"He probably just feels too vulnerable to text me first…"
And all the other lies women tell themselves - and each other - about dating (AKA "Bud is not in Dubai.")
I had lunch with my mate T, AKA The Most Successful Divorced Woman In London. She’s early forties, having The Best Time back out there, following the demise of her marriage (to a dick, sorry, BUT HE IS). T has inevitably learned a thing or two about men and the contemporary dating scene over the last little while. I am always keen to hear what she’s discovered since the last time she and I met.
“Right, so: I had my Mum Friends round for drinks last night, “ she says. (We’re in Ottolenghi as a treat, lamb shoulder + two fancy side salads a-go-go, cortado and a glass of wine AND A Diet Coke, because three drinks - two caffeinated, one alcoholic - is always the sign of a good time.) Then: “I mean, I say Mum ‘Friends’, I actually call them ‘the Mum C**ts’, because they’re awful - but also inadvertently extremely entertaining.”
“For example?” I say.
“FOR EXAMPLE, One of them has started going out with this bloke, right…” Half the Mum C***ts are, like T, also relatively recently divorced, ergo: gingerly re-immersing themselves into dating for the first time in decades. “But her kid doesn’t like him. When she asked her kid why, the kid replies ‘He’s sexist, homophobic, and short’. And all she could say, was: ‘He’s not that short…’”
The Mum C**t evening had gone on, T had plied her guests with Prosecco (“What else was I supposed to do?”) and canapés, listening in for further evidence of c**tery, when one of their number - whom, T had noted, had been checking her phone a truly insane amount of times - suddenly burst into tears.
“Oh dear, still no word?” asked the Mum C**t with the sexist homophobe love interest. Cry-y Mum C**t shook her head.
T perked up. “Everything ok?” she inquired, delicately; but Cry-y couldn't get her words out.
“Bud’s incommunicado in Dubai,” whispered another one of them, in explanation.
“WHO THE F*** IS BUD?” yelled T. And the whole sorry story emerged.