The Butcher, the Baker, the Candlestick Maker

by Suzanne Portnoy

  I explained that Søren was opening his own bakery in a couple of weeks and that our schedules would be in total conflict; he’d be going to bed around the time I’d be coming home from the office.

  ‘In a good relationship,’ said Anne Marie, ‘people can always work around the conflicts.’

  ‘Well, we still have to sort out the not-eating-pussy issue,’ I reminded her. ‘So we’ll see.’

  Søren managed to see me every couple of weeks, but what I saw was that our relationship just wasn’t working.

  I’d call. ‘Hi, Søren. This is Suzanne calling. It would be great to see you again. Give me a ring when you can.’

  It would be days before he returned a message. As predicted, Søren’s hours and mine were indeed incompatible. The new bakery took up all of his waking and too many of his sleeping-around hours. More than once, a date we put in our diaries got postponed.

  ‘Hi, Suzanne. I cannot see you tonight. My oven broke. I have to wait here. The repair guy is coming.’

  We’d reschedule.

  ‘Hi, Søren, this is Suzanne calling. Again. It would be great to see you. Again. Give me a ring when you can.’

  I came to the conclusion it wasn’t worth waiting for a man who, when he did show, was totally exhausted and fell asleep as soon as he got in bed. This isn’t working, I found myself thinking. Why wait for a man who won’t even go down on me?

  Still, Søren’s dinners almost compensated for the frustration, so I continued to leave messages on his mobile phone – and continued to get delayed replies. More than once I found myself wondering if he was simply trying to blow me off, and thinking maybe I was too stupid to take the hint. And then I’d receive a message from Søren saying he hoped to see me soon.

  ‘Hey, Suzanne. I got your messages. Sorry I have not been in touch. I am so busy with the bakery. But let us keep in touch.’

  Let’s not, I thought. Good guy, bad timing. I called the bakery, his real mistress, and left a message whose short sentences Søren was sure to understand. ‘Hi, Søren. Suzanne here. Tired of calling. Good luck with the business. Bye.’

  It was time to move on. I hadn’t gone online since meeting Frank and had fallen out of the habit. I was too old for hanging out in singles bars and nightclubs, too old for dressing up, putting on make-up and standing around all night hoping to meet guys, like I had done in my youth. Meeting Søren at a hotel party was a fluke. I was ready to try something new.

  One afternoon at work, while scanning the papers for references to my clients, I turned a page and saw the personal ads. I briefly contemplated the wisdom of placing one of my own.

  I was not a virgin to the personals, but my only other experiences had taken place so many years earlier and had proved so disappointing, I didn’t hold out much hope. Shortly after losing my virginity, I answered two intriguing ads in Time Out. My first date sounded artistic and promised romance, but turned out to be a drunk in St John’s Wood who groped me, then passed out on his bathroom floor while going to the toilet; relieved, I walked out of the flat and left him there. The second date took place after my school friend Kelly and I responded, for a laugh, to a hilarious ad.

  Two Warlocks, Young, Attractive, Seek Two Witches to Spellbind Them.

  We arranged to meet at the Windsor Castle, a pub in Maida Vale then frequented by punks. By the time they arrived – two guys in their early twenties, one a rockabilly stud, the other an emaciated punk with chipped black teeth – Kelly and I had been waiting forty-five minutes and had downed two pints of lager each. Another two pints later, the guys invited us back to their flat on what turned out to be Warlock Road. Oh, I get it! I remember thinking. How clever!

  We all smoked a joint, then the boys asked us to tie them to the double bed. Oh, ‘bind’. Like ‘spellbind’. I get it! That revelation didn’t click in till much later, alas, after I’d thought back on that night. At the time, I was so drunk I didn’t consider this request particularly unusual and, conveniently, ropes had already been tied to the bedpost to make it easier. So I tied them up. Then I sucked on the rockabilly’s cock for a while, until I found his elbow and, in my stoned haze, licked that for a half-hour, thinking I’d found a new erogenous zone.

  Eventually, I looked up and I noticed Kelly had done a runner, leaving me alone with two strangers. ‘I have to go now,’ I said, and fled, leaving them to pull a Houdini. I figured the knots were loose enough that they could escape easily. And they were. The next day Mr Broken Teeth, the one I’d ignored, rang me up to say how much they’d both enjoyed meeting me and suggested another date. I opted out of the personals for two and a half decades.

  After calling it off with Søren, I wrote up an ad and placed it in the Guardian and the Independent, the two arty left-wing papers I read, hoping to attract a few arty left-wing guys.

  Sexy, smart, fit, funny American media chick, 41, seeks handsome, successful man, fit, funny, 38–50, for lightweight relationship.

  I got thirty-two responses from the Guardian and whittled them down; I put the twenty-five responses from the Independent aside to save for a later date. After listening to my messages, I deleted anyone whose voice was too high or too cockney. I also nixed anyone whose job sounded boring and anyone who lived south of the river. After the frustrations of my long-distance relationship with Frank, I decided never to go out with anyone who lived more than five miles from home. That left seventeen possibilities – enough dates to keep me in dinners for the next three months.

  Though he hadn’t worked out, my Great Dane had spoilt me. He had a good body and a deep voice, and dinners with him had been a real treat. I hoped to find his replacement.

  Johnny did not sound like a Guardian reader as he spoke in monosyllables. I didn’t get the feeling he read much at all. But he said he was a thirty-eight-year-old builder from Scotland and lived nearby in Cricklewood. Potentially hot. He also mentioned that he looked like Antonio Banderas, and was just looking for some fun. Definitely hot. For the first time since college, I decided to break my golden rule and meet a man whose voice I didn’t like. When you look like Antonio Banderas, certain things, including an incomprehensible Glaswegian accent, are forgivable. He may not have sounded very intelligent, but he did live almost within walking distance, and, I discovered, he did look like Antonio Banderas.

  We had a quick first meet to check out the goods at a local wine bar a few hundred metres from my house. When I walked in I recognised him right away. I was wearing drainpipe jeans and a sweatshirt; he was wearing broad shoulders, meaty biceps and the same triangular shape as my boys’ action figure toys.

  He had a Foster’s and I ordered a glass of Chardonnay. ‘Do you actually read the Guardian?’ I asked.

  ‘Not really,’ he admitted. ‘I read the Guide. I like the listings. You know, what’s on in the movies, that kind of thing.’

  ‘Do you read any newspaper?’

  ‘No. What’s the point? It’s always the same old shit. Politicians, natural disasters, sports. Boring.’

  It’s hard to maintain a conversation with someone who makes English – his native tongue – sound like a foreign language. Still, Johnny was cute and local. After an hour, I got the sense it wasn’t going to work out with my movie star, so we both moved towards the door.

  ‘Do you have a car?’ I asked.

  ‘No, I’m walking.’

  I offered to give him a lift.

  We got in my car and were outside his door in five minutes. His flat, just off the A41, in the back of someone’s garden, looked more like a garage than a residence.

  ‘Do you want to come in?’ he asked.

  I told him I couldn’t stay for long, that I had to be up early to take my kids to school. That didn’t seem to bother him.

  He opened the door and we walked into a large mostly vacant room. There was a makeshift table just inside the door that held a computer. A small sofa faced a telly just beyond that and, on the other side of a half-wall divider, there was a double bed, still unmade. A
tiny bathroom was off a far wall. I don’t recall seeing a kitchen.

  I felt awkward. I didn’t see a chair and didn’t know if I should remain standing or sit down on the sofa or the bed. Johnny pointed to the sofa, solving my dilemma, and said, ‘Do you want to watch some television?’

  ‘Not really,’ I said. ‘I’m not really here to watch television.’ So I kissed him.

  He leant into me and steered me towards the bed. He was incredibly keen – a bit too keen. There wasn’t much foreplay; there wasn’t much of anything, sadly. When I looked down from the perfect pecs, broad shoulders and bulging biceps, what I saw down there was so small it might as well not have been there.

  I figured doggy style was the only position that would facilitate my feeling anything, so, like an obedient dog, I got on all fours. Johnny put on a condom – I hated myself for noticing how it was too big for the job – and entered me from behind. I think. It was hard to tell whether he was in or out. It was hard to tell if he was hard. If the average white cock doubles in size when erect, then his, hard, would have been about two inches long. I thought anal might be the answer.

  Employing my most seductive voice, I said, ‘Can you slip your cock in my ass?’

  He moved into position and probed my butt. Again I couldn’t feel a thing. Again it was disappointing. I couldn’t imagine Antonio Banderas with a two-inch cock. Funny, his self-declared lookalike hadn’t mentioned that particular detail before our first date. Nothing was working for me, but at least Johnny was satisfied.

  After he came, I said, ‘Listen, I’d better be going. You’re only around the corner. Let’s meet up again sometime.’

  ‘Just let me know. You know where I am.’

  Normally I wouldn’t have considered a second date with a man whose distinction was having the smallest cock I’d ever seen, but a few weeks later I got an invitation to a private party at Opium, a fashionable West End club, and needed a chaperone. A friend handling the event said there would be free shots and canapés.

  ‘Free drinks?’ said Johnny. ‘Sounds great. Count me in.’

  I invited Johnny not so much for sex – after our first date, I wasn’t sure I wanted to go back there again – but I didn’t fancy going to the party on my own and figured he’d make a good chaperone, as long as he didn’t open his mouth.

  The barman passed out small bottles filled with a spirit containing a prune at the bottom. He told us it was Japanese, one hundred per cent proof – and on the house.

  ‘There you go, then,’ I said to Johnny. ‘I’m going to see if there’s anyone here I know. Are you OK?’

  ‘You don’t have to worry about me,’ he said, knocking back his first shot. ‘I’ll be fine.’

  I left Johnny to enjoy the freebies, while I networked with some fellow PR people I recognised. As I walked towards the familiar faces, a cute black boy stopped me and said, ‘Is that Agent Provocateur perfume you’re wearing?’

  I told him it was.

  ‘I’d follow a woman with that scent anywhere.’

  Nice line, but he was too young to be fuck material. We had a dance anyway, before I moved on.

  I walked back to the bar several times to check on Johnny and found him knocking back the shots. Later, when I realised it was well after midnight, I went back for the last time. ‘Do you mind if we leave?’ I asked.

  I got our coats while Johnny went to the toilet. We agreed to meet by the bar.

  Twenty minutes later, it was apparent he wasn’t going to.

  I peeked my head into the men’s loo. ‘Johnny? Are you in there?’

  A cubicle opened and Johnny stepped out, stripped down to his boxers.

  ‘What are you doing without your clothes on? Where are your clothes?’

  ‘My clothes?’ he said, not comprehending.

  ‘Yes. Your clothes. The things you wear. Where are they?’

  He looked down. ‘Oh. Shit.’

  A bouncer appeared at the door. ‘Excuse me, madam, but ladies can’t use the men’s toilet.’

  I told him I didn’t want to use the men’s toilet and explained the situation. Then I asked him to help my friend.

  As the bouncer entered the toilet, I saw Johnny thrust his hands up above his head. ‘It’s OK! It’s OK! You can take me in!’ he screamed, apparently mistaking the bouncer for a cop.

  I waited another ten minutes and still no Johnny. I drove home alone. This was one Banderas movie I did not want to see again.

  There were sixteen other dates on my Guardian list but, after my experience with an alcoholic with a cock the size of my thumb, I went instead to the list of Independent readers I’d put aside.

  I chose a man named Giles because he sounded fascinating. He had published several novels and seemed glamorous and highbrow and nice. He also had the poshest accent I’d ever heard. Like me, he was divorced, in his forties and had two kids. He lived in the middle of nowhere, in the Wye Valley, three hours west of London, but said his work frequently brought him to the city. After my experience with Frank, I should have disqualified him purely on the basis of location, but I was wary of having another two-inch Johnny just down the road. Plus, Giles told me he lived in a cottage, which sounded charming and romantic as he described it in emails. He said he kept the house warm with log fires. I pictured a man making his own candles in a cosy stone kitchen. If things work out, I thought, it could be the perfect weekend getaway. That fantasy was cut short during our second telephone call when his sweater caught fire and he had to hang up quickly.

  During our third phone conversation, Giles told me he had two tickets for an opera at the Coliseum and invited me to join him. He suggested dinner before the show. A double bill! I thought, quite pleased at the prospect.

  ‘May I have a kiss first,’ he asked, ‘so we can get that part over with?’

  Before consenting, I made Opera Man work for it. I emailed a survey I devised just for him, with questions about the car he drove and the alcohol he drank, his star sign, his dress sense, the kind of clothes he liked on women, his favourite way to kiss. He took the challenge, writing he’d once had his chart done ‘by a woman who used a computer rather than a crystal ball’ and had discovered he was ‘a typical Sagittarius’. I took that to mean a free spirit who liked to travel, hopefully in my direction. He described his dress sense as ‘tending to the extravagant’ to the point where his daughter called him a ‘straight gay man’. Like every man I’ve known, he had a thing for high-heeled shoes on women and, like too many men, drove a Range Rover. He drank gin and white wine, as did I. He didn’t answer the question about the kiss. Still, he sounded like a smarty and, following Johnny, who was a virtual illiterate, that was just what I wanted.

  We arranged to meet at the Pizza Express on St Martin’s Lane. It wouldn’t have been my first choice for a dinner, being neither particularly expensive nor exclusive. I supposed Giles’s rationale was that it was both local to the theatre and cheap. Still, that worried me a bit. If a guy suggests Pizza Express as a first date, he’s probably thinking that, if I turn out to be a dud, he won’t have wasted too much money – that is, assuming he pays. Unless it’s a first date, I normally have my wallet out so fast it’s like I’m practising for a gunslinging scene in a Hollywood Western, while secretly hoping the guy says, ‘This one’s on me.’

  I spotted Giles immediately in the crowded restaurant. As promised, he was wearing a black fedora. I thought that an arty touch; so few men wear hats of any kind any more. He took off the hat, tossed his wavy shoulder-length brown hair and stood to greet me. I saw he was slim, of medium height and medium build and quite good-looking, in a bohemian sort of way. His sweet face and brown eyes offset his black trousers and baggy black turtleneck – very old-school thespian, the kind of man one would expect to see in a cape.

  Not knowing what was or wasn’t appropriate attire for an opera, I’d dressed a bit thespian myself, Barbara Stanwyck manqué – black pencil skirt, tight-fitting pink blouse, high heels, plus a short brown mo
hair jacket and a matching brown fedora of my own. I felt very film noir.

  The real darkness was still ahead. I found my first opera, Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress, long, boring and difficult, a discomfiting orgy of minor chords. I managed to get through it without falling asleep, however, all the while thinking, If I’m going to sleep in this curious man’s presence, it won’t be here.

  During the interval Giles had kissed me. He had bad breath – strike one. Still, we kissed some more after the show, bad breath being a small price to pay for getting laid, I figured. His kisses, though not unpleasant, weren’t like Frank’s or Søren’s and didn’t make my head go fuzzy. Back in the theatre, Giles had manoeuvred his hand on to my thigh, moving up my skirt during the performance until he was practically rubbing my pussy. He had paid for dinner and now I wondered if this was the price I had to pay for the opera ticket. At least it kept me awake.

  Afterwards, as Giles knew a member of the cast, we went backstage and met the lead baritone. ‘Suzanne has never been to the opera before,’ Giles said as an introduction, laughing as he spilled the secret I’d foolishly shared over dinner. His tone implied I’d led an uncultured existence all the years before this attempt at civilising me. I didn’t like it; I hadn’t expected him to patronise me or use my secret against me.

  After the opera and backstage visit, Giles took me to his room at the Holiday Inn Bloomsbury. It was extremely tiny – barely enough room for the double bed and the minibar. He had bought two mini bottles of champagne – bigger ones wouldn’t have fitted in the room’s fridge – and put them on ice after checking in before the theatre. The champagne was cold – nice touch – we had a drink and started messing around.

  I undid his trousers and kissed him. Then I put my mouth around his cock. He came instantly – strike two.

  ‘Good heavens!’ he said. ‘I’m so sorry I came so fast.’

  ‘It’s OK,’ I lied. I didn’t know what else to say. I felt a little embarrassed for him and quite disappointed for myself. I’d got all worked up, all for five minutes of foreplay. It seemed appropriate to move on to safer terrain. ‘Thanks for the opera. It was interesting,’ I lied. ‘I wasn’t expecting the music to be quite so . . . dissonant. I prefer something with a bit more melody.’