by Mike Gayle
The four guys at the bar.
The three guys smoking at a table near the window.
The two guys in suits finishing off their pints near the cigarette machine.
They all had the potential to be Rob’s brand new Phil.
That evening Rob was surrounded by friends. They just weren’t his. They were inherited friends, friends by proxy, Ashley’s friends. Ashley had invited them to come out and celebrate his birthday: Christine and Joel, Luke and Lauren, Jason and Louise, Mia and Edwin and, of course, Neil.
‘Happy birthday, mate!’ said Christine, kissing Rob as she handed him a pint of lager.
‘Cheers,’ said Rob, eyeing the group of men at the bar. They were similarly dressed in jeans, T-shirts and trainers, and were laughing and joking among themselves. Why aren’t I celebrating my birthday with you guys? he thought bitterly.
‘You’re only as old as the woman you feel,’ joked Jason, as he sidled up to Rob with a grin.
Rob smiled at him uncomfortably.
‘The woman he’s feeling feels great to me,’ replied Luke, squeezing Ashley’s bottom. ‘One hundred per cent peach.’
Rob’s eyes flicked to Luke’s hand, then to Ashley’s bottom and back to Luke’s face. Luke was always doing stuff like that to show Rob he’d known Ashley so much longer than Rob had that he could pinch her bottom secure in the knowledge that Rob couldn’t say a word without seeming churlish.
‘You can’t do that to Rob’s bird right in front of him – not on his birthday of all days,’ chided Neil. ‘Wait until tomorrow!’
Rob tried to laugh but his heart wasn’t in it. Instead he smiled politely as if that was shorthand for genuine laughter and continued to scan the bar for more fantasy friends. He spotted some immediately – two guys at a table near the door. One was wearing a grey suit, the other faded bootcut cord trousers and a grey hooded top. Rob wondered whether they were talking about the latest series of Alias, which had just started on cable, because that was a conversation he was dying to have with someone who actually cared.
‘Stop teasing him, you lot,’ reprimanded Ashley, taking Rob’s hand and giving it a squeeze of solidarity. ‘It’s his birthday. Give the man a break.’
Rob smiled his first genuine smile of the evening. No matter what situation he found himself in, Ashley could always make him feel all right – if only for a little while. He didn’t doubt that he loved her or that he wanted to be with her. And right now, at this moment, he was sure that if there was anyone for whom he would have endured the torture of the last six months, it was Ashley. ‘Do you know what?’ he whispered in her ear.
‘What?’
‘I really love you.’
‘Good,’ said Ashley. ‘Because I love you too.’
Rob took a long sip of the birthday pint Christine had bought him and gagged. He held up the glass and sighed heavily.
‘It’s the wrong beer, isn’t it?’ said Ashley, wincing.
He continued to stare at it as if it embodied the essence of his disappointment in life.
Ashley took the glass from him and sipped. ‘It tastes fine to me – in as much as it tastes like lager.’ She handed it back to him. ‘I don’t know why you’re making such a fuss about it. How different can one make of beer be from all the others?’
‘I’m not ungrateful,’ explained Rob. ‘In fact I really appreciate Christine’s buying me a pint on my birthday. But I don’t like whatever this is. Have you ever, in all the time I’ve known you, seen me drink any other beer apart from Carlsberg or Guinness?’
‘No,’ said Ashley.
‘Exactly. I don’t drink Grolsch, Stella Artois, Red Stripe, Löwenbraü, Leffe, Foster’s, Castlemaine, Budweiser, Becks, Budvar, Staropramen, cheap no-name brewery lagers with fake-sounding German names. Miller or Tennent’s. Yes technically they are all lagers, but they’re not the lagers I like.’
‘They all look the same to me.’
‘The truth is, babe, while they might look the same they’re not the same. Some I like. Some I don’t. It’s just a matter of taste.’
As he spoke, it struck Rob that the way he felt about lagers was the way he felt about friends. He’d always been particular about the kind of people he spent time with, which was why leaving his friends in London had hurt so much. It wasn’t that he had always befriended the coolest, the most amusing or the most popular people – on the contrary, a number of his London friends were the most uncool, humourless and unpopular characters anyone could hope to meet. But the bottom line was that, just as with lager, there were some people in life he liked and others he couldn’t stand.
‘I’ll get you another drink,’ said Ashley.
‘Nah,’ he replied. ‘I’ll get you one, but first I ought to say an official thank-you.’ He cleared his throat and raised his pint in the air, commanding Ashley’s friends’ attention.
‘Quiet, everyone,’ said Mia. ‘Rob’s going to make a birthday speech.’
‘I just wanted to thank you all for coming,’ he said, looking at his glass philosophically. ‘And . . . er, that’s it, really.’
Everyone raised a glass, cheered, then immediately resumed the conversations they’d been having before he interrupted them.
‘Thanks for doing this,’ said Rob, turning to Ashley.
‘Doing what?’
‘Forcing your mates to come out on my birthday.’
‘I didn’t force them,’ she said, squeezing his hand. ‘They wanted to be here. They’re your friends as well as mine.’
‘You know as well as I do that I have no real friends here.’
Ashley opened her mouth as if to refute his claim, then closed it again.
‘And I have to admit that having no friends is making me feel like a bit of a loser . . .’ He trailed off.
Ashley squeezed his hand again. ‘You’re not a loser,’ she reassured him, ‘and you’ve got friends. It’s just that they live in a different city.’
‘I can’t see how things are going to change,’ said Rob. ‘It’s virtually impossible to make new friends when you get to your thirties. People my age don’t want any more friends. They’ve got all the different kinds of friends they need for every eventuality. It’s a closed shop. In fact, I think people at our age actively shed friends.’
‘That’s so not true.’
‘Really? Then tell me this. When was the last time you made a new friend? And by “friend” I mean proper friend. Not just someone you’re on nodding terms with. I mean a going-for-a-drink-sharing-secrets-doing-each-other’s-hair-remembering-their-birthday-asking-after-their-parents-not-worrying-if-it’s-two-o’clock-in-the-morning-and-you-want-to-call-them-because-you’re-having-a-crisis friend?’
Ashley thought about it. ‘Hayley from work. A year ago.’
‘Damn,’ muttered Rob. ‘I’d forgotten about her.’ Hayley Legge was a locum who had come to work at Ashley’s hospital for six months, then moved to Bath to marry her fiance. She and Ashley had immediately become best friends.
‘Women don’t count,’ he said defensively. ‘Your lot are built differently from mine. I leave you alone in the queue at the supermarket for five seconds and come back to discover you telling the woman next to you your life story.’
Ashley laughed. ‘It was just the once. And I could tell straight away that Sue was a really nice woman.’
‘But what kind of person makes a brand new friend in the supermarket? I’ve never heard anything like it in my life.’
‘But women share things. That’s why we find it so easy to make new friends.’
‘Exactly. And men are the opposite. We don’t share things. We don’t make small-talk if we can help it. We don’t tell complete strangers the story of our lives in a supermarket queue.’
‘Maybe you should.’
‘Do you know who the last friend I made was?’ asked Rob.
Ashley shook her head.
‘I don’t either. But it was years ago. Do you see what I’m saying? The window of opp
ortunity for making new friends has closed. I’ve missed the boat. I’m too old to make real friends now. Not like the ones I’ve left behind anyway. It’s an impossible task.’ He paused. ‘I know how I made friends in my twenties – by living in crap house shares and hanging out in the pub – but how I’m supposed to make friends in my thirties is a mystery to me. How do you do it when the people you want to befriend are settling down and getting on with their lives?’
‘Are you saying you want to go back to London?’ asked Ashley, nervously.
‘Of course not,’ replied Rob. ‘I said I’d give it a year and I meant it. I just don’t know how it’s going to work for us, though, if I can’t make my own friends.’ He gazed enviously across the bar at a group of guys in their thirties who had just come in. ‘I don’t know . . . Maybe I should just lower my standards. I’m never going to find a bunch of mates like the ones I’ve left behind. I doubt I’ll ever find someone I get on with as well as I do with Phil . . . But do you know what? Right here, right now, I’d settle for being able to go for a drink once a week with someone – anyone – I could be myself with for a little while.’
‘You’re right,’ said Ashley, as though a thought had occurred to her. ‘You do need your own friends. And I’m determined to help you do something to sort out this problem once and for all. In fact, I’m going to find you a brand new friend if it kills me.’
‘But how?’
‘Well, I’ve got an idea and it’s going to take me a while to sort it out. But you have to promise me that, whatever happens, you’ll give it a go.’
Rob looked around BlueBar once more at the groups of friends sitting together, drinking, talking, having fun. ‘Fine,’ he said. ‘Whatever it is you’ve got in mind, I’ll give it a go.’
PART THREE
(Principally concerning obstacles)
City life
It was six thirty on a Friday night, roughly a month after his birthday, and Rob was sitting in front of the TV waiting for Ashley to get home from a meeting. Since he had finished for the day an hour earlier he had put the dishwasher on, tidied the kitchen and prepared the ingredients for their evening meal. After that he watched the tail end of Neighbours and the beginning of the Six O’Clock News. He only moved from the sofa when he saw Ashley’s convertible pull up outside. When he opened the door to greet her, he was met with a firm kiss on the lips and a smile. ‘I’ve got some good news for you,’ she said, grinning.
‘What is it?’ asked Rob.
‘First things first,’ she replied, kicking off her shoes and going into the living room. ‘Highlights, lowlights.’
‘My lowlight,’ began Rob, as he flopped on to the sofa again, ‘was waking up this morning. As for my highlight . . .’ He let the silence do the talking. ‘There wasn’t one today. Just one very long lowlight. How about yourself?’
‘Well, my lowlight is pretty bad news,’ said Ashley. ‘As of today I’m moving from Geriatrics to the orthopaedics team covering A and E, which means more hours, more weekends and, worst of all, regular night shifts – beginning tonight.’
‘Tonight? Oh, that’s great. I was looking forward to spending some time with you. I’ll never see you now. We’ll be working completely different hours.’ He paused, then said the one thing he knew they were both thinking: ‘I might as well have stayed in London for all the good being here is doing.’
‘Don’t,’ said Ashley. ‘Look, it’s just until they get a few staffing problems sorted. And . . . well, it’s not that bad, really. I’ll be on for four days and off for four days, so we’ll have time together.’
‘You’ll be catching up on your sleep for most of it.’
‘You’re right, it’s not great, but I don’t have a choice.’
Suddenly Rob felt guilty for giving her such a hard time. ‘So, what was your highlight?’
‘As usual,’ she said, cheering up considerably, ‘coming home to you.’
‘Even when I’m like this?’
Ashley nodded. ‘You could be in the worst mood ever and it would still be the highlight of my day because you’re here . . . But go on, ask me what my second highlight of the day was.’
‘What was the second highlight of your day?’
‘I’ve done it,’ she replied. ‘I think I’ve got a way to find you a new friend.’
She hadn’t mentioned finding Rob a mate since his birthday and he’d assumed (or rather hoped) she’d forgotten about it. While it was kind of her to offer to sort out his life, there was little dignity in knowing, at the age of thirty-three, that his girlfriend was trying to find him a playmate.
‘What have you done?’ he asked suspiciously.
‘Nothing bad.’
‘So why do I feel nervous?’
‘Well, after we talked about finding you a friend I started thinking about ways to do it and realised you were right. It is difficult. Most people at our age make their new friends through work and, of course, that’s not an option for you. Then I had another thought. Why not place a personal ad in a What’s On type magazine like City List?’
‘A personal ad?’ echoed Rob.
‘I know what you’re thinking,’ began Ashley. ‘Personal ads are for the lonely, the desperate and the just plain weird.’
‘I wasn’t going to say that exactly but thanks for spelling it out.’
‘I didn’t mean that – but I knew you’d see it like that. But the truth is a lot of cool people use personal ads these days.’
‘Like who?’
‘Jenny at work. She put one in City List last year and look at her now.’
‘Isn’t Jenny the one who was single for ages and is now engaged to . . . what’s his name? The guy with the pale skin and beady eyes who looks like he’d crumble into dust if he ever went out in the sun?’
‘His name’s Stephen,’ said Ashley, tersely, ‘and there’s no need to be so mean. They’re very much in love.’
‘Well, that’s as may be. But her ads were in the Love Wanted section, weren’t they?’
‘Yes, but they have one for friends too—’
‘Let me stop you there,’ interrupted Rob. ‘First, no matter what you say, anyone who wears Mickey Mouse socks over the age of ten is not cool. Second, finding a bloke in the personals is not the same as finding new friends – there’s something too weird about it. In this age of speed dating and suchlike it might be socially acceptable to try to find a new partner through a magazine ad – but a friend? You might as well get “loser” tattooed on your forehead. How can anyone admit in black and white that they’re so socially inadequate that they can’t make a friend without advertising?’ He paused to let Ashley answer the question, and realised that he was precisely the type of loser who was so socially inadequate that he couldn’t make new friends without advertising for them.
‘How did this happen?’ he asked himself.
‘For the last time you’re not a loser,’ Ashley told him. ‘But the way I see it you’ve got two options. You can either sit and sulk in the house or get up and do something about it.’
‘I’ll sit and sulk,’ said Rob, sullenly. ‘There’s no way I’m putting an ad in City List asking for people to be my friends.’
‘But—’
‘No way.’
‘You promised.’
‘I know. But I didn’t promise to do this.’
‘Yes, you did. You promised to go along with whatever plan I came up with . . . and, anyway, it’s sort of too late.’
Rob looked at her and she glanced away guiltily. The penny dropped. ‘You’ve done it already, haven’t you?’ he accused her.
‘I did it the day after your birthday,’ she said, delving into her handbag and taking out a rolled-up copy of City List. She opened it and read aloud: ‘Chorlton based thirty-three-year-old male new to the north-west wishes to meet up with like-minded souls for drinking and carousing. Likes: music, literature, cinema and sitting in pubs. Dislikes: soap operas, hazelnuts, peanuts and people who own Anastacia albu
ms. If this sounds like you then drop me a line and we can set the world to rights.’
‘Is this some sort of practical joke?’ asked Rob, standing up to study the magazine for himself.
‘No,’ snapped Ashley. ‘It may seem far-fetched but this is me doing something to help you out. If you don’t want any help, fine – I’ll leave you alone.’ With that, she sat down on the sofa, changed the TV channel with the remote and folded her arms across her chest.
‘Look,’ said Rob, sitting down next to her, ‘I’m really sorry. You’re right, I did say I’d try to be open-minded about this. It’s just that—’
‘What?’
‘You’re asking me to go on a date with a bloke.’
‘And?’
‘Well, it’s a bit gay, isn’t it? I mean surely a bloke going on a date with another bloke is pretty much the definition of gayness. And as I’m completely heterosexual I think I’d just feel a bit uncomfortable doing it.’
‘Making friends through personals ads is not “a bit gay”.’
‘You’re right,’ replied Rob. ‘It’s not a bit gay. It’s actually very gay. Two men who don’t know each other meeting up in a bar or a restaurant for the sole purpose of getting to know each other better is completely and utterly gay. There’s no way round it.’
‘But, Rob,’ said Ashley, ‘you’re not gay. You have a girlfriend – me. You’re not suddenly going to swap which team you bat for just because you’ve gone for a drink with a bloke.’ Rob shrugged, unconvinced. ‘Anyway,’ she continued, ‘other than it being “a bit gay”, what did you think of the ad? It took me ages to write.’