'Mr Sex': Frienditis, Part 2

I want to go back, if that’s cool with you, to a statement Sam made on Monday;

I find that men are afraid of making the first move with women, they are scared of even thinking about having sex with the women they fancy - because they are worried about coming across as a sleazy bastard.

When I read this, I went far beyond the ear-burning stage. My entire face caught fire. I’d like our male readers to check the following situation and tell me if I’m talking bollocks or not…

There’s this girl who, at various points throughout your life, absolutely beguiles you. You could be 14, or 19, or 27, or 39 – it doesn’t matter. And it’s not the same girl, either; it’s someone in your English class at school, or someone behind the till at Tesco. That girl at college or uni who just grew on you, and think no-one else has clocked her. The mate of a mate. The girl who you see at the bus stop every morning. The woman you always see with her mates in the same pub on the same night. And she’s attainable as well; as far as you know, she’s not attached to anyone.

And she doesn’t even know it, but she absolutely runs your life.

You wake up in the morning, and your first thought is; Yessss. I’m going to see her today. You get ready for work in total preparation for the moment you see her, from what you’re going to wear, what facet of your life you’re going to talk up in order to impress her, down to what tune you want to be listening to on your iPod when you see her. Every song you hear on the radio seems to be about you and her, even when your hand slips and the Bangladeshi station comes on. Every time you see her, your stomach lurches, you sit bolt upright, and you have a sucky grin on your face like Maggie Simpson whenever The Happy Elves come on the telly.

After you’ve made some kind of contact – whether verbally, visually or even (if you’re dead lucky) physically, you think about nothing else for the rest of the day. Then you think about what she’s doing at that moment. You think about conversations yet to be had. You wonder about where she lives, and what her parents are like. You think about what her hand would feel like in yours.

And then, when you’re lying in bed, when there's no-one about and and the lights are out, you wank yourself bandy over some woman who used to work at your old place, who you didn’t particularly like much, let alone fancy.

Now, I’m guessing that any woman reading this will snort with disbelief at that statement (and I really don’t know how many men will agree with me either, to be honest), but trust me; in my case, it’s true. Depressingly, horribly, morbidly true. If I fancy a woman, I cannot bring myself to wonder what she would be like in the sack, no matter how sexy she is, how flirtatious she's been, or even if we’ve already done something mildly intimate (In fact, it’s even worse now; all female friends are out of the equation too). But when it comes to rubbish exes who didn’t give it up and then pissed off to give it to someone else, or women from my past who I hardly said two words to, fucking hell – we’re at it hammer and tong all the bastard time.

So what’s that all about? Well, you tell me. Is it the Madonna/Whore complex? There’s an element of that, I’m sure; that hoary old attitude still exists. Is it because certain men enjoy the anticipation and open-endedness of a potential relationship that hasn’t happened yet (and might never will) and want to avoid the thought of bringing it to a conclusion with a sexual liaison that she might be disappointed by? Could be.

I think it comes down to this; for years and years and years and years and years, we’ve been bombarded with the bullshit notion that women don’t really like sex, and – despite all the evidence to the contrary, which practically grows by the day - it’s still seen as something you have to cajole, flatter, and con a woman into. And that attitude takes a long time to get over, no matter now many Ann Summers there are on the high street.

And the upshot of this is that whenever certain men come across a woman who they know they’re falling for, they automatically feel like they have an LCD screen on their head that is spelling out their every thought. They want her to read; ‘HEY! I’M ACE, ME, AND DEAD INTERESTING, I'M NOT LIKE THOSE OTHER TOSSERS, HONEST, AND WE SHOULD KNOCK ABOUT WITH EACH OTHER, YOU KNOW’. And the last thing they want her to read is ‘NARRRGH! I WANT FUCK, WOMAN’. They’re so geared towards convincing a woman that they’re not trying to get into her pants that they almost always succeed.

Cruellest of all, some of us even con ourselves out of getting into an imaginary pair.