Remind Me Again Why I Need a Man (11 page)

The late night movie is on.
Top Gun
. The scene where Tom Cruise takes Kelly McGillis zooming off into the sunset on the back of his motorbike, as Berlin sing ‘Take My Breath Away'. It triggers another memory, but this time for different reasons …

THE TIME: 13 February 1986. (I only remember the date so clearly because it was Valentine's Eve. Read on, you'll see why.)

THE PLACE: Blazes wine bar in Temple Bar before any of us knew it was Temple Bar. We just thought it a load of seedy side streets off the quays.

THE OCCASION: Jamie's newly formed band are making their highly anticipated debut. The Lovely Girls are, naturally, out in our finery to support him
.

‘Why are the band called Emergency Exit?' asks Rachel.

‘So that their name will always be in lights,' I answer, filling our glasses with the cheapest wine I could find, which is all we can afford.

‘Ughhh!' says Caroline, spitting it out. ‘Tastes like cat pee.'

‘Oh, that is truly revolting,' says Rachel, spewing hers out too. ‘In future, Amelia, you need to remember that wine should always cost more than milk.'

Blazes is packed with the UCD crowd, most of whom Jamie and his lead guitarist Pete Mooney have bullied into being there. They're both on stage (well, not really a stage, a big rostrum more like) tuning up, which involves Jamie screeching ‘Two, two, two, one, two' into a mike at a decibel level that would shatter glass.

‘I'd swear Jamie's wearing make-up, you know,' I say, squinting at him from where we're parked at a table on the far side of the stage.

‘Yeah, I did it for him earlier,' says Rachel. ‘He's
going for a Boy George look, right down to the plaits. The Alison Moyet hat is mine too. Do you like it?'

‘Alison Moyet? Crocodile Dundee, more like.'

‘Oh, look, there's Celine, over by the bar,' says Caroline.

Celine is Jamie's girlfriend of about three weeks; an Annie Lennox lookalike, full-time English student, part-time rock chick.

‘Will we invite her to join us?'

‘No,' Rachel snaps. ‘She should be Celine and not heard.'

‘What's wrong with her?' asks Caroline. ‘She seems really sweet and lovely.'

‘So by that you mean thick.'

‘Come on, Rachel,' I say, ‘we should make an effort. She is Jamie's girlfriend.'

‘Big deal, Jamie has a girlfriend. I have a pimple, but you don't hear me going on about it.'

‘But they've been together for a few weeks now. That's quite serious, for our Jamie.'

‘Oh, please, I have lumps of cheese in my fridge I've had longer relationships with.'

‘Rachel,' I ask as gently as I can, ‘what is up with you?' We're all used to her being brittle and caustic, but quite not to this extent.

‘Nothing. I just happen to think the girl is a complete tea cloth. In fact, there are probably tea cloths out there with higher IQs than hers.'

Next thing, two really handsome preppy-looking guys saunter over to our table. ‘Yes, before you ask, those seats
are
taken,' says Rachel, whose bad humour knew no bounds that evening. ‘We're with the band.'

‘Wish I could have said that,' I groan. ‘I've waited my whole life just to be able to say, “We're with the band.” '

‘Didn't mean to interrupt,' says the taller one politely. ‘I just wanted to ask your friend something.' He nods over to where Caroline is splurting out another gulp of the rancid wine.

‘Sorry,' she says, looking up at them and giggling prettily.

‘It's just that my friend here thinks you're the image of Selina Scott,' says the slightly cuter one of the two. ‘That's before she started doing breakfast television and got all wrecked-looking. But I think you look really like Daryl Hannah in
Splash
. Except your hair's a bit shorter. We just wondered if you got asked this a lot.'

‘Ignore them, they're pissed,' says Rachel.

Just then Emergency Exit launches into their first number, ‘You're Nancy to my Ronald, you're Raisa to my Gorbachev, if I'm Scargill then you're Thatcher.'

Caroline doesn't ignore them though. By the time Jamie's band have shut up (about seven minutes later, Emergency Exit's repertoire consists of only three songs), she is deep in conversation with the cuter one,
who she blushingly introduces to us between songs as Mike, a third-year dentistry student at Trinity College.

Next thing, the torture's over and Jamie bounds over to us, demanding congratulations.

‘Well done,' we all chorus. ‘You were fab!'

Celine's over like a shot too, almost elbowing us out of her way to get to Jamie. ‘Darling! Marvellous was not the word,' she says in her gravelly, sixty-fags-a-day voice.

‘So you liked it, babe?' says Jamie, hugging her.

‘I heard your music,' she says, deadly serious, ‘and I was jealous. That's the best compliment I can give you.'

Rachel shoots me a significant I-told-you-to-watch-out-for-that-stupid-cow look and, for a moment, I feel maybe she's right. I shrug it off though, figuring: I'm sure Yoko Ono had to put up with this from Paul, George and Ringo all the time.

‘I think Pete likes you,' Jamie says to me later on, once he's relaxed and happy with a Malibu and pineapple in his hand and Celine perched on his knee.

‘Who's Pete?'

‘Lead guitarist. Well, only guitarist. He wanted to know who your musical influences are. I told him Kraftwerk and Talking Heads. Could you imagine if he found out the horrible truth?'

‘What horrible truth?'

‘That you secretly like Sister Sledge and Bananarama.
And you even have a Billy Joel LP lying around your house. No use to keep pretending it's your mother's, I have you sussed.'

Celine laughs, a bit cruelly I think, and I'm all set to defend myself when Pete himself joins us. ‘Introduce me to him, quick,' I hiss at Jamie. ‘I only have about an hour before my hair starts flattening.'

‘Yeah,' says Jamie, clocking that at least three and a half cans of hairspray and mousse must have gone into my painstakingly backcombed hair that night. ‘Take that, ozone layer.'

We all shake hands with Pete and offer congratulations, then he settles on a bar stool between Caroline, Mike and me. He's very cool-looking, beanpole tall and skeletally thin with hollow, sucked-in cheeks, kind of like Nick Cave's. He's head-to-toe in black and wearing heavy eye make-up too. Very New Order.

‘So did you enjoy the gig?' he asks me.

‘Yeah! You were
fantastic
!' I lie. (Well, it's been a long time since any guy cared about my musical influences. What can I say? I'm flattered.) ‘You remind me of U2 when they first started out.'

‘Don't mention those bastards. Adam Clayton stole one of my songs, you know.'

‘What? Which one?'

‘Sure, they only have two decent songs. “Pride in the Name of Love”.'

‘You wrote that?'

‘Well, not exactly. I wrote a song called “I'm So Proud That You Love Me”. But my brother was in the same class as Clayton and I'm telling you, he stole it. One minute, me and Jamie are jamming it in my dad's garage; next thing, before I even have a chance to record it on my double tape deck, U2 are on
Top of the Pops
singing it. Almost the same tune and everything. Bastards.'

‘That's terrible.'

‘That's the music business. What did you think of “Poison Yuppie”?'

I look at him blankly.

‘The last song we sang? With me on lead vocals?'

‘Oh, sorry, it was … emm … really,
really
great.'

‘I wrote that.'

‘You did? Wow.' I try to look suitably impressed.

‘Yeah, when my ex-girlfriend left me for a guy with red braces and a filofax.'

We chat on for a bit, mostly – well, all about him, and eventually he says, ‘Do you want to go and see Talking Heads?'

‘Are they coming to Dublin? Do you have tickets?'

‘No, I meant the film they're in,
Stop Making Sense
. It's on at the Ambassador.'

Just then, Caroline interrupts us. By now, I notice, she and Mike are holding hands. ‘Are you both talking about going to a movie?' she asks. ‘Because Mike's just asked me to see
Top Gun
with him tomorrow night.
There's a special Valentine's night showing. Why don't we all go as a foursome?'

‘Why not a sixsome?' says Jamie, arms tight around Celine.

It's only at this point I notice that Rachel has left.

‘And please don't think I'm in any position to be picky. Just as long as they can stand erect and use a knife and fork, they're in with a chance. I'm completely inoculated from having any great expectations when it comes to men.'

I'm sitting in Caroline's elegantly appointed drawing room, sipping café au lait and filling her in on what's been happening in Ira's class/bitching about Greg Taylor/humbly begging to be set up with one of Mike's friends.

‘Oh, sweetie,' says Caroline, cradling her sleeping four-year-old, Joshua, close. (You should just see the two of them. Throw in a star and three wise men and you're looking at a beautiful Madonna and child.) ‘I'm racking my brains to think of any nice, eligible men Mike knows, who you haven't met yet, but I honestly can't. They're all either married or spoken for, every one of them. And besides, after the last few single guys we set you up with, I wouldn't blame you if you never
went on a blind date ever again as long as you live, you poor thing.'

‘I was kind of hoping you wouldn't bring them up.'

Over the years, I have, of course, badgered Caroline and Mike into matching me up with anyone halfway suitable and … well … you don't need to have the consequences spelt out. Here I am, years on, still single, still sitting on her immaculate Louis XVIII two-seater, still looking for fix-ups.

‘Do you remember the Oompa-Loompa?' Caroline giggles.

‘Oh God, don't remind me!' I squeal.

The Oompa-Loompa was a work colleague of Mike's, an orthodontist, who Mike and Caroline had introduced me to years ago. In fact, that's probably the best thing I can say about him. He had a decent job. Otherwise he was arrogant and mean, the type who'd take me to dinner in a posh restaurant which I could ill afford, order three courses for himself while I'd nibble on a starter, insist on buying ludicrously expensive bottles of wine, then glug the entire bottle himself while I sipped on a thimbleful (I'd be the designated driver) and, finally, insist we split the bill fifty-fifty.

Then after we broke up, he became possessive to the point of virtually becoming a stalker. He would buzz the intercom at my apartment gates for hours at a time while I lay flat out on the living-room floor, terrified he'd see that I was home. It was Jamie who christened
him the Oompa-Loompa, mainly because he was short with red hair. Jamie also did his best to start a rumour that the Oompa-Loompa had to buy all his clothes from kiddie departments, but it wasn't true, just Jamie being mean. Funny, but mean.

‘He's married now, you know,' says Caroline.

‘You see, if the Oompa-Loompa can find someone to marry, then so can I.'

‘Well, sweetie, you know what I always say? These things are bigger than us. If Julia Roberts's movies have taught me anything, it's that fate and serendipity will eventually lead you to Mr Right.'

‘Caroline, I've waited thirty-seven years; can I help it if fate and serendipity need a kick up the bum?'

She starts giggling again. ‘What was the name of that patient of Mike's you went out with? The one who took you to dinner in the Trocadero …'

‘And when I asked for a mint tea—'

‘He went, “Mint tea? La-di-dah!” '

‘That wasn't the worst of it. His proudest boast was that he'd never been outside of Dublin in his life. Didn't even own a passport. He kept saying, “Sure, why would anyone want to leave the Phibsboro Road?” He was forty-two.'

‘And he had boasted to Mike that he ran his own highly successful business …'

‘But it turned out to be a sweet shop which he lived over.'

Suddenly Caroline goes quiet.

‘What's up?' I ask.

‘Amelia, do you remember what the nuns in school used to teach us?'

‘That, sooner or later, everyone gets shot?'

She smiles. ‘Stop messing.'

‘What then?'

‘Remember social studies class? Sister Hildegarde always used to say that you should go on at least three dates with a man before you rejected him. Do you think maybe you're not really giving these guys a real chance? That you're writing them all off for very superficial reasons? You know, like we tease Jamie for doing.'

‘No I'm not. Am I?
Am I?'

‘I'll give you one example. Damien Delaney.'

I groan inwardly. She's got me there. Damien Delaney is a good friend of Mike's; they're in the same golf club and play together regularly. I have to tread carefully here as I know Caroline is very fond of him too.

‘Now you tell me one thing that was wrong with Damien.'

I brace myself for the lie. The truth was, we only went on one date, just before I met
He-whose-name-shall-forever-remain-unspoken
and, although it wasn't disastrously awful, I did do the seatbelt manoeuvre when he drove me home. This is a handy move which
Jamie and I have perfected over years of bad dating, whereby if a guy is driving you home and you've already decided you don't want to invite him in for coffee, you unlock your seatbelt just before you arrive at your destination, but hold it in place so it still looks locked. Then, once you're safely home, you can be out of the car in one swift movement, politely wishing him a very good night, and cleverly eliminating the embarrassment of any should-we-kiss-each-other-goodnight-or-not angst. One hundred per cent effective, every time.