The Right Man (15 page)

Soul
Connexions. I started to browse the phoneline lonely hearts columns, and it
afforded me some momentary amusement working out the meaning of the repeated
phrases and abbreviations, giving me the sort of satisfaction one gets from
solving the
Guardian
Quick Crossword in under three minutes. ‘Profess. educ.
e-g. M. 30s. WLTM sim. for f/ship poss. ser. r/ship must like mountains,
The
Fast Show,
travel. Veg.n/s. SOH.’ ‘Profess. educ. M.3os’ meaning
forty-two-year-old bloke with a couple of A levels and a job, ‘e-g’ meaning
easy-going, but actually meaning frightened of commitment. ‘WLTM sim.’ meaning
would like to meet someone with a similar problem. ‘Mountains and travel’ — a
reference to his desire to go walkabout as soon as anything develops. ‘F/ship
poss. ser. r/ship’ just a straightforward lie to make sure he gets more than
one reply, and the
Fast Show
reference a rather pathetic attempt to
demonstrate that he is one of the very few ‘veg. n/s’ — vegetarian non-smokers
— who has an ‘SOH’. Sense of humour featured very often in the women’s
requirements but not half as often as tall: ‘Grad. F. hedonist WLTM
tall
solvent
M. for walks, dining and frolics. Must have SOH.’ ‘Rubenesque redhead WLTM
caring M.30 +
tall.’
‘Rubenesque’ meaning obese with dimpled buttocks. ‘Slim
hourglass F. 20 likes arts, eating out and more. WLTM
tall
M. any age.’
In fact, as I scanned the column, I could find only two entries where the woman
had not written ‘tall’ as a criterion for meeting a member of the opposite sex.
Depressing reading if like me you happen to be five foot six. In the men’s
column, there was no ‘must have big tits’ abbreviation, MHBT. This is the
nineties after all and if all we want is BTAA — big tits and arse —we can buy
the
Daily Sport
or any tacky toilet-paper tabloid.

Some
entries were simple and obviously rather cheap: ‘OK guy, Nottingham area’ or ‘Asian
bi F. WLTM guy 20s.’ Others were virtually incomprehensible — ‘Mary, 40, seeks
righteous Joseph to sit under lemon tree and make shining star noodles’ —or . had
a poetic slant: ‘Jazz librarian WLTM his concertina.’

An
entry caught my eye: ‘Gorgeous shapely babe, Newcastle, will give all for right
man … No dickheads, please!’ No serial killers either, or anyone suffering
from Roman Emperor Syndrome, presumably.

I
dialled the Soul Connexions main number. A recorded woman s voice answered like
the speaking clock: ‘Hello and welcome to Soul Connexions. Please press the
star button on your telephone. To hear the message line of your choice, please
press 1. To leave an advertisement, please press 2. To go to the main menu
option, please press 3.’ A different woman’s voice came on, this one with all
the stresses and inflections in the wrong places, like an air stewardess
announcing turbulence. ‘To hear the message — line of your — choice, please
press — the corresponding number on — your telephone now.’ And then, ‘You have
chosen message line number…’ and the computerized numbers came out
individually, each with its own placidly banal and soothing emphasis. Then a
third woman’s voice came on the line. This one was a real person. This was
gorgeous-shapely-from-Newcastle’s message.

‘Erm,
hello, it seems really strange doing this but they say you must describe
yourself, so …’ Long, embarrassed pauses. ‘… So, well, I’m twenty-nine and
I’m quite petite, slim, and I see myself as having a sense of humour but I have
got a serious side, and, er …’ She was talking slower and slower, it was
excruciating. ‘Er . . if you can hear rustling paper, it’s because I’ve written
some notes here … in case I forget who I am.’

She
must have found that funny when she thought it up but now, talking into the
disembodied digital void, she lost confidence in her own joke and it fell
flaccidly like old lettuce. She went on.

….
And in case you’re wondering why I put the ad in, I reached the point where I
got fed up with waiting for the right man to materialize out of thin air and I
thought it was time I did something about it, so … this is it, really …’
Christ, she was about as exciting as a supermarket queue. ‘I like walking and
being outdoors and sitting by the fire and talking and I like eating out in
restaurants … and they say you’ve got to say the sort of thing you’re looking
for… so here goes … well, he’s got to have a sense of humour and be tall
and …’ I held the receiver away from my ear, as you would when an elderly
relative calls to witter on. My cigar had gone out so I relit it. I took
another gulp of ‘poo. I checked back with the babe from Geordieland. She was
drawing to an end in her own good time…. Just someone I can have some fun
with, really… and that’s it …’ Click. Back to the plastic tones of the
option menu hostess. ‘To hear this message — line — again, press 1 — to return
to the main menu — press 2 —’ Could be an interesting torture to hear that
message line again and again. I’d crack after a couple of goes.

I was
surfing the option menu now. I pressed other message line numbers, most were as
sad as gorgeous-shapely but some were bizarre. ‘Well, I’m fifty-two, my work is
as a detective superintendent in the police force and my husband left me two
years ago and I’m looking for someone who likes Elvis Costello, Chopin and Vivaldi
but not Sting or Beethoven, who could bring me out of myself a bit.’ After six
or seven goes at this game, the buzzing in my head started to return; I was
getting bored. These people and their stories were drab, they’d had their
fifteen minutes of fame and they’d blown it. There was nothing I could do for
any of them.

Suddenly,
the hot night cracked with a massive roll of thunder overhead. No rain yet, but
the sky was bursting. I went to the window and looked out. A lightning flash
and then almost immediately another crack of thunder. This time a sudden
vomiting of water from above and people in the street rushed into shop doorways
to hang about for a few minutes with the homeless who were crouching there. I
closed the window — the rain was flying in past the sill on to our fax machine.

I
returned to the sofa. I was a player now. I flicked through to the back of the
entertainment guide to where the hot chat-line numbers are listed after the
rubber mini-skirt and French maid outfit ads. ‘One to one! The horniest,
hottest girls!’ ‘Wet talk!’ ‘Thirty-five seconds of sexy mouth!’ ‘Oral exams!’ ‘Come
in my crack!’

More
air stewardess voices with option menus. I punched in a request number. Tania
would be able to clock all these 0891 numbers when the itemized phone bill
came, but my Captain Sensible side seemed to have gone loco. It’s lucky we
weren’t yet on the internet, or I’d be entering deviant and expensive porn
web-sites in Las Vegas by now. I was suddenly connected to a recorded scenario
with the front dialogue lopped off, like when you get through to a cinema
information number and they’re already going through the showing times, and you
have to wait for the tape to go round to the beginning to find out what’s on.

An
Australian male voice was plodding through a turgid script. Worse than
A
Country Practice,
if you can credit that.

‘….
and you were a very bad girl going out in that short dress when I told you not
to. I’ll have to put you over my knee and spank you now.’ He was joined, if
that’s the right word, by the voice of a woman straining to sound husky.

‘Oh,
that makes me so wet when you do that.’ Then the sound of someone wearing
rubber gloves slapping a block of wood. Then the woman’s voice again. ‘I’ve
been very bad and I need to be punished.’

Acting,
surely, is about convincing someone, anyone, that you believe what you are
saying — as any of the voice artists on our books will tell you. I need not go
into the wherefores of why the owner of this voice was not, nor ever could be,
an actress. The Aussie bloke was back.

‘I’m
going to have to pull your knickers down and spank you again.’

Well,
it was entertaining. For about half a minute. I put down the phone. My friend
the phone. My constant companion over these last ten years. It had let me down.
No, I had let it down. I was ashamed. The phone looked back at me from its
cradle like a hurt puppy in its basket. All those things Liz had told me about
myself — that I was arrogant, that I had no feelings, that I didn’t know how to
express my feelings, that I didn’t understand feelings, that I was only
interested in sex, that I was only interested in possessions, that I didn’t
know how to treat a woman properly, that I was cheap — all were real and true.
I was seeing myself through her eyes. Her refracted interpretations had won the
territory of my self-respect. The thunder had receded some miles away by now,
but the stagnant air had begun to move. Outside in Soho a wind heaved up Shaftesbury
Avenue. I got up and fetched the Yellow Pages. I couldn’t stand it in the
office any longer.

Outside the
chintzy-curtained window were the branches of a streetlamp—lit chestnut tree,
thrashing in the wind. The heat had broken, and the air currents were angry. I
sat on a small candlewick bed, waiting for the courage to take my trousers off
as I had been told to do. There were clean towels everywhere and a Spanish
bullfighter print on the wall.

On the
TV, there was a video of a frenzied blow job to the accompaniment of soft,
irritating music. On top of the TV, on a chintzy doily, stood a painted
souvenir donkey from Madeira. At last she came in. She was wearing a cheap lacy
all-in-one and a silk-mix dressing gown open at the front. She was bigger than
me.

‘Stormy
night, eh?’ she said with a grin. ‘And we’re going to be pretty stormy too.’
The wind outside was rattling the sills and driving stray soft drinks cans
along the pavement. The chestnut tree outside fought with the storm in a tussle
of swaying and yielding.

She sat
on the bed beside me.

‘Ooooh,
you are very disobedient,’ she said, referring to the fact that I had taken off
my shoes and nothing else.

‘Well,
I’m nervous,’ I said. ‘I’ve not done anything like this before.’

‘Aaaaaaah.
They all say that. Now, give us a hug,’ she said, and pulled me to her, her
painted nails on my shoulders, one hand still hanging on to the children’s
Snoopy glass which contained her vodka and coke. My drink, in a Mickey Mouse
tumbler, was sitting on the small bedside table under the table lamp from
Tenerife. The carpet was threadbare and a lacy shawl had been draped over the
main light, giving the room an amateurishly theatrical ambience. The tassels of
the shawl jogged with the force of the gale outside. Her free hand rubbed
between my shoulder blades, where the tension lives like a knotted pair of
tights. It was soothing.

‘Do you
like titties?’ She asked, and peeled down her Marks and Sparks lacy top. Well,
of course I like titties, I thought. I’m just not sure about having them so
large and so present right now. I felt like a child and she seemed to think
that was good.

‘You
have to tell me what you like,’ she said. Even if I had known what 1 like and
had the words in my mind to describe it, I wouldn’t have been able to speak. I
imagine that Jeremy Planter, if he ever found himself in a situation like this,
would be able to be very decisive and clear about what he wanted. ‘Stand over
there at an angle of forty-five degrees to the chair, flutter your eyelashes
and say, “Oh my God, I’ve never seen such a big one”,’ he would say without a moment’s
pause. I have no idea what I like. That never comes into it. I aim to please, 1
suppose.

‘Do
most men tell you what they want?’ I asked.

‘Some
do,’ she said, and started to unbutton my shirt. Inside she flicked her painted
nails over my nipples for a bit and then started to unbutton my trousers.

‘Unless
I’m doing the old “dommo.” Oh yes, I’m good at giving orders. ‘Cos then it’s
more like a performance, you know, it’s like acting. I’ve got all the boots and
whips and everything but they have to say that’s what they want beforehand,
like, so I can prepare, and then it’s straight into it the moment I get into
the room.’

She
spoke with a straightforward Brummie accent. She was mixed race. Quite
dark-skinned but not black like Joan in the office. What’s known in the biz as ‘BBC
brown’.

Although
they would issue a statement to deny it — introduce a packet of measures to
stop it, even — the broadcasters seem not to employ black actresses, other than
to play the odd one-line junkie/whore/single mother with attitude. No, when
casting the larger roles, they tend to go for the more acceptable, lovable and cliché-sexier
mixed-race type, hence the expression ‘BBC brown’. I don’t know why we don’t
all admit it and shove it on their CVs.

This
unwritten code does not apply to men, however. They’re allowed to be macho
black — like my Simon N’quarbo, does very well on telly — thus making the TV
industry appear both sexist and racist at the same time. It’s as well to know
these things when digging around for clients. And don’t let any directive,
equal-opportunity employer pamphlet, memorandum, conference bullshit convince
you otherwise. The woman in front of me would have stood a chance, had she been
an actress and had she so wished, of playing the token female doctor in some
worthy drama series about vets.

‘Come
on, off with your things, mate,’ she said.

I
obliged.

‘Do you
get the same guys coming back again and again?’ I asked.