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| Making your excuses: 10 reasons why I won’t be returning his calls |
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| Talk,
Heather Lennox,
02:00:00,
01 June 2001 | |
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1. He didn’t shave and it was only our second date.
I have been pognophobic (afraid of beards) since childhood. Men with beards always seemed like creepy perverts. "Get away from me, you pervert!" was often my favourite way of dispatching many of the bearded churchmen in my youth. To me they were the origin of cooties. I would have held a dead man’s hand before I would have sat on the knee of a bearded weirdie, Santa.
Despite that, I still think my arguments are relevant for everyone, as there is a little bit of the beard fear in most. It started for me originally on viewing Roald Dahl’s diagram of what lives within beards (bits of old cheese, bugs etc.) in his book ‘The Twit’s’.
As an ‘adult’ not shaving raised a plethora of other issues. It said ‘Two dates is long enough to know me now as the true slob I am’. So If you aren’t making an effort to shave by the second date I can’t help but think ‘What will I get on the third date, will he be pushing a shopping cart full of string and wearing a bathrobe?’ Hence, no third date.
It also made me wonder if ‘Miami Vice’ was only yesterday for him. Perhaps he doesn’t know what year it is. And, If he doesn’t know what year it is, is he some kind of retro 80’s axe murderer, deluding himself about how many other things? Females have to assess these factors at the beginning. Before you say it, appearances are not everything. Not making an effort is the problem. But you sure wouldn’t like it if your last vacuous blond
effort showed up in an unflattering number. That wouldn’t go down well with the boys, would it?
You know, I really enjoy having whatever guy-friend of X months, having not shaved for two days, kiss me just before he skips off to work. Shortly after that I can feel a lovely puffy red rash swelling up on my sensitive little girlie face. Be warned, not shaving is only acceptable after you are married; have experienced the birth of your second child, it is your birthday and a Sunday as well. By then, I’m sure we can manage to avoid you for a day if necessary.
2. He has been pursuing other females as well as me and has been fool enough to tell me about it.
Total insanity. Perhaps there has been a lull between dates and you haven’t seen each other for a while. Maybe you thought you should shop around a bit more and would like to tell your ‘best of bunch’ original choice about your topsy-turvy love life. Be assured that we will listen with interest at all you have to say about your recent hopeful trysts. Then, calculating in our minds what kind of bastard you are, we will collect snips of your coat-tails when you aren’t looking and maybe, a napkin you have used so that we can go home to construct another voodoo doll to keep under the bed.
3. He made a comment on my dress sense.
Unless you are a transvestite or a top designer/consultant, I don’t see what you would know about women’s fashion. You are treading dangerous ground. An ex- once commented that my purple lace stockings did not go with my leather mini skirt. At 17, and in the late-80’s, I knew that for any trashy glam gig in Soho I was perfectly attired. To me I just felt he was trying to keep me from looking attractive so no other men would want me. Talk about insecure! It never crossed his mind that I may have wanted to look that way for myself.
Actually, I did give him a reason why I was to no longer phone him. I remember him saying "But I could spend the next four or five years with you". And with that, I told him Thank you for saving me from wasting the next 4 or 5 years. Some men are such fools! ‘I want to be with you until I die’ would have been the correct answer. Who wants to see the movie if you already know the end? Say Goodnight, Gracie.
4. He invited me out for a dinner date, then suggested we go Dutch.
Truly awful. On better terms, I am a reasonably a 50/50 kind of girl, actually. But that was so rude!
5. He had inordinately hairy arms/back etc. and wasn’t afraid to flaunt it.
This whole thing was just so out of order. It was summer and my new date had omitted that he was a Sasquatch!
No matter what bit of your body you have reservations about being excessively hairy, no woman will ever deride you for doing something about it. Most women dislike their own body hair with a vengeance. If anything, this may bring you closer together with those unifying tales of stubborn depilatory experiences. The only woman likely to prefer you with a bushy beard and/or hairy shoulders has got to be a repressed drag king.
6. He discussed previous relationships ‘in an adult way’.
Will they never learn? All previous relationships were of course a failure until you met me and all others will be erased from your mind! You should feel like there were no women before this relationship or that all other girls were just an unsatisfactory composite of what you were searching for, i.e. me.
The thought of a boyfriend having had sex with anyone else in the past is easily as impossible as having to rationalise that your parents had sex. My parents had 3 children. Therefore I will accept that they had sex three times. A new partner will hence have had no sex and spent the majority of his previous life in a priest hole waiting to meet me. Any previous girlfriends are to be viewed as platonic dabblings with inferior little bints.
7. He displayed habits I would rather not witness again.
For some unknown reason, One man wouldn’t stop surreptitiously stroking one nipple through his shirt. What does this mean? Is this some future nuance to what will be required of me? Plus, as mentioned in premise number 1; what am I to be shamed by him fiddling with on the next date?
8 It took me longer to do his make up than it took to do my own.
What can I say, I have strolled down some strange roads trying to compromise with the little things in order to achieve a decent relationship. I mean, if he’s faithful, funny, and honest, has taste in music, and is a bit of a looker, hey I don’t care if he’s going to wear a Dynasty frock now and again.
But, there were complications. Soon, I had to do his makeup before we went out. Or we would have an enormous row concerning the wearing of a particular wig styled tastelessly by Toni and Guy. Plus, I had to look for his size as well as mine in the lingerie department at Marks and Sparks. This can not work. It doesn’t work! I, repeat, I, am the girl in the relationship.
9 He didn’t have a plan for our date, and we just wandered around not knowing what to do.
Well, that’s not going to impress. And worse, I just took it as a mirrored microcosm of what our future relationship was going to be like.
10. He commented on the looks of another woman (or man)
Again, when he is with me there are no other women worth looking at in ‘that’ way. If we do catch you slyly observing another woman, it would be right and fair for you to throw down your napkin and leave the date in shame, there and then. Should he be noticing men, then we all know the score, don’t we, ducky?
11. Musical differences.
You just can’t get round this one. Most of us in this decade have a pretty wide and open minded range of musical taste, but when he says how great he thinks Andrew Lloyd Webber is, he’s really saying that he is a complete git.
So there you have it. Please don’t take it so hard, even if it is all completely true. I believe that we ladies are still rooting for you all to get it right. I just wish that’s a years compulsory charm school had replaced the abolishment of the national service. If only.
Remember, it’s difficult for us. We live in a society where, no matter what we look like, we could easily just walk out into the middle of the street where we live and announce ‘I want a man’. Subsequently, droves of hopefuls would scurry from every direction, (unsuitable though they may be). To keep in with us, the best thing you can do is just to give us flowers all the time, it makes us think that you are sensitive and you stand a much better chance of fooling us into thinking that you may be after more than just a...
The real bottom line of this whole piece is this. If you aren’t completely crazy about the new prospect, I mean if you just ‘like’ them and they keep you from feeling lonely, why are you bothering? Maybe if you tried feeling lonely for awhile you would be more decisive about the good relationships you do get. You’ll know the right person because they will make you feel disorientated and you’ll keep finding your washing up liquid in the fridge. If you don’t feel that way about them, you’re not just wasting our time, but your own.
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