Romantically Challenged

by Sami Lukis

  The furchild’s complete and unashamed dominance of my bed really doesn’t bother me, and it has only ever led to issues in my dating life on a few occasions. Like the time a guy told me about halfway through our our first date that he could never be with a girl who let her dog sleep on the bed. ‘It’s a dating deal-breaker,’ he said, rather sternly.

  I laughed out loud and yelled jokingly, ‘Cheque, please!’ But my date did not think I was funny. He didn’t even crack a smile. Instead, he made it very clear to me that he could not, and he would not, ever be in bed with a dog.

  So I decided to make it very clear to him that my dog did always and would always sleep in my bed, which presented an uncomfortable conversational crossroads for a few moments, before we moved on to other topics. It was wildly premature to be discussing our bedroom routine at that stage, anyway.

  After dinner, I was a little surprised when he said he’d like to see me again. It seemed pointless getting to know him better. You don’t have to be an expert matchmaker to realise that a man who hates dogs and a woman who loves hers like the child she never had are probably never going to make it down the aisle.

  I was understandably confused by his mixed messages, so I did what any self-respecting content-hungry radio host would do, and turned it into an on air segment. The next morning, I explained his no-dogs-on-the-bed first-date deal-breaker to my listeners, who were already well aware of my boundary-less relationship with my pooch. And I asked them if it would be foolish of me to accept his invitation for a second date.

  Some callers said I should give him another chance. They assured me that he’d change his tune as soon he met my adorable furbaby. But most warned me not to waste my time. Well, I didn’t even have to make the decision in the end, because about thirty seconds after I came off air, I received a text message from the guy that read, ‘I heard your show today. I think it’s best that we don’t see each other again. Take care.’

  Boom! Just like that. He’d sent me a one-way ticket to the doghouse. Where, quite frankly, I realised I’d be much happier anyway. Still, I honestly don’t know what his problem was. My dog is a non-shedding, non-allergenic bichon frise toy poodle mix who gets professionally groomed once a week. She’s probably cleaner than some of the women he’s slept with.

  Plus, whenever I have had a home-ground dalliance in the bedroom, Lolli always plays ball with the girl code. She knows exactly when to remove herself from her preferred position on the bed. As soon as things start getting hot and heavy, she relocates to a different spot, underneath the bed. She somehow understands my need for privacy and uninterrupted access to the full scope of the mattress. Or she’s just hiding down there covering her ears with her little paws, begging for it to be over.

  I actually think she was emotionally scarred early on when she took it upon herself to investigate the strange new game that Mum and her man-friend were playing on the bed. She crept up behind the guy while he was on top of me, and licked his balls. The poor fella got the fright of his life. It didn’t take him long to work out that it wasn’t me down there.

  So, yep, that was a terribly awkward situation for everyone. Probably worst of all for Lolli. She’s never tried that move again.

  There was only one other embarrassing occasion, when Lolli wanted everyone to know that she was really pissed about sharing her bed (and/or her mum). I had invited a guy back to Villa Lukis for the first time on our third date. We had a fun groping sesh on the couch before relocating to the bedroom. Unfortunately, Little Miss Intuitive must have already sensed where things were headed because, while we were still mid-make-out on the couch, Lolli had popped into the bedroom and peed on the floor . . . on his side of the bed.

  As if that wasn’t awkward enough, I woke the next morning to discover that, during the night, Madam had also urinated right next to his clothes, where they’d been sitting in a crumpled heap on the floor (I never told him but I’m pretty sure I also spotted a little splashback on his shoes).

  All dog owners know that dogs don’t pee where they sleep or eat, so I can only imagine Lolli really wanted to make a point that night. The first pee was probably just marking her territory. But the second one, next to his clothes, was a warning shot. Doggie language for, ‘And don’t ever come back. Next time, you won’t be so lucky.’ The guy was a good sport about it all. But I never saw him again.

  There have been a number of men in my bedroom since then and Lolli has never done it again. So maybe she was trying to tell me something. Maybe she did me a favour by scaring that guy off.

  I can only imagine the kind of almighty mess she would have made if I’d brought home the guy with the no-dogs-on-the-bed deal-breaker.

  The Vin de Champagne Awards is my favourite event on the Sydney social calendar. Guests enjoy a gourmet five-course meal matched with no fewer than fifteen fabulous tastings of (mostly vintage) champagne. Yes, it’s every bit as extravagant as it sounds and it’s pure heaven for a champagne lush like me.

  Unfortunately, one year, the event left me with a bad taste in my mouth.

  After quaffing glass after glass of Bollinger, Pol Roger, Dom Pérignon, Krug and Cristal, I had left the event and was on my way to the taxi rank when a well-dressed, middle-aged man suddenly appeared alongside me. In a deliciously seductive French accent, he said he’d also been at the champagne awards and we struck up the kind of flirty conversation you might expect to have with a handsome French stranger after you’ve both just sampled fifteen different spectacular vintage champagnes.

  In the five-minute exchange as we walked to the taxi rank, he bombarded me with flattery: ‘I notice you ze moment you arrrive’, ‘Zat dress is spectacularrr’, ‘You were ze most booootiful woman in ze room’. The intensity of his flirting was actually verging on the ridiculous. But I told myself to relax and accept the compliments graciously. It was probably just the way of the flirty Français, after all. Oui, oui!

  We arrived at the taxi rank and he said he would very much like to take me out to dinner sometime. He gave me his business card and urged me to call. I accepted his card, said goodnight and got into the back seat of the taxi. But as I slowly started to drive off and I sat there, trying to process what had just happened in that brief but intensely flirtatious interaction, there was a knock on my passenger window. It was the flirty Frenchie.

  He leaned in and said, ‘Excusez-moi, but I really like to spend more time wiss you, s’il vous plaît. Can I join? Perhaps I drop you at your house and take ze taxi on to my home after? Oui?’

  It was as if the guy had made a split-second decision, in that sliding door moment, that he wasn’t prepared to risk letting me simply drive out of his life. It was all incredibly charming and I’d already been swept away by his avalanche of flattery. I was feeling slightly euphoric after the champagne so I said yes. And he jumped in, and we drove off.

  As we chatted in the back of the cab, I started feeling that warm glow you get after you’ve met someone you’re attracted to and you realise you’re feeling a rapport with them as well. I also noticed that Frenchie was really, really, really good-looking. He had a touch of Emmanuel Macron about him. I wondered how I hadn’t noticed him earlier in the night.

  One of the things that makes the French language so provocative is not just hearing it, but watching someone speak it as well. Mainly because they need to round the lips for that ‘ou’ sound (for the vous, nous, and tous), which gives them a subtle ‘blue steel’ look. It can sometimes look like their lips are preparing for a kiss.

  I noticed that Frenchie’s lips looked very kissable. And I didn’t resist when he gently reached over for my hand and intertwined his fingers with mine. It was all starting to feel rather romantic. I started feeling those wonderful butterflies of attraction and anticipation, wondering if this could possibly be the start of something quite fabulous.

  As the taxi weaved its way through the city and Frenchie sat there holding my hand, he explained (in his super cute broken English) that he’d just moved t
o Australia for the job in Sydney. He said he had three children under eight. Alarm bells!

  I quickly glanced down at his left hand. After decades of being on the singles scene, I pride myself on having ninja-like precision when it comes to spotting a wedding band on a potential. But I was pretty sure I hadn’t clocked one on this guy. I was right. His ring finger was bare. Then, as he stroked my hand, Frenchie asked if I was single.

  ‘Of course I’m single,’ I said, before hesitantly following up with, ‘Are you?’

  Cue awkward silence.

  ‘Errrr, no.’

  ‘Oh. Are you . . . separated?’

  ‘No.’

  Another awkward silence.

  ‘Are you . . . married?’ I asked without really wanting to hear the answer.

  ‘Errrrr, oui,’ he said with a cheeky smile.

  Frenchie wasn’t the least bit fazed. He calmly explained (as he was seductively stroking my forearm) that his wife of nine years was also the mother of his three children. And they were all very happily living under the one roof close to the beach at Manly. The kids really loved the beach, apparently.

  I pulled my arm away and said, ‘So what the hell are you doing in the back of this cab with me?’

  And he told me, very matter-of-factly, that he ‘just couldn’t help himself’. As if it was perfectly normal for a married man to flirt so aggressively with a woman who was not his wife. I asked him if his wife was aware of what he got up to while she was at home tending to their enfants and he just shrugged his shoulders and gave me a look that said, what do you think?

  This clearly wasn’t Frenchie’s first rodeo.

  I’d heard about these guys and their uber-relaxed attitudes to marriage and fidelity but it was the first time I’d been the direct target of a real-life French philanderer. The champagne goggles had well and truly worn off by this stage and I suddenly felt enormously embarrassed for allowing myself to be seduced by this sleazebag. Had I actually become so desperate and vulnerable that all it took was a French accent and a couple of corny compliments (oh, and a bucket of champagne)?

  I felt like a fool.

  We sat in awkward silence for a few minutes and then we arrived at my apartment building. I got out of the cab and couldn’t believe it when the frisky Frenchie made one last-ditch effort.

  ‘Please call me. I vould love to see you again.’

  ‘No, I will not call you. Ever,’ I said. ‘Go home to your wife.’

  I have been the other woman. Twice. That I know of. (Okay, three, if you count the horny Brooklyn hipster.)

  I was eighteen when it happened the first time. I’d been lusting after Matty forever. I was totally besotted by him. He looked just like Andrew McCarthy from Pretty in Pink: cute little button nose, shaggy hair that fell over one side of his face, a bit preppy. He always wore a polo shirt with the collar flicked up. He was so dreamy.

  Sadly, Matty had been going around with his schoolyard sweetheart, Linda, for years. I also knew Linda. We played in the same water polo team. From what I could tell, Matty and Linda seemed very happy together. So I kept my distance and just admired my dreamboat from afar (silently praying for the day when he would dump Linda and realise it was me he wanted all along).

  I lost my shit when Matty called to say he’d broken up with Linda and his parents were out of town and he had the place to himself and would I like to come over and watch a movie? I was in the car, with the pedal to the metal, and at his house, on the other side of town, in about six minutes flat.

  It wasn’t exactly the romantic rendezvous I’d been dreaming of. His mate Toby was there as well, so we all played video games in the rumpus room for a while. Boring! Eventually, Matty invited me upstairs and through the doorway to heaven (i.e. his bedroom) to fool around and, yes, it was every bit as wonderful as I’d imagined it would be. I was more convinced than ever that Matty was my one true love and that we’d live happily ever after. Hell, we might even invite Linda to the wedding, after she realised he was meant to be with me all along.

  We were onto our third shag – we were teenagers, remember – when Toby started banging on the bedroom door. Linda had just turned up at the house and she was standing at the front door, asking to come in. And Toby needed to know what Matty wanted him to do.

  Well, Matty panicked. That’s what he did.

  He told me he was really sorry but he actually hadn’t broken up with Linda at all. They’d just had a big fight.

  I think I had a sneaking suspicion all along that this might be the case. Because I didn’t even argue when Matty kicked me out of the house. Well, he didn’t actually kick me out. He asked Toby to sneak me out the back door so Linda wouldn’t see me.

  With my shoes, handbag, some exceptionally unsightly JBF hair and an unhealthy dose of guilt, I followed Toby outside and onto the adjoining golf course. He escorted me all the way up the seventh hole fairway and showed me where I could pop back out onto the street and sneak down to Matty’s house, where I could find my car. And escape. Like the scandalous, filthy, rotten ho that I was.

  Sure, I got the prize momentarily but I felt like a thief. Stumbling around a suburban golf course half-naked, like I was an extra in some C-grade Seth Rogan movie was a suitably humbling experience. It wasn’t worth it. I swore I would never be the other woman, ever again.

  It didn’t take long for the rumours to start spreading like wildfire through the Brisbane water polo community. Linda told everyone that she’d gone over to Matty’s place on Saturday afternoon after their big fight, to find my car parked there, right outside his house. Linda knew exactly what my car looked like. She saw it every week at training. But when she asked Matty why my car was parked outside his house, he played dumb and pretended he had no idea what she was talking about. So everyone assumed I was a stalker.

  Thanks, Matty. You dick.

  Maybe I should have told Linda the truth. That her boyfriend had invited me over and that we’d had sex. Three times! But I didn’t say anything. I just kept my mouth shut, because I didn’t know which was worse: having everyone think I was a stalker or that I’d been the other woman.

  It was another twenty years before I realised I was the other woman again (and sure, there may have been a few other times in between that I’m not even aware of). I was holidaying in my favourite ski resort of St Anton. As I’ve mentioned, they say the ratio of men to women during ski season there is about eight to one but the reality is, the ratio of single, available men to every woman is nowhere near that high.

  I met a fetching English fellow who flirted with me outrageously, even though he appeared to be wearing a wedding ring. I say ‘appeared to be wearing a wedding ring’ because the whole ring thing is a bit confusing over there. Some European guys wear their wedding band on their right hand, instead of on their left, like they do in Australia. So I can never really be sure who’s married and who’s not. Basically, you just have to hope he comes clean.

  Well, the Pom told me it was a wedding ring, but that he and his wife had separated only a month before and he just wasn’t ready to take it off yet. He seemed quite sweet, so I conveniently believed him. Plus, he was there with a group of eight mates. Surely if the wife was still on the scene, one of the friends would have given me some kind of heads-up or tried to stop their buddy from going home with me. But they didn’t. So he did.

  I had a second night on the town with the English lads and they were bloody good fun. Again, none of his mates seemed bothered by my presence and nobody mentioned the wife. So I have absolutely no idea what prompted me to ask him, post-shag, on the second night, ‘You’re not really separated, are you?’

  And he very calmly replied, ‘No, I’m not.’

  (Note to self: your gut always knows what’s up. Trust that bitch.)

  I didn’t immediately throw the Pom out into the hotel hallway in a fit of rage and invite him to go fuck himself. Instead, I had a really open, fascinating conversation with the naked married man I’d just slept with, abou
t why he was there, in my bed, cheating on his wife.

  He told me he loved her and he always would. But he wasn’t ‘in love’ with her like he used to be. They’d reached a point where they were more committed to their children than they were to each other. He didn’t have the heart (or balls) to leave her but he thought he probably would, when the kids were a bit older. Also, they hadn’t had sex in about six months, which is probably, in all honesty, what led him to my hooha.

  So it left me wondering if the guy was a lying slimebag and a bloody good actor, or if he was a mostly decent guy in a passionless marriage, who cheated on his wife in a moment of weakness.

  It also made me reconsider some things I’d always assumed about cheaters. Maybe they’re not all fucking arseholes. Yes, cheating is a violation of trust and a terrible, terrible thing to do to a partner. But maybe it doesn’t mean you’re a terrible person if you do it.

  The fact is, sometimes people do cheat on the people they love. At the end of the shag, he’s the one who has to go home with his guilt.

  I still felt like shit, though, knowing that I’d just slept with someone else’s husband. I couldn’t stop thinking about that poor woman, sitting at home with their kids.

  The only thing that made me feel 0.001 per cent better about the situation was knowing that if it wasn’t me, it probably would have been someone else. I would never be a threat to the wife or her family. I’d never track him down, and turn up at her door bunny boiler–style. And I’m not the type of person to contact the wife to let her know that her husband just had sex with me. I feel uneasy when I hear stories from friends who have done this. It’s kind of like punishing the poor woman for her husband’s actions.

  It’s also not my business to get involved in other people’s drama. You never know what’s going on in other people’s relationships anyway. Maybe she already knows he cheats on her. And she doesn’t care. Maybe she’s cheating on him too. Plus, did she really need to know? I sometimes wish I’d never found out about the guys who cheated on me. Ignorance can actually be bliss in some situations.