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!