Whatever Happened to Men? 27/4/14

At my age, I am not hit upon very often. 

Actually, I'm not sure I ever was. My mum thinks otherwise and thinks I was just too blind or uninterested to see it. But I think there was always something of the hit-er about me, rather than the hit-ee. Well, men can be so slow. I've always thought that adults could learn from kids: “D'you want ice-cream, yes or no? Take it or leave it.” What child debates the logistics that we all come to apply to adult relationships?

    

“Hmmmmm . . . I know I want an ice-cream, but I'm not sure how much, nor what flavour I want, and do I want a tub or a cone, and a sugar cone or an organic cone, and what if I don't like it when I've got it, or a better ice-cream comes along, and what if someone tries to steal my ice cream . . . ?” Oh, FFS, just be grateful you've got an ice cream at all and get it down you.

  

Ah, life was so much easier as a kid. But now, I'm sitting in a New York bar listening, for the third week in a row, to men banging on about the complications of relationships with women. Not only is it something that I haven't heard British men do for 30 years (and even then, hardly ever), it's something I never, ever hear in LA, where everyone talks about work.

  

The man next to me has been talking about the look on some woman's face when he gave her flowers – for 20 minutes! I know the details of this bouquet so well now, I could be head florist at a Kardashian wedding.

  

It really is as if they all took lessons from Sex and the City, and it sounds so yesterday to me. I still watch repeats of SATC and still think it one of the most brilliant constructed and poignant comedies that, in my job as a TV critic, I have ever seen.

  

But the key was this: it was the women wittering on about men's inability to talk that was the key. Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus and all that.

  

Where the heck's the interest if men start going all twinkly when talking about how rosy a girl's cheeks go when she gets a bunch of flowers, blah blah blah? Trust me, sonny: it was embarrassment. She was about to dump you, which is why you're in the bar with your mate on day of said floral delivery, while she sits at home, plucking petals into her pedal bin and wondering how she's going to have the courage to tell you it's over. Which it is; it really is. I'm not only from Venus; I've conquered Mars.

   

I’m all for men having a sensitive side, and I have had more than my fair share of sensitivity lobotomised blokes; but when I go out with my male friends, I don’t want to hear them banging on about women; I have women friends for that. It is, perhaps, why all my close male friends are married with kids – they don’t have the time or inclination to go dating, or if they do, they’re certainly not telling me about it (well, with one exception, but discretion is one of my greatest virtues).

We talk about art and literature. Work and TV. Does any man even own a TV in New York City? I mentioned Will's death (I am still traumatised) in The Good Wife to a few and they looked at me with the kind of expression I imagine John Logie Baird had when somebody handed him a pair of pliers and an elastic band, promising the future of the moving image.

   

I suspect it is a New York thing, because the city is a real hunting ground – at least, it feels that way to me, after a little over two weeks here. Every single woman I meet bemoans the lack of available single men, yet to me there are dozens of them.

   

So far, I’ve been hit on in several bars and restaurants, the subway, an elevator, and by 80% of taxi drivers. Heck, one Russian driver was so gorgeous, I was all but booking my honeymoon in Moscow.

   

I don’t think I’m giving off vibes of desperation, because I am anything but; however, I am getting a lot of comments about my accent and my “cuteness”. Even women are squeezing my cheeks and telling me how gorgeous I am. It’s as if I’ve turned into the human equivalent of a tiny bonsai tree that everyone wants to tend and water.

   

It’s certainly a change from LA, where the women most men go for aren’t as old as my last toothbrush (ok, not quite, but you get my drift). The men who aren’t picking up them are way too busy working, making a fortune, and never hitting the town.

   

It’s definitely a change from my native Wales, where if a man buys you a pint of Stella, he expects you not only to be grateful but for you to go halves on it.

   

The differences between men and women will continue to be the subject of books, films, TV, papers and magazines, for as long as humans roam the Earth. It’s a subject that fascinates me. I just wish in New York that men would keep their sensitive mouths shut and go out to do what they’re really here for: kill bears, get me food, have a scrub down and ravish me in my cave. 

No words have to be spoken. They really don’t.