trying to get the type of sex Iâd been having before and I wasnât getting any. My standards, which have always been broad, Iâll admit, didnât shift. I didnât start having sex with monkeys or goats.
Itâs funny how luck works. Iâd lost my job in the bar and with it â I donât know how â my ability to pick up women. I suppose I couldnât tell you how I learnt how to pick up women in the first place. Iâve been doing it as long as I can remember, often without really trying too hard. I felt like a man whoâd woken up one morning and forgotten how to walk. Something that had always come naturally had been turned off like a tap.
I canât help but feel that my job situation was a factor. Being out of work knocks your confidence, and women can spot a guy lacking confidence from a long way off. Iâm not lucky enough to have any rich benefactors or family money to fall back on, either, so it wasnât like I could suddenly turn into a man of leisure. When your form is down, you start to try too hard, and like I said, one of the things that Iâd learnt from Celeste was that a lot of women steer clear of a pushy guy.
I looked for work in a few other bars, but my ex-manageress had a vindictive streak and had decided to take her revenge by not only sacking me but also letting everyone else in the local trade know that I was a till-sifting punter-botherer. It was particularly upsetting as only half of it was even remotely true. I guess she must have thought that muddying my reputation was a means to ensure that no one would believe any gossip I happened to let slip about her. She obviously doesnât know me well enough. Iâve never been in the habit of kissing â or screwing, or flogging, or scalding for that matter â and telling.
In the end, as my cash ran dry and one lead after another led nowhere, I was left with no option but the jobcentre.
Iâm glad that there isnât an equivalent for people who canât find sex: the North Camden jobcentre is like a cross between the queue at Heathrow airport and a school hall being used to house hurricane victims. The members of staff working in the place want to be there even less than the jobless, particularly my âcase managerâ, a kid who was my age but looked like a teenager, and who urgently needed someone to tell him to blow his nose instead of constantly sniffling. On one occasion I even suggested to him that we could all solve our problems by swapping sides of the desk. I donât think he got the joke.
None of the staff there could pronounce my name, or understand why I didnât have a funny accent, or indeed what it was Iâd ever done with my life. So after two weeks I found myself still on the dole and up against it.
It was also a frustrating place for a man on a bad run of luck for another reason: the women. If the staff there are the greyest, least-inspired collection of time-servers youâve ever met, they contrast with the great number of extremely sexy, recently arrived Polish, Russian, Bulgarian and God knows where else from young women. All were fresh-faced, ready to impress, and desperate to improve their English by any means necessary.
When I saw the pale, lispy young man whoâd failed again to get me a job being greeted by the passionate kiss of Amaja, a gypsy goddess with gravity-defying breasts who Iâd seen job seeking only a week before, I realised that the world had gone wrong.
Chapter Thirteen
With no job and no sex, I tried to be creative.
Where do you go to find women and thatâs free? Correct: galleries and museums.
Galleries and museums are great places: the hushed, reverent silence, the slow movement of visitors. Only libraries have more sexual tension, and talking is forbidden there.
So I started spending a lot of time at the Tate, the South Bank and the Barbican. Different women frequented each one: tourists and language
Itâs funny how luck works. Iâd lost my job in the bar and with it â I donât know how â my ability to pick up women. I suppose I couldnât tell you how I learnt how to pick up women in the first place. Iâve been doing it as long as I can remember, often without really trying too hard. I felt like a man whoâd woken up one morning and forgotten how to walk. Something that had always come naturally had been turned off like a tap.
I canât help but feel that my job situation was a factor. Being out of work knocks your confidence, and women can spot a guy lacking confidence from a long way off. Iâm not lucky enough to have any rich benefactors or family money to fall back on, either, so it wasnât like I could suddenly turn into a man of leisure. When your form is down, you start to try too hard, and like I said, one of the things that Iâd learnt from Celeste was that a lot of women steer clear of a pushy guy.
I looked for work in a few other bars, but my ex-manageress had a vindictive streak and had decided to take her revenge by not only sacking me but also letting everyone else in the local trade know that I was a till-sifting punter-botherer. It was particularly upsetting as only half of it was even remotely true. I guess she must have thought that muddying my reputation was a means to ensure that no one would believe any gossip I happened to let slip about her. She obviously doesnât know me well enough. Iâve never been in the habit of kissing â or screwing, or flogging, or scalding for that matter â and telling.
In the end, as my cash ran dry and one lead after another led nowhere, I was left with no option but the jobcentre.
Iâm glad that there isnât an equivalent for people who canât find sex: the North Camden jobcentre is like a cross between the queue at Heathrow airport and a school hall being used to house hurricane victims. The members of staff working in the place want to be there even less than the jobless, particularly my âcase managerâ, a kid who was my age but looked like a teenager, and who urgently needed someone to tell him to blow his nose instead of constantly sniffling. On one occasion I even suggested to him that we could all solve our problems by swapping sides of the desk. I donât think he got the joke.
None of the staff there could pronounce my name, or understand why I didnât have a funny accent, or indeed what it was Iâd ever done with my life. So after two weeks I found myself still on the dole and up against it.
It was also a frustrating place for a man on a bad run of luck for another reason: the women. If the staff there are the greyest, least-inspired collection of time-servers youâve ever met, they contrast with the great number of extremely sexy, recently arrived Polish, Russian, Bulgarian and God knows where else from young women. All were fresh-faced, ready to impress, and desperate to improve their English by any means necessary.
When I saw the pale, lispy young man whoâd failed again to get me a job being greeted by the passionate kiss of Amaja, a gypsy goddess with gravity-defying breasts who Iâd seen job seeking only a week before, I realised that the world had gone wrong.
Chapter Thirteen
With no job and no sex, I tried to be creative.
Where do you go to find women and thatâs free? Correct: galleries and museums.
Galleries and museums are great places: the hushed, reverent silence, the slow movement of visitors. Only libraries have more sexual tension, and talking is forbidden there.
So I started spending a lot of time at the Tate, the South Bank and the Barbican. Different women frequented each one: tourists and language
Similar Books
