The Drought (The hilarious laugh-out loud comedy about dating disasters!)

The
Drought

The hilarious laugh-out loud
comedy about dating disasters!

Steven
Scaffardi

Copyright
Steven Scaffardi 2011

All rights
reserved

This ebook is
licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be
re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share
this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy
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respecting the hard work of this author.

Published by
Steven Scaffardi at Smashwords

This book is
available in print at most online retailers.

Cover design
by Jacqueline Abromeit

Praise for
The Drought

"Steven
Scaffardi's first novel is absolutely hilarious and will leave
every reader, male or female, laughing out loud."

- Chick Lit
Plus

"A pleasantly
darker alternative to the offerings of Mike Gayle. All hail the
arrival of Steven Scaffardi."

- Ortis Deley
| Television & Radio Presenter

"I laughed so
much I spat my tea out!"

-
BestBooksToRead.com

"The Drought
is a good, entertaining read. It hits what could be a gap in the
market."

- David
Harrison | Award-winning journalist

"WARNING -
This book will make you cry... with laughter! The perfect gift for
the lad in your life!"

- BCF Book
Review

"Witty,
well-written, and pulls no punches. Scaffardi has an imaginative
mind that needs to be unleashed!"

- Angellica
Bell | Television & Radio Presenter

About the
author

Steven
Scaffardi was born in Tooting, south London in January 1978. A
former journalist,
The Drought
is his first novel, and has already received
praise from television personalities and journalists alike. He
currently works in advertising, but since January 2011, he has been
a regular on the London open mic stand-up comedy circuit. His brand
of comedy combines witty observation with self-deprecating humour;
incorporating tales of relationships, dealing with life in his 30s,
and the situations he encounters as a man.

For more
information on Steven Scaffardi visit:

http://stevenscaffardi.blogspot.co.uk/

Chapter 1:
The End

Sunday, September 13, 2009 -
12.47pm

Drought Clock: 255 days, 23
hours, 50 minutes

I guzzled down the remainder of
the vodka and coke left in my glass, wiping away the liquid that
escaped my lips and trickled down my face, staining the neck of my
white T-shirt.

“
Same again,
darling” The barmaid was polite enough to at least pretend to
ignore that I now had an equal amount of alcohol on my top as I did
in my throat.

“
Yes please,
and a bib if you have one,” I responded, attempting a witty
comeback to cover up my embarrassment.

She shot me a cheeky grin and
let out a little giggle, as she tended to prepare my drink. Then
eye contact, and another smile. Hold on, what did we have here? A
mutual attraction perhaps? Well, sort of.

Okay, so maybe she was a little
overweight and wore her hair up in that strange side ponytail that
some girls of a certain stereotype go by. You know, the one where
they scrape their hair back so tightly it looks painful because of
the constant agony they must be in from the stretching of skin from
the hairline to their forehead. This was all held in place by the
obligatory neon-coloured scrunchie, of course.

She wasn’t the usual type of
girl I would normally go for. In fact, she looked like the type of
girl my dad would say had been around the block a few times. In
this case, the prisoner cell block by the look of those tattoos on
her forearms.

I guess I normally went for the
more natural and pure look in a girl, as opposed to the aggressive
and potentially violent look this barmaid had managed to perfect. I
think she even had a bit of a limp too, like one leg was shorter
than the other or something.

But who was I kidding? On
current form I was certainly no Casanova and was in no position to
be picky. I was experiencing the worst drought of my life. It had
been over eight months since I had last managed to get my leg over.
I didn’t know if I should laugh or cry half the time. Eight months
without sex. People had committed crimes and been given lesser
sentences. It was the worst slump I‘d experienced since losing my
virginity seven years ago. With each passing day I had gone without
sex, the further my self-esteem seemed to spiral downwards. But
today’s events had tipped me over the edge.

I caught a glimpse of myself in
the mirror behind the bar. There I was – Daniel Hilles. I stared at
my reflection but I was unrecognisable to my own eyes. I had become
a desperate man, and the strain was beginning to take its toll. `I
might not be the best looking bloke in the world, but I'd like to
think I could pass for a 7-out-of-10 on a good day. But now I was
starting to look a shell of my former self. My stylish messy dark
brown hair now looked, well, just plain messy. Three days of not
shaving had not given me the desired effect of designer stubble.
Instead my face looked more like a used Brillo pad. My eyes were
bloodshot and glazed over, but that could have been the
alcohol.

An hour ago I’d hit rock
bottom. Just when I thought things couldn’t have got any worse,
they had. And this time it went much deeper than trying to get a
girl into bed. I’d walked into the White Horse on Balham High
Street with one intention – to get as pissed as quickly as
possible.

The White Horse was your
typical old man’s pub. Dark and gloomy, and full of drunks who
wanted to get as much cheap alcohol down their throats as quickly
as humanly possible. The wallpaper was red and white stripes. The
white stripes were no longer white; instead they were nicotine
yellow, while the red was a strange velvet material. It was the
type of wallpaper your parents may have had on the living room wall
back in the 1980s. The rest of the bar furniture was dark oak, and
the lack of music meant the only noise that could be heard was the
inane alcoholic chit-chat. The perfect venue to drown my
sorrows.

I thought this would be a safe
place; a place where I could forget about what had just happened.
It was also the last place on earth in which I thought I would find
myself in a position to have to try and impress a girl in a lame
attempt to get her to shag me. But now faced with an opportunity in
the shape of Vicky Pollard’s twin sister, I thought to myself why
not? Beggars can’t be choosers as they say.

Besides, she had some redeeming
qualities. The little bit of extra weight she was carrying had
certainly enhanced her buxom appearance, and she wasn’t exactly shy
when it came to trying to hide those two fabulous assets busting
out of her pub-issued white shirt. Granted she was probably wearing
one too many sovereign rings on her fingers for my liking – seven
to be exact plus two amazingly large Pat Butcher-esque gold hoop
earrings. But at that moment I had a good feeling about this.

That feeling could have been
the bulge that was starting to develop in my pants as I found
myself staring for a tad too long at her fantastically large
breasts jiggling with every movement. But she didn’t seem to mind
me looking, and with the right amount of coaxing I could be on to a
winner. The four double vodka and cokes I had downed in the last 45
minutes were also helping guide my judgement on this one.

She placed the drink down on
the coaster, leaning towards me and giving me even more of an
eyeful with a devilish look across her hard features. The dirty
little minx – she wanted me to look. I handed her the money and
held onto her hand for just a second or two long enough to be
playful.

Brad Pitt eat your heart out. I
don’t think I could have played it any cooler. I knew it, she knew
it – even the old man slumped at the end of the bar drinking the
cheapest bitter on tap knew it – she wanted me bad. “Keep the
change, sweetheart,” I told her with a wink and flashed her that
old winning smile which had been missing for far too long.

Yep, I was certainly back on
form. She wiggled her way over to the till, before turning and
heading back over towards me. I was ready for the next stage of
where this was heading. I’d crack a few jokes, we’d flirt a bit,
and she’d probably playfully hit me at some point in that way girls
do when they fancy you. God knows why I had been worried about
getting back into the game for all this time. I just had to be
myself and stop listening to other people. This one was most
definitely in the bag.

“
You’re 40p
short,” she said, that cheeky grin now fading away. Bollocks. A
minor setback, but don’t panic I said to myself. I made a quick
joke about telling her to keep the change and offered to buy her a
drink instead. I pulled out my small change pouch and started to
dig around at the copper and silver coins.

“
Is that a
purse?” she sarcastically asked, her grin now replaced by a mocking
curl of the lips.

“
No,” I shot
back. “It’s a pouch actually,” I continued, as I tried my best to
savour whatever masculinity I had left holding the stupid leather
purse that displayed a picture of a tiger in fake gem stones and
plastic diamonds.

Why the hell
had I listened to Rob when he advised me to buy the damn
thing?
“It’s the height of fashion; all
the footballers have got one of these bad boys,”
he told me. I had that same look on my face the
barmaid now displayed when Rob had said this to me.
“It’s bloody gay”
had
been
my exact response. I should have gone
with my first instinct.

“
Well it looks
like a purse – a man purse,” she laughed. “And is that a picture of
a cat?”

“
It’s a
tiger
actually,
”
I said as manly as possible, not wanting to concede the fact that I
was indeed holding a purse.

“
It is a cat!”
she said, pretty pleased with herself. “That makes it a pussy
purse!” And she started to cackle uncontrollably. “Hey John, have
you seen one of these before?” I was delighted with the fact she
had decided to share this awkward moment with her colleague. “This
guy has a pussy purse.”

John’s booming laugh alerted
other patrons in the bar, and he wasted no time informing the two
workmen he was serving, who were now looking over, pointing and
laughing.

“
It’s not a
purse, alright?” I managed to sputter out as I shoved the coins
into the palm of her hand, hoping to put an end to this
conversation immediately.

She studied the change. “This
is only 37 pence. You owe me another three pence. Anything else in
that purse of yours?” she enquired, looking at me like I was the
biggest tosser she had ever had the misfortune of laying her eyes
on. From the look of the clientele in this establishment, she had
seen a fair few in her time and I wasn’t exactly thrilled to be at
the top of that pile.

I don’t know why I was
surprised this was happening to me. One way or another, all female
contact I had experienced in the last few months had resulted in
some form of humiliation. Why should this be any different?

Panicking, I rummaged around in
my pockets, praying I had the lousy three pence somewhere so I
could at least salvage some dignity. Impatiently she rolled her
eyes at me, knowing full well I didn’t have the money. “Could I owe
you the three pence?” I pathetically asked.

“
Whatever,”
she sighed. I scooped up the drink and drank. I wanted to get out
of this bar as quickly as I could. But with the final swig, a piece
of ice about the size of the one that brought the Titanic down,
slid into my mouth and lodged itself in my throat. I coughed hard,
and in doing so managed to not only dislodge the iceberg, but also
spray the barmaid with a mouthful of vodka and coke.