

My most heinous crime of sentimentality was doggedly dragging around a security blanket until the age of six or so like a wannabe Linus from Peanuts. It used to be a re-useable nappy. In other words, I felt misplaced yet fervent kinship for something I used to regularly and profusely defecate into. And, on special occasions, vomit on.

As I’ve grown older (and installed my desktop optimism alarm) I’ve made an effort to do away with sentimentality. Not only do you accumulate a lot of junk; for someone such as myself it’s downright unhealthy.

This weekend in the old familial home we got new furniture to replace the pair of armchairs we’ve had since I was nine. Now, my first thought was that I was desperately sad about this. They’ve been there for so many significant moments of my life.

Then it occurred to me that the chairs, although still remarkably comfortable, have been altogether incidental in my life. Mostly I sat on my own every night after school and ate any food I could get my hands on until my ballooning weight collapsed the centre of the chair. A broken spring tore a hole in the carpet underneath. The chairs have become nothing but arbitrary recipients of nostalgia that, in my head, needs such personification to remain keen and close. And, much as it doesn’t stop me, trying to keep an iron grip on the past is futile.

So now the chairs are out on the drive to be taken by a passer-by or eventually removed and disposed of. In years to come this house will empty itself, from the objects within it, to the pets, and, sooner or later, the people. And there is nothing more sure in this life than that these walls will harbour no memories of us.

Grown Up

It’s 3am, and my assigned partner and I are on our way up the stairs to the main sleeping floor of the homeless shelter to relieve a pair of supervisors. The smell hits first, long before we reach the top, a thick haze of old sweat and cigarette smoke like the front row of Glastonbury’s main stage on the final day, then the staggered snores and mutterings of men in various stages of sleep. We walk between the camp-beds, my partner ahead of me, her shoes shushing gently on the worn carpet.

The supervisors we’re replacing rise when they see us, stretching the stiffness from their limbs. In the dim light from the windows one of them shrugs off a luminous safety vest and holds it out to me.

‘You know how to use a fire extinguisher?’ He whispers so as not to disturb the men sleeping close around us.

‘No.’

He shoves the vest into my hand. ‘Well, you’re the fire marshal now.’

And they leave. I try and foist the vest onto my partner, but she insists it remain with me on the grounds that ‘I’m the man.’

I study the squat fire extinguisher stashed beneath my chair and realise I have no idea how to use it. The advice printed on what’s left of the label says ‘Aim at fire.’ This is the instruction that will allow me to save the lives of hundreds of people if something catches alight in the next two hours. There is a temptation to ignite one or two of the homeless people, just a little, and let them flail around aflame as melodramatic proof that I am not up to this job.

It first became apparent that people considered me a grown up when I worked in a pet shop. If some child were banging on the glass of the guinea pig cages their mother would throw me a knowing sidelong glance before announcing, ‘You’d better stop that or the man will shout at you!’ At which point the child would recoil from me in abject terror.

I wanted to fling my hands up and plead my innocence. When did I become some kind of fun-spoiling crypto-fascist? I felt the need to throw my lot in with the child; I’m with you, guinea pigs are boring, bang the glass! Set them on fire and applaud as they screech like boiling kettles for all I care! Just don’t sever me so flippantly from my childhood.

By some definition I could not grasp, I was suddenly seen by many as a grown up. This is why, perhaps, if ever I occupy a spot in London for more than a few minutes I will inevitably be approached by a waylaid foreigner and asked directions. I had always assumed that my face’s default position was that of vacuous bafflement, as if my brain were perpetually tuned to BBC Parliament. Instead it must be vaguely trustworthy, possessive of some chance verisimilitude when I send the asker in a random direction. A Spanish lady and her family approached me once as I waited outside Camden Town tube station and enquired whether I was a taxi. The only response I could manage was an exasperated spreading of my hands, a slow turn to the empty curb behind, then back to her as she gazed at me expectantly.

Western culture is devoid of any definitive transition into adulthood. Teenage dystopian fiction is filled with clear-cut gruesome rituals that are the death knell of childhood, and the world of Pokemon is built on a delightful transparency, youngsters expelled at thirteen to enact any cruelty they wish on the animals of the land. The UK is too politically-correct to let me venture into the allotments behind my house and cold-bloodedly enslave or murder the resident foxes. No survivalist trek into the wild can last for more than a few hours before stumbling across a Little Chef. How could I have earned my stripes rather than become an adult without even noticing? I needed more experience, to see more of the world. I had experienced nothing to thrust me headlong into manhood.

As 4am approaches on the sleeping floor of the homeless shelter, the lights of the city eerily still in the distance and the winter creeping into my bones, a young guy, perhaps my age, perhaps less, rolls in his tattered sleeping bag to face me.

‘Have you ever seen a dead alcoholic?’ he asks.

And it’s true, I think, as his eyes stare into mine. I haven’t lived through anything at all.

‘No,’ I say. ‘I haven’t.’

Modern Dating II

This post is sponsored by the words Pot, Kettle, and Black.

A few months ago I wrote a blog entitled Modern Dating. It portrayed any guy who partakes in ‘alternative dating’ (online, personals, chloroform, etc.) as a maladjusted misanthrope stuck behind his computer with a seething erection and crispy tissues plastered irrevocably to his hands, and any girl as the female equivalent; this perhaps involves a cucumber. A number of people more experienced in the online dating world did not take kindly to this astringent assumption. They suggested I should try it myself before mouthing off on the Internet. This, combined with a growing phobia of dying alone beneath a railway bridge and my bloated corpse only coming to light after several weeks of being eaten by cats, encouraged me to give it a go.

I chose a free dating site, which, days later, was in the news after one of its members beat another member half to death with a hammer following a bad date. Now, the very crux of my previous dating post was that no one shows their true self in alternative dating. Gaping flaws, such as a penchant for hammer-orientated violence, become endearing quirks, crippling anxieties charming idiosyncrasies. Even with this insight I soon found myself glossing over my personality defects and listing only my most esoteric of tastes. Yes, my favourite film is Three Colours Blue by Krzysztof Kieslowski! The only photos I uploaded were either pretentious Instagram or pretentious black & white, and all conveniently devoid of bad skin, fat belly, and hairy back. By the time I was finished, my profile was home to a version of myself I’d never met.

Initial interest was exclusively pugnacious transsexuals in bondage gear inviting me to their house for a blow job. Their numbers have been safely stowed for a few years down the line. Online dating is particularly belittling due to the arrival of a notification each and every time someone visits your profile, balks at the abhorrence of your photographs, and hurriedly absconds. It took a few weeks before I made contact with any real females.

This blog is built upon a foundation of disastrous dates and romance run aground. Who else can say the first girl they ever kissed promptly threw a pint glass at their head? However, this entry will be slightly different. Although not one of my four dates was a success per se, all of them, to varying degrees, went smoothly.

The difficulty lies in a superficial notion of imaginary science upon which people judge the future viability of a hypothetical relationship: chemistry. Although I understand the importance of getting along with someone, this apocryphal natural harmony has eluded me at every turn. It might be the fact that I am naturally awkward and take a while longer than most to feel comfortable around somebody new. This, as well as an archaic adherence to chivalry, often sees my relatively unhurried pace to sleep with someone diagnosed as a chemistry deficiency. Whatever happened to taking the time to get to know someone?

This is a disadvantage in the world of online dating. When finally I do meet someone I am plagued with a heightened awareness that I must make a great first impression. I arrive with a gargantuan flashing sign around my neck that screams LOVE ME. So scared am I of failure the date becomes a job interview, a frantic dissimulation, the desperate concealment of all blemishes to try and appear as the perfect man, as someone who isn’t inwardly terrified of being revealed as not worth knowing. Amid the exertion of maintaining the charade there’s no space to formulate chemistry.

The result was three non-awkward but ultimately lacklustre dates. Three separate girls sent near-identical postdate messages: You’re a really nice guy, but there was just no chemistry.

I persisted with a fourth date. Within ten minutes of sitting down in a pub on the Southbank, I knew it was doomed. Every time I spoke her eyes glassed over in a way I’ve only seen before in students I’ve taught. My chemistry vacuum yawned widely between us. So I decided to experiment. If being myself doesn’t work, and presenting a version of myself modified for social acceptance doesn’t work, I would be somebody else.

So the next time I opened my mouth I told her about the years I spent as a primary school teacher for troubled kids in Manchester. I regaled her with the tale of my near-goring in the running of the bulls at Pamplona. I made a devilishly inappropriate joke about Chlamydia.

And she laughed. And she believed. And when I text her the next day to ask how it went, she replied that there was great chemistry.

Although I’m not proud of lying to someone, it was necessary in order to stop deluding myself. Dating, online or otherwise, will not work for me. I will never make an earth-rending first impression. I will never glide inside the doorway in full Navy uniform and sweep someone off their feet back to my villa in the hills to engage them in headboard-abusive acrobatic sex.

So my online dating profile currently stands idle. All that’s left is to wait in the hope that one day there will be someone patient enough to get to know me, that time will outweigh lacklustre first impression. And if not, you will find me by following that smell to the noise of feasting cats underneath the railway bridge.

Easter Bunny

This is as close as I’ll ever get to posting a blog of cute animal pictures. In fact, while we’re here:

Aww.

Now that we’ve satisfied that Internet quota, I have a rare uplifting story to tell; a tale of heroism against the odds; a legend about the time I had to finger a rabbit to save its life.

...I didn’t say it was going to be a typical uplifting story.

For some years I worked in a pet shop. Contrary to popular belief, this did not entail daily communions of hugging fluffy creatures nor the animal-induced learning of saccharine life lessons. Rather it required being soaked in urine at 6am, dangling hamsters from my fingers by their teeth, and generally battling to prevent idiotic customers from inadvertently murdering their pets.

The rate at which people are able to off their new friends is really quite impressive. Common sense rarely hinders customers from leaving their brand new gerbil in the car while they go shopping. For five hours. At the height of summer. My claim to fame is selling a hamster to the head anchor at ITV news, only for him to return a week later to inform me that his son had ‘thrown it down the stairs.’

So when an elderly gentleman and his young granddaughter approached me about their new rabbit being ill, I was less inclined to care. The girl had likely fed it Super Noodles or tried to sync it with iTunes. I was soon informed that two months prior the little girl’s father had been diagnosed with cancer. Then he’d died. A rabbit had been bought to cheer the girl up. It died. And now its replacement had refused to eat or poop for three days. Half-hourly syringe-feeding was required throughout the night or it would... well, you get the picture.

At this point, to emphasise my heroism, I should point out that this was my tenth work day in a row, with a combined total of near a hundred hours. But like the cold-hearted rom-com businessman who answers his door to find an abandoned squalling babe, my heart melted just enough. I took the rabbit home.

He was tiny, only two months old, ginger and white in colour. His stomach had bloated and hardened like a condom packed with gravel. Every half an hour I forced a feeding syringe behind his front teeth and injected formula that smelled approximately of regurgitated afterbirth down his throat. It’s lucky that rabbits are unable to vomit.

By midnight I had christened him Wilhelm and we were cuddled up on the sofa in front of the TV. Four feedings later, just after 2am, the exclusive first showing of Cheryl Cole’s new music video came on. Wilhelm was clearly not a fan. A gout of diarrhoea lashed across my trouser leg. A torrent of it soaked my crotch as I hoisted him up. I ran for his cage, Wilhelm at arm’s length, splattering a trail of diarrhoea across the carpet and up the stairs. I dropped him into his cage, and with his steely rabbit indifference he filled the corner with a puddle of half-digested formula. When he was finished, I flipped him over to clean him up.

The rabbit had prolapsed. Where usually his exit hole would be obscured by fur, the urgency of his bowel evacuation had forced his bottom inside-out. A shiny pink lump like a pierced tongue protruded from his brown-stained fur.

The diarrhoea was a good sign. But his stomach was still bloated, backed up like a blocked pipe. It could not be cleared while he was wearing his bumhole as a belt. It would have to go back in.

I paused to rub Vaseline on my finger, the rom-com businessman burdened with changing a soiled nappy or consoling his distraught love interest. This was my animal-induced life lesson. Wilhelm must live! Live!

I pressed my fingertip to his flagging behind and with one firm shove popped it back inside. Then I pulled out and watched as the diarrhoea resumed, worse than before. I begged for his bottom to hold. I was an engineer manning the shields on the USS Enterprise, Tommy Lee Jones praying for his lava diversion to take the strain. Until 7am I monitored his butt as the flesh flexed and rippled, but held true.

Later that day the customers returned for their rabbit. Wilhelm was out of the woods. I had been awake for thirty hours and sexually violated what had become my best friend. Like the final scene where the softened rom-com businessman loses custody, they took the rabbit and left. There could be no appeal. They didn’t even bloody say thank you.