Love by the Book Read Free

met Adrian.
    It was at a Christmas party filled with people I didn’t know. I was new to the British Christmas party tradition of getting blind drunk, flashing your underwear at everyone and making out with someone completely inappropriate, but I took to it like a duck to water and made it my mission to attend as many as possible. Which is how I ended up in the middle of Kensal Rise with a bunch of my colleague Cathryn’s former schoolmates, who had gathered for their annual Christmas reunion. I had come prepared with a pack of Marlboro Lights and wearing a top that was masquerading as a dress.
    I saw his excellent pompadour from across the room and nudged Cathryn.
    â€œWho’s he?” I said, topping up her drink.
    â€œWho, him?” she said, putting her hand over the top of her glass and pointing incredulously to the bespectacled object of my attention.
    â€œYep, the Buddy Holly look-alike. Who is he?”
    â€œWith the glasses? That’s Adrian.”
    â€œAdrian, eh? What’s his deal?”
    â€œUgh. I couldn’t stand him at school. So full of himself. Wanted to be a journalist, I think. Last I heard, he was working as a subeditor in Sunderland. Ha.”
    â€œWell, he’s here now and I like his glasses. I’m going to make eyes at him.”
    â€œSeriously? Adrian Dean?”
    â€œChrist. Yes, Adrian Dean! I’m not asking
you
to make eyes at him!”
    The eyes worked and soon he was bumming cigarettes off me as we smoked in the alley behind the bar, the condensation from our breath mingling with the smoke as we grinned at each other over our cigarettes. By midnight he had kissed me. By 2 a.m. we were in a cab on the way back to my place.
    Â â€¢Â â€¢Â â€¢Â 
    It was three great months of sex on tap with someone I didn’t mind spending the before-and-after periods with—exactly what I wanted. And then came that foolish morning when, in a rush of postcoital goodwill, I committed the grave error of making the man eggs.
    Even Adrian, who I thought understood me, ended up convincing himself that I was trying to tie him down.
    I thought that dating was meant to be easy; fun, even. Sure, I didn’t have all that much experience playing the field, but I’d managed okay in college. Clearly my current seduction methods were failing me. I needed guidance.
    And then a plan began to form.
    I remembered all those “Ten Ways to Make Him Yours” articles in
YM
and
Seventeen
when I was a teenager. They were always depressingly similar, encouraging you to share his interests (“If he loves cars, why not take a mechanics course?”), flirt like a madwoman (“Pass him a note in PE asking if he’s wearing boxers or briefs!”) and generally change your entire personality and appearance around what a fifteen-year-old boy wants from a girlfriend. Tip number ten was always “Just be yourself!” though how you could manage that while flicking your hair around and brandishing a wrench, I could never figure out. Really, at the end of the day, a fifteen-year-old boy wants a girl with blond hair and large breasts, neither of which I have or will ever possess (which goes a long way to explaining my teenage dating record).
    Surely, all those dating guides in the bookstores were the adult equivalent of teen magazine top-ten lists? They promised to get you your man, no matter the cost, but would their advice actually work? Or would I be left looking like a lunatic? Most importantly, would following these guides result in me having frequent sex with people who were not known psychopaths?
    I started to get excited about the prospect. I’d follow a different guide every month and log the results in a journal (this very one!) for scientific posterity. It would be a sociological experiment. Jesus, after a few months of scientific study, I’d practically be Margaret Mead! Maybe not quite, but at least it would be interesting. Much