Sugababes may not know who's in the band anymore, but at least they'll always have their style
Spiders, heights, felching, Twink – these are examples normal, everyday fears which most men will empathise with. Everyone has something that makes them break out in a cold sweat, lose all semblence of rationality and start freaking the fuck out.
For me, it’s dancefloors. The thought of having to dance in a public place (especially a sparesly populated, bright one, like at a wedding) without the social lubricant of enough alcohol to drown the entire cast of Riverdance brings me out in hives.
It’s not just that I have all the rhythm of a retarded moose – there are plenty of people who can’t put their left foot in front of their right without falling over, but they couldn’t seem to care less.
"Whut yu talkin' bout Willis?"
For me, it’s that fear that everyone’s watching me.
In this nightmare, I am silently being judged by every woman in the room as I flail around the gaff, each making the mental note that bad dancer equals rubbish at sex (not true, ahem), before the mocking begins.
They are then joined in their taunts by smug, ripped twats drinking Bud Light who look like they’ve just walked off the set of Home and Away, before the lot of them begin an acrobatic shagging marathon there and then.
Yours truly is left alone to shamefully wank into oblivion, before drowning in a mixture of sperm and tears.
Back in reality, every trip into a nightclub usually results in the adoption of one of these three caricatures:
Mr Popularity: Spends the entire night outside chain-smoking alone, alternating between pretending to text and pretending to wait for someone, complete with confused “hmm, I wonder where they could be” facial expression.
Mr ADD: Downing five double vodka Red Bulls the instant I get into the club, ensuring imminent bankruptcy, no sleep until it’s too late and a bout of ungainly dancefloor pogo-ing which I’ll be reminded about every day for the next week.
The Constant Wanderer: Overcomes fears of looking like a loner by lapping the club non-stop while mates are out dancing. Fails to realise that everyone else in the venue thinks they’re being stalked.
You might aswell send me to The Joy instead
Anyway, I digress. I’ve been saying for years that I’ll put my masculinity aside for a few months to join a dance class, but for now I’m content – as I have been for the past decade – to blame it all on school discos.
As I would later discover, these seminal events produced even more potential for disaster than the local community disco – the main reason being that everyone was forced to re-congregate at school the morning after.
Every incident was pored over in detail, and gossip over who shifted who, who was caught with drink, who boxed the head off who went was ubiquitous by 10am.
It was like trial by death stares, whispers and pointed fingers the next day. You just had to hope you’d kept your nose clean. The problem was, deciding not to go was even worse – pure social suicide.
My first one of these arrived midway through first year, at the tender age of 12. For a spotty, awkward fella like myself, the preparation was something else.
Like, actually showering, for a start.
The dancefloor jury were in session
And then realising that a wardrobe full of naff soccer jerseys and button pants (remember those?) wasn’t going to cut the mustard. I also had no older brother to borrow things like shirts and aftershave from.
I eventually scrounged an outfit together, and scabbed a lift off someone’s Mammy to the next town in west Cork where the school was.
American movies and shite like The Wonder Years had conditioned me to expect the lads lining up on one side of the room, the wimmin on the other. It would be bloody awkward but at least we’d be in it together.
But oh jaysus no, this was the late 1990s, and we were the fearless Celtic Tiger cubs. At least, everyone else was.
Inside the hall, madness was ensuing. The lads were brazenly trying every trick in the book:
Boy (to girl): Hey, I bet you a pound I can make your tits move without touching them…
Girl: Erm, go on so?
Boy stares puzzlingly at pre-teen breasts for 10 seconds or so, before unsubtly giving both of them a good feel, inserting pound coin down girl’s top and walking away in fits of laughter
Me? I was nervously clung to the only part of a wall, sopping with condensation, that wasn’t populated by couples investigating each other’s tonsils.
Paul O’Connell hadn’t yet invented the Fear of God, but I already had it in me. I’d only been there 10 minutes and I already wanted out. There was still three hours to go.
"And for my next trick, how not to get your dick wet"
Every so often I’d be saved my a bit of banter with passing mates, but it was all-too-brief. And then, taking a leaf out of Moses’ book, the crowd split, and heading in my direction in a hurry was the ugliest girl in the year.
She had acne, backne, presumably crackne, and her tits were covered in it too. She put a hand on my shoulder, and motioned towards her friend, who was standing awkwardly about ten metres away.
Luckily for me, she wasn’t trying the lads’ favourite chat-up line: “Hiya, see my friend over there? They want to know if you’d score with me”.
Nope, this was by the book, my-friend-wants-to-maul-you-but-is-too-scared-to-ask stylee. Which would have been fine, if I’d ever kissed someone before.
I’d had a girlfriend alright. She was rockin’ hot and American, but holding hands was a big deal for her. Which is quite a problem when you’re 12 years old and get hourly erections.
The girl who was about to be etched into my brain forever as my first kiss now stood in front of me. She certainly was anything but rockin’ hot.
She towered over me for a start, all the more worrying given I was about 5’7 when I was 12. A gargantuan arse, but one you could crack walnuts between. More worryingly, thighs that could you could crack my head between.
It was like scoring with Optimus Prime.
A quick bit of chit-chat later and it was finally on. And it wasn’t too long before I was scarred for life, literally.
It was completely brutal, of course. All first kisses are. I hadn’t a clue what I was at, and neither did she. I could have handled it if it was washing machine stuff. But this was even less subtle, and more aggressive. This chick practically invented the phrase “chewing yer jaw off”.
When I eventually wrenched free of her death grip, I found half of my year surrounding us in fits of laughter at the spectacle they’d just witnessed.
We were also both covered in silly string, tinsel and other gaudy shite. Given she had seriously frizzy hair, I imagine it was worse for me. But as if this wasn’t funny enough for the onlookers, the sudden realisation on their part that there was something seriously wrong with my face suddenly ratcheted things up a notch.
Mortified and confused, I legged it to the jacks to locate the source of the problem.
The perfect candidate for a Blood On The Dancefloor cover
And in there, I found an inch-long gash along my top gum, and enough blood to suggest I’d been chowing down on Dracula himself (or Robert Pattinson, I’m sure that would be more satisfying, though it’d be a bit “Waiter, waiter, there’s a giant eyebrow in my soup”).
The prominent train-tracks on her teeth were clearly to blame here, but there was little doubt who’d be suffering the majority of the taunts the day after. Kids can be so cruel.
I mercifully recovered from this harrowing episode to blossom into the handsome, intelligent, modest fuck-machine that I am today.After getting the idea for this article I looked yer wan up on Facebook, to see if she fared similarly well.
She looks exactly the same, except she’s a total scumbag, communicates in mis-spelled text-speak, fancies herself something rotten, may or may not have a couple of kids and presumably still needs planning permission to sit down thanks to that mahoosive rump.
I imagine that if she walks in front of the TV, you’d miss a whole season of The Wire.
Nonetheless, I bet she’s not a complete pussy when it comes to dancefloors. Let that be her legacy.
tape cassettes of “our songs” that I had taped off the radio, crying and writing poetry and songs (all of which started with or included the lines “She Left Me” or “Heartbroken and Alone Forever”) Even though I didn’t have the hair, makeup or clothes, I was acting like an emo.
To say I am terrified of flying would be like saying that Gerry Ryan isn’t feeling the best these days. I was petrified and I was on my own for the first time on a plane. Worst of all, they sat me at the emergency exit, beside a nun. I fucking hate nuns! Anyway, we took off and as soon as the seatbelt sign went off, I was asking the air hostesses for a beer. I must havelooked like a frightened child because they didn’t get angry at my incessant bell ringing. Quite the opposite. They took pity on me and actually gave me a few free beers.
