The Pick-up

It has been a long time since anyone showed any interest in me.

I have started to dress like an adult. I have bought new clothes. I have had my hair done by a real hairdresser although I sometimes grab for the scissors when there is no one around to tut and shake their head at me. I bought perfume duty free and sometimes I remember to wear it. I have taken to wearing blood red lipstick that I imagine would look quite nice, red lips parting and taking in the length of a penis.

I used to like it when my girlfriend painted her lips. I used to watch her lips open for some man's penis and it used to excite me, just the look of it. So now, in my new clothes, I have adopted her warpaint.

I was sitting in a pub the other day and he came up to me. He was a short man, inoffensive. He was wearing a yellow reflective jacket like a tradie or a cyclist. He was old, my age, old. He reminded me that I was an adult now. I looked up from my book, blinking, bleary-eyed, emerging from a good story well told.

"Can I sit here?"

There were seats everywhere. The bar was almost empty. There were other girls, prettier girls, girls younger than me and he had singled me out from the crowd because I looked old and single and perhaps lonely.

"I mean, is this seat taken? Do you mind if I sit here?"

He was probably my age, maybe a little older. He looked fine. Not mentally ill or drunk or high on anything as far as I could tell. He wanted to sit with me and chat, just a quiet conversation after work. No one has tried to pick me up in years. I am tempted to say that no one has ever tried to pick me up, but that would be wrong. There was that one boy who asked me on a date (see "Bagged and Gagged") and there were those two drunk men who chased me at 2am one night. I suppose that was a come-on of sorts. But really, in the scheme of things there has been no one interested.

Not ever.

He was interested. Tentative. Interested.

I looked at him, mole blind from the book, a little sad from the one glass of wine drunk too quickly.

Oh yes. I am growing older.

If I were single now, there would be no men plucked from my furtive fantasies, no wild affairs with those beautiful people I have been diligently ignoring. I could perhaps go back to my life of casual sex and one night stands. There would be some pleasure in it I suppose, but I blink up at the man who is standing with a beer in hand, waiting to be invited to sit down, and I am suddenly floored by the inexorable march of years.

The first and only pick up in so many years. This possibly nice man who is possibly the same age as me.

I refuse politely. I have my book to finish, my good story well told. I have a second glass of wine to consume it with. I have my nice adult clothes and my red lipstick and my low self-esteem to keep me company. I have a husband, shielding me from the harsh glare of reality, from the horrible potential of quietly following this man who is as old and sad as I am, back to his lonely bed.

He doesn't insist. He excuses himself politely and I watch out of the corner of my eye as he stands at the bar and quietly finishes his beer and walks out and away, rejected. Dejected.

And my heart breaks just a little, for his sake, but mostly for my own.