Lou Sanz

I got an email from a friend of mine earlier this week, just a heads up really about our impending nuptials; ah yes his/ my ill thought out ‘if we’re both single at 30 let’s get hitched’ deal…I knew I’d forgotten something I had coming up. Of course when this deal was brokered we were both drunk 17 years old in the back seat of this Holden in my parents driveway at their holiday house one New Years Eve and sure, I know when you hear ‘back seat of a Holden’ you think ‘maybe Lou just got caught up in the romance of the moment, she’d have been a fool not to’ but the truth was my friend was trying to bang him and I’d just been sent to the car to lay the ground work for that event to take place, it had been a fact finding mission, where yes lines had been crossed and I remember as that deal was struck and I finished the last of my Lemon Ruski, that I was no longer a girl, but, as Britney would one day sing; not yet a woman.

The problem with brokering such a deal is that it is inherently flawed because it lacks context. Sure it has its merits if say you’ve had one too many glasses of cheap wine and are looking for an out one evening.. .

‘yeah, I’d love to see where we end up to, but the thing is I’ve already kinda agreed to marry someone else and you know what they say about breaking promises; 7 years of bad luck..’

‘I think you’ll find that’s broken mirrors Lou.’

‘Exactly, I’m glad we’re on the same page.’

…and back in 1996, well 30 seemed such a long way off that we laughed because we both knew that by then he’d be onto his second wife; an ex-Russian figure skater whom he’d met when buying up the controlling land rights to some displaced Eastern European state quite clearly for tax advantages. And of course I’d be holed up in my New York loft style apartment on my 3^rd novel that rumour had it was my ‘comeback’ after not quite living up to the expectations placed on my second book after my debut novel took out the Booker and the Nobel Prize for Literature in the same year, but it would be my arts journalist/ academic partner who tells me not to live into the hype of being a modern day ‘F Scott Fitzgerald’ according to The London Book Review and that I could’ve authored The Da Vinci Code for all he cared and he’d still love me….

But the reality of now was a little bit different to what had been imagined by either of us all those years ago on the Mornington Peninsula. Having peaked around 21years old careers-wise and now soothing my creative inadequacies with ramblings posted on the internet and with his penchant for only dating strippers neither of us were exactly in a position to not at least consider the validity and potential of this deal we had once struck. That said based on recent online chats (he resides in London) between us some concerns had been raised:

HIM

I need a job

LOU

It’s really that bad over there?

HIM

Yes

LOU

Maybe you should do some escort work? Those sort of industries really boom  during a recession J

HIM

Nah, too hard.

LOU

It’s not really. You just look handsome; go to the Opera with them (ok, granted my understanding of escorting has been moulded by old Inspector Poirot movies) and then go out and eat some food

HIM

But then you have to go home and eat them.

LOU (offline)

There was also the small issue of the fact that I don’t believe in marriage, which of course comes with its own problems. A few weeks ago my mother pulled out her wedding dress, a dress that demonstrated perhaps the most brutal lack of a scoop neck I have ever seen on a garment before. We both stared at it lying on my bed, eating hummus, revelling in how hideous it was.

‘I guess you could cut it up and make tote bags out of it’ I helpfully suggested.

‘No, the material is very expensive.’ My mother bemoaned.

‘Expensive tote bags then?’

‘Don’t you want it?’

I admired a yellow stain on the sleeve.

‘Oh, that’s just a ciggie stain, or it could be…’ she sniffed it ‘…could be Spumante or morning sickness…’

‘I’ll be ok mum, really.’

‘It’ll just end up going to the Salvos’ she said as she bundled it up into a garbage bag.

‘No, don’t do that, I could use it for a fancy dress party’…I was still looking at the stain ‘…or you could donate it to Hillsong as an advertisement against pre-marital sex…’

Mum glared at me.

‘What? I’m just workshopping ideas!’

I got another email a week later from him, he wanted to check that I still had an EU passport and suddenly I realised that our deal had taken on quite a different meaning. I was an asset what with my dual nationality, could it be that perhaps his UK work visa was drawing to an end and that this reminder of my betrothal was just him using me to stay in London to really try and make it work with women called ‘Spectacular’ and ‘Mistress Pony’?

LOU

Hi.

HIM

Hey wifey

LOU

You do realise it takes over 18 months to get access to the spousal rights of my EU passport?

HIM

Brb

LOU

K

(A few minutes pass)

HIM

Hey –sorry bout that, needed a piss.

LOU

Great. Did you see my question?

HIM

No

LOU

I said you do realise it takes over 18 months to get access to the spousal rights of my EU passport?

HIM

…we’ve both decided that given my current career aspirations to move this blog from a Word Press blogging template to TypePad and what with his burgeoning relationship with a Red Bull promo girl it was probably best not to invoke the conditions of our 1996 treaty agreement and we are no longer getting married, ever.

HIM

and she’s not like any other promo girl Lou,

she really believes in the product,

she says it’s a more a vacation

for her then a career.

LOU

well I’m glad some of us can have jobs

that feel like holidays.

HIM

Oh no, she means vocation when she’s talking,

she just gets the words confused. It’s cute.

LOU

She sounds like a diamond sweetie, a diamond

that was left a little too long under water in the

bath when she was in her key developmental stages.

HIM

Yeah, she’s a big fan of swimming.

LOU (offline)

I was having a nice lasagna lunch with a friend of mine yesterday just catching up on the respective events in each other’s lives as friends are want to do when he just came out with it…

 ”Your thing is Lou, you’re just that kid that always gets the wrong end of the stick.’

These words lingered as he took the last piece of garlic bread all to himself.

“Where’d that come from?” I said, suddenly very self-conscious.

“It’s nothing to be embarrassed about Lou, we all have our thing, like take me for example I’m not good with raisons in desert.”

“I’m not really sure sweeping statements about me getting the end of sticks wrong is even in the same non-league as you’re intolerance to dried fruit.”

“See, you’ve done it again Lou, not really heard what I’m saying, you’ve really got to watch that, could get you in a lot a trouble.”

I stabbed at my meat sauce.

“I’m sorry you’re really going to have to explain to me how I just completely misinterpreted what you said to me.”

He put his napkin down and moved his plate aside.

“Ok Lou, I’ll explain. I was saying that my thing with raisons well it does cause a lot of problems, because like let’s say I’m going out with someone right and they make me like a baked cheesecake -”

“Who’s baking you cheesecake?”

” – you right Lou? Can I keep going?”

I slumped into my seat.

“Sure”

“Thanks Lou, much “

I could so tell he didn’t appreciate my encouragement to go ahead.

“Ok, so this person bakes me a cheesecake and they put raisons in it and then they offer me a slice, now I can’t begrudge them that, they’re just being polite, but when I say I can’t eat it and tell them it’s because it has raisons in it and so it’s not their fault I can’t see them anymore, it’s the raisons fault, I get really annoyed when they don’t get it, or didn’t see it coming and sure I never told them about the raison thing but if they really were the right one for me then they’d just know about the raisons, like I wouldn’t even have to say anything – understand?”

“No I don’t understand. That was just complete and utter bullshit.”

“Hey I don’t make the rules Lou, I just play by them…want some coffee?”

I nodded and watched as he tried to get the waitresses attention.

He was right though, all too often I did get the wrong end of the stick.

When I was 6 years old and it was on the eve of my birthday I was in church at school when the priest stood up and asked everyone why tomorrow, the 1st of the August was such a special day. Now going on what my parents and my grandparents had told me, the reason the 1st of August was so special was because I was born that day so I raised my hand confident that the $10 promise from the priest for the one of us that got it correct was all mine – that was like $100 back in the day…

He looked out and saw my little hand sticking up. 

“Yes Louise, can you tell us why the 1st of August is such an important day?”

“Yes, it’s my birthday.”

The look on his face said it all, sure my birth was kinda special, but inevitable given my mother had been with child. It turned out that what was so special was that it was the horses birthday, something some Grade 6 with an over inflated sense of self knew. My nan tried to make me feel a little better by saying I just got the wrong end of the stick – no, that was not the case, I’d just not been fed all the pertinent information necessary for me to answer the question. Surely I was more an example of a lax educational system then a victim of the ‘wrong end of stick’ theory that was floating around?

When I was 14 I had a quite a crush on a boy called Andrew. He was lovely, well lovely if you liked guys with smooth legs, high pitched voices and a chronic case of conjunctivitis. He asked me to the new McDonald’s for a thick shake after school and I knew he liked me cause he use to try and hold me down and stuff sand down my socks – ok, quite obviously looking back he displayed precursors to that of a preferential sex offender, but at the time all this attention being paid to me was quite a turn on. As we walked to McDonald’s through the school gates I got that nervous, fluttering feeling that most of us attribute to the first pangs of lust, but lets just say I was mistaken when I noticed an ant crawling over my arm, well lots of ants crawling over my arms. I freaked out, running up to the water fountain and trying to get them off me. I yelled for help from Andrew but he just stared and smiled. It was then I realised my socks had been filled with ants…

“I thought you liked me” I yelled as I flung my school uniform off in the middle of the street.

“Oh, I just wanted to see if ants ate human flesh.” And with that I jumped into a nearby fountain.

When asked to explain his actions to the school principal Andrew contended that I had just gotten his intent wrong, that surely his attention towards me could never have extended beyond basic scientific curiosity, that perhaps I had gotten the ‘wrong end of the stick.’ The principal concurred, and I got detention for taking my top off with 200 meters of school property.

I spent most of my early 20′s avoiding the obvious as a way of not misinterpreting anything, that was until I hit 27 and a boy I was big into followed me all the way to Australia “to be with me forever”, well look that’s what he told me on the phone. As he hopped off the plain I searched the crowd for his little face and finally he appeared. I flung myself at him, grinning like an idiot only to have him push me away and take my arm and guide me away from the crowd.

“Listen Lou, let’s not rush things.

“But we’ve been living together for two years, you’ve just moved here to be with me – you made me a card out of dried pasta and silver paint.”

I held it up to him.

“Yeah, but I really think we should start out as friends first.”

“But we’re engaged.”

“Isn’t that just a label Lou, designed to make us confirm to societies ways?”

“Um..well yes, but you asked me…”

He smiled at me as he tussled my hair.

“There you go again Lou getting the wrong end of the stick, it just makes you so god darn cute.”

…and then we proceeded to live together for 4 months until he took me aside once again one day concerned that I was confusing us living and sleeping together as something more than friendship.

It was at that point that I realised I knew nothing about anything. Ever.

And now here I was watching my friend still trying to order his coffee.

We’d been talking about an incident I’d had during a local festival whereby I’d met this guy from overseas a few times during the duration of it and we’d chatted at various venues and every time he’d tried to kiss me but I challenged his advances and then one night he came over to me and told me fancied me and told me I couldn’t stop him from what he was about to do next -he kissed me. All very hot, I know. However, when the kissing stopped, he leaned against the bar and said…

“It’s such a shame I’ve got a girlfriend.”

When I looked confused, given what had just happened he knocked me on the shoulder and said…

“Surely you knew that already, I mean am I really the type not to have a girlfriend?”

And it was this incident that had seen my friend come out with his outlandish claim of me getting the wrong end of the stick. “But he kept trying to kiss me” I said.

“So?” Said my friend, “doesn’t actually mean anything, I mean he put in the hard yards, got what he came for – it’s like going to the Royal Melbourne Show – you go for the show bags but just end up getting pissed and leaving them on the train on the way home.”

Fair call.

As the coffees finally arrived, my friend got up to use the bathroom and the waiter asked if we’d like any cake.

“Do you have cheesecake?”

They did.

“Does it have raisons in it?”

It did.

“Great, we’ll grab a slice of that and just one fork.”

…hey, that’s not being selfish, just didn’t want him to get the wrong end of the stick, I had high hopes for this one.

I agreed to meet a guy for dinner earlier this week. He was a friend of a friend and needed help with a script. He’d rung a few times over the last few months but I’d been busy, but finally he got me on a day when I was hungry and there was something amusingly desperate in his plea to sit down and talk about screenplay formatting – I myself was curious to see how long anyone could drag out a conversation on that topic for. It wasn’t that he wasn’t a nice guy, he just lacked…he just lacked a clue, or perhaps various clues – like the time when he was dating my old flatmate and they went to a “Dress up as who you want to f**k” fancy dress party (you know Angelina Jolie, Fred Savage – the more obvious choices) and he went dressed as her younger sister.

Now I don’t know about anyone of you, and I can really only speak from my own experience, but when someone calls you to talk about macro templates for Word documents I think it’s a bit of a stretch on anyone’s behalf to infer that what was about to precede could be seen as a date – but as with what has increasingly become the case with men born of women these days, I found myself sitting opposite this guy Rob who clearly thought he was on to something with me – completely unaware that I was looking at him imagining myself naked, slit with a thousand razor blades and bathing in a bath of lemon juice and vinegar – because that’s where I’d rather be then on this misconstrued and socially awkward encounter.

“Hey” he said as I took my seat.

“Hi”

I plopped down some old screenplays I’d bought along and popped my water bottle back into my bag that now had only one handle due an incident the week before.

‘You should get a new bag’ he suggested as he brandished his Crumpler messenger bag across the table in what can only be described as an elaborate attempt to make me jealous. It was working. My current attempt to protect my own laptop was a result of me wrapping it in a towel off my bathroom floor from earlier that day. Sure it did the trick but the reality of my situation left me sad and contemplative.

“So I’ve bought some old scripts I’ve collected over the years for you to just have a look at, but you can pretty much download most of them online” (in fact this whole conversation could’ve been avoided thanks to Google…)

I eyed off the waiter, ok granted in a slightly pervy way, but more so because I needed a glass of wine. He knew I was eager from the minute I walked in the door so he was more inclined to stay away for now but I could work around this.

“Could you order me a glass of wine? I asked Rob.

He smirked “oh so that’s what 20 years of the women’s movement gets you…”

I stared at him so as he could imagine me doing something rather bad to him.

“Yep…ok, so I think I’ll stop there” he stammered.

But I wasn’t done yet “and just so you know, the women’s movement has been around for a lot longer than 20 years.”

He leaned back into his chair “I suspect you’re right. Women have been known to move and I’ve got no doubt it’s been something they’ve been doing for quite some time.”

He crinkled his nose up as he gathered my scripts and began stuffing them in his oversized bag.

“I guess you can just post them back to me when you’re done” I suggested.

“Oh I thought you were giving them to me, you know like a present.”

He started thumbing through the scripts.

“Surely you don’t want Mallrats back…and really, Chasing Amy?”

I was growing annoyed. It was no business of his that at an earlier stage in my formative screenwriting career I had admired the juvenile if not pop-heavy ‘ya mama’ humour of Kevin Smith and that maybe Chasing Amy had been more than a film to me, but rather a cornerstone in my sexual development, because if it hadn’t been for Jason Lee I might never have finally acknowledged my undeniable and unexplainable attraction to that bit of stomach on a man just above his belt – but the thing is I didn’t need to explain myself to Rob.

So I went with… “Kevin Smith is just really underrated as someone who knows how to format a good script.”

“And fart jokes” Rob reminded me.

“Yes and fart jokes.” I concurred.

Finally the waiter decided to sate my desire and took my order for a glass of wine and for Rob’s Bailey’s and milk. It was at that point I realised that no matter how hard I tried I could not find this guy attractive. We’re all guilty of it – looking at someone you have no particular interest in any conceivable way and thinking to ourselves “well if I had to and he was laying on his side….and the future of humanity depended on it…” but as he sipped his date-rape drink I knew that had we been the last two people left on earth then life as we knew it would stop existing, but probably, knowing my luck before that moment came I’d find him wanking off into a tree defending his actions with the all to often heard cliché of “but she understands me better than you, she actually listens.”

He ordered another drink and I knew it was time to leave, I had a gig in two and half hours, really had to go and spend some time on the 5 minutes of pure comedy gold I would no doubt be unleashing that night. I grabbed at my bag.

“Thanks for meeting up with me Lou.” He said leaning forward.

“That’s cool, it was just writing stuff – glad to help.”

“It’s more than that” he said “do you know Lou, do you know how hard it is to find a decent woman to talk to in Melbourne?”

“Personally I don’t think it’s that hard.”

He kept going “Yeah sure I guess when you’re talking about women’s stuff but I’m talking about real man and woman stuff, you know natural, organic conversation.’

I kept looking at him trying for the life of me to figure out how my old flatmate ever let him touch her – he had nice finger nails, but you can’t really hang a relationship on, well not in my experience. Looking back she was on anti-depressant medication at the time and rumour had it she was back on the heroin – further cemented by her night after night attempts to crawl into bed with me after a hit – and I’m telling you, no amount of pillow wall building can save you from what happens in the dark.

“Listen Rob, I’m sure there are plenty of girls out there for you to talk to, but I really don’t think I’m one of them, I’m rubbish at conversation, just words in general.”

“I’m not going to pay for conversation Lou.”

“I didn’t say you were…”

“But you were alluding to it.”

“No, I really wasn’t.”

“Well anyway, you’re the one that agreed to dinner with me.”

“No, I agreed to meet with you to talk writing as a favour to my friend the junkie.”

“She’s a habitual user Lou, not a junkie.”

“Please don’t play the specific game with me Rob.”

“Specific – well yes maybe I should’ve been more specific when I asked you out.”

“This is not a date.”

“Don’t you get it Lou, I think you’re the kinda girl I could find attractive.”

“Gee Rob, as encouraging as that is, this is still not a date.”

I looked at my phone. I needed to leave – someone might ring at any moment and I didn’t want to be caught unawares.

“And you know what Lou, you have short hair and I don’t really go for girls with short hair.”

“It’s great to see you’re stepping out of your comfort zone there Rob, but I really need to leave.” I stood up, only to notice that Rob’s fly was undone.

“Your flies undone.” I pointed out.

“Oh yeah, like what you see do you?” he attempted to purr.

“I was just being polite.” I reiterated as I skulled the remainder of my drink.

“I think you might want to touch me, just a bit.” He murmured.

Oh why you can’t just die already – I thought to myself.

“Alright, so you take care Rob” and with that I turned and left, leaving Rob to explain to the restaurant manager why he was exposing himself in a restaurant.

Leaving the restaurant I walked into a nearby police station to see if I could have my suspicions confirmed that Rob might be on the sex offenders register and if not how I might go about getting him placed on it. As I waited for someone to see me I commended myself on my stand alone policy of only going on dates with people who I wanted to touch – inappropriately – but in a good way  - yep, I really was just a hopeless romantic.

It is now officially 3 years to the day that I started writing “The Problematic World of Lou” – quite fitting given how things have been panning out for me over the last week or so. It’s no big leap to say that when it comes to many of my stories that I reference my life, events, people I meet, conversations I would rather not have had or currently be having and when a friend of mine was recently pushed to give my blog a genre for an article they were writing they summed it up as ‘a series of vignettes about how some people (namely Lou) just attract the inappropriateness of humanity and we the reader delight in it because it’s not us.’ I did point out to him that as far as I was aware a complete sentence basically further cementing the often at times crap encounters of my life was not in fact a definition of genre but more an opinion. He threw something back at me along the lines of this is why things always cock up for me because of my limited understanding of the MTV generation and then asked why I’d insisted on wearing flat shoes to the photo shoot coinciding with the article as there really was no need to exacerbate my shortness, it could very well make the readers uneasy what with me being photographed so close to the ground and everything.

The thing is regardless of whatever impression my stories or shows give I’m actually a rather private person (ok, granted, after a couple of bottles of wine I’ve been known to hear myself say “shoosh, yep, don’t tell anyone but I watch Criminal Intent with the volume down cause Vincent Dinofrio’s the only porn I’ll ever need…shoosh, oh no…I think I just lost my shoe…again”).

When I was about 21 my oldest friend went as far to say that when it came to my personal life I could’ve been with someone for 25 years and have two kids and yet still refer to them when questioned as ‘oh that’s just someone I’m seeing for now, it’s early days, I don’t really want to get into it.’ I thought that whatever my friend was waxing lyrical about was complete bullshit though granted at the time I was living with a guy and still found it hard to refer to him as anything other then ‘the guy that pays the other bit of rent. – but I wasn’t going to let her revel in such a poorly achieved victory.

Years later a boyfriend of mine confirmed this aversion I had to revealing anything about my personal life when he told me that it had taken me nearly a year to stop referring to him in public as ‘a friend of a friend.’ Ok, so perhaps I had a problem, but I was in my early twenties and as far I was concerned other people’s lives were far more interesting and back then and to be honest even now I’m a big believer in never actually admitting something is real or happening because that’s roughly about the time that you come home to find your partner sitting in your studio apartment that you’ve rented together, that same flat you pay for out of your joint checking account only to find him crying into the mail because you just received a joint invite address to the both of you to attend a friends BBQ and he’s now concerned that people might think our relationship was more than that of friends, which tragically after being together for about 2 years was news to you.

But even at that point, experiencing that slightly surreal situation I was still hell bent on not writing or documenting anything about my life. I’d write plays about modern celebrity and the inherent loneliness of coming to terms with a lack of talent, I’d write comedy sketches for socially and politically skewed comedy programs about the indigenous community and we’d call them subversive, short stories about beds that could fly (yes, all very Freudian), films about a brother and sister hustler team and a guy getting sexually abused at a party – basically anything not to write or put any of myself out there for people to see, criticise or judge – because it’s much easier to argue justice for a fictional character to be captain of the netball team cause sure she might be short and not nearly as zippy as the rest of her long limbed counterparts but she has a passion for the game and that should count for something eh? Eh? (note:  please don’t get the impression that my time in the Sandringham Starlets moulded me into who I am today – I was crap and even with my tenacity they decided to let the retarded girl from the care centre take court before me, but to be honest her hand-eye coordination was masterful and in hindsight her promotion over me was well deserved).

It wasn’t until just before I moved to Melbourne 3 years ago that I started writing about myself. The blog came about as a result of a bad break-up that saw my social skills take a dive along with basic hygiene (in short I suffered from a chronic bout of embarrassment that seemed only to be remedied with 3 solid months of going to the pub down the road everyday and drinking till I passed out only to wake up near a gutter with a cheeseburger nearby, eating it and then passing out again) – I realised at that point that if this was where my embarrassment led to that maybe writing about what was going on might be therapeutic but I really need to reiterate that it was not to be confused with “painting therapy” which I think is at best an indulgent and completely uninformed use of expression (let’s just say I had a bad experience when I painted something in pink and my therapist said it probably meant I was allergic to wheat or perhaps frigid – quite clearly only one of those things is true).

I was walking to dinner with a new friend the other night and I told him about a project I was getting involved in – he niggled me a bit about it being somewhat based in truth because that’s all I ever wrote about. It didn’t matter that the part wasn’t written by me and was set in a 1930’s war bunker, there was nothing funny about that – no it was much more entertaining to assume that my realm of creativity possibility was only limited to ideas based on myself. When I went to respond to his generalisation he encouraged me to walk faster and with nothing pertinent to say back to him I distracted myself with this new task he has lay before me. He then remarked that this would probably end up in my blog and at the time I honestly thought it wouldn’t – it was a moment that lacked drama, context, and narrative purpose. Of course now, given the post-modern inference of this blog entry it seems perfectly at home, (much like me inside my two dooners and the DVD box set of Peep Show) and that idea that because I’ve now put my life on stage and online that everyone I meet, every conversation I have must become fodder for a story….is complete and utter rubbish – there are many day-to-day humiliations I don’t need people to know about, like how yesterday I sat having dinner with a friend while we all had a go at putting “Quickie condoms” (yes, they’ve invented condoms that go on quick – apparently there was a gap in the market) on our thumbs and then mine got caught because I broke the quick release trigger and got lubricant all over my new shoes…

…Ok, so maybe next week I’ll try less of the self-referential stuff, just as soon as I find something to wipe my hands on.

Hi – just a quick note – I wanted to say thanks for all of you for being such avid readers. Without you writing this blog would be like putting make-up and a pretty dress on and just sitting in front of my mirror occasionally touching myself and pretending it’s someone else. Thank you.

Recently I went on a date with someone. The lead up was a classic case of girl meets boy, girl gets the inkling that boy might like her so is understandably thrown when boy in question encourages his best mate to ask her out. Girl turns down lovely best friend and is then confronted by the boy who berates her for shooting down his best mate. Confused and slightly irate with the bullshit going on girl calls boy on this situation and surprise, surprise turns out he liked the girl just was big on delivering favours for friends but it all ended in the agreement that we should go out.

I remember the first date I ever had. I was 15; his mum sat between us, bought him a large pop corn and a coke (I’m just saying it was enough to share) and made me a cheese sandwich, made with that plastic cheese stuff. Sharing led to sex, well that was her theory on why she insisted on me paying for own ticket, not making eye contact with him or offering him piece of my gum when he clearly was gagging for it. Let’s just say that relationship didn’t really pan out and if you were to believe the gossip he ended up living in a basement with his mum for over 12 years only managing to escape her non-sharing ways by suffocating her death, a result of wrapping her in Glad Wrap – “not cling wrap, no the good stuff” my mother would always say when she recounted that story to guests over dinner.

I was leaning towards the idea that this boy wasn’t going to try and wrap me in cling wrap but given the last few dates I’d been on over the years that ran that gamut from them not turning up and then following it up with the excuse “yes I know I set a date and time but you can’t hold a person to those sort of restraints, I’m feeling like I can’t be myself in this relationship” to “…and I got this scar when my He-Man costume, the one I told you about that I bought on eBay started to really chaff me, I just hope it doesn’t happen when I finally get to wear it in public.” – Let’s just say nothing would surprise me.

Of course my friends had to have their two cents on how the whole evening would pan out and being the romantics they are they just came right out with it.

 “You going to sex him?” my friend Sally asked nonchalantly as she refilled out diet cokes at Subway.

“I’m not having this conversation with you guys.”

My other friend Mel was chomping down on her sandwich as I toyed with my salad, damn my wheat allergy.

“Bet you will” muffled Sally as she picked her pickles out.

“And how do you sex someone anyway – you make it sound like some sort of sailors grip”

“Hey, calm down Lou, don’t get too excited, neither of us mentioned grip – don’t get ahead of yourself.”

My tomato was dead and I decided the ice left in my drink would be sufficient to pass my time away. I crunched away slowly.

“I’m not planning on it” and given I had cancelled my two latest appointments to the beautician then I could have easily put on money on it, invested it in variable shares and made something back, yes, even in today’s economic climate.

“You know what I do when I don’t want to give it up on the first night.”

Both Mel and I looked over at Sally as she attempted to wipe smeared tomato sauce from her face without the use of mirror or napkin.

“I just have a really big wank and then by the time I get there I just can’t be bothered.”

“Charming” I remarked as I found and conquered my last ice-cube.

“I’m just saying that if you do it yourself Lou then you won’t feel any pressure to outsource it. It’s like taking your own lunch to work, you don’t end up spending money you don’t have on crap take-away wishing you’d taken that sandwich that you know you left in the fridge to work instead because it was pesto chicken and at least you know pesto chicken can satisfy you.”

I put aside Sally’s chicken analogy and went and had a coffee with my friend Peter who overall was little sterner on the whole dating subject.

“When you get to your age Lou it’s best you start putting everything that could be coming up to its use by date at the front of the shelf – not quite bargain basement, but cheap enough to grab their attention, you know like a good quality cut of meat”.

I really had to remind myself to stop talking to my friends at some point this year.

“The key is to give them the illusion that you’re just as good as say, what’s that make-up you like, that MAC stuff, but really who can afford that day-in-day out, and you’re more like that Pond’s tinted moisturiser my mother still uses after 15 years – reliable.”

Our suggestion to share a piece of cake was an ill advised one as Peter had begun chomping down on what clearly was my side of the plate.

“I’m not moisturiser Peter.”

“I’m not saying you are Lou, but I’d much rather buy home brand for longer periods of time and really I only buy label as a one off thing.”

“If what you’re saying is that I’m a top label and I need to force myself to be more home brand in order to keep this boys attentions then I can do one of two things – take it as a compliment or advise you that I’m going to give this one a little more credit – anyway I have no idea about his shopping habits.”

Peter contemplated this for a moment.

“You’re right, for all you know he could buy online.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about” I said as I took the last bite of cake.

“None of what you just said has made any sense at all”

“All I’m saying Lou is by all means put out on the first, it’s a different world we live in now.”

“We’re the same age Peter”

“Yeah, but times were different back then.”

“Back when? What when we were minors”

“Don’t be gross Lou; is it ever possible to have a mature, adult conversation with you or does it always has to end up inappropriate?”

“Sorry” I mumbled as some cake coughed its way out of my mouth.

“Anyway all I was saying was sleep with him first time round just make sure you don’t talk to him for at least three days after, he’ll feel so guilty about the idea of touching himself up over that night that he’ll be forced to call you, just for maintenance if anything.”

Now I need to point out at this point, I do not go seeking this advice, these pearls of wisdom just fall into my lap time and time again and so with firm thoughts of getting a restraining order out on my friends for offering my somewhat questionable advice I decided to go ahead with the date and declined Pete’s offer of a cheat sheet I could just place inside my shoe just in case.

“Surely by the time I’ve taken off my shoe then that would dictate that something was taking place…” I remarked as we trailed the video store.

“Given how many times your shoes fall on any given day I thought it the most discrete option.”

He had a point and as he picked out Sean Astin’s classic Toy Soldiers for his movie night, he turned to me as asked, quite seriously…

“So what you reckon, would you do Toy Soldier’s Sean Astin when he was a teenager and you’d still have to be thirty, or Lord of the Ring’s Sean Astin but him as a hobbit and you still thirty?”

I thought about it a moment and then picked up my final Mars Bar from our Pic’n’Mix Selection.

“You know what Pete, wouldn’t matter either way, you’d never know. I don’t kiss and tell.”