The Drought (The hilarious laugh-out loud comedy about dating disasters!) (30 page)

“
What is this
we’re watching?” Jack asked.

“
WrestleRage
,” I said as the Iron
Warrior hit Flex Bruiser with a big clothesline.

“
But
why?”

“
Because Ollie
said I needed to learn how to fight.”

“
And he
recommended you watch this?”

“
Yeah,” I said
like it was the most obvious thing. Warrior pressed Bruiser above
his head and dropped him in preparation for his big splash
finish.

“
And you
listened to him?”

Jack was
right, it
was
ridiculous. But I had been hooked since I had put on the DVD
three hours ago. Watching these spandex-wearing muscle men had
brought back so many nostalgic memories from my
childhood.

“
Shhh,” I put
my finger up to my lips. “The Bruiser is making a
comeback!”

And he was! Shaking his head
and waving his finger at the Warrior, taking everything the Warrior
could throw at him. Then came the big boot and he went for his
famous Knee Drop.

“
That was so
obvious he was going to miss,” Jack said as the Warrior rolled out
of the way at the last minute.

“
Shut up,” I
said, now on the edge of my seat as Warrior bounced off the ropes
and hit Bruiser with
another
big splash. “One... two... three!” It was all
over – the Warrior was the new champion. I leapt to my feet and
started dancing around the living room in my dressing gown,
imitating the Warrior by beating my chest.

“
What in God’s
name are you doing?” Jack said, his arms folded across his chest.
“Turn this rubbish off. We’ve got work to do.” Jack was taking it
all very seriously. I took my seat back on the sofa next to him. I
wasn’t even too sure what man moves were. I had been too tired when
he had called that morning to bother asking.

“
As the
missing piece of the puzzle, I will be helping you with the single
most important part of your rehabilitation,” Jack pursed his lips.
“Man moves, otherwise known as sex education,” and with that he
pulled out a notepad and pen, and put a pair of glasses
on.

“
Wait a
minute,” I said. “I thought you wanted to teach me how to be cool
and to get my swagger back? And why are you wearing those? You
don’t wear glasses.” I said.

Jack ignored
my question. “Hey, what impresses a girl more than being
absolute
in the sack?
And after all this time out of practice, you could probably do with
a few pointers.”

“
I really
don’t think this...”

“
What is the
best sexual position?” Jack interrupted me.

“
Well... I...”
The bluntness of his question took me aback.

“
Too slow,”
Jack said shaking his head and writing something down on his
notepad. “If you can’t answer a simple question like that then what
hope do you have when you’re with a woman?”

“
The girl on
top,” I shouted just to shut him.

“
Tut tut,”
Jack shook his head and wrote something else down on his notepad.
“Wrong answer.”

“
Why is it the
wrong answer?” I demanded to know.

“
Too lazy. You
put too much control in the woman’s court,” Jack said looking at me
over his glasses which were now perched on the end of his
nose.

“
What should I
have answered then?”

“
Doggy style,”
he said placing his notepad down like he had just come up with the
solution to the perfect sexual manoeuvre. “Would you like me to
elaborate?”

“
Please
do.”

He got to his feet and cleared
his throat. “The doggy position puts all of the control in the
man’s court. He controls the speed, the angle, and rest periods.
The woman cannot direct proceedings while on all fours. She might
be able to back into the man, but at any given time the man can
take back control of the reins. Come here and let me show you.”

I looked at him blankly for a
second before realising he was deadly serious. “I am not letting
you demonstrate on me. No way.”

“
Hey!” Jack
shouted, pointing his finger at me. “You told me you had done
exactly what the others told you to do. I want that same respect.
Now get over here and get on all fours.”

“
Jack, I’m not
doing this...”

“
Trust me
Dan,” Jack said placing his glasses down on the table. “This is the
only way to learn. You’ll thank me.”

And for the second time that
day I agreed to what Jack was asking against my better judgement.
Reluctantly I got down in front of him on my knees. “No funny
business okay?”

“
You have my
word that this will be strictly professional” Jack said. “Now get
on all fours, bitch.” I shot him a look before shaking my head and
getting on all fours. I felt him grab me by the waist and pull me
towards him.

“
I can’t do
this...” I said trying to get up, but Jack forced my head down and
I sprawled on to the carpet.

“
Lesson one,”
Jack said with one hand pushing down against my head and the other
clutching onto my waist. “In the doggy position the man controls
the situation.”

He started thrusting his pelvis
back and forth, forcing my face to rub against the carpet. “Jack,
if you don’t get off me...”

“
Lesson two.
In this position you can apply the old reach around. You can go
upstairs or downstairs.” Jack freed the hand from my waist to reach
around to my chest and groin area.

“
Seriously
Jack, if you don’t get off me I’ll...” I turned my face to meet his
gaze to let him know I meant business, but he just interrupted me
again.

“
Lesson three.
The doggy position means you don’t have to look at her face if she
is fugly,” he said using his abbreviation for
fucking ugly
,
and with the hand that was pushing my head down he turned my
face away back towards the carpet to stop me looking at
him.

“
Lesson four,”
Jack said taking a firmer grip as I tried to squirm out of the way.
“The doggy position is the ideal position to switch from vagina to
anal.”

“
Get off me
now!” But as I tried pushing away I lost balance and my chin
crashed against the carpet.

“
And the final
lesson today class, after giving the girl anal pleasure, you can
play that well-known game of
taste your
ass
,” and with that Jack slapped my arm
and twisted my hips to spin me on to my back and straddled me with
his groin in my face. “Taste your ass, bitch.”

“
GET THE FUCK
OFF ME!” And with all the strength I could muster I launched Jack
across the room.

“
What’s your
bloody problem?” Jack said rubbing his head.

“
I think I’ve
learned enough for one day thank you very much,” I said hauling
myself back up on to the sofa.

“
Suit
yourself,” Jack said getting to his feet. “We’ll pick this up later
on in the week. Our next class will be how to perform perfect oral
pleasure.”

“
Get
out.”

Chapter 19:
The Dating Game

Friday, June 26, 2009 -
8.13pm

Drought Clock: 176 days, 4
hours, 24 minutes

I had a new
look. I had started to work on a new physique. And I had tried to
erase all memory of Jack’s lesson on
proper man moves.
Now I had to get
out there and make it work. I had arranged to meet the boys in the
Nelson Arms to go through my strategy. The plan was simple – I was
to arrange dates with as many girls as possible and play the odds
game with the hope that at least one of them would be willing to
shag me.

“
Where is your
Little Black Book, then?” Rob asked.

In this case my Little Black
Book consisted of mobile contacts, email addresses, and Facebook
friends. “Here you go,” I said handing them a piece of paper with a
list of names I had drawn up.

“
You have to
take this name off,” Rob said crossing out the name of Sarah Young.
“We know her brother Billy.”

“
So what?” I
said.

“
If you've
known a bloke for more than 24 hours, his sister is off limits
forever,” Rob explained. “Unless you plan to marry her.”

“
That reminds
me, how is
your
sister Ollie?” Jack said.

“
Behave
yourself,” Ollie said pointing at Jack with the top of his beer
bottle.

“
Let me ask
you guys a question,” Jack said shifting forward in his seat,
holding out two fingers. “Why does Ollie’s sister masturbate with
these two fingers?”

“
I’m warning
you, Jack,” Ollie said.

“
Because
they’re mine!” Jack said cracking up. Even Ollie had a smile on his
face.

“
You probably
don’t want to contact this one either,” Rob said pointing at Adele
Tompkinson’s name. “Remember the story she spread about Ryan
Jefferson?”

We all nodded
as we recalled of how Ryan got stuck with a nickname that still
haunted him to this day. Rumour has it that halfway through sex,
poor Ryan had an asthma attack and needed to stop to get his
inhaler. Adele had apparently been so put out by this, that she had
not bothered to help him find the inhaler. While the poor guy was
gasping for breath she sat on the side of the bed sulking. To add
insult to injury, she told everyone the story and Ryan became known
as the
Weezy Lover,
sung to the tune of the Phil Collins song
She’s an Easy Lover.

We whittled the list down to
three names. Rob handed me the piece of paper and I took a swig on
my bottle of beer. I looked at the names and wondered if one of
those girls could be the one to help bring an end to my drought.
Only time would tell.

Date One

Who:
Hannah Kennedy

When:
Tuesday, June 30

Where:
Dinner in
Chinatown

Background:
Old school friend who
recently got in touch on Facebook.

“
Do you
remember Miss Clarke, the art teacher?” I asked Hannah as our food
was brought to our table.

“
Yes, I do!”
Hannah said. “She was the one who used to disappear midway through
class to have a sneaky fag outside.”

It was good reminiscing about
the old days and talking about things I hadn’t thought about for
years. Hannah hadn’t changed much. She still had long brown hair
and a pretty little nose. I had sent her a message on Facebook
asking if she fancied meeting up and she had replied almost
instantly saying we should meet for dinner after work one
evening.

“
And how about
Mr Thembury, the French teacher,” I said tucking into my chicken
and cashew nuts. “He used to get so worked up when he was telling
the class to be quiet that he would have tears in his
eyes.”

“
Or Mr Neal,
the geography teacher, who wore that really bad wig!” Hannah said,
and we both cracked up. This was going great. I kicked myself for
not thinking about doing this before. Meeting up with an old friend
put me completely at ease.

“
I really miss
those days,” I said shovelling some rice into my mouth. “It would
be great to go back and relive our time at school.”

“
Hmmm,” Hannah
nodded, but had an awkward look on her face.

“
Everything
ok?”

“
It’s nothing
really,” Hannah drunk some wine. “It’s just I had a bit of a tough
time at school. I got bullied.”

“
I’m so sorry,
I had no idea,” I said putting down my chopsticks and placing my
hand on top of hers. “If I had known I would never have brought it
up.”

“
It’s okay,
it’s not your fault.”

“
We don’t have
to talk about this. We can change the subject if you
like?”

“
No, that’s
okay,” she said holding my hand. “It would be nice to talk about
it. I haven’t really told anyone about this before.”

Hannah had seemed so happy at
school, but here she was looking for a shoulder to cry on. She
looked so vulnerable.

I could definitely use this to
my advantage.

Okay, I was a despicable human
being to prey on this poor girl’s weakness. But I knew it would be
something Jack would do, and he wasn’t suffering from any sort of
drought at the moment.

“
Tell me what
happened?”

She took a deep breath. “Things
were fine until the final year. I had been getting good grades and
keeping my head down.”

“
Go on,” I
said stroking her hand.

“
Then one day
during a science class it happened. I didn’t mean for it to happen,
but it just came from nowhere. And you know what kids are like at
school. They can be so cruel, but I couldn’t help it. It wasn’t my
fault.”

“
What
happened?” I said, intrigued.

“
We were set a
test on the Periodic Table. It was silent apart from the noise of
pencils scratching against paper. And that’s when it
happened?”