So now for something a little different. Those of you keeping track will already know me as The Hulk that Phalimus has parachuted into several of his stories. Here is the first of my guest blogs. With thanks to Phalimus for this prime piece of web real estate.
I used to fight that nickname - Hulk - at least inside, but not anymore. In a way, I guess it's apt. Underneath the raging green exterior I seem to project, lies a sensitive soul. You're as likely to find me at a poetry recital as you are cranking out supersets at the nearest free weight stack.
Recently I was propping up the bar at Prive with Phalimus and Saks. It was your standard Prive night, full of attrition, Team Catfish hogging their end of the bar, the Dorks and Dicks crowding out the talent on the dancefloor. I wasn't looking too hard. Truth be told, I do my best work when I'm doing nothing at all. It sounds arrogant but that's how it inevitably works out. The silent, aloof thing works for me. I've tried bulldozing my way in a few times, cocktalking and gun-toting, but this tactic tends to work on those I've already made a connection with, by and large. Of the random pick-ups, the random one-nighters, the silent tactic pays better dividends.
I didn't sex anyone up on the night in question, so if you want to jizz over some erotic clit-lit then I suggest you turn away now. But yeah. There I was with the boys. Prive. 4am. Haven't so much as made eyes towards any prospective target. A girl pushes up against me at the bar. She's not hot. In fact she reminds me of the back end of a London bus. She's got a big mouth, figuratively and literally. Now, ordinarily, this is the point where I make some really cutting and probably grossly unfair remark and samurai slice them off at the pass. The Boys got man stuff to talk about, run along sugar. But this one persisted. She "borrowed" a cigarette from Phalimus' unattended pack. She gestured at me to light it. Believe me, such rash assumptions as to my willingness to play Mr. Subservient on a night out have left some pretty little things broken beat and scarred. But I played along.
She fluttered her hideously over-mascara'd eyelashes at me and said:
"Do you think men can determine what they think about a woman on the first date?"
Fuck. Is that the best you can do?
She persisted so I mumbled out some half-assed responses hoping she would go away. But she stood there, jabbering away. I really wanted her to leave. My annoyance level was rising. I'm standing sideways on, drink turned away from her. None of this cosy body language BS. I wasn't drunk enough and she was clearly teetering as if about to fall off the precipice of sobriety. She yammered on about how she hadn't dated anyone for two years. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot. Yeah, like I'm gonna be the sucker to break that drought, right? Shit woman. No date for two years and you want to come to the top table to dine?
Now, this is already way past the point when I usually tell the hag to fuck off. But this one held my interest for a moment longer. She was monotonous and freakish but in my 4am pre-Tsui Wah state I probably would have taken a handtug round the back of Prive. She kept throwing obtuse hints at me, prying for a number exchange. I didn't bite. I rarely do. But funnily enough, I didn't snap either - a rarity in itself.
It was obvious she was alone (or perhaps abandoned) as no friend had come to badger her during this brief-but-awkward interlude. But I couldn't help myself. A mini-Hulk moment bubbled to the surface. For the first time, I turned around to face her, looking her straight in the eye:
"Look, do you have any friends to introduce to us or not? Cos if you're here with some girlfriends, maybe we could go talk to them instead."
Her face fell and finally the moment dawned on her. I'm a blabbering round-faced dinosaur who is wasting this guy's time.
She promptly made some lame excuse about having to leave, and hightailed it out of there. Of course I'm being a dick. Yeah, praise the girl for taking a risk. She saw the guns and wanted my pistol in her holster. But a girl's gotta know when to exit with dignity. Even I know my limits, and I stay within the confines of what is achievable. If you're looking to bat in the major leagues, at least offer me a few curveballs. Say you'll wear a paper bag over your head while you suck it and then promise to disappear into the night. Then you might have my attention. Yeah, you can still feel sorry for her. But I didn't go full green on her that night so I'm gonna say she got off lightly.
A couple of beers later and we're out on the street. Saks and Phalimus bump into some old friend and I idle off to the side of the club to check my messages. There I'm accosted by Katie, who once tried to lock me in her office after hours and mount me. She's cute, but I just can't bring myself to make nasty with her: she's got that innocent twinkle that I don't want to ruin.
Y'see, as Phalimus probably told you already, I go for the bitch. The power-hungry office-dominatrix. And this girl, for all her relative business acumen, doesn't look like she could dominate her way out of a pair of warm chocolate handcuffs. I don't have many female companions I count as friends, in fact you can count them on one hand, so alienating one of the very few by pulling my usual hump and dump routine doesn't seem like a good move.
I try to break loose, but she forces me to tell her what movies I haven't seen; she then tells me that she'd like to see those too, and that the "ball is in my court". I don't reply, in fact I barely nod in acknowledgment. She grips my hand, and rests her head on her shoulder. It's 4am and out of the two badly packed kebabs on offer I think I'm leaning towards the one at Ebeneezer's. I push her head off my shoulder and leave her there, sitting alone.
She texts me almost immediately afterwards, as I clamber into a taxi. It's bawdy and it's a come-and-get-me plea. I ignore it. My crotch didn't twinge, and that's the death knell, my unassailable litmus test.
Like I said, doing nothing at all.
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