Daddy. Look,’ and she pointed to the seven dwarfs in their yellow tops. ‘They’re the police.’
My daughter had never done anything wrong, of course. Innocent people have that luxury. There are no sentences for taking your pull-up off and pissing on your mattress or defacing your bedroom wall, or spilling your food, or ruining your new shoes. Those are a given. I’m not saying they come without sanction; some parents treat them very seriously; but they’re rarely life and death. They’re not in the same ballpark as rape and murder and child abuse. Those are for us. I’ve never been one of those whose mouth wouldn’t melt butter, although I’ve tried very hard and have sometimes got away with it. Most of the time, I’ve done so because people were too stupid to realise - or maybe I was too stupid to realise they’d let me get away with it. I was like that with my ex-wife. Of course, I only knew that at the end when we talked. She was far cleverer than I and had known everything - that woman’s intuition thing. She had seen through me.
Now, I know better. She hadn’t seen through me at all. She’d seen through men. We were all the same. To really get away with it, you had to surprise people. The greater the surprise, the more likely that was. Just ask the police officer.
10
Counsellors are all the same. I’m not sure what gene they’re missing, or whether counsellor school turns them all out that way, but to me they seem to be largely missing the point. I don’t want them to listen; I want them to counsel. Hence, the name, right? All they ever seem to do is take notes and read them back.
‘Let me see if I’ve got this right.’
Of course you have. I’ve just spent the last hour telling you.
My ex-wife and I - I’ve got to think of another name for her - were sat on a small sofa staring at her. Or what we could see of her. When I arrived five minutes before, I had completely missed her.
‘Take a seat.’
‘Hello?’
‘Here.’
I’ve never been very good at disguising my feelings. I’ve always been more Othello than Iago. When she hopped off the seat and walked towards me, all I could think about were the other genes she must be missing. She wasn’t exactly straight from the pantomime, but she could have passed as a hobbit without much makeup. She smiled rather grotesquely at me, with her too bright red lipstick, and took my hand in her hoof. I wondered what the officer had meant - she’s very good. At what? Not smiling.
I suppose she must have got that reaction a lot. It’s always worse for women, I know. I know because they tell me. Nearly every woman I’ve ever been with has told me this. I’ve gone beyond the age where I care what they think, if they think I’m sexist or a racist or a paedophile. Some of them have quite liked that, others have stared at me and wondered what genes I was missing. Women need to be beautiful. Or they need to be seen to be beautiful. Without it, they wither. They need the constant bolstering and ego inflation to compensate for the lack of collagen and silicone. Somehow, this is all men’s fault. Our expectations greatly exceed the supply. There simply aren’t that many pretty girls. There are a lot of reasonable looking girls - I’d go as far to say that most girls fall into this category - the ones who could, with a little bit of effort and expense and careful application of makeup, aspire to being beautiful, but they seem alternately disappointed and unhappy making the effort. Of course, with time, that effort only increases. I have seen middle-aged women, and even, heaven forbid, old women, sitting in front of mirrors with pins in their eyebrows and stitches in their cheeks, trying to hold back the years. They look exhausted. In the end, they have no choice. Nature takes its course and they re-join their ugly sisters. You can only play at being Cinderella for so long.
There aren’t that many ugly girls, although there are more of them than
My daughter had never done anything wrong, of course. Innocent people have that luxury. There are no sentences for taking your pull-up off and pissing on your mattress or defacing your bedroom wall, or spilling your food, or ruining your new shoes. Those are a given. I’m not saying they come without sanction; some parents treat them very seriously; but they’re rarely life and death. They’re not in the same ballpark as rape and murder and child abuse. Those are for us. I’ve never been one of those whose mouth wouldn’t melt butter, although I’ve tried very hard and have sometimes got away with it. Most of the time, I’ve done so because people were too stupid to realise - or maybe I was too stupid to realise they’d let me get away with it. I was like that with my ex-wife. Of course, I only knew that at the end when we talked. She was far cleverer than I and had known everything - that woman’s intuition thing. She had seen through me.
Now, I know better. She hadn’t seen through me at all. She’d seen through men. We were all the same. To really get away with it, you had to surprise people. The greater the surprise, the more likely that was. Just ask the police officer.
10
Counsellors are all the same. I’m not sure what gene they’re missing, or whether counsellor school turns them all out that way, but to me they seem to be largely missing the point. I don’t want them to listen; I want them to counsel. Hence, the name, right? All they ever seem to do is take notes and read them back.
‘Let me see if I’ve got this right.’
Of course you have. I’ve just spent the last hour telling you.
My ex-wife and I - I’ve got to think of another name for her - were sat on a small sofa staring at her. Or what we could see of her. When I arrived five minutes before, I had completely missed her.
‘Take a seat.’
‘Hello?’
‘Here.’
I’ve never been very good at disguising my feelings. I’ve always been more Othello than Iago. When she hopped off the seat and walked towards me, all I could think about were the other genes she must be missing. She wasn’t exactly straight from the pantomime, but she could have passed as a hobbit without much makeup. She smiled rather grotesquely at me, with her too bright red lipstick, and took my hand in her hoof. I wondered what the officer had meant - she’s very good. At what? Not smiling.
I suppose she must have got that reaction a lot. It’s always worse for women, I know. I know because they tell me. Nearly every woman I’ve ever been with has told me this. I’ve gone beyond the age where I care what they think, if they think I’m sexist or a racist or a paedophile. Some of them have quite liked that, others have stared at me and wondered what genes I was missing. Women need to be beautiful. Or they need to be seen to be beautiful. Without it, they wither. They need the constant bolstering and ego inflation to compensate for the lack of collagen and silicone. Somehow, this is all men’s fault. Our expectations greatly exceed the supply. There simply aren’t that many pretty girls. There are a lot of reasonable looking girls - I’d go as far to say that most girls fall into this category - the ones who could, with a little bit of effort and expense and careful application of makeup, aspire to being beautiful, but they seem alternately disappointed and unhappy making the effort. Of course, with time, that effort only increases. I have seen middle-aged women, and even, heaven forbid, old women, sitting in front of mirrors with pins in their eyebrows and stitches in their cheeks, trying to hold back the years. They look exhausted. In the end, they have no choice. Nature takes its course and they re-join their ugly sisters. You can only play at being Cinderella for so long.
There aren’t that many ugly girls, although there are more of them than
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