The Drought (The hilarious laugh-out loud comedy about dating disasters!) (8 page)

Hi how r u? x

I stared at it for a while, my
mind trying to process the complete randomness of the text. We had
not spoken since New Year’s Day when Babe Ruth had tried knocking
my head out of the ball park.

I placed the phone back on to
the table without replying. I would be lying if I said I hadn’t
contemplated contacting Stacey over the last three weeks. Despite
everything that had happened, I still wanted to make sure she was
okay. Kelly had been spot on when she had said how hard it could be
adjusting from a routine you had become so accustomed to. It felt
strange going from daily contact with Stacey for three years to
having no contact whatsoever. Maybe Stacey was feeling the same way
and that is why she had sent the text.

The phone beeped again. I
picked it up expecting it to be Jack’s reply but it was Stacey
again.

R U mad with me? x

I sat forwards, my elbows
leaning against my knees, and brushed my hand through my hair. Her
question baffled me. What the hell did she expect me to say? That I
was pleased for the exercise after having to run for my life to
avoid certain death at the hands of her pit bull flat-mate? Still,
curiosity got the better of me and after a couple of minutes I
decided to reply.

Hi, I’m good. How r u? I’m not
mad, just a bit confused.

Within seconds
the phone beeped:
Why are you confused?
You’re the one who used me for sex and then dumped me.

Immediately I regretted
replying to her. I’d fallen into her trap too easily. I knew the
exact pattern of conversation that would follow if I replied. I had
lost count of the number of conversations that had started like
this during the last few months of our relationship. I sat back in
my seat, pissed off that she was trying to drag me back into
another pointless argument. When we had been together I had tried
desperately to avoid situations like this, but she always managed
to drag me into her web just like a female black widow spider
preparing to eat her male equivalent after they have mated.

But then I
smiled. We weren’t together anymore. I didn’t have to put up with
this. I was free. No longer did I have to engage her in this
bullshit. So I ignored her. This may sound immature, but I don’t
mind admitting that I got an enormous amount of satisfaction
knowing that my silence would be driving Stacey crazy. My instinct
was proven correct when she sent me a fourth text:
Too scared to face the truth? You’re not a real
man.

If ever I needed proof that I
had made the right decision, there it was. Stacey was not the same
person I had once known and fell in love with, and I knew that
moving on was the best thing for me. Stacey on the other hand had
different ideas, and not content with sending me abusive texts, my
phone started to vibrate with her name flashing up on the screen. I
contemplated sending her straight to my voicemail but I had already
learnt my lesson with the 47 messages at New Year. I wanted to nip
this in the bud now.

“
What do you
want, Stacey?” I abruptly answered.

“
Don’t speak
to me like that,” she was drunk. “Who do you think you
are?”

I could hear Sophie egging her
on in the background. I could just imagine her big mop of frizzy
hair waving around like Medusa’s snake locks.

“
What do you
want, Stacey?” I asked again.

“
I just want
to let you know that I’m so over you. I’ve found someone else and
he is more of a man than you ever were.”

“
So you’re
dating Sophie, then?” I managed to stifle my laugh.

“
You think
you’re so funny, don’t you? You’d better hope you don’t see me out
because next time you won’t be able to run.”

“
Hold on
Stacey, I have got someone here who wants to talk to you. Say hello
to my mate tone.” And I clicked off.

I sat there for a while
wondering how things had gone so wrong. Why had Stacey allowed
herself to be manipulated by that witch Sophie? The girl I knew at
university seemed like a distant memory, but I couldn’t dwell on it
any longer, and I certainly wouldn’t blame myself for what had
happened.

My phone
beeped and the fifth text from Stacey came through. It was short,
direct, and to the point:
wanker.

I switched the television off
and decided to call it a night. I got into bed and started to think
about what Stacey had said. It really played on my mind. Not the
part about me being a wanker obviously, but the fact she had met
someone. I hated to admit it but it had got to me. Had she really
met someone so soon or was she just trying to be spiteful and get a
reaction out of me? It was probably the latter knowing her.

My phone beeped again. This was
now getting beyond a joke. What sort of monster had she turned
into? How long was this going to go on for?

The 10th annual cock sucking
and deep throating contest is this Friday. Don’t bother coming
mate, we’ve got girls to come this year. Thanks anyway champ! Yeah,
I’m all over it buddy! See you Saturday. Come on!!

I smiled. Jack was on board for
drinks next week.

Chapter 6:
Out of Practice

Saturday, January 31, 2009 -
7.35pm

Drought Clock: 30 days, 8
hours, 13 minutes

Sitting in my flat in Balham, I
stared at the computer screen, clicking my way through the pictures
in the photo gallery. I had toyed with the idea of removing Stacey
as my friend on Facebook. It was pretty clear that we were never
going to be friends in the real world again, so why bother being
cyber friends?

It presented a constant
reminder of what she was up to. That is probably the worst thing
about social networks on the net. Your private life is no longer
private anymore. Even Jimmy Mercer – who I only vaguely remembered
as the fat kid from primary school who used to sit at the back of
the classroom sniffing Sherbet Dib Dabs – had constant access to my
every move.

And now, looking at Stacey with
her tongue down the throat of some Neanderthal with two huge gold
hoop earrings, I was starting to think I had made a mistake by not
cutting all ties with her.

“
Come on,
mate, don’t do this to yourself,” Rob said swigging at his bottle
of beer.

“
I can’t
believe she has moved on so quickly,” I continued flicking through
the pictures. It had now been four weeks since we had split up. The
photo gallery I was looking at was titled
Friday night @ Oscars
and had been
uploaded this morning.

I stopped on one picture of Mr
gold earrings – tagged Dave Rowett – sandwiched in the middle of
Stacey and Sophie. He had his hands on Stacey’s chest while Sophie
maniacally laughed behind him.

“
She knew I’d
see these pictures,” I said pointing at Sophie, who had posted the
gallery online.

“
Forget about
it, and turn the computer off,” Rob handed me a beer. “Come on,
drink.”

He clinked his bottle against
mine. I took one final look at the screen, gulped down a mouthful
of beer and shut the computer down.

“
Atta boy,”
Rob slapped me on the back. “Tonight I am making it my personal
responsibility to get you hooked up. And she’ll be a damn sight
prettier than that goon Stacey was assaulting. I can’t believe you
used to kiss that mouth.”

I laughed hard, nearly spitting
out the contents of beer swishing around in my mouth. I needed a
good laugh. I had not been out since New Year’s. A combination of
working late and waiting for pay day to roll round had kept me
stuck indoors.

“
Come on, take
your beer with you,” Rob said putting on his brown designer leather
jacket. “I told the others we’d meet them at eight.”

There was a cold bite in the
air as we made our way down to Balham Station, and Rob had a
mischievous look about him. “This is where it begins, Danny
boy.”

“
What are you
talking about,” I asked him.

“
Single life,”
he said it as though that was meant to clear everything up.
Obviously the look on my face told him I still had no idea where he
was going with this.

“
Danny, for
three years you have done a very honourable thing. You gave your
penis to just one woman,” Rob patted me on the back. “Honourable,
but fucking stupid at the same time.”

“
Eh?” was
about all I could muster as we entered the tube station.

“
You were what
19, 20, when you hooked up with Stacey? Do you know how sad it is
that I slept with more girls at
your
university than you
did?”

Rob had a point. Every time he
came to visit me he pretty much cleaned up.

“
You wasted a
lot of opportunities,” he told me. “Luckily for the girls you went
to university with I was willing to take one for the team. But I
never allowed myself to get tied down to any of them, and believe
me when I say that a few of those girls were into that sort of
thing.”

As we stepped onto the
escalator, Rob turned to face me. “Single life, Danny,” he said
like it was the greatest thing in the world. “Take our current
setting, for example,” he said waving his arm around the tube
station. “How many times have you been on the Tube on the way to
work and seen a really hot girl and thought to yourself ‘if I was
single, I would talk to her?’”

“
A few I
guess,” I answered. And by a few I meant none. Yes I’d seen plenty
of good-looking girls on the Tube, but I would never have the balls
to approach any of them – single or not. I just wasn’t one of those
guys who were capable of pulling off something like that. We made
our way down the platform and Rob continued to educate me on the
delights of my newfound single life.

“
Tube stations
are a great place to meet women,” Rob enlightened me. “You just
need to be confident,” he said scanning the platform. “What about
her?” he said pointing towards a girl wearing a long cream coloured
coat.

“
She’s cute, I
guess.”

“
Go and talk
to her then.”

“
What?” I
responded like he had asked me to place my hand in a
blender.

“
Go and talk
to her. Just say hello.”

“
And then
what?”

“
Something
will come to you,” and he pushed me in her direction. I turned back
to him but he waved me on. “If you’re lucky, she’ll
bite.”

A strange uneasy feeling began
to come over me. My palms began to sweat. She caught sight of me
coming towards her out the corner of her eye. I stopped and turned
back to Rob but he kept urging me on. Before I knew it I was
standing next to her. I needed to say something quickly before this
got even more awkward.

“
Excuse me,” I
nervously said.

“
Yes?” she
faced me, a subtle pink lip-gloss made her lips look
luscious.

“
Erm, I was
just standing over there with my friend,” I actually pointed
towards Rob. “And I just wanted to say hello.”

“
Hello,” she
smiled. Yes, she smiled! She could have pepper sprayed me, but
instead she smiled. A good sign. Things were going well. I decided
to follow this up with...

... the longest pause known to
man. I drew a complete blank. I puffed out my cheeks as if somehow
that would help the situation and rubbed my hands excessively down
the side of my jeans. We were experiencing an awkward silence and
this wasn’t even a first date. Eventually she broke the unbearable
silence by asking “Was there anything else?”

“
No. I mean,
yes.” Say something more meaningful than this for fuck’s sake I
thought to myself. “You’re getting a tube, then?”

There are days when I look back
at this moment and wish I had asked her if she came here often.
Anything else than asking her if she was getting a bloody tube
while she waited on the platform at a tube station, directly
opposite a map of the Northern Line.

“
Er, yeah,”
she replied, now with a slightly nervous tone to her voice as the
southbound tube thundered into the platform. “This is my tube,” she
said almost relieved to be putting an end to my misery. “Nice
speaking to you.” And with that she hopped on, not even giving me a
second look, sitting down with her back to the window.

“
So, how did
it go?” Rob asked as I shuffled back over to him. “Did you get her
number?”

“
No, and if
you have any more pearls of wisdom tonight please keep them to
yourself,” I pleaded, more than asked.

The northbound tube pulled into
the platform and we got on to make the short two-stop journey to
Clapham Common. As we took our seats it was pretty clear Rob was
not going to let this go so easily. “Don’t worry about what just
happened. You’re just out of practice; it’s ring rust that’s all.
After being stuck with the same girl for three-years you have
simply forgotten how to chat-up girls. It’ll all come flooding
back, trust me,” Rob told me confidently before smiling at a
strawberry blonde opposite us, and then engaging her in
conversation like it was the easiest thing in the world.

Maybe Rob was right. Before
Stacey I’d had a decent track record with the ladies. Clearly not a
track record like Rob; he just needed to look in the direction of a
female and she seemed to drop her knickers for him. I just needed
to get back into the saddle – it’s like riding a bike as they
say.