Men and Supermen

by Jilly Cooper

  OR YOU CAN TAKE HER TO A PUB.

  Sexual Norm usually takes girls to his pub on the first date, because it’s cheap, because his friends will be impressed if they see him with a girl, because there’s someone else to talk to if he runs out of conversation. And he knows where the Gents is.

  I’m not wild about pubs, they’re all right in their place but not for courting, with all those bursts of well lubricated laughter, and large men in sports coats wanting to break into song. The bar stools are just the wrong length for my legs, and if you collar a table someone always comes shuffling over clutching a glass of lager and a cheese roll, sits down and inhibits your conversation.

  Invariably too your date drinks pints of beer, when you have a gin and tonic, and as you finish long before he does, if you’re polite you hide your glass, or if you’re like me, you rattle your ice or ostentatiously eat your lemon peel to encourage him to buy you another.

  Pubs however are infinitely sexier than Indian restaurants: nothing could be less turning on than flocked wallpaper, bright lights, glasses of warm light ale, a meat vindaloo-flavoured kiss afterwards, and onions, which recur through the night.

  Going to the theatre is nice for a first date—as long as you choose something jolly and the man doesn’t spend the whole time grumbling that there’s nowhere to put his legs. You should also dine afterwards rather than before.

  Cinemas are all right too—but here again you should dine afterwards with plenty of alcohol. There’s always something faintly depressing about the return to reality: your date doesn’t look quite as good as Steve McQueen, and you certainly don’t look so good as Jane Fonda. Horror films are excellent because they’re good for a giggle, and you’ve got a marvellous excuse for pretending to be frightened and clutching each other.

  THE PASS

  Sexual Norm by this time will be treading out the ground for the pass. We all know the tell-tale signs: the slowing down of a car on a lonely road, the hand edging along the back seat, the manoeuvring into an empty office in the lunch hour, the sidling up on the faded rose-patterned sofa accompanied by a murmur of: “Are your flat mates really out?”

  The girl if she fancies the man is wondering how much and how soon she can give in without feeling cheap.

  Norm has been known to pounce from the arm of a girl’s chair, and be rudely deposited on the floor when she leaps to her feet.

  A lot of men reluctant to face a rebuff, make verbal passes.

  “Can I come up for coffee?”

  “Does your husband ever go away?”

  “When are you next going up to London?” (This to a country wife.)

  “I thought next time we lunched it might be fun if we had a leg of chicken and white wine at my flat.”

  “The grass really isn’t wet, you know.”

  “Our bodies do talk the same language, don’t they?” (This one usually on the dance floor.)

  Or the more direct but less subtle approach: “I fantastically want to fuck you.”

  Sexual Norm, who realises the importance of being a good sexual conversationalist, sometimes says: “Would you mind awfully if I kissed you, Jennifer?” and then lunges even if she says no.

  It must be difficult being a man. If you pounce too soon everyone calls you a wolf, if you hold off too long everyone calls you a queer. If you make a pass of Khyber-like proportions at a girl who fancies you, she’ll say you’re wonderfully passionate, if you do exactly the same to a girl who doesn’t, she’ll complain you’re mauling her.

  “Big feet, darling …?”

  In theory, Superman is never in a hurry. His timing is so good that he always waits to make a pass at you at exactly the moment you’re worrying he might not—so you plummet like the proverbial ripe plum into his arms.

  But the whole pass-making business has become such a game—the man waiting until you’re getting worried, you falling over backwards not to appear worried—that it all goes on until you both go off the boil.

  Other men are so impervious to the come-on signs that you don’t know if they’re genuinely shy or just playing hard to get. They’re so reserved you wonder if someone else has reserved them already.

  The smooth operator of course, who always prefers to play on home ground, lures you back to his flat. Soon you’re lying on his sofa without your shoes. The central heating is up, the lights are dimmed, soft music is spilling into the room, and out of the corner of your eye in the next room you can see the most enormous double bed covered in furs. Within minutes the zips are down.

  *

  Bed

  “ Sex isn’t the best thing in the world, or the worst thing in the world, but there’s nothing else quite like it.”

  W. C. FIELDS.

  LOCATION

  ONCE A MAN knows a girl’s interested, where does he take her? It’s all right if both of them have got a flat—but if they haven’t there’s all the hassell of packing a suitcase to spend a few hours at a hotel, or borrowing a friend’s flat to ‘change in’, or waiting till nightfall to do it in the back of a car, or for summer to do it in the long grass.

  Wives always say they couldn’t possibly commit adultery in their own house, but lust is a great leveller.

  Superman books a room at the Ritz and launches the girl into a sea of vice with a bottle of champagne, ordering smoked salmon in the interval. He believes in mixing pleasure with pleasure.

  I’ve often wondered why smoked salmon is so erotic. Perhaps because it reminds one of rather warm bare flesh.

  Before he was married Sexual Norm used to commit fawnication (sic) on a creaking single bed. The girl invariably bumped into the landlady on her way to the bathroom on the next floor.

  Some women with marvellous figures like to be undressed before they leap into bed. And for this reason boys ought to take a course in undoing bras at prep-school. But with most people it’s a race to get undressed and into bed before the other person has time to see their stretch marks or spindly calves.

  “But Angus, I always thought one never wore anything underneath …”

  Bachelors sometimes take their clothes off and fold them up in polythene bags. Older hippies get undressed in another room, so they can remove their corsets in private and return with a swish of terry towelling.

  Adulterers look in the cupboard or under the bed. Superman takes the telephone off the hook. He also has a fire extinguisher on the wall in case the girl bursts into flames.

  Once in bed both parties breathe deeply and say “A-a-a-ah” several times. This is usually construed as ecstasy, but is in reality because of the coldness of the sheets and other people’s hands.

  People always try harder with new people. Sexual Norm will spend the next ten minutes worrying whether he’s giving the girl enough sexual foreplay or fiveplay, and then grimly thinking about cricket or football to keep his mind off sex. He occasionally says ‘Howzat’.

  The girl, remembering what the sex books told her about not lying back and being passive, will be frenziedly stroking Norm’s neck, tickling his toes, kissing his navel, and putting on such a display of acrobatics that he has to try and think even harder about cricket or football.

  Finally with the words ‘there are no frigid women, only incompetent men’ ringing in his ears, Norm starts threshing away like a sewing machine that’s got out of hand.

  THE BLAND LEADING THE BLAND

  Then come the lies.

  The man, crossing his fingers, will say: “I don’t do this very often, you know.”

  The girl, crossing her legs, will say: “Neither do I.” He: “I’ve only been to bed with, er, five women in my life.” She (uncrossing her legs): “This is the first affaire I’ve had since I’ve been married.”

  He: “I wouldn’t dream of going to bed with a girl I didn’t feel deeply about.” (Feeling deeply under her dress.)

  Several asterisks later he will say: “That was wonderful, darling. Was it wonderful for you, darling?”

  “Gosh, that was marvellous, darli
ng. Was it wonderful for you, darling?”

  I’m sure one of the reasons for the permissive society is because girls wear so few underclothes these days and are more getatable. Whenever I went out with a new man—fifteen years ago—I used to buy a new pantie-girdle to keep my curves at bay, which acted as a complete chastity belt. And, even worse, there were those all-in-one corselettes, which totally denied access.

  MULTIPLE BOREGASM

  Sex books in fact have made Sex absolutely impossible. Havealot Ellis and the still small voice of Kama Sutra were all right, but recently I was sent a book consisting of 287 pages devoted to Oragenitalism, which needed a degree in engineering to be understood. And you can go crazy trying to memorise all the refinements of The Sensuous Woman. “The Velvet Buzz Saw, the Butterfly Flick.” Nor can I see that it honestly adds anything to your sex life if you suddenly disappear in the middle of a steaming session to get chocolate ice-cream from the fridge to smear all over each other. And think of the laundry bills.

  I’m sure all those ludicrously controlled positions they advocate are responsible for the high incidence of slipped discs these days. I wouldn’t be surprised if most sex books were written by osteopaths to encourage business.

  “Oh damn, I’ve lost the place again.”

  Cosmopolitan magazine the other day was exhorting girls to excite and cajole their lovers with wildly obscene language. Sexual Norm, who’s been brought up not to swear in front of a lady, would be absolutely horrified.

  In fact after reading a sex book manual, I’m amazed any man dares pounce on a girl at all. He must be so worried about ‘ejaculatory incompetence’ or being a tower of jelly in a crisis, or not being able to come ten times a night. Then there’s always the problem of having wined not wisely but too well. Of the four stages of drunkenness: jocose, bellicose, lachrymose and comatose, it is essential to catch the girl at the post-jocose stage.

  And novels are so sexy too these days that even if a couple are having a quiet read before going to bed, the girl is liable to become insanely amorous just after the man’s taken his sleeping pills.

  LUST IS THE MOTHER OF INVENTION

  I’m a believer in lust—if two people fancy each other silly, they usually have a nice time in bed without the aid of chocolate ice-cream or the Velvet Buzz Saw.

  Of course there will be men like the Old Man of Thermopylae who never did anyone properly, or lazy men, who believe in labour saving vices, and just lie on their backs and let the girl do all their work.

  But on the whole I think the good lover has a way with women as some people do with horses—he makes them relax, he creates the kind of cosy emotional atmosphere in which a woman is not afraid to ask him to do the thing he wants to her. He is also an enthusiast, he cares for making a woman happy rather than making her, he is not frightened of getting his feet or anything else wet—relief would be just a lovely wallow away.

  I don’t think most women are crazy about sexual athletes. If he can twist you into every position in the Kama Sutra that’s gym not sex. Nor are they wild about marathons. The third day he rose from the bed may be all right for some, but it’s no good if he doesn’t press the right buttons.

  Finally the most important thing in a good lover is a sense of humour. He should be someone who can send the whole thing sky high, who wouldn’t mind if you were having an off day or didn’t feel up to it.

  “But sweetest, why in the bedroom?”

  BATHS

  Afterwards lovers are supposed to have baths together, which I’ve always thought was an overrated pastime, particularly if you sit at the wrong end and have the taps digging into your back, with one side scalded and the other one frozen. On the other hand if you don’t have a bath together, whoever has last bath not only has to make the bed but also clean the bath.

  THE VENERABLE BIDET

  Then of course there’s the bidet—somehow if you go to someone’s house and see a bidet in their bathroom you assume they must be sexually switched on, or French. Sexual Norm thinks bidets are for bathing the dog. American girl in Paris hotel: “Dig that crazy drinking fountain.”

  VASECTOMY

  According to a recent article this is the most beautiful thing a man can do for a woman; it’s also one of the shrewdest. If a man has a vasectomy, he can have an absolute hayride sleeping with anyone he wants to without danger. His wife however is completely stymied if she suddenly gets pregnant.

  DIRTY WEEKENDS

  “But, darling, when you said a dirty weekend …”

  Dirty weekends are divided into two kinds, the first when both the man and the woman intend to sleep with each other, the second when the man is intending to sleep with the woman.

  As the former usually take place in hotels, the couple’s main problem is to appear married, because if the hotel staff rumble the fact that they are not married they may easily try to put one of them in the Annex. A girl friend of mine recently spent a dirty weekend in Scotland, punctuated by dour Highland Ladies banging on the bedroom door and crying: “Come out, come out.”

  “Oh for goodness sake, Annabel, we’ve got to leave early in the morning.”

  The couple should therefore remember not to roll up in separate cars with separate luggage bearing different names. They should also not appear too animated at mealtimes, but gaze gloomily into space like other married couples. The girl should also remember not to ask the man whether he likes sugar in his coffee at breakfast or what name she should put in the register.

  One wife I know after her husband had spent a dirty weekend in the Cotswolds with his secretary found the bill in his name. When taxed, the husband told her it was his partner’s bill. “The swine always uses my name when he gets up to any of his tricks.” The wife believed him, and went round saying what a louse her husband’s partner was.

  If a girl goes on one of the latter dirty weekends when the man is trying to make her and has promised there are no strings attached, he usually invites her to stay with married friends who immediately steer her into a room with a large double bed, which they claim is their only spare room. Or he will take her on a boat, and not until it’s at sea, does she realise it only sleeps one.

  Love

  LOVE

  “If you believe in me, I’ll believe in you”

  ALICE IN WONDERLAND.

  “I am melancholy when thou art absent, look like an ass when thou art present, wake for thee when I should be asleep, and even dream of thee, when I am awake; sigh much, drink little, eat less, court solitude, am grown very entertaining to my self, and (as I am informed) very troublesome to everybody else. If this be not love, it is madness, and then it is pardonable.” The Old Bachelor.

  A GREAT DEAL of time is spent kidding oneself a man is keen on one when he isn’t. Once a man is hooked he will:

  find every one of your idiosyncrasies endearing

  roar with laughter at your most inane jokes. (People in love sound like hyenas)

  write you letters, when he’s going to see you the next day, which he tears up

  bore all his friends talking about you in the tones of gross hyperbole

  lose interest in everyone else

  telephone all the time

  make heroic efforts to spend every moment he possibly can with you to the extent of driving you 30 miles home after a date, picking you up from the office to take you to the station, or crossing London in the rush hour for the sake of being with you for two minutes.

  Men quite often behave like this to a girl before they get her into bed. If they act like this afterwards, she’s on to a good thing and should stay on.

  NORMAN’S SEXUAL CONQUEST

  Being susceptible, Norm falls in love about three times a year. At present he is hooked on a well stacked typist in the office called Dental Floss.

  His wife Honor can always detect the signs. She hears Norm yelling for clean underpants in the morning. She then watches him putting deodorant between his toes, cutting himself shaving because his hand is shaking
with excitement, shrieking with agony when his new French Aftershave gets into the cuts, leaving a snowfall of talcum powder on the bathroom floor, and cutting his toe nails surreptitiously into the waste-paper basket instead of in bed as usual.

  He then polishes his shoes, changes his mind five times about what tie he’s going to wear, picks the only rose in the garden for his buttonhole, spends hours combing his hair over his bald patch, and can be seen slipping a toothbrush into his briefcase. Sometimes he cleans his teeth.

  Honor notices he has also taken to carrying cigarettes and a lighter although he doesn’t smoke, and spending a lot of evenings at regimental dinners or out with the boys and returning completely sober. When she rides in the car she finds her seat belt has been let out to accommodate a vast bust.

  FOR EVER AMBER

  Some men are so filled with caution, they can never bring themselves to propose. I’ve seen so many girls go out for years with a man in the hope that they might hook him in the end. They spend their time looking for signs: “He’s talked about our going on holiday together, he’s going to get a house when the lease of his flat runs out, he’s taken me to meet his mother, he’s got my photograph in his wallet, I’ve looked in his diary and he’s got nothing but squash with Geoffrey and cricket fixtures for the next six months.” But the man still won’t say he loves her or ask her to marry him.