Dan: Flyering Low

Being the director of a company should have gravitas, should come with power and should drip with respectability. A live events production company no less, a funky business that deals in comedy, live music…you know, fun stuff, with cool people who wear massive sunglasses that hide the dark circles from the coke-fuelled parties the night before.

In reality, I spent yesterday handing out flyers for an event we’re running in Madame JoJo’s in Soho and getting ignored. By far the worst were the looks of utter disgust from office girls – you try offering a flyer to a girl dressed in work clothes and looking all ‘pouty’, and see what reaction you get. One pair of girls actually laughed at me, with one saying as she walked past, "obviously can’t get a real job" which I felt was rather…well, nasty.

It’s funny as well, because the traits a lot of women like (or seem to) involve hard-working, dedicated and outgoing types, not forgetting GSOH. Lets look at the evidence here: I run my own company, I’ll do whatever it takes to make stuff work including flyering or dressing up, and I do my own stand-up comedy during the week. I’m all over those qualities, surely – and also, I'm flyering for a charity event with five major UK charities being represented (RNLI, Teenage Cancer Trust, Oxfam, Centrepoint and International Medical Corps) so I’m giving too! Although I confess the phrase ‘kill two birds with one stone’ popped into my head. But there was no loose masonry nearby.

It always gets my goat when people dismiss others – especially when it’s me!

Anyhow, if any of you lovely readers would like to come down tonight, all the details are here at www.crowntheclown.com - and if you turn up on the door mentioning 'Todger Talk you can have the £8 price usually reserved for those who book on-line. All the door takings are donated to charity so you can have a good laugh and give something.

Dan: Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned…

(...and especially an insecure woman who thinks she’s been scorned)

Forgive me for being silent for so long. I’ve been so busy I’ve barely had time for eating and sleeping. While thoughts of sex have never been far from my mind, they’ve not had a hugely thoughtful edge to them. I didn’t think six paragraphs of ‘I want some, I want some, I want some, I want some, I want some’, would be particularly interesting reading for you.

I was treated to an interesting display of ‘female scratch-cattery’ the other week during a meeting that turned into a bit of a night out. I’m doing some work with a friend – lets call him Pete – on a new charity comedy night. After the meeting finished, we met up with his girlfriend, a mutual female friend of ours and a few others who joined us later.

This mutual friend is lovely – good looking, husky voice and interesting with a brilliant sense of humour. She is also a natural flirt. Guys who first meet her usually think she fancies them because during conversations she will touch you on the wrist or shoulder, sometimes even your leg. She never seems bored of what you’re saying, always asking more questions to learn more – smiling as she does so.

(A pet peeve of mine is people who can’t hold conversations, and in my experience, a lot of people can’t. Ever had that situation where you ask somebody something; they answer for about five minutes while you nod looking interested; and then they just let the conversation die by not asking you something in return?)

In short, she is very engaging and so you want to engage with her in return. She buys drinks for people too - not standing on outdated etiquettes. All this – coupled with lovely eyes and a winning smile – mean sex appeal radiates from this girl like a shockwaves from an earthquake.
It also means that any girl who happens not to know her doesn’t realise she is happily in a relationship and sooooo not interested in that girl’s boyfriend, and therefore loathe her instantly and instinctively. I’ve seen it several times – it’s almost comic.

Ladies have a sixth sense for threat, I think, and evidently Pete’s girlfriend felt threatened because she did the ‘anti-vaginal magnet hug’. You’ve all seen this before – usually between two girls who know each other but don’t like each other – they hug, pretending to like each other for the benefit of everybody else in the group.

But if you look at the hug, it’s like their pelvises have strongly opposing magnets in them so the only parts that get remotely close are the head and arms, so they briefly resemble an inverted ‘v’. If you haven’t seen it, watch out for it – any time there is a power struggle in a group of women that hug is evident, as neither lady wants to be seen as the ‘bitch’ in the group.

Anyhow, so there we were, everybody laughing and joking. We all ended up back at my mate’s flat for a few drinks and then the mutual friend makes her excuses and leaves. So far, I’ve not really spotted any issues during the night - people have all been chatting, and conversations have been flowing like expenses cash into Hazel Blears’s bank account.

But almost as soon as the front door closed, my mate’s girlfriend kicked off worse than Drogba on a diving course, accusing my friend of carrying on and practically fucking this girl on the coffee table.

‘You’re such a dick… how dare you? – you know what you’ve done! blah blah, yadda yadda, call me a taxi now you pig, I’m going to sleep at mine tonight!’ (A really stupid tactic, it seems to me, if you are actually worried about losing your boyfriend to another woman).

Jealousy is a pretty ugly thing when rendered in such stark and obvious form (whichever sex is the one on the jealous spree – and guys defiantly do it too!). Pete was perplexed because he and I had spent most of the evening chatting about business (very dull of us) and the rest talking with the other people who had joined us later. At no time had Pete’s girlfriend taken him to one side and simply asked him about any perceived over familiarity. In the end, her reaction just made her look ridiculous and monstrously insecure.

All this after Pete has told me he and his lady had discussed marriage. God forbid the bridesmaids are even remotely attractive, because somebody might get injured. Can you stab somebody with a bouquet?

Danonymous Dan: A bit rusty

Just a quick one…thought I‘d share with you something that made me chuckle.

I spent the other evening at a theatre improvisation class in Balham called ‘Hoopla’ which was, as usual, very enjoyable. It’s helpful for the stand-up comedy I do and also socially good fun as generally everybody who attends is really nice.

This evening there was a girl who was a journalist for a major red-top British paper. I used to work as a journalist (and then later as a PR), and we got chatting about shared experiences. Having had a couple of drinks, I was perhaps a bit more forthcoming than I would normally be and said; ‘Hey, I write for a blog called Todger Talk…’

Now evidently my ‘talking to girls’ skill was somewhat tipsy, because I pulled a trick worthy Gareth from the Office; taking out my iPhone and showing her my post on circumcision.

She read two paragraphs, put the phone down and said, “ I don’t want read any more” then didn’t speak to me for the rest of the night.

Everyone’s a critic...

Danonymous Dan: Smeg Off!

It’s cleaner? It’s more aesthetically pleasing? What the fuck? I had an argument with somebody recently about what was better – circumcised or not?

My view is rather simple. It is a cock. It has two purposes: pissing and fucking. As long as it accomplishes both of those tasks adequately then there is no reason to lop the skin off the end of the poor blighter.

Advocates of foreskin removal – excluding religious mutilation, for a moment – seem to think that when men like myself peel back the foreskin, hulking great chunks of man-cheese drop to the floor and bounce around the bathroom like oversized mini-Babybels. This is lop-ist propaganda at its worst: the cleanliness argument is lie; no man’s commando should go into battle without his balaclava.

I will admit occasionally you might find a bit of smegma – but I’ll let you all into a secret… we can wash it off! Just think of the pain and money that could have been saved if religious zealots knew that smegma could be removed with soap and water. If a guy finds any (medical conditions not withstanding), its usually after having not washed for a couple of days. So ladies, unless you have a penchant for fucking tramps, you’re unlikely to come across any massive build-ups of man curd. But if you do, you can look on it as an early warning system – he’s a dirty bastard and you shouldn’t want to fuck him anyway.

There are some pretty ludicrous myths used to push circumcision, including: guys can last longer in bed; its better for your immune system; its advised by health centres; and let us not forget that, despite creating them (and being perfect and incapable of making a mistake), God doesn’t like them! I won’t list all the myths but if you want to have a read take a look at this.

Society seems far more at home with the idea of various viscous vaginal fluids being emitted throughout the different stages of the menstrual cycle. Nobody suggests a surgical procedure to stop the naturally occurring discharge: you are simply told to wash. (I appreciate there are some absolute fucktards who advocate female circumcision in places around this earth; that is a whole other blog)

My girlfriend admits she was ‘surprised’ when she saw my penis because she was expecting me to be circumcised because such a massive proportion of American males get the chop. I think I was the first ever adult male she had seen with a foreskin. A friend of hers, who lived in England for a year, admitted she had found the sight of and uncircumcised cock disgusting when she first saw it – lets face it, neither version is going to win a beauty contest – but disgusting just because it’s wearing a hat? That’s just penis-ist!

Every guy has had that inexpert tug job from a girlfriend – the one where she treats it like a mongoose killing a snake. I can only imagine how painful that would be with no foreskin to act as slack while she attempts to yank the spitting cobra’s head off.

I’m sure it’s not an issue many women give that much thought too: it’s either there, or it isn’t. But from what I can see, the more severe the circumcision (there are different levels of ‘close’) the more painful it can be for the man in later life. Considering that it is basically a permanent thing (there are groups of men attempting to regrow their foreskins), I think all people should be allowed to make up their own mind, which means waiting until they’re 16, at least.

A friend of mine who is a journalist always says that each article needs a pay-off – a sentence which sums up the article or blog in a pithy and/or amusing way. Here's mine! It’s nob-cheese; stop mutilating children!

Danonymous Dan: Make-Up Sex

You have an argument. You make up. You have sex. Everything is okay.

Make up sex: an excellent concept.

I like it. It’s simple and makes sense; you draw a line under an issue or problem and ensure that is doesn’t bleed into other areas of your relationship. It signifies business as usual, no harm done, back on track.

But does it actually exist? Can’t say that it features in my relationship, or indeed my past relationships either - if I’ve just had a whacking great barney with the missus, the last thing she wants to do is bump uglies. After an argument, sex is the last thing on her mind - both in cases where I was in the wrong and apologise, and in cases where she was in the wrong. In fact, especially when I am correct and she is in the wrong – in that scenario, not only do I rarely get an apology, but certainly nothing resembling make-up sex.

I don’t know whether it is a conscious or unconscious decision, but I suspect this has something to do with not wanting to be seen to reward me for being wrong, or, in the scenario where I am the aggrieved party, not wanting to take too submissive a stance (no, not like that) and lose face.

(Somebody rather more cynical than I might suggest that withholding sex is a backdoor way of securing some small victory out of the jaws of defeat. Cock is a hard thing to swallow after a helping of humble pie, I guess.)

Frankly, its seems fairly obvious to me that if a guy irritates his girlfriend and makes her upset, then she isn’t going to want to have sex with him. I can’t open a womens magazine or read a problem page without being told sex is much more a mental thing for girls, more about ‘frame of mind’. So taking that as a starting point, it's not surprising that if a guy puts his partner in a bad frame of mind, she doesn’t want to have sex with him.

Perhaps it’s the act of being asked (or`pestered) by the guy for sex after a fight is what allows a girl to know her bloke is sorry for being a prick? The more he is made to beg, the more sorry he seems? Just a thought.

In the movies or on TV – a poor frame of reference, I admit – a pair will have a fight and then start snogging each other’s faces off as their angry passions ignite desires too strong to control. Make-up sex ensues. I’ve yet to experience this anger lighting the fuse of passion – does it exist?

I fear I may never get to have the ‘angry make up sex’ unless I dump my present girlfriend and start dating the writer of a daytime soap. Still, I guess I should keep trying for Todger talk readers - so in the spirit of investigative journalism:

“Honey, you smell! I don’t like that dress and you have a funny American accent.”

I’ll let you know how it goes…

Danonymous Dan: Snot The Fuck?

Staring at the sun is a stupid thing to do, because you’ll go blind. I am of course talking about goggling into the real ball of flames in the sky, not newspaper-induced Page Three masturbatory blindness.

The body has various options at its disposal to stop a person looking directly at the sun. You’ll feel pain, dizziness and - of course - you’ll sneeze like a bastard, which generally forces you to shut your eyes and look downward away from our friendly hat-wearing Mr. Sun.

There is a clear benefit to a reflex mechanism for saving the sight of idiots, but what the hell is the benefit of sneezing when thinking of sex?

If I think sexy-time thoughts, the type of thoughts that would make Southern Baptist ministers attempt an exorcism, I start to sneeze. Massive, great fucking embarrassing sneezes. It comes at the worst times. I could be sexily kissing my way down towards a lady’s lovely love lips, or perhaps watching as she undresses with my mind racing over the racy possibilities, and suddenly one of those ‘in-out-pre-sneeze-but-can’t-quite-sneeze’ things will start up.

Irritatingly, I have to then concentrate on stifling the sneezes – yes, plural – as stealthily as possible and hope she doesn’t realise what I’m doing. Yes, theoretically I could just stop and ask for a tissue before she’s even touched my nob, but blasting out your brain fluid does kill the mood - and it’s a bad idea to release your nasal ejaculate mid-muff-munch.

I noticed the phenomenon when I was in my early 20’s. Strange, because if it were a ‘nerves’ thing then I would have expected it to manifest itself earlier when I was much less sexually confident and mature.

Something somewhere in me is broken or cross-wired. If there is a Creator, then he’s lazy! (We know this to be true because he’s only ever worked for a week, not even whole one either as he had rest on the last day - sounds to me a like somebody from a temping agency). They say everybody is given a talent in life – what if this is mine? What if my talent is to sneeze all over ladies’ naked bodies while thinking about what I want to do to them and them to do to me? Is there a fetish for snot?

Up till around mid-December I thought this was a problem that I suffered from alone but then I saw this article and I sneezed for joy! I am exaggerating my issues a little for comic effect here; luckily mine is not as pronounced as the chap whose condition caused the Doctor to start doing this research. Mine appears to happen sporadically and in relation to two specific situations. Firstly, when thinking about stuff that I don’t normally do and am about to try or want to, and secondly, when I am in polite surroundings and allow my mind to wonder on to the topic of things wet and carnal.

My girlfriend just finds the whole thing quite funny, thankfully –it provides a fairly unmistakable sign that I’m enjoying what she’s doing.

Danonymous Dan: Z!Z!Z!Z!Z!Z!Z!Z!Z!Z!Z!Z!...dear God…shut up!

Girls, I have to take my hat off to you. I don’t know how you do it – but you manage it, and it is a special thing, an amazing feat of aural self-delusion, denial of reality – and I need your help replicating it myself.

Blocking out snoring.

When sleeping in the bed next to a man who snores, it must be so hellishly irritating that I am amazed there are not more women killing guys while they sleep. Lopping off noses in the night, a last-ditch sleep-deprived effort to silence the awful sound. No wonder women are always rolling over and saying they’re tired – if they fuck the guy he’ll probably fall asleep first and they can kiss goodbye to any decent sleep. Not having sex with them is self-preservation!

I’ve recently been having experience of this myself. That isn’t say I’ve been snoring, or that I’ve been sleeping with men and listening to them snore – I don’t mind doing a bit of research for my blogs but that might be a bridge to far.

No, I share a house with others at the moment, and the guy in the room next to mine snores so obnoxiously he sounds like a bulimic in reverse. Honestly, his nasal ructions are so fucking loud that even with a wall between us I can still hear it despite wearing earplugs. Do you remember the scene in Jurassic park with the glass of water ripples indicating the arrival of the T-Rex? The guy in the room next to mine could achieve the same effect with a bath. The army use sound to break down suspects – I think they should start using the sound of my housemate’s snoring, it would cut interrogation times in half I’m sure.

Girls, help me…how do I block out this aural attack?

I think guys should state they don’t snore when wooing a lady – it must be a massive plus point. ‘Yes, he’s a convicted paedophile, but he doesn’t snore!’ How many of you have had to put up with a snoring partner? Anybody’s relationship ended? I honestly wouldn’t be surprised...

Danonymous Dan: Dribble tongue syndrome

I am not very often lost for words. I am pretty good at talking – so good I can even do it while walking at the same time. I was always excellent during interviews because I was able to bullshit convincingly enough to get a job – a skill I put down to having three older brothers and not wanting to look like the ‘spazzy younger brother’ when their friends came over.

What’s more, I actively enjoy conversation, whether it’s on the phone or in person I like interaction, meeting new people. As a very young cherubic-faced blond child I would stand on the roadside outside our house talking to people as they walked past (I did actually get offered sweets once which I like to think shows I was an attractive child). My mother would always realise and pull me inside trying once more to instil in me the mantra ‘thou shalt not talk to strangers!’ I – with faultless logic – once replied, ‘but if I talk to them, they won’t be strangers anymore.’ Ah, sweet.

So why is it that if I am faced with a girl I really fancy my finely honed conversational skill deserts me like French infantrymen? I shouldn’t make quips about the French – I bet they don’t get this problem, smooth bastards. It doesn’t happen so much now because I am older than I used to be (what an obvious thing to say) and also I am in a relationship and intrinsically know I have nothing to lose and am not after anything. When I met Michelle for the first time, I babbled absolute shit though. I’d like to think I did it with aplomb but really that’s a fiction and I ended up talking about the kids instrument ‘Gazoos’ when I meant ‘Kazoos’. I can only assume she found the bumbling Englishman thing cute. More Hugh Grant than Hugh Hefner, I mean shambolic buffoon rather than slick operator not that I’d rather sleep with a prostitute than a playboy bunny.

I should also qualify this by saying its doesn’t happen just because a girl is physically attractive, it only happens if I fancy them – they have that ‘thing’ about them that makes them really stand out. Doesn’t really happen now as I am with Michelle, but I am sure that if, hypothetically, my relationship with Michelle was to end, my ‘dribble tongue syndrome’ would return.

Not being a girl, I can’t say whether there is a female version of this although it would seem there probably is. A fair while ago, when I was about 19, a previous girlfriend I met said she’d experienced this when we’d first met. I was part of the media team filming a version of Jesus Christ Super Star and was relaxing with the cast during a rehearsal break. We were sat in a group and one of the girls introduced herself to me, we chatted briefly, and I then turned in an attempt to include her friend in the conversation. The exchange when like this:

Me “…and who are you?”

Her: “Oh er…I’m just a leper in the crowd.”

Me: “Yes...but do you have a name?”

Both of my parts in that exchange had come out much harder than I’d meant them to, because I was nervous, fancied this girl, and wanted to seem relaxed and confident – but my brain turned them into gruff and blunt. She had apparently fancied me for a few days by that stage, and panicked when the object of her affections actually spoke to her. In that instance, all worked out fine, but it makes me wonder how many potentially great relationships never get a chance to exist because one person panics or gets flustered and says or does something they wouldn’t normally say or do and creates a bad impression of themselves?

Danonymous Dan: Hair today, hair tomorrow . . .

Who remembers Teenwolf? It is an awesome movie, in the rubbish way that so many ’80s movies are. Luckily for Michael J Fox he was able to take the hair off when the director yelled ‘cut’, but for some of us that isn’t possible, we have to live with a visual eyesore sprouting from our chests like the devil’s own cress.

I have to be honest here, I feel bloody cheated! I had older brothers and grew up watching bastions of the chest toupee fighting and ‘tearing shit up’ in movies as a kid. Programmes like Magnum PI nurtured in me the belief that hair was good; it was the sign of a man. Grrrr. Rugged. Hair was a signal to all that a massive membrum swung pendulously between the legs of a manly man who took what he wanted and damn the consequences. All the ladies swooned at the sight of the white jacket (with rolled up sleeves) and gratuitously open Hawaiian shirt that said ‘I’m here, I’m hairy and there is enough of me to keep you all warm on a chilly night.’ But now? Hair is seen as a sign that you’ve got an extra gene, probably from incest.

Luckily, I don’t have a hairy back… but time is no friend of the hairy man – it’s going to happen. My current girlfriend was a little shocked by what she refers to as ‘my condition’, as being a Californian she was mainly used to waxed or naturally hairless Baywatch types. I don’t know if there is something in the water in California but a lot of guys are really hair-less over there.

In any conversation I’ve ever had on the topic of body hair (and I have had a few, usually initiated when somebody sees for the first time that I have hair) most people – especially the girls – conclude that hair is grim and should be removed at all costs. I’ve had various reactions to my chest-tinder; thankfully nobody has reacted with utter disgust despite my general chat above. However I have had shock and a few ‘OMG (laugh) you’re so hairy…ooh its soft like dog’s fur,’ which is great for the personal confidence. However, I have on the whole noticed a difference between the hair-hating rhetoric and my own experiences with the opposite sex. Perhaps they were just being nice and trying not to hurt my feelings, but nearly every girlfriend I’ve had comes to love it. After the visual shock of the devil cress has passed, it’s always head on my shoulder while a snaking arm starts rubbing the chest and stomach – I guess there is something tactile about it.

While I wouldn’t class myself as a metrosexual (I don’t fuck free newspapers – boom boom) I’m no stranger to trying to remove the hair. I’ve tried the cream stuff, but that just burns like napalm and gives me a nasty red skin colouring for days; by the time the redness has gone the hair is growing back. Totally useless!  I remember somebody once saying to me, “don’t worry about it, Ron Jeremy is covered in hair,” I am pretty sure that it wasn’t Ron’s hair that gave him a triple decade career in porn but more likely the fact he can suck his own nob.

When I was about 19, I fell asleep drunk and some friends decided it would be funny to wax a strip out of my chest. The shock of it (and the fact I had inhaled two bottles of Jack Daniels) made me throw up – ruining the coat of the person who’d waxed me. Payback’s a vomit-coloured bitch. So with summer dawning, I was left with a ridiculous looking strip running from my ribs up over my nipple. So I bought some Veet strips and then – pencil between the teeth – attempted to finish the job. Fucking hell. The stomach was the worst part, the process took me three days and the bruising I caused myself was epic. I looked like a jaundice sufferer who’d been attacked by an acupuncturist.

So there we go. I’m boyfriend and furry fire hazard all rolled into one. They say that fashion rolls around in a circle which means the time of the ware-man will come again – no doubt I will be 70 by then and in no safe state to wear a white suit. Crap.

Danonymous Dan: Parenthoodwinked

It’s been a few weeks since the Webb story broke now. Potted history for those of you who missed the woeful tale is as follows: Webb’s wife revealed in an argument the daughter he’d raised until she was 17 wasn’t actually his. After a paternity test confirmed it, Webb wigged out, cut the daughter out of his life and started legal action against the mother and her lover seeking damages for paternity fraud. I first clocked this when watching the ‘Wright Stuff’, a programme that is at least more interesting than other daytime offerings such as Cash in the Attic. (What is so great about watching stupid people rooting around their council flats desperately trying to find some shit to sell at auction so that Chesny can have his first sovereign ring?)

A panel of ‘experts’ including Anne ‘gastric band’ Diamond, Janet Street ‘face-like-a-railway’ Porter and some sanctimonious horse faced doctor called David, debated the case. They all thought Webb was despicable for disowning the girl and then dragging her into a long and arduous court case. But really how else could somebody react? JSP even went as far as to suggest that the woman’s actions were okay and quite justified especially if the lover didn’t want to raise the child. I think the point here is simply about choice, by making the decision to lie Webb’s wife stole Webb’s ability to make a choice at the beginning. Instead, 17 years of a man’s life are found to be a complete lie. Should he just sit there and take it?

Primarily this is a story about consequences and facing up to them. Whilst it doesn’t detract from this specific case I will say that when it comes to owning up to paternal responsibility men can be pretty shit.  But that is another blog piece.

Let’s look at what else has been potentially taken from Webb. Breeding is a strong biological imperative for most guys and he now finds himself in the position of not being a biological father, so unless he manages to have kids again age 47 (more likely 57 by the time he’s able to trust somebody again) then his genes end with him. Seventeen years of financially supporting a ‘loving’ wife and daughter, all the memories, the good times, are all based on a fiction that was deliberately engineered. If it was a mistake on her part, if she’d owned up to the cheating and then honestly believed the child was Webb’s, that would change things. But his wife knew and actively created the deception. I do not agree with the disowning of the daughter in the slightest – but it’s very easy for me to say that, as it isn’t happening to me.

The occurrence appears to be rather more prevalent than people might think. The statistic used on the ‘Wright Stuff’ suggested that one-in-ten children are in the same boat (including prince Harry?). To put that into context according to our beleaguered government’s office of national stats we have 12.2m children in the country, meaning that somebody else is raising 1,220,000 children.  That does seem very high and there is no way of knowing how many of those are actually cuckoo children as I assume this number would include adoptions and men who have married women with children.

Girls, I’m curious – if you found yourself in this situation what would you do? The women I’ve asked about it seem to think that while lying was regrettable if they found themselves pregnant by another man while in a relationship they might do the same thing with the main driver being survival and, not wanting to lose the security of a marriage with a baby on the way. Survival is an interesting point because I’d say that Webb’s actions fall loosely under the same umbrella. When faced with a crisis we often drop into fight or flight mode (the 3^rd option people forget is ‘freeze’ roll over and get a good kicking) and act oddly as a result. If I was faced with this situation, I’m pretty sure I’d flee first and then fight second and justifiably I’d be very angry. And Guys, what about you? Fight, freeze or flight?

Danonymous Dan: Lo..ooooower

Ah… love is in the air. Love is in glances that you share. Love is all over the sheets and in a rubbery tissue ball in the bin by the bed. She catches your eye and smiles at you expectantly and you smile back. You lie back with your head upon a pillow in a comfortable silence letting your mind wonder – you think back to how you first met, the first time you fooled about, the early weeks of your fledgling relationship onward through time going over dates you went on, parties, your first shag. On and on till it dawns on you that you’ve been dating for eight months and recently she’s said the word ‘love’ a lot. ‘Isn’t this or that thing loveable…I love this toothpaste…aren’t Bill and Jane so in love, they are a lovely couple. Suddenly you realise what exactly that expectant smile was actually expecting. Three words.

No, not ‘Fancy a shag.’ But, I…L…L love you. Oh God. Now you realise the reason she’s been swallowing lately. Then you experience a moment of regret as you also realise she hasn’t actually accepted your argument that swallowing is ‘just good manners’ as you have to swallow enough liquid to rehydrate a cupa-soup when licking her out. 

I’ve always tended toward long-term relationships. For me general dating around and playing the field is what’s most difficult. But it appears to be the case, or at least a strong perception, that men shy away from the L-word like it’s a prostate exam. Why? There is the obvious idea that it’s linked to a new level of commitment and by not saying it a guy can delude himself that he’s not that committed, and is still somewhat of a free spirit still. But really what is so great about being a free spirit? Ok, you can fuck about without guilt or remorse – that is true. But then again, if you’re in a relationship where your partner is looking like they’re expecting you to say ‘I love you’, then you probably have sex on tap and assuming you work at it that sex is likely to get better. Plus, you have all the perks such as the ‘little things’ I mentioned in a previous blog. So why are they holding back from the brink of the love precipice? When is the right moment, if not now?

The obvious answer to the question is: ‘when it feels right’ so lets just dismiss such pleasant easy thinking for the nonsense that it is. I am sure that for some few martini drinking beautiful people, things are perfect in their lives, they’ve never been hurt by anybody, never over extended their feelings, never been harshly dumped and never been cheated on nor lost somebody they loved. For those few people ‘when it feels right’ is fine and I wish them well in Narnia or ‘Imagination Land’ or wherever the fuck they live. But things are more complicated in the real world and people’s feelings move at difference speeds.  Which leads to the next conundrum, you say it first, and then your partner holds out…

That’s a tough one as it puts a strain on things – suddenly it becomes crystalised that one member of the relationship is investing more emotionally than the other (or at least, that is the perception). That hurts the person doing the investing because – if I can continue the financial metaphor – the other potential investor appears not to view the risk as one that will yield a sufficient ROI to make it part of their portfolio over the long term.

I think the problematic idea of ‘Romance’ plays a key part in the overall problem. If love was not seen as intrinsically linked with ‘magic’ and ‘just knowing’ or as something fairy-like that is just ‘in the air’ I think we’d all be a lot better off. Romantic notions and magic moment mumbo jumbo is lovely in principal but encourages us to abrogate the responsibility for love to some ethereal level that we have no control over. Relationships are about compromise and so is love. But you can’t compromise with something that is so high up on a magic pedestal that its somehow a taboo to talk about it lest you tarnish its fragile nature and cause it to smash to the floor and explode into a thousand tear coloured pieces. I’m not drawing strong conclusions about this subject so I’m sticking it up for debate – when do you reckon its right? How do you get both people there at once?

When I was younger, a girlfriend of mine was doing me the honour of blowing me, and she was doing a particularly good job. As I lay back moaning, the three words started to slip out of my mouth in a rather salacious moan… my brain fired up half way through the word ‘love’ and I ended up saying “ooh… I Lo..ooooower…” Didn’t want to ruin the moment for myself after all.

Danonymous Dan: Boffing the Nanny

Ok so some of you appear to want to know how my girlfriend and I met and how, against Atlantic-sized odds, we’ve managed three years. Well here’s the story of our meeting. At the time I was dating a girl in London, but things had been dying for a while, so when the possibility of a month away seeing my brothers, having weddings and going scuba diving came up I was all over it like tits on a top-shelf. My trip ended up in California visiting with my 3^rd brother and as it drew to a close, I was in no rush to head back, I extended my trip by a week. It was during this extended week that I met my current girlfriend…

I’ll just take a moment to explain my mind-set at the time. From a relationship perspective the trip was the perfect way to put a bit of physical distance between myself and my ex.  We were both bored of each other but neither had the inclination to end things. ‘Bad me’ had fully been intending to try and get his end away during the trip mainly for fun, but also make it morally impossible to stay in that relationship – screw ‘good me’ into a moral corner, if you will. Various things – including the knowledge that it was wrong to do so – conspired to thwart my attempts. I mean, if you’re staying in a hostel in the Cook Islands and you don’t manage to get your wick wet then your heart just isn’t in it.

The week extension meant my brother’s time off had ended and he was back at work, so he enlisted the help of the girl who used to Nanny for his children. The actual flow of events during our first meeting is totally jumbled for me, as I fancied her the moment I saw her. I’m not going to be as floptarded as to say ‘love at first sight’, but it was certainly ‘fuck me at first sight’. She’d just come from the gym and was wearing LuLu lemon workout trousers that looked like they’d been sprayed on in a latex factory. I couldn’t tear my eyes away from her arse – which made conversation tricky as I had to stand behind her. However, I really don’t believe in love at first sight, but my nephew could have been licking the plug socket at the time and I’d not have noticed. She sounded confident, looked it and was pretty and seemed nice – I was smitten.

I still remember the thrill of talking to her for the fist time, doing my level best not to sound a twat, and pull off an air that suggested I was both sweet, but also Bond-like and able to kill a man with my sheer masculinity. I failed. She loves to tell people I was wearing ‘rafting sandals’ and looked a spod. In my defence, they were a pair of very comfortable and extremely practical Teva walking sandals, that I am sure bond would wear on is days off. At the time she was living with her long-term boyfriend of six years. He was a rather, er, limited individual who had a penchant for road rage and jealousy – one of those ‘fighty’ sorts. Not blowing my own trumpet (if only, eh?) but that wasn’t a hard act to follow and she and I spent two days seeing sites and enjoying each other’s company. I was enjoying myself so much I extend my trip again. There was, of course, still the nagging problem of my existing girlfriend. But that went away pretty sharply, because following the email announcing the second trip extension she phoned me up and said that she had been going to wait till I got back but decided it was best to do it now – then broke up with me.

I felt fucking great. I may have said thank you.

On day three we had we went to a Mexican restaurant in San Diego Old Town and drank till the small hours. We’d discussed the idea of getting a hotel room already, but under the rather transparent guise of it being too far get a taxi if Michelle got too drunk to drive back. Plus, and this is the important bit, Old Town is next to SeaWorld where my family (who had recently arrived from NZ on their way through back to the UK) were going for a day out as a treat for my two nephews. We got kicked out of the restaurant at about 11.30, said good-bye to her friends found ourselves in exactly the situation we had foreseen. Oh look, a Marriot hotel across the way and both of us with overnight bags… how convenient. We should get one room, right? They all have two queen-sized beds in anyway…

So we checked into the hotel room… then fucked each other’s brains out. Starting around midnight and finishing around 4.30 in the morning.  Yes, I boffed the nanny. The next day, it was a ‘fuck-knackered’ pair who did the walk of shame around SeaWorld. My parents tried to pretend they didn’t know of such things, my brother and his ex wife tried a divide and conquer method to get gossip and my nephews…well they just babbled about dolphins. That day was also the day that my girlfriend dumped her ex and moved out…

Danonymous Dan: The Little Things

Not feeling so hot right now. This morning saw me driving my girlfriend to Heathrow airport so she could fly off home. It is so shit. I came home afterwards, did some work but my heart wasn’t really in it. I found it hard to concentrate and had a listless sense that I’d rather do something else but didn’t know what or have the will to actually think of anything. Yes, I moped. In fact I’m still doing it.

She flew over here to spend Christmas with me and also for my Birthday/New Years’ – which was cracking by the way thanks for asking. It was an important trip for us as things haven’t been as good as they could have been and this trip was a sort of concentrated healing/reflection/rejuvenation/ having fun period. The worst thing about a long distance relationship is not the lack of sex. While that is irritating, it’s relatively easy to bare. Really the saddest part of a long distance relationship are, to quote a band that can’t play their instruments, ‘all the small things.’ Things that I am sure are easily taken for granted in a regular relationship, but which are so important.

I can’t stay in on the couch with her, I can’t go out for a meal with her, we can’t argue properly, we can’t make up properly either. Kissing, flirting, pinching, stroking, rubbing, or simply being silent in each other’s company are all beyond us. The tiny social interactions that you do every day, which cement your relationship in so many unnoticeable ways, aren’t there. I’ve never been as aware of the value of these things as I have been while in my current relationship.

Skype is helpful, but it is a plaster on the stump of a severed arm. I can see her as we chat, and I am very thankful for that, but its rather like listening to a crap mobile phone rendition of a classical score and pretending it sounds as good as an Orchestra.

You will all be pleased to know that my girlfriend has just texted me to let me know her plane landed ok. I feel the trip accomplished a lot for us, forward steps that are very difficult to take when you are so far apart and the nature of your time together is patchy and sporadic. Not only did we have fun, but killed a few demons that were in our way also. So whilst I hate having to miss her again, I am really pleased that I do because it reminds me just how good we are together and just how much I love her.

Danonymous Dan: Sick of Scolding

Sorry for my lack of words recently but I have been sick, and I don’t mean that in a Fritzel kind of way. I’m talking man-cold first class, with a medal in chesty cough, and a citation for blurred vision in the face of severe migraines. Honestly, when I sneeze I spray paint the bedroom.

Illness never seemed much of problem in life before – I’d just call in sick and turn the Xbox on. But I work for myself now: calling in sick means nothing gets done. If you couple starting a live music/comedy/arts production company with my stand-up comedy gigging, it becomes clear that my overworked self was due an illness. It’s a particularly virulent bastard too – all the people I live with have it, loads of the stand-up comics I know have it, and it lasts about two weeks, “Mum! Mum! I’m Dying!”

I don’t often wish I still lived at home, but when I am sick, like any man, I want the brow-rubbing, soup-ladling, hot-water bottle love that only a mother can give me. I want the ‘poor little bunny’ type stuff from the Man Stroke Woman sketch show.

‘But you have a girlfriend – surely she’s nice to you?’

My girlfriend lives in the US (major long distance, I know) but when I am ill I am sort of glad she’s so far away because her scorn at my sickness is somehow less cutting when delivered via a webcam.

During the periods of time we have lived together for months at a time the exact chain of events is this: I tell her I am ill; for the next five hours she is quite nice to me; and then that’s it. If I’m not better after that, she switches into scorn mode and I have to go and cower in an airing cupboard so she can’t find me.

Imagine my upset when I read a Telegraph article, which appeared to suggest this is commonplace – apparently many women do this? 

Now I know the research is just cynical PR nonsense dreamt up in the Monday morning meeting of whichever PR agency handles Reckitt Benckiser. However, we all know the scorn men receive for having ‘man-colds’.

The flipside to this one is that when she is ill, I do tend to try and offer lots of sympathy. In a slightly strange and thankfully-not-physical way, I turn into my mother. Why is this? If she’s ill, I jump to her every whim and wish, but if I am sick, I get beaten like a ginger stepchild. Also why is it that a mother will give this care, but a girlfriend won’t, despite that girlfriend receiving that level of loving caring attention from me?

I know what you are thinking… and no, I am not only nice to her just so she gets better quicker so I can knob her again. Of course, that is a gratifying side effect.

Danonymous Dan: The First Kiss

Hands up who has seen Dawson’s Creek? Or its more recent clone, The O.C? I am sure there are plenty of ‘Emo in disguise’ shows which I could list here, all aimed at the American middle classes. We all know how good American ‘aim’ is, and unsurprisingly, in a hail of televisual friendly fire, those shows ended up here on our TVs. Mowing down our impressionable young people in a cross fire of weepy teenage angst, I was luckily just old enough that these show’s bullets of cathartic simplicity bounced harmlessly off my embittered British skin, when they first started arriving in the late ’90s.

“Did you see the one where Dawson agonised over his naughty thoughts while hiding himself in a shack by an idyllic lake which the director brilliantly juxtaposed with Dawson’s roiling inner turmoil. You see! He’s just like us, except with a bigger forehead, obviously.”

Whether you think these shows are escapism, catharsis, or simply crap, you can’t deny their subject matter, first kiss, first fondle, first act of onanism (‘onerism’ is incorrect – look it up), strikes a chord with everybody. Unfortunately, life doesn’t do soft focus, and most people’s experiences are far more interesting and visceral than daytime US sop-soaps can cover. Looking back, I find my first kiss incredibly funny, but at the time it threatened to scar me for life. It was pre-Dawson by about two years – the only television I had to help me cope was Blue Peter and Byka Grooove.

Being the ‘creative type’ (read dyslexic and emotionally stunted) I had managed to land myself a bit part in the school play and was at school one weekend for a rehearsal. The play’s lead, played by one of my year’s cooler sorts, had brought a few ‘out of school’ friends with him, like a coterie of groupies. It was with one of these girls, a hoop ear-ringed, shiny shell suit wearing meta-chav with an expression of permanent distaste on her face, that I had my first kiss. I’m being a bit nasty after the fact, because I do remember her as very pretty despite all the Elizabeth Duke trappings.

I was a Nirvanoid, so I guess if she was a blueprint for chav, I was the blueprint for Emo and as they say, opposites attract. After much ‘my-friend-fancies you,-do-you-like-her’-type chat this girl and I ended up away from everybody behind a bush or something romantic like that. Things were going well, hotting up even. I cracked jokes, she laughed. She cracked jokes and I pretended to laugh. You could almost hear the music in the background building the tension toward the romantic encounter that surely neither of us could avoid. We were two freight trains on a single track of destiny ploughing toward a perfect passionate moment – time would surely stop. I lent in and it happened, boy freight train met girl freight train, we kissed, our tongues questing, my eyes open in shocked surprise at my luck – ‘look mum, I’m doing it!’ The moment lasted what seemed like an age, the girl pulled back and looked deep into my eyes and said:

“You’ve not done that before, have you?” My train de-railed, rolled down a bank and fell off a cliff edge of sheer drop-jaw embarrassment. She went off and told people who laughed at me.

Cue Music: “I don’t wanna wait... for our lives to be over…”

Danonymous Dan: Into the lionesses’ den

I once had the misfortune to work as a freelancer in an all-female public relations office. Me, the lone rogue male, thrust into their midst like a sacrificial slave. Lunchtime was a daily competition about who could eat the healthiest salad – the shocked, jealous stares engendered by my M&S sandwiches were the highlight of my day.

This agency was ‘trendy’ in the painfully-boring way that PR agencies try to be (one PR agency I worked in had sand on the floor of its meeting room, another forwent chairs for beanbags), with its point of trendiness being Unisex toilets. It was a mere two days before I got told-off for leaving the toilet seat up. Already rather irritated by the job, and knowing it was only a two-week contract, I decided to argue my case. I posited that a group of strong-minded career women should really be able to manage the lowering of a toilet seat. If they weren’t looking before they sat down then it was a problem with their own personal due diligence practices – after all, I didn’t just walk in and start pissing on a lowered seat without looking.

“Look,” said one of the senior account directors, a particularly po-faced harridan – pregnant at the time, although how I have no idea how – “It’s just basic manners.”

I’m pretty sure toilet seat etiquette is not included in any manners books, but it does bring me to the wider point. The reason I mention the toilet seat thing is because it’s symptomatic of ‘a woman’ expecting that ‘a man’ should do something for her simply because she is ‘a woman.’ With the advent of equality over patriarchy is it not time to start looking at the balance of ‘manners’ that govern social interaction of the sexes?

It’s fashionable to think women are happy to go ‘dutch’ on a meal, but as a guy you still worry that raising it as topic will lose points. So what is the real deal these days? What are the new rules? Should a guy automatically let the women go first, and ensure he’s holding the door for her? If it’s cold is the man supposed to give up his coat? No women I know has turned up to a date with a gift of flowers for me, not that I would want flowers, but the same garages men buy flowers from also sell charcoal briquettes and plastic footballs – I’d happily accept either.

I know I am being facetious about this but I guess what I’m driving at is if things are more equal (or to become so) then men should be in line to have a more equal share in the social niceties. Social rules we use find their route in the patriarchal societies of the past. They were designed, unconsciously I assume, to reinforce dominant male, inferior female stereotypes, “You can’t refuse him, its his right, but at least he holds the door and lets you into the bedroom first, what a gentleman.” Do we still need them?

One girl I know who earns well over £50K, but if her boyfriend suggests she dip into her pocket for anything she turns into a bile-spitting harpy, because as a woman she should be ‘looked after’. If we mock her, she looks to her beleaguered boyfriend to defend her tight-fisted behaviour. I know, or have had the displeasure to meet, various such women. I freely admit that part of me quite likes the ritual of it all, acting the gentlemen by going through social motions, but another part of me would like to say fair's fair – let's see consistent equality with the ladies taking the initiative 50% of the time.

Danonymous Dan: Pissing away the moment

My history is one of serial monogamy. I’ve had a string of two-to-three year relationships since I was 16. But I have had the odd one-night-stand which has actually turned out to be rather good – I’ve even managed the holy grail of sleeping with a best female friend and it not being awkward afterward (high five!).

But while serial monogamy is a great way to learn one woman really well (references available on request) it fails to prepare you for the one-night-stand awkward moments passion killers that shoot the mood quicker than Sarah Palin hunting a polar bear.

The UK’s drinking culture tends to mean that if you meet a girl through friends it’s usually at a party, or a pub. Let’s fast forward. Your sales patter worked and you’ve scored a night of fun and frolics. Excellent: have a hat and pat yourself on the back. Now you’re balls deep, passion is high and...

Beep, Beep.

You get a mental text message from your bladder: ‘Stop now, make a dignified exit and return once empty.’ How do you broach the subject of a mid-bang pee break?

Brazenly carrying on with the irritating ‘bladder-on-the-brain’ thoughts is distracting and means you’re not putting your entire focus into enjoying the young lady’s company. You had better hope you orgasm before the pressure becomes unbearable. If not, you’ll be running from the room and hoping the erection subsides in time to avoid painting the bathroom mirror with piss. Unless you both met at a water-sports convention, this may dampen the mood. You can pull out and say ‘I’ll be back’. However, pulling out mid-stroke saying ‘I’ll be back’ will seem odd; it’s an action that invites not only self-doubt and annoyance on her part, but also questions like, ‘where the hell are you going?’.

Answering that in a way that doesn’t murder the magic? Tough ask.

You can’t admit you’re going for a piss, as it reminds her the male member has two purposes – an instant mood killer with some girls. So what can you say instead? ‘ …a piss? No, I’m going to take a dump?’ Unless you’ve picked up a scatologist, which is different from scientologist who simply invented a religion based on it – then this isn’t going to work either. Saying you are going to wash your hands is an epic fail because it suggests you think she has a personal hygiene problem. Search the bathroom – there is nothing that serves as a good excuse.

You could go to great expense and keep some form of vibrator in your bathroom cabinet and then after you’ve taken a piss, bring it back with you. However while using a girl’s own vibrator on her is seen as sexually enlightened, having a spare around the house ‘just in case’ would have the same effect as asking a girl to put her hair in pigtails and humming ‘Do you wanna be in my gang’. Girls tend to be a bit icky about used toys – ‘its good to share’ doesn’t apply here. I put this to a real girl I know and her response was: ‘you can’t trust a man to wash his own cock, let alone a spare one.’

The only serviceable answer I can think of is to say that you don’t like that condom and you have a better type in the bathroom. It is good to make sure that you do have a better one because if you don’t it looks weird putting on another one of the same type. Ok, so we have solved the problem… well, assuming you have taken her back to your house. Now, what do you do if the bathroom isn’t yours because you’ve gone back to her’s …

Sam: our first new guest

Well, you lot are keen! We already have our first new guest crew: Dan. He'll be joining us for the next month as a guest writer and we'll see how his rowing skills turn out.

Anyone else out there who fancies joining Todger Talk as guest crew, please email us at todger dot talk at googlemail dot com