Dan Taylor Is Giving Up on Women by Neal Doran Page A

really me? I know, I need to try and be more myself sometimes, I guess.’
    ‘Yes, but like the edited highlights. You’re trying to impress someone, and there’s nothing wrong with that. You’re trying to find someone you’ll want to impress for the rest of your life so you need to dial some things about you up a little. Your best qualities, maybe not the…anxiousness. There’s just so much good about you, but you don’t need to leave that hidden for people to discover over time. You need to get this stuff condensed into one big bowl of Dan terrificness. Basically, you need to be SuperDan.’
    ‘SuperDan?’
    ‘SuperDan.’
    ‘Why stop there? Not UberDan?’
    ‘You’ve got to show the other guys a bit of mercy now, mister. UberDan would have the power to wreck previously happy marriages.’
    ‘I always thought Rob had a little thing for me.’
    ‘Hands off my hubby, loverboy.’
    Our attending spook noiselessly materialised again next to us. Or maybe he’d been there all along; it’s impossible to know considering the dark arts these operatives must be trained in.
    ‘We’ll take these, please. And we’ll have the boxes,’ Hannah said authoritatively. As we stood and waited for our cards to clear, she turned to give my slumped back a bit of a rub.
    ‘Niamh did say you seemed really nice once she got to know you a bit. She even said that you’d make a really sweet boyfriend for someone.’
    ‘Ooh, nice AND sweet? That’s harsh…’
    ‘You know me, have to tell it like it is. Now come on, time for jeans.’
    After we moved on to shopping for trousers, the novelty of the day began to wear off a little bit. If buying shoes was a more complicated process than I’d previously appreciated, jeans was worse — colour, cut, finish all had to be considered before they got dumped on the pile I was carrying around to try on. I realised at least with shoes you had the advantage of mainly sitting down to do the trying on; now I was hopping around in a small cubicle wrestling stiff denim. It was a well-known fact that thousands of accidents a year happened when men were trying to put their trousers on, and here I was risking my life over and over again for something I’d previously just bought off the shelf if they matched the combination blue, 32W, 34L.
    ‘Come on, turn around and lift your jumper up. If we’re going to do this we can’t afford to be shy,’ said Hannah as I gingerly stepped out from the changing-room pod.
    I passed another man in front of a full-length mirror who was apparently capable of making his own decisions on clothing, nodded to the headset-wearing attendant in charge of the section — the spies were everywhere today — and ran the gamut of other expectant partners waiting for their charges to emerge.
    ‘They feel quite comfortable,’ I said hopefully as I complied with the instruction.
    ‘Right. Comfortable. Now come over here in front of this mirror and you can tell me what’s wrong with them.’
    I walked over to stand next to Hannah with the scratchy flapping of the cardboard labels and plastic security tags running down my leg singling me out as someone to be judged. Sheepishly I stared at my legs. They did look a bit clownish, I supposed. I looked at Hannah through the mirror.
    ‘I guess they’re a little baggy? Around the thighs?’
    ‘A little baggy? You could get someone else in there. Which is a waste, because this is not a look that’s going to make anyone want to get in your pants. Here, c’mere.’
    Hannah stood up close in front of me; with me in just my socks her head was bumping against my chest.
    ‘Now look at your bum in the mirror,’ she said. ‘Except you can’t see it at the minute because it’s hidden in these terrible jeans. You look like a dieter wearing their “before” pants. Now if I just do this…’
    Her head dipped slightly as she stood in closer and grabbed the loose fabric on each side of my trousers. I was hit with a burst of the