Down and Out in Nottingham and Manchester (He is me)

A quick glance in the mirror and he realises he is in danger of becoming Woody Allen - without the comedy, wealth, women, fame and genius.

He had reached a real dry spell in his life. The doctor didn’t know how to diagnose the problem. He said it was the first time he had used the word ‘drought’ to describe a person’s sex life. He knows it was just the doctor’s polite way of saying he hadn’t been laid in a while, and he was in total agreement. He had been telling people that he was involuntarily celibate for quite a while. It seemed the most appropriate term for what he was going through. Is it possible for your virginity to grow back? If not used for a while, will it eventually shrivel up and go back inside? These were the questions he found himself asking on a daily basis. It was a worrying time for the young man.

He did start to think that things were looking up at one point. Due to unforeseen circumstances, he had recently moved from the ever so rainy Manchester, to the even colder and wetter Nottingham - but it had been made abundantly clear that there was a 4:1 ratio of women to men in Nottingham - so things weren’t all that bad, he thought. He would love to meet the statistician who composed that data. If that is in fact the case, why would the best part of his day right now be a woman sneezing on him, because despite the awkwardness of the situation, a conversation may develop and they would have something funny to tell the children? There had been no such luck.

The closest he had been to a date in recent months was when he and a complete unknown got caught up in one of those really uncomfortable street situations. It was the one where two complete strangers are trying to brush past each other, but find they are attempting to walk in exactly the same direction, repeatedly. He avoided such embarrassment by making a quick witted comment. “Don’t worry about it, you are a better dancer than my last date!” he said. If only this woman didn’t have a noticeable Adam’s apple and legs hairier than his, it could have been his window for romance.

So where was he going wrong? Was he giving out the wrong vibes to women (repelled them), or just simply going out of style (ugly)? He would have to overcome these obstacles, and fast. He had started a few self-help plans that were going okay. Swimming once a week allowed him to maintain a balanced diet of eating and drinking utter ‘rubbish’ throughout the week, but he found that attending a biweekly yoga class in order to meet eligible females wasn’t such a wise idea. It became apparent after just one class that he didn’t have the foggiest idea what he was doing - and it made him feel like that humiliating uncle who, at functions, tries to break dance to 80’s hip-hop, but clearly is out of his depth and just looks ridiculous.

So has it become more difficult to meet the right woman (well, any woman really)? Or has he just been missing such obvious signs? Have they been pointing out that he has quite clearly hit a brick wall in this juncture of his sex life, and that he needs to make some personal changes? It doesn’t help matters for the young man that a fairly brutal rivalry has emerged between his hairline and forehead, in which each is pushing for new territory. At present the forehead is slowly pushing the other back - and soon, if not careful, a victory may be declared. That will really kill any remaining confidence he has left.

There was one thing that had been bugging him as of late. It was Woody Allen. The man, in his mid twenties, could not grasp how Mr Allen, who for four decades, had had a string of beautiful women lining up to be his other half (e.g. Mia Farrow, Diane Keaton...). If you take away his cinematic and theatrical successes, what would be left is a man, who in everyday life, would be hanging from the school railings by his underwear, and would be forfeiting his dinner money to the class bullies. But, the man seems to be untouchable in Hollywood. Who else in the public eye would be allowed to bed down each night with his adopted daughter?

So it has hit him. Of course it doesn’t matter what the person looks like. Woody Allen has had no problem convincing the world of that. Despite his awkward demeanour and fidgety tendencies, Allen has proved that an extremely clever comedic brain and an ability to turn one’s dorky self image into a cultural phenomenon, is all that’s important. So now there is a new game plan. Get funny before you get ugly, and become interesting before you find yourself being just another balding, yet aspiring harlequin.

For the young man in question, I wouldn’t usually be so sympathetic, apart from he is me.