2001-10-23 - 11:41 a.m.

�We get the feeling that we�re not alone in this, and then a God who really ought not to exist, sticks out a great big hand and grabs me by the wrist, and asks me why and I say well, God, it�s like this��

So my last entry�s declaration to explore avenues other than, um, ploughing a lonely furrow (which definitely has limited appeal after a while, even for the ambidextrous) started me thinking about the logistics behind escaping this. Namely, for want of a better reality, dating. (My parents still call it �courting�. Sometimes when I go and see them, the point will arrive where my Mum has me on my own and she�ll begin the familiar line of questioning to make sure I�m not gay��So, Pablo, are you�courting at the moment?� �As a matter of fact I am, Mum. Mild anxiety, poverty and professional disaster�.or did you mean actual girls?�)

Anyway, I�m sure great advances have been made since I last did this seven years ago, but my memories certainly aren�t of the stardust variety.

Say, for reasons of amnesia, desperation or pure scientific curiosity, the poor victim that you insisted on sharing a taxi with back from the party last weekend (even though you live a couple of time zones away) has actually deigned to meet you for a �date�. Of course, it took the "You probably don't remember me but..." phone call, where you joke that they won't remember you and they pretend to remember you and then agree to go out just to get you off the phone.

(Best asking for a date scene in a film, from �Play it Again, Sam�:

Allan: That's quite a lovely Jackson Pollack, isn't it?

Museum Girl: Yes, it is.

Allan: What does it say to you?

Museum Girl: It restates the negativeness of the universe. The hideous lonely emptiness of existence. Nothingness. The predicament of Man forced to live in a barren, Godless eternity like a tiny flame flickering in an immense void with nothing but waste, horror and degradation, forming a useless bleak straitjacket in a black absurd cosmos.

Allan: What are you doing Saturday night?

Museum Girl: Committing suicide.

Allan: What about Friday night?)

And then you feel even worse�but persuade yourself that the first date is a glorious, golden, beckoning window of opportunity, and not in any way a shame-ridden social minefield filled with enough public humiliation and dread to make you want to join a hermetic religious order that live in caves. Still, you're feeling good as you slide on your snazziest underpants/nicks, buoyed by the semi-confidence that you can even vaguely remember what they look like. Naturally you've suggested a bar, since it affords the quick get-out opportunities if all looks bad, or, if all looks good, the chance to ply the victim with alcohol strong enough to floor a concrete rhino and therefore increase the likelihood of hot first-date jiggery-pokery later on.

�It may be arrogance, or just appalling taste, I�d rather use my pain than let it all go to waste, on some old God who tells me what I want to hear, as if I cannot tell obedience from fear��

Once they arrive and you've adjusted to the fact that they're more bearded/corduroy-clad/Portuguese than you remember, you find yourself sticking to talking about whatever mutual friends you might have, and what marvellous fun/incorrigible slags/depressive alcoholics they are. This precludes the necessity to divulge any personal information - because if there's one thing you don't want, it's the person you�re talking to getting to know you. Or more specifically, getting to know your preference for being smeared with pureed monkey glands whilst tied blindfold to a swaying hammock. Of course, if you're trying to con them into thinking you've got remedial amounts of class, you'll be playing the delusionally self-torturing "not wanting to rush into sex" card and avoiding the subject completely, but after the Flaming Sambucas you ordered as way of swerving round that last looming awkward silence, that will probably go out of the window. Closing strategies usually fall into one of three camps - the saucy lunge (incorporating drunken success / immediate physical violence options), the polite but affectionate goodbye, or the declaration of a sudden plan to traverse Asia and therefore not be available for several millennia, thanks all the same.

The upshots? Empty, spiritually bereft sex, awkward waiting to arrange the second date, or a night of lonely self-hatred, ploughing your, erm, lonely furrow.

Not that I�m against either in principle, now I come to think of it. So, I guess�laissez les bon temps roulez!

In other news, I seem to be addicted to online scrabble. If I were ever to be chronically disabled in, say, a freak rollerblading accident, it would be a) strange considering I don�t plan to own, borrow, or strap on a pair of rollerblades ever, and b) made more bearable by the fact that I could spend the rest of my days playing online scrabble, even if it had to be with a special poking device attached to my chin. (I realise this is a flippant remark, so apologies to anyone actually having to play online scrabble with a poking device attached to their chin).

If there are any takers, step on up, mofuckies. Er�I mean, I�d be happy to play sometime.

Ahem.

�I want to take my pleasures where and how I will, be they distasteful, or disgraceful, or distilled, and to be frank I find that life has more appeal without a driver who�s asleep behind the wheel��

Today�s godless fop