Beta Male by Iain Hollingshead Page A

yoyos.’
    â€˜Ayeee.’
    And so the discussion continued late into the night until at some ridiculous point someone – I can’t remember who now – suggested making up little cards of the girls we knew by taking their pictures off Facebook and playing a version of TopTrumps using the categories we’d finally decided upon. Claire’s personality and Lisa’s looks – that appeared to be the perfect, winning combination. Even Ed, who had always had a soft spot for Claire, perked up at that thought. It was just a pity that fit Lisa was mildly annoying and fun Claire slightly plain.
    At half past midnight little Alan, who had always been the most lightweight of the group, started to pontificate about what women would say if they walked in on us and promptly fell off the sofa and passed out. Matt ventured that he had overheard female doctors gossiping about men and they were far worse, before going off to be sick in the bath. Just before 1am Ed tried to call Tara so we stole his phone and flushed the battery down the toilet. He went home in a sulk, climbing over a prostrate Alan on his way to the front door and leaving only a newly sober Matt and me vaguely
compos mentis
.
    â€˜You really mean to do this, mate?’ asked Matt.
    â€˜Yes,’ I said, trying to still the swaying room by concentrating very intently on a point in the middle of his dimpled chin. ‘I know it’s all a bit of a joke, but it will be a lot of fun, even if it doesn’t work out.’
    â€˜Category one: money?’
    â€˜Category one: money.’
    â€˜With a pleasant sprinkling of other attributes mixed in.’
    â€˜Indeed.’
    I didn’t say the real reason I wanted to take up the challenge: namely that the last month had made me as terrified of ending up on the shelf as the desperate thirtysomething girls I’d just been mocking. I, too, was entering my fourth decade: too old to be a professional footballer, a pop star or, these days, even a politician. I thought back to my cynical bravado at the wedding; the bluff in front of my friends just now; the bet. The truth was I had been protesting too much. Lisa’s wedding, my trip to Edinburgh, Claire’s teasing, Jess’s proposal to Alan… It had all shaken me to the core. Mr Geoffrey Parker was right: I had to give up the Peter Pan act at some point. I would needsomewhere to live, someone to live with and someone to support me while I threw myself one last time into acting, the only thing I had ever wanted to do with my life.
    Matt and I shook solemnly on the bet and then suggested kicking off by going through our mobile address books and finding the richest-sounding girl possible.
    â€˜Here,’ he said. ‘Let’s swap phones. It will be more fun.’
    A few seconds later, just as I was about to send an erotic text to one of Matt’s gay friends from his phone, mine beeped in his hands.
    â€˜It’s Mary,’ he said, waving it in my face.
    â€˜The Christian from the wedding?’
    â€˜I think so.’ He studied it more closely. ‘Did you know that her surname was Money-Barings?’
    â€˜Mother of God, give me that blessed phone,’ I said.

Chapter Seven
    There are many horrible words in the English language that I teach, but few are more unpleasant than ‘dumped’. Dumping is something you do to unwanted rubbish. It is a one-way process, an assertive, violent act by a subject to an object, a non-reflexive, unequivocal, irretrievable imposition of the will of one person on an unwilling victim.
    Our break-up was not ‘mutual’. We did not ‘talk it over and come to an understanding’. We did not ‘drift’ or ‘grow apart’. We did not decide that ‘we loved one another, but were not
in
love with one another’. We did not agree that ‘we had become friends instead of lovers’. She did not shake her head sadly and lie that it was