20 April - Pimping for friends

I have been pimping for a friend lately, because I’m reasonably good at it. G. and g/friend split up around Xmas and it had been a long time coming, basic incompatibility I diagnosed, despite strong mutual attraction As it took a while, when it ended, he wasn’t exactly heartbroken. In the meantime he had met a woman through work and they’d gone to dinner a few times in a town where they both find themselves working, she during the whole week, he a couple of days a week, not every week. He was smitten, though it took this lady two meetings before she disclosed she has a boyfriend of 15 years back at her hometown. Sort of historic boyfriend who never visits her where she works and probably doesn’t understand her anymore and who has yet to marry her and she wants to leave him but….

So, of course she’s unavailable and of course he’s smitten. I point out that they only seem to meet at drinks or dinner and it’s kind of hard to get a full picture in the cosy limbo of expensive restaurants. They like each other because they can talk and talk and he buys her dinner but they don’t know much about each other really. I suspect they’re both lonely in the city they have to work in and provide a great respite from tiny flat for her and hotel room for him. Still, after 3 months of dinners, drinks, constant texts and emails declaring ‘you’ve changed my life, you’re my god’ and gifts from him to her, she’s still not gone further than some taxi snogs with him.

I think she’s treating him like the gay friend and she’s the one who goes home at the w/end and shags her boyfriend who she wants to leave but .. blah blah.
Eventually he reaches the point and gives an ultimatum and decides not to be in touch with her until she’ll have sorted out her situation one way or another. I predict she’ll stay with boyfriend. In the meantime he’s truly upset. For something that never happened! This must be like what courtly love was all about… Courting and hopes…

So time to take action and distract G. At a party in London I introduce him to J. who’s a high flying PA to movie directors and jets off to NY and LA often enough. I don’t know her at all (friend of a friend) but he likes the look of her and so they arrange to meet. I predict second base will be reached in no time but I forgot she’s 35 and so she’s also playing the long game and in order to do this, there’s no concessions except some minor snogging and once again he’s busy dropping hundreds on dinners and cocktails. J. sweetly buys breakfasts at the w/end but .. not post sex obviously. And after the breakfasts she’s off to Harrods for a massage in her cute BMW and he has nothing to do but read the Sunday papers with us. He finds himself invited to some wedding with her in Portugal, or to NY where she stays at the St Regis or to the forthcoming wrap party for latest movie. Clearly he’s interested and intrigued but his mind is still on the unavailable one… and was considering J. only as a one off, whilst now he’s being sucked into a relationship that hasn’t gone sexual yet.

In the meantime he’s being told off by a female director in his company who he’s close to because she says that J. is not blue chip career enough for G!. How dare she criticise my r ‘n’ roll acquaintances? I think she’s jealous. And she’s just moved out of her boyfriend’s flat. Another 35ish… Scary times.

Time for more distractions … this time I take him to dinner with a hedge fund lawyer I think he’ll like the look of if not the lifestyle (she’s very extra sporty and he doesn’t do sports, she’s very intense and he’s very laid back, but you know, am hoping chemistry will do the trick.)

However at dinner it’s clear that they’re not in a hurry to speak to one another. They’re not sat opposite each other. Darn, I didn’t manoeuvre that fast enough. He talks most dinner to A. who’s opposite him but she’s recently hitched up so I doubt she’s interested. At the tail end of dinner this other woman L. who I don’t know but is some kind of consultant/accountant friend of A. turns up and boy does she wades straight in. As a confident 37 year old she probably thinks that she has no allegiance to the other woman who invited her along…She ends up monopolysing him the rest of the time at the bar and then they disappear off to a club from which he returns alone at 3am. Snogging took place again but no deal.

Now, am beginning to suspect he doesn’t know how to close a deal, or is a very bad snogger or… he’s still thinking about unavailable woman, to really take a step in another direction.

Which will it be? He’s back again next weekend and this time he’s going to tell J. he has nowhere to stay and let’s see if she finally takes him home? As for the wedding in Portugal, I’ve advised he should go only if guaranteed that there will be top glamorous/interesting people in attendance, otherwise, why bother. Have become very straightforward with my advice these days.


But then I get a pang of guilt about the women.. Little do they know how many he’s juggling… but of course he’s not doing anything wrong. All is up for grabs and he’s not getting laid.

8 February - A tale of 3 Men

A simple one really, may expand on it some other time and am sure the male readers would have plenty to retort but... based on a short meal and drink with two girlfriends last night, the following was established: without a good woman most men would not function. I don't care that some of them run big hedge funds or politics (er... case in point, see the mess on the markets and the world in general), they are not very good on a day to day level.

Of these 3 men in question, one would be bankrupt (subtext: if it wasn't for the wife), as he has no notion of how much the tax man wants and even when he does, he doesn't set it aside and would spend it on new clothes because everytime someting is dirty, not knowing how a washing machine functions, he'd just go out get more. And he'd forget the kids's private school fees and a host of other things. He'd forget to feed the kids too if left in his care, if a washing machine is difficult, so is a cooker. Never mind that he has a house full of computers and gadgets on which he's very competent.

One would be a sad lonely figure drinking pints every night at the same pub as he'd been doing for years, and would be overweight due to said pints and bad food and would also not have a decent sofa to sit on or uplighter lighting. These two improvements to his quarters were achieved recently by the new girlfriend who also bought cushions (here my heart goes out to him) and who encouraged him to go swimming four times a week and so he's over a stone lighter than when they met, and has also acquired new social skills and social group by being absorbed into hers.

One would be in heart attack territory and depression if it wasn't for supporting g/friend who also insists on visiting GP's and measuring blood pressure when one has palpitations or when one is ill and who enforces (eventually) assorted other practitioners who can get your rhythms flowing again and help regain optimism, find new work etc.

All these men are over 43 and still causing as much work as if they were 9 years old. It's kind of tiring ... At least 2 of them are currently still performing at the top of their sexual abilities so there is some payback and it's not all doom and gloom.

26 November - Multitasking

How much do I do in a morning before I leave the house? It just occurred to me, that I clean the shower head (oh yes, had put it in a bowl wiht some vinegar to descale it) I take things out of the washing machine (I set it on night before), I clean the mirror in the bathroom as I brush my teeth and I wipe the washbasin, I make him a cup of tea. I tidy up a bit, pick up stuff, re-arrange newspapers and mags, and am about to take the thrash out when I remember to just leave it well alone…

I don’t care. He has time to read the papers, read books, do anything he wants, but not hoover unless he's been told for a week and not polish his shoes unless he's been told for two weeks. My oh my, who would want to live together /get married and all those things then really become your chores instead of just doing them because, because, you just do. Why can't I just sit down, drink my tea and maybe read for five minutes before I go to work? Why am I wired this other stupid way that makes me the maid?

He's got his uses, I do send him to get the Vietnamese visas though… and that is something I'd have to take a morning off for. Still he'll have a coffee whilst he waits and read in the car. He still has an easier life than me.

18 November - Dating Dos & Don'ts

This should really be part of my impending tome ‘100 Lessons You Really Should Have Learnt By Now (in your local bookshop self-help and comedy sections in 2008 perhaps), but here goes. If you’re about to meet for a first official date someone who you’ve thought was cute and you told your mutual friends as much and they egged you on to get together… then you should be in top form, best behaviour and so forth. I know this from … just plain sense but also because I get regular emails from this website I must have subscribed to once and you know, it’s good to be reminded. Her rule no. 1 with regards to dating is: Be fragrant and not tired, wound up etc. And my two gay friends (who should know better) just went and flaunted it. Granted, neither is a camp gay with high regard for fashion or cosmetic counters (unlike another I know who says he buys all Chanel face and body care products because he likes the packaging and especially the noise the little pump makes when dispensing the product. But I digress). So, a year ago they met briefly at a launch but didn’t vibe off each other and one went off with someone else that night. It was short lived.

Then a few weeks back R. (42) arrived and met a few of us after we’d been out for a v. long lunch and told me he rather liked J. (36) who was present and at this point very louchely slouched on a brown leather sofa at S. House. J. also told me he rather liked R. I was a bit surprised and pointed you ‘You met last year and didn’t vibe off each other ’ but had to concede that at least J. now looked very different as he sports a lumberjack style huge beard which didn’t exist last Summer.

So, emails were exchanged – we got very excited, they do have jobs that mean they understand each other’s world, visually at least and they’re similarly built and both are very manly looking, nothing sissy about them - and we left them to it. But I did know that on the day they met J. had been up most of the night and had imbibed lots alcohol by the time R arrived at 3pm. But I didn’t know that R. had also not gone to bed. So they probably had blurred vision, god knows what they saw in each other or maybe it was a case of ‘thank god there’s a gay man in this hetero gathering, I’ll have him’.

So…. They arranged to meet for breakfast on the day after J. returns from a trip to the USA (hence he’s a bit jetlagged) and R. turns up again after an all nighter so he’s a bit dishevelled. I get an email from J. to say ‘Nah, there’s no chemistry there’. But R. does like him and he’s a bit upset when he tries to arrange a further proper date and gets told ‘Better not’. You have to admire the level of frankness here displayed, no time wasters…. R. wonders if it was because he was out of it. I check with J. and he repeats not, just no chemistry. Oh well, my first attempt at gay matchmaking has failed. But I wonder, if they met in the queue to the coat-check whilst leaving the Vauxhall tavern, would they go for each other? J. told me he went home with someone from the coat-check queue a while ago and didn’t even bother to ask this guy’s name…. And it wasn't the first time either.

12 October - Of Mice & Women

One Sunday am uncharacteristically in a pub full of people watching a rugby qualifier. Two of my g/friends are early 30's, the other one is my age. One, G. leans over to say she likes that bloke over there in the green flak jacket who's talking to a woman and are they together? I reply after a while that the body language seems to indicate they're just mates and good choice, he's the most attractive here. A while later I leave to go join the fag end of a Sunday lunch and meet some bloke I'd heard much about from a girlfriend over the year she had a little thing for him. Indeed, I liked him a lot. Made perfect sense. But back to my story. Imagine my suprise the following day when same age g/friend says that she ended up introducing green flak jacket boy to L . and yes, he was single and yes they liked each other and things may be happening.
Fast forward a week or two when same age g/friend relates that it's all already over. Why? Because he wouldn't kill a mouse. A first date had gone ok, not brilliant, as he'd not taken enough charge of where to go/what to do. He's 'only' 27, bless. But by second date they were in L.'s flat, kissing etc on the sofa and in various stages of undress when L. spotted a mouse next to her face. She got boy off her and asked him to kill the mouse. He said he would try and catch him and throw it out of the window. No, you must kill him says L.
A bit of fluffing about later and she gets into a huff and asks boy to leave. Then she sends him a text to say it wouldn't work etc and bye bye.
My same age friend is laughing her head off at this tale. I'm flabbergasted that this poor boy may be now traumatised by the way in which he was dumped because he didn't deal with a mouse in the way the woman expected.
Then I think of myself age 30odd and the amount of people (men) I discarded for similar spurious reasons. You know, it would never work because you like beans on toast and I want to climb the Himalayas. I feel like picking up the phone to call L. and tell her off or at leasat point out she could have killed the mouse herself, but instead I text G. that boy is free and so long as she can deal with this character flaw of his...

16 July - The perils of Pauline are still the same

Youngish blonde maidens don't have it easy. The ogres are still out there or the prince too charming to be believable, so it's an odd swinging movement my darling G has to learn.
tbc