Twice divorced, Cosmo Landesman, 61, has proposed and been turned down five times. He recently ended a clandestine relationship, but still dreams of finding true love.
I was wondering if it was a good idea for a man of my age to write about his sex life — so I asked the naked woman on top of me for her opinion.
“Yes. Do that.”
“Really? Don’t you think it’s a bit yucky?”
“No, I meant that thing you’re doing right now.”
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“OK. So what about putting sex in the column?”
“Cosmo, do we really have to talk about your dating column during sex?”
“Do you plan to have your orgasm within the next 48 hours? I have to file this piece by Wednesday.”
“Why don’t you just shut up.”
“But won’t readers think (oh my God, that feels incredible!) he’s lost his marbles?”
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“Darling, no one — young or old — should write about sex. You’ll just end up embarrassing yourself.”
“But why should young men — and young women — get to write and talk about sex. Are we oldies meant to stay silent and pretend that we have no erotic life? It’s just ageism.”
“Did you talk this much during sex when we were young?”
“I don’t remember.”
“You don’t remember our great sex?”
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“I don’t remember when I was young.”
“This position is no good. Come on, let’s do doggy.”
“OK, but I can’t in front of your dog. Can you please put him out of the room.”
“Why?”
“I feel he’s judging me. Look at his little disapproving face.”
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“Pugs always look disapproving.”
“So, sex in the column or not?”
“Look, as long as you don’t write about me, do what you want.”
This conversation was held on a rainy and windy Monday afternoon in a darkened room that smelt of cold vodka and hot sex. There’s nothing better in life than an afternoon of great sex, especially when everyone you know is at work.
We’d taken the day off from being adults, slipped between the sheets and kissed our way through the cracks in time — back to 1974, when we’d been so in lust, we mistook it for love.
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Back then she was a stunning young beauty at art school. And now she’s an older — 58 — stunning beauty, but she doesn’t believe me when I tell her I love the lines around her eyes. She gets dressed and makes self-deprecating jokes about her breasts and bottom. I get dressed and make self-deprecating jokes about my belly and balls. Thanks, I say, and she asks me: what for?
“For a date that’s left me feeling like the luckiest man alive.”
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Dolly Alderton, 27, has form: her previous dating adventures include a fling with a Tinder playboy and an on-off relationship with the Comedian. Now she’s not sure what she wants.
It’s a Friday night and I am at a friend’s engagement party. I really love a good engagement party. There’s a relaxed camaraderie that a wedding often just misses. A successful engagement do is like a get-together with a large, tenuously linked group of mates a month before a big summer trip to Faliraki. There’s a sense that we’re in the first phase of a prosecco-and-smoked-salmon triathlon and by the finish line we’ll all be best friends for life.
My in to the party is a delightfully fauxhemian old school friend with lustrous long hair both on her head and under her arms who is always shrouded in Indian scarves and bemoaning western medicine. Her fiancé is a banker: the heart wants what the heart wants.
The party is in Farringdon — neutral ground between her love of the East End and his of the City. I am sitting at the bar drinking white ladies with a woman who used to sit next to me in our school choir, merrily reminiscing about our performance of Carmina Burana, when a very drunk, ratty-faced, floppy-haired man in mustard cords comes over.
“Hi, I’m Rupert,” he shouts.
“Hi,” I say. “I’m Dolly.”
“What do you do, Dolly?”
“I’m a journalist.”
“Cool, so am I,” he replies. “Do you have a column or anything?”
“Yes, I have a dating column.”
“Oh, so not a proper one,” he says. I sigh heavily.
“And who do you write for?” I ask.
“It’s an industry magazine about fishing, you wouldn’t have heard of it.”
“Yes, you’re right, I wouldn’t have heard of it. Anyway,” I pick up my glass and raise it to him. “Have a good night.” I turn around and continue speaking with my friend.
“Have you ever worked in TV?” he continues.
“Yes — have we met before?”
“No. I work in TV. You worked on Made in Chelsea, didn’t you?” he asks.
“Yes, no doubt you’re going to tell me all your thoughts on it.”
“Lowest form of entertainment, reality TV,” he says.
“Interesting, no one’s ever voiced that opinion to me before.”
“Do you want to go out for dinner?” No.
“Do you want to go back to my place and take gak?” No.
“OK,” he says, realising it’s time to cut his losses. “See you at the wedding.”
Increasingly I am finding this column is accidentally turning into The Misandrist Papers. A series of case studies profiling the great and the good of misogyny. A bit like an Andrea Dworkin book, but with Aquazzura stilettos and without any doctrine.
So the question is: where, oh where are the nice men? And do I have any energy left to find them?
