Mr. Commitment by Mike Gayle Read Free Book Online Page B

so happy for the two of you.” She dropped the phone about a million times, and made me tell her the details over and over again as if she couldn’t believe it the first time.
    I went round to Vernie’s to tell her, and her initial comment was a terse, “About time too,” which made me laugh because I knew deep down her excitement was on a par with my mother’s. Charlie congratulated me with a hearty handshake and said he thought my getting married was the best news he’d heard in ages.
    Dan, needless to say, thought my getting married was a bad idea but didn’t say so because he knew that wasn’t what I wanted to hear. So he gave me a kind of backslappy hug, cracked a joke about advertising in
Penthouse
for a new flatmate and promised to arrange a celebratory drink on Friday night. As Mel had arranged a quick “I’m-engaged-isn’t-it-great?” drink on the same night, Dan’s plans fitted in perfectly with the weekend schedule Mel and I had prepared for ourselves, now that we’d been upgraded into the serious-couple club.
     
    S itting in the Haversham on Friday night, Dan and Charlie decided unanimously that the whole evening’s entertainment would be at my expense, despite my having been an engaged man for only six days. For the next few hours I was the butt of their jokes, jibes and mockery, which was actually quite reassuring in its own way—laughter was the perfect antidote to any apprehension I was feeling about marriage. The evening’s conversation went a little something like this . . .
    8:23 P.M.
    “What is it about weddings that women like so much?” asked Dan.
    “The dresses?” suggested Charlie.
    “You could have a point there,” said Dan. “What have all weddings got in common apart from the bride and groom?”
    “A posh dress!” replied Charlie.
    I tried my hardest not to become tainted by the sheer ludicrousness of their conversation but I couldn’t help myself. “You’re not seriously trying to tell me that women the world over have been getting married just so they can get a new frock? What about Elizabeth Taylor? Married more times than I can remember and she can afford as many posh frocks as she likes.”
    “Ahhh,” exclaimed Dan astutely, “but the wedding means she’s always got somewhere nice to wear it.”
    9:28 P.M.
    Charlie played question master. “Why do you think blokes are so scared of commitment?”
    “Simple,” answered Dan. “It’s the Daisy Duke principle.” With the utterance of those words Dan had our attention in full. For everyone around the table and probably any member of our generation, Daisy Duke—of
The Dukes of Hazzard
fame—was a byword for truth, beauty and cheek-revealing denim hotpants. “In our formative years we’re exposed to a huge number of amazingly beautiful women,” continued Dan. “We men become conditioned to seek out perfection and spend our lives in pursuit of the ultimate babe. Of course this search will prove fruitless because perfection doesn’t exist. But that won’t stop us wandering through life nomadically, refusing to put down roots until our quest is over.”
    “We are to be pitied not chided,” chipped in Charlie. “Ours is a thankless task.”
    “When you think about it,” said Dan, “finding the perfect partner is a bit like a game of pontoon. I mean, you get your cards and you make your decision. Do you stick or twist? Do you play safe and settle for nineteen or do you go all out for twenty-one, even if you might end up bust?”
    “On a good day Vernie’s a twenty-one.” Charlie laughed. “Although I reckon she thinks I’m an eighteen. What do you reckon, Dan? Ever had a twenty-one?”
    “Let’s think,” he said, mulling it over. “There was Cerys in college, she was a fourteen. Then there was Louise after that, who was probably a seventeen, but I think the closest I’ve ever come was with Meena.” He hesitated for a moment and took a sip of his beer. “She was definitely a twenty, but you