Sexual Norm usually takes girls to his pub on the first date, because it’s cheap, because his friends will be impressed if they see him with a girl, because there’s someone else to talk to if he runs out of conversation. And he knows where the Gents is.
I’m not wild about pubs, they’re all right in their place but not for courting, with all those bursts of well lubricated laughter, and large men in sports coats wanting to break into song. The bar stools are just the wrong length for my legs, and if you collar a table someone always comes shuffling over clutching a glass of lager and a cheese roll, sits down and inhibits your conversation.
Invariably too your date drinks pints of beer, when you have a gin and tonic, and as you finish long before he does, if you’re polite you hide your glass, or if you’re like me, you rattle your ice or ostentatiously eat your lemon peel to encourage him to buy you another.
Pubs however are infinitely sexier than Indian restaurants: nothing could be less turning on than flocked wallpaper, bright lights, glasses of warm light ale, a meat vindaloo-flavoured kiss afterwards, and onions, which recur through the night.
Going to the theatre is nice for a first date—as long as you choose something jolly and the man doesn’t spend the whole time grumbling that there’s nowhere to put his legs. You should also dine afterwards rather than before.
Cinemas are all right too—but here again you should dine afterwards with plenty of alcohol. There’s always something faintly depressing about the return to reality: your date doesn’t look quite as good as Steve McQueen, and you certainly don’t look so good as Jane Fonda. Horror films are excellent because they’re good for a giggle, and you’ve got a marvellous excuse for pretending to be frightened and clutching each other.
THE PASS
Sexual Norm by this time will be treading out the ground for the pass. We all know the tell-tale signs: the slowing down of a car on a lonely road, the hand edging along the back seat, the manoeuvring into an empty office in the lunch hour, the sidling up on the faded rose-patterned sofa accompanied by a murmur of: “Are your flat mates really out?”
The girl if she fancies the man is wondering how much and how soon she can give in without feeling cheap.
Norm has been known to pounce from the arm of a girl’s chair, and be rudely deposited on the floor when she leaps to her feet.
A lot of men reluctant to face a rebuff, make verbal passes.
“Can I come up for coffee?”
“Does your husband ever go away?”
“When are you next going up to London?” (This to a country wife.)
“I thought next time we lunched it might be fun if we had a leg of chicken and white wine at my flat.”
“The grass really isn’t wet, you know.”
“Our bodies do talk the same language, don’t they?” (This one usually on the dance floor.)
Or the more direct but less subtle approach: “I fantastically want to fuck you.”
Sexual Norm, who realises the importance of being a good sexual conversationalist, sometimes says: “Would you mind awfully if I kissed you, Jennifer?” and then lunges even if she says no.
It must be difficult being a man. If you pounce too soon everyone calls you a wolf, if you hold off too long everyone calls you a queer. If you make a pass of Khyber-like proportions at a girl who fancies you, she’ll say you’re wonderfully passionate, if you do exactly the same to a girl who doesn’t, she’ll complain you’re mauling her.
“
In theory, Superman is never in a hurry. His timing is so good that he always waits to make a pass at you at exactly the moment you’re worrying he might not—so you plummet like the proverbial ripe plum into his arms.
But the whole pass-making business has become such a game—the man waiting until you’re getting worried, you falling over backwards not to appear worried—that it all goes on until you both go off the boil.
Other men are so impervious to the come-on signs that you don’t know if they’re genuinely shy or just playing hard to get. They’re so reserved you wonder if someone else has reserved them already.
The smooth operator of course, who always prefers to play on home ground, lures you back to his flat. Soon you’re lying on his sofa without your shoes. The central heating is up, the lights are dimmed, soft music is spilling into the room, and out of the corner of your eye in the next room you can see the most enormous double bed covered in furs. Within minutes the zips are down.
*
Bed
“
W. C. FIELDS.
LOCATION
ONCE A MAN knows a girl’s interested, where does he take her? It’s all right if both of them have got a flat —but if they haven’t there’s all the hassell of packing a suitcase to spend a few hours at a hotel, or borrowing a friend’s flat to ‘change in’, or waiting till nightfall to do it in the back of a car, or for summer to do it in the long grass.
Wives always say they couldn’t possibly commit adultery in their own house, but lust is a great leveller.
Superman books a room at the Ritz and launches the girl into a sea of vice with a bottle of champagne, ordering smoked salmon in the interval. He believes in mixing pleasure with pleasure.
I’ve often wondered why smoked salmon is so erotic. Perhaps because it reminds one of rather warm bare flesh.
Before he was married Sexual Norm used to commit fawnication (sic) on a creaking single bed. The girl invariably bumped into the landlady on her way to the bathroom on the next floor.
Some women with marvellous figures like to be undressed before they leap into bed. And for this reason boys ought to take a course in undoing bras at prep-school. But with most people it’s a race to get undressed and into bed before the other person has time to see their stretch marks or spindly calves.
“
Bachelors sometimes take their clothes off and fold them up in polythene bags. Older hippies get undressed in another room, so they can remove their corsets in private and return with a swish of terry towelling.
Adulterers look in the cupboard or under the bed. Superman takes the telephone off the hook. He also has a fire extinguisher on the wall in case the girl bursts into flames.
Once in bed both parties breathe deeply and say “A-a-a-ah” several times. This is usually construed as ecstasy, but is in reality because of the coldness of the sheets and other people’s hands.
People always try harder with new people. Sexual Norm will spend the next ten minutes worrying whether he’s giving the girl enough sexual foreplay or fiveplay, and then grimly thinking about cricket or football to keep his mind off sex. He occasionally says ‘
The girl, remembering what the sex books told her about not lying back and being passive, will be frenziedly stroking Norm’s neck, tickling his toes, kissing his navel, and putting on such a display of acrobatics that he has to
