"Love can be so bizarre at times," I thought to myself as I watched my housemate prepare to torch a pair of her ex's underpants and hang them out of the window before he came round to discuss custody of her weightlifting kit. Later I substituted "violent" for "bizarre" as gory, flesh-tearing noises drifted up from the lounge. You always hurt the one you love, particularly if you attack them with a large kitchen knife.
A month later, while Forensic were still working on the lounge, I was faced with the prospect of becoming single again myself after two and a half years, and was no longer regarding the situation from quite the same sanguine viewpoint. I thought carefully about the implications of the word "goodbye". I would be a free man once more, able to play the field and sow my wild oats, to wake up in strange beds miles from home, to flirt and shark with a clear conscience because "life is short and love is always over in the morning" ...
Problem was, I never got to do those things last time I was single. Of course there is no reward in transitory one nighters and wild sex with people who mean nothing. I'd just appreciate the opportunity to make sure in case, you know....they might be fun for a while?
I reviewed my qualifications and past decorations for valour on the battlefield of the sex war. I've been in three relationships in the past four years, one of them serious. Only one woman has ever made a first move on me, and she was one of the more saccharine American females, all the way from Squitsville, Kansas, where you probably have to obtain authorisation in triplicate from the pastor before you can even hold hands with someone. I fall in lust all the time, or at least whenever I'm not asleep. I fall in love only occasionally; the last time was with an anonymous girl at Crewe station around whom I constructed an entire fantasy perfect relationship (she'd be intelligent, witty, serious, mysterious, innocent and uninhibited all at once - unfortunately, the one thing she was not was getting off at my stop). My resemblance to Arnold Schwarzeneggar begins and ends with the fact that both our forenames start with "A". And I'm a computer scientist, which in social terms ranks me just below a wall of drying paint. Sometimes I know how Prince Edward must feel. (Is this generating enough sympathy out there or are you all busy yakking into your bins?) People - especially happily married journalists and agony aunts - say that being single is a period of personal growth and re-evaluation; those I spoke to on the subject felt that there's only so far one can grow before needing a damn good shag to stop things growing out of proportion. Ahem.
Sadly, the statistics regarding the numbers of single people drifting forlornly
through society, daydreaming of red roses and pink underwear, testify that
meeting that perfect someone, or even that acceptable one-nighter, is not easy
for all. In the bars, in the clubs, across the launderette, over the vegetable
counter and through the barbed wire fence (erm, sorry), you're always gazing
hopelessly at the object of your desire wishing you had the
courage/charm/clue/wellies to make a pass, while someone else is looking at you
feeling exactly the same way. And suppose you do manage to gird your loins into
approaching and attempting "light" conversation?
"Hi!"
"<bored look> 'Ullo."
"<amazingly false air of confidence and charm> Can I buy you a drink?"
"<incredulous look> Nope."
"OK, I've just got to slip down this crack in the floorboards and bludgeon
myself to death with a claw hammer. Sorry to bother you."
People always want their love lives to be like the movies, and their sex lives to come straight out of one of the more lurid Stones songs. Everyone wants to be Harry meeting Sally Sleeplessly in Seattle at a Singles bar full of Pretty Women, before going back to the Whistle Stop cafe for some Satisfaction. Unfortunately, many of us can't get no.
Worse, all failures in love know someone who attracts attention like flies
around the appropriate analogy and is completely unaware of it.
I know a guy who is often served by barmaids
with body language that just stops short of flinging their legs around him
screaming "Take me NOW, big boy!" Frankly, one could do without this
kind of rub:
"The barmaid has just passed out while sniffing your loose change - I think she
fancies you."
"Oh, does she?"
"YES! Yes she does, you bastard! WHY?! I couldn't get a date with a prostitute!
Why should you have all the luck?!"
Yes, the more desperate one becomes, the less hope one has. No one is flattered by the attentions of a person who is one step away from molesting sheep or dating college librarians. Perhaps it's the dangerous gleam in the eye that seems to say "If you don't go out with me, they'll be serialising your fate in Michael Winner's True Crimes". So finally, you settle for someone who is equally desperate and, a few disappointing wet patches and delusory attempts at true romance later, you give up and fill in your application for the clergyhood.
But assuming you do successfully connect with someone emotionally as well as
genitally - who needs it? The situation changes so fast when you're in love;
it's like trying to steer a formula one car the wrong way down the M1 blindfold
with someone else operating the pedals whilst you grapple with a mad grizzly in
the back seat (although I can think of a few people who make a mad grizzly look
like Meg Ryan). One day you're both so infatuated that everyone who sees you
together, hand in hand sharing gormless smiles, immediately regurgitates their
breakfast. The next morning you're faced with such a major sulk from your
partner (and it was nothing you did, of course) that you spend the rest
of the week writing hate mail to the Gold Blend couple. Think how your friends
always seem to be going through the same ordeals:
"How's Pete?"
"Oh, he's wonderful. He's my soulmate, we're just so perfect for each other, he
treats me like royalty..."
"Oh? I heard he ate babies and defiled nuns."
"...and he buys me an Interflora shop every day and he often heals the sick.
He's actually Christ on Earth, you know..."
A week later:
"So, you and Pete still madly in love?"
"That bastard??! I only want to see him again if I can nail his
scrotum to the wall!"
People say love is a game, but if it was it'd be the sort of personally embarrassing party game that everyone secretly hates playing. And the saddest thing of all is - even the most wretched, psychotic, moronic relationship is better than being Single! (Or at least, so it sometimes looks from here right now.) If you're one step from hacking your darling partner into little pieces of offal and hiding the leftovers in bin liners in the woods, before they do the same to you, then at least life stays interesting (for a short while, anyway).
At this point, you may be expecting some deep insight or profound conclusion which will put everything into perspective, restore your faith, help you through the night and similar nonsense. Sadly, you are about to be bitterly disappointed (again) as I don't have a bloody clue what goes on either; I'm writing this for spite, not Cosmopolitan.