needing to be a bit of a cock

Yesterday I think I might’ve been lobbed another bone in the similar sort of way as a couple of Fridays ago.

Watching Frank Skinner’s interview with Russell Brand, they discussed the need to actually act like a bit of a cock in order to be promiscuous, get laid, have one night stands.

I’m not saying I can’t act like a bit of a cock, I’m sure I’m more than capable of that.  But it is this fronty salesy bravado I struggle with, the pure belief and directness.

A few industry colleagues and by now borderline real proper friends, a busy Chrismassy pubby pub bang in the centre of Soho, several ales.  We get chatting to a trio of Americans over visiting for a family wedding, the youngest at 24, eldest 34, one pretty much in the middle between.  Kooky and fun the youngest is particularly cute, not dumb, but very Americaayn: little sense of irony, acutely self aware, constantly self fluffing.

After several hours drinking, we fail in finding a decent Soho eatery and wind up in a place with a strange penchant for 24 hour breakfast dishes.  It's approaching midnight and they want burgers.  Their high maintenance faces shrivel in barely concealed disappointment.  But we go in anyway, for want of a better option, and they troop to the Ladies en masse.  A mate and I sit at a table, half wondering if they'll seek another exit and flee.  They don't, a makeup touchup later, they're back with us and begin inspecting an unimpressive menu.

Only on realising the time, and that I need to move sharply if I'm to make it back to Waterloo for the last train, do I realise I've possibly missed another opportunity.  The final setting was wrong, cramped around a table, eating.  I didn’t even say goodbye to them properly, squashing a note into my friend’s hand as I left, saying goodbye, lovely to meet you, and leaving.

Back in the pub, where we’d spent most of the evening, much time chatting one-to-one with the cute, highly made-up Americaayn, who I wouldn’t have cared THAT much about being an idiot in front of.  If I’d made my affection more obvious, firmly trodden that difficult line between sleaze, creep, being a bit of a cock, and appreciable directness; deliberate and transparent interest.  Maybe then...   Probably not, but maybe..

It’s all too common, shoved in an unpredictable, one-off fluid scenario.  You can’t plan or consider a strategy in the same way that you can if you work in an office with someone, or regularly see them as part of some group or social gathering.  It has to be a spontaneous and concerted calculation of the moment, ridded of those neuroses and crippling shackles.

I tell myself this now of course.  It never occurs to me at the time, or perhaps it does and I just bottle it, fearing the humiliation and looking like a bit of a cock.