"So, what's new with you?"

My girlfriend broke up with me. People say "there are plenty more fish in the sea", and I force a laugh, ha ha ha, almost literally saying the ha sound, to make them feel like they've brought some joy into my life. Then I try and respond with a quip, to show them the old Pete is still in there, life of the party. "Yeah" I say "so long as you don't drown" or "is that why I feel so adrift". Ho Ho Ho. I stopped shaving for a month, and looked like a young Santa Claus, until my boss took me aside and said "Peter, I know you're going through a tough time at the moment, but the marketing coordinator for the country's second leading electric travel razor can't look like a towel-head bomber". Good old Steve. A mixture of concern and old fashioned bigotry that can't be replicated. So I shaved.

We'd been together since college. I've been re-watching the chick flicks she's left at my house, trying to learn how to date. It hasn't gone well.

I got a date with a girl from work, out of the blue. "Do you want to go for a coffee?" she asked, and for a moment I wasn't sure she was talking to me. "After work?". She hovered by my desk. Not literally, she isn't a bee. But she flapped her hands and trembled. "About 7?". I began to wonder if all her sentences would end on that nervy, neurotic upswung note, then realised she was still waiting for me to say something.

"Sure". Manly, I thought. Act like this happens all the time. Now that I think of it, her okay was more a question than a statement.

The thing is, the dating movies don't really cover dates after works. Dates with colleagues, sure, but I was on unfamiliar territory. I started to panic. I couldn't work out whether coffee meant a hot milky caffeinated beverage or up the stairs of her flat and into the bedroom for a hot and milky adventure. Performance anxiety set in, and then I remembered the film with the girl from The Mask in. The date film. I forget its name. But the guy has a pre date wank in the bathroom, to take the edge off, and I thought that seemed like a grand idea.

Perhaps I should have gone into the cubicles. With the benefit of hindsight, not going into the ladies would also have been smart.

So now I am a single guy with no job. Which isn't helping me get any dates.