Low Expectations (3 page)

Rose was being dry-humped on stage by a tall man whose face was entirely obscured by his sweat-licked hair. They exchanged numbers before I packed her off home in a taxi. In an act of sweet hope, sexual frustration or desperation (possibly all three) their initial drunken attraction met the
sober light of Wednesday. It was essentially a blind date, as all she could remember about him was that he was probably white and had been wearing a trilby.

‘… So, I was pleasantly surprised! I thought he'd be a minger, as that seems to be the only factor uniting men I've pulled lately, but he actually had a decent face and really nice eyes. He came on his Vespa though, so we didn't really drink, just had dinner and talked.'

Ick. There has always seemed to me an inherent lameness to a man driving a Vespa outside of the Continent. They require sun, café-culture and Italian sunglasses to be chic. In wet, grey England, a scooter is the clinging and tragic ghost of Cool Britannia. Vespa drivers make this vain stab at bad-boy mystique, all the while unwittingly driving the tricycle of the motorcycling world. I refrain from saying this. If a willingness to look like a reject from
Quadrophenia
is Phil's only character defect he is leagues better than her last boyfriend, Scrotum Mark. So-called because his name is Mark and he is a scrotum.

‘Did you have good banter? Did he pay?' I ask.

To me, these are the two vital components of a good date. If a man is incapable of witty flirtation and generosity on the first date, these qualities will never bloom. I have had several flings with boring cheapskates who I managed to convince myself were the strong, silent, fiscally sound types. These men are also rarely good in bed. There must be a direct correlation
between the number of pints a man is willing to buy you and his working knowledge of the clitoris.

But maybe the problem lies with me. I am apparently not an inspirer of impetuous, romantic purchases. My mother frequently reminds me of the wonderful holidays and presents she received from devoted lovers in her youth. My sparkling conversation has led to a grand haul of: three DVDs (two of them burnt). It should be said that these were not spontaneous gifts, but for my birthday. Nothing says, ‘My feelings for you are tepid and cheap' like a copied disk in a genre of film you never had any interest in. At this point, a Groupon voucher would seem the height of decadence.

‘Yeah … well, he paid. He was all right. He was wearing “Gap Yah” beads, though. At his age he should really know better. Plus he said he stole them from a Buddhist Temple in Cambodia. Bit of a twat in most ways really, but he was a good kisser. I'm hardly beating men off with a stick at the moment so I'll probably see him again,' Rose says with an air of mild depression, leaning her head in her hands.

‘Don't bother, sweetie. You lost me at Vespa. He probably has a mod target tattooed on his chest. It's better to end it before you get attached. If he's good in bed you'll start to think his temple-thieving ways make him the next Indiana Jones. Look at Georgie, she's always giving things a second and third chance and then ends up in relationships with people who treat her like shit,' Julian says, his cocked eyebrow daring me to contradict him.

I wish I could dispute this, but that pretty much sums me up. Moral of my story: don't date out of boredom and never sleep with men out of mild curiosity (especially if they are known to their friends as ‘Two-Minute-Michael'). The biochemistry of the orgasm is a cosmic joke whose purpose is to blind you and bind you. Usually to people whom, if they were your co-workers, you would avoid on public transport.

‘It's not like I deliberately overlook bad behaviour!' I protest feebly, ‘It's just that sometimes it's hard to know if someone is cruel or if they just suffer from severe honesty.' That sounded less pathetic in my head. ‘Am I supposed to stay alone indefinitely? The last time I tried waiting for someone amazing all it led to was eighteen months of celibacy. I started calling my vagina the Batcave.'

Rose chuckles at this, while Julian looks repulsed.

‘I really liked He Who Shall Not Be Named and I was miserable. Who else have I really been emotionally invested in? Alexi, maybe. God, that was a long time ago.'

‘Is he the one who stole your gap year fund?' Rose asks.

‘Yeah.'

I met Alexi when I was seventeen. He was my first love, though due to my subsequent betrayal at his hands I rarely voice that aloud. Older, French, sophisticated, he was a compulsive liar and cokehead whom I trusted implicitly for eight months due to mind-boggling naivety and the mistaken belief that I am a good judge of character. I have since learnt to be
wary of men who wear wraparound cardigans. It is not a sign of ‘
je ne sais quoi
', but of sociopathy.

‘Well, I'm with you on choosing bastards over cobwebs. Every girl needs to experience one douchebag as a rite of passage into womanhood. But you should limit yourself to one, Georgie! You need more faith that men aren't divided into idiots versus dickheads. Even at my lowest points with Mark, I never thought that. If anything, it made me realize that things can only improve. There are good, funny, kind, hot men out there. I'm sure of it.'

Rose, a serial monogamist, hasn't casually dated nearly as much as I have. I imagine that in a few years' time this refrain will have been beaten out of her by the vagaries of life, but maybe it is a simple matter of choosing quality over quantity. In matters of the heart, that has never been my speciality.

‘I'm sure that's true, but they seem to scatter like cockroaches in a lit room when I'm around. No matter. Positive thinking! It's October so to all commercial intents and purposes Christmas. People turn into complete sluts around the holidays. I have high hopes!' I lift my glass in a toast to anticipated vaginal victories. ‘To sluts!'

‘To sluts!' they chorus loudly.

A stern, bug-eyed woman in her late thirties, clad in a hideous furry yellow jumper, Russian army hat and skinny jeans, turns around from across the room to give us evils. I
smile and wink. Impervious to my charms, she rolls her eyes before turning back to her stony-faced companion. It must be irritating trying to have a decent conversation with drunken twenty-somethings cackling and swearing in the vicinity. However, she is what I most fear becoming. Humourless, bitter and freshly abandoned by the feckless dole-rat, last-chance-before-sperm-bank boyfriend who has been cheating on her for years, with only her bar work to support the acting career she secretly knows will never take off. In short, the withered husk of scenester dreams, in ironic mohair. But maybe I'm projecting a little.

From now on, things are going to be different, I swear to myself. The first term of my last year of university has just begun. It is time to put my annual resolution to develop a super-strong work ethic, by finally developing it. This year I will be productive, in work and in love, though if I have to choose between the two, I will of course choose work. A man might keep you warm at night, but so does a radiator. It seems a more reliable solution than some handsome poet. However, I'll stay open to meeting someone fantastic who I genuinely fancy. This year will be different.

*

Thus far, this year is not shaping up to be different. I work as a waitress a few times a week for different events around London, at a company that may as well be called ‘PoshSlaves4You'. They mostly cater to well-bred people who don't like to be
served by those ghastly commoners who drop their h's, or worse, by Poles.

It's poorly paid grunt work, but the odd art opening makes it more bearable. I generally entertain myself by eye-fucking the hot clients and eating as many canapés as is humanly possible. This is a subtle art form that requires lurking behind potted plants and the ability to masticate with minimal jaw movement.

The one I'm working at now, however, has a number of drunken men misbehaving as if at a Dionysian feast, rather than a Savile Row shop opening. As I tour the room with my precariously balanced champagne flutes, it is immediately evident who ‘The Savile Row Man' is. The party overflows with minted banker types fulfilling every cliché one can apply to the financial sector. It seems not only has the crisis been forgotten, but so has self-awareness, good manners and the realization that a large number of people still hate them. I assume this blissful state of self-satisfaction was achieved by imbibing gallons of Cristal and rocking out to Chris Brown in Boujis.

The company they keep are even worse. Faux-nymphomaniac gold diggers hang on their every word. Their collagen blowjob lips pout in supplication, silently confirming that these men are God's gift to women. Nods and smiles and titters and tits are all that is required of their better halves.

As a result, these hapless men believe that sexual harassment is a hilarious, panty-dropping tool of seduction.
Unfortunately, our outfits leave us vulnerable to vulgar comments. We girls have been made to wear Santa's Little Slut baby-doll slips and simper when someone asks us for the tenth time if we'd like to sit on their lap to see what our gift will be. Why Father Christmas would expand his empire into Biro-sized erections is a mystery.

At any rate, the champagne flows; the testosterone rages; and sometimes, as now, someone's dick is whipped out. I don't know if any of you have experienced the joy of a portly five-foot-three man-child in a £3,000 suit, skipping like a cracked-out leprechaun, his cock and balls on full display. It is not an impressive sight. I stare in morbid fascination at the tiny, shrivelled ballsack adorned with a button mushroom, utterly perplexed. Why would you do this? Why, when mystery is the only conceivable advantage that your genitals possess?

‘Ooh, she's not impressed! Are you a lesbian? Are you a dyke?' The expression of open revulsion on my face has antagonized Merry Micro-Peen. He attempts to stare me down, rather ineffectually as I tower over him in my heels.

‘Does my dick offend you, dyke?'

At moments like this, I wish I were a dyke. He has one hand behind his head in a pin-up pose, the other pretending to tweak his nipple through his suit while thrusting his zip-throttled todger arrhythmically to the laughter of his friends.

‘I'm not impressed. But that isn't. Because. I'm a dyke.'
I bite out witheringly, while forcing myself to stare at his deformed, impertinent third thumb.

I'm tempted to lose control of the champagne glasses I'm carrying, showering his exposed genitals in Veuve. I seem to do this regularly enough by accident. Somehow I refrain, paste a smile on my face and walk with slow and furious dignity through the crowd.

Am I a beacon for twats? My mother is always going on about our personal auras interacting with other people's auras, attracting or repelling them energetically. I usually don't subscribe to this theory as it implies some responsibility on my part but my mood has been foul tonight so maybe there is some truth to it.

‘Bloody motherfucking shitfaced cockhead!'

‘Hey … are you all right?'

I look up into laughing hazel eyes, framed by sooty lashes. Strong nose. Tall. Longish, golden-brown hair, the colour of toast – my favourite foodstuff. Even in my burning fury the pervert in me is aware that this is one hot toddy, but I'm too irritated to care.

‘I'm great, just surrounded by men who think that because I'm carrying a tray I'm fair game for visual assault!' I'm aware that my face is screwed up in an expression of demented hate. ‘Champagne, sir?' I spit out with an edge of hysteria.

‘Yes please, mademoiselle,' he drawls teasingly as he takes a flute from my tray. ‘I heard you muttering something. Seems you're not too keen on Benjo.'

Despite my best intentions, it is difficult not to notice how very attractive he is. If you like an appealingly crooked smile or a light Scottish brogue. Luckily I am resistant to the charms of conventionally good-looking men. By some strange whim of fate, I prefer to date people shorter, fatter, uglier, older, weirder or who are emotionally disabled, with the occasional borderline-psychotic combination of the above. Maybe those are just the only ones who have asked me out.

‘You associate with that misogynist?'

‘Hey,' He's looking at me more seriously now. ‘I apologize for my friend. He's being a prick but he's just very drunk, his girlfriend broke up with him last night.'

‘Yes, well.' I say curtly.

It's hard to direct your anger at something so pretty. I'm not usually such a humourless bitch, what's wrong with me?

‘Can't say I blame her,' I add in bitter afterthought.

Though the man is handsome, his taste in mates is seriously questionable. Why do some men think that if a girl dumps them (probably for excellent reasons), it excuses their subsequent appalling behaviour? They go one of two ways, becoming either aggressively bitter or unbearably whiney. Though women bear the stigma of the bunny boiler, we deal with the demise of relationships with far more emotional maturity, as was demonstrated in that book
Get Fat, Get Spiritual, Get Fucked
or whatever it was called.

‘You're right, of course. I'm sure you've never done something
stupid drunk,' he says with a wry grin. ‘Though I admit his is an extreme case.'

‘I am the soul of class and restraint, actually.'

To be fair, I am usually doing some
one
stupid drunk, rather than some
thing
. But technicalities are always best left unexpressed.

‘Yes, class and restraint always come to mind when I hear someone swearing like a sailor,' he laughs and runs his hand through his shaggy hair. ‘I'm Scott Montgomery.'

Good name. I hate this cocky bastard. How dare he throw that in my face? If men would learn not to highlight a woman's rational inconsistencies, the world would be a far better place.

‘And I'm leaving. I can't respect a man with such poor taste in mates.'