05/02/05 - Corners
Nature originally gave me a bunch of tools for luring lovers. I'm not referring to the heaving roundness of my chest or the soft curve of my rump, but corners ... of eyes.
Peripheral vision is the vanguard of the mating game. You're in a pub, on the tube, on the dancefloor or fingering the veg at the supermarket, and you spot someone who pleases your aesthetic senses. Your pupils get BIG and, according to body language folk, you point your feet in the direction of whatever has tickled your fancy. You look. You look away. You look back. You look away again. Each time you flick your gaze, you watch from the corner of your beady little eye to see if they're watching you not really watching them not really watching you. To and fro you go. If you're not entirely sure, you chuck in a yawn for good measure. If you catch them yawning back, you're in! Now you can shuffle up and ask if they come here often or tell them their legs 'would be great as a necklace'.
But what happens if you came last in the ophthalmological genetic lottery? If that corner action starts to disappear and over time you start to see your world through tunnels? It's over, right? Wrong. Those finely honed subtleties of watching while not watching are shot to pieces, so you have to start relying on the fast-track approach of staring directly, smiling coyly and waiting for them to come panting on over. But they do - and it's so much quicker.
12/02/05 - Chances
In an ants' nest of 8 million, the odds of seeing someone once and then seeing them again are wafer-thin. If you live in a village and spot someone you like at the Spar, chances are you'll see them again down the post office or walking the dog. And because people in the country actually talk to strangers, you've got licence to spout something imaginative such as 'Lovely weather, isn't it?' or 'Have you seen what the yoofs have done to the clock tower?'
The capital, however, despite its vast population, is a void when it comes to the pursuit of 'meeting people'. The statistics of love in London are bleak: around 8 million people, half of them female, which leaves 4 million; eliminate the ones who like guys more than girls, and you've got about 3 million; then shave off Tory voters, under 26s, over 36s, under 5ft 6ins, those with bad haircuts, City boys, frequenters of Firkin pubs, etc, and you're left with about 200 elusive suitables.
It's a barren land, so when you do spot the glimmering needle in the sodden haystack, you can't leave it until you bump into them again: you won't.
I went to see a friend strut it up with his dance troupe in a club in King's Cross. On my way out, I met one of my 200. We traded chemically potent glances and I left. I took a cab home. And then, remembering my statistics, took it straight back. I'd forgotten something. I said it was my gloves. Really it was his number.
19/02/05 - Hiding
I've given my number to a post-punk DJ I met in a cabaret club. He rings and we meet. I'm cringing. What will I say? What if we sit in silence? What if he tries to kiss me when I don't want him to? What if I like him, but he doesn't like me? Does he know I can't see around the edges? Does he know I write this column? If he does, is he just out to get in it? If he doesn't, will it put him off when he finds out I'm hanging out my life in the paper every week?
He asks me what I do. 'Great,' I think, 'he must read the Mail.' I tell him I write for the Guardian. He asks for my surname. I go red and refuse to give it. A trip to Google will cough up every lover and loser of my life. What normally comes out in the passage of time will be there in an instant. The sorry truth that I'm trying to hide until the time is right will be there on the monitor before him.
He thinks I'm from a famous family; a Murdoch or Hilton maybe? I let him believe it. Anything is better on a first date than 'in 25 years, I'll probably be blind and, oh, next week you'll be appearing in the paper as the bloke from the cabaret club'.
He comes to my flat. When he's in the toilet, I shove all my back issues of Weekend down the back of the fridge. I think my secret is safe. It is, for two weeks ... until he turns up one Saturday clutching a magazine and a knowing grin.
26/02/05 - Pot NoodleI've been dating a postpunk DJ with a gentle, pondering manner and a haircut like Hitler for three weeks. When I met him, I thought he looked like Ted Hughes or a postrevolutionary Russian poet, maybe. Whatever, I was sure he secreted romance and sophistication from every pore of his mysterious, smouldering, perplexed being.
The first throes of the affair were spent in a locational triangle consisting of my flat, the pub up the road and the greasy spoon on the corner. He seemed to like coming over to mine and avoiding his. He told me the heating didn't work and that the man downstairs liked dragging his naked girlfriend into the communal hall. I still wanted to go over. I wanted to know what he knew of me: what cereal I ate for breakfast, what books I read, that my record collection included The Frog Chorus and a bit of Clapton. All I knew of him is that he wore the same jacket on every date and he'd told me that he had 'a bit of a thing' for David Bowie, Pot Noodles, crisps and making lists.
So, one night I invited myself over. I sensed he was hiding something. He was. The 'bit of a thing' for Bowie and noodles was an understatement. I lay naked in my lover's bed and resigned myself to the fact that my notions of romance and sophistication were mere projectile fantasies. The reality is forcing down a breakfast of Beef And Onion Super Pot with crisps and counting the 53 Bowie posters staring down at my Sunday morning gluttony.