‘You don’t understand …’ I’m trying to keep the rising panic out of my voice.
‘Oh, come on. You contact me again after all these years, agree to meet me, then walk in here all alone and looking hot and sexy? Bet you’re living in some fantastic penthouse apartment now, with big leather couches and satin sheets on the bed … Why don’t we go back to your place and take this a bit further?’
Chapter Eight
‘Remind Me Again Why I Need a Man’
It’s hard to believe that a week has passed and yet here I am, sitting in the front row of tutorial room 201, in full flow, virtually ranting at poor Ira Vandergelder about my experiences of the previous night.
‘All I can say is, meeting my ex-boyfriend constituted one hour out of my life I’ll never get back.’
The class titter.
‘So what exactly happened?’ ‘OK, the nicest thing that happened all evening was that he covered his mouth when burping. This man has an ex-wife, a girlfriend – who by the way is pregnant, just for added entertainment value – and then he made a move on me. He had completely got the wrong idea as to why I’d contacted him and thought, in his own warped head, that because I was still single, therefore I was fair game. Can you believe the arrogance?’
‘You wanna feel sorry for yourself or do you wanna get married?’ says Ira.
I’d almost forgotten about the New York, take-no-prisoners directness. I can’t answer her though; I’m too distracted by the rest of the class looking at me like I’m a few coupons short of a special offer.
‘How old were you when you started dating him?’ Ira ploughs on with the interrogation.
‘Sixteen.’
‘So, tell the class what it’s taken you the guts of twenty years to learn.’
I pause for a minute and take a deep, calming breath. There comes a point when you’ve been so humiliated in front of a room full of complete strangers that you don’t care any more. It can hardly get worse. ‘My first boyfriend was a cheater when I knew him and he’s still a cheater now. I suppose I’ve learned that people don’t change.’
‘There’s something even more obvious than that.’
‘What?’ I’m genuinely stumped.
‘We need to work on your screening process. Sounds to me, Amelia, as if you do not choose good men for yourself. Look at you, so pretty. You seem like a lovely person too, so what you need to ask yourself is this: Why would any man not want to be married to me? May I ask why you broke up with your most recent boyfriend?’
‘The oldest story in the book. He said he loved me but couldn’t commit to me.’
‘Bullshit,’ says Ira, rolling her eyes to heaven, as if she’s heard this a thousand times before. ‘When a man uses that “I’m commitment-phobic” line, let me translate it for you. It means he just doesn’t want to commit to you. You are gonna learn to select better potential husbands, Amelia. Remember, you are not looking for a boyfriend; you are auditioning for a marriage partner. OK. Next.’
She moves on to the woman next to me and I find myself smarting, as I always do, at the very mention of He-whose-name-shall-forever-remain-unspoken. When we broke up, or, more correctly, when he finally had the guts to dump me, he’d said that it wasn’t me, it was him. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to be with me any more, he didn’t want to be with anyone and blah, blah, blah.
What Ira is saying makes a lot of sense. Maybe there’s nothing fundamentally wrong with me, maybe I just make appalling choices … and have been doing so for over twenty years. It’s an empowering thought and it cheers me up no end.
As the class goes on and everyone is vying to tell their stories, I’m almost starting to feel like I got off easily last night. Some of the other women’s experiences would turn milk sour.
Swotty, red-haired girl (who I’ve since discovered is called Mags) tracked down her first proper boyfriend, who had a nice, sensible job in the civil service, only to discover that he was now driving a taxi around North Dublin and was happily married to a mail-order Russian who he’d bought over the internet.
‘I was kind of half hoping it would be so romantic and that he’d tell me, after all these years, that he’d never stopped loving me,’ she says, sniffing. ‘But the truth is, he never started loving me in the first place. He couldn’t even remember my name.’
At this point, I start to feel really sorry for poor Mags. Compared with that, my story is like something from a Disney cartoon.
The woman beside her found out her first ex-boyfriend is now in prison, doing ten years for drug-trafficking. ‘And you know, it’s funny,’ she tells the stunned classroom, ‘but whenever I’d go out on a date with him, there was always money missing from my bag.’
But the Olympic gold medal goes to this lovely-looking woman at the back of the class who tearfully tells us she got in touch with her ex’s family and asked how she could contact him. She said the hostility she met with was so forceful that she had to ask if she’d caused offence in any way just by looking for his contact number. It turned out he’d died in a car accident about five years ago, and no one had thought to tell her.
Ira patiently listens to each and every story and passes out good, rock-solid advice, mostly ending with her mantra: ‘Good work. Now learn and move on.’ Eventually she takes her position at the front of the class. ‘OK, ladies, listen up,’ she says, hands on hips. ‘You have two assignments for next week. One is, you will get in touch with your second ex-boyfriend and find out what the hell went wrong there. Secondly, you will contact all of your married friends and ask for fix-ups.’
‘Why married friends?’ asks Mags.
‘Because I want each of you ladies to change your reference group to reflect your desired status. You all wanna be married, right?’
There’s nodding and murmurs of assent.
‘And you’re prepared to do anything to achieve that goal, right?’
More nodding and murmuring, although the way she emphasized the word ‘anything’ sends an alarm bell ringing in my head.
‘Then you need to realize that your single friends, by and large, will want you to remain single. That way they’ll have someone to talk to on the phone late at night and bitch about men while eating two-day-old cold pizza slices.’
I baulk a bit at this and have a brief mental picture of Rachel clocking her one, just for the cold-pizza remark alone.
But Ira ploughs on, ‘Whereas your married friends tend to want you to be married too. That way they can go out in foursomes and have another couple to talk to when they’ve run out of things to say to each other.’
Bit of an unfair generalization, I think … but could she possibly be right about single people? Do they really want you to stay single?
‘So, ladies, contact as many of your married friends as you can and ask them straight out. Tell them this is your year to get married and that you wanna be fixed up. Be brave. Remember you have nothing to lose. Their husbands must have single work colleagues, golf partners, football team-mates, whatever, and all you’re asking your friend is to set you up on a date with one of them.’
‘Ugh, I’d hate to go on a blind date,’ says someone from the back.
‘Then leave my class,’ says Ira coolly. ‘You are clearly not committed to finding a spouse. Of course it’s a blind date. What is internet dating except blind dating with a fancy new name?’
Soon, too soon for my liking, it’s nine o’clock and class is over.
‘Go get results!’ Ira calls out as everyone packs up and files out past her. I’m almost at the door when she calls me back. ‘Amelia?’
‘Yes?’
‘A quick word. What I just said about getting your married friends to set you up with someone? That particularly applies to you.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Seems to me like you make a lot of bad choices, honey. So, work the problem. See if one of your good friends can pick a better man for you, on your behalf.’
‘Thanks.’ I smile ba
ck at her. ‘I’ll certainly give it a shot.’
‘Hope I wasn’t too hard on you earlier.’
‘No, not at all. In fact, you really lifted my spirits. I think you’re right. I am lousy at choosing men. And I’ve also had a lot of very bad luck.’
‘The thing to remember about bad luck,’ Ira replies sagely, ‘is that it always runs out.’
I get a clear, unequivocal sign later that night. I’m tucked up in bed, wading through some scene breakdowns I need to be on top of for a story meeting I’ve scheduled for first thing the following morning, when tiredness eventually gets the better of me. I switch on the TV by my bed and snuggle down to sleep. (Ask any single person: we all have little, idiosyncratic things we have to do to fill the void; mine just happens to be that I can’t go to sleep without the TV on.)
The late night movie is on. Top Gun. The scene where Tom Cruise takes Kelly McGillis zooming off into the sunset on the back of his motorbike, as Berlin sing ‘Take My Breath Away’. It triggers another memory, but this time for different reasons …
THE TIME: 13 February 1986. (I only remember the date so clearly because it was Valentine’s Eve. Read on, you’ll see why.)
THE PLACE: Blazes wine bar in Temple Bar before any of us knew it was Temple Bar. We just thought it a load of seedy side streets off the quays.
THE OCCASION: Jamie’s newly formed band are making their highly anticipated debut. The Lovely Girls are, naturally, out in our finery to support him.
‘Why are the band called Emergency Exit?’ asks Rachel.
‘So that their name will always be in lights,’ I answer, filling our glasses with the cheapest wine I could find, which is all we can afford.
‘Ughhh!’ says Caroline, spitting it out. ‘Tastes like cat pee.’
‘Oh, that is truly revolting,’ says Rachel, spewing hers out too. ‘In future, Amelia, you need to remember that wine should always cost more than milk.’
Blazes is packed with the UCD crowd, most of whom Jamie and his lead guitarist Pete Mooney have bullied into being there. They’re both on stage (well, not really a stage, a big rostrum more like) tuning up, which involves Jamie screeching ‘Two, two, two, one, two’ into a mike at a decibel level that would shatter glass.
‘I’d swear Jamie’s wearing make-up, you know,’ I say, squinting at him from where we’re parked at a table on the far side of the stage.
‘Yeah, I did it for him earlier,’ says Rachel. ‘He’s going for a Boy George look, right down to the plaits. The Alison Moyet hat is mine too. Do you like it?’
‘Alison Moyet? Crocodile Dundee, more like.’
‘Oh, look, there’s Celine, over by the bar,’ says Caroline.
Celine is Jamie’s girlfriend of about three weeks; an Annie Lennox lookalike, full-time English student, part-time rock chick.
‘Will we invite her to join us?’
‘No,’ Rachel snaps. ‘She should be Celine and not heard.’
‘What’s wrong with her?’ asks Caroline. ‘She seems really sweet and lovely.’
‘So by that you mean thick.’
‘Come on, Rachel,’ I say, ‘we should make an effort. She is Jamie’s girlfriend.’
‘Big deal, Jamie has a girlfriend. I have a pimple, but you don’t hear me going on about it.’
‘But they’ve been together for a few weeks now. That’s quite serious, for our Jamie.’
‘Oh, please, I have lumps of cheese in my fridge I’ve had longer relationships with.’
‘Rachel,’ I ask as gently as I can, ‘what is up with you?’ We’re all used to her being brittle and caustic, but quite not to this extent.
‘Nothing. I just happen to think the girl is a complete tea cloth. In fact, there are probably tea cloths out there with higher IQs than hers.’
Next thing, two really handsome preppy-looking guys saunter over to our table. ‘Yes, before you ask, those seats are taken,’ says Rachel, whose bad humour knew no bounds that evening. ‘We’re with the band.’
‘Wish I could have said that,’ I groan. ‘I’ve waited my whole life just to be able to say, “We’re with the band.” ’
‘Didn’t mean to interrupt,’ says the taller one politely. ‘I just wanted to ask your friend something.’ He nods over to where Caroline is splurting out another gulp of the rancid wine.
‘Sorry,’ she says, looking up at them and giggling prettily.
‘It’s just that my friend here thinks you’re the image of Selina Scott,’ says the slightly cuter one of the two. ‘That’s before she started doing breakfast television and got all wrecked-looking. But I think you look really like Daryl Hannah in Splash. Except your hair’s a bit shorter. We just wondered if you got asked this a lot.’
‘Ignore them, they’re pissed,’ says Rachel.
Just then Emergency Exit launches into their first number, ‘You’re Nancy to my Ronald, you’re Raisa to my Gorbachev, if I’m Scargill then you’re Thatcher.’
Caroline doesn’t ignore them though. By the time Jamie’s band have shut up (about seven minutes later, Emergency Exit’s repertoire consists of only three songs), she is deep in conversation with the cuter one, who she blushingly introduces to us between songs as Mike, a third-year dentistry student at Trinity College.
Next thing, the torture’s over and Jamie bounds over to us, demanding congratulations.
‘Well done,’ we all chorus. ‘You were fab!’
Celine’s over like a shot too, almost elbowing us out of her way to get to Jamie. ‘Darling! Marvellous was not the word,’ she says in her gravelly, sixty-fags-a-day voice.
‘So you liked it, babe?’ says Jamie, hugging her.
‘I heard your music,’ she says, deadly serious, ‘and I was jealous. That’s the best compliment I can give you.’
Rachel shoots me a significant I-told-you-to-watch-out-for-that-stupid-cow look and, for a moment, I feel maybe she’s right. I shrug it off though, figuring: I’m sure Yoko Ono had to put up with this from Paul, George and Ringo all the time.
‘I think Pete likes you,’ Jamie says to me later on, once he’s relaxed and happy with a Malibu and pineapple in his hand and Celine perched on his knee.
‘Who’s Pete?’
‘Lead guitarist. Well, only guitarist. He wanted to know who your musical influences are. I told him Kraftwerk and Talking Heads. Could you imagine if he found out the horrible truth?’
‘What horrible truth?’
‘That you secretly like Sister Sledge and Bananarama. And you even have a Billy Joel LP lying around your house. No use to keep pretending it’s your mother’s, I have you sussed.’
Celine laughs, a bit cruelly I think, and I’m all set to defend myself when Pete himself joins us. ‘Introduce me to him, quick,’ I hiss at Jamie. ‘I only have about an hour before my hair starts flattening.’
‘Yeah,’ says Jamie, clocking that at least three and a half cans of hairspray and mousse must have gone into my painstakingly backcombed hair that night. ‘Take that, ozone layer.’
We all shake hands with Pete and offer congratulations, then he settles on a bar stool between Caroline, Mike and me. He’s very cool-looking, beanpole tall and skeletally thin with hollow, sucked-in cheeks, kind of like Nick Cave’s. He’s head-to-toe in black and wearing heavy eye make-up too. Very New Order.
‘So did you enjoy the gig?’ he asks me.
‘Yeah! You were fantastic!’ I lie. (Well, it’s been a long time since any guy cared about my musical influences. What can I say? I’m flattered.) ‘You remind me of U2 when they first started out.’
‘Don’t mention those bastards. Adam Clayton stole one of my songs, you know.’
‘What? Which one?’
‘Sure, they only have two decent songs. “Pride in the Name of Love”.’
‘You wrote that?’
‘Well, not exactly. I wrote a song called “I’m So Proud That You Love Me”. But my brother was in the same class as Clayton and I’m telling you, he stole it. One minute
, me and Jamie are jamming it in my dad’s garage; next thing, before I even have a chance to record it on my double tape deck, U2 are on Top of the Pops singing it. Almost the same tune and everything. Bastards.’
‘That’s terrible.’
‘That’s the music business. What did you think of “Poison Yuppie”?’
I look at him blankly.
‘The last song we sang? With me on lead vocals?’
‘Oh, sorry, it was … emm … really, really great.’
‘I wrote that.’
‘You did? Wow.’ I try to look suitably impressed.
‘Yeah, when my ex-girlfriend left me for a guy with red braces and a filofax.’
We chat on for a bit, mostly – well, all about him, and eventually he says, ‘Do you want to go and see Talking Heads?’
‘Are they coming to Dublin? Do you have tickets?’
‘No, I meant the film they’re in, Stop Making Sense. It’s on at the Ambassador.’
Just then, Caroline interrupts us. By now, I notice, she and Mike are holding hands. ‘Are you both talking about going to a movie?’ she asks. ‘Because Mike’s just asked me to see Top Gun with him tomorrow night. There’s a special Valentine’s night showing. Why don’t we all go as a foursome?’
‘Why not a sixsome?’ says Jamie, arms tight around Celine.
It’s only at this point I notice that Rachel has left.
Chapter Nine
The Set-up
‘And please don’t think I’m in any position to be picky. Just as long as they can stand erect and use a knife and fork, they’re in with a chance. I’m completely inoculated from having any great expectations when it comes to men.’
I’m sitting in Caroline’s elegantly appointed drawing room, sipping café au lait and filling her in on what’s been happening in Ira’s class/bitching about Greg Taylor/humbly begging to be set up with one of Mike’s friends.
‘Oh, sweetie,’ says Caroline, cradling her sleeping four-year-old, Joshua, close. (You should just see the two of them. Throw in a star and three wise men and you’re looking at a beautiful Madonna and child.) ‘I’m racking my brains to think of any nice, eligible men Mike knows, who you haven’t met yet, but I honestly can’t. They’re all either married or spoken for, every one of them. And besides, after the last few single guys we set you up with, I wouldn’t blame you if you never went on a blind date ever again as long as you live, you poor thing.’
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