Crazygirl Falls in Love (2 page)

I’m not competitive (besides the odd moment over a game of
Scrabble), nor tenacious, nor intimidating, and I hate buzz words.
Why is it always ‘the overarching policy’ and not just ‘the
policy’? The policy by its definition is overarching! Anyway, with
that kind of an attitude I’m still at Associate level. They call
lawyers like me Associates for Life, notwithstanding I’m just shy
of thirty and should be well on the way to Junior Partner. Fish
like me simply don’t have what it takes to scale that next
rung.

I look up from Schmermesco as Stalker and Angrypants walk past
my desk. Angrypants is looking tired and cantankerous, as per
usual. You know those people who have Perma-Exhausted Faces, like
Susan Sarandon? Angrypants is one of those. She wears those dark
saggy bags as a mark of honour. Eye bags show the world that she’s
been up all night reviewing leases. Eye bags mean diligence and
commitment. Eye bags command respect.

Stalker shoots me a wink and a goofy smile
as he passes my desk. I sigh to myself. I mean… why? Why does it
always have to be
that
guy? Why are we never chased by the hot ones? Like that waiter
from lunch. Why couldn’t
he
have winked at me, asked for my number, stalked me
a little?

I check the clock again (
move you little bastard!
) and go back
to my half scribbled note next to subclause 2.3.5. I see my phone
flash. It’s Chloe.

Sorry again about earlier, Mission Sofa was aborted when I
saw the crowds at John Lewis. Nightmare. So where are we headed
tonight?

I’d promised her we’d go out. I pick up my Galaxy, which I’ve
grown to love like I would my own child, and begin
typing,

Work is putting on drinks at Loft. Fancy joining? I’ll text
Mags now too. Free drinks and finger food! Let’s go Lady Marmalade
styles - why spend mine when I can spend yours?

“What up, gangsta-a-a?”

Ugh, really?
I look
up from my screen and there he is. The new bane of my
existence.

“Hi Sam,” I say as I look back down.

I place my phone down and start shuffling my papers, trying to
look as busy as possible. Stalker doesn’t take the hint and
proceeds to sit on the edge of my desk.

“Been meaning to ask ya, mind if I call you P-Diddy, or
P-square?”

I blink.

“I’d prefer Penny. You know, because it’s my name.”

“Oh. Okay, no problemo. Are you coming out tonight? I’m
considering making it my welcome drinks. You know, because I’m new
and all.”

“Yeah, I’ll be there.”

But standing far away from you, my stalkerish little
friend.

“Word. Catch you later, ‘gator.”

And suddenly I feel really sorry for this idiot, who with
every syllable is confirming that he is the lamest person I’ve ever
met. I look up from shuffling my papers, sigh, and throw him a
bone,

“In a while, crocodile.”

Stalker takes both hands out from his pockets, pretends
they’re guns, clicks them at me and walks off. I shudder and go
back to my phone to message Mags.

Free drinks tonight at Loft, Brewer Street? Starts at six.
Don’t be late else bar tab will run out

Gribbles are usually quite generous with their quarterly drink
nights, but you never know. Plus, Mags needs all the encouragement
she can get to arrive on time. Earlier this week she, Chloe and I
were supposed to meet up for dinner. Long story short, we were
waiting for Mags for two hours. Chloe doesn’t eat a lot during the
day but in the evenings she must have a massive dinner, and on time
too. If you keep her waiting then… well, it ain’t good. After a few
abusive voice messages left by a very hungry Chloe, Mags called.
She had forgotten about us and was volunteering at an animal rescue
shelter.

Mags pings back immediately. I’m pleasantly surprised. Bless
her but I’m usually waiting hours, sometimes days, to get a
response.

Yay! See you there, promise I won’t be late!

***

Five hours later Chloe and I are sipping Loft’s cheapest
Shiraz (no complaints, it’s free) wondering why Mags is an hour
late. I take a long gulp, keeping my eyes firmly locked on Chloe’s.
We’re trying to avoid the gazes of the Gribbles lads. It’s not that
they’re not nice people, besides the freaks, like that guy in
M&A whose hobby is to carve vegetable shapes out of aluminium
cans (last Christmas I received an aluminium lettuce with a card
saying ‘Lettuce be friends’). But yes, besides the oddballs they’re
generally okay, just not our scene. I’d rather chew off my arm than
date someone like Stalker, and they’re even less Chloe’s types. She
likes rugged, hairy-faced-Wolverine-types, not weedy
lawyers.

But hey, my colleagues are leagues better than the
engineers-with-no-lives Chloe works for. The more wine we down the
more bitter she becomes about her work peeps. I take another gulp
as she continues,

“... utterly incompetent and couldn’t take a
calibration if God gave them the instruction manual, ignorant fools
always looking for the lowest bidder. Haven’t they ever heard of
value for money? The second cheapest contractor, the
second cheapest
, has
ten-fold more experience and is actually competent at testing
installations, but no no no, we have to save money now, regardless
that we’ll be spending more later fixing their mistakes. And then
there’s Majnoon, I still cannot believe what he did
today…”

Just as I’m about to tell her to chill-the-fu-u-udge out
because she’s killing my buzz, we hear a squeal behind us. It’s
Mags, her frizzy red mane pointing in every direction, green eyes
sparkling,

“Hi lovelies! So sorry I’m late, my class ran overtime then a
bunch of students kept me back to argue their assignment marks.
These kids, they’ll be the death of me.”

She gives us each a quick hug. Mags teaches English and
History at some high school somewhere. We often urge her to switch
careers, teaching takes up so much of her spare time, and kids are
all sociopaths as far as I’m concerned. But Mags never listens. She
says teaching is her calling. She has one of those beautiful
personalities where her kindness constantly shines through, like a
star going nova.

“No worries, how are you?” I ask her, sipping my wine (hope
this stuff doesn’t give me the ever-so-sexy purple toothed
grin).

“Good thanks. Mind, I’m glad the weekend is here! What were we
talking about?”

“Majnoon,” Chloe spits, flicking her dark mahogany locks, and
I notice how similar her hair colour is to the red wine we’re
sipping.

Majnoon is a nickname Chloe coined for a manager at her work.
It means crazy or psycho in Arabic. Why Arabic? Because Chloe’s
company develops Middle Eastern oil fields and she’s picked up a
bit of the language. One of their oil fields is called Majnoon
because of the insane amounts of black gold found there. Not that
Majnoon himself is Arabic – they’re all Brits at Wilson & Smith
Engineering – but Chloe thought it slightly more subtle to refer to
him in the Arabic form while she bad-mouths him in the office
kitchen.

Majnoon has been trying to make Chloe look bad to their boss
for over a month, since a redundancy notice was issued. Every week
there’s a new horror story of him sabotaging her work. This week he
started planting typos (as Chloe is now explaining to
Mags),

“He was showing the Project Director some
drawings I’d prepared. The last page was titled ‘indexes’, spelt
with an ‘x’, and he yells out, ‘Oh Chloe darh-ling, that’s not how
you spell indices!’ He made me look like such an idiot, and worse I
was stunned into silence because I was so confused. I
always
spell check before
sending work through. Anyway, after the meeting I went back to my
desk and checked the presentation I’d sent him, and lo fucking
behold, indi
ces
was spelt correctly when I sent it to him to review. The
bastard set me up, he put
the typo
in.”

“No?” Mags gasps (I already heard the story earlier so I
continue to drink my wine unphased).

“Yep. Such a twat. I think I’ll have to kill him,” our ruby
haired menace concludes.

We each launch into our news from the past
week. Chloe is having a bad time at work (as usual), Mags is trying
to save the planet (as usual) and I’m having a bad time with men
(you get the drift). Every week my news is the same, in that it’s
one dating disaster after another. This week it was the guy who
stole my tip. That’s right, he
stole
the tip I left for the waiters
when he thought I wasn’t looking. The week before was the guy who
analysed my appearance and told me that I needed collagen in my
upper lip (“because your upper lip disappears when you smile”),
then said I’d also benefit from a boob job and maybe some fillers
around my eyes (“because your eyes crinkle when you smile”). I
should’ve smacked him.

The week before him had been the struggling actor looking for
a sugar mamma. And the week before that? The guy who had kept
demanding that I entertain him (“Tell me something entertaining,”
“Do something entertaining” “Entertain me”). In the end I had
snapped, “I’m not your fucking monkey” and had stormed out of the
restaurant.

Anyway, every time I catch up with the girls I always have
another doozy of a date story to add to the collection. I attract
assholes like a pile of shit attracts flies.

The drinks keep flowing as the room gets stuffier and more
cramped. I guess the other Gribblettes had a similar idea to me –
instead of socialising with lame work dudes, bring your friends.
The more jammed it gets the closer our circle tightens, and
eventually Chloe gets bumped by some guy. Of course, half his beer
ends up on my sleeve instead of hers but I wipe it off good
naturedly (I’m clumsy and accident prone, so no biggie). The guy,
who I’ve seen before (I think he’s in International Arbitration)
turns around,

“
Shit, sorry about that.” He smiles at Chloe. They always smile
at Chloe.

“That’s okay,” She replies.

“
I like your outfit. It makes you look like a Bulgarian
wrestler, but you pull it off.”

The smile vanishes from Chloe’s face. She lifts one eyebrow in
an expression that can only mean ‘god you’re a loser’ and turns her
back to him. Mags and I also shoot him unimpressed looks. I mouth,
“oh my god” to my friends while the hapless lad turns back to his
arbitration team, looking confused.

I guess men don’t realise that many women
have read their pulling bible,
The
Game
(also known as a collection of inane
advice for hopeless losers who will always struggle). I mean....
What a fucking stupid book. I’m sorry but it is! I’ve read it, lots
of girls have, and I can assure all the men out there that the
nimrods will
never
have their selection of supermodels to choose from, no matter
what technique they use. And negging only makes things
worse.
The Game
links insults with sexual success and there is no correlation
between the two, none whatsoever. Why did you do it, Neil
Strauss,
whyyyyy
?
Insulting a girl straight off the bat is the verbal equivalent of a
herpes infection. Plus, if a monster tries to pick me up, he has
just as much chance using backhand compliments as if he didn’t.
I.e. he has no chance at all. Zero. Nada. No book, and no amount of
negging, will ever change the rules of the Dating
Market.

As potential breeding material we are all rated on a scale of
0 to 10. 0s are the wolves of society. Unfortunate looking,
malicious, uncaring, dumb, cheap, no job, no prospects,
nothing-to-offer-society types. I haven’t actually met any 0s.
There was one guy who used to push trolleys around back in
Melbourne called Toothless Pete. He was close, being the sexist,
smelly, overweight, potty-mouthed, rude asshole that he was. But
hey, he still had a job (pushing trolleys), so he didn’t qualify as
a complete zero. Maybe a 0.2

10s are top dating material, the cream of
the crop. Gorgeous, intelligent, rich, sweet, generous, polite,
funny, interesting, sociable, blah blah blah. I haven’t met any
10.0s either, because everyone has at least one flaw. I met an
Armani model once who was the most physically incredible being I’ve
ever encountered (he’s the only man ever who has literally taken my
breath away. And when I say ‘literal’ I mean it in its purest
sense. I stopped breathing for ten seconds). But Mr Armani was an
arrogant butt smear once I got to know him, so he was
definitely
not
a
10. He was dumb as dog shit too. So all in all I reckon he came in
at a 4, a 5 at best.

We’re all somewhere between 0 and 10. Chloe’s looks are
probably a 9 (she’s a knock out, tall and slim with the face of an
angel), and she’s smart and talented, but because she can be a wee
bit anti-social (she doesn’t look it but she has the heart of an
emo), as a complete package I’d rate her as an 8.

Mags (who is currently chatting away to Chloe and sort of
ignoring me because I’m in my own little world) isn’t as hot as
Chloe if I’m being honest, but she’s got such a beautiful
personality, and is very low maintenance. That’d bump her up to a
7.