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We all looked at him.
“Well, British men have this bad rap for being crappy in bed,” Hamish said, somewhat desperately. “But I think we’re getting better at it. We try to have some foreplay and we will, you know, perform oral sex. I’ve tried to get better in the sack. I read my mother’s women’s magazines to find out what to do.”
“Yeah, but they don’t show you pictures of a clitoris!” Giles said.
This comment was so pitiful, I didn’t know what to say.
“I can’t do the casual sex thing because I fail at the post-post-coital portion,” said Hamish. “Should you call? What do you say if you do call? I haven’t gotten to that part of the manual.”
“You pray for an answering machine,” Giles said.
“Inside, I’m really a trembling mess,” Hamish said. “I’m not good about being friends with women afterward, which is stupid, because if you are friends, you leave the door open for a shag six months later.”
“The whole thing is just too fucking complicated,” Giles said. “Now I’m trying to only shag girls I think I might want to have a relationship with. It’s important to be choosy. Besides, I want to have kids. In fact, I’m desperate to have kids. I’ve wanted to have kids since I was about sixteen.”
“That reminds me. I have to go home. To my girlfriend,” Hamish said.
“What’s with this marriage and kids bit?” I asked.
“How should I know?” Giles said. “That’s the thing about Englishmen. We’re not very analytical. We don’t go to shrinks.” He paused, then looked at Claire. “Hey. Don’t you have cats?” he asked.
We left.
“See what I mean?” Claire said. “London is just impossible. I would go to New York, but I’m afraid to fly. Why don’t you come over for a nightcap, and I’ll show you that new floor waxer?”
And then I got the phone call. From this Judy person. My supposed editor at the newspaper. That was paying me to write this stupid story. I had to have lunch with her the next day.
Judy was, to my mind, a “typical” Englishwoman. She had long, stringy brown hair and a pale face and wore no makeup. She drummed her half-bitten fingernails on the table. She was a no-nonsense kind of gal.
“Well,” she said. “What have you found out about sex in London?”
“Mmmm . . . er . . . can I have a cocktail?” I asked hopefully.
She nodded to the waiter. “So?” she demanded.
“Frankly,” I said, “I’ve never been anywhere where the sexes are so disparaging about each other. When it comes to, ah, actual sex.”
“Meaning?”
“Oh, it’s just that. . .” I looked at her and thought, Hang it. “It’s just that Englishmen say that Englishwomen are terrible in bed and vice versa.”
“Really?” she said. “Englishmen say that Englishwomen are bad in bed?”
I nodded. “They also say that Englishwomen don’t know how to give blow jobs.” I examined my naturally perfect nails. “What is this obsession with blow jobs, anyway?”
“Public schools,” she spat.
“They also say that . . . Englishwomen are hairy and don’t care about how they look.”
Judy leaned back in her chair, folded her arms, and regarded me smugly. She was scaring the shit of out of me. No wonder Englishmen are a dithering mess.
“Englishwomen are not like American women. That’s true,” she said. “We don’t care about things like coloring our hair. Or our nails. We don’t have time to get our nails done here. We’re too busy.”
Oh, I thought. Like American women aren’t?
“Men and women understand each other here.” She gave a short laugh. “Englishmen understand that we’re all they’ve got. In other words, they’re stuck with us. And if they don’t like it, well, they get no sex at all.”
“That might be a good thing,” I said. “For you, I mean.”
