Twenty Something (5 page)

I'm in heaven.

Corporate restructuring has led to Leila ‘netball wing defence' Sidebottom moving to the same desk as me. Admittedly, we're at opposite diagonals and there's a sizeable partition blocking our view, but if I sit up straight in my chair I can just make out a perfect rectangle of forehead and blonde hair. As long as I keep below her eye line I can watch her all day. I feel like Camus's prisoner who's content to stare at his fragment of sky through the bars. I also feel like a pathetic old pervert.

Mid-afternoon, and I'm disturbed from my pleasant revelries by Leila herself. She's standing over me, wearing a short business-suit skirt. Her breasts are pushing against her white shirt. I have to slide my chair further under my desk so that she can't see the bulge in my trousers.

‘Hi, Jack,' she says.

How did she know my name? I must have registered surprise, because she motions to the name plaque on my monitor.

‘It says so there. I'm Leila.'

As if I had to be told. Leila, light of my life, fruit of my loins. Lay me on my knees, Leila. Hadn't I written a panegyric to that very name?

‘We met in the lift,' she adds, somewhat unnecessarily.

Oh bollocks, she remembered.

‘How's your granny? Did she like her flowers?'

‘Oh, yes. She loved them.'

This is one of the longest personal conversations I've ever had with a colleague at my desk. People are starting to look at us weirdly. Perhaps we're endangering the wellbeing of the FTSE with our lightning banter.

‘I'm making coffee,' she continues. ‘Would you like some?'

Would I like some? God, would I like some.

‘Yes, please. Really milky.'

‘Sugar?'

Don't say, ‘I'm sweet enough already.' Don't say, ‘I'm sweet enough already.'

‘I'm sweet enough already.'

Oh, Lancaster, you blundering arse. Again.

In these dark, private confines, I would like to write something in my diary about masturbation.

Two things, in particular, strike me as extraordinary about the topic of self-gratification. The first is that it still happens at
all. In the twenty-first century we can perform uniquely wonderful feats such as sending astronauts to the moon. But successful, attached, attractive men still tug themselves off on a regular basis. I know very little about the animal kingdom, but I'm pretty certain that elephants don't pleasure themselves with their trunks. I know our family dog Buzz certainly doesn't — although he does like a good chair leg.

The other thing that amuses me about onanism is the way in which people broach it. Guys adopt a boorishly laddish approach to the subject. It's something to joke about in games of ‘I have never'. Four times in one day? Well, I never. Caught by every single member of your family? Unbelievable. Are you a once-a-day man? Yep — me, too. Legend.

Girls, on the other hand — or, at least, the demure little things that I seem to hang around with — appear to be shocked by the subject. Never believe a girl who claims never to have had a fiddle in the basement. This is like having a brand-new Ferrari in the garage and never taking it for a test drive. Get to know them better — Claire, Susie, Katie and Mel are all cases in point — and you'll elicit fuller confessions.

Enough beating about the bush: the really tricky bit as a home-movie director is deciding whom to cast opposite you in the role of leading lady. It's fine when you stick to celebrities or random encounters whom you're never going to come across again. It crosses the borderline into awkwardness when friends and colleagues start playing cameo roles. It becomes even more awkward if this recollection suddenly hits you during a conversation. Part of the reason for my appalling conversation with Leila on Friday afternoon was that she'd been bouncing on my lap in a full-length feature movie only eighteen hours previously.

In fact, I can pretty much divide my female acquaintances into girls I've fantasised about and girls I haven't. I always wonder what they would make of this if I told them. Probably nothing. When they're not being so demure (i.e. untruthful),
they'd probably admit to entertaining similar fantasies themselves. Except that theirs have a plot involving conversation and flowers, and we cut straight to Act V.

And with these enlightening thoughts on the human condition, I retire to bed, wondering if I'm missing Lucy more than I've admitted to myself.

I've never been an Olympic athlete, but I'm normally capable of walking the whole way up the fast lane on the Underground escalator without a pit stop. Today I had to pull over, panting, to let a pensioner overtake.

Concerned, I checked my BMI with the doctor at work, who confirmed that I am now officially an overweight, balding, single banker. I complained about this to Buddy.

‘Hey, be a man about it,' he advised kindly. ‘Take it on the chins.'

Later I tried to keep my chins up by popping into Boots to sort out my other imperfections. But incredibly, they had nothing to prevent premature balding. There were entire sections devoted to bladder weakness and hair removal products but nothing to keep my precious remaining follicles on my head.

It reminds me of a group of Parisian students who formed the Suicide Club in the 1850s. Their manifesto declared that all members should kill themselves before the age of thirty, or before they went bald — whichever came first. If I had drawn the last ticket in the lottery of life — born 150 years ago in France with suicidal bohemian tendencies — I fear I would have been one of the first to go.

After re-reading my little masturbation monologue entry from the weekend, I began to worry that I was a slightly unpleasant
person. Not to mention shallow, perverted, sly, verbose, vindictive, competitive, inept, jealous and lonely. I mentioned this to Flatmate Fred on Monday and he decided that I had overdosed on male company and was in need of some counterbalancing feminine input. So we decided to invite some girls around for pancakes this evening, Shrove Tuesday.

Katie was away with Rick for their parents' wedding anniversary party, so it was just Claire (doctors 'n' nurses), Mel (first kiss) and Susie (first shag). Mel and Susie were caught up in their usual battle for the attention of Flatmate Fred who was at his metrosexual best tossing pancakes in the kitchen. So I had a bit of time to spend with doctors 'n' nurses. Ironically, Claire is now a doctor and going out with a male nurse. It's funny how these things change. When we were toddlers, I was always in charge of the stethoscope.

‘Claire,' I ask. ‘You've known me ever since I was an itch in my alpha male 'rental's pants. Why am I so unhappy at the moment?'

‘Well, let's see. You hate your job, you've just left your girlfriend in an ugly scene involving your best mate, you're getting fat, you're hopelessly in lust with a colleague who's twenty miles out of your league and you're beginning to lose your hair.'

‘I'm what?'

‘Your hair, darling, your former hair. You're going bald. Your hairline is retreating like a polar icecap.'

‘What, five metres per year?'

Claire's the first person to point this out to me. It's official now.

‘But why don't you do something about it all?' she asks.

‘About the hair? There's nothing to be done about the hair. I'm not having transplants. It costs a bomb and it looks lame.'

‘No, dummy, the hair's fine. Balding men are sexy. Testosterone-packed. I mean the rest of your wretched life. Why don't you take some affirmative action to sort it out?'

This is quite a revelation. She's right. I, Jack Lancaster, can sort this all out myself. I am not some piece of flotsam at the mercy of the waves of fate. I have a mind of my own. I can do anything I want. I am in the driving seat of my life.

I am still smiling about this abstract thought when we're all sitting down later and discussing what to give up for Lent.

Predictably, the three girls are all renouncing chocolate for forty days. I wonder what student chocolate activist Leila would make of this. None of them is overweight, so they're not doing it for cosmetic reasons. Apparently, it's about self-denial, an appreciation of life's essentials.

‘Oh toss,' I protest. ‘It's the gastronomic version of tantric sex — delayed pleasure. Waiting a few weeks allows you to enjoy stuffing your face on Easter Day without feeling guilty. And in the meantime you feel empowered and feminine. “Oooh, what are you giving up for Lent? Chocolate? Oh you're
so
brave.”'

‘I am brave,' sniffs Mel. ‘You can't understand how chocolate makes us feel. If there were no men in the world, the planet would be full of happy, fat women eating Mars bars. It's so much better than sex.'

Women have no idea how inadequate that makes us feel.

‘Masturbation is often better than sex, as well,' I say. ‘And we don't go on about it.'

‘Why don't you give it up for Lent then, Jack?' asks Claire.

‘Yes,' chorus first kiss and first shag. ‘I dare you.'

‘I double-dare you,' adds Flatmate Fred. Mel and Susie titter at his witticism.

OK, then, I think. I am in the driving seat of my life, and I will. If the son of God managed to resist the temptation to turn stones into bread in the desert, I'm sure that I can keep away from my trouser snake for six weeks.

‘OK, then,' I tell my four disciples. ‘I will. And what are the terms of the bet?'

The girls look at each other and giggle.

‘You get what you've always wanted,' says first kiss.

‘A medal?'

‘A foursome with all of us.'

Oh. My. God.

Spent all day thinking about Mel's offer last night. She can't really have meant it. Surely. It must have been a sly little ploy to frustrate me. How can I possibly abstain for six weeks when that image is constantly in my mind? It's devious psychological warfare: the reward is the torture itself.

But hey, we all need challenges in our lives. Some people row across the Atlantic and climb Everest. I'm going to have simultaneous sex with three of my best friends.

Remembering the doctor's diagnosis at the beginning of the week that I am, indeed, a fat, balding bastard, I decided to go the gym this morning. It was surprisingly fun. The padded exercise bikes can be quite comfortable for watching
Sky News
as long as you don't move around too much. The weights are OK, too, on the condition that you put the key on the easiest level and keep to five repetitions. And I positively loved falling off the ergo machine onto a sweaty patch of unprotected metal below.

But what is it with communal changing rooms? I saw Rupert (bald) standing on a bench and blow-drying his pubic hair while whistling an out-of-tune Marseillaise. Well-endowed men trotted around naked (‘No towel is big enough to cover it,' they seem to imply), as if they were expecting a round of applause whenever they walked into the shower. We less blessed mortals scurried around nervously trying to wash, dry and dress in under seven seconds.

‘Do you want to work on your abs or your pecs first?' asked the personal trainer.

Stupid man. I just want to look good naked.

‘That could take a little while,' he replied.

Valentine's Day. The day of commercialism, despair, desperation and love.

There was the usual card from my dad, which he's sent every year since I was twelve. When I was at school he used to write ‘love from Daddy' on a Post-it note so I could tear it out and pretend I had a secret admirer. There was also a card signed jointly by Claire, Mel and Susie. Now they're really playing me.

Today, however, I had other things on my mind. Today I was going to make a tentative move on Leila. Stepping into the driving seat of my life (can you step into a seat?), I started to compose an email.

To: Leila Sidebottom (
yeuch
)
From: Jack Lancaster
Subject: No subject (
what subject could I give it? ‘Re: trying to pull you'?
)
Monday 14th February 14.35

Hey Leila, how you doing?! (
why the exclamation mark?
) How are things on the Westside of the desk (
what kind of joke is that?
)?! A bunch of us are going out for a few drinks after work today. Do you fancy coming along?

J
(pretty cool, eh?
)

My mouse hovered over the ‘send' button. I hesitated. I paused. And then I thought,
I am not flotsam, I am going to send this email
. And so I did.

I heard a little chuckle from the ‘Westside' of the desk. Brilliant, she loved it. And then ping, straight back, I had mail.

To: Jack Lancaster
From: Leila Sidebottom (
yeuch, I really have to marry her
)
Subject: Drink (
the girl calls a spade a spade — excellent
)
Monday 14th February 14.36

Ayeee, all's well on da Westside. Finding work kind of boring today (
wow — kindred spirit
). Would have loved to come along (
ouch, that's an ominous tense
), but I'm already going on a girly night out (
she's single, she must be single
). Maybe another time (
she didn't say never
).

Leila

X (
she put a kiss, a capital-letter kiss no less
)

But my sense of triumph over the electronic kiss was short-lived and I soon felt like a thoroughbred loser again. Of course she wouldn't have a boyfriend. She's too perfect to have a boyfriend. No one could put up with the jealousy that a girl that beautiful would arouse. You'd lose all your genuine mates instantly. Other blokes would just hang around with the two of you so they could catch her when you screwed up and she moved on.