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

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‘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 (#ulink_ed6d8728-221d-537d-990c-6a9b6777c75d)

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.