Afterthought
By ALAN BRIEN 'Greasy,' too, suggests racial and class inferior- ity, conjuring up images of the shifty, half-caste, Mexican villain in a paperback Western. Horses sweat, gentlemen perspire, ladies glow and hooli- gans exude grease. Picking-up is a strenuous and athletic pastime, with a high content of nervous strain. The youth who remains matt to the end of the set will never reach Olympic level. Pock- marks are also the stigmata of the outsider in popular fiction—signs that the wearer is the last degraded fruit of some diseased, and probably Oriental, stock. But even adolescent dukes and geniuses break out in spots around fifteen and carry the craters with them for life. (At that age I remember making a resolve, as I fingered my orange-peel complexion, that I would immediately cease reading any book in which the author was tactless enough to introduce a char- acter described as 'a pimply boy.' If his own photograph on the dust-cover was sufficiently revealing, I sometimes even sent him a note, via his publishers, saying 'Get your teeth fixed' or 'When did you last count your chins?') Miss Holland misunderstands the purpose of a pick-up if she thinks it aims to succeed through 'sexual reassurance.' The basic theory of the game is that though only one side appears to be playing for a win, both sides are manoeuvring for a draw. When I first came to London from Oxford, I fell into a nest of randy and frustrated
bachelors who were already a year ahead of me in metropolitan courting customs. Like John Osborne's hero in Inadmissible Evidence, they claimed only two questions were worth asking— 'Do you like it? Do you want it?' This approach was widely defended and justified as being more honest and straightforward than the traditional sequence of the introduction at the party, the flattering telephone call next morning, the candle- lit dinner with the half-bottle of wine, the taxi- 'ride back for the non-existent night-cap. It certainly saved time and money, if it worked.
Statistics in this field are notoriously difficult to work out. H. L. Mencken dismissed the entire Kinsey investigation out of hand on the grounds that all men and women lied about sex and that the only ones who told ate truth would be per- verts and exhibitionists. Certainly, we all believed as a matter of faith that there was a famous up- picker who circulated the West End every day handing out cards printed, 'Would you like a ? If so, ring me at this number.' Endlessly we argued the odds on his investment, asserting hopefully that if he made a 3 per cent return on a hundred offers he must be in business.
The truth seems to be that at a certain bio- logical period the young stags do not much care about the appearance, or the age, of the mate they seek. The pick-up is neither a compliment nor an insult, but the recognition of a female presence who may just conceivably be sharing the same desires. The absence of the formal introduction makes the approach easier rather than harder. It is not necessary to think of a way out after the rebuff—you simply stop following and be- come lost in the crowd. Not all my friends specialised in the naked question direct. One of them elaborated an opening which he hoped would be as witty as it was direct—'Excuse me, do you speak to imperfect strangers?' He claimed that any girl who understood the joke was half won over anyway. 'Keep them laugh- ing' was his motto and his favourite hunting ground was outside the American Express where he could offer not only his sexual services but also his advice on new plays, antique shops and how to translate dollars into pounds. One of his fondest dreams was of meeting a beautiful rich widow, or divorcée, in Bond Street who would ask him to hold her parcel of mink and diamonds while she opened the Cadillac—and then with a hot, secret smile invite him to accompany her back to the Ritz for the afternoon. One day it happened. It was a Rolls and the hotel was Claridge's but the general pattern remained un- changed except for one innovation. 'I'm not very good in traffic,' she apologised. 'Could you drive me there?' My friend leapt in, took the ignition key from her scented hand, and then realised that he did not know how to drive.
Addicts of the pick-up 'often grow to enjoy its whiff of danger, its prickle of excitement, its possibility of opening up strange and new lines of communication, long after a wide circle of acquaintanceship has made it unnecessary. But it is surely, in daylight on busy streets, a very safe and innocent way of meeting the opposite sex. A formal interchange of names through a common friend is no guarantee of anything. The myth of the Arabian Nights of Baghdad-on- Thames is still a potent spell for the young, and the lonely, and the shy. I doubt whether I could have met the girl in Nottingham who asked me to kill her father any other way than by exchanging smiles in a shop-window reflection. So please, Miss Holland, don't reject us too hastily for our grease and our pocks and our doubtful ante- cedents. Twenty years ago, the woman could not have been you. But the youth might have been me.
Previous page
