Just a little Hi to all my readers to wish you all a very Happy, Healthy and Successful 2009 and to thank you all for your support since I started this blog.
'The Daily Male' will be published as a sequel to 'The Toyboy Diaries' in the New Year in a slightly different format with plenty of new experiences and I'll keep you all posted as to progress.
Hope you all had a Merry Christmas and once again, every good wish for the New Year and thanks for reading.
Best regards,
Wendy x
Wednesday 31 December 2008
THE DAILY MALE continues...31/12/08
46 (CC's age) is a pretty good number, so I log on to toyboywarehouse and metaphorically trade him in for one 22-year old and one 24-year old who both contacted me last night. One’s fair, one’s dark, and they’re both called Dan and are 'curious to learn more about the older woman' so who better to teach them than Yours Untruly? Either way, I’m Dan-ned if I do and Dan-ned if I don’t.
We email back and forth awhile - I have no idea which is which but no matter – and I wonder if it might be amusing to arrange to meet them both together.
In the afternoon, I prepare for a short business trip which will give me a chance to rethink some of my less-than-brilliant ideas most notably that last one.
Tuesday. Skopje. I’m travelling with a group of fifteen women headed by HRH Princess Katarina of the Balkans on a fact-finding mission to promote investment and tourism in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.
On the first night we are invited to dinner at the British Embassy by His Excellency the Ambassador, Sir R.U. Really-Worthit and his wife, Lady Izzy Really-Worthit. We stand around in our ball gowns making small talk and drinking abominable Balkan plonk.
A group of thick-set Macedonians have been drafted in to make up the numbers. They look like rottweillers and talk like mafiosi. I spot a couple of younger men across the room and when dinner is announced, I make a beeline for their table.
After dinner, they take us out clubbing – not something I tend to do much back home. As we are travelling with the royal party, we have a fully-armed police escort, and a fleet of chauffeur-driven bullet proof Mercs. It’s hilarious.
When I get up to go to the loo in one particularly outré disco, one of the female heavies comes with me. She clears a path through the crowd, brushes aside the queue of young girls in the Ladies and fast tracks me into the nearest stall. I wonder if this is what is meant by the Royal Wee?
We all get hammered on raki and the evening leaves me feeling as flippant as a funfair and as light as meringue. A good feeling.
The rest of the trip does what it said on the brochure. We visit museums, mosques and monasteries and I make a couple of new girlfriends among the group. One of them is psychic and while visiting an archaeological dig, she comes over all spiritual. We’re walking across some old burial pits and her antenna picks something up. She turns to me suddenly and says:
‘That man you’re thinking about - you have to let him come to you…’
I stare at her for a moment and nod sagely. In spite of it all, I am, of course, still thinking about CC 23/7.
Wednesday. I check my emails and find I have several new recruits on toyboywarehouse, none of whom float my boat or twang my thang. I’m starting to worry that I’ll return home to the mortal dread of all single people: a Blank Holiday weekend. Rugby Player for all his bravado is terminally unreliable and the Desperate Dans have gone off the radar.
Saturday. After a gruelling three-hour car journey from the Kosovan border to the airport, followed by a stopover in Vienna, I get home to find my internet is down. This is quite inconvenient, the physical equivalent of having both arms cut off at the elbow and both legs at the knee.
I try not to panic or shout at Bashar in Mumbai, Prakesh in Bangalore and Kemal in New Delhi but they talk to me in tongues using words like protocol, logfile and encryption. Follow instructions as I may, I STILL CANNOT PICK UP MY EMAILS.
A migraine circles my head like a hungry scavenger then dive bombs through my skull into the side of my temple. It starts pecking away at the left cortal section of my frontal lobe causing my own hard drive to crash. I leave the unpacking ‘til tomorrow, take two heavy-duty prescription pills and go to bed, praying that the problem will have resolved itself by morning.
Sunday. Still no internet connection in my home office. The migraine has now dug itself in for the duration and every time I move, I see Aurora Borealis and hear Very Strident Music. I struggle on regardless taking my laptop to the nearest café to check my emails. Nothing earth-moving business-wise, but one of the Dans has returned to basecamp and we make a tentative date for next week.
CC has now set up shop in the part of my brain not being assaulted by the Red Army Ensemble. He is peddling his wares which include Bad Vibes, Negative Energies and Terminal Grief Syndrome which all come in my size.
I mentally compose tracts of a letter to him which all sound articulate, convincing and feasible but I don’t note any of it down, so when I actually put fingers to keyboard, I can’t remember a single word. What I do write comes out sounding stupid, needy and pathetic. I take more head drugs and go to bed.
Friday. Rugby Player and I have a date arranged for tomorrow. I text to ask if it's still on and he confirms an 8 o'clock pick up for an 8.30 table. This time it sounds like it might actually happen. I’ll wear the lingerie he sent me, but more for me than for him. I doubt he’ll get to see it.
Cute Face bleeps in. We’ve had no contact in more than a week, ever since he’d forgotten our last arrangement and I’d told him off. Frankly, I never expected to hear from him again.
Wat u up 2? Ive got the raging horn. Shall I cum over? Hehe
We email back and forth awhile - I have no idea which is which but no matter – and I wonder if it might be amusing to arrange to meet them both together.
In the afternoon, I prepare for a short business trip which will give me a chance to rethink some of my less-than-brilliant ideas most notably that last one.
Tuesday. Skopje. I’m travelling with a group of fifteen women headed by HRH Princess Katarina of the Balkans on a fact-finding mission to promote investment and tourism in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.
On the first night we are invited to dinner at the British Embassy by His Excellency the Ambassador, Sir R.U. Really-Worthit and his wife, Lady Izzy Really-Worthit. We stand around in our ball gowns making small talk and drinking abominable Balkan plonk.
A group of thick-set Macedonians have been drafted in to make up the numbers. They look like rottweillers and talk like mafiosi. I spot a couple of younger men across the room and when dinner is announced, I make a beeline for their table.
After dinner, they take us out clubbing – not something I tend to do much back home. As we are travelling with the royal party, we have a fully-armed police escort, and a fleet of chauffeur-driven bullet proof Mercs. It’s hilarious.
When I get up to go to the loo in one particularly outré disco, one of the female heavies comes with me. She clears a path through the crowd, brushes aside the queue of young girls in the Ladies and fast tracks me into the nearest stall. I wonder if this is what is meant by the Royal Wee?
We all get hammered on raki and the evening leaves me feeling as flippant as a funfair and as light as meringue. A good feeling.
The rest of the trip does what it said on the brochure. We visit museums, mosques and monasteries and I make a couple of new girlfriends among the group. One of them is psychic and while visiting an archaeological dig, she comes over all spiritual. We’re walking across some old burial pits and her antenna picks something up. She turns to me suddenly and says:
‘That man you’re thinking about - you have to let him come to you…’
I stare at her for a moment and nod sagely. In spite of it all, I am, of course, still thinking about CC 23/7.
Wednesday. I check my emails and find I have several new recruits on toyboywarehouse, none of whom float my boat or twang my thang. I’m starting to worry that I’ll return home to the mortal dread of all single people: a Blank Holiday weekend. Rugby Player for all his bravado is terminally unreliable and the Desperate Dans have gone off the radar.
Saturday. After a gruelling three-hour car journey from the Kosovan border to the airport, followed by a stopover in Vienna, I get home to find my internet is down. This is quite inconvenient, the physical equivalent of having both arms cut off at the elbow and both legs at the knee.
I try not to panic or shout at Bashar in Mumbai, Prakesh in Bangalore and Kemal in New Delhi but they talk to me in tongues using words like protocol, logfile and encryption. Follow instructions as I may, I STILL CANNOT PICK UP MY EMAILS.
A migraine circles my head like a hungry scavenger then dive bombs through my skull into the side of my temple. It starts pecking away at the left cortal section of my frontal lobe causing my own hard drive to crash. I leave the unpacking ‘til tomorrow, take two heavy-duty prescription pills and go to bed, praying that the problem will have resolved itself by morning.
Sunday. Still no internet connection in my home office. The migraine has now dug itself in for the duration and every time I move, I see Aurora Borealis and hear Very Strident Music. I struggle on regardless taking my laptop to the nearest café to check my emails. Nothing earth-moving business-wise, but one of the Dans has returned to basecamp and we make a tentative date for next week.
CC has now set up shop in the part of my brain not being assaulted by the Red Army Ensemble. He is peddling his wares which include Bad Vibes, Negative Energies and Terminal Grief Syndrome which all come in my size.
I mentally compose tracts of a letter to him which all sound articulate, convincing and feasible but I don’t note any of it down, so when I actually put fingers to keyboard, I can’t remember a single word. What I do write comes out sounding stupid, needy and pathetic. I take more head drugs and go to bed.
Friday. Rugby Player and I have a date arranged for tomorrow. I text to ask if it's still on and he confirms an 8 o'clock pick up for an 8.30 table. This time it sounds like it might actually happen. I’ll wear the lingerie he sent me, but more for me than for him. I doubt he’ll get to see it.
Cute Face bleeps in. We’ve had no contact in more than a week, ever since he’d forgotten our last arrangement and I’d told him off. Frankly, I never expected to hear from him again.
Wat u up 2? Ive got the raging horn. Shall I cum over? Hehe
Monday 15 December 2008
THE DAILY MALE - continues...
I spend the following morning trying to put my thoughts in order. This self-imposed nonsense (though I refuse to recognize it as such) is doin' me 'ead in, yet in some indulgently sado-masochistic way, I'm pushing the boundaries of my sanity to see how far they'll go.
In the light of my other dalliances during and since meeting CC, you (and I) might find it hard to believe that my feelings for this man are genuine and I do seem to have the ability to separate my body from my heart and my emotions from my actions and in that respect, I am fragmented yet complete.
My daughter, Lily, pops by for a bowl of soup and I tell her about the date last night.
‘He doesn’t sound that interested!’ she states. ‘And he’s already told you as much Mum, so why don’t you listen? Find someone less complicated! Now, about that course I want to go on...’
The role reversal going on here is not lost on me and annoyingly, she’s probably right. And it can’t be easy having a mother like me.
Halfway through the afternoon, I remember that Cute Face and I had made a tentative arrangement for tonight but I haven't heard from him and it's already 4 o'clock. Our wild weekend seems as far away as Venus, but when I text him Are we on for this evening? he replies Oh crap. I’ve just arranged something.
Although I’m not that bovvered preferring to stay home and concentrate on my magnificent obsession, I am slightly peeved that he's forgotten our prospective date which compounds the theory: Give a man what he wants and he no longer wants it.
I text back a sniffy: Thanks for forgetting and not letting me know! to which I get Sorry hun. Don’t be grumpy and ruin my illusion that relationships with older women are less stressful! to which I shoot a finger-wagging: You need to be polite no matter the woman's age... to which I get silence. Another one I’ll probably never hear from again.
At 6 p.m. knowing his phone will probably be off, I leave CC an effusive message:
…I just wanted to thank you for a really great evening…it was so lovely seeing you again. About the theatre, please call me back when you have your diary handy so we can make a plan and I can tempt you with whatever you want to see…I really don’t want to leave it so long before we meet again…speak to you very soon, I hope? Lots of love...
I loathe grovellers so why am I grovelling now? Answers on a postcard please.
Saturday. I wake up a little down, the positive aspects of the next date with CC diminishing with every hour that passes sans reply to my sycophantic message. I add up the credits in my social account and they don’t amount to a hill of beans. I have:
1 x lascivious lothario who lives in New York and sends me expensive lingerie he’ll never see me wear.
1 x arrogant short-arse boy toy who FORGOT WE HAD A DATE LAST NIGHT and
1 x navel-gazer who is terrified of his own shadow, never mind having a relationship with me.
Pondering woman’s propensity to find a man she really likes then immediately try to change him, I wonder if that’s why I’m so drawn to CC. Speaking psycho-babbly, in seeking your soul mate you are drawn to the fragilities of others from which you too suspect you might suffer. By attempting to heal them, you are attempting to heal yourself. I don’t understand this either. I told you it was psycho-babble.
I pray to the Goddess of Lost Causes to show me the way to either fuck him or forget him or at least to be able to say: Fuck him! I’m going to forget him.
I discuss the subject with my daughter again and she suggests that since I’ve been unable to express my feelings vocally, I write him a letter. Not a text, nor an email, but a good old-fashioned pen to paper letter. 'It’ll be cathartic' she advises just as I would have had she been in the same situation, 'and you never know what may come of it...' and so I begin:
My dearest CC,
Dear Sweet CC
Dear CC
CC Darling
My darling CC
which takes me twenty minutes and I don’t get a whole lot further.
Sunday. As if Dyno-rod has done a night-cleansing operation on my brain, I wake up in a completely different frame of mind. Barbra and Donna’s song No More Tears (Enough is Enough) beings playing in my head.
It's raining, it's pouring
My love life is boring me to tears,
after all these years...
and I resolve, once and for all, not to waste any more time on this man.
I really must move on. If he’s happy being a tormented, introvert, self-absorbed, sad-assed hypochondriac, then I wish him well of it. There really is nothing more I can do.
With a renewed sense of self and optimistic vigour, I step out from under the cloud of pain and with the help of John Frieda’s Highlight Enhancing Shampoo for Champagne Blondes, I wash that man right out of my hair and decide to treat myself to a feast of unfettered self-gratification by replacing him now - this very day!
In the light of my other dalliances during and since meeting CC, you (and I) might find it hard to believe that my feelings for this man are genuine and I do seem to have the ability to separate my body from my heart and my emotions from my actions and in that respect, I am fragmented yet complete.
My daughter, Lily, pops by for a bowl of soup and I tell her about the date last night.
‘He doesn’t sound that interested!’ she states. ‘And he’s already told you as much Mum, so why don’t you listen? Find someone less complicated! Now, about that course I want to go on...’
The role reversal going on here is not lost on me and annoyingly, she’s probably right. And it can’t be easy having a mother like me.
Halfway through the afternoon, I remember that Cute Face and I had made a tentative arrangement for tonight but I haven't heard from him and it's already 4 o'clock. Our wild weekend seems as far away as Venus, but when I text him Are we on for this evening? he replies Oh crap. I’ve just arranged something.
Although I’m not that bovvered preferring to stay home and concentrate on my magnificent obsession, I am slightly peeved that he's forgotten our prospective date which compounds the theory: Give a man what he wants and he no longer wants it.
I text back a sniffy: Thanks for forgetting and not letting me know! to which I get Sorry hun. Don’t be grumpy and ruin my illusion that relationships with older women are less stressful! to which I shoot a finger-wagging: You need to be polite no matter the woman's age... to which I get silence. Another one I’ll probably never hear from again.
At 6 p.m. knowing his phone will probably be off, I leave CC an effusive message:
…I just wanted to thank you for a really great evening…it was so lovely seeing you again. About the theatre, please call me back when you have your diary handy so we can make a plan and I can tempt you with whatever you want to see…I really don’t want to leave it so long before we meet again…speak to you very soon, I hope? Lots of love...
I loathe grovellers so why am I grovelling now? Answers on a postcard please.
Saturday. I wake up a little down, the positive aspects of the next date with CC diminishing with every hour that passes sans reply to my sycophantic message. I add up the credits in my social account and they don’t amount to a hill of beans. I have:
1 x lascivious lothario who lives in New York and sends me expensive lingerie he’ll never see me wear.
1 x arrogant short-arse boy toy who FORGOT WE HAD A DATE LAST NIGHT and
1 x navel-gazer who is terrified of his own shadow, never mind having a relationship with me.
Pondering woman’s propensity to find a man she really likes then immediately try to change him, I wonder if that’s why I’m so drawn to CC. Speaking psycho-babbly, in seeking your soul mate you are drawn to the fragilities of others from which you too suspect you might suffer. By attempting to heal them, you are attempting to heal yourself. I don’t understand this either. I told you it was psycho-babble.
I pray to the Goddess of Lost Causes to show me the way to either fuck him or forget him or at least to be able to say: Fuck him! I’m going to forget him.
I discuss the subject with my daughter again and she suggests that since I’ve been unable to express my feelings vocally, I write him a letter. Not a text, nor an email, but a good old-fashioned pen to paper letter. 'It’ll be cathartic' she advises just as I would have had she been in the same situation, 'and you never know what may come of it...' and so I begin:
My dearest CC,
Dear Sweet CC
Dear CC
CC Darling
My darling CC
which takes me twenty minutes and I don’t get a whole lot further.
Sunday. As if Dyno-rod has done a night-cleansing operation on my brain, I wake up in a completely different frame of mind. Barbra and Donna’s song No More Tears (Enough is Enough) beings playing in my head.
It's raining, it's pouring
My love life is boring me to tears,
after all these years...
and I resolve, once and for all, not to waste any more time on this man.
I really must move on. If he’s happy being a tormented, introvert, self-absorbed, sad-assed hypochondriac, then I wish him well of it. There really is nothing more I can do.
With a renewed sense of self and optimistic vigour, I step out from under the cloud of pain and with the help of John Frieda’s Highlight Enhancing Shampoo for Champagne Blondes, I wash that man right out of my hair and decide to treat myself to a feast of unfettered self-gratification by replacing him now - this very day!
Saturday 6 December 2008
THE DAILY MALE - continues...
During the evening, he’s complimented me on everything: my jacket, the colour of my top, my pearls, my earrings, my skirt, my nail varnish – every detail of what I’m wearing. To have a man seem so interested, yet still have no idea where I stand with him, is discombobulating.
Despite my recent shenanigans with AB, CD and EF, these were just pastimes to kill the hours, days and nights while waiting for CC to come back into my life. Not exactly honest behaviour, I know, but what the eye doesn’t see, the heart doesn’t grieve over.
Now that I’m with him however, my blousy confidence has blown out the window and I feel like I’m drowning, the life raft having been carelessly omitted from the manifest.
As we sit in the back of the taxi, me trying somehow to climb inside him, he begins to run his hand up and down my arm. His touch is like a promise and my cheating heart soars as I take this tactile contact as proof of his feelings for me. If it's not love, it's something I manage to interpret as such.
I sigh deeply and rest my head lightly on his shoulder. He stops his movements immediately and stiffens in all the wrong places.
‘There’s so much I want to say to you…’ I whisper encouragingly, and I actually feel a lump rise in my throat.
He doesn’t ask what this ‘so much’ is and the moment somehow passes. The taxi is nearing my home and having waited so long to be with him, I know these precious few hours are rushing towards their unnatural conclusion. I need more time with him. I need to express how I feel.
The taxi pulls up outside my block, and I raise my head and look questioningly at him.
'Now what?' say my worried eyes. His impassive look reveals nothing.
‘Would you like to…?’ I begin tentatively as if I'm inviting a rabbit to stand in my headlights.
‘No. Thank you. I must get home.’ The rabbit retreats to its warren.
My heart crashes through the floor but I decide not to push it. Not tonight. It’s gone better than I could have hoped. I think.
He walks me to the entrance of my block and kisses me goodnight. The lightest brush of his lips on mine is tantalizing, but for now, that will have to do. I thank him for a lovely evening and we say goodbye.
As I climb my stairs I write the text: Everything I wanted to say could have been summed up in just three words but I do not send it. I know that less is more and I want so much more.
I go to sleep peacefully, convinced he and I are far from over. In fact, I think we’re just beginning.
Wednesday. I wake up with a banging headache as expected and replay the evening like a cracked record changing the end with every turn. I’m certainly no worse off than I was yesterday, in fact, I may be a lot better. He didn’t have a dig at my lifestyle like the last time I saw him, and he was pleasant and personable company.
I feel very restless though. I want to call him, but I’m afraid of not catching him in the right mood, of him being cold to me which will compound my insecurity. I’ll do it later and see if I can pin him down for that theatre date.
Despite my recent shenanigans with AB, CD and EF, these were just pastimes to kill the hours, days and nights while waiting for CC to come back into my life. Not exactly honest behaviour, I know, but what the eye doesn’t see, the heart doesn’t grieve over.
Now that I’m with him however, my blousy confidence has blown out the window and I feel like I’m drowning, the life raft having been carelessly omitted from the manifest.
As we sit in the back of the taxi, me trying somehow to climb inside him, he begins to run his hand up and down my arm. His touch is like a promise and my cheating heart soars as I take this tactile contact as proof of his feelings for me. If it's not love, it's something I manage to interpret as such.
I sigh deeply and rest my head lightly on his shoulder. He stops his movements immediately and stiffens in all the wrong places.
‘There’s so much I want to say to you…’ I whisper encouragingly, and I actually feel a lump rise in my throat.
He doesn’t ask what this ‘so much’ is and the moment somehow passes. The taxi is nearing my home and having waited so long to be with him, I know these precious few hours are rushing towards their unnatural conclusion. I need more time with him. I need to express how I feel.
The taxi pulls up outside my block, and I raise my head and look questioningly at him.
'Now what?' say my worried eyes. His impassive look reveals nothing.
‘Would you like to…?’ I begin tentatively as if I'm inviting a rabbit to stand in my headlights.
‘No. Thank you. I must get home.’ The rabbit retreats to its warren.
My heart crashes through the floor but I decide not to push it. Not tonight. It’s gone better than I could have hoped. I think.
He walks me to the entrance of my block and kisses me goodnight. The lightest brush of his lips on mine is tantalizing, but for now, that will have to do. I thank him for a lovely evening and we say goodbye.
As I climb my stairs I write the text: Everything I wanted to say could have been summed up in just three words but I do not send it. I know that less is more and I want so much more.
I go to sleep peacefully, convinced he and I are far from over. In fact, I think we’re just beginning.
Wednesday. I wake up with a banging headache as expected and replay the evening like a cracked record changing the end with every turn. I’m certainly no worse off than I was yesterday, in fact, I may be a lot better. He didn’t have a dig at my lifestyle like the last time I saw him, and he was pleasant and personable company.
I feel very restless though. I want to call him, but I’m afraid of not catching him in the right mood, of him being cold to me which will compound my insecurity. I’ll do it later and see if I can pin him down for that theatre date.
Saturday 29 November 2008
THE DAILY MALE - continues...
Another few minutes pass, during which time I develop a tic in my right eye. It flickers uncontrollably like Herbert Lom’s in The Pink Panther every time Clouseau hove into view.
Now I’m slightly tipsy and my eye’s all a’quiver. Maybe if I break both ankles as I’m going down the stairs, I can claim disability allowance and retire gracefully to Eastbourne, then I won’t have to worry about dating inappropriate men any more.
Unable to contain myself any longer, I pick up my handbag and keys, lock my front door and walk very carefully down the three flights of stairs. I twitch for another few minutes in the hallway of my block and finally, a black cab pulls up.
I leave my building smiling and walk confidently towards him, like a clapperboard's just been clapped and the director’s barked: ‘Action!!’
He’s in the back of the taxi on his mobile phone. He grasps my hand as I climb in and pulls a face by way of apology. I mouthe ‘Don’t worry…’ and squeeze his hand so tightly I nearly fracture his fingers.
I look at him and I look at him again. God. He is handsome. More so than I remember. I haven’t seen him since that awful night he fell apart in my little tub chair, and he’s actually improved.
The illusion I have of him in my mind did not, strangely, include the way he looks. It was more about the complexity of his character and the way he made me feel on holiday...certainly not since as, if you weigh it up, a major brain fuck is not perhaps that seductive.
He’s wearing a crisp white shirt, a grey suit and no tie. I’ve only ever seen him in ski wear or jeans. Or naked.
He finishes his call and turns to me and we give each other a big hug and a kiss on each cheek.
‘You look absolutely gorgeous…’ he says softly, looking me up and down with undisguised admiration.
Then he releases my hand abruptly, as if by holding on to it he might be lured back into some dark place he neither understands nor wishes to go.
‘It’s all new,’ I reply, so glad that he’s noticed. ‘Especially for tonight.’
Accommodate him, please him, make-him-feel-at-ease-him.
He apologizes again for having come straight from work and for being late, then draws my attention to the fact that his shoes could have been cleaner.
‘But you’ve been working,’ I say, helping to excuse him. I wouldn’t have cared if he’d been wearing one gold flip flop and one dog-eared trainer.
‘I’d wanted to go home and change, but I ran out of time’ he explains. ‘In fact, I nearly had to cancel again, but I knew that wouldn’t have gone down too well…’
Too right it wouldn’t.
‘Why what happened?’ I ask, deeply interested in what his idea of a good reason to cancel would have been.
‘There was a crisis at a property I’m renovating, but I got someone else to deal with it. If I’d had to go there myself, I suppose I could have picked you up first and taken you with...?’
‘I wouldn’t have minded that,’ I answer. ‘I would’ve put jeans on and we could’ve got a takeaway pizza…as long as we’d been together…that’s all I want…’
I drop my voice to little more than a whisper.
‘And I’ve not been well again since we last met…’ he informs me, with a drop of whine in his voice.
‘You look very well now,’ I flatter. ‘How do you feel?’
The correct answer would have been ‘All the better for seeing you’ but I don’t get that.
Instead he’s looking straight ahead, seemingly lost in thought. His hands are clasped together in his lap. I want to take one in mine and lift it to my lips but I don’t want to freak him out.
We make small talk for the rest of the journey and arrive at the restaurant where he orders two glasses of champagne. We clink a toast to seeing each other again and relax into conversation, like two normal people out on a date.
We share a bottle of wine with the meal. I know I’ll have a headache in the morning but I don’t care. I don’t need my head for anything other than thinking about him and that’s been an ache for the past five weeks anyway.
When I laugh at something he says, I realize I haven’t laughed since the last time we laughed together, and I tell him this because it’s true.
I take the conversation back to the good times we shared, trying to remind him how wonderful we were together in those carefree, heady, fun-filled days.
‘And oh those lazy afternoons... when it was snowing too hard to do anything but...' I sigh but he will not meet my eyes.
We talk about work and what’s on at the theatre, and there’s actually a play he wants to see. I immediately offer to buy the tickets and suggest we go together.
He hesitates, and I know I’m going too fast. I've definitely assumed the role of predator here, over keen, over-aged and over here. When an over eager suitor does this to me, I find it really annoying.
As we near the end of the meal, I notice a button hanging loose from the cuff of his jacket, and another one actually missing.
‘You need someone to look after you…’ I offer sweetly. ‘If you want to come home with me later, I’ll sew them back on for you.’
He looks at me as if I’ve just told him I’ve laid animal traps all up my stairs and there’s little chance of him avoiding them.
He pulls at his sleeve trying to turn it round so I won’t see it.
‘You’ll tell all your friends I arrived late looking like a tramp,’ he gripes, clearly embarrassed that I’ve noticed another flaw in his presentation,
‘Don’t be silly’ I cajole. ‘I’ll tell them that you arrived on a white charger, all tall and gorgeous, and that we had a wonderful time. That’s right, isn’t it?’
He manages to nod and shake his head all at the same time, an action Bill and Ben the Flowerpot Men perfected it in the fifties.
Now it’s me who needs reassuring, me who feels insecure. I’m trying to love the pants off him and he’s shrinking down in his seat like a puppet whose master’s let go of the strings.
We share a chocolate mousse, then he pays the bill and we walk down Charing Cross Road to find a cab. He doesn’t hold my hand nor take my arm but strides on ahead looking left and right. At one point, a group of drunken youths block my path, and I have to step this way and that to get past them.
I call out to him: ‘Look after me, please. I’m about to be hi-jacked here!’ and he slows down and I take his arm.
This doesn’t feel natural. He’s holding it stiffly away from his body like someone’s left a brolly stuck up his sleeve. I let go and we carry on walking separately.
We eventually find a cab and climb in and at last, he takes my hand and I entwine my legs through his. He looks down at my feet.
‘Oh what lovely shoes!’ he remarks and I snuggle up closer to him.
Now I’m slightly tipsy and my eye’s all a’quiver. Maybe if I break both ankles as I’m going down the stairs, I can claim disability allowance and retire gracefully to Eastbourne, then I won’t have to worry about dating inappropriate men any more.
Unable to contain myself any longer, I pick up my handbag and keys, lock my front door and walk very carefully down the three flights of stairs. I twitch for another few minutes in the hallway of my block and finally, a black cab pulls up.
I leave my building smiling and walk confidently towards him, like a clapperboard's just been clapped and the director’s barked: ‘Action!!’
He’s in the back of the taxi on his mobile phone. He grasps my hand as I climb in and pulls a face by way of apology. I mouthe ‘Don’t worry…’ and squeeze his hand so tightly I nearly fracture his fingers.
I look at him and I look at him again. God. He is handsome. More so than I remember. I haven’t seen him since that awful night he fell apart in my little tub chair, and he’s actually improved.
The illusion I have of him in my mind did not, strangely, include the way he looks. It was more about the complexity of his character and the way he made me feel on holiday...certainly not since as, if you weigh it up, a major brain fuck is not perhaps that seductive.
He’s wearing a crisp white shirt, a grey suit and no tie. I’ve only ever seen him in ski wear or jeans. Or naked.
He finishes his call and turns to me and we give each other a big hug and a kiss on each cheek.
‘You look absolutely gorgeous…’ he says softly, looking me up and down with undisguised admiration.
Then he releases my hand abruptly, as if by holding on to it he might be lured back into some dark place he neither understands nor wishes to go.
‘It’s all new,’ I reply, so glad that he’s noticed. ‘Especially for tonight.’
Accommodate him, please him, make-him-feel-at-ease-him.
He apologizes again for having come straight from work and for being late, then draws my attention to the fact that his shoes could have been cleaner.
‘But you’ve been working,’ I say, helping to excuse him. I wouldn’t have cared if he’d been wearing one gold flip flop and one dog-eared trainer.
‘I’d wanted to go home and change, but I ran out of time’ he explains. ‘In fact, I nearly had to cancel again, but I knew that wouldn’t have gone down too well…’
Too right it wouldn’t.
‘Why what happened?’ I ask, deeply interested in what his idea of a good reason to cancel would have been.
‘There was a crisis at a property I’m renovating, but I got someone else to deal with it. If I’d had to go there myself, I suppose I could have picked you up first and taken you with...?’
‘I wouldn’t have minded that,’ I answer. ‘I would’ve put jeans on and we could’ve got a takeaway pizza…as long as we’d been together…that’s all I want…’
I drop my voice to little more than a whisper.
‘And I’ve not been well again since we last met…’ he informs me, with a drop of whine in his voice.
‘You look very well now,’ I flatter. ‘How do you feel?’
The correct answer would have been ‘All the better for seeing you’ but I don’t get that.
Instead he’s looking straight ahead, seemingly lost in thought. His hands are clasped together in his lap. I want to take one in mine and lift it to my lips but I don’t want to freak him out.
We make small talk for the rest of the journey and arrive at the restaurant where he orders two glasses of champagne. We clink a toast to seeing each other again and relax into conversation, like two normal people out on a date.
We share a bottle of wine with the meal. I know I’ll have a headache in the morning but I don’t care. I don’t need my head for anything other than thinking about him and that’s been an ache for the past five weeks anyway.
When I laugh at something he says, I realize I haven’t laughed since the last time we laughed together, and I tell him this because it’s true.
I take the conversation back to the good times we shared, trying to remind him how wonderful we were together in those carefree, heady, fun-filled days.
‘And oh those lazy afternoons... when it was snowing too hard to do anything but...' I sigh but he will not meet my eyes.
We talk about work and what’s on at the theatre, and there’s actually a play he wants to see. I immediately offer to buy the tickets and suggest we go together.
He hesitates, and I know I’m going too fast. I've definitely assumed the role of predator here, over keen, over-aged and over here. When an over eager suitor does this to me, I find it really annoying.
As we near the end of the meal, I notice a button hanging loose from the cuff of his jacket, and another one actually missing.
‘You need someone to look after you…’ I offer sweetly. ‘If you want to come home with me later, I’ll sew them back on for you.’
He looks at me as if I’ve just told him I’ve laid animal traps all up my stairs and there’s little chance of him avoiding them.
He pulls at his sleeve trying to turn it round so I won’t see it.
‘You’ll tell all your friends I arrived late looking like a tramp,’ he gripes, clearly embarrassed that I’ve noticed another flaw in his presentation,
‘Don’t be silly’ I cajole. ‘I’ll tell them that you arrived on a white charger, all tall and gorgeous, and that we had a wonderful time. That’s right, isn’t it?’
He manages to nod and shake his head all at the same time, an action Bill and Ben the Flowerpot Men perfected it in the fifties.
Now it’s me who needs reassuring, me who feels insecure. I’m trying to love the pants off him and he’s shrinking down in his seat like a puppet whose master’s let go of the strings.
We share a chocolate mousse, then he pays the bill and we walk down Charing Cross Road to find a cab. He doesn’t hold my hand nor take my arm but strides on ahead looking left and right. At one point, a group of drunken youths block my path, and I have to step this way and that to get past them.
I call out to him: ‘Look after me, please. I’m about to be hi-jacked here!’ and he slows down and I take his arm.
This doesn’t feel natural. He’s holding it stiffly away from his body like someone’s left a brolly stuck up his sleeve. I let go and we carry on walking separately.
We eventually find a cab and climb in and at last, he takes my hand and I entwine my legs through his. He looks down at my feet.
‘Oh what lovely shoes!’ he remarks and I snuggle up closer to him.
Saturday 22 November 2008
THE DAILY MALE - continues...
...but of course, I must be slightly attached because as the hours tick by and I don’t hear from him, I start to feel slightly miffed. I didn’t expect the mad momentum of last week - that would have been unreasonable – but a 'thank you for having me :- )' wouldn’t have gone amiss.
I get on with my day getting increasingly peeved whilst attempting to accept the inevitable. I consider texting him, but what would I say? A telling-off would be churlish and I sure as hell ain’t gonna thank him considering I did most of the work! I prepare myself for the fact that now he's had his way, I may never hear from him again.
At 6.30 p.m., I go to yoga and then for a drink with some of the girls. A guy comes over to chat to us but he’s wearing a wedding band so I send him packing, and as I’m heading back home, my phone finally vibrates. It’s Cute Face. About bloody time.
Hey sexy. Had a good day?
I smile and thank G-d that normal service has been resumed. I wait a while before replying (he's punished) and we make another date for Wednesday, in his words 'a school night', so if CC on Tuesday goes horribly wrong, at least I’ll have something to fall back on.
Just before signing off for the night, when he’s obviously having a bit of a personal fondle, Cute Face enquires if he can he ask me a very personal question. I could put money on what’s coming...
Do you ever take it up the arse? I’ve never really tried it…not bothered either way but I thought I’d ask x
How very charming! And nice that he ended with a kiss.
While I'm composing my reply which takes a while, he sends a mildly panicked Have I offended you? obviously worried that he’s gone too far.
I tried it once (thrice actually) but it didn’t work for me. Too painful, too many nasties involved and it didn’t turn me on. I know women who like it but I’m not one of them. In case the next question is ‘Do you swallow?’ I’m not keen on that either. Are you getting bored already??!
I don’t hear back from him so I shrug, switch everything off and go to sleep.
Tuesday. Today’s the today. My date with CC. He won’t cancel now, will he? I expect I’ll hear from him sometime later to confirm. I’ll give him ‘til 5, then I’ll give him ‘til 6.
I have lunch with a girlfriend in the café where I write and just as she's leaving, my mobile rings. I leap out of my seat as I see CC's name on the screen and I run out into the street to where the noise levels are lower.
I don’t want him to hear the background buzz in case he thinks I’m here with someone else. That might make him insecure again. The situation's tenuous enough as it is…
He sounds bright and perky and offers to pick me up in a cab at 7.15 to which I agree with effusive thanks. We hang up with a jointly chirpy ‘See you later' and I try to work on through the afternoon.
At 5.30 I go home to start getting ready. I change into my new coral top with the matching silk skirt, and slip into my taupe patent high heel shoes, finishing off with a pearl necklace and earrings. He’s never seen me this dressed up before. I hope he likes it.
At 6.36, I’m absolutely bricking it. If I put any more make up on, I’ll look like a drag queen. I need a drink, but I don’t want to smell of alcohol and I also feel I might throw up. Notwithstanding this, I pour myself a vodka and cranberry juice, crack some ice into it and down it in one.
Rugby Player texts me à propos of nothing: You are an uber sexy version of Jennie Bond. What the fuck is he talking about?
I ignore him ‘cos he’s disturbing this deliciously anticipatory moment, but at 7.20 I declare CC officially late.
I’m not unduly worried. The drink has calmed me down somewhat but now I’m dying for a fag. That would truly be the kiss of death. He’s very anti-smoking and he would definitely smell it on me. And I don’t really smoke anyway, except I really need one NOW.
My phone rings suddenly and I grab it off the kitchen table. It’s him. He can’t make it. No, it’s OK. He’s apologizing. He’ll be another five minutes.
‘No problem!’ I squeak brightly.
You can be five years late, mate, as long as you turn up eventually…and I take a long, neat slug from the vodka bottle.
I check myself in the mirror one last time. Short of stripping everything off and starting again, there’s not a lot else I can do.
I get on with my day getting increasingly peeved whilst attempting to accept the inevitable. I consider texting him, but what would I say? A telling-off would be churlish and I sure as hell ain’t gonna thank him considering I did most of the work! I prepare myself for the fact that now he's had his way, I may never hear from him again.
At 6.30 p.m., I go to yoga and then for a drink with some of the girls. A guy comes over to chat to us but he’s wearing a wedding band so I send him packing, and as I’m heading back home, my phone finally vibrates. It’s Cute Face. About bloody time.
Hey sexy. Had a good day?
I smile and thank G-d that normal service has been resumed. I wait a while before replying (he's punished) and we make another date for Wednesday, in his words 'a school night', so if CC on Tuesday goes horribly wrong, at least I’ll have something to fall back on.
Just before signing off for the night, when he’s obviously having a bit of a personal fondle, Cute Face enquires if he can he ask me a very personal question. I could put money on what’s coming...
Do you ever take it up the arse? I’ve never really tried it…not bothered either way but I thought I’d ask x
How very charming! And nice that he ended with a kiss.
While I'm composing my reply which takes a while, he sends a mildly panicked Have I offended you? obviously worried that he’s gone too far.
I tried it once (thrice actually) but it didn’t work for me. Too painful, too many nasties involved and it didn’t turn me on. I know women who like it but I’m not one of them. In case the next question is ‘Do you swallow?’ I’m not keen on that either. Are you getting bored already??!
I don’t hear back from him so I shrug, switch everything off and go to sleep.
Tuesday. Today’s the today. My date with CC. He won’t cancel now, will he? I expect I’ll hear from him sometime later to confirm. I’ll give him ‘til 5, then I’ll give him ‘til 6.
I have lunch with a girlfriend in the café where I write and just as she's leaving, my mobile rings. I leap out of my seat as I see CC's name on the screen and I run out into the street to where the noise levels are lower.
I don’t want him to hear the background buzz in case he thinks I’m here with someone else. That might make him insecure again. The situation's tenuous enough as it is…
He sounds bright and perky and offers to pick me up in a cab at 7.15 to which I agree with effusive thanks. We hang up with a jointly chirpy ‘See you later' and I try to work on through the afternoon.
At 5.30 I go home to start getting ready. I change into my new coral top with the matching silk skirt, and slip into my taupe patent high heel shoes, finishing off with a pearl necklace and earrings. He’s never seen me this dressed up before. I hope he likes it.
At 6.36, I’m absolutely bricking it. If I put any more make up on, I’ll look like a drag queen. I need a drink, but I don’t want to smell of alcohol and I also feel I might throw up. Notwithstanding this, I pour myself a vodka and cranberry juice, crack some ice into it and down it in one.
Rugby Player texts me à propos of nothing: You are an uber sexy version of Jennie Bond. What the fuck is he talking about?
I ignore him ‘cos he’s disturbing this deliciously anticipatory moment, but at 7.20 I declare CC officially late.
I’m not unduly worried. The drink has calmed me down somewhat but now I’m dying for a fag. That would truly be the kiss of death. He’s very anti-smoking and he would definitely smell it on me. And I don’t really smoke anyway, except I really need one NOW.
My phone rings suddenly and I grab it off the kitchen table. It’s him. He can’t make it. No, it’s OK. He’s apologizing. He’ll be another five minutes.
‘No problem!’ I squeak brightly.
You can be five years late, mate, as long as you turn up eventually…and I take a long, neat slug from the vodka bottle.
I check myself in the mirror one last time. Short of stripping everything off and starting again, there’s not a lot else I can do.
Sunday 16 November 2008
Sunday 9 November 2008
THE DAILY MALE - continues...9/11/08
I'm talking to my girlfriend about sex at sixty. She’s currently got it all going on with a 67-year old millionaire from Monte Carlo who slams her up against the wall every time they meet. (This relationship doesn't last...)
We discuss the aggravation aspect of men versus no men which is a no-brainer. Of course there’s aggravation. It goes with the territory. (And talking of aggravation, I still think CC is worth fighting for…)
I notice in the mirror that I’ve got a spot on my chin…perhaps it comes from behaving like an adolescent. Having the spot is bad enough, but now that I’ve mucked about with it, it’s looking a lot worse.
I wonder, if I cover it with enough make-up, will I be able to angle my face in such a way as not to rub the make-up off when Cute Face kisses me? (There are people out there dying, but this to me is a major problem. All my lifetime I should have such problems...)
It’s a very sunny day and The Spot will no doubt shine out from my chin like the Eddystone Lighthouse. Maybe I’ll pass on the TV shopping and stall Cute Face until it gets dark, bearing in mind he’s told me several times what’s going to happen the minute he steps across my threshold. Out Damned Spot! I’ll have to bank on him not noticing the mantelpiece while he’s stoking the fire.
I go to have my hair trimmed and finish earlier than expected. Now I have two hours to kill. As if reading my thoughts, he texts to ask if 3.30 is still OK.
Or sooner? I offer, forgetting about the sun/Spot situation. 2.30? he enquires eagerly. Go on then…x I reply and dash home to change my clothes - four times as if it matters.
I’m delighted to see that it’s started raining. I close the bedroom curtains so there’s not a chink of light, and I potter about in the kitchen ‘til the doorbell rings.
He bounds up the stairs and the minute I set eyes on him, I start giggling. I knew I would. All the sexual build-up of the past week de-materializes into a form of embarrassment, as we hug and kiss awkwardly on the doorstep and I lead him into the living-room.
We sit down on the sofa both talking rubbish at once and I wonder where all the feelings went. How liberated we were by text, without eye contact, without inhibitions… I offer him something to drink but because it’s too early for alcohol, the afternoon turns into Mrs. Beeton’s Victorian tea party.
I’m in my comfort zone: boiling the kettle, buttering the crumpets, preparing the tea things on a pink embroidered traycloth, decanting some raspberry jam into a small china ramekin. He appreciates this and it diffuses the tension between us.
He puts the (old) TV on (we’re not going to make it out, are we?) and we relax in each other’s arms. It’s only 3.20 p.m. We have all the time in the world…
By 3.27 p.m. we’re in bed with our heads between each other’s legs and the week long fantasy is coming true. How blissfully liberating is Saturday afternoon sex, especially when you’ve got the rest of the weekend ahead of you…
Our ardour rises rapidly and I’m glad he’s not tall as we fit each other perfectly, whichever way you turn it. He’s shaved his entire genital area and with my fresh Hollywood frou-frou, we’re both as silky smooth as Romeo and Juliet without the family problems.
When we finish our first bout, he puts The Robe on (see Chapter Five The Toyboy Diaries) and with me in my lilac tracksuit, we go back to the fireside sofa for more tea and a game of Scrabble.
It really is delightfully dichotomous: a 28-year-old and a 61-year-old who happen to be lovers, hot for each other one minute, competitive with word games the next. He’s never played before. He picks it up bloody fast and tries to thrash me. I can see the makings of a Very Bad Loser, and we finish two points short of each other, him winning under my expert tutelage. To celebrate his victory, I give him a blow job which leads to us going back to bed for Round Two.
As I am, at this point, needing a little help to reach my destination, I fantasize that I’m a young nun being raped by the Mother Superior wearing a strap-on.
At 6 p.m., the designated 'cocktail hour', he opens a bottle of rosé for himself, pours me a Scotch and ginger and I cut up some crudités to eat with the blue cheese dip I prepared earlier.
We relax back on the sofa, cuddled up in each other’s arms. It’s cold and wet outside but the stars are aligned in perfect symmetry. At 8 p.m. I stick some Waitrose Thai in the oven and we eat in off a tray in front of the tele. Aaaah! Blissto.
Having started our date at 2.30 p.m. and had two energetic bouts of deeply satisfying sex, by 10 p.m. we’re both shattered. He falls asleep on the sofa spooned in behind me snoring like a hog. I tolerate this for as long as I am able, then I get up and clear away the dinner things. When I go back to check on him, he’s flat out on the couch, one leg thrown over the back, his face buried in a pile of cushions. The snoring continues apace, so I switch off all the lights, lower the volume on the TV, and take myself - happily alone - off to bed.
I contemplate throwing a duvet over him to make him more comfortable but I can’t be arsed to rummage around looking for it. And I certainly don’t want to wake him up, so I adjust the heating instead, remove my make-up and go to sleep.
At around 2 a.m. I hear him get up and go the loo, and then, of course, he comes to join me. Damn. He snuggles up but I ignore him and he soon falls back to sleep his face pressed up hard against my neck. The snoring begins again in earnest, and I push him away crossly and reach for my ear plugs. He spreadeagles himself across my bed then wriggles through the rest of the night, until he’s wrapped up like a mummy in my top sheet. For a little guy, he sure takes up a lot of space and I am now seriously uncomfortable, wide awake and very grumpy. I keep trying to shove him away but he’s too hard to shift.
God! I think. The price one has to pay for a couple of man-made orgasms. (Hail, oh Rabbit! I love thee well…)
We discuss the aggravation aspect of men versus no men which is a no-brainer. Of course there’s aggravation. It goes with the territory. (And talking of aggravation, I still think CC is worth fighting for…)
I notice in the mirror that I’ve got a spot on my chin…perhaps it comes from behaving like an adolescent. Having the spot is bad enough, but now that I’ve mucked about with it, it’s looking a lot worse.
I wonder, if I cover it with enough make-up, will I be able to angle my face in such a way as not to rub the make-up off when Cute Face kisses me? (There are people out there dying, but this to me is a major problem. All my lifetime I should have such problems...)
It’s a very sunny day and The Spot will no doubt shine out from my chin like the Eddystone Lighthouse. Maybe I’ll pass on the TV shopping and stall Cute Face until it gets dark, bearing in mind he’s told me several times what’s going to happen the minute he steps across my threshold. Out Damned Spot! I’ll have to bank on him not noticing the mantelpiece while he’s stoking the fire.
I go to have my hair trimmed and finish earlier than expected. Now I have two hours to kill. As if reading my thoughts, he texts to ask if 3.30 is still OK.
Or sooner? I offer, forgetting about the sun/Spot situation. 2.30? he enquires eagerly. Go on then…x I reply and dash home to change my clothes - four times as if it matters.
I’m delighted to see that it’s started raining. I close the bedroom curtains so there’s not a chink of light, and I potter about in the kitchen ‘til the doorbell rings.
He bounds up the stairs and the minute I set eyes on him, I start giggling. I knew I would. All the sexual build-up of the past week de-materializes into a form of embarrassment, as we hug and kiss awkwardly on the doorstep and I lead him into the living-room.
We sit down on the sofa both talking rubbish at once and I wonder where all the feelings went. How liberated we were by text, without eye contact, without inhibitions… I offer him something to drink but because it’s too early for alcohol, the afternoon turns into Mrs. Beeton’s Victorian tea party.
I’m in my comfort zone: boiling the kettle, buttering the crumpets, preparing the tea things on a pink embroidered traycloth, decanting some raspberry jam into a small china ramekin. He appreciates this and it diffuses the tension between us.
He puts the (old) TV on (we’re not going to make it out, are we?) and we relax in each other’s arms. It’s only 3.20 p.m. We have all the time in the world…
By 3.27 p.m. we’re in bed with our heads between each other’s legs and the week long fantasy is coming true. How blissfully liberating is Saturday afternoon sex, especially when you’ve got the rest of the weekend ahead of you…
Our ardour rises rapidly and I’m glad he’s not tall as we fit each other perfectly, whichever way you turn it. He’s shaved his entire genital area and with my fresh Hollywood frou-frou, we’re both as silky smooth as Romeo and Juliet without the family problems.
When we finish our first bout, he puts The Robe on (see Chapter Five The Toyboy Diaries) and with me in my lilac tracksuit, we go back to the fireside sofa for more tea and a game of Scrabble.
It really is delightfully dichotomous: a 28-year-old and a 61-year-old who happen to be lovers, hot for each other one minute, competitive with word games the next. He’s never played before. He picks it up bloody fast and tries to thrash me. I can see the makings of a Very Bad Loser, and we finish two points short of each other, him winning under my expert tutelage. To celebrate his victory, I give him a blow job which leads to us going back to bed for Round Two.
As I am, at this point, needing a little help to reach my destination, I fantasize that I’m a young nun being raped by the Mother Superior wearing a strap-on.
At 6 p.m., the designated 'cocktail hour', he opens a bottle of rosé for himself, pours me a Scotch and ginger and I cut up some crudités to eat with the blue cheese dip I prepared earlier.
We relax back on the sofa, cuddled up in each other’s arms. It’s cold and wet outside but the stars are aligned in perfect symmetry. At 8 p.m. I stick some Waitrose Thai in the oven and we eat in off a tray in front of the tele. Aaaah! Blissto.
Having started our date at 2.30 p.m. and had two energetic bouts of deeply satisfying sex, by 10 p.m. we’re both shattered. He falls asleep on the sofa spooned in behind me snoring like a hog. I tolerate this for as long as I am able, then I get up and clear away the dinner things. When I go back to check on him, he’s flat out on the couch, one leg thrown over the back, his face buried in a pile of cushions. The snoring continues apace, so I switch off all the lights, lower the volume on the TV, and take myself - happily alone - off to bed.
I contemplate throwing a duvet over him to make him more comfortable but I can’t be arsed to rummage around looking for it. And I certainly don’t want to wake him up, so I adjust the heating instead, remove my make-up and go to sleep.
At around 2 a.m. I hear him get up and go the loo, and then, of course, he comes to join me. Damn. He snuggles up but I ignore him and he soon falls back to sleep his face pressed up hard against my neck. The snoring begins again in earnest, and I push him away crossly and reach for my ear plugs. He spreadeagles himself across my bed then wriggles through the rest of the night, until he’s wrapped up like a mummy in my top sheet. For a little guy, he sure takes up a lot of space and I am now seriously uncomfortable, wide awake and very grumpy. I keep trying to shove him away but he’s too hard to shift.
God! I think. The price one has to pay for a couple of man-made orgasms. (Hail, oh Rabbit! I love thee well…)
Sunday 2 November 2008
THE DAILY MALE - continues...
Thursday. The past two days have been totally dominated by Cute Face and his not unwelcome barrage of horny, little texts filling my inbox with fun and filth, and my mind with anticipation for the weekend ahead.
It amuses me to reply in kind (any exercise in writing is a writing exercise) but I get to wondering if my 350 free texts are going to be sufficient this month - Heaven forbid this interlude should begin to cost me money!
Of course I know it won’t last. It reminds me of the beginning with MLP when it was all full-on and brimming with pent-up passion. How do you get that intensity to last? I’ve never found the formula even with my great age and experience.
I’m wondering (like it matters) whether Cute Face and I haven’t gone into overkill mode with all this expectation – the fantasy being better than the reality 'n all.
If he’s told me once he’s told me a thousand times how much he’s looking forward to seeing me again, longing to have his body next to mine, to gently slip inside me and feel how wet I am around his throbbing cock, making him wanna cum so hard he could burst, how he fancies me something rotten, that I’m well fit, that he’ll do anything for me - anything at all. It's all guff, of course...but it's a shame I can’t put him in a pot with CC and melt them both down to make the perfect partner!
The postman arrives with my replacement Myla bra. It looks beautiful. I’ll send Rugby Player another 'thank you' later when I’ve tried it on. It’s the middle of the night in New York anyway, and he’s probably busy wooing someone else.
I wonder whether to wear this new lingerie for my date with Cute Face on Saturday. I’m not sure that’s what RP intended when he sent it to me, but CF is here and RP isn’t and what he doesn’t know won’t hurt him.
Thursday night. I go out to eat over-priced Asian Fusion with the Lizard of Oz. Bless him, he’s in his sixties and still behaves like a teenager. Whoops...pot kettle black. Shame I don’t fancy him or we’d both be sorted. No more gallivanting shenanigans with unsuitable brain fucks.
I thought I saw CC in the restaurant. I did a double take and my heart made a bid for freedom by trying to punch a hole through my chest. But it wasn’t him.
Friday. I dreamt about CC all night. He called me (which would have been nice) and in my dream, we talk a lot about how it was between us when we first met and what’s been happening since. Not what I’ve been doing, Christ! I’m hardly likely to tell him that!! Anyway, it’s his fault I’m on this path of self-destruction...or ‘having a laugh’ as I prefer to call it.
In the context of ‘If you can’t be with the one you love, love the one you’re with’, I text Cute Face:
No more texting til we meet tomorrow. First one to crack gets a smack.
Rain is predicted. Good. We won’t feel guilty about staying in bed the entire weekend.
The ‘no texting’ policy falls at the first hurdle when he caves and starts e-mailing me. I ignore him.
I go to the beauty parlour and instead of a Brazilian, I have a full Hollywood. I’d already broached the subject with him and he told me to surprise him. I surprise myself by managing not to scream. I cave back and text him:
Ouch! I hope you like 12-yr olds…
Completely off? he replies. Cool. I’ll be giving you a good tongue lashing tomorrow.
A little later, obviously having pondered the matter at length (like Albert Einstein pondering the Theory of Relativity) he asks:
So when you get a wax, do you have to get naked?
How else? I reply. What are you thinking about? Another woman touching my cho-cho?
I wasn’t… but I am now! Have you ever done that? Not that I’m asking… you’re more than enough for lil' ol' me but I bet you have, being the experienced woman you are
I continue to wind him up until it’s time to go to my mother’s for dinner. Halfway through a bowl of her especially delicious chicken soup with matzo balls, Rugby Player texts me: How’s the new underwear?
Shit. I forgot to let him know it had arrived or to thank him.
I reply and a conversation ensues:
Absolutely gorgeous. Thanks again. It’ll look stunning hanging from the canopy of a king-size 4-poster bed...
I’d like to see that…
Play your cards right…
I have another pressie for you. But it’s rather more personal…
Avec batteries I presume?
Spot on!
I leave it after that. If he’s into buying presents, I have no wish to discourage that. And not replying gives me a credit. In case I should ever wish to text him first. Which I don’t.
Cute Face is out with mates tonight getting drunk. Why do they do that when they know they need to be on top form the following night?
Saturday. On waking, I find two voice messages in my mail box. Both very drunk, sent in the early hours, the noise of his feet crunching along a road.
I’m really really looking forward to seeing you tomorrow… hic…byebyebye…
followed by something that sounds like him tripping up, then a thud and a groan.
The second message is four minutes long, not talking but walking. He’s obviously forgotten to hang up the first call.
At 10.15 a.m. I text him:
Good morning! x and an hour later, he replies:
not feelin gr8
There’s a surprise… says I. Can you get here by 3.30 so we can go and buy the tele? but I don’t hear back.
I’m not unduly worried. Well maybe just a little.
It amuses me to reply in kind (any exercise in writing is a writing exercise) but I get to wondering if my 350 free texts are going to be sufficient this month - Heaven forbid this interlude should begin to cost me money!
Of course I know it won’t last. It reminds me of the beginning with MLP when it was all full-on and brimming with pent-up passion. How do you get that intensity to last? I’ve never found the formula even with my great age and experience.
I’m wondering (like it matters) whether Cute Face and I haven’t gone into overkill mode with all this expectation – the fantasy being better than the reality 'n all.
If he’s told me once he’s told me a thousand times how much he’s looking forward to seeing me again, longing to have his body next to mine, to gently slip inside me and feel how wet I am around his throbbing cock, making him wanna cum so hard he could burst, how he fancies me something rotten, that I’m well fit, that he’ll do anything for me - anything at all. It's all guff, of course...but it's a shame I can’t put him in a pot with CC and melt them both down to make the perfect partner!
The postman arrives with my replacement Myla bra. It looks beautiful. I’ll send Rugby Player another 'thank you' later when I’ve tried it on. It’s the middle of the night in New York anyway, and he’s probably busy wooing someone else.
I wonder whether to wear this new lingerie for my date with Cute Face on Saturday. I’m not sure that’s what RP intended when he sent it to me, but CF is here and RP isn’t and what he doesn’t know won’t hurt him.
Thursday night. I go out to eat over-priced Asian Fusion with the Lizard of Oz. Bless him, he’s in his sixties and still behaves like a teenager. Whoops...pot kettle black. Shame I don’t fancy him or we’d both be sorted. No more gallivanting shenanigans with unsuitable brain fucks.
I thought I saw CC in the restaurant. I did a double take and my heart made a bid for freedom by trying to punch a hole through my chest. But it wasn’t him.
Friday. I dreamt about CC all night. He called me (which would have been nice) and in my dream, we talk a lot about how it was between us when we first met and what’s been happening since. Not what I’ve been doing, Christ! I’m hardly likely to tell him that!! Anyway, it’s his fault I’m on this path of self-destruction...or ‘having a laugh’ as I prefer to call it.
In the context of ‘If you can’t be with the one you love, love the one you’re with’, I text Cute Face:
No more texting til we meet tomorrow. First one to crack gets a smack.
Rain is predicted. Good. We won’t feel guilty about staying in bed the entire weekend.
The ‘no texting’ policy falls at the first hurdle when he caves and starts e-mailing me. I ignore him.
I go to the beauty parlour and instead of a Brazilian, I have a full Hollywood. I’d already broached the subject with him and he told me to surprise him. I surprise myself by managing not to scream. I cave back and text him:
Ouch! I hope you like 12-yr olds…
Completely off? he replies. Cool. I’ll be giving you a good tongue lashing tomorrow.
A little later, obviously having pondered the matter at length (like Albert Einstein pondering the Theory of Relativity) he asks:
So when you get a wax, do you have to get naked?
How else? I reply. What are you thinking about? Another woman touching my cho-cho?
I wasn’t… but I am now! Have you ever done that? Not that I’m asking… you’re more than enough for lil' ol' me but I bet you have, being the experienced woman you are
I continue to wind him up until it’s time to go to my mother’s for dinner. Halfway through a bowl of her especially delicious chicken soup with matzo balls, Rugby Player texts me: How’s the new underwear?
Shit. I forgot to let him know it had arrived or to thank him.
I reply and a conversation ensues:
Absolutely gorgeous. Thanks again. It’ll look stunning hanging from the canopy of a king-size 4-poster bed...
I’d like to see that…
Play your cards right…
I have another pressie for you. But it’s rather more personal…
Avec batteries I presume?
Spot on!
I leave it after that. If he’s into buying presents, I have no wish to discourage that. And not replying gives me a credit. In case I should ever wish to text him first. Which I don’t.
Cute Face is out with mates tonight getting drunk. Why do they do that when they know they need to be on top form the following night?
Saturday. On waking, I find two voice messages in my mail box. Both very drunk, sent in the early hours, the noise of his feet crunching along a road.
I’m really really looking forward to seeing you tomorrow… hic…byebyebye…
followed by something that sounds like him tripping up, then a thud and a groan.
The second message is four minutes long, not talking but walking. He’s obviously forgotten to hang up the first call.
At 10.15 a.m. I text him:
Good morning! x and an hour later, he replies:
not feelin gr8
There’s a surprise… says I. Can you get here by 3.30 so we can go and buy the tele? but I don’t hear back.
I’m not unduly worried. Well maybe just a little.
Sunday 26 October 2008
THE DAILY MALE - continues...
Every time I think we’ve finished and I’m laid out on the deck facing north, south, east or west, he starts all over again and this continues until about 5 a.m. when I finally tell him to leave me the hell alone so I can get some sleep.
He goes out like a light snoring like Darth Vader with a sinus problem and I stuff my ear plugs in and when the room eventually stops spinning, I close my eyes and drift away.
After a couple of hours, we start again and make love intermittently between 8 a.m. and midday. I then get up v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y and cook us a full English breakfast. He showers, gets dressed, hugs me affectionately and goes off to watch the football.
About an hour after he leaves, I receive an MMS from him: his hand grasping the engorged base of his fully erect penis. I’m a bit surprised it isn’t nesting quietly against his inner thigh, considering the night it’s had, and am rather taken aback by the ensuring video clip of him pleasuring himself. I can hardly walk and he’s at it the minute he gets home!
I text him to stop being a dirty, little bugger as I'm barely firing on half a cylinder and stumble through the next couple of hours tidying up my flat which looks like The International Festival du Fuck has just taken place.
Later I go to the cinema to see Away from Her where I promptly fall asleep missing the central theme of the plot. It’s about a long-married couple, the wife of whom puts herself in a home due to impending Alzheimer’s. I can’t relate to the long-married bit at all… and it would be too sad to contract Alzheimer's and forget all these delicious experiences. Just as well I’m writing them down.
I go to bed early but am woken just after midnight by another text from Cute Face, offering to come over again. I’ll save him for next Saturday. My tender nethers need to convalesce.
Monday. Cute Face texts me on and off all day and when I get home, I suggest he may want to come shopping with me at the weekend to help me choose a a new TV. You’d have thought I’d offered him a shared stateroom on a Caribbean cruise with Angelina Jolie and her twin sister!
God you really know how to get a man going’ he exudes. Electronics shopping…Absolutely!! Bring it on x
He suggests I go for the SkyHD enabled, 72” flat screen, surround-sound VHRAM home cinema thingy, and I tell him all he has to do is put it in the car, carry it up the stairs, install it and teach the Victorian woman how it works. Then I might make him a cup of tea.
'Tea is the only reward I want…' he replies '...that and to ravish your sexy naked body.
You don’t get that at John Lewis. No matter how Never Knowingly Undersold they are.
Now some people might question the fact that a 28-year old is complimenting me on my ‘sexy naked body’ at the age of 62, but I have it on good authority (unforgiving mirror, ex-lovers who come back for more) that it’s not that bad. At least no one’s ever asked for their money back, and frankly, when a man’s blood lust has headed south, I don't think it matters if you're Scarlett Johanssen or a watermelon.
Tuesday. The day begins with a good morning text from Cute Face.
I can’t get rid of my raging horn. You must have warped me, Salisbury.
Methinks it’s all in your mind, young sir... I reply.
The messages degenerate throughout the day into graphic sexual detail
(I wish I had my tongue in your pussy right now… I’m absolutely longing to be inside you and fuck you any way you want me to…I want to feel your cum on my rock hard cock… ) and so on and so forth. He's angling for another invitation before next Saturday. He won’t get it.
My long-term married lover of some thirty years makes one of his occasional calls and asks me if I want to ‘come out to play’ with him and his mistress. We’ve done this once before as I am occasionally partial to a little girl-on-girl action - isn’t everyone?? I decline however. I have enough going on and I can always pick this offer up some other time when the cupboard is bare.
In any case, I reason, what I’m doing now is just biding my time until I begin my Proper Relationship with CC at which point I will drop everyone and everything and commit myself to coupledom.
Self-delusion is alive and well and living in West London.
He goes out like a light snoring like Darth Vader with a sinus problem and I stuff my ear plugs in and when the room eventually stops spinning, I close my eyes and drift away.
After a couple of hours, we start again and make love intermittently between 8 a.m. and midday. I then get up v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y and cook us a full English breakfast. He showers, gets dressed, hugs me affectionately and goes off to watch the football.
About an hour after he leaves, I receive an MMS from him: his hand grasping the engorged base of his fully erect penis. I’m a bit surprised it isn’t nesting quietly against his inner thigh, considering the night it’s had, and am rather taken aback by the ensuring video clip of him pleasuring himself. I can hardly walk and he’s at it the minute he gets home!
I text him to stop being a dirty, little bugger as I'm barely firing on half a cylinder and stumble through the next couple of hours tidying up my flat which looks like The International Festival du Fuck has just taken place.
Later I go to the cinema to see Away from Her where I promptly fall asleep missing the central theme of the plot. It’s about a long-married couple, the wife of whom puts herself in a home due to impending Alzheimer’s. I can’t relate to the long-married bit at all… and it would be too sad to contract Alzheimer's and forget all these delicious experiences. Just as well I’m writing them down.
I go to bed early but am woken just after midnight by another text from Cute Face, offering to come over again. I’ll save him for next Saturday. My tender nethers need to convalesce.
Monday. Cute Face texts me on and off all day and when I get home, I suggest he may want to come shopping with me at the weekend to help me choose a a new TV. You’d have thought I’d offered him a shared stateroom on a Caribbean cruise with Angelina Jolie and her twin sister!
God you really know how to get a man going’ he exudes. Electronics shopping…Absolutely!! Bring it on x
He suggests I go for the SkyHD enabled, 72” flat screen, surround-sound VHRAM home cinema thingy, and I tell him all he has to do is put it in the car, carry it up the stairs, install it and teach the Victorian woman how it works. Then I might make him a cup of tea.
'Tea is the only reward I want…' he replies '...that and to ravish your sexy naked body.
You don’t get that at John Lewis. No matter how Never Knowingly Undersold they are.
Now some people might question the fact that a 28-year old is complimenting me on my ‘sexy naked body’ at the age of 62, but I have it on good authority (unforgiving mirror, ex-lovers who come back for more) that it’s not that bad. At least no one’s ever asked for their money back, and frankly, when a man’s blood lust has headed south, I don't think it matters if you're Scarlett Johanssen or a watermelon.
Tuesday. The day begins with a good morning text from Cute Face.
I can’t get rid of my raging horn. You must have warped me, Salisbury.
Methinks it’s all in your mind, young sir... I reply.
The messages degenerate throughout the day into graphic sexual detail
(I wish I had my tongue in your pussy right now… I’m absolutely longing to be inside you and fuck you any way you want me to…I want to feel your cum on my rock hard cock… ) and so on and so forth. He's angling for another invitation before next Saturday. He won’t get it.
My long-term married lover of some thirty years makes one of his occasional calls and asks me if I want to ‘come out to play’ with him and his mistress. We’ve done this once before as I am occasionally partial to a little girl-on-girl action - isn’t everyone?? I decline however. I have enough going on and I can always pick this offer up some other time when the cupboard is bare.
In any case, I reason, what I’m doing now is just biding my time until I begin my Proper Relationship with CC at which point I will drop everyone and everything and commit myself to coupledom.
Self-delusion is alive and well and living in West London.
Monday 13 October 2008
THE DAILY MALE - continues...
I throw on some make-up, fluff up my hair, change my flats for heels and walk down to the local wine bar.
God! Rugby Player is way better looking than I remembered and he has indeed lost a couple of stone. He’s got a strong jaw with a cleft chin, a thick head of graying hair, and very large green eyes. He’s tall, well-dressed and from his generous present is on the right side of rich. Not that this matters to me, but if I’d passed him in the street, or anywhere else for that matter, I’d have tripped myself up and fallen headfirst into his lap.
I thank him effusively for the lurvely lingerie and ask him if he presumes that by sending such a gift, it buys him the right to handle the goods contained therein.
‘Not at all...’ he replies. ‘There’s no obligation whatsoever…though it would be very nice…I enjoy spoiling beautiful women especially those to whom I am attracted.’
I can’t argue with that. I drink a tomato juice and we chat for a while then he has to go. I kiss him goodbye and by the time I’ve walked home, he’s texted:
You are both striking and have great chat. Looking forward to indulging you xx.
Ooh! OK...Indulge away, I think to myself. I sure as hell ain’t gonna stop you.
Later that evening, while having dinner with my mother and aunt, he texts me again and because I’ve slung some Chilean Chardonnay down my neck and convinced myself that I really fancy him, I’m a little more overt than usual in my reply...
Saturday. I shoot down to Portobello Road to have coffee with an occasional customer of mine, a darling young chap I've wanted to 'mother' since the day we met.
There is a certain je ne sais quoi in the air between us and I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s got Benjamin-style designs on me. My maternal feelings are rather like reverse MILF i.e. SILF (son I’d like to f***…)
When we say goodbye, he kisses me fondly and says: ‘We must go out for dinner sometime.’ Yes, I think. We must.
I go home to prepare some pasta for my children, and while I’m doing this, I’m on the phone negotiating a lower price for a piece of furniture I saw in All Saint's Road.
My mobile goes off, but I ignore it and carry on with my wheeler-dealing while stirring the Bolognese. I lean over to look at the mobile screen and it says a name I don’t immediately recognize. I have a habit of giving people code names when I save them and I can't always remember who they are.
I think it may be my son-in-law’s father, but as I hang up the furniture call and pick up the mobile, I realise who it actually is.
IT'S………CC!!!!
OH.
My joy at seeing his name on the screen is totally disproportionate with any emotions I’ve experienced in the last ten years and I savour the moment before pressing the answer key.
‘Hallo?’ I say innocently, as if I don’t know who I'm speaking to.
He introduces himself and I come over all warm and soppy. As usual (he's really such a wimp) he starts with an apology.
‘I’m sorry...I’ve felt guilty all week at not phoning you.’
‘Well I was going to come round and pour melted cheese through your letter box,’ I counter, but of course I couldn’t have done this, as Mr. Cagey has never given me his home address.
‘I suppose you have a whole list of creative vendettas to draw on,’ he comments fearfully. ‘Nothing as mundane as cutting up my ties…’
The conversation carries on in this vein but by the end of it, we have another date arranged. I've agreed to let him take me out, and somehow this time, I think we’ll make it. I feel so happy I could fly.
The children arrive, eat, play and leave, and remaining on my high, I get ready for the evening.
I drive to the station and park the car where I can see the exit. Cute Face arrives on time and I see him clocking another woman. He looks like he might dive back down the tube as she’s a dog and I can tell by his uncomfortable body language that he thinks she might be me.
I bound out of the car and cross the road, and his relief is evident. We kiss Hallo and he hands me a carrier bag which contains a bottle of Taittinger. Nice one. When he’d asked me this morning if I preferred red or white, I told him to surprise me. He has.
We have a couple of drinks at the Elgin then go home as planned to watch TV.
We make kir royales with the Taittinger and once we’ve finished those, I liberate some peach and raspberry schnapps shots from the freezer. I then send him into the kitchen to concoct a toxic cocktail into which he throws rum, vodka, amaretto, brandy and fruit juice. For someone who doesn’t drink, I’m doing a passable impression of a very boozy floozy.
I put on some Bon Jovi and we crash around the living-room in what we think is dancing but which is, in fact, bumping into things. This isn’t clever, as my furniture - and I – bruise quite easily.
He then decides he fancies some more champagne and without asking, he raids my fridge and opens the nice, cold bottle of Moët I’d been saving for a special occasion. (I can’t be sure that this is not it...)
We throw the bottle back and forth to each other, spilling a fair amount on the settee and carpet. I suddenly think I’m going to throw up and rush to the loo, but the nausea passes and I lurch back into the living-room and change the music to the Pointer Sisters.
The neighbours will surely appreciate our authenticity as we obey the order to Jump!
At around 11 p.m. having had no dinner and enough booze to sink the Bismarck, we stagger like drunken sailors into the bedroom where we embark on an orgy of rampant sex.
I can’t remember the finer details of this fuck-athon except to say that I really enjoyed it.
And it goes on for a very long time.
And apart from a Cute Face, Cute Smile, Cute Body and Cute Bum, he has a Huge Cock.
HUGE!
God! Rugby Player is way better looking than I remembered and he has indeed lost a couple of stone. He’s got a strong jaw with a cleft chin, a thick head of graying hair, and very large green eyes. He’s tall, well-dressed and from his generous present is on the right side of rich. Not that this matters to me, but if I’d passed him in the street, or anywhere else for that matter, I’d have tripped myself up and fallen headfirst into his lap.
I thank him effusively for the lurvely lingerie and ask him if he presumes that by sending such a gift, it buys him the right to handle the goods contained therein.
‘Not at all...’ he replies. ‘There’s no obligation whatsoever…though it would be very nice…I enjoy spoiling beautiful women especially those to whom I am attracted.’
I can’t argue with that. I drink a tomato juice and we chat for a while then he has to go. I kiss him goodbye and by the time I’ve walked home, he’s texted:
You are both striking and have great chat. Looking forward to indulging you xx.
Ooh! OK...Indulge away, I think to myself. I sure as hell ain’t gonna stop you.
Later that evening, while having dinner with my mother and aunt, he texts me again and because I’ve slung some Chilean Chardonnay down my neck and convinced myself that I really fancy him, I’m a little more overt than usual in my reply...
Saturday. I shoot down to Portobello Road to have coffee with an occasional customer of mine, a darling young chap I've wanted to 'mother' since the day we met.
There is a certain je ne sais quoi in the air between us and I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s got Benjamin-style designs on me. My maternal feelings are rather like reverse MILF i.e. SILF (son I’d like to f***…)
When we say goodbye, he kisses me fondly and says: ‘We must go out for dinner sometime.’ Yes, I think. We must.
I go home to prepare some pasta for my children, and while I’m doing this, I’m on the phone negotiating a lower price for a piece of furniture I saw in All Saint's Road.
My mobile goes off, but I ignore it and carry on with my wheeler-dealing while stirring the Bolognese. I lean over to look at the mobile screen and it says a name I don’t immediately recognize. I have a habit of giving people code names when I save them and I can't always remember who they are.
I think it may be my son-in-law’s father, but as I hang up the furniture call and pick up the mobile, I realise who it actually is.
IT'S………CC!!!!
OH.
My joy at seeing his name on the screen is totally disproportionate with any emotions I’ve experienced in the last ten years and I savour the moment before pressing the answer key.
‘Hallo?’ I say innocently, as if I don’t know who I'm speaking to.
He introduces himself and I come over all warm and soppy. As usual (he's really such a wimp) he starts with an apology.
‘I’m sorry...I’ve felt guilty all week at not phoning you.’
‘Well I was going to come round and pour melted cheese through your letter box,’ I counter, but of course I couldn’t have done this, as Mr. Cagey has never given me his home address.
‘I suppose you have a whole list of creative vendettas to draw on,’ he comments fearfully. ‘Nothing as mundane as cutting up my ties…’
The conversation carries on in this vein but by the end of it, we have another date arranged. I've agreed to let him take me out, and somehow this time, I think we’ll make it. I feel so happy I could fly.
The children arrive, eat, play and leave, and remaining on my high, I get ready for the evening.
I drive to the station and park the car where I can see the exit. Cute Face arrives on time and I see him clocking another woman. He looks like he might dive back down the tube as she’s a dog and I can tell by his uncomfortable body language that he thinks she might be me.
I bound out of the car and cross the road, and his relief is evident. We kiss Hallo and he hands me a carrier bag which contains a bottle of Taittinger. Nice one. When he’d asked me this morning if I preferred red or white, I told him to surprise me. He has.
We have a couple of drinks at the Elgin then go home as planned to watch TV.
We make kir royales with the Taittinger and once we’ve finished those, I liberate some peach and raspberry schnapps shots from the freezer. I then send him into the kitchen to concoct a toxic cocktail into which he throws rum, vodka, amaretto, brandy and fruit juice. For someone who doesn’t drink, I’m doing a passable impression of a very boozy floozy.
I put on some Bon Jovi and we crash around the living-room in what we think is dancing but which is, in fact, bumping into things. This isn’t clever, as my furniture - and I – bruise quite easily.
He then decides he fancies some more champagne and without asking, he raids my fridge and opens the nice, cold bottle of Moët I’d been saving for a special occasion. (I can’t be sure that this is not it...)
We throw the bottle back and forth to each other, spilling a fair amount on the settee and carpet. I suddenly think I’m going to throw up and rush to the loo, but the nausea passes and I lurch back into the living-room and change the music to the Pointer Sisters.
The neighbours will surely appreciate our authenticity as we obey the order to Jump!
At around 11 p.m. having had no dinner and enough booze to sink the Bismarck, we stagger like drunken sailors into the bedroom where we embark on an orgy of rampant sex.
I can’t remember the finer details of this fuck-athon except to say that I really enjoyed it.
And it goes on for a very long time.
And apart from a Cute Face, Cute Smile, Cute Body and Cute Bum, he has a Huge Cock.
HUGE!
Sunday 5 October 2008
THE DAILY MALE - continues...6.10.08
I buzz the postman in and he climbs the stairs and delivers unto me a small square parcel. There are no clues on the label or the packaging as to who this might be from, but I slash the tape impatiently with my trusty Stanley knife, and rip off the outer wrapping.
As curiosity courses through me and my inner kitten squeals and hides beneath the sofa, a stylish, little Myla box reveals itself (think Agent Provocateur with added lady).
A slow smile tickles the corners of my mouth as I carefully unwrap the tissue paper to reveal a beautiful ivory satin lingerie bag with a hand-curled loop and button clasp in tangerine silk.
Inside is an exquisite strapless bra with matching lace panties. I don’t think anyone has ever sent me lingerie before. Bought it for me, fastened it on me, peeled it off me, but sent it to me through the post? Never. Not in my entire life. A stiff little card reads:
Enjoy. From New York Boy.
I was right. This is from Rugby Player and it's his much anticipated gift. I shake my head in amazement and grin widely. I am still able to do this as I have not, as yet, succumbed to Botox.
I rattle my proverbial pedestal and CC, precariously balanced at the top, crashes to the kitchen floor. Other wannabee mountaineers ascending the rock face of my affections stop in their tracks, look up, look down and wonder if it’s worth the rest of the climb.
Rugby Player now stands proudly at the top, arms folded triumphantly across his broad and manly chest, one foot planted firmly on a heart-shaped boulder. For the moment - for me - he is The Man.
I text him an effusive thank you and rip my clothes off to try the undies on. Although glamorous in the extreme, the bra is not a great fit, so I go to the Myla website and establish that I can change it. No point in keeping something I can’t wear, is there?
He’s spent £95 on some ecru lace dental floss whose company slogan is 'Accessories for your Sex Life' on the off chance that this may improve his. Unlikely if he’s in New York and I’m in London, but if a plane ticket in the sharp end of a jumbo jet was forthcoming, I could be persuaded.
At lunchtime, I get a text from Tom Cat saying he enjoyed our meeting last night, swiftly following by one from Cute Face getting ever more excited about our date tomorrow. He tells me he’s going for a haircut and I order him not to as I like my toyboys a tad unkempt. He insists he needs the haircut anyway and promises to maintain a degree of scruffiness.
We carry on texting silliness throughout the afternoon which could be why I’m developing RSI in my right thumb. Or it could be arthritis. At my age, anything is possible.
Rugby Player texts me back to say he landed in London early this morning and has six hours to kill until his next flight out again. Now I could have just left this alone, because God knows, I’ve got enough going on plus a stack of work to do, but because it’s Friday and it’s 3.30 p.m., I feel like knocking off early. So I do...
As curiosity courses through me and my inner kitten squeals and hides beneath the sofa, a stylish, little Myla box reveals itself (think Agent Provocateur with added lady).
A slow smile tickles the corners of my mouth as I carefully unwrap the tissue paper to reveal a beautiful ivory satin lingerie bag with a hand-curled loop and button clasp in tangerine silk.
Inside is an exquisite strapless bra with matching lace panties. I don’t think anyone has ever sent me lingerie before. Bought it for me, fastened it on me, peeled it off me, but sent it to me through the post? Never. Not in my entire life. A stiff little card reads:
Enjoy. From New York Boy.
I was right. This is from Rugby Player and it's his much anticipated gift. I shake my head in amazement and grin widely. I am still able to do this as I have not, as yet, succumbed to Botox.
I rattle my proverbial pedestal and CC, precariously balanced at the top, crashes to the kitchen floor. Other wannabee mountaineers ascending the rock face of my affections stop in their tracks, look up, look down and wonder if it’s worth the rest of the climb.
Rugby Player now stands proudly at the top, arms folded triumphantly across his broad and manly chest, one foot planted firmly on a heart-shaped boulder. For the moment - for me - he is The Man.
I text him an effusive thank you and rip my clothes off to try the undies on. Although glamorous in the extreme, the bra is not a great fit, so I go to the Myla website and establish that I can change it. No point in keeping something I can’t wear, is there?
He’s spent £95 on some ecru lace dental floss whose company slogan is 'Accessories for your Sex Life' on the off chance that this may improve his. Unlikely if he’s in New York and I’m in London, but if a plane ticket in the sharp end of a jumbo jet was forthcoming, I could be persuaded.
At lunchtime, I get a text from Tom Cat saying he enjoyed our meeting last night, swiftly following by one from Cute Face getting ever more excited about our date tomorrow. He tells me he’s going for a haircut and I order him not to as I like my toyboys a tad unkempt. He insists he needs the haircut anyway and promises to maintain a degree of scruffiness.
We carry on texting silliness throughout the afternoon which could be why I’m developing RSI in my right thumb. Or it could be arthritis. At my age, anything is possible.
Rugby Player texts me back to say he landed in London early this morning and has six hours to kill until his next flight out again. Now I could have just left this alone, because God knows, I’ve got enough going on plus a stack of work to do, but because it’s Friday and it’s 3.30 p.m., I feel like knocking off early. So I do...
Saturday 27 September 2008
THE DAILY MALE - continues...
Flash Gordon sends me a choice of dates when he’s free to see me. None of them suit my diary, and I’m not really sure I want to see him again anyway. He is a nice person and a real little gent, but he doesn’t float my boat which is currently high and dry in the dockyard. I let him down gently telling him an ex has reappeared on the scene.
These bloody exes of yours, he texts back. I can’t even get a drink with you let alone waltz into your life and hog you forever. If you gave me a chance you’d forget all those fairycakes.
I’d forgotten I’d used this excuse before. If you’re going to lie you need a good memory. Or a d.o.b. that doesn’t being 194…
He forges on regardless:
All I want is to cook you a meal, tell you all my crap jokes, scrub your back in the bath and give you a deep tissue massage that will take your breath away.
Now this sounds like a pretty irresistible offer no matter which way you cut it. I mean when was the last time a good-looking 28-year old offered you such a teaser of temptations? I may allow him his way at some point, but for the foreseeable future, I think I can hold out.
At 7.35 I go and meet Tom Cat at the Elgin. Not much to look at but charming, polite and easy company nevertheless. In the present circumstances, this should be sufficient, but my Fit Bloke Alert doesn’t go off, so I know it ain’t going nowhere.
We have a couple of drinks and he removes a stack of papers from his man-bag. It’s the book he’s trying to write which he wants me to look at. Writers don’t really like looking at other people’s work, unless it’s truly appalling.
As Gore Vidal said: Whenever one of my friends succeeds, a little something in me dies.I
scan some of it, and it’s not bad – a tad overwritten, but about love and angst from the male perspective which is interesting. And guess what? Men have feelings too, but frankly, who gives a damn?
I give a critical appraisal of his style, offer a few pointers I learned way back in creative writing class, and hand it back to him. I wish him lots of luck. I know how hard it is trying to write a book. I also know he’ll never finish it.
We go for a Thai meal and a little vodka-fuelled chemistry sparks between us. He pays me loads of compliments but that’s just sycophancy and when he asks if there’s somewhere we can ‘go for coffee’ when we finish eating he adds:
‘You live near here, don’t you?’ with a most unsubtly raised eyebrow.
I definitely do not want to invite him home. I tell him there’s a café round the corner that serves good coffee, but I don’t want one, and he rescinds his request graciously.
As we leave the restaurant, he offers me his cashmere sweater because it’s chilly outside, and as we walk to my car he slips his arm through mine like an old pal. He’s rather sweet and chivalrous but…no bells. Not even a distant chimelet.
We peck a kiss goodbye; I get into my car and he walks off towards the station. One more Hallo…one more Goodbye. I'm tired and am really looking forward to getting into bed. Alone.
Friday. I trust you noticed I hardly mentioned CC at all yesterday and my philosophy of hoping he doesn’t call me so I can get over him quicker seems to be working. That and the Bach Flower Remedy that my daughter, Lily, prepared for me. She gave me a consultation last week while I was on a real CC low, and I found myself talking to her like she was a shrink or something.
She has a calm and caring way of discovering what ails you and I told her all sorts of personal stuff that maybe I shouldn’t have, what with her being ‘our kid’ ‘n all... When I'd explained the situation and my mixed-up feelings, she went off to prepare a potion. She added wild hawthorn for anxiety, walnut for melancholy, marjoram root for self-determination and arsenic in case none of the above worked. I’ve taken eight drops so far and I feel better already.
Around noon, I’m sitting at my desk tapping away and the postman rings. Twice.
I'm not expecting anything and then I remember...Rugby Player told me to look out for a parcel...
These bloody exes of yours, he texts back. I can’t even get a drink with you let alone waltz into your life and hog you forever. If you gave me a chance you’d forget all those fairycakes.
I’d forgotten I’d used this excuse before. If you’re going to lie you need a good memory. Or a d.o.b. that doesn’t being 194…
He forges on regardless:
All I want is to cook you a meal, tell you all my crap jokes, scrub your back in the bath and give you a deep tissue massage that will take your breath away.
Now this sounds like a pretty irresistible offer no matter which way you cut it. I mean when was the last time a good-looking 28-year old offered you such a teaser of temptations? I may allow him his way at some point, but for the foreseeable future, I think I can hold out.
At 7.35 I go and meet Tom Cat at the Elgin. Not much to look at but charming, polite and easy company nevertheless. In the present circumstances, this should be sufficient, but my Fit Bloke Alert doesn’t go off, so I know it ain’t going nowhere.
We have a couple of drinks and he removes a stack of papers from his man-bag. It’s the book he’s trying to write which he wants me to look at. Writers don’t really like looking at other people’s work, unless it’s truly appalling.
As Gore Vidal said: Whenever one of my friends succeeds, a little something in me dies.I
scan some of it, and it’s not bad – a tad overwritten, but about love and angst from the male perspective which is interesting. And guess what? Men have feelings too, but frankly, who gives a damn?
I give a critical appraisal of his style, offer a few pointers I learned way back in creative writing class, and hand it back to him. I wish him lots of luck. I know how hard it is trying to write a book. I also know he’ll never finish it.
We go for a Thai meal and a little vodka-fuelled chemistry sparks between us. He pays me loads of compliments but that’s just sycophancy and when he asks if there’s somewhere we can ‘go for coffee’ when we finish eating he adds:
‘You live near here, don’t you?’ with a most unsubtly raised eyebrow.
I definitely do not want to invite him home. I tell him there’s a café round the corner that serves good coffee, but I don’t want one, and he rescinds his request graciously.
As we leave the restaurant, he offers me his cashmere sweater because it’s chilly outside, and as we walk to my car he slips his arm through mine like an old pal. He’s rather sweet and chivalrous but…no bells. Not even a distant chimelet.
We peck a kiss goodbye; I get into my car and he walks off towards the station. One more Hallo…one more Goodbye. I'm tired and am really looking forward to getting into bed. Alone.
Friday. I trust you noticed I hardly mentioned CC at all yesterday and my philosophy of hoping he doesn’t call me so I can get over him quicker seems to be working. That and the Bach Flower Remedy that my daughter, Lily, prepared for me. She gave me a consultation last week while I was on a real CC low, and I found myself talking to her like she was a shrink or something.
She has a calm and caring way of discovering what ails you and I told her all sorts of personal stuff that maybe I shouldn’t have, what with her being ‘our kid’ ‘n all... When I'd explained the situation and my mixed-up feelings, she went off to prepare a potion. She added wild hawthorn for anxiety, walnut for melancholy, marjoram root for self-determination and arsenic in case none of the above worked. I’ve taken eight drops so far and I feel better already.
Around noon, I’m sitting at my desk tapping away and the postman rings. Twice.
I'm not expecting anything and then I remember...Rugby Player told me to look out for a parcel...
Tuesday 16 September 2008
THE DAILY MALE - continues...
Wednesday. An eventful day in Toy Town. I text Eurotrash to firm up Thursday and he telephones me to say that although:
‘Ze answer is Yah, it is in fact Ney’ because:
a) he’s zhtill got ze zore zroat, und
b) he’s also got ze zore finger which does not heal.
Eeuwwhh! I’d better steer well clear of him. He sounds like a walking infection.
I’m just about to hang up when he suddenly asks: ‘Zo how ij your zex life?’ like it’s any of his bloody business. I don’t reply but turn the question around and ask him about his.
‘Not much!’ he replies which I find hard to believe.
He apologizes again and says he’d love to see me ‘ven I’m vell again.’
It seems like men are apologizing to me a lot lately. This, of course, could be because they’re always guilty, unexpectedly turning up with ‘I've been fucking' flowers as my girlfriend with the wandering husband likes to call them.
Thursday. Tom Cat telephones. He sounds incredibly posh. He also went to the same school as me, which is pretty random, although we did attend some forty-five years apart! It’s unlikely that we shared any teachers but the school dinners were probably the same. He’s not coming to the gig tonight after all, as he wants to spend time working on a book he’s writing about sex and dating from the male perspective. We may discuss a collaboration and meet up tomorrow, which I now have free due to Eurotrash having syphilis and/or gonorrhaea.
I get a message from a newcomer on toyboywarehouse. He has a very Cute Face:
Hiya pretty lady! he writes. Fancy meeting up for a drink this weekend?
This could not have come at a better time as I’ve just been let down by Blonde Best Friend who I thought I was seeing on Saturday. Cute Face and I text on and off for the rest of the day, which is mildly entertaining but doesn’t mean to say I haven’t had some heart-rending moments vis à vis CC. It just means to say I haven’t mentioned them…
I am fully aware that all this so-called male attention doesn't amount to a hill of beans, and just as I’m about to go out for the evening with some proper people with proper jobs and proper modes of behaviour, Oxbridge phones. His number always comes up on my screen as ‘Unknown’ and my heart trips a beat as I think it might be CC. I forgot I was meant to be hoping he wouldn’t call.
When I hear the strange voice, I imagine for a moment it is him, but the voice gives its name and the name is wrong as is the accent. I can hardly remember who Oxbridge is in my life. Have we met? No we haven't and I don’t want to make small-talk with him any more. Maybe I should stop giving my phone number to strangers but then again, life would not be as rich as it is now!
I go to the gig at the Hope & Anchor in Upper Street. There is no talent there to speak of, except the singer, J.B. Newman, who is awesome. I remember with affection the night I met MLP at the Good Ship in Kilburn when we were listening to the same music as JB is playing tonight.
During the evening I exchange another few texts with Cute Face. He obviously fancies himself as a bit of a comedian because when I tell him I’m at the gig, he comments:
You’re really quite trendy for somehow who grew up in Victorian times, aren’t you?
I am affronted at his effrontery but rise to the challenge by telling him my horse-drawn carriage will arrive soon to take me home as it's past my bedtime and I need my Horlicks. He better not say anything ageist to my face though. That would be dangerous…
He then sends me a text obviously meant for someone else which reads:
No mate, she doesn’t seem nuts. Looks well pretty actually. I’ll just see how it goes I guess.
It’s funny that his mate thought I might be nuts…
I'm fairly convinced of it.
‘Ze answer is Yah, it is in fact Ney’ because:
a) he’s zhtill got ze zore zroat, und
b) he’s also got ze zore finger which does not heal.
Eeuwwhh! I’d better steer well clear of him. He sounds like a walking infection.
I’m just about to hang up when he suddenly asks: ‘Zo how ij your zex life?’ like it’s any of his bloody business. I don’t reply but turn the question around and ask him about his.
‘Not much!’ he replies which I find hard to believe.
He apologizes again and says he’d love to see me ‘ven I’m vell again.’
It seems like men are apologizing to me a lot lately. This, of course, could be because they’re always guilty, unexpectedly turning up with ‘I've been fucking' flowers as my girlfriend with the wandering husband likes to call them.
Thursday. Tom Cat telephones. He sounds incredibly posh. He also went to the same school as me, which is pretty random, although we did attend some forty-five years apart! It’s unlikely that we shared any teachers but the school dinners were probably the same. He’s not coming to the gig tonight after all, as he wants to spend time working on a book he’s writing about sex and dating from the male perspective. We may discuss a collaboration and meet up tomorrow, which I now have free due to Eurotrash having syphilis and/or gonorrhaea.
I get a message from a newcomer on toyboywarehouse. He has a very Cute Face:
Hiya pretty lady! he writes. Fancy meeting up for a drink this weekend?
This could not have come at a better time as I’ve just been let down by Blonde Best Friend who I thought I was seeing on Saturday. Cute Face and I text on and off for the rest of the day, which is mildly entertaining but doesn’t mean to say I haven’t had some heart-rending moments vis à vis CC. It just means to say I haven’t mentioned them…
I am fully aware that all this so-called male attention doesn't amount to a hill of beans, and just as I’m about to go out for the evening with some proper people with proper jobs and proper modes of behaviour, Oxbridge phones. His number always comes up on my screen as ‘Unknown’ and my heart trips a beat as I think it might be CC. I forgot I was meant to be hoping he wouldn’t call.
When I hear the strange voice, I imagine for a moment it is him, but the voice gives its name and the name is wrong as is the accent. I can hardly remember who Oxbridge is in my life. Have we met? No we haven't and I don’t want to make small-talk with him any more. Maybe I should stop giving my phone number to strangers but then again, life would not be as rich as it is now!
I go to the gig at the Hope & Anchor in Upper Street. There is no talent there to speak of, except the singer, J.B. Newman, who is awesome. I remember with affection the night I met MLP at the Good Ship in Kilburn when we were listening to the same music as JB is playing tonight.
During the evening I exchange another few texts with Cute Face. He obviously fancies himself as a bit of a comedian because when I tell him I’m at the gig, he comments:
You’re really quite trendy for somehow who grew up in Victorian times, aren’t you?
I am affronted at his effrontery but rise to the challenge by telling him my horse-drawn carriage will arrive soon to take me home as it's past my bedtime and I need my Horlicks. He better not say anything ageist to my face though. That would be dangerous…
He then sends me a text obviously meant for someone else which reads:
No mate, she doesn’t seem nuts. Looks well pretty actually. I’ll just see how it goes I guess.
It’s funny that his mate thought I might be nuts…
I'm fairly convinced of it.
Monday 8 September 2008
THE DAILY MALE - continues...
Monday. I decide to adopt a new philosophy. If CC doesn’t call today, I shall be relieved. I shall pray it’s not him every time the phone rings, and be thankful when it isn’t. I shall start from this moment to get over this man ‘cos if I see him again, and I like him again, and then he doesn’t phone me again, I’ll have to travel this rotten road one more time and frankly, I don’t fancy the journey.
So now I’m glaring at my mobile phone muttering: "Don’t you dare ring, you bastard, stay well away from me, take your monkey business elsewhere…"
Meanwhile, like an army to the rescue, a whole tangle of toyboys get in touch, one after the blessed other.
I’ve got Flash Gordon asking if I want to have a drink after work on Friday.
I’ve got Rough Stuff on his daily mission to seduce, asking if I’m free at all this week.
I’ve got a blast from the past in the form of the Arrogant Rugby Player temporarily back from New York claiming to be two stone lighter, and advising me to look out for the postman. (Remember that little something he threatened to send me? Well I don’t know if you received it, but I certainly didn’t…)
He bangs on about how much I excite him and asks if I am 'someone who likes to be spoilt in lifestyle terms and indulged sexually.' What is it with these guys? Are they all on drugs or something? His PR campaign sounds like an advert for a Country House Hotel Sex Spa and I tuck the idea behind my ear for later as a possible future business venture.
I ignore him however. I’ve heard it all before, mate. Either shit or get off the pot.
My non-reply eggs him on and just as I'm starting to think he's a right jerkoff, he suddenly suggests taking me to dinner at L’Atelier de Joel Robuchon, which turns him into a right jerkoff with taste.
Joel Robuchon is a squillion-star French chef with a new London restaurant I’ve been dying to go to, so I rescind my ignoration and we make an arrangement for three weeks hence which I expect him to either cancel or forget.
I get another message from a newcomer we'll call TomCat, who looks rather tasty and is something in the City. He steams right in asking when we can meet, so I make a tentative date for a drink tomorrow night in Islington, as my friend’s son is gigging again, and I have a latent desire to recreate the night MLP and I first met.
Tomorrow I’ll text Eurotrash to see if he wants to come over and play, so as far as the rest of this week is concerned, CC can go and fuck himself.
So now I’m glaring at my mobile phone muttering: "Don’t you dare ring, you bastard, stay well away from me, take your monkey business elsewhere…"
Meanwhile, like an army to the rescue, a whole tangle of toyboys get in touch, one after the blessed other.
I’ve got Flash Gordon asking if I want to have a drink after work on Friday.
I’ve got Rough Stuff on his daily mission to seduce, asking if I’m free at all this week.
I’ve got a blast from the past in the form of the Arrogant Rugby Player temporarily back from New York claiming to be two stone lighter, and advising me to look out for the postman. (Remember that little something he threatened to send me? Well I don’t know if you received it, but I certainly didn’t…)
He bangs on about how much I excite him and asks if I am 'someone who likes to be spoilt in lifestyle terms and indulged sexually.' What is it with these guys? Are they all on drugs or something? His PR campaign sounds like an advert for a Country House Hotel Sex Spa and I tuck the idea behind my ear for later as a possible future business venture.
I ignore him however. I’ve heard it all before, mate. Either shit or get off the pot.
My non-reply eggs him on and just as I'm starting to think he's a right jerkoff, he suddenly suggests taking me to dinner at L’Atelier de Joel Robuchon, which turns him into a right jerkoff with taste.
Joel Robuchon is a squillion-star French chef with a new London restaurant I’ve been dying to go to, so I rescind my ignoration and we make an arrangement for three weeks hence which I expect him to either cancel or forget.
I get another message from a newcomer we'll call TomCat, who looks rather tasty and is something in the City. He steams right in asking when we can meet, so I make a tentative date for a drink tomorrow night in Islington, as my friend’s son is gigging again, and I have a latent desire to recreate the night MLP and I first met.
Tomorrow I’ll text Eurotrash to see if he wants to come over and play, so as far as the rest of this week is concerned, CC can go and fuck himself.
Friday 29 August 2008
THE DAILY MALE - continues...
In a weird way I manage to compartmentalize. This interlude with Eurotrash in no way affects my feelings for CC which are in a totally separate box marked PARANOID FIXATION OF 2008.
If CC comes up trumps, all bets are off but I am hedging those bets by keeping the other horses in my stable fed and watered and exercising them around the paddock at regular intervals to ensure their readiness for riding if, as, and when required.
My masculine side endorses this behaviour, while my feminine side weeps and wails and rents its clothing.
Sunday. I have lunch with my family and power walk two miles around Regent’s Park with Calm Best Friend. This solves nothing but makes my calves ache rather pleasingly.
Monday. I finally meet Rough Stuff for dinner. He looks like a cross between Ray Winstone and Alec Baldwin both of whom I fancy, but I don’t fancy him. He’s a working-class geezer who appears to have broken into a Jermyn Street Gentleman’s Outfitters and walked off dressed in the spoils.
He’s hard-nosed and savvy with a film script life story, but the cockney accent really jars with me. Although I’m attentive enough, all I can think about is:
When I wake up in the morning, I’ll be seeing CC ‘tomorrow’.
Unless, of course, he bottles it…
Tuesday. Well whaddya know? I should have gone down to William Hill and bet my flat on it - I could’ve retired on the proceeds.
Didn't I know it? Didn't I FUCKING KNOW IT. I switch my mobile on at 8.47 a.m. and there are two texts. One’s a ‘Good Morning, Princess’ from Rough Stuff, the other is a voicemail alert.
I dial 901 and YUP! it’s CC ‘postponing’ our dinner date.
The fucking, wanking, cunting, shitting, cock sucking bastard has blown me out. To give myself time to absorb this, I go to the fridge and check the sell-by date on the cheese I bought for the infamous fondue. It’s good for another couple of weeks. I may boil his head in it. But not until it’s gone off.
He’s left me a jolly upbeat message, though, considering he’s a manic depressive, bipolar, emotionally-arrested, dysfunctional nutcase. His voice mail is positively bubbly which I find very annoying. How dare he sound normal when he’s calling to cancel me?
What’s happened is, he tells me cheerfully once he’s commented on what a beautiful day it is, (TOSSER!) that he’s got into the office and checked his diary and found that he’s double-booked tomorrow evening. He’s heading up a think tank for his senior management to institute a media-related strategy whereby high-profile hunter gatherers can brainstorm their passive-aggressive admin exec counterparts.
Oh for the love of Christ, get over yourself, you twat.
He does however apologize four times and offers an immediate alternative, suggesting that in order to make it up to me, instead of me cooking, he’ll take me out instead.
Cold Comfort Farm, but at least he didn’t say: ‘…so I’ll see you around’.
Funnily enough, I’m not actually that devastated because I know that once tomorrow has come and gone, I’ll be back to square one again with nothing to look forward to.
I replay the message about eight times but I don’t read anything more onerous into it except that which I presume to be the truth. It’s too convoluted to be otherwise even from a half-baked potato like him. I decide not to reply just yet. A little mind game, methinks.
I compose texts in my head then go to a business meeting which takes up the rest of the morning. At 1.30 p.m. when he’s almost certain to be at lunch, I text to say that I’ve received his message and when shall we re-schedule for?
I purposely ask a question in order to provoke an answer but none is forthcoming.
I wait all day to hear from him until I can stand it no longer, and at 8.45 p.m. I call him back. It goes straight to voicemail.
I say ‘Hi, it’s me. Call when you’re free’ in Voice no. 32 : Bright and Breezy but Three Steps Away from a Shotgun. I get no reply.
Yet again with this man, I'm left feeling sad, let down and disappointed. I’m even starting to piss myself off never mind anyone else, and all this for a person who’s about as much use to me as a glacier mint is to a polar bear.
I beat myself up a little bit more thinking I should have called him back this morning, when the matter was fresh in his mind and his diary on his desk in front of him.
Now I’ve used up my text credit and instead of a mind game, I have to play the much reviled waiting game. I can’t help thinking that he’s obviously ‘not that into me…’
I play around on a dating site and make arrangements to meet a 23-year-old which cheers me up no end.
If CC comes up trumps, all bets are off but I am hedging those bets by keeping the other horses in my stable fed and watered and exercising them around the paddock at regular intervals to ensure their readiness for riding if, as, and when required.
My masculine side endorses this behaviour, while my feminine side weeps and wails and rents its clothing.
Sunday. I have lunch with my family and power walk two miles around Regent’s Park with Calm Best Friend. This solves nothing but makes my calves ache rather pleasingly.
Monday. I finally meet Rough Stuff for dinner. He looks like a cross between Ray Winstone and Alec Baldwin both of whom I fancy, but I don’t fancy him. He’s a working-class geezer who appears to have broken into a Jermyn Street Gentleman’s Outfitters and walked off dressed in the spoils.
He’s hard-nosed and savvy with a film script life story, but the cockney accent really jars with me. Although I’m attentive enough, all I can think about is:
When I wake up in the morning, I’ll be seeing CC ‘tomorrow’.
Unless, of course, he bottles it…
Tuesday. Well whaddya know? I should have gone down to William Hill and bet my flat on it - I could’ve retired on the proceeds.
Didn't I know it? Didn't I FUCKING KNOW IT. I switch my mobile on at 8.47 a.m. and there are two texts. One’s a ‘Good Morning, Princess’ from Rough Stuff, the other is a voicemail alert.
I dial 901 and YUP! it’s CC ‘postponing’ our dinner date.
The fucking, wanking, cunting, shitting, cock sucking bastard has blown me out. To give myself time to absorb this, I go to the fridge and check the sell-by date on the cheese I bought for the infamous fondue. It’s good for another couple of weeks. I may boil his head in it. But not until it’s gone off.
He’s left me a jolly upbeat message, though, considering he’s a manic depressive, bipolar, emotionally-arrested, dysfunctional nutcase. His voice mail is positively bubbly which I find very annoying. How dare he sound normal when he’s calling to cancel me?
What’s happened is, he tells me cheerfully once he’s commented on what a beautiful day it is, (TOSSER!) that he’s got into the office and checked his diary and found that he’s double-booked tomorrow evening. He’s heading up a think tank for his senior management to institute a media-related strategy whereby high-profile hunter gatherers can brainstorm their passive-aggressive admin exec counterparts.
Oh for the love of Christ, get over yourself, you twat.
He does however apologize four times and offers an immediate alternative, suggesting that in order to make it up to me, instead of me cooking, he’ll take me out instead.
Cold Comfort Farm, but at least he didn’t say: ‘…so I’ll see you around’.
Funnily enough, I’m not actually that devastated because I know that once tomorrow has come and gone, I’ll be back to square one again with nothing to look forward to.
I replay the message about eight times but I don’t read anything more onerous into it except that which I presume to be the truth. It’s too convoluted to be otherwise even from a half-baked potato like him. I decide not to reply just yet. A little mind game, methinks.
I compose texts in my head then go to a business meeting which takes up the rest of the morning. At 1.30 p.m. when he’s almost certain to be at lunch, I text to say that I’ve received his message and when shall we re-schedule for?
I purposely ask a question in order to provoke an answer but none is forthcoming.
I wait all day to hear from him until I can stand it no longer, and at 8.45 p.m. I call him back. It goes straight to voicemail.
I say ‘Hi, it’s me. Call when you’re free’ in Voice no. 32 : Bright and Breezy but Three Steps Away from a Shotgun. I get no reply.
Yet again with this man, I'm left feeling sad, let down and disappointed. I’m even starting to piss myself off never mind anyone else, and all this for a person who’s about as much use to me as a glacier mint is to a polar bear.
I beat myself up a little bit more thinking I should have called him back this morning, when the matter was fresh in his mind and his diary on his desk in front of him.
Now I’ve used up my text credit and instead of a mind game, I have to play the much reviled waiting game. I can’t help thinking that he’s obviously ‘not that into me…’
I play around on a dating site and make arrangements to meet a 23-year-old which cheers me up no end.
Saturday 16 August 2008
THE DAILY MALE - continues...17/08/08
We have a slightly stilted conversation about what we’ve both been doing (I’ve been staying home every night pining, obviously!) and he’s been mostly working late. Thrilling.
When the conversation looks like it’s running out of gas, I leap into the driving seat and slam my foot on the accelerator.
‘I’m thinking of making a fondue one night,’ I say, winging it, 'the one we never had on holiday, remember? It would be a shame to go to all that trouble just for one, so how about you come over and share it with me?’
Expecting a hesitation or downright refusal, I am staggered when he answers:
‘I should really take you out.’
My heart bounds like Baryshnikov across the dining-table and lands elegantly atop the sideboard.
‘I’ll do the fondue this time and you can take me out the time after how about next Thursday?’ I end the sentence gasping for breath.
He can’t do Thursday, I can’t do Wednesday so we make an arrangement for twelve days hence.
That’s Twelve Days.
Hence.
‘7.30?’ he asks, as if he actually intends to keep this date.
‘Perfect!’ I reply and hang up.
I look around to see if a bunch of red-nosed clowns aren’t pissing themselves laughing behind my back but they’re not. I walk over to the hall mirror and kiss myself full on the mouth, then I turn on my heels and moonwalk backwards down the corridor until I reach my bedroom.
Did you see what I just did there? I ask the curtains. They stare back at me impassively as if to say: 'What?'
For the next twelve days, I spend a lot of time singing If Tomorrow Never Comes. ‘Looking forward to’ is the sweetest foreplay. I contemplate what mood he might prefer to find me in: light and fluffy? Deep and serious? Sexy and seductive? Will he keep the date or suddenly decide he has to go salmon fishing on the banks of the Clyde?
Time drags along like a half-dead donkey and every time the phone rings, I’m convinced it’s him calling to cancel. Notwithstanding this, I carry on planning the menu like I’ve got Gordon, Jamie and Heston coming to dinner.
Wednesday.
I’m in the local wine bar with my laptop when I get an email from Eurotrash. He wants his art book back. I tell him I’ll drop it off when I’m next passing but he suggests picking it up one night after work.
I decide to drop the book back there and then. I go home, tart myself up a bit and drive to the gallery.
Loud music is playing and he's absorbed on the computer so he doesn’t look up as I walk in. I place the book down on his oversized desk and slide it slowly towards him. He jumps when he notices it, clutches his chest, and stares up at me. The blueness of his eyes is astounding. He bounds out of his chair and comes round to hug me so tightly I can hardly breathe.
‘I heffen’t herd vrom you in such a long vile’ he complains.
‘Ditto!’ I answer. ‘And why should you hear from me? You virtually stood me up last time.'
‘I really vasn’t vell,…’ he vhines.
‘Self-inflicted, by all accounts.’ I retort. ‘No sympathy there, I’m afraid.’
‘No, really… I had zuch a zore zroat. I shtill don’t feel right…’
I raise one eyebrow and walk off to look at the new installations. He follows me and grabs my arm.
‘I like the vay you’re so angry’ he breathes, his lips almost touching mine. ‘Like it vas important to you…’
‘I’m not angry’ I snap. ‘I just don’t like being dumped at the last minute, that’s all.’
He shrugs apologetically and carries on stroking my arm.
‘Vy ish it…’ he goes on, ‘…zat I always get so horny venever I see you?’
‘Cos you're a dirty bastard and I'm hot!' I answer and I leave the gallery with an extra swing in my step.
No sooner am I out on the street than he texts me: YOU ARE SO DELICIOUS XXXX
'So come up and eat me sometime' I reply and go home to do the ironing.
When the conversation looks like it’s running out of gas, I leap into the driving seat and slam my foot on the accelerator.
‘I’m thinking of making a fondue one night,’ I say, winging it, 'the one we never had on holiday, remember? It would be a shame to go to all that trouble just for one, so how about you come over and share it with me?’
Expecting a hesitation or downright refusal, I am staggered when he answers:
‘I should really take you out.’
My heart bounds like Baryshnikov across the dining-table and lands elegantly atop the sideboard.
‘I’ll do the fondue this time and you can take me out the time after how about next Thursday?’ I end the sentence gasping for breath.
He can’t do Thursday, I can’t do Wednesday so we make an arrangement for twelve days hence.
That’s Twelve Days.
Hence.
‘7.30?’ he asks, as if he actually intends to keep this date.
‘Perfect!’ I reply and hang up.
I look around to see if a bunch of red-nosed clowns aren’t pissing themselves laughing behind my back but they’re not. I walk over to the hall mirror and kiss myself full on the mouth, then I turn on my heels and moonwalk backwards down the corridor until I reach my bedroom.
Did you see what I just did there? I ask the curtains. They stare back at me impassively as if to say: 'What?'
For the next twelve days, I spend a lot of time singing If Tomorrow Never Comes. ‘Looking forward to’ is the sweetest foreplay. I contemplate what mood he might prefer to find me in: light and fluffy? Deep and serious? Sexy and seductive? Will he keep the date or suddenly decide he has to go salmon fishing on the banks of the Clyde?
Time drags along like a half-dead donkey and every time the phone rings, I’m convinced it’s him calling to cancel. Notwithstanding this, I carry on planning the menu like I’ve got Gordon, Jamie and Heston coming to dinner.
Wednesday.
I’m in the local wine bar with my laptop when I get an email from Eurotrash. He wants his art book back. I tell him I’ll drop it off when I’m next passing but he suggests picking it up one night after work.
I decide to drop the book back there and then. I go home, tart myself up a bit and drive to the gallery.
Loud music is playing and he's absorbed on the computer so he doesn’t look up as I walk in. I place the book down on his oversized desk and slide it slowly towards him. He jumps when he notices it, clutches his chest, and stares up at me. The blueness of his eyes is astounding. He bounds out of his chair and comes round to hug me so tightly I can hardly breathe.
‘I heffen’t herd vrom you in such a long vile’ he complains.
‘Ditto!’ I answer. ‘And why should you hear from me? You virtually stood me up last time.'
‘I really vasn’t vell,…’ he vhines.
‘Self-inflicted, by all accounts.’ I retort. ‘No sympathy there, I’m afraid.’
‘No, really… I had zuch a zore zroat. I shtill don’t feel right…’
I raise one eyebrow and walk off to look at the new installations. He follows me and grabs my arm.
‘I like the vay you’re so angry’ he breathes, his lips almost touching mine. ‘Like it vas important to you…’
‘I’m not angry’ I snap. ‘I just don’t like being dumped at the last minute, that’s all.’
He shrugs apologetically and carries on stroking my arm.
‘Vy ish it…’ he goes on, ‘…zat I always get so horny venever I see you?’
‘Cos you're a dirty bastard and I'm hot!' I answer and I leave the gallery with an extra swing in my step.
No sooner am I out on the street than he texts me: YOU ARE SO DELICIOUS XXXX
'So come up and eat me sometime' I reply and go home to do the ironing.
Saturday 9 August 2008
I'M BACK! 08/08/08
Hi readers everywhere!
Thanks for being patient with me while I toiled away on the cliff face of literature (a lovely terrace in Andalusia...) working on my novel Blood on the Sand.
I'll keep you posted as to how that's going but for now on with The Daily Male:
Friday. I set off for a couple of days away with an old friend to his country cottage in Devon. PT and I have known each other for many years. When we first met, he made a bit of a play for me, but I wasn’t attracted to him in that way and he seems to have accepted it. He does still try it on occasionally but I slap him down affectionately and he takes it in good part. I think...
As we are closeted in his car for the long drive West, I tell him all about CC. He listens attentively but doesn’t express much, except to say: ‘He sounds like trouble’.
The weekend is pleasant enough. It’s always good to get out of town as long as you know you’re coming back.
On the Sunday afternoon, I return to London by train as PT is staying on. I’ve got the steak date with Eurotrash to look forward to but as the train is chugging through Berkshire, the trashy bastard texts to tell me he’s ‘not feeling very well’, having had ‘a large one’ the night before.
How fucking dare you! I think to myself. You knew you had to be on top form for Sunday night! I could have stayed on in the country and now I've got nothing to do when I get home. I consider hurling myself into the path of an oncoming express, but Mr. Branson realises this sort of thing might happen (he obviously knows men like Eurotrash personally) so he's sealed up all the windows.
My disgruntledness of the bloody awfulness of Sundays in general, and cancelled dates on Sunday nights in particular, reaches an all time high. I console myself with a cosy, little homily: Life sucks and then you die.
I draft some texts to CC to pass the time on the rest of journey. Writing to him is like talking to him…
My darling, I haven’t slept for nights. (not strictly true). I do not wish to harass you emotionally (strictly true) but is there any way we could stay in touch that you would be comfortable with? I can’t bear the thought of losing you forever… I miss you every day...(totally true).
I save these in my drafts folder.
Wednesday. Unable to keep my counsel any longer, I send CC the favourite from among my drafted texts:
I’ve waited with the noose around my neck for you to kick the chair away. Please either do that or come and lift me down.
After several hours, I receive the much-dreaded reply:
I’m really sorry lovely Wendy but I have read your memoir and I know that this perhaps overly private and sensitive man cannot do this. I wish I could but I can’t. Sorry sorry sorry. Your adventure is bold, courageous and I respect what you are doing xxx
I only wrote The Toyboy Diaries to inspire other women that all things are possible no matter your age. I never expected it to come back and bite me on the bum.
Through a mist of tears, I text back:
Sweetheart, I am devastated... please don't judge me by the contents of a book. I am worth more than that... And I am.
I get no answer.
The massacre of my last vestige of hope leaves me lost without a cause. I feel like a rat swimming against the tide in a maelstrom of muck of my own making. Now what? Now what? I feel like my life has turned sepia. Where did all the colour go?
Another week begins and unable one night when I am home alone, I decide I have to phone him. I psych up myself for at least an hour, composing disjointed sentences the words of which shatter into a crazy alphabet which swims around in my head.
Finally, hardly making any sense, I dial his number. It rings a few times and goes to voice mail.
‘H-hallo?’ I stutter. ‘It’s…er… Wendy?…er…I’m…er… not sure if I’m allowed to do this?…Am I still a…er…friend or an ex-friend…? (nervous laugh) I just wanted to say… I think about you often and I’d really like to know how you are? You see… I…er…I really miss you? …and I care about you?…and er…it would be nice to hear from you?… to know you’re OK…?
I have no idea why I’m talking Australian? but I know I sound vulnerable and insecure, and this is not an act. What I’ve created by making the call is renewed hope…the hope that he will call me back.
Had there been a brick wall within bashing distance, I may just as well have impacted my weary head against it but within a few minutes, my mobile rings and it’s him!
Thanks for being patient with me while I toiled away on the cliff face of literature (a lovely terrace in Andalusia...) working on my novel Blood on the Sand.
I'll keep you posted as to how that's going but for now on with The Daily Male:
Friday. I set off for a couple of days away with an old friend to his country cottage in Devon. PT and I have known each other for many years. When we first met, he made a bit of a play for me, but I wasn’t attracted to him in that way and he seems to have accepted it. He does still try it on occasionally but I slap him down affectionately and he takes it in good part. I think...
As we are closeted in his car for the long drive West, I tell him all about CC. He listens attentively but doesn’t express much, except to say: ‘He sounds like trouble’.
The weekend is pleasant enough. It’s always good to get out of town as long as you know you’re coming back.
On the Sunday afternoon, I return to London by train as PT is staying on. I’ve got the steak date with Eurotrash to look forward to but as the train is chugging through Berkshire, the trashy bastard texts to tell me he’s ‘not feeling very well’, having had ‘a large one’ the night before.
How fucking dare you! I think to myself. You knew you had to be on top form for Sunday night! I could have stayed on in the country and now I've got nothing to do when I get home. I consider hurling myself into the path of an oncoming express, but Mr. Branson realises this sort of thing might happen (he obviously knows men like Eurotrash personally) so he's sealed up all the windows.
My disgruntledness of the bloody awfulness of Sundays in general, and cancelled dates on Sunday nights in particular, reaches an all time high. I console myself with a cosy, little homily: Life sucks and then you die.
I draft some texts to CC to pass the time on the rest of journey. Writing to him is like talking to him…
My darling, I haven’t slept for nights. (not strictly true). I do not wish to harass you emotionally (strictly true) but is there any way we could stay in touch that you would be comfortable with? I can’t bear the thought of losing you forever… I miss you every day...(totally true).
I save these in my drafts folder.
Wednesday. Unable to keep my counsel any longer, I send CC the favourite from among my drafted texts:
I’ve waited with the noose around my neck for you to kick the chair away. Please either do that or come and lift me down.
After several hours, I receive the much-dreaded reply:
I’m really sorry lovely Wendy but I have read your memoir and I know that this perhaps overly private and sensitive man cannot do this. I wish I could but I can’t. Sorry sorry sorry. Your adventure is bold, courageous and I respect what you are doing xxx
I only wrote The Toyboy Diaries to inspire other women that all things are possible no matter your age. I never expected it to come back and bite me on the bum.
Through a mist of tears, I text back:
Sweetheart, I am devastated... please don't judge me by the contents of a book. I am worth more than that... And I am.
I get no answer.
The massacre of my last vestige of hope leaves me lost without a cause. I feel like a rat swimming against the tide in a maelstrom of muck of my own making. Now what? Now what? I feel like my life has turned sepia. Where did all the colour go?
Another week begins and unable one night when I am home alone, I decide I have to phone him. I psych up myself for at least an hour, composing disjointed sentences the words of which shatter into a crazy alphabet which swims around in my head.
Finally, hardly making any sense, I dial his number. It rings a few times and goes to voice mail.
‘H-hallo?’ I stutter. ‘It’s…er… Wendy?…er…I’m…er… not sure if I’m allowed to do this?…Am I still a…er…friend or an ex-friend…? (nervous laugh) I just wanted to say… I think about you often and I’d really like to know how you are? You see… I…er…I really miss you? …and I care about you?…and er…it would be nice to hear from you?… to know you’re OK…?
I have no idea why I’m talking Australian? but I know I sound vulnerable and insecure, and this is not an act. What I’ve created by making the call is renewed hope…the hope that he will call me back.
Had there been a brick wall within bashing distance, I may just as well have impacted my weary head against it but within a few minutes, my mobile rings and it’s him!
Monday 28 July 2008
APOLOGIES FOR THE INTERRUPTION!!
Dearest Readers,
I hope you will forgive me this hiccup in the continuing saga of "The Daily Male".
I have taken some time out to work on a novel, an idea I´ve had for some time which simply had to be released. I´ve hidden myself away in Southern Europe but I shall return to the story in a couple of weeks, I promise.
Thanks for your comments and your patience - I love knowing you are out there even if we´ve never met...
Have great summers, everyone, and I´ll be back soon.
Very best wishes and thanks for reading.
Wendy x
I hope you will forgive me this hiccup in the continuing saga of "The Daily Male".
I have taken some time out to work on a novel, an idea I´ve had for some time which simply had to be released. I´ve hidden myself away in Southern Europe but I shall return to the story in a couple of weeks, I promise.
Thanks for your comments and your patience - I love knowing you are out there even if we´ve never met...
Have great summers, everyone, and I´ll be back soon.
Very best wishes and thanks for reading.
Wendy x
Thursday 3 July 2008
THE DAILY MALE - continues...03/07/08
Sunday. I’m worried that I might be turning into a shark. The urge to keep moving lest I die is bordering on manic. Not content with having had 'knowledge' of four different men in the past two weeks (perhaps in Essex that’s the national chaverage) I’ve been lured out by a fifth this afternoon who’s contacted me on a dating website.
He’s a character actor, been in The Bill (hasn’t everyone?) and sounds like a bit of a geezer. I’m meeting him in Regent’s Park at 4.30 p.m. for tea. Before that I’m meeting a girlfriend for a walk and after that I’m going to the cinema with a male mate.
Now there’s no problem with this per se, but shouldn’t one be staying home occasionally and sorting out one’s knicker drawer? Or learning how to use the new DVD – G-d forbid one should ever want to be in of an evening watching one?
I think about CC, cast in the role of Hanging Judge, deciding my fate as he reads the fruits of my nefarious labours. He probably hasn’t got beyond the first chapter – or even the back cover. He'd have thrown it straight onto the fire dressed in an exorcist’s robes to expunge the corruption contained therein.
The date with Rough Stuff gets cancelled at the last minute and I am somewhat relieved, though this leaves my brain excess time to bubble away like a witch’s cauldron, to which I keep adding extra frogs, newts, toads and bats.
Tuesday. Something in my genetic make-up, or maybe my upbringing, will not allow me to accept defeat. A long line of oppressed ancestors battled their way out of Russia, Poland and Lithuania and dispersed to the four corners of the globe where they not only survived, but made a go of it. I was conditioned from an early age to strive for success and this ethos has dogged yet encouraged me through all of life’s situations.
Although I walked out of two marriages because there were insurmountable problems, I gave them both my best shot and for this reason, I am still determined to fight for CC.
I cannot understand if someone has a chance for love that they wouldn’t embrace it with open arms? I mean… you’re a long time dead… especially if he genuinely thinks he’s only got a few years left...you’d have thought he’d want to fill those years with all the unbridled joy that’s on offer.
Or maybe he doesn’t see me as ‘unbridled joy’…maybe he just sees me as ‘major aggravation’.
Unfortunately, deep in my soul, I know where he’s coming from. His fear of rejection, fear of getting hurt, fear of my infidelity, fear of having his heart ripped out and thrown to the wolves, are all very valid terrors. And I’m getting far too carried away with this less than ‘magnificent’ obsession.
Maybe I need to take a step back and write myself a reality cheque.
Wednesday. Eurotrash texts me and we make a date for the steak fest for Sunday night. Him being a bit Transylvanian ‘n all, I hope he means steak and not stake.
He’s a character actor, been in The Bill (hasn’t everyone?) and sounds like a bit of a geezer. I’m meeting him in Regent’s Park at 4.30 p.m. for tea. Before that I’m meeting a girlfriend for a walk and after that I’m going to the cinema with a male mate.
Now there’s no problem with this per se, but shouldn’t one be staying home occasionally and sorting out one’s knicker drawer? Or learning how to use the new DVD – G-d forbid one should ever want to be in of an evening watching one?
I think about CC, cast in the role of Hanging Judge, deciding my fate as he reads the fruits of my nefarious labours. He probably hasn’t got beyond the first chapter – or even the back cover. He'd have thrown it straight onto the fire dressed in an exorcist’s robes to expunge the corruption contained therein.
The date with Rough Stuff gets cancelled at the last minute and I am somewhat relieved, though this leaves my brain excess time to bubble away like a witch’s cauldron, to which I keep adding extra frogs, newts, toads and bats.
Tuesday. Something in my genetic make-up, or maybe my upbringing, will not allow me to accept defeat. A long line of oppressed ancestors battled their way out of Russia, Poland and Lithuania and dispersed to the four corners of the globe where they not only survived, but made a go of it. I was conditioned from an early age to strive for success and this ethos has dogged yet encouraged me through all of life’s situations.
Although I walked out of two marriages because there were insurmountable problems, I gave them both my best shot and for this reason, I am still determined to fight for CC.
I cannot understand if someone has a chance for love that they wouldn’t embrace it with open arms? I mean… you’re a long time dead… especially if he genuinely thinks he’s only got a few years left...you’d have thought he’d want to fill those years with all the unbridled joy that’s on offer.
Or maybe he doesn’t see me as ‘unbridled joy’…maybe he just sees me as ‘major aggravation’.
Unfortunately, deep in my soul, I know where he’s coming from. His fear of rejection, fear of getting hurt, fear of my infidelity, fear of having his heart ripped out and thrown to the wolves, are all very valid terrors. And I’m getting far too carried away with this less than ‘magnificent’ obsession.
Maybe I need to take a step back and write myself a reality cheque.
Wednesday. Eurotrash texts me and we make a date for the steak fest for Sunday night. Him being a bit Transylvanian ‘n all, I hope he means steak and not stake.
Friday 20 June 2008
THE DAILY MALE - continues...20/06/08
Before I know it, I’m running a bubble bath, lighting candles, opening a bottle of Cava (I'm not wasting Champagne on him!) and selecting the appropriate music.
Drunk and disorderly, we both get naked and slide into the warm womb of water where we slither all over each other like a merman and his maid.
Despite his shortish stature - no more than 5’9” - Eurotrash is sporting an impressive organ which pokes up out of the water like a 'peniscope'. The invitation is irresistible and I lower my head and sink my mouth around it. He groans appreciatively and massages my feet.
We soap each other's bodies and talk and laugh and it feels like someone has changed my batteries. Normal service has been resumed.
We get out of the bath and step naked onto my little balcony. The night is mild and heady and he wraps his arms around me and pulls me back against him, attempting to enter me from behind.
I’m not that drunk and there’s no way we’re having full penetrative unsafe sex. I don’t trust him. I also have no idea where he’s been and, more to the point, I remind myself that I am trying to stay faithful. To what, or more precisely, to whom, is debatable.
Eurotrash doesn’t insist, so we lie down on the bed and just fool around. When he leaves, we’re still laughing. No mental anguish is involved, no demands, no commitment. We arrange for him to come over again some time and he promises to cook me a 'fat, juicy steak'. I am disproportionately excited about this.
Friday. Despite the brilliant fun I had last night which certainly helped to blow the cobwebs away, I still haven’t heard a dickie bird from You Know Who. Brad Pity ups the ante by bringing our date forward to tonight. I weaken to the point of horizontal by inviting him to come straight over without bothering with the ‘drink at the Elgin’ first. Well we have met and I know what I'm dealing with.
My attempt to have a zipless fuck fails. Guilt and remorse and nostalgia make uncomfortable bedfellows. CC said he couldn’t have sex without love and although I can and often do, it happens that I rather wouldn’t.
Drunk and disorderly, we both get naked and slide into the warm womb of water where we slither all over each other like a merman and his maid.
Despite his shortish stature - no more than 5’9” - Eurotrash is sporting an impressive organ which pokes up out of the water like a 'peniscope'. The invitation is irresistible and I lower my head and sink my mouth around it. He groans appreciatively and massages my feet.
We soap each other's bodies and talk and laugh and it feels like someone has changed my batteries. Normal service has been resumed.
We get out of the bath and step naked onto my little balcony. The night is mild and heady and he wraps his arms around me and pulls me back against him, attempting to enter me from behind.
I’m not that drunk and there’s no way we’re having full penetrative unsafe sex. I don’t trust him. I also have no idea where he’s been and, more to the point, I remind myself that I am trying to stay faithful. To what, or more precisely, to whom, is debatable.
Eurotrash doesn’t insist, so we lie down on the bed and just fool around. When he leaves, we’re still laughing. No mental anguish is involved, no demands, no commitment. We arrange for him to come over again some time and he promises to cook me a 'fat, juicy steak'. I am disproportionately excited about this.
Friday. Despite the brilliant fun I had last night which certainly helped to blow the cobwebs away, I still haven’t heard a dickie bird from You Know Who. Brad Pity ups the ante by bringing our date forward to tonight. I weaken to the point of horizontal by inviting him to come straight over without bothering with the ‘drink at the Elgin’ first. Well we have met and I know what I'm dealing with.
My attempt to have a zipless fuck fails. Guilt and remorse and nostalgia make uncomfortable bedfellows. CC said he couldn’t have sex without love and although I can and often do, it happens that I rather wouldn’t.
Friday 13 June 2008
THE DAILY MALE - continues...13/06/08
Thursday. He texts to thank me for the meal.
‘It was very kind of you. I’ll read the book and see how I feel’ and then I have an epiphany!
HANG ON A MINUTE, I think to myself. You’ll see how you feel?? Who the hell do you think you are - The Lord High Executioner? I have to wait and worry all weekend while you see how reading my story makes you feel?
At least I never tried to dupe anyone, pretending to be someone I'm not, making them fall for me then telling them I can’t cope with it.What sort of a man is that? So afraid of dying he’s forgotten how to live? Worried about falling in love in case the excitement proves too much? Hiding away like a hermit in case, God forbid, I might enjoy myself? And who is he to judge me anyway?
This mental outburst helps me to put things into perspective. Of course I still care about him and would love to try to make it work between us, but if he’s always going to doubt me and never going to trust me, it has no chance of even getting off the starting block.
I spend the weekend on a self-inflicted death row, the condemned woman who awaits the decision of the hanging judge. Right now, the jury’s out and the defendant awaits an almost certain Guilty verdict.
Tuesday. I still haven’t heard from him. I compose but do not send a variety of texts ranging from furious to flippant to frustrated. This helps on a scale of zero to not at all.
Thursday. I am looking after my little granddaughters which is like trying to tame a pair of electric eels, and although it’s a great distraction, I still manage to fret about CC the entire time. Once I’ve bathed them, fed them, read to them and put them to bed, I doodle out a few texts which includes making a further date with Brad Pity. After the rejection by CC, I need to re-affirm my desirability.
Friday. Having decided to give Eurotrash a further run for his money, I visit him at the gallery. The minute I walk in he’s all over me like a second skin. He has a delivery to make near my home so we decide to go for a drink, which turns into a second and then a third by which time we’re hungry and need to eat.
It’s a beautiful evening and we're sitting outside in the patio garden of Le Cochonnet. I feel relaxed and liberated which makes a pleasant change. Eurotrash is entertaining company. He makes me giggle and although I know he’s a wrong ‘un, somehow, we fit.
We discuss a Shakespeare play he's seen recently of which he could not follow the plot. I remember a book I have called Shakespeare for Idiots or something and offer to lend it to him. This book is on my shelf at home which happens to be… just around the corner. He says:
"Veel get it now, shall ve?" and I say: "OK".
I know exactly where this invitation is going, and as you might expect, Shakespeare is forgotten the minute we walk in my door.
‘It was very kind of you. I’ll read the book and see how I feel’ and then I have an epiphany!
HANG ON A MINUTE, I think to myself. You’ll see how you feel?? Who the hell do you think you are - The Lord High Executioner? I have to wait and worry all weekend while you see how reading my story makes you feel?
At least I never tried to dupe anyone, pretending to be someone I'm not, making them fall for me then telling them I can’t cope with it.What sort of a man is that? So afraid of dying he’s forgotten how to live? Worried about falling in love in case the excitement proves too much? Hiding away like a hermit in case, God forbid, I might enjoy myself? And who is he to judge me anyway?
This mental outburst helps me to put things into perspective. Of course I still care about him and would love to try to make it work between us, but if he’s always going to doubt me and never going to trust me, it has no chance of even getting off the starting block.
I spend the weekend on a self-inflicted death row, the condemned woman who awaits the decision of the hanging judge. Right now, the jury’s out and the defendant awaits an almost certain Guilty verdict.
Tuesday. I still haven’t heard from him. I compose but do not send a variety of texts ranging from furious to flippant to frustrated. This helps on a scale of zero to not at all.
Thursday. I am looking after my little granddaughters which is like trying to tame a pair of electric eels, and although it’s a great distraction, I still manage to fret about CC the entire time. Once I’ve bathed them, fed them, read to them and put them to bed, I doodle out a few texts which includes making a further date with Brad Pity. After the rejection by CC, I need to re-affirm my desirability.
Friday. Having decided to give Eurotrash a further run for his money, I visit him at the gallery. The minute I walk in he’s all over me like a second skin. He has a delivery to make near my home so we decide to go for a drink, which turns into a second and then a third by which time we’re hungry and need to eat.
It’s a beautiful evening and we're sitting outside in the patio garden of Le Cochonnet. I feel relaxed and liberated which makes a pleasant change. Eurotrash is entertaining company. He makes me giggle and although I know he’s a wrong ‘un, somehow, we fit.
We discuss a Shakespeare play he's seen recently of which he could not follow the plot. I remember a book I have called Shakespeare for Idiots or something and offer to lend it to him. This book is on my shelf at home which happens to be… just around the corner. He says:
"Veel get it now, shall ve?" and I say: "OK".
I know exactly where this invitation is going, and as you might expect, Shakespeare is forgotten the minute we walk in my door.
Saturday 7 June 2008
THE DAILY MALE - continues...08/06/08
To lighten the mood and erase the conversation that has just taken place, I tell him I have theatre tickets for next week and I ask if would he like to come with me. I am resolutely convinced of my power to re-invent us as a fully functioning couple.
With scant interest, he asks what play it is, and I tell him it’s an Indian version of Midsummer Night’s Dream. He pulls a face like I’ve just poured a very hot curry down his trousers, and says his attention span is rather limited and the Bard, therefore, is not someone he can sit through.
While still desperate to repair the situation, I am becoming mildly exasperated. Surely it would be easier to just give up? I question my motives. Maybe it’s the challenge that drives me on. I’ve had men not wanting me before, but for some reason, I want this one more than I ever wanted any of them. And I do want to help him; I doubt he’s ever had someone who really cares about him like I do.
We continue our disjointed dialogue which winds blindly through a complex maze of dark passages and alleyways until it comes to a grinding halt somewhere north of nowhere. It’s like I’m talking Icelandic and he’s answering in Cantonese.
Reverting to my default setting of Jewish mother, I suggest we have something to eat. He admits to being hungry and seems surprised and grateful that I should offer to cook for him, like no-one’s ever done this before.
I try to get him to help me in the kitchen to create some sort of positive dynamic between us, but he doesn’t even know how to slice a mushroom, so I end up doing it all myself.
I rustle up a smoked salmon and avocado starter and make a risotto which he appears to enjoy. At least something has pleased him about tonight. The hostess, sadly… pas beaucoup…
Over dinner, he perks up a bit and talks about his teenage years and how he used to play in a band, but not once during the evening is there any of the lightness of spirit or humorous piquancy of the holiday passing between us.
And then it’s 10.30 p.m. and he says he has to go. He needs his sleep so he asks me to call him a taxi and the minute it arrives, he leaves.
I get a half-hearted hug at the door, do the washing-up and go to bed feeling melancholy and hopeless. The whole emotional investment of the past two weeks seems to be producing no return.
The Pet Shop Boys sing me sleep, their lyrics strangely appropriate to my darkening mood:
When I look back upon my life,
It’s always with a sense of shame
I’ve always been the one to blame…
With scant interest, he asks what play it is, and I tell him it’s an Indian version of Midsummer Night’s Dream. He pulls a face like I’ve just poured a very hot curry down his trousers, and says his attention span is rather limited and the Bard, therefore, is not someone he can sit through.
While still desperate to repair the situation, I am becoming mildly exasperated. Surely it would be easier to just give up? I question my motives. Maybe it’s the challenge that drives me on. I’ve had men not wanting me before, but for some reason, I want this one more than I ever wanted any of them. And I do want to help him; I doubt he’s ever had someone who really cares about him like I do.
We continue our disjointed dialogue which winds blindly through a complex maze of dark passages and alleyways until it comes to a grinding halt somewhere north of nowhere. It’s like I’m talking Icelandic and he’s answering in Cantonese.
Reverting to my default setting of Jewish mother, I suggest we have something to eat. He admits to being hungry and seems surprised and grateful that I should offer to cook for him, like no-one’s ever done this before.
I try to get him to help me in the kitchen to create some sort of positive dynamic between us, but he doesn’t even know how to slice a mushroom, so I end up doing it all myself.
I rustle up a smoked salmon and avocado starter and make a risotto which he appears to enjoy. At least something has pleased him about tonight. The hostess, sadly… pas beaucoup…
Over dinner, he perks up a bit and talks about his teenage years and how he used to play in a band, but not once during the evening is there any of the lightness of spirit or humorous piquancy of the holiday passing between us.
And then it’s 10.30 p.m. and he says he has to go. He needs his sleep so he asks me to call him a taxi and the minute it arrives, he leaves.
I get a half-hearted hug at the door, do the washing-up and go to bed feeling melancholy and hopeless. The whole emotional investment of the past two weeks seems to be producing no return.
The Pet Shop Boys sing me sleep, their lyrics strangely appropriate to my darkening mood:
When I look back upon my life,
It’s always with a sense of shame
I’ve always been the one to blame…
Monday 2 June 2008
THE DAILY MALE - continues...02/06/08
‘I cannot allow myself to fall in love with you. I will get terribly hurt. And…’ he drops his voice so I can hardly hear him, ‘I cannot have sex without love…’
I take onboard what he’s saying, resenting the fact that it was fine for him to have ‘sex without love’ just a few days ago.
I suddenly decide to give him a proof copy of The Toyboy Diaries. Maybe it would work like homeopathy – treat the sickness with the sickness. I take one off the shelf and drop it into his lap.
‘Instead of imagining the worst, why don’t you read it?’ I suggest. ‘It’s nowhere near as bad as you may think, especially since most of it is made up!’
My nose grows by at least an inch and my tone is possibly half an octave harsher than usual. I’m still smarting from the No Sex Please – We’re Skittish comment. He recoils as he lifts the book gingerly off his lap and holds it at arm’s length as if it’s a ticking time bomb.
‘Please don’t throw things at me,’ he bleats ‘and don’t shout…’
I apologize, and consider that, should we ever by any remote chance get it together, I might have to temper everything I do around him: my voice, my mood, my personality, my behaviour. Christ! Do I really want to live like that?
He turns the book over frowning deeply as he reads the back cover. I stand there chewing my thumb, like a schoolgirl whose father is reading a letter from the Headmaster informing him that she’s been caught in the toilets giving the gym teacher a blow-job.
‘How can it possibly work out between you and me?’ he asks despairingly having scanned the best of the worst of my story. ‘You’ll always be looking over my shoulder for the next 19-year old!’
‘I will not!’ I cry defensively. ‘That affair happened twenty years ago and I’m so over all that now…’
How far can you bend the truth before it snaps?
I take onboard what he’s saying, resenting the fact that it was fine for him to have ‘sex without love’ just a few days ago.
I suddenly decide to give him a proof copy of The Toyboy Diaries. Maybe it would work like homeopathy – treat the sickness with the sickness. I take one off the shelf and drop it into his lap.
‘Instead of imagining the worst, why don’t you read it?’ I suggest. ‘It’s nowhere near as bad as you may think, especially since most of it is made up!’
My nose grows by at least an inch and my tone is possibly half an octave harsher than usual. I’m still smarting from the No Sex Please – We’re Skittish comment. He recoils as he lifts the book gingerly off his lap and holds it at arm’s length as if it’s a ticking time bomb.
‘Please don’t throw things at me,’ he bleats ‘and don’t shout…’
I apologize, and consider that, should we ever by any remote chance get it together, I might have to temper everything I do around him: my voice, my mood, my personality, my behaviour. Christ! Do I really want to live like that?
He turns the book over frowning deeply as he reads the back cover. I stand there chewing my thumb, like a schoolgirl whose father is reading a letter from the Headmaster informing him that she’s been caught in the toilets giving the gym teacher a blow-job.
‘How can it possibly work out between you and me?’ he asks despairingly having scanned the best of the worst of my story. ‘You’ll always be looking over my shoulder for the next 19-year old!’
‘I will not!’ I cry defensively. ‘That affair happened twenty years ago and I’m so over all that now…’
How far can you bend the truth before it snaps?
Thursday 22 May 2008
THE DAILY MALE - continues...23/5/08
Monday. I don’t hear from him all day. I leave him be, it’s his first day back at work, as it is mine. In spite of last night’s heavy and disturbing conversation, I am in denial, convinced he will reverse his decision, still on some kind of holiday high.
I have a stab at doing some work, make some phone calls and bring my girlfriends up to speed (mostly leaving out the Hot Frog fuck fest).
I think about CC constantly and after a thrashing night of inner torment, I text him.
Miss you a lot. Hope you are OK? : - ( xxx
Several hours pass and eventually he replies.
I have missed you terribly and slept little. I'm pretty sure I am not strong enough for this Xxx
With the imminent release of The Toyboy Diaries, there is a flurry of publicity out there and I cannot stop it. Like Diana’s sister said to her the night before The Royal Wedding: ‘You can’t back out now, Duch…your face is on the tea towels.’
I draft a reply:
Sweetheart, I am devastated and crying as I write. I understand your fears but please can we talk one more time? I couldn’t bear not to see you again. We have a chance for love. Is that not worth a shot? xxx
But I don’t send it.
In the evening, he phones me. He is very somber, his voice flat and monochrome. I somehow manage to persuade him to come over tomorrow night so we can talk face to face.
Wednesday. He calls me several times during the afternoon to tell me he’s running late. Every time I see his name on my screen I’m convinced he’s going to cancel. My two best girlfriends are au fait with the situation, and I have already placed bets with them as to what the evening holds in store. They try to keep my spirits up, but I know what I know. It’s a self-fulfilling prophesy. He’s coming over to tell me that he’s made his final decision. It is going to be over.
And so it comes to pass that he enters my doorway at 7.20 p.m. and slumps down in my tiny tub chair with such a badass body language, I can hardly believe it’s the same person. And no one ever sits in that chair anyway – unless the three-seater sofa has four people on it.
He is too far away from me for a start, and despite his stature of 6’2”, he seems to have imploded, shrunken in on himself as he hunches, withdrawn and anxious, unable or unwilling to make eye contact.
‘What can I do to take us back to last week?’ I plead gently.
He glances at me like he’s never seen me before and quickly looks away.
‘If you like toyboys so much’ he says, expelling the word from his mouth like a bitter taste, ‘what on earth are you interested in me for? I’m forty-six, for God’s sake, practically geriatric…’
‘You’re not!’ I argue. 'I…’
He shakes his head vigorously to show he will not listen.
‘But how would I trust you?’ he asks simply... and I have no answer to that.
I have a stab at doing some work, make some phone calls and bring my girlfriends up to speed (mostly leaving out the Hot Frog fuck fest).
I think about CC constantly and after a thrashing night of inner torment, I text him.
Miss you a lot. Hope you are OK? : - ( xxx
Several hours pass and eventually he replies.
I have missed you terribly and slept little. I'm pretty sure I am not strong enough for this Xxx
With the imminent release of The Toyboy Diaries, there is a flurry of publicity out there and I cannot stop it. Like Diana’s sister said to her the night before The Royal Wedding: ‘You can’t back out now, Duch…your face is on the tea towels.’
I draft a reply:
Sweetheart, I am devastated and crying as I write. I understand your fears but please can we talk one more time? I couldn’t bear not to see you again. We have a chance for love. Is that not worth a shot? xxx
But I don’t send it.
In the evening, he phones me. He is very somber, his voice flat and monochrome. I somehow manage to persuade him to come over tomorrow night so we can talk face to face.
Wednesday. He calls me several times during the afternoon to tell me he’s running late. Every time I see his name on my screen I’m convinced he’s going to cancel. My two best girlfriends are au fait with the situation, and I have already placed bets with them as to what the evening holds in store. They try to keep my spirits up, but I know what I know. It’s a self-fulfilling prophesy. He’s coming over to tell me that he’s made his final decision. It is going to be over.
And so it comes to pass that he enters my doorway at 7.20 p.m. and slumps down in my tiny tub chair with such a badass body language, I can hardly believe it’s the same person. And no one ever sits in that chair anyway – unless the three-seater sofa has four people on it.
He is too far away from me for a start, and despite his stature of 6’2”, he seems to have imploded, shrunken in on himself as he hunches, withdrawn and anxious, unable or unwilling to make eye contact.
‘What can I do to take us back to last week?’ I plead gently.
He glances at me like he’s never seen me before and quickly looks away.
‘If you like toyboys so much’ he says, expelling the word from his mouth like a bitter taste, ‘what on earth are you interested in me for? I’m forty-six, for God’s sake, practically geriatric…’
‘You’re not!’ I argue. 'I…’
He shakes his head vigorously to show he will not listen.
‘But how would I trust you?’ he asks simply... and I have no answer to that.
Sunday 11 May 2008
THE DAILY MALE - continues...11/05/08
Over the next few hours, as he lies in the darkness of my womb-like room, the tall, upright, confident, accomplished, funny, genial holiday man disappears and in his place appears an ailing, timid, frightened, emotionally-disabled wreck. I don’t recognize him at all.
He talks about past love affairs which haven’t worked out, deep insecurities, low self-esteem in his work and personal life, hypochondria and as if this weren't enough, an overwhelming conviction that he will die young. A bundle of laughs it ain't...
The most incomprehensible thing he tells me, and what confuses me most of all, is that much as he says it would be easy to fall in love because he finds me ‘lovely, lovely, so very lovely...’ he is afraid in case he becomes addicted. Best case scenario, in my book...someone needs to become addicted but I surely don't want it to be me...(how little I knew at this point...)
He says he is not strong but I think he is actually very strong to make such a conscious and calculated decision. After all, if love was a choice, would any of us choose such exquisite torment?
Based on what I told him about myself that first night we sat talking in the bar, crowing as I am wont to do about conquests past and present, he probably thinks he knows me pretty well. He says he suspects my ability to be faithful as I joked to him on that first night when we exchanged confidences, that as a girlfriend I was probably ‘a very bad bet’.
In some perverse and obtuse way, I was daring him to fall for me even then. But he does not dare. He does not dare at all.
During those long hours as we lay talking in my bed, the daylight, denied by the tightly-closed curtains, turns to dusk, but much as I try, I cannot divert CC from his chosen path. I tell him my past is my past; that I’m ready and willing for a new beginning, that I would very much like it to be with him, but he is resolutely unconvinced.
His weakness is tangible, the depth of his dejection a living presence in my room. I can now smell with an animal’s instinct the scent of fear. In the context of us as a couple, I feel like I’m the alpha male now, as CC sobs silently more than once in my arms. And I know now, though not quite why, how truly damaged this poor man is.
And so my niggling suspicion of something not quite right comes home to roost - not, as I thought, because of his being in another relationship - but because he appears unable to sustain one even with himself.
At midnight, with no further distance for us to travel, he gets up and leaves. My optimistic side thinks I may be able to draw him back, but the pessimist in me has its doubts. And so the scales slide again, for now I am the weaker and he the stronger.
An acerbic one-liner comes to mind:
You can’t make somebody love you. All you can do is stalk them and hope that eventually one day they’ll give in.
He talks about past love affairs which haven’t worked out, deep insecurities, low self-esteem in his work and personal life, hypochondria and as if this weren't enough, an overwhelming conviction that he will die young. A bundle of laughs it ain't...
The most incomprehensible thing he tells me, and what confuses me most of all, is that much as he says it would be easy to fall in love because he finds me ‘lovely, lovely, so very lovely...’ he is afraid in case he becomes addicted. Best case scenario, in my book...someone needs to become addicted but I surely don't want it to be me...(how little I knew at this point...)
He says he is not strong but I think he is actually very strong to make such a conscious and calculated decision. After all, if love was a choice, would any of us choose such exquisite torment?
Based on what I told him about myself that first night we sat talking in the bar, crowing as I am wont to do about conquests past and present, he probably thinks he knows me pretty well. He says he suspects my ability to be faithful as I joked to him on that first night when we exchanged confidences, that as a girlfriend I was probably ‘a very bad bet’.
In some perverse and obtuse way, I was daring him to fall for me even then. But he does not dare. He does not dare at all.
During those long hours as we lay talking in my bed, the daylight, denied by the tightly-closed curtains, turns to dusk, but much as I try, I cannot divert CC from his chosen path. I tell him my past is my past; that I’m ready and willing for a new beginning, that I would very much like it to be with him, but he is resolutely unconvinced.
His weakness is tangible, the depth of his dejection a living presence in my room. I can now smell with an animal’s instinct the scent of fear. In the context of us as a couple, I feel like I’m the alpha male now, as CC sobs silently more than once in my arms. And I know now, though not quite why, how truly damaged this poor man is.
And so my niggling suspicion of something not quite right comes home to roost - not, as I thought, because of his being in another relationship - but because he appears unable to sustain one even with himself.
At midnight, with no further distance for us to travel, he gets up and leaves. My optimistic side thinks I may be able to draw him back, but the pessimist in me has its doubts. And so the scales slide again, for now I am the weaker and he the stronger.
An acerbic one-liner comes to mind:
You can’t make somebody love you. All you can do is stalk them and hope that eventually one day they’ll give in.
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