Jilly Cooper - Men and Supermen

You are also supposed to meet men at parties, but how do you get asked to parties if you don’t know anyone? Then of course there’s evening classes and meaningful glances across the basketwork or the thrown pot—or joining a club, which gives one awful visions of Youth Clubs full of scoutmasters or eager beavers called Stanley with badges on their lapels—or computer dating, which doesn’t seem to work much because you can’t computerise chemistry and everyone lies like hell. If someone asks you if you consider yourself utterly irresistible, quite irresistible, resistible, or canned nightmare, you are hardly likely to put canned nightmare.

Picking up men in the street or in restaurants is dodgy because you never know if you’ve landed the Boston Strangler, and there’s always the irrational feeling that if he’s got time to go round picking up girls he must be desperate, even though you’re doing exactly the same thing yourself.

On the other hand it’s different picking up men on aeroplanes (on the false assumption that if he can afford a plane ticket he must be rich), on holiday (the same applies) and at art galleries or at concerts (if he loves beauty he can’t be all bad). The Tate Gallery incidentally at weekends is one of the best pick-up places in London.

I have also been reading The Sensuous Man , which encourages men who want to meet women to hunt them out in the supermarket. Instead of pinching a pretty woman’s bottom, a man pinches her trolley ‘by mistake’ and whisks it down to the check counter. When she rushes shrieking after him, he offers to pay for her groceries, and this way strikes up a friendship. So next time you’re in the supermarket, and you see a man lurking, throw a few jars of caviare and peaches in brandy into your wire basket.

Another method the book recommends is for the man to bump into a girl in the High Street and send her parcels flying. He then picks them up, gets into conversation, and offers to buy her a drink to make up for any bruises or breakages he may have inflicted. (This ploy can, presumably, only be used in licensing hours.) It strikes me as being rather extreme—one has visions of the pavements of Oxford Street getting as bad as the M1 in a fog. Perhaps they’ll install a Pederasts Crossing for men who don’t want to get caught up in the rough and tumble.

THE CHAT UP

“ Oh, you say that to all the girls .” DICK EMERY SHOW.

Well, he does fancy you and he’s decided to do something about it, so he starts chatting you up. You notice the preliminary switching on of casualness, the quick range-estimating glance, the perceptible inner girding of loins, or squaring of shoulders. Sexual Norm straightens his Club tie, smooths his sweater down over his bottom, pulls in his stomach, whips off his spectacles, crinkles his eyes engagingly, and puts on his goat fatale face. He then goes upstairs, brushes his hair, and starts all over again.

“ Please, Mr Elmhurst, put me down this instant! ”

Usually a man indicates his interest in you by shooting you a penetrating glance, which you return and hold just a second longer than is polite, as you say: “Whoops tra la, here we go again.” Soon your eyes are meeting so often in penetrating glances it doesn’t matter that you’ve got nothing to say or he’s talking about garden sheds.

Superman, when he’s chatting you up, never lets his eyes swivel to see if there’s something more amusing behind you, he howls with laughter at your weakest joke, and remembers what you’ve said an hour later.

He only leaves your side, even if he’s given every chance of escaping, to go and fetch you another drink, so he can shoot you a long-distance smoulder across a crowded room, then bolt back to your side again. He keeps telling you how pretty you are, which works a treat—all women like a bit of buttering-up with their bed. Occasionally he touches your hand when he lights your cigarette. Sexual Norm, in an attempt at sophistication, puts the cigarette in his own mouth to light it for you, and hands it to you all soggy.

A lot of men chat up girls by being rude to them. But personally I don’t fancy the plain blunt type. If a man’s likely to put me down, I don’t let him pick me up in the first place—I like soft soap, a flannel and a duck for my bath. My idea of an agreeable man is one who agrees with me. Nor do I like a man who boasts of his conquests. If he’s keeping open bed for half London, what’s in it for me?

As he is leaving, Superman moves into action:

“We must meet again sometime.” (Smouldering glance.)

“We must.”

“Where can I get hold of you?”

“Wherever you like, darling.” (Smouldering glance.)

“No, I meant your telephone number. We must have dinner sometime.” (Lunch if either of you is married.)

Superman then memorises the number until he gets outside the room, when he writes it down. Sexual Norm overhears and jots it down in his diary, alongside the addresses of hundreds of other girls he’s never had the courage to telephone. In fact, knowing he’s got her number and could ring her up lessens his desire to try.

THE DATE

“ And afterwards, Miss Dyson, you might like to come round to my place … ”

My experience has been that men who are interested ring you up within twenty-four hours, and ask you out.

I get very irritated when they telephone and say: Guess who. I always guess wrong deliberately. Nor do I like men who ring up at twelve o’clock and say how about lunch today, giving you no time to wash your hair or appear faintly unavailable. Or, when you don’t want to speak to them, give someone else’s name, Omar Shariff or Sean Connery, to get you to the telephone. Even more maddening is when they call you and keep you on slow burn by chatting you up for a quarter of an hour and then don’t ask you out.

I don’t like it either when men, having got your address, drop in uninvited at all hours of the night expecting an ecstatic welcome just when you’ve gone to bed covered in cold cream and rollers. This is a fundamental would-be-seducer’s error. Nothing makes a woman less sexually receptive than feeling unattractive.

For the first date, any man who’s worth his salt will spend a bomb on dinner, the theatre, etc. Equally, the girl who is worth his assault will spend a bomb on a new dress, shoes, make-up, and at the hairdresser’s. Sex is expensive.

Most courtships seem to be carried on in restaurants, helped along by soft lights and hard liquor.

Superman never takes a girl on public transport—the lighting’s so frightful. It’s either cars, taxis, or a short walk (and I mean short), if it’s not raining or freezing, under the stars.

ON THE FIRST DATE, MOST MEN TAKE YOU TO A RESTAURANT.

Superman gives you plenty to drink, doesn’t translate the menu from French for you, or spend so much time chatting up the patron and asking the waiters about their mothers that he’s got no time for you.

“ Darling, I’m so hungry I could eat you .”

He also arranges for you to sit side by side on a bench seat at a decent distance from other people so that he can brush your hand with his occasionally, or even put a hand on your thigh when he’s making a telling point.