Man, I feel like a woman
I'm not a bad-looking man, but I wouldn't describe myself as a head-turner. Yet on a recent visit to a bar called Patch in St Paul's, I attracted more female attention in 10 minutes than I had in the previous 10 months. I wasn't sporting a new aftershave, haircut or penis. It was, as an estate agent might say, all about location: I was at my first singles night.*
The night was organized by the Lovestruck dating website and my mate George and I went along with few expectations. Upstairs, Patch was a normal bar. But as we descended the stairs into the basement, it was clear we were venturing into something abnormal... and exciting.
It was a packed room, with lots of girls in it, and they were all looking at us. ALL of them, with peculiar expressions that managed to amalgamate curiosity, desperation and lust. I attempted a tricky manoeuvre: scanning the entire room to see if any of the girls were actually hot, while simultaneously trying to avoid eye contact with them because their staring was so intense, so expectant.
I felt like a Chippendale who had just walked on stage at a hen night in a women's prison. But not a happy Chippendale, confidently strutting around to cheesy dance music and swinging his nuts about. More like a sad, scared Chippendale who had been trafficked in from Eastern Europe and missed his mum. It was overwhelming.
I quickly deduced that most of the people in the room were not attractive, with a few exceptions -one of whom was a girl I actually recognised. I'd been speaking to her on the Lovestruck website, her name was Annabel. Once our eyes met, I had to approach her. Sadly, I found the scenario weird and spouted unattractive rubbish. I informed her about the group of guys to our right who were pinching the bum of every girl who walked past. She looked at me as if I was making it up, which I wasn't, then made her excuses and left.
So we were exposed again, and George revealed that two girls were "pursuing" us as we walked to the bar. I glanced around to see a blonde woman waving at me. I ignored her and carried on walking but got caught in a cul de sac of bopping bodies. Soon the blonde had appeared right beside me.
"It's a bit rude to ignore someone when they offer you a high five," she said.
For the next five minutes, George and I proceeded to dish out the most obnoxious banter we could think of - we're gay, we're racist, we hate cats — just to shake off the blonde and her mate. Eventually we resorted to complete silence and they finally left us alone.
But then more undesirables were inspecting us. I realised there's only one thing worse than when no girls want to talk to you... it's when loads of them do but they're not fit. In other words, for the first time I understood what it felt like to be a woman in a nightclub.
By now, the place was a den of writhing, sweaty bodies all girating, shouting, snogging. I spotted Annabel and her mate nearby. They were talking to two guys who looked younger, leaner and cooler than me and George. Annabel was laughing her head off.
A pretty girl who'd caught my eye earlier was in deep conversation with a guy wearing sunglasses on the back of his head. Not on his eyes, not even on the top of his head, on the BACK of his head. And she was hot. This was a place you could certainly punch above your weight.
It was like 3am in a booming provincial disco. But it was only 8 o'clock. We escaped upstairs and paused for breath, but after that we were too petrified to return. Instead we got talking to some girls who were nothing to do with the singles night. There was a stunner called Veronica who said she worked for Deloitte. But by that point I'd drunk too many two-for-one cocktails to possess the foresight to ask for her number. So Veronica disappeared and George and I stumbled out into the chilly City streets, dazed by what we had witnessed. Empty-handed and no longer turning heads, but somehow relieved.
*The singles night detailed here does not count.
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