There was one big distraction for me at work apart from emails from IK. The editor’s PA, Jenny. Life at work can be dull but not when there is a Jenny to swoon over. Can a man swoon? I did something like swoon, I palpitated and shifted in my chair whenever she was near. I lost my cool, inasmuch as I had cool in the first place. I wanted desperately to look at her and I desperately wanted her to notice me. It was adolescent infatuation of the most pure sort, except I brought to it a thirtysomething man’s discomfort at his own untamed lust and the awful sense that I would never have the thing I wanted. Jenny pirouetted and floated, pranced and skipped. She was, in some ways, the archetypal boss’s personal assistant, being young, blonde and willowy in a quintessentially English way. But the refinement of her beauty, the exquisite architectural lines of her bone structure, the near translucence of her porcelain skin, the cut of her jeans on her girlish hips, and the almost vulgar Aryan sky blueness of her eyes, added up to something wholly diverting and dangerous. She would be any man’s trophy girlfriend, but there was something pure and unaffected about her soul. She was not manipulative and she did not use cheap perfume or adopt the affectations of the age that spoiled the allure of so many young women in my mind.
If she was vain, it was only the normal vanity of a woman who deserves to be adored because she brings joy and light to any room she walks into. When I thought of Jenny, I could see meadows and streams and forests. She did not belong in a drab office, sitting at a computer. She was from somewhere natural and wholesome and she had been let loose in the big city.
Well, these were the ways in which I saw her, and yet I could never put them into words around her. Clearly I was in danger of becoming demented and every second that I passed in her company was a form of psychological torture. I had once, briefly, had a girlfriend who fitted the description of a Jenny, if that is not unfair to a whole class of woman. Things began to go wrong when I called her ‘nice’, and she spent the next few months proving how wrong I was and how cruel, tough and heartless she could be. With Jenny, I sensed that she enjoyed my attentions when she had reason to speak to me, but as soon as it was over she moved on and forgot about me. Whereas for me, my day was constructed around imagining my next Jenny moment, or dissecting the last one and reconstructing it in such a way that it ended with Jenny coquettishly saying my name over and over and calling me a naughty boy who she would have to give a good seeing to in the editor’s office at the end of the day.
That is not how any of our interludes had ended. She did her manful best to engage me in light banter and even lighter flirtation. But I usually flunked the chance to return the sentiment and build it into something more promising. I was simply too nervous, busy or tied up with my own neurotic insecurities to do what was necessary. I was not handsome enough to see myself easily at Jenny’s side. But that did not mean I did not imagine such a thing could happen. As I was only moderately endowed in the looks department, I needed to compensate with charisma or acts or bravery and chivalry. Jenny had very occasionally shown an interest in my writing for Global Business. In the end though, there was a flaw in the master plan. Bottom line, a girl like her had to have a boyfriend. I had spied her texting and sending emails and it was obvious she did not go home at night to eat her TV dinner and cry into her pillow. No, that was me. She had a boy, and I envied him. It was Nick’s Second Law alongside the Law of Good-looking-Girls-Always-Wear-iPods. Its more profound sister statute, the Law of Good-Looking Girls-Always-Have-Boyfriends. This second law is a bigger obstacle to male happiness than the first one. Attractive women are like desirable properties. They are never on the market for long. When I was younger I used to put a great deal of energy into chasing ‘hot’ girls. And when they were 18 or 20 it was possible that they would be single. Around aged 23 that ceased to be the case as the Second Law came into effect. Clever boys would weasel their way into the good books of a taken girl in the hope that sooner or later her relationship would founder and they would look around to see who had shown the requisite qualities of reliability and deference, without of course overstepping themselves. I never had the patience or strategic vision for that kind of forethought. Just imagine putting all that effort in only for the girl of your dreams to meet some hunk at a nightclub and throw all your endeavours into the bin. Perhaps I had not read enough Jane Austin, which was true. I had read none. The girls seemed to have all the cards. The game was fixed and I had not worked out a way to cheat. But I still wanted Jenny.
11.37 Reuters news feed: UK security committee raises terror threat to amber.
If she was vain, it was only the normal vanity of a woman who deserves to be adored because she brings joy and light to any room she walks into. When I thought of Jenny, I could see meadows and streams and forests. She did not belong in a drab office, sitting at a computer. She was from somewhere natural and wholesome and she had been let loose in the big city.
Well, these were the ways in which I saw her, and yet I could never put them into words around her. Clearly I was in danger of becoming demented and every second that I passed in her company was a form of psychological torture. I had once, briefly, had a girlfriend who fitted the description of a Jenny, if that is not unfair to a whole class of woman. Things began to go wrong when I called her ‘nice’, and she spent the next few months proving how wrong I was and how cruel, tough and heartless she could be. With Jenny, I sensed that she enjoyed my attentions when she had reason to speak to me, but as soon as it was over she moved on and forgot about me. Whereas for me, my day was constructed around imagining my next Jenny moment, or dissecting the last one and reconstructing it in such a way that it ended with Jenny coquettishly saying my name over and over and calling me a naughty boy who she would have to give a good seeing to in the editor’s office at the end of the day.
That is not how any of our interludes had ended. She did her manful best to engage me in light banter and even lighter flirtation. But I usually flunked the chance to return the sentiment and build it into something more promising. I was simply too nervous, busy or tied up with my own neurotic insecurities to do what was necessary. I was not handsome enough to see myself easily at Jenny’s side. But that did not mean I did not imagine such a thing could happen. As I was only moderately endowed in the looks department, I needed to compensate with charisma or acts or bravery and chivalry. Jenny had very occasionally shown an interest in my writing for Global Business. In the end though, there was a flaw in the master plan. Bottom line, a girl like her had to have a boyfriend. I had spied her texting and sending emails and it was obvious she did not go home at night to eat her TV dinner and cry into her pillow. No, that was me. She had a boy, and I envied him. It was Nick’s Second Law alongside the Law of Good-looking-Girls-Always-Wear-iPods. Its more profound sister statute, the Law of Good-Looking Girls-Always-Have-Boyfriends. This second law is a bigger obstacle to male happiness than the first one. Attractive women are like desirable properties. They are never on the market for long. When I was younger I used to put a great deal of energy into chasing ‘hot’ girls. And when they were 18 or 20 it was possible that they would be single. Around aged 23 that ceased to be the case as the Second Law came into effect. Clever boys would weasel their way into the good books of a taken girl in the hope that sooner or later her relationship would founder and they would look around to see who had shown the requisite qualities of reliability and deference, without of course overstepping themselves. I never had the patience or strategic vision for that kind of forethought. Just imagine putting all that effort in only for the girl of your dreams to meet some hunk at a nightclub and throw all your endeavours into the bin. Perhaps I had not read enough Jane Austin, which was true. I had read none. The girls seemed to have all the cards. The game was fixed and I had not worked out a way to cheat. But I still wanted Jenny.
11.37 Reuters news feed: UK security committee raises terror threat to amber.
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