Dan Taylor Is Giving Up On Women. Neal Doran
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between the office cubicles like a catwalk, and I’d unselfconsciously stared as she disappeared from view.
Hotpatootie1.
Bingo. I logged on, ready to wait all morning for an important internal email.
Lunchtime arrived, and so far work had been a pretty unproductive place to be. So I’d clearly got straight back into the swing of nine-to-five life. By midday, the majority of the office had passed my desk and, if any rivals had wanted to know how one of Europe’s premier niche trend analysis firms had enjoyed Christmas, I had the data to show it had been not only ‘not bad’, but also ‘quiet’ for nearly a hundred per cent of respondents.
I was waiting for the office-wide email that heralded the arrival of the sandwich man. You’ve got to be quick before all that’s left is a choice of some ungodly combination involving dolphin-unfriendly tuna. While I waited an instant message from Hannah popped up on the screen.
@Hannahmatic : Hey mister. Know any good synonyms for average?
@aDanTaylor : Standard? Regular? Middling? Mediocre? Run of the mill? Pedestrian? Unremarkable? Dull?
@Hannahmatic : In a positive mood for a Wednesday then? You’re not making filling in this profile on soullyforyou.com any easier.
@aDanTaylor : Soully what now?
@Hannahmatic : soullyforyou.com. It’s an Internet dating site, for finding your soulmate.
@aDanTaylor : Are you sure about that? It sounds like a ready-meal range for the lonely and desperate.
@Hannahmatic : It looks good! It was featured in Time Out as fresh and new. Also it’s free, and the alternative costs sixty quid if you actually want to, y’know, arrange a date with anyone.
@aDanTaylor : We’re really doing this? Isn’t this idea supposed to just quietly fade away like a usual drunken resolution to change your life?
@Hannahmatic : No chance. You’re our project for keeping our marriage fresh and exciting. Rob wanted us to join the local swingers, I wanted a new puppy. You’re the compromise.
@aDanTaylor : Jesus…And so far all you’ve got is average?
@Hannahmatic : Oh no! Now I’ve got mediocre height, run-of-the-mill build and pedestrian hair. But I’m putting your eyes down as Mediterranean azure to pep it up a bit.
@aDanTaylor : You realise everyone discounts all descriptions on these things by 20% to counter exaggeration? You’re making me out to be a bug-eyed asthmatic dwarf.
@Hannahmatic : I was just joking, mister. I’m doing a magnificent sales job on you. Taking you down 20% would put you somewhere between Clooney and Gosling. I just realised we hadn’t asked you what kind of woman you’re actually looking for.
There was a question. What was I looking for? What was my ‘type’? I wasn’t entirely certain. Existentially overwrought Parisians, currently juggling a string of humourless and borderline abusive international hunks?
Drop-dead gorgeous IT experts who could learn to understand that their psychopathic tendencies are to the fore just because they’re in need of the love of a good man who won’t mock their choice of the latest reality TV ‘star’ as a personal role model?
Cute PhD students that could excuse the use of a slightly exaggerated account of the loss of a girlfriend to get a hand inside their enticingly flimsy underpants?
I could probably have kept going through the qualities of every woman I’d met in the past twelve to eighteen months, but instead decided to do a quick search on Google Images for the funniest photo I could find of a bimbo with anatomically improbable breasts to send Hannah as an attachment.
What do you mean you knew that that was the time that my boss would obviously come and stand behind me for a chat?
‘Dan, I can see you’re very busy. But I’d like to introduce you to Jamie, our new graduate trainee. He’s starting today in Pharma, and I thought you might have time to show him the ropes a bit.’
My boss, Nigel Pearson, was a scary man. When he got angry he didn’t shout or go purple with rage, he just smiled a bit more. When he was really furious his eyelids also fluttered. I sat, looked at him, then at the giant tie knot dwarfing Jamie’s head, then back at my computer screen with its photo of a famous glamour model, digitally enhanced with Photoshop® to take her chest way beyond the limits that nature imposed on even the most daring plastic surgeon. Turned out the image was also animated, and made giggly kissy noises while the gargantuan knockers jiggled saucily. I looked back at Pearson, whose lips were twitching upwards as my computer kept saying, ‘Mwah! Mwah! Mwah! Ooh!’
I was paralysed with embarrassment, and it was only when a new instant message from Hannah appeared saying ‘Hey you! Don’t be shy! I need totty details!!!’ that I managed to spring into action and shut down all the windows on my desktop.
I hoped maybe the other two hadn’t seen the message, but the cooling breeze on the back of my reddening neck appeared to be emanating from just below Pearson’s manicured eyebrows, and I heard a repressed snigger from the new guy.
Mumbling something about doing bespoke research as a favour to an important client, I said I’d be delighted to give Jamie the low-down on how things worked around here. Not taking my eyes off the pair of them, I then casually leaned over and sharply tugged all the leads out of the back of my computer monitor as the model’s breathy exclamation, ‘Ooh my, what a big boy you are! Yummy! Yummy!’ let me know I’d not properly shut down, only minimised, my browser window.
‘Excellent, I’ll leave you to it,’ said my boss, ‘and can I assume that since you’ve moved on to new research projects it won’t be a problem getting me the presentation on the performance of lightly carbonated tropical fruit beverages against citrus-based market leaders by first thing tomorrow?’
‘Absolutely, no problem,’ I lied, taking like a man my punishment for spending his good money looking up smut. Pearson shimmered away with a noiseless tread, and Jamie grabbed a nearby chair and slumped down next to me, grinning from ear to ear as he swivelled from side to side. Jamie was unusual for a new guy in the office, as he appeared to be reasonably attractive. Not to me, I mean, obviously. But I wasn’t so insecure that I couldn’t realise what women might see in other guys without worrying that maybe I’d been suppressing a fundamental element of my sexuality for the past twenty years. I left that sort of anxiety to my mother.
He wasn’t exceptionally good-looking, but women weren’t that different from men, and a bit of fresh-faced youthfulness could work wonders. He had a confidence that came from being twenty-three and pretty sure, if you could get your MA in consumer responses to corporate marketing practices, you could handle anything the world threw at you. Or maybe it was the energy and enthusiasm of a chirpy ten-year-old in the body of a man that evidently still did sport rather than just watched it that would do it for him. I’ll stop now, because there may be a point where I’ll start thinking my mum might be right. But I’ll just say that energy, positivity, and youthful physical confidence aren’t words you’d use to describe the rest of the male workforce around here.
‘So it’s pretty laid-back around here, then?’ Jamie observed.
Ah, the eager young recruit, still giddy from the job ads and interview process, imagining it was all nice