An Idiot in Love (a laugh out loud comedy) (23 page)

              She clasped it and shook gently. My palm slipped in hers, I could feel the wetness of my own hand. I could sense the sweat as it transferred from me to her.

              ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, withdrawing the appendage and wiping it on my trousers. ‘I didn’t mean to, I mean I didn’t know--’

              ‘It’s okay,’ she said genuinely.

              ‘I washed my hands,’ I assured her. ‘I mean it’s not dirty, it’s not urine or anything. It’s just sweat; I mean that probably sounds just as bad, well, certainly
bad
, perhaps not
as
bad.’

              She looked away shyly. I paused, cleared my throat awkwardly and drained the last dregs from my bottle of beer.

              ‘I mean it could have been perspiration from the bottle.’ I told her, glancing at the smeared glass. ‘Is it perspiration or is it condensation? Is there even a difference?’

              I heard a loud cough and turned around to see Matthew glaring at me.

              I stared at the empty bottle and began to finger the sticker, peeling and picking away at the adhesive.

              ‘They say this is a sign of sexual frustration,’ I said absently. ‘I never quite understood that. If you were
that
sexually frustrated and your hands were
that
idle, wouldn't it be easier just to have a wan--’

              The bell sounded and the Australian girl sprang like a tightly wound jack-in-the-box. She flashed me a brief smile -- the excitement and wonder in her face having faded somewhat -- and disappeared without saying a word.

              Number two looked like a man. It had short, dark hair, thick bushy eyebrows, a prominent brow and a monstrous set of teeth that poked through an underbite with the jagged uncertainty of broken piano keys.

              ‘Hi, my name is Ashley,’ it said in a voice that could have passed for a slightly feminine man or a slightly butch woman.

              Despite many flaws, Ashley had a powerful set of green eyes that would suit any supermodel. They glistened at me from across the table, catching the light of the halogen bulbs above.

              ‘I’m Kieran,’ I said.

              This time I decided not to offer my hand, even though the sweat had now mostly dried or had been transferred onto my jeans or the hand of the Australian girl.

              ‘You know, you have amazing eyes. I know that’s a corny pickup line but I didn’t mean it like that,’ I said. ‘Not like I wouldn’t want to pick you up,’ I quickly corrected. ‘I mean you’re a beautiful ma--woman,’ the inflection was a little higher than I had anticipated, it shot to the heights of helium abuse and I was forced to cough it away and pretend it hadn’t happened by adding more base to the next few syllables. ‘
You are
, don’t get me wrong. I just don’t do pickup lines.’

              Ashley stared deeply at me, as if trying to figure something out.

              ‘So...’ I looked down at my fingers as I danced them absently on the table. ‘Do you come here often?’

              The bell sounded again. The sound of chairs being shoved back by eager backsides immediately followed.

              Matthew leaned over before the third woman sat down.

              ‘What the fuck are you playing at?’ He asked in an angry whisper.

              ‘I don’t know, I really don’t. I’m blabbering; I told you this was a bad idea. I’m still nervous; I don’t think the pills are working.’

              ‘Calm down,’ he said in softer tones. ‘Let them do the talking.’

              Number three was a plump middle-aged woman with a bubbly smile emanating from a face flushed with red, either through nerves, alcohol or excitement.

              I did as Matthew said and let her talk. I didn’t even need an opening; she attacked the silence after our introduction like a dog attacking a piece of meat. She ate up the sentences like they were made of cake.

              I pretended to listen to every word she spoke. If my brief experiences with women have told me one thing it’s that they not only like to talk but they like other people to listen. So I played the listener.

              She stopped talking after she had munched through a handful of sentences. She had a look of expectation on her face.

              ‘So?’ she said, prolonging the word so it sounded like
soo-oooo
.

              I had been thinking about something else, anything else;
everything
other than what this woman was saying to me.

              ‘Sorry,’ I said, ‘I drifted off there. I didn’t hear--’

              ‘Am I boring you?’ she quickly interrupted. Those sweet bubbly features now turning sour.

              ‘No, not boring as such.’

              ‘
As such?
’ I had flashbacks to my childhood and to Kelly Newsome -- the same angry tone, the same questioning glare. I was sure that if she was standing she would have her hands on her hips right now.

              ‘It was interesting, honestly,’ I plastered a smile on my face; even
I
knew it looked disingenuous. ‘I’m just tired. Distant. Maybe a little drunk,’ I held up the empty bottle as if it were concrete proof.

              ‘Don’t patronise me,’ her sour face looked prepared to spit. She seemed to be having an internal battle, perhaps deciding if she should empty her glass of wine on me or not. In the end the bell made her mind up for her, she stood, distasteful muttered: ‘Typical man,’ and departed.

              ‘Three and out?’ Matthew whispered across.

              ‘She’s got issues,’ I said. ‘She has some Jekyll and Hyde thing going on. I dodged a bullet there. Not my type anyway.’

              ‘I told you, tonight your type is female, end of. And even then we can make exceptions.’

              The eyes of number four were on me before she sat down and they never left me when she lowered a trim backside, fitted in tight formal pants, onto the seat. She was attractive, stunning actually, her features set with a film-star glow reminiscent of a decade long dead. A charm nestled in her eyes, a beauty in the small lines at the corner of her mouth, a touch of class in her demeanour.

              Like the previous singleton she was about twenty years older than me, and before I could stop myself I made a point of mentioning it.

              ‘You look a lot like my mother,’ I had said it with a smile and good intentions, but my heart sank when I heard those words leave my lips.

              The woman with the film star looks didn’t react how I would have expected. She didn’t frown, she didn’t look away, she didn’t slap me. There was a touch of indecision there, but nothing malignant.

              ‘I’m so sorry,’ I said, covering my mouth, as if I could force the words back in. ‘I meant that as a compliment, honestly. I heard myself saying it... It didn’t sound like a compliment I know, but...I’m so sorry, I’m not very good at this.’

              ‘You have a tendency to speak before you think?’ she said, her voice was soft, reassuring. I thought motherly but quickly forced that thought out of my head in case it did any more damage.

              ‘You don’t know the half of it,’ I said, somewhat relieved she hadn’t hit me yet. ‘I don’t mean anything bad by it, I just can’t help myself. I talked to the first girl too much, the last one talked to
me
too much -- I didn’t listen to a word -- and the second, well, I’m not even sure that was a girl at all.’

              ‘Well, you haven’t scared me away yet.’ A genuine warm smile curled at the corners of her mouth, it was as reassuring as her voice. ‘I’m Ally.’

              ‘Kieran.’

              ‘So Kieran, what brings you here?’

              I glanced at Matthew. He was leaning across the table and listening intently to a woman who had yet to visit me. ‘A friend,’ I said, looking back at her. ‘He said it would be fun.’

              ‘Has it been?’

              ‘It's been eventful I guess.’

              ‘You class offending three women as eventful?’ Ally asked with a cheeky grin.

              I smiled, suddenly overcome with shyness. ‘Just three? So you’re not including yourself in that?’

              ‘It’s impossible to offend me,’ she said confidently.

              ‘I’m sure I’d manage.’

              She seemed to ponder this. ‘Is that a challenge?’

              I grinned. I sensed things were finally going my way. Then the bell rang.

              Ally stood with an apologetic shrug. I watched grimly as she backed away from the table.

              ‘That looked better,’ Matthew whispered across. ‘She was smiling, always a good sign.’

              ‘I liked her,’ I said, leaving space for a disappointed
but
.

              ‘How did you blow it?’

              ‘Why do you assume that I blew it?’

              The next round of girls sat down and ended the hushed conversation.

              Number five waited patiently for me to greet her, but I did so with such a lack of enthusiasm that I set the tone for five minutes of awkward coughing, throat clearing and small talk.

              I could feel the onset of the Valium, a wave of warmth that had started in my toes was now tingling its way through my thighs and my groin.

              My inhibitions began to ebb away. I could feel my anxieties and my worries departing.

              Number six was an anxious blonde; she didn’t look much older than nineteen. Under the increasingly enchanting spell of the sedative I felt a desire to connect with her; a oneness with my fellow human beings. But this fresh found social desire translated into five minutes of blank staring and smiling. Hereby increasing her anxieties whilst my own dissolved.

              With number seven I made a good early start on the conversation, but it turned ugly, very quickly.

              ‘So, have you been single long?’

              ‘What is that supposed to mean?’

              ‘I’m...nothing. I was just--’             

              ‘Why are you smiling like that?’

              ‘I’m smiling? Am I smiling?’

              ‘You don’t know that you’re smiling?’

              ‘I do now, or at least I think that I know that I
am
smiling now, otherwise why would you have asked such a thing?’

              ‘What?’

              The five minutes couldn’t have been up sooner for number seven; she nearly tripped over the chair as she scuttled onto the next table.

              The steadily increasing warmth of the Valium continued to suck my inhibitions away by the minute, but during the eighth date that warmth exploded into an unimaginable heat.

              Number eight was a small Asian woman with delicate oriental features and a thin smile. She introduced herself, I gave my name and then I insulted her. Another blip, another blabber. But this time I didn’t react with a sinking heart, it was like watching a DVD of my life, the impact moment had been played, but I was able to pause, hold the scene and contemplate.

              I was looking for the rewind button when she retaliated.

              ‘What do you mean,
“We’ll all be speaking Chinese in a few years?’’’
she was no longer smiling but I was. I hadn’t meant to say what I had said, it had slipped out as so many careless words do, but I didn’t mind. The Valium took care of that.

              ‘I didn’t mean anything bad by it. I’m not racist or anything,’ I assured her. ‘Or is it xenophobic?’

              She didn’t answer. She glared.

              ‘If I don’t object to the colour of your skin but I hate your country, that’s xenophobia right?’ I shrugged my own nonchalant reply. ‘Anyway, I have no issue with you people.’

              ‘
You people?
’

              ‘That sounded bad didn’t it?’

              ‘Uh-huh,’ I could practically see the steam blowing out of her ears.

              ‘I used to work with a guy who was Chinese,’ I said, trying to sound serious but unable to brush off the simpleton smile still plastered over my face.

              ‘Really?’ she said in a displeased monotone.

              ‘Well, he was Korean, but it’s the same thing ain’t it?’

              She grunted a noise that didn’t sound human, looked around the table in fleeting aggression and then shot upwards, throwing her chair backwards with the force of her calf muscles. ‘You’re despicable,’ she spat, her voice infused with rising octaves of frustration.

              She stormed straight out of the room, her hair billowing behind her as she strode through the doors and allowed them to slam shut in her wake. A few people looked my way, a mixture of disgrace and wonder on their faces.

              Sober I would have sunk my head ashamedly, or followed my disgraced date out of the room with a flushed colour decorating my cheeks, but under the influence of sedatives I returned each stare with a smile that said
isn’t this wonderful?

              And I generally believed that, because at that moment I felt wonderful, after that moment, with the benefit of hindsight, I would have stopped myself. I would have gagged myself or kicked myself out of that room and into the street.

              But I didn’t have the benefit of sober hindsight and Matthew became too engrossed in the event to save me from myself.

              First it was the turn of a pleasant, albeit obese, woman who shifted the table with her stomach when she sat down.

              ‘God, you’re a big girl aren’t you?’ I said.

              She saw the smile on my face and assumed it was either a cruel joke or I was mentally handicapped and had no power over what I said, halfway through the date she seemed to decide upon the latter (partially true in this case) after listening to a dialogue which ranged from the toilet habits of Britain's fattest man to the economical upsides of anorexia.