Chapter Six: Humiliation in a Peruvian Blanket

‘I’d rather not if you don’t mind.’
‘What?’
‘I don’t really know you.’
‘Is there something wrong? Am I too fat?’
‘Don’t be silly, it’s just I need to get up in the morning.’
‘Well I’ll be off as soon as we’ve finished.’
‘But I’ve got a big day tomorrow. God I don’t even think I’ll be finished till about half ten.’
Attempt Number Three was not going well.
‘What about if I try one more thing?’
With verbal communication going nowhere, I needed to harness all the power of my feminine charms.
‘Please don’t.’
I pulled my head up from underneath the duvet, swung both legs out the side of the bed and turned my back on him. Perhaps men are better at dealing with rejection than women but TURNING DOWN A BLOW JOB! It was the ultimate betrayal. No effort on his part and still he didn’t want it! And if I couldn’t give him a blow job then there was no way I was going to coerce him into sex and if there was no sex then there’d be yet another of my precious jewels hitting the china before the month was out. I took a deep breath and wrapped the Peruvian-style throw that was lying at the bottom of the bed around my body. The blanket was made out of donkey hair and scratched at my skin as I shuffled towards the hallway. Head bowed, eyes down - the walk of humiliation. He didn’t want me. I was repellent. At least the scratchy, irritation gave me a temporary distraction.

Things had looked so promising. For a start, Simon hadn’t been accurate in his description of Mr Medium Brown. Okay his hair was brown but this was where his ‘medium-ness’ stopped. He had lovely, broad shoulders, like someone who chops logs on a regular basis. His stomach was flat and he was tall and whilst I usually get intimidated by men with really good bodies, there was something nice about his face that brought him back to earth. He didn’t come across as the kind of guy who only looked in your eyes to check out his own reflection. In fact if anything he was nervous, jumpy even and kept checking his mobile with one hand in his pocket then pulling out his wallet and thumbing through the contents. He avoided eye contact. Then he dropped a box of matches on the floor and they all spilled out and he spent about forty minutes picking up each one and putting it back in the box. Okay he was a bit shy and anxious. But everything else was right. I ran a mental checklist.
- Fair sized hands.
- Hair that stops at the hairline. No hair on fingers. No hair on the end of nose. No hair escaping from ears.
- Good posture.
- Nice skin, no psoriasis, rosecea, spots (having suffered with spots as a teenager I didn’t want to stack up the odds).

Perhaps on reflection this was one of the key sources of his anxiety. Perhaps I’d been too obvious in checking off all his features. And even when he spoke instead of really listening to what he was saying, I instead listened out for the tone of voice, the level of vibrato, the modulation. In fact, if anything, I’d sized him up like a Butcher looking at a doe-eyed cow in a field. And instead of saying, ‘Ooh what a beautiful beast, that cow is a veritable gift from God,’ says, ‘Well I could get ten chops, about six rib-eyes and that rump will get me at least four or five good stewing steaks.’ I gawped a lot. I found it difficult to follow the thread of his conversation. And I probably drank more because he was so much better than I’d expected him to be.

After a couple of hours in the pub, Mr Medium Brown started to make excuses that he was tired, that he thought it would be a good idea if we headed home, that he had a big day ahead tomorrow. Beware the ‘big day ahead’ excuse. Anyone who really wants to sleep with you wouldn’t care if they were perming the Queen’s hair the next day.
‘Well we could share a taxi, I kind of live round the corner’ I said eagerly.
‘No it’s a big day. I really need to rest,’ he said standing up and checking his pockets again.
Why did he keep checking his phone? Did he think I was going to steal it?
‘Oh hang on, that’s my phone ringing,’
What followed next was the most terrifyingly cringe-y escape attempts I have ever witnessed. He picked his mobile out of his pocket and brought it up to his ear, then turned away so I would think he was talking to a friend but I could clearly hear the tinny voice at the other end saying, ‘The number you require is…’. Then he actually pretended to have a conversation! He turned away a bit more so I couldn’t read his lips.

And then it made sense, the constant checking of the mobile, seeing if it was turned on or not, checking his text messages - he hadn’t been anxious, he’d obviously sent a text and was waiting to be rescued. And now out of desperation he’d resorted to calling Directory Enquiries! Was I really so grotesque? Couldn’t he just be normal and say ‘I don’t think this is going to work,’ and then leave. And as I watched him, his cheeks growing pink with the stress of acting out his silly game, I developed a growing sense of determination. I would prove him wrong. I would make him like me. This had nothing to do with getting pregnant. This was all about maintaining my self- respect. He hadn’t seen the best of me. I’d been so eager running through the itinerary of his best features, his potential contribution to my baby’s DNA that in the meantime I’d completely forgotten to be entertaining and engaging!
‘That was a friend,’ he said putting his phone back inside his pocket, ‘He’s had a terrible accident. I have to go to the hospital and see him immediately.’
Mr Medium Brown exhibited the top three symptoms of telling a blatant lie. He shook his head and licked his lips, then scratched the side of his nose.
‘What kind of accident?’
He shuffled to the side a bit and then rubbed his ear. No doubt his pupils were expanding but I couldn’t tell because his eyes were firmly fixed on an indeterminate space on the floor. I decided to tackle his deceit head on. If I could make him feel guilty, he’d be on the back foot. Then whilst he was still struggling to stand up straight, I’d floor him with the full force of my sex mission. Images of chandeliers, of knickers hanging from lampshades, of broken bed springs, of curtains drawn for forty eight hours raced through my mind.
‘That was Directory Enquiries,’ I said.
‘No it wasn’t,’ he said looking up.
His pupils were as big as Californian raisins. Would he just run? Run away in shame and embarrassment? But then again I suspected he wasn’t that kind of bloke. He wanted to do the right thing.

I’m still not completely sure how I managed to get us out onto the street, into a taxi and speeding towards his flat (at the opposite end of London to my place). Perhaps I had succeeded in making him feel guilty. Now he owed me. The only thing I wasn’t sure about was how much credit I had left.

And was it enough to make him sleep with me?

We got inside the flat and immediately I could tell that this was going to be a MONUMENTAL effort. We were both relatively sober. Certainly he was more sober than I was. And he was still checking his mobile compulsively as if somehow it would ring and a genie on the other end would tell him how to get rid of this strange and persistent woman who had somehow managed to smuggle herself into his flat. I went into the kitchen and after rummaging inside the fridge uncovered a half bottle of vodka. I poured us one each. Then drank both of them and poured another two. When I returned, things were looking worse. His jacket was still on and there was a distinct absence of romantic music. In fact he’d turned on Sky Sports and was watching a man with a head like a pickled onion reciting the sports stats. At least he’d got onto the sofa and was looking more relaxed. But I would have to work hard to change the atmosphere. I placed the drinks on the table in front of the TV, slid my shoes off and then slithered myself up underneath his arm and snuggled into his chest making noises like I was already in a state of high arousal. The sport was arousing me. Every result was making me more and more highly charged. I was a fantasy. A woman aroused by sports! Manchester City 4, Newcastle 3. I gasped and ran my fingers under the collar of his shirt and then took his earlobe between my thumb and forefinger. But instead of letting his head loll backwards and unbuttoning his shirt, Medium Brown stood up suddenly, knocking both our glasses flying, then ran out of the room. The drone of the Pickled Onion continued. It was completely un-erotic. The atmosphere couldn’t have been less sexy if my Mum had been sitting on the sofa chatting about the terrible side effects of the menopause. Yet still I wouldn’t give up. I persisted. I wasn’t quite sure whether it was biology, the fact my egg was mature and so ready that it was practically shouting out of my womb to be impregnated or whether it was more to do with the challenge, that this man REALLY DIDN’T want me, would have done anything to get away from my presence. In fact I wouldn’t have been surprised if I’d looked out the bedroom window to see him lying lifeless on the pavement below.

I went to the bathroom, dabbed some of his aftershave behind my ears (perhaps a mistake but I’d read somewhere that people like to have sex with people who smell the same as them) and then took myself into the bedroom. Where is that chandelier? But the poor man was lying face down on the bed. He looked dead. In fact it couldn’t have been more obvious that he didn’t want me unless he’d scrawled PLEASE LEAVE ME ALONE! all over his mirror in shaving foam.

At some point you have to give up, draw the line. I had done all I could.

‘But there’s no harm sleeping in his bed for a while?’ a voice in my head said (or perhaps it really was the egg who had developed lungs and a trembling high-pitched voice). And so what if I removed my clothes? Most of the men I’ve known are opportunists. If you’re naked and in bed you’re at least narrowing down the range of things that might happen next. This changes of course once you’re in a long-term relationship, then many things can happen. In fact you could probably fall out of the sky completely naked, fall directly on top of them and still you wouldn’t end up with sex as the outcome. But when things are fresh, well it’s nature really. So I would let nature takes it’s course and stop trying so hard.

But nature betrayed me. I had found a man who could actually decline a blow job from a stranger! A naked stranger who was actually waiting for him, willing to do anything he wished, his very own sex slave! It was amazing. But once I retreated into the uncomfortable world of the Peruvian scratchy blanket I realised I had to give up. Any more was abuse. He didn’t want me. What else did he have to do? And maybe he really did have a big day tomorrow and who was I to mess it up for him? After using his toothbrush, I went back to his room (this time noticing the interesting collection of black and white photos he had hanging in the hallway - Liz Taylor and Richard Burton in Cannes, Serge Gainsbourg smoking a cigar sitting in front of an enormous mixing desk and a close up of Woody Allen taken from the film Sleeper). I realised with a pang that Mr Medium Brown was potentially quite an interesting person. But I’d been so keen to get inside his pants and unleash his sperm that I hadn’t heard a word he’d said. If he’d been just another numbskull-pub-nut with nothing to say for himself, it wouldn’t have been so bad. What started to eat away at me was the fact that here was someone I potentially liked who didn’t like me. I wasn’t good enough for him. I wasn’t even good enough to kiss his penis! With sorrow I visualised the egg, I knew it had a couple more days but in my mind it was already turning in on itself, munching itself up, dissolving, detaching and slowly progressing towards the exit.

I left his flat without saying a word. I would have liked to have got some sort of clear explanation out of him. I needed a firm and rational assessment. Or did I? I knew exactly all the things I’d done wrong.

You were too forward.
You came across as desperate.
You kept looking at my hands in a creepy way.
You stank of aftershave.

And who did I think I was Pamela Anderson? It wasn’t like my body was some sort of sex missile sent to create mayhem amongst the male population of the world. Bits of it were okay but as an overall package it was badly assembled and had several faulty components. Perhaps taking my clothes off had finally convinced him. Shut the door on the tiny, glimmer of light. Yes I was over-analysing things. The long and the short of it was, he simply hadn’t found me attractive. Suddenly the notion of being a sex-bomb, of being able to seduce any man I fancied and make them father my child seemed ridiculous. I was only good enough for hairy men with tiny penises.
That was my lot.

The next day when Simon asked me how the date had gone, I was completely honest. I told him I’d tried to seduce him but he’d turned me down.
‘Do you want me to see if I can find out from my friend what the problem was?’ he’d asked.
‘No don’t bother.’

I knew what the problem was already. I needed to lower my standards. Mr Medium Brown had taught me a tough lesson. And as I felt my resolve grow tougher I realised that I couldn’t risk losing another egg through sheer vanity, through believing I could truly punch above my weight. The next one would have hair growing out of his teeth for all I cared. I had to succeed. And if hairy teeth and chronic body odour problem were my only options then I’d embrace both. It actually made things easier, much less chance of emotional fall - out if the guy was so repellent that I couldn’t fall for him. Medium Brown had been a mistake. Not only had he made me like him, he’d also made me question my whole plan. Days later and I still felt guilty about it. And I couldn’t stop thinking about him. Trying to run through my mind all the different ways I’d messed up and then worrying about whether there were ANY potential signs that he’d actually liked me. Then coming up empty. ' I have a big day tomorrow'. The phrase kept dancing around and around my brain at three in the morning and I realised it was actually the worst thing anyone had ever said to me or perhaps it just felt like that because it had come out of his mouth. Going for an attractive, interesting father was not a good idea. It made things too messy. Detachment was required. No emotions, pure biology. I needed to schedule my next attempt somewhere where the desperate men-beasts of the world roamed wild. Somewhere where they gathered together, ogled Page Three, drank lighter fluid and compared notes on their very low standards.

Then something happened that took my mind off the next Attempt. The whole thing went out the window.
Mum called.
George had gone missing.
And he’d left a suicide note.