The Drought (The hilarious laugh-out loud comedy about dating disasters!)

by Steven Scaffardi

  A wrinkly bald old man with huge floppy ears – resembling a cross between Dumbo and a scrotum – starts to celebrate. Hubert Grayson dances around his walking stick, showing great delight that his long-standing sexless record has been eclipsed by yours truly.

  The applause grows louder, aided by heckles and taunts such as “cobweb cock” and “dusty dick’. Not content with the indignity he has already imposed on me, the adjudicator congratulates me by shaking my hand and presenting me with the certificate before he continues his verbal assault.

  “Mr Hilles coined the phrase ‘couldn’t get laid in a brothel’. No matter how hard he tries, here stands a man with a complete lack of skills to get any ass. He will use any means necessary to obtain it yet he constantly fails at every attempt to get the pussy.”

  I stand there gasping, speechless and wide-mouthed. I can’t get the words out to end this humiliation I am being forced to endure, and he continues: “Mr Hilles faces an uphill task to ever see a real vagina in the flesh again, let alone get near one. Ladies and gentleman, please show your appreciation to a truly sexless individual – Mr Daniel Hilles!”

  By the time he has finished berating me the applause has broken into hysterical laughter. In fact the only person in the crowd not wailing in delight at this mortifying scene is my mum. She stands there, clutching both hands to the side of her face with a strange look of pride in her eyes. My dad is standing next to her shaking his head, his arms folded across his chest. I can hear his words echoing in my head from the day when my mum had found my porn stash under my bed when I was 13 years old.

  “You have to see it from your mother’s point of view,” he explained to me in the aftermath of the horror that was the great porn discovery of 1998. “In her eyes you have gone from her sweet innocent little boy to, well, a perverted little wanker.”

  That’s it! I snatch the microphone out of the hands of the smug adjudicator and launch into my defence. “Sexless is not technically true,” I proclaim to the stunned audience. “Yes, I have not had sex for many months now, but I have in fact had self-sex in the last 24 hours.” I pause for just the right effect, “Twice.”

  A hushed silence falls over the crowd. For a brief moment, victory is sweet.

  But this is soon replaced by the reality of the utter ridiculousness of my statement. Who in their right mind would refer to masturbation as self-sex? I might as well have just pulled out my penis right there-and-then and started to stroke one out to the rhythm of the crowds roaring laughter ringing in my ears.

  My mum bursts into tears at the realisation of her worst fear – her little boy is in fact a perverted little wanker. She buries her head into my dad’s chest, who simply stares at me, disgusted in the knowledge that I am his spawn.

  *

  “Tickets please,” the ticket inspector roused me from my sleep. I handed him the ticket and watched as he scribbled a strange scrawl on to it before handing it back and making his way down the carriage.

  I shook my head and rubbed my face to wake myself up. It had been over two months since I had last seen my parents at Christmas, and I decided a nice break out in the sticks would do me good.

  I had pretty much kept a low profile over the last few weeks since the Valentine’s Day disaster, especially as I was now in hiding from Stacey’s new knuckle-head boyfriend. Being the arsehole ex-boyfriend wasn’t enough for me; I had to go and add chatting-up his schoolgirl sister and attempting to shag his mum to the list of reasons of why Dave wanted to kill me. Kicking his dog can’t have helped either.

  Yeah, a bit of home cooking and some pampering from mum was just what the doctor ordered. After dinner perhaps I could stroll down to the village pub for a pint or two with the old man.

  My parents had moved to the small village just outside of Horsham in West Sussex while I was still at university. Instead of returning home from university to the hustle and bustle of inner city life I had left behind, I returned to fields of green for as far as the eye could see. The familiar sound of police sirens, traffic, and drunken ramblings I had become accustomed to outside my bedroom window had been replaced by deathly eerie silence. It was like being stuck in a Walt Disney cartoon with all the ducks, pheasants, geese and deer strolling around.

  It took me about 15 minutes to walk from the train station to my parents’ house. I spotted my dad in the drive washing the Range Rover he had bought when they moved here because he felt it would suit the rural landscape. What he hadn’t banked on was the tiny country roads.

  “Hello boy,” my dad greeted me, his roll-up cigarette hanging from his mouth.

  “Hello dad,” I said and he patted me on the arm. I had always been close to my father. Growing up, he had been my source of inspiration. He was also the first person who offered me my first real insight into the world of the fairer sex. He would often say things like:

  Women are like parking meters; if you don't feed them with enough money you face serious consequences.

  Women are like refrigerators; they're always cold and never seem to have a beer when you need one.

  Women are like blue jeans; they look good for a while but eventually they fade and have to be replaced.

  I remember when I was about 16 he took me to one side and gave me what I guess was his version of that classic father-son contraception talk.

  “Son,” my dad started with his hand on my shoulder. “When you meet a girl, whatever you do don’t tell her your real name. That way if you get her pregnant she won’t be able to find you.”

  Of course, he had a back-up plan in case that little nugget of gold didn’t help me out.

  “If you are stupid enough to knock someone up, then I have a little money set aside for an emergency, and we’ll fly you out to Spain where you can lay low for a couple of years until it blows over.”

  That was my dad. He had solutions and advice for real problems and real situations. He finished hosing the soap off the car. “How have you been, son?”

  “Not bad,” I told him. It was a lie, but my father was a real man’s man and not the type of man that would react well to knowing that in the last two months I had run away from a fight with a girl, and had tried pulling a schoolgirl and her mum in the same night. Actually, he probably would have been quite impressed with the latter.

  “Good, good,” he said taking his rollie out of his mouth and stubbing it out on the floor with his foot. Suddenly his face went dead serious and he put his hand on my shoulder. “Look, I’ve got some bad news.”

  This wasn’t good. The last time my dad had started a conversation with me like this was the time my pet goldfish Chips had died. I loved that little fella. Luckily my dad had eased my pain with four Ghostbusters action figures. I would later find out when I was older that my mum had grown bored of having to clean the tank all the time and had flushed Chips down the toilet, thinking he would be flushed out into a river somewhere. My dad would often make the crude joke that Chips was down there in the sewer somewhere holding on to a ‘Richard the Third’ for dear life and paddling to safety.

  But this time there wasn’t a Peter Venkman or Egon Spengler figurine in sight. This had to be bad. Maybe my grandmother had died, or the dog had been run down. Maybe a 10-foot goldfish had been found in the sewers and was hell-bent on revenge against the family that had cruelly discarded of him down the toilet all those years ago. Some fish hold grudges. Did you ever see any of the Jaws sequels?

  “Hey, what’s up cuz?”

  No, this was worse. Much worse.

  I stood completely still, not knowing what to do. I looked at my dad for help, but he just shrugged his shoulders and went back to leathering off the car.

  “Hey cuz, I said what’s up?”

  There it was again – a voice that conjured up an abundance of emotions that boiled deep inside me. A voice that cut through me like an icy blade. A voice that made my teeth itch.

  “Cuz?”

  A voice that belonged to my cousin Charlie.

  “Hey
Charlie,” I said turning to face the boy who had once replaced all of the cream from my Oreo cookies with toothpaste. The boy who spun me on the roundabout for 11 minutes straight causing me to throw up four times. The boy who once handed me a tampon and let me unwittingly pretend it was a cigar so I could be Hannibal from The A-Team.

  “Good to see you cuz.”

  The boy who called me cuz. I hated it when he called me that. But what I hated the most about my cousin Charlie was that he always had to go one better than you. If I bought the latest Eminem CD, then he had just got front row concert tickets. If I had front row concert tickets, then he had a backstage pass. If I had a backstage pass, then he had actually performed with the man on stage and knew him well enough to call him Marshall, or Marsh for short. I actually did get a backstage pass to an Eminem gig once and to this day Charlie still has a fake number in his phone assigned to Marsh.

  Charlie was four years older than me and the most pretentious idiot I had the misfortune of knowing, let alone being related to. He was the type of guy that wore sunglasses to a nightclub, and wore big fake diamond stud earrings. He would boast of his many conquests with girls. To complement his overbearing personality, he was also a compulsive liar. He once told me he had given the Pope a lift home after his “Pope mobile” had broken down in Bethnal Green.

  He reckons the Pope needed to get to Catford.

  And he was wearing a denim jacket.

  A sleeveless denim jacket.

  We made our way inside where my mum greeted me with a big hug. “It’s lovely to see you, dear,” she said.

  “You too, mum,” I replied and then whispered into her ear through gritted teeth. “What is he doing here?”

  “Your aunt and uncle called and asked if they could pop by,” she pulled away and shook her head apologetically. “It was all very last minute.”

  I said my hellos to my Aunt Maggie and Uncle David. Maggie was my mum’s sister; a slim woman who smoked too much and always seemed to smell of cats. David was a heavyset man who had the ability to rub my father up the wrong way just like Charlie was able to do to me. Like father, like son.

  “Everyone sit down,” my mum ushered us towards the dining table. “Lunch will be served shortly.”

  My dad came back into the house as my mum served up generous portions of lamb, roast potatoes, cauliflower cheese, and vegetables, all smothered in lashings of thick onion gravy. The small talk concentrated around the usual subjects: the incredible snowstorms that had brought the country to its knees, how the banks had screwed the economy up for everyone, and a story that had appeared in the local paper story about the three-legged dog that had saved his owner from drowning. My mum was a sucker for pet stories.

  Of course, the men talked about sport; it was a safe subject. My mother tried getting involved by commenting how much she thought Andrew Flintoff looked like his brother Freddie when she had seen him interviewed earlier that day on the news.

  But secretly, I knew my mum had been dying to grill me more about the Stacey situation and it wasn’t long before she subtly brought the conversation round to my now infamous break-up.

  “So, I was telling your Aunt Maggie that you and Stacey are not courting anymore,” was about as subtle as my mum got. Courting. It was such a parent word to describe relationships. It was up there with mating. Nobody used words like that anymore to describe relationships or sexual experiences. In fact, I am pretty sure that words like that died out the day swimming pools took down the No Heavy Petting signs.

  “Yeah, what happened cuz? Did Stacey finally see sense?” Charlie laughed, nudging me in the arm. I smiled and resisted taking the bait. “So, how does it feel being single again?”

  I thought about it for a second. What word would best sum up my re-entry into my newly found unattached status? Distressing? Disastrous? Desperate? Whatever word it was to describe how I felt obviously started with a D. “It’s been okay,” I lied. “I have been out on a few dates and meeting new people.” Technically part of that was true. I had been on one date, albeit an unsuccessful date, but a date nonetheless. The actual details weren’t important.

  “That’s nice, dear,” my mum said. “I’d hate to see you lonely.”

  “I’m not lonely, mum,” I reassured her.

  “Leave the boy alone,” my dad said waving my mother away. “Your mother was a little upset when she found out, but I told her you were too young to settle down.”

  “Especially when you see the way some of these young girls dress today,” my Uncle David said, inhaling and shaking his head with a disturbing smile on his face.

  “When I was a boy, you were lucky if you got a grope after walking her home before her old man chased you halfway down the street,” my dad shared with us, laughing. “I was born too soon,” he said picking up a piece of meat with his fork.

  “I know what you mean,” my Uncle David butted in. “I used to tell Charlie that if you sneak any girls into the house, don’t let me catch you because I’ll make you share.”

  “And he did once!” Charlie said grinning and then high-fived his dad. It was an awkward moment. I glanced towards my Aunt Maggie but she just shrugged with this what can I do look on her face. “Boys will be boys,” she said and then went back to her conversation with my mum.

  “Hey cuz,” Charlie started nudging me on the arm again. “I saw this bloke chatting up a cheetah the other night. I thought to myself, he’s trying to pull a fast one!” He burst out laughing. “You love it, don’t ya,” he kept saying, still nudging. “Yeah, of course you bloody love it,” he finished off rustling my hair like I was a five-year-old, with a mouthful of roast potato spilling from his mouth.

  We finished the rest of the meal with my dad doing his best to avoid any conversation with my Uncle David, while Charlie insisted on prodding and jabbing me every five minutes with some quip.

  “Why don’t you take Charlie down to the pub in the village,” my mum said as she cleared the table. I stared at her in disbelief. This is the woman who carried me inside her womb for nine months. The woman who put a plaster on my knee when I tripped and fell. The woman who used to sew my name into the back of my underwear. Here she was, selling me down the river.

  “Get your coat, cuz,” Charlie said before I had the chance to answer. “You’ve pulled.”

  *

  “I’m not meant to be in a pub,” Charlie suddenly announced to me.

  “Why is that?” I asked half-heartedly. I really didn’t care, I had been trying to drown out his annoying voice the moment we arrived at the pub.

  “Well, a couple of weeks ago we were in this pub and I saw this guy I recognised. This fella had taken liberties with me in the past, so I went over to front him out.”

  If I had a pound for every time I heard Charlie start a story like this in the past year I would probably have about £608. Granted that is not a lot of money, but you try sitting through 608 of his bullshit stories.

  “Anyway, he gives it the large and before you can say Reggie Kray, it has all kicked off. There are punches flying everywhere, and the last thing I remember is connecting with a beautiful right hook,” he paused. “And then I blacked out.”

  Charlie went quiet, shaking his head and looking to the distance, trying his best to look contemplative. “So what happened?” I begrudgingly asked.

  “I woke up in a police cell. I banged on the door and demanded to know what had happened. Old Bill comes in and tells me I’ve nearly killed the bloke – he’s in a coma.” He took a drink and sat back with his arms folded. “Anyway, they had to let me go because there wasn’t enough evidence.”

  “They let you go because there was no evidence?” I said cynically. Charlie simply nodded, leaving me to wonder how the hell I was related to this guy. “Unbelievable,” I said shaking my head with a degree of ambiguity that he expected me to believe this.

  “Tell me about it,” Charlie said.

  “And what exactly had this guy done to deserve such a savage beating
at your hands?” I asked sarcastically.

  “He knocked my chips out of my hand when I was 12,” Charlie announced. “That'll learn him.”

  “Unbelievable,” I uttered under my breath again.

  “So cuz...” Charlie started. I bit my lip, fighting back the urge to smash my glass over his head. “...talk to me about your sex problems.”

  I almost choked on my beer. I looked around the bar and saw an old man at the next table across giving us a strange look. “Keep your voice down,” I said wiping the beer away from my chin. “And I don’t have any sex problems.”

  “Sure you do,” he said. “You’re not getting any at the moment, are you?”

  “That is none of your business.”

  “Look, we’re family,” Charlie said. “Maybe I can help.”

  Everything inside screamed at me not to listen to him; to change the subject. But the truth was I was desperate; I was willing to try anything. Besides, he was family. Maybe he could help.

  “Okay,” I took two huge mouthfuls and plunged straight into my story. I explained the whole sorry tale; the unbearable strain of two sexless months. No matter what I tried I couldn’t even manage a conversation with a girl, let alone get one into bed. He listened attentively, his face twisted in deep thought. He scratched his chin and made hmm’ing noises and would say “I see” in response to what I was telling him.

  “I think I know what your problem is,” Charlie finally said after I had finished. I studied his face. Maybe I had been wrong about my cousin. Maybe he did have the answers. They say that salvation can be found in the most unlikely of places.

  “Your problem,” Charlie said taking another sip from his beer, “is a common one.”