Twenty Something (20 page)

A very strange day.

So why exactly was I crying post-ravish on Saturday? Well, the most prosaic reason was that Katie was agonisingly rough with her handiwork. I don't mean to be crude here, but a penis is not a gearstick. It only really likes to move in two directions. And you certainly don't find reverse by pushing it down violently and shoving it into the top left corner of its axis.

I suppose it's the age-old conundrum for a man. Do you let a woman continue to chafe you raw in the hope that the orgasm might validate the purgatory? Does the end justify the means? Or do you quietly and sensitively show her how to do it gently? Women are always taking the mickey out of us for requiring a map to find their clitoris. (Men are fine with maps, we just don't like to ask directions.) I think it's time that we struck back.

But of course, I was also crying because I'd realised that I'd lost Lucy for good. I didn't really want to sleep with Katie. She was just Rick with longer hair, fit from afar, far from fit, a substitute for all that I'd been through with Lucy. I wouldn't want Lucy back in a million years, but I've got to the stage now when I can remember the reasons why I liked her in the first place. I suppose this is the final stage in getting over someone.

All of which are very generous thoughts, but I can't help wondering whether I really meant all those nice things I said about Rick and Lucy at the wedding. A large part of me wanted to stand up and give vent to the vilest, most cynical speech ever witnessed at a festival:

‘Ladies and gentlemen, we are gathered here today because the bride slept with the groom as a way of making the best man jealous. We are here to celebrate the happy fact that the bride is pregnant and the father of the bride is so bottom-clenchingly middle class that he forced her to marry her one-night stand. Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you the happy couple (and I give them half a year).'

But that would have caused quite a scene in rural Wiltshire, and Archie Poett and I would no longer be on first-name terms.

Now that my life is back on a boringly neutral plateau again — no annoying boss, no pestering ex-girlfriend, no immediate love interest, no testicular cancer, no fights with friends, no political ambitions, no real purpose — I suppose I should set about working out what to do with myself for the next forty-five years until retirement. This is the strange thing about life after university. It's feels like you've just fallen off a conveyor belt of nonstop academic landmarks, and are launched in one fell swoop into the rest of your life. It's suddenly up to you, and not your tutors or your parents.

But I've really got no idea at all what to do next. The things I enjoy and do well — socialising, drinking, writing amusing emails — are not really transferable economic skills. I think the sad truth is that to make money you have to work with money. And money per se is indescribably boring. Worse still, it's impossible to know which job will suit you until you try it out. And as soon as you try it out you're stuck with contracts and
inexplicable gaps in your CV. It's like jumping straight from a first date into marriage.

What do you do with a BA (Hons) in Latin, anyway? Classical Civilisation is very interesting, but it doesn't really lead you down a career path in the same way as studying Economics, or Law, or Medicine. We have no real skills beyond copying other people's essays. You can do anything or nothing with an arts degree. It opens every door and no door.

I've even thought about going back to university and learning some more useless facts. It was so much simpler there. You could have breakfast in the afternoon and dance midweek to Abba in sweaty student clubs. You could impetuously decide that you had had enough of working at 3pm and leave the library for a game of tennis. One of the hardest decisions you had to face on an average day was whether to have chicken or minestrone Cup-a-Soup.

If I went back and did a Master's I could be a legend again. I would stand out from the rest of the sad grads. I could have my pick of the nubile teenagers. I could wake up every morning feeling a little fresher.

But then I'm far too late for this academic year. And I've got absolutely no idea what to study. And what nubile nineteen-year-old wants to go out with a balding former banker when she could have a hot young stud at the peak of his sexual prime?

Perhaps I need an older woman. Where is Mrs Iona in these times of trial?

I finally arranged to see Jean again in the evening.

I was nervous. I was aware that I was entering dangerous territory with a second date. You can't have a second date with someone and not kiss them at the end. It's against the rules.

But my problem is that I am incredibly bad at kissing
someone for the first time. I hate rejection. I hate throwing the face in. I don't like doing something unless there is a statistically high chance of success. There must be something of the banker still in me.

And I think the worst bit is that split second just as you're leaning in. It seems to last a lifetime, and there's that agonising fear that she might turn her head away at the last minute, leaving you hanging like a mutant teenager with your tongue lolling out.

All these thoughts are still running through my head as I'm walking Jean back to the tube at the end of the evening. I look at her sideways. She's attractive. She's a very nice girl. But I can already see the future — we'd go out for three months, become fond of each other and then I'd feel trapped and try to extricate myself without hurting her. She's got lots of good qualities, but none of them are enduring. And what's the point of starting when you can already see an inevitable end?

‘Jack, are you listening to me?'

‘Sorry, I was miles away. What were you saying, Jean?'

‘I was asking whether you wanted to kiss me.'

Direct, as ever. We're standing outside a tube station. There is a
Big Issue
seller next to us. A bunch of teenagers walks past giggling.

‘Er, yes, that would be quite nice actually.'

But it's far from nice. I mean, I've had some bad snogs in my time. I remember my first one with Mel aged fourteen. We were both wearing train tracks. We didn't come up for breath for fifty minutes. Every time I opened my eyes, hers were staring into my left eyebrow. I remember seeing Rick and Flatmate Fred jigging around behind her giving me the thumbs-up. It was like we had been waiting all our lives for this moment (I guess we had) and we were going to cling on for dear life. And I think we were both scared that stopping meant having a conversation, and that is the worst thing imaginable for a fourteen-year-old.

But eleven years on, here is Jean pipping Mel to the post. It's the most rancid kiss I've ever had in my life. And there is
nothing worse than a bad kiss. I want fireworks; I'm getting a tumble-drier. I'd like some delicate nibbles; she is trying to vacuum out my oesophagus. I'd appreciate some delicate teeth work; she's taking penalty hockey flicks at my tonsils. It's utterly repellent. It's about as sexy as cooking beans on toast.

I close my eyes and try to imagine Leila, but it's still not working. After thirty seconds, I can take no more.

‘Jean, this has been lovely.'

‘Yes, it has. And you're an amazing kisser. Call me soon, lovely boy.'

With all due modesty, I think I am a rather good kisser. But it takes two to tango, and I plan never to waste my talent on Jean the Dyson again.

‘Fred, why is it that everyone we like at the moment is completely unfanciable and everyone we fancy is completely dislikable. Why do we continue with the torturous amateur dramatics of the dating game? Why do we love our friends and fancy unsuitable strangers? Why do we think like heroes and act like cads?'

He looks up from Act II of his screenplay.

‘Jack, you're in love with Leila. She's the one girl who you adore
and
fancy. She seems to bring out the best in you. Why can't you just admit it to yourself and then admit it to her? Then you'll get closure, and then you can move on, and then you can get a bloody job and join the rest of humanity again.'

‘What, you think she'll say no?'

‘I've got absolutely no idea. But you're never going to find out if you don't ask her.'

Actually, he's right. It's piss-simple, but he's hit the nail on the head. I always skirt cowardly around the issue, hoping somehow that she'll pick up on my feelings through a fog of alcoholic obfuscation and subtle hints. For all our
conversations and our friendship and our closeness, I have never wholeheartedly told her how I feel. Instead, I sit here at my laptop, recording my grubby little thoughts in my diary, frustrating my feelings and feeling my frustrations, refusing to set myself up for failure, unwilling to take a leap in the dark, living the cosy fantasy because I'm too scared to try the reality.

I haven't spoken to her properly for ages. We've let the closeness slide. I'll see what she's up to at the weekend.

Leila has offered to cook for me at her house in Shepherd's Bush.

I spend ages getting myself ready to go out. Every hair is in place, every orifice scrubbed, deodorised and perfumed. My lucky boxer shorts are washed, pressed and sparkling.

Eminem is helping to psych me up. I'm jigging around my bedroom using my aftershave as a microphone. The crowds are loving it. I've only got one shot, one opportunity, to seize everything that I ever wanted, one moment. Yo! I've got to capture it, not just let it slip.

‘Yo,' says Flatmate Fred, coming into my bedroom and turning the music down a notch. ‘You can do anything you set your mind to, man.'

‘Thanks, Fred, very profound.'

‘Go get her, Tiger. And, Jack — one thing.'

‘Yes.'

‘If you don't say anything to her, I'm not letting you back into the flat tonight. This nonsense has gone on long enough.'

‘Thanks, mate.'

He gives me a hug.

And so I arrive at Leila's house just off Uxbridge Road. I've never been here before. Her two housemates are out.

‘Jack, it's so great to see you. I'm just cooking now. We're going to have a duck.'

‘A what? Oh, yes, sorry.'

I haven't spoken to her properly for ages — not since our ‘No, don't be silly, of course I don't fucking love you' chat. We've got a million things to catch up about. She wanted to hear about the Windsor polo incident and the Mrs Fothergill letter in full. I told her about Rick's wedding. I left out the bit about Katie.

I feel myself open up to her again. We pick up from where we left off. I can talk to her like no one else in the world. She takes away my cynicism and my juvenility and my snideness. I become the idealistic person I'd like to be. And when she talks I listen because I want to, and not because I have to. She is endlessly and wholly and perfectly enchanting.

We're still there at midnight. I have absolutely no idea what we're talking about by now, but I know it's great. It's just that right level of drunkenness where the conversation really hits its stride. We could be talking about shooting stars, eternal love and the fundamental meaningless of it all; we could equally well be discussing the perfect Pot Noodle. It doesn't really matter; we have an inner rhythm of our own. I just want to hear her voice, swim in her eyes and lie, at mortal rest, between her golden breasts for ever.

But my poor blue balls are in exquisite raptures of agony. I've had an erection for three hours and I really need to go to the loo. And that means trying to pee with an agonising stiffy. It's an awful conundrum. Either you spend ten minutes pacing up and down the bathroom thinking about an OAP wiping his bottom or you opt for the long-distance release.

I go for the latter. I want to get back to Leila and tell her how much I like her, that I want to grow old with her, that I would die to protect her.

A long-distance release involves crouching on the floor at a distance of about one to two metres from the loo, according to a rapid calculus formula based on your angle of excitement and the fullness of your bladder. After many years of unrequited
conversations about shooting stars and Pot Noodles, I have the technique almost flawless.

But, just as I'm settling, one of Leila's housemates comes home and flings open the bathroom door. In a normal situation this would have been fine. We would have had a laugh about locks and swapped a few sumptuous observations about men and loo seats. But long-distance releases are no normal situations. Crouched as I am almost two metres back from my target, the bathroom door catches me in the small of my back in the full arc of its parabola. I topple forward,
membus virilis
still in shocked hand as the pair collide in a searing chorus of pain on the rim of the pan.

‘Sorry, so sorry,' she trills out, closing the bathroom door rapidly behind her.

Not half as sorry as I am. The force of the door also causes my head to fling forwards, hitting the upturned loo seat and bringing it crashing down on my neck. I am left looking like the victim of a medieval torture, my neck on the block, my head down the pan, my damaged cock in my hand, my life going down the toilet.

I struggle to my feet and make my way back to the sitting room to join Leila and her bemused friend.

‘Jack, this is Catherine.'

‘Hi, Catherine. Hi.'

Catherine looks at me as if I'm some kind of child molester. How much did she see in the bathroom? She wipes her hand on her trousers after shaking mine.

‘Leila, I've really got to go.'

She looks disappointed.

‘I'm sorry. Think I'm suddenly a bit drunk. I'll see myself out.'

‘So her flatmate thought you were polishing your trumpet in the bathroom?'

‘Yeah, Fred, probably. Whatever.'