Dinner for Two

by Mike Gayle

  ‘I’m sorry about my wife,’ I say, as we settle down to bottled beer and prawn cocktail crisps for two. ‘She’s very protective of me.’

  ‘It’s no problem,’ says Fran. ‘I didn’t realise you were married to Izzy Harding. I’m a big fan of her stuff. She used to write that column in Femme a few years back, didn’t she, “Girl About Town”?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I reply, and I know exactly what her next question’s going to be.

  ‘Does that mean you’re “The Bloke” she always used to mention.’

  ‘I should hope so.’

  Fran drums on the table with delight. ‘I feel like I know you already!’ she says, clearly delighted. ‘Izzy’s one of the reasons I went into journalism in the first place. I remember one column she wrote about the sub-duvet shenanigans of an old boyfriend and it had me in hysterics for ages. All her observations about men and stuff were so spot-on.’

  ‘She’ll be impressed when I tell her that. Izzy loves people who say nice stuff about her work. There’s only one thing, though . . .’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That column you were talking about. That ex-boyfriend’s bedroom habits were mine.’

  ‘You’re kidding!’ says Fran, stifling a fit of giggles. ‘Doesn’t it bother you that she puts all these intimate details of your life in her column and features?’

  ‘Not really. She makes half of it up and what she doesn’t make up she exaggerates for “comic effect”. No one could live as glamorous a life as she used to make out in her column, and no boyfriend or husband could be as annoying as she makes out I am. Anyway, I’m very thick-skinned about that kind of thing.’

  ‘You’re a very blokey kind of bloke, aren’t you?’ observes Fran. ‘That’s the sort of response I’d expect from a blokey bloke.’

  ‘Well, there you go.’

  ‘I bet you don’t talk about relationships either, do you?’

  ‘I don’t mind. Just as long as you don’t start crying.’

  Fran laughs. ‘One man in an office full of girls. It’s going to be a lot of fun having you around. Relationships are all we ever talk about.’ She pauses. ‘Well, relationships – and the state of our hair.’

  For the rest of our lunch-break, in a concerted effort to show how girly she can be, Fran talks mostly about her boyfriend, Linden. They’ve been an item for two years but don’t live together. He’s slightly older than her and works in a clothing shop in Camden. I like the way she talks about him, with a mixture of pride and adoration, even if he sounds like a bit of an idiot. He has a cool group of friends who do cool things in cool places. I begin to wonder whether she’s with Linden to make a fashion statement rather than because she’s in love with him. However, she seems content to talk and I’m content to listen. It’s the perfect match.

  love

  Over the lunch-times that follow my first day at Teen Scene I eat a sandwich at my desk and work on my next column for Femme. Izzy says no to both the toilet seat and why men can only do one thing at a time. I suggest a column about my lack of DIY skills and she laughs – she knows what I’m going to write about because she lives with the results – and says yes. By Friday lunch-time I finish my piece so I e-mail it to her.

  chocolate

  To: izzy.harding@bdp.co.uk

  From: dave_atch01@hotmail.com

  Subject: My very first male shot column.

  Dear Babe,

  Here is my very first Male Man column.

  The idea came to me when I was thinking about the time the bathroom radiator leaked all over the floor . . . Exactly. Bit of truth. Bit of fiction. But a cracking column all around I’m sure you’ll agree.

  Dave XXX

  Man About The House

  There’s one phrase I dread hearing more than any other in the English language. In my book it’s worse than such spine-chillers as: ‘It’s not you it’s me,’ ‘Is this your vehicle, sir?’ and ‘The bank has instructed me to cut your credit card in two.’ Only my wife has the power to utter the phrase I fear so much, and the only when some catastrophe has be fallen the house – like, for example, last Saturday when the kitchen radiator precipitated a scale version of Lake Windermere across the kitchen floor. Just as I began searching for the biscuit tin that constitutes my toolbox, my wife disappeared and returned, Yellow Pages in hand, and uttered the words I loathed so much: ‘I think we’d better get a man in.’

  I know that in this day and age, when Calvin Klein makes a unisex perfume, sexism is considered uncool by all but a few dinosaurs, and gender roles are no longer set in stone, such things shouldn’t matter, but I feel incredibly threatened by the thought of ‘getting a man in’. ‘I’m a man,’ I tell myself, ‘I don’t need to get a man in!’ The truth is, however, that fixing stuff appeals to the five-year-old that dwells within every bloke and I don’t see why I should pay someone to have all the fun.

  When I lived in rented accommodation, I wouldn’t even have changed a light-bulb without making a huge song and dance about it. Instead I’d be the first on the phone to the landlord. The minute my wife and I bought a place of our own, we drew up a long list of things that needed fixing. It suddenly dawned on me that, without a landlord, I’d have to take on the mantle of Mr Fix-it. The prospect of doing all the DIY things I’d watched my dad do when I was a kid had me so excited I literally didn’t know what to do.

  Received wisdom has it that home improvements – like football and Claudia Schiffer’s vital statistics – are something men know how to do instinctively. Unfortunately, somewhere in the mists of time, one of my ancestors must have suffered some sort of genetic amnesia because while I’m okay on Liverpool FC seasons ’82–’87, have a fondness for Mercedes soft tops and German supermodels, I know NOTHING AT ALL about HOME IMPROVEMENTS. This, however, doesn’t stop me having a go. And before I know it I’m lying on the floor, monkey wrench in hand, refusing assistance of any kind.

  My wife, much to her credit, is extremely patient and holds off with the Yellow Pages until I admit defeat or have made the situation so dangerous that she is in fear for our lives. Then, and only then, I make the call. That done, I sit and wait to be emasculated and curse the education system. What use is a degree in English when you’ve got a leaking radiator? My constant wish is that, one day, a man in overalls will call me up on a Saturday morning (double time) and ask me to come round and explain the works of Shakespeare to him in front of his despairing wife. It’ll never happen. Instead when The Man arrives, I compensate for my inadequacies by standing over him while he’s working to give him the impression that I understand the basic principles of central heating. When the humiliation is all but over, my wife will insist that I offer him a cup of tea and a biscuit while he charges me an exorbitant amount for ten minutes’ work, tells me my DIY skills made the situation worse and then, finally, adds, in a jokey sort of way, ‘With a bit of know-how, mate, you could’ve saved yourself a load of money.’

  please

  It’s the morning of my last day at Teen Scene. I’ve been here for two weeks and I feel like a completely different person. I’ve learned all the names of all the members of the Backstreet Boys; I no longer feel the urge to smash my car radio when I hear the record that sampled the TV-drama theme tune because from doing my singles reviews I’ve been made aware that a lot worse music is out there; I’ve got so deeply into Dawson’s Creek that I now actually care about whether Dawson and Joey will ever get it together properly. In short, I’ve enjoyed my second adolescence, but not enough to contemplate staying at Teen Scene any longer. Five days ago Gary Robeson, editor of Selector, which is a kind of cross between Rolling Stone and NME, offered me a job as deputy editor for a lot less than I’d earned at Louder. I haven’t said yes to him as Selector’s circulation is so low that it might fold before the end of the year.

  At about midday Jenny sends me an internal e-mail, asking me to come and see her for a chat. I’m in the middle of setting up a photo-shoot and interview with a new UK girl band, and it isn’t
going well. They can’t make any of the dates when the photographer is available and I’m trying to come up with viable alternatives. Talking to Jenny is just the break I need.

  Her office is a real teen treasure trove. The wall behind her desk is plastered with Teen Scene front covers dating back to 1994. Along the wall next to it are shelves of American teen and entertainment magazines, and stretching half-way across the wall facing her desk is a large cabinet overspilling with paraphernalia from the teen world: boy-band T-shirts, abandoned TV merchandising, CDs, logoed sweatshirts, and a thousand and one promotional gifts and freebies.

  ‘I can never believe just how much stuff you have in here, Jen,’ I say, gesturing to the cabinet as I sit down opposite her.

  ‘It’s only here because I feel bad about chucking it out,’ she replies. ‘There are kids out there who would cut their arms off to have some of this stuff, but Trev won’t have it in the flat.’ She laughs. ‘Feel free to help yourself to anything that catches your eye.’

  ‘I’ll take this,’ I say, reaching down to pick up a Dawson’s Creek novelisation sitting on top of a pile of Teen Scene back issues. ‘Something to read on the tube. So, what’s up, then?’

  ‘You know I’ve asked you a couple of favours in recent weeks? Well, now I need to ask another.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘You must have read the magazine by now, and you must have seen the advice pages . . .’

  ‘You mean the “Your Confession” section? Four pages of teenage girls yapping on and on about boys and acne and boys and periods. Yeah, I know that.’

  ‘Scoff all you like but it’s the mag’s most popular section.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Well, the thing is I’m thinking about revamping it and I’m going to get rid of our freelancer Adam Carter, who wrote the “Ask Adam” column.’

  ‘No more “Ask Adam”? I’m gutted.’

  ‘Not as gutted as he’ll be, I suspect. I’ve never really liked his column – he was way too old-school.’

  ‘So why is he here, then?’

  ‘I inherited him from the last editor and was always too busy to make a change. Anyway, I was talking it over with the editorial director at lunch and we decided that the section needs a young, fresh, funky approach to agony-uncling.’

  I can’t help but laugh. Only in her world did adults use the words ‘fresh’ and ‘funky’ without the faintest degree of irony. ‘So, what’s this fresh and funky approach, then?’

  ‘You,’ she says, pointing at me. ‘You’re perfect for the job. You’re young. You’re good-looking. You’re cool. Our readers would love to take advice from you.’

  All I can do in response to this is laugh. I laugh so much I can’t stop.

  ‘You’re not taking my misery seriously, are you?’ says Jenny. ‘Just think about it, will you? We’re keeping on “Dear Dr Liz”, to deal with all the “technical stuff” of problem pages: periods, pregnancy and the like, and we’d have you for the fun side of things. And we’re going to expand it. Six whole pages every month.’

  ‘I can’t, Jen. I’m really grateful for the work, honestly, but you know I was only doing this until I found something else.’

  ‘But you haven’t found anything else yet, have you?’

  ‘Not exactly. Selector have offered me a job but—’

  ‘You reckon it will fold just like Louder.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  She gives me a sly wink that she knows is incredibly annoying. I put two and two together. ‘Izzy told you.’

  ‘She was just trying to give me a bit of ammunition to help me out. Listen, please take the job I’m offering. It’s not just me who thinks you’d be great at it either. Fran suggested it at a features meeting ages ago. She said you’d been giving her tips about how to handle her boyfriend.’

  This is true. She’d come into the office crying on the Friday morning of the previous week because she and Linden had had a massive row and he’d said that he didn’t want to see her any more. She’d wanted to know if she should call him and apologise, even though it was always her who called and apologised when they rowed. I bet her ten pounds that if she didn’t call him all day and went out with her friends in the evening she’d have an apology from Linden by ten o’clock that night. At half past eight she’d called me on my mobile, while Izzy and I were watching TV, to tell me that Linden, who had never before begged for anything in his life, had begged her not to end the relationship. She’d never been in such a strong position with him in all the time they’d been together and she nominated me as her ‘relationship guru of choice’.

  ‘You can’t take Fran’s opinion on anything. She’s a bit strange.’

  ‘Come on, Dave,’ says Jenny, ‘aren’t you bored with all that music stuff yet? Proclaiming some band to be the best on the planet one month only to slag them off the next? We’ll pay you decent money for what amounts to very little work. You won’t have to come into the office every day and even if you did get a new job you could carry it on. What do you say?’

  ‘How much are we talking?’

  She scribbles a figure on a Post-it notepad and pushes it across her desk towards me.

  ‘Not bad,’ I say to the pad. ‘I take it that it has occurred to you that I haven’t got any formal advice-giving qualifications.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter. I like the stuff you’ve already written for us and for Izzy. Fran thinks you’re the best thing in the world. All that matters is that, once upon a time, you were a teenage boy, which means you know what they think about. That’s all our readers want: someone who used to be a teenage boy explaining to them the mindset of the teenage boy. Our readers can’t work them out at all. You’d be a kind of big-brother figure, explaining the complicated species that they see regularly at school but don’t understand.’

  ‘Can I give it some thought?’

  ‘No. Tina, the deputy editor, has been lobbying desperately for me to give it to her boyfriend who works on the second floor at that men’s magazine that always has semi-naked female TV presenters on the cover. I said I’d get back to her by the end of the day. Don’t make me give it to him, Dave. I can’t stand him. He’s a real idiot. A sexy idiot but an idiot all the same. You’d do a million times better job. So, what do you say?’

  Briefly I review my career over the past few months: lose job as music journalist, get freelance work with a women’s glossy magazine, write a couple of gig reviews for a newspaper, write a feature for a teen mag then go and work for said teen mag. What is life trying to tell me? I don’t know, but I find myself saying okay to Jenny.

  ‘That’s fantastic,’ she says. ‘You are now officially Dave Harding – Love Doctor.’

  ‘Love Doctor?’

  ‘Yeah. I came up with it during a brainstorming session a while ago. You’re an agony uncle for the twenty-first century.’

  ‘And what about the music and celeb-interview stuff? Who’s going to be writing that?’

  ‘Good point,’ says Jenny, winking knowingly. ‘I was kind of hoping that, until we find someone permanent, you’d do it too.’

  smile

  ‘Congratulations,’ says Fran, when I arrive back at my desk.

  ‘This is all your fault,’ I tell her.

  Fran looks thoroughly pleased with herself. ‘I think you’ll make a great agony uncle. Much better than Adam, who was just a few strides away from being a bit creepy.’ She pats my shoulder. ‘Well done, mate. First thing to do is have a cheesy photograph taken for the top of your column.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You have to have one if you have a column in the mag – the readers like to know what you look like so they can pretend you’re their best friend.’ She handed me a picture of herself smiling impishly. ‘I had it done last summer and I look about twelve in it, don’t I?’ She giggled. ‘They’ll probably have to do a lot of work on yours, though.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It’s not a veiled insult, honest. It’s just that Daisy
told me they had to get the photographer to shoot eight rolls of “Ask Adam” before they got a single shot where he didn’t look like a serial killer. They were even toying with the idea of using a male model as a front but Adam wouldn’t have it. He said it would compromise his integrity.’

  ‘That’s a lot of effort for one photograph.’

  ‘Not really. What you’ve got to remember is that, well, blokes are a bit scary, aren’t they? Especially when you’re a girl and you’re only fourteen. That’s why teens like boy bands so much. They’re a nice non-scary introduction to the delights of older boys. They’ve got smooth cheeks and they’re sort of girly-looking – just the kind of boy a girl likes at that age. So, the photographer will turn you into the boy-band version of an agony uncle, the perfect nonthreatening male role model.’

  ‘You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?’

  ‘Of course,’ says Fran. ‘Can you think of anything funnier than a former cooler-than-cool music journo dispensing words of wisdom to a bunch of teenage girls? I certainly can’t.’

  call

  ‘The Love Doctor!’ exclaims Izzy, when I call her at Femme later that afternoon and tell her the news. ‘You have got to be kidding.’

  ‘It’s true,’ I say. ‘It was Jenny’s idea. She said calling the column “Dear Dave” wasn’t “fresh and funky”.’

  ‘And “Love Doctor Dave” is?’

  ‘Apparently.’

  ‘Hats off to Jen for persuading you to do it, though. When she told me about it I said there was no way you’d do it. Not even because we’re all friends. And there you are, an agony uncle. You should start reading up about all this advice stuff, you know – try some of those Oprah-endorsed books. I could probably steal a couple from work.’