Stephen Kearney grew up knowing that girls didn’t like him. He was just plain unattractive to the female of the species. He liked women alright, but they didn’t like him. It was just too bad, but that’s the hand he’d been dealt. He’s just have to get on without them – and he had made all the adjustments. Then he discovered it wasn’t the hand he’d been dealt with but the dealer.
By the time you’ve reached sixteen, you’ve a pretty good of idea which way the wind is blowing. You know what’s coming, give or take. Of course you’re not sure of the detail of what’s ahead, but you sure know the drift. At the age of 16, I was out of the ball game – and I knew it. Ruby Wax said that at the age of 18, she knew she’d never have a job: yep, got that but I was there two years earlier. I also knew something else: no woman would ever look at me. This wasn’t self-pity, it was just plain, straightforward, scientific fact – and you can’t argue with that. I knew I wasn’t ugly and I certainly wasn’t gay – or ‘queer’ as we might have called it then – but I also knew that no woman would look at me. I was, simply, not the type of guy that women found attractive. Relationships, like careers, were for other people. Whatever lay ahead, I knew I’d have to be going my own way.
I knew I was not the only one to carry this affliction – I wasn’t that unique. There were others who you just knew would never attract a mate. Oh, they tried alright, wasting a lot of time and suffering, rather than face the truth. One guy I later got to know at college made the effort big time. He attended all the rugby club dances, dressed very smartly, was always immaculately turned out – and reeked of desperation. I felt like shrieking at him “No woman will ever look at you: stop wasting your time and put your energies into something that will give you some reward.” Maybe I should have shrieked at him – like out loud. He died at the age of 41, still looking and still a virgin.
Time moved on. I had now completed college and at least had found something to absorb my energies: motorcycles. I was once accused of using motorcycles as a woman substitute: well, they gave me a lot of excitement, fun and social contact and formed at least some sort of ersatz love. But, of course there was still something that motorcycles could not provide. Yes, I still had desire, something undiluted by my acceptance of my condition. My condition was not reciprocated: in a fair world if women did not find me attractive, I shouldn’t have found them attractive. But I did – some of them, at least. Occasionally, even a tiny little bud of belief might sprout through a chance comment or a smile, allowing the mighty dynamo of hope to begin turning, slowly gathering speed. Then you’d quickly realise how foolish you’d been and desperately try to reverse course, metaphorically running along the gantgways in the huge power-station of hope, hastily trying to kill every switch before that dynamo disintegrated, torn from its bearings, all to a blaring klaxon of “misinterpretation!, misinterpretation!, misinterpretation!”.
A day later, once you were recovered and the dynamo saved, you would give yourself a good “talking to”: “Look no woman will ever find you attractive: you know it and they know it. Stop wasting your time. You’ve a lot going for you, health, education and an exciting hobby which is earning a bit of money too. Be grateful for what you have. Yes, there are some people who are just not attractive to the opposite sex and you happen to be one of them, but it’s not the end of the world. This is just the way it is. You’ve just got to accept the science.” Yes, I had to accept the science. No amount of “positive thinking” or whatever they called it around 1970 could overcome the cold, scientific facts. I might as well have wished I was six foot six – and at a whole foot below that, I wasn’t getting there. In truth, I had made all the adjustments. It just wasn’t going to happen. I would be going my own way.
Naturally, I told no-one. Why give away your position? But you can hide your position behind a front. When, at the age of 15, we had to individually visit the school dean to be told the facts of life, I told the priest that I never intended to get married, meaning of course, I knew no woman would ever look at me, but social norms forbade you saying it. He said that I couldn’t say that unless I was going into the priesthood. You didn’t argue with this guy, but I knew! Of course I just didn’t want to think about the situation. I developed avoidance – and armour plating. In modern parlance, I developed coping strategies, and most of the time they worked. I got quite good at the glib replies. Just a few years later at college, one of my fellow students, an Indian guy, complained that condoms had burst twice on him and asked me what I used. I was hardly going to tell him that I’d never even been kissed (literally), let alone that I was a virgin. “I refuse to answer that question” I answered with a knowing smile “on the grounds that it might incriminate me”. Luckily he misinterpreted my ‘knowing smile’. Phew! Deep down though, I suspected a lot of people suspected. A few years earlier, a teacher asked me if I had been invited to a lot of parties over a particular Christmas. My armour has been suddenly penetrated and I felt rotten for having been exposed. Surely he knew that I was simply not the kind of person who got invited to parties – and I didn’t want to be reminded of it. So why ask? A depressing, listless “no” was all I could manage.
The day after an evening in the local, my eldest sister told me that a girl there had been “making eyes at you all night”. What? I was mystified. Why would my sister say such a strange thing?
Very occasionally, you could get the odd nutter – a girl who wanted to get close. Christ. If someone affects an interest in you, a man scientifically proven to be utterly repellent to women, there is only one possible explanation: she’s nuts. Better get out of here! J. Edgar Hoover of FBI fame, as featured in a biopic, is invited in by a young woman, but when she starts coming on to him, he rushes around the room looking for bugging equipment. “Do you really have such a low opinion of yourself” she yells at him in utter frustration, “that you think no woman would be interested in you unless to set a trap?” This must have been the only time I could ever tune into J. Edgar.
In the earlier times I would enjoy a little Schadenfreude at the amorous anxieties and heartbreaks of some of the guys, secure in the knowledge that it could never happen to me. You see, I would be going my own way. Then I developed another technique: I persuaded myself that no woman was worth it in any case. Every girl I met was immediately scanned for some imperfection in mind, body, clothes or attitude: I’d find something, somewhere that would prevent me even considering desiring her – a sort of pre-emptive sour grapes. Then I could feel good about myself and my loveless life – and persuade myself that motorcycles – bikes – were “where it’s at”, as we used to say.
My social circle was expanding rapidly in my early 20’s – usually with fail-safe blokes – and bikes. No problem with blokes: bikers together. I’d often be relieved to find they didn’t have a girlfriend either: if they did, said girlfriend would be put through the ‘fault finding apparatus’. Of course, their boyfriend status would be a bonus and I wouldn’t really have to try – I’d let myself off the hook. As most of these social encounters took place in pubs, alcohol helped the anaesthetic effect along with the general feel-good atmosphere. It was at one of these events in 1973 that something happened. A new couple appeared on the scene, friends of one of the gang.
They looked like the perfect couple. Both were ex College of Art, a rare distinction in our group. He was very funny, witty and capable – and a biker to boot. Indeed, only a few years earlier, I used to catch sight of him, blasting through our local high street on his huge Triumph, long hair trailing in the wind, a blissful image of joy and freedom, in stark contrast to my being frog-marched in or out of the church by that same miserable git who gave me the lecture about my “wife and children”. Ha! And she was, quite simply, the most beautiful woman I had ever seen in my life – and educated, intelligent and funny with it. Instantly she was scanned. She didn’t just have a beautiful face, she had the body to go with it. No faults were showing – none whatsoever. There were no blips on the radar screen. Damn it! She was desirable! In a weird way, though, I did not feel too bad after that first meeting. She was so far out of my league, she was beyond dreaming range. So I wouldn’t have her, even in my dreams. And in any case, she was taken. And in any case she was with a brilliant guy. And in any case, I was happy with my motorcycles, borrowing an advertising slogan from the 1969 BSA catalogue: “Go your own way, go BSA”.
Soon after, I was in my little motorcycle workshop when she arrived alone out of the blue. I assumed she was passing by and just wanted a chat. I thought nothing of it though I enjoyed the encounter. Over the next week or two it happened a few more times. I thought that maybe she was a bit lonely. Then it happened again. I was with my pal, the guy who had introduced the couple to our crowd, when she arrived alone once more. It was evening time, so we decided to adjourn to the local which formed a sort of social hub. Another one of the gang joined us and a very pleasant evening followed.
All four of us started walking back to the workshop, maybe three hundred metres away, sharing jokey bonhomie. Nearing the workshop, I heard her make a few quick steps behind me and suddenly both her arms were around my waist. What the heck was going on? Play it cool, Stephen. This is a trap. It was so obvious. I mean talk about a decoy. The most beautiful and desirable woman in the entire district, already widely regarded as the catch of catches, grabs me – the man proven scientifically to be utterly repellent to women. This is what simply is known as “a wind-up”. I could see the script ahead “ I grabbed Stephen and he thought I was serious”. Already I was anticipating the scornful laughter if I made a wrong move here: “You actually thought she saw something in you? Get outa here!” So it was settled. This was a trap. Play it cool. Do nothing. Say nothing.
I was doing nothing and saying nothing. I still had this woman’s arms around me as we continued walking like some sort of pantomime creature. I knew I had to do something – but what? After a little consideration, I put my hands on hers: that couldn’t be misinterpreted. After all, she laid her hands on me first. I couldn’t be vulnerable to much ridicule over this. I mean, what was I supposed to do?
We continued our crab-like gait. The other two guys were wrapped up in their own conversation and were ignoring us. I kept my hands on hers and she seemed quite content with that. I was desperately scanning every possibility, trying to figure when the trap was going to be sprung and how. But there were no clues. The radar screen was blank. I could still feel her head nuzzling my back. Could this be for real?
Could this be for real? I was actually beginning to wonder if it was. The facts were beginning to support this view. This was truly weird. The most beautiful woman I’d ever seen, the acknowledged catch of catches, was showing an interest in me? How the heck did that happen? I suddenly felt like one of those old 1940s B movie characters who, while casually leaning against a vast ornate fireplace in some strange old house, accidentally opens the secret door to the hidden room before it snaps shut. Desperately, he starts retracing every move around the fireplace trying to find that magic button or lever he activated. Well, that was me. I was now desperately trying to think back over the evening, trying to figure out what combination of words or actions I had undertaken to produce this remarkable event. Already I was preparing my defence. I was innocent. Yes, I might have tricked her but it was purely inadvertent – like the guy in The Manchurian Candidate (1960) whose hypnotic programming code is accidentally triggered and he ends up in a lake. Lordy, I had tricked this poor girl. Clearly I had given her a totally false impression. Was she under the impression that I was Casanova’s brother or something? I was vaguely anticipating a storm of anger when she realised what she’d grabbed. There was only one thing to do: I’d just have to man up about it and tell her the truth.
By this stage we’d reached the workshop. I had to prepare my defence. Yep, man up. Tell it straight. She was going to find out anyway so better now than later. I explained that, at 22, I was a virgin: that I had zero experience of women and that I had never even been kissed. I was honest, I was up front and I said it like it was. I suggested she might have got hold of the wrong end of the stick. Her fella, after all, who seemed to have temporarily disappeared was, as I gradually realised, also considered the catch of catches, one of my sisters fancying the pants off him as I later discovered. I wouldn’t stand a chance against someone of his calibre. There was a sort of reverse ‘Joleen’ going on here though I can feel a bit of ‘Adios Amigo’ in the background.
But she decided she had got hold of the right end of the stick. Back at her place that night, the 22 year paradigm ended and a new one began.
Confounding the Conditioning r2 © Stephen Kearney June 2020