James Hannah

Look: it takes a lot, when you’re the aver­age teenage boy.

First off, it takes a lot to ask a girl out. Weeks of sum­mon­ing up the courage, days of shim­my­ing past sus­pi­cious friends, hours of try­ing to find her on her own in just the right sit­u­a­tion, just to pop a ques­tion that might reduce to ashes the entire foun­da­tion of your posi­tion in play­ground society.

This has been doc­u­mented com­pre­hen­sively over the gen­er­a­tions, and I think it is well under­stood: it takes a lot.

But that is just the start of it. Where, when the asking-out has finally occurred and con­sent unex­pect­edly secured, is ‘out’?

‘Out’ to me, as an adult, is some­where com­fort­able to pass time with like-minded peo­ple (say, hav­ing a chat and a laugh); some­where to indulge in what­ever sen­sual stim­u­la­tion is on offer (say, a hearty meal with fine wine).

‘Out’ to me, as a teenager, was some­where com­fort­able to pass time with like-minded peo­ple (say, kick­ing a foot­ball around and light­ing small fires); some­where to indulge in what­ever sen­sual stim­u­la­tion was on offer (say, a quar­ter of rhubarb & cus­tard and a can of cider).

So ‘going out’ — like, with a girl — is the first step on the process of mak­ing the sub­tle switch from one ver­sion of ‘out’ to another.

You must find a place you’re not famil­iar with, to which you can escort your intended (and she’s not famil­iar with it either, hav­ing spent her ‘out’ time round a friend’s house, leaf­ing through mag­a­zines and car­ry­ing out left­field cos­metic exper­i­ments), and you can get on with the busi­ness of, well, being ‘out’.

My mind flits briefly to the evening when I escorted – let’s call her Miss Smith (because that was her name) – across an October-sodden Abing­ton Park in a short­cut to the pub. Her expen­sively embroi­dered trousers were quickly reduced to a mud-caked write-off below the knee. What can I say? It was a short­cut. What else were we going to do? Walk round, adding point­less min­utes to our journey?

It cer­tainly cut a few min­utes off the length of our relationship.

But, shov­ing my expe­ri­ences firmly to one side, I was wit­ness to the hor­rors of some­one else’s fledg­ling rela­tion­ship last week, as my wife and I inves­ti­gated our waki udon noo­dles with chop­sticks at Birmingham’s Wagamama.

Waga­mama is the kind of restau­rant that obliges you to sus­pend any lin­ger­ing Eng­lish­ness, because, first off, it’s ‘pan-Asian’ food (i.e. Asian food you can cook in a pan), and sec­ondly you are sat on a bench oppo­site your din­ing com­pan­ion, and next to a com­plete stranger. There is no phys­i­cal divide between you and the stranger what­so­ever. I should imag­ine one of the best things about being a Waga­mama wait­ster is observ­ing the psy­cho­log­i­cal divides peo­ple con­jure up. I myself never glance out­side the –10°/+10° angle of my companion.

Our enjoy­ment of the noo­dles and casual con­ver­sa­tion were infil­trated about halfway through by a strong scent, as a roughly 18-year-old cou­ple were installed beside us and handed their menus.

Olfac­to­rily speak­ing, the girl was obvi­ously some way short of being able to judge the pre­cise period of depres­sion of the but­ton on her atomiser. The con­se­quent nasal assault brought right back to me the sheer com­plex­ity of the jour­ney those kids were on – the jour­ney that had brought my wife and I to pre­cisely where we were, chat­ting and hav­ing a laugh, enjoy­ing the good food and wine.

Here’s the break­down of expe­ri­ence of what he had to do after hav­ing secured her con­sent to go ‘out’:

• Think of some­where to go (“Why don’t you take her out to a restau­rant, love? She’ll be very impressed.”)
• Find out what a good restau­rant is (McDon­alds <—> The Savoy)
• Phone up
• Book a table (or become resigned to the risk of tak­ing her there and find­ing it full)
• Get dressed up (how dressed up? trip to town? what shops are good shops? TK Maxx <—> Har­vey Nichols)
• Find her house; call for her three min­utes late
• Wait at the bus stop, while sus­tain­ing conversation
• Endure a bus ride, while sus­tain­ing conversation
• Find the restau­rant, while sus­tain­ing conversation
• Know what to do when you get in the door (i.e. queue up to be seated)
• Sit right next to some 30/40 year old cou­ple who obvi­ously know what they’re doing
• Sus­tain con­ver­sa­tion while decid­ing when to engage with the menu
• Inter­pret the menu
• Sus­tain con­ver­sa­tion while the food is prepared
• Know how to use chop­sticks, and not suc­cumb to pick­ing up the fork that has been placed dis­creetly to one side by the char­i­ta­ble waitster.

What com­plete and unut­ter­able mis­ery. How can any­body look appeal­ing in the face of such complexity?

By hook or by crook, our lad nego­ti­ated all this. “He was try­ing really hard,” my wife noted, “but she wasn’t giv­ing him any­thing to work with.”

The girl was, let it be recorded, eat­ing her noo­dles with a spoon.

Well, there we are. I man­aged to attract the waitster’s atten­tion to ask for the bill (oh – add that dark art to the above list), and as I thumbed in my PIN, I heard the lad beside me pitch one last-ditch attempt to stoke up the com­pletely stalled conversation.

“What’s your favourite meat, then?”

I won­der how we sur­vive as a species at all.

As ever,

j