It's Got To Be Perfect: A laugh out loud comedy about finding your perfect match

‘But if there are sausages everywhere they go, then surely the urge would abate, and they’d suffer from some kind of aversion, like sausage fatigue?’

‘Sausage fatigue?’ she said, flicking a sheet of golden hair over her shoulder. ‘You mean because there is an endless supply of boobs and bums on offer, men will get desensitised?’

I nodded.

‘They already are,’ she said, pointing at Stacey who was now pretending to bite Lacey’s nipples through her top. ‘Those two will have to get their internal organs out in a few years to even warrant a second glance.’

With that she shuffled off, seemingly oblivious to the fact that her skirt was working against her.

When Stacey and Lacey’s show was over, I noticed Kat tailing three tall muscular men as they strutted round the room like silverback gorillas. After I’d caught her eye, she rushed towards me.

‘They’re RAF pilots!’ she squealed, flapping her arms excitedly.

I rolled my eyes, recalling the million times she had described her ‘ultimate fantasy’.

‘He’s an injured pilot ran aground in a field and you’re a virginal milkmaid who comes to his aid,’ I said in a dull monotone.

She fanned her flushed chest. ‘Well, thinking about it, it would be unlikely that there would only be one pilot in the aircraft. Maybe it would be more plausible with three?’

I shook my head and watched her stride across the room, sticking out her boobs and hitching up her skirt.

As the night drew on, the walls of the cave grew damp and sticky. Styled hair softened, sweat glowed through face powder and natural scent overpowered the synthetic. Masks slipped and inhibitions gave way to instinct.

This wasn’t an orgy. This wasn’t a bunch of teenagers on holiday in Kavos. These were professional people, who, earlier on, had been sharing awkward exchanges about the economy and current affairs. Now they were writhing on leather sofas: tongues locked, limbs entwined, hands up skirts, down tops, under shirts, down trousers. The candles, once flickering gently, were now burning violently, wax dripping down their shafts.

Perched on a sofa in the only uninhabited alcove, I looked on, watching an equities trader dry humping a pretty florist at the bar. He really reminded me of something. Now what was it?

‘Randy dog,’ a man’s voice said, directed at me.

Yes, that’s it, I thought, before looking up to see a broad smile beaming down at me. We both turned back to see the subject’s bottom bobbing up and down with increasing momentum.

‘He’s with me, I’m sorry to say,’ he said, still grinning.

I smirked. ‘Can you put him on a leash, then?’

He laughed. He sat down next to me, fixing me with the most beautiful brown eyes I had ever seen. ‘I’m Nick,’ he said. ‘Mind if I join you?’

I shuffled up the sofa, eyeing him suspiciously.

‘So you’re the brains behind all this, then?’ he asked.

I nodded. ‘Although there’s not much brain activity happening here tonight.’

He looked around the room and smiled. ‘What were you expecting?’

‘I don’t know … a little more self-restraint.’

He laughed. ‘If you put kids in a candy shop—’ he gestured in the direction of a man, whose hand was emerging from a short denim skirt ‘—they get sticky fingers.’

I tutted, then rolled my eyes while he continued to laugh at his own joke.

‘And you?’ I asked. ‘Haven’t you found a florist to dry hump or a sticky place to put your fingers?’

He shook his head. ‘There’s only one girl who caught my eye.’

‘And?’

‘She seems to have a bit of an attitude problem.’

A smile edged out from the corners of my mouth.

‘I knew you’d crack eventually,’ he said, his hand skimming mine as he reached for his drink. Suddenly, a tingle shot up my arm and a flash of white light ripped through the bar. I looked up, my eyes squinting against the neon beams, as though abruptly awoken from a dream. The music stopped and voices hushed.

‘Time, everyone,’ Steve announced. ‘Bar’s closing.’

The light shone down on us, and when Nick looked at me, it was with such intensity that I suddenly felt as though every pore, every blemish and every scar that I’d hoped to conceal were exposed. A surge of panic raced through my nerves and I jumped up from my seat, mumbling something incoherent about needing to help tidy up. Then I walked away without looking back.

Absent from the comforting canopy of candlelight, the crudeness of reality was unveiled. The guests clambered to their feet and wiped their lipstick-smudged faces as though desperate to reclaim some dignity. From a hidden alcove, I watched everyone leave. My eyes tracked Nick as he sauntered up the stairs, my stomach churning when I noticed a leggy brunette tottering after him. When he smiled at her, the smile that I’d secretly hoped he’d reserved for me, the electricity tripped and the room was plunged back into darkness.

By the time Steve had flipped the fuse, the bar had emptied out. I dropped back down on my seat. Only a few hours earlier, before the guests arrived, the atmosphere had seemed charged and full of anticipation, but now the flowers had wilted, with their stems slumped and petals curled. The candles had withered down to useless stumps, droplets of wax eating away at the polished veneer. Beside them stood smeared glasses containing fluids mixed and merged. Beneath the tables, trampled cherries bled into the carpet.

‘Imagine all the shagging that’s going on tonight, thanks to you!’ Kat said as we shared a taxi home.

‘There might be a little baby being made as we speak,’ Cordelia joked.

I huffed. ‘That’s not how it’s supposed to work. I was hoping for blossoming love not rampant sex.’

‘Don’t the two go hand in hand?’ Kat answered.

‘I’d settle for rampant sex,’ Cordelia chipped in.

‘Rampant rabbit for me tonight,’ Kat said before curling her bottom lip. ‘Not quite RAF pilot. But—’ she paused, retrieving a damp piece of paper from her cleavage ‘—I got their numbers!’

‘So, what about you, Ellie?’ Cordelia asked. ‘That guy you were chatting to—what happened there? He looked gutted when you walked off.’

‘Yes, he was cute but—’

‘He had a cute butt, I saw.’

‘Kat, stop it,’ Cordelia interrupted and looked back at me. ‘But what?’

‘But I don’t have time for a relationship at the moment. I’m concentrating on other things.’

‘That’s utter bollocks!’ Cordelia shouted, waving her arms around. ‘You haven’t had a relationship since …’ She paused, placing her hands back on her lap.

‘You can mention it, you know. I’m not going to break down into a gibbering wreck. Since I got dumped by my fiancé, you meant to say?’

‘No. Since your lucky escape from that twat. That’s what I meant to say. You know it wasn’t your fault.’

‘Look, I really don’t want to talk about it again. It’s in the past.’

‘You never want to talk about it. And it’s not in the past if it’s stopping you from meeting someone new.’

‘I’m fine. I just want to focus on—’

‘Whatever!’ She rolled her eyes. ‘Great strategy. You’ll never get hurt again if you never have a relationship again. Brilliant idea!’ She folded her arms and looked away from me.

‘Okay, that’s enough, ladies!’ Kat interrupted. ‘You can have one of my pilots if you like?’ She turned to me with a silly grin.

‘I’d make sure she washed the milkmaid outfit before borrowing that though,’ Cordelia said, unfolding her arms and offering me her olive branch smile.

I leant forward and put my arms around them both. ‘Stop worrying about me, you two. I’m fine.’

Initiating a drunken group hug was a bit of a challenge in the back of a fast-moving taxi, especially as the driver took a sharp corner onto my road at our most vulnerable moment. Kat went flying, bottom over boobs and onto the taxi floor, Cordelia managed to retain her composure for a few seconds and grabbed my arm to steady me, but as the driver slammed on the breaks outside my flat, it was too late. I knew I was going down and that she was coming with me. Flying out of our seats, I landed across Kat, my face cushioned by her inbuilt airbags, but Cordelia continued to slide around the taxi before finally settling between Kat’s legs, her mouth open against black satin knickers, hands gripping her lace-topped stockings. It was like a particularly creative scene from Girls Gone Wild.

The taxi driver did a double take in the rear-view mirror.

‘All right, ladies?’ he said, turning around and looking a little alarmed, but clearly refusing to acknowledge any responsibility in the matter.

‘Yes, we’re fine, thank you,’ Cordelia replied, her recovery marginally thwarted by the penguin ensemble.

When we were vertical again and safely out on the street, I leant in to pay the driver. He looked at me, his eyebrows knitted together, with an unsettling empathy in his eyes.

‘You’re a nice-looking girl,’ he said, peering down my top. ‘You’ll find a man, don’t worry.’

I rolled my eyes and Kat slammed the door.

‘There goes your tip,’ Cordelia said as she waddled after us.

Lying in bed that night, wedged uncomfortably between a fidgeting Cordelia and a snoring Kat, I realised how much the dating game had changed. Before I met Robert, I’d never had to look for a man. They’d always seemed in plentiful supply and ever eager for a date. However, from my observations that night, it seemed that now the men had all the power. And it appeared it was us women who had handed it to them. With a cherry on top.

I wondered if Matthew was right. Had men been socially conditioned by the recent wave of engineered sex bombs—sporting glued-on hair, mutilated boobs and creosoted legs—so that a normal girl didn’t stand a chance any more?

One who wasn’t prepared to strut around with her bottom in the air, proclaiming a love of anal and threesomes?

My temples throbbed at the injustice of it all. As I pulled the pillow over my head to drown out Kat’s snores, I remembered the brunette trotting after Nick, her ridiculously short skirt riding up over her bottom. I felt a rage burning inside. It was as though my blood had been on a low simmer but tonight the heat had been ramped up a notch.

Chapter 6

HE SLAMMED HIS business card on the table ‘This is me. Google me. Now can we talk about what I’m looking for?’

‘Er, hang on,’ I interrupted, picking up his card. ‘Richard Stud. Consultant gynaecologist.’

I looked up to see him shifting uncomfortably in his seat.

‘Is that really your name?’ I asked, assuming he was having me on.

He let out an irritated sigh. ‘Yes. It is. It’s not like my parents gave me any choice in the matter.’

‘Okay. Sorry. It’s just—’

‘I know. A gynaecologist called Dick Stud. I’ve heard it all before. There’s also dermatologist called Mr Cream, so you can use that one for your dinner party anecdotes too if you like.’

‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to offend. Honestly, I thought it was a joke. Anyway, I’ve had to live with the name Eleanor Rigby, so I know where you’re coming from.’

‘What’s wrong with that?’

‘It’s a Beatles’ song.’

He shrugged his shoulders.

‘About a desperately lonely woman who died a spinster? Anyway, moving on from my issues, let’s talk about yours. Apart from bottom groping in wine bars, what do you like to do in your spare time?’

Two days prior, I’d received a call from a man with a familiar Irish accent. The man explained that he had been headhunted in a bar a few weeks back and wanted to book an appointment to see me. It was only when he arrived that I’d recognised him as the bottom-groper from the queue at Apt. I suppose I could have argued the accuracy of his use of the term ‘headhunted’, or his suitability as a client in general, but something stopped me. When I’d first met him, his jet-black hair and white teeth made him look like one of those cheesy Just for Men adverts. But this time—albeit through the haze of a cherry-plucker hangover—with his bright blue eyes and floppy hair, he reminded me, a bit, of Rob Lowe.

Behind him, the lounge bar gleamed as though it had been the subject of an extreme makeover. In the twenty-four hours since the party, the carpet had been shampooed, the sofas scrubbed and the surfaces polished. Fresh flowers replaced the old, new candles replaced withered stumps and the shadows seemed to have crept back into the crevices. Aside from a few resistant stains, all traces of the night had been erased.

During the prerequisite discussion about his family and career background, I sensed we were both losing interest.

‘Okay,’ I said, improvising a drum roll on the table. ‘Now you get to tell me what you’re looking for.’

He smiled. ‘You’re going to love this.’

‘Go on,’ I said, before taking a sip of coffee.

‘I have absolutely no idea. That’s my answer. I honestly don’t have a clue what I’m looking for. I just want someone nice.’

I smiled. ‘That’s great. Open-minded is the best way to be when dating,’ I said, though not entirely convincing myself. ‘So you don’t have a type at all?’

He shuffled in his seat again. ‘I used to have a type, but not any more. I love all girls: tall, short, slim, curvy, blondes, brunettes, white, black. I suppose the main issue would be settling with just one.’ He laughed.

I frowned.

‘That was a joke,’ he said. ‘I’d be more than happy with one. The right one.’

‘Okay, so how do we find the right one?’

His eyebrows met in a semi-frown. ‘I don’t have any trouble attracting girls, or finding girls I’m attracted to. But—’ he leant back in his seat and looked up to the ceiling ‘—I go off them.’

‘You go off them?’

He nodded.

‘Can you explain?’

He scratched his nose. ‘It’s quite difficult to explain when I don’t really understand it myself.’

‘Try.’

‘Okay, well, when I meet a girl I like, I fall in love easily,’ he explained, still scratching his nose. ‘It’s a bit like a favourite T-shirt. I’ll wear it all the time and then one day I’ll look at it and hate it. And then throw it out.’

‘Because you’ve found a new favourite T-shirt?’

‘Not necessarily. Sometimes. Other times, I’ll just wear other T-shirts until I find a new favourite one.’

Steve appeared at our table. ‘You can never have enough T-shirts,’ he said, nodding at Dr Stud, who then laughed. ‘Any more drinks?’

‘Thanks for the insightful input, Steve, another coffee for me. Still haven’t quite metabolised those cocktails.’

‘You’re better off with water: rehydrate and flush out that acetaldehyde,’ Dr Stud suggested, before turning towards Steve. ‘I’ll have a beer, please, mate. And I like your T-shirt.’

He nodded at Brigitte who was squeezed into a tiny red dress and pouting next to the bar. I turned around. I hadn’t noticed her until now, yet Dr Stud, who’d had his back to the bar, had somehow managed to assess her attractiveness and ascertain that she was something to do with Steve.

‘The male sixth sense,’ I said after I’d shared my thoughts with him. ‘The ability to determine cup size and sexual availability without turning your head.’

He laughed. ‘And the female equivalent? The ability to calculate total net worth with a casual glance.’

I smirked. ‘So do you think what you earn is important to women?’

He laughed, but this time it sounded forced and irritated. ‘Of course. You wouldn’t believe the number of women I’ve pulled just by telling them I’m a doctor.’

‘But that’s not because of how much you earn.’

‘No?’

‘No, it’s more of a profession fetish. You know, a sort of white-coat-hyper-competent-House-meets-George-Clooney-in-ER combined with I’ve-married-a-doctor-didn’t-I-do-well type thing.’

He leant back and laughed. ‘I thought we weren’t discussing your issues?’

My cheeks flushed. ‘Sorry, please continue.’

‘And I think,’ he continued, still half smiling from my outburst, ‘that’s half the reason I get fed up with the girls I date. It’s as though they’re too stupid to plan their own lives, so instead they’re waiting for me to do it for them. It’s pathetic really.’

I opened my mouth to say something, but he continued.

‘I’ve got this friend who quit being a doctor the day she married. She studied for seven years and then only worked for one. What’s that all about? Seriously, what’s the point of putting women through university if they’re just going to give it up when they get married?’

‘But that’s only one girl,’ I said.

He didn’t respond, but simply took a sip of the beer Steve had just brought over.

‘So I think what you’re saying is that you want to date an independent woman?’ I asked, picking up my pen, poised to take notes.

‘That’s what most girls think they are. But they’re not.’

‘Okay, okay,’ I interrupted, now feeling the need to defend my team. ‘Let’s rewind a bit. The night we met. In the queue for Apt.’

‘Yes.’

‘You were pretty offensive.’

He raised his eyebrows.

‘Grabbing bottoms and making reference to anal sex is likely to put off the intelligent, independent women. We want to be wined, dined and cherished. Not objectified and manhandled.’

He smirked. ‘Manhandled? Do people still say that?’

I frowned. ‘Don’t deflect.’

‘I was hardly Benny Hill chasing you around the club to clown music. Honk, honk.’ He pretended to squeeze a pair of imaginary boobs.

‘It was still disrespectful.’

‘You disrespected yourself, wearing that miniskirt.’

I laughed. ‘It was a dress actually and it wasn’t that short.’

‘It was tight around your bottom. And, yes, it was short.’

‘So you’re saying I was asking for it?’

He shook his head. ‘Of course not. But—’

‘Yes, go on, please.’

‘You wanted men to notice. Or you wouldn’t have worn it.’

‘Is it a crime to want to look nice?’

‘Nice or sexy?’

I rolled my eyes.

‘Okay. So this is how it goes.’ He sat forward in his chair and stared at me. ‘I work my arse off in a job which gives me a good salary and lifestyle. I then use this to wine and dine a woman who feels she is entitled to it just for being her wonderful, beautiful, miniskirted self. And then, if I behave correctly—i.e. spend enough money, shower her with enough compliments, pander to her neuroses—then I am allowed sex. I’m supposed to pretend it is the best sex I have ever had and never want it with anyone else again. From then onward, I am expected to continue this ridiculous charade until she has borne her desired number of children and we are old and withered. Unless I get fed up with her unending list of demands, and leave her, or have an affair, in which case I will be back at square one, only with half my income gone.’

When he had finished, he sat back in his chair and took, what seemed to be, a triumphant sip of beer.

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