The male of the species

There have been a few run-ins with men over the past few days. Perhaps I'd better run them in chronological order...

I was on my way to training on Thursday morning when the first one happened. I know. It's strange. Me, heading to training. Not only that, me being out of the house before 7:30 in order to exercise. But it's true. I've been going ever since the second major incident of the back, and so far it seems to be helping. Except when it's making it worse, but that's a whole other story.

I wandered past a couple of workmen by their truck on the way there. They were the forerunners of a whole crew of workmen who would spend at least 20 minutes trying to work out the logistics of closing off part of a street in a one-way system of roads, that included a train station car park with one entrance before the closure and one after. It was apparently baffling, and had them standing in the middle of the road and scratching their heads as cars were forced to reverse into driveways to get back on track. When the rubbish truck arrived to empty the bins of the houses along the street, things got more confusing still.

But the intelligence or otherwise of these, ahem, fine physical specimens is not why I'm mentioning them. No doubt there were road crews across the city who were facing similar mentally taxing challenges. No, I'm mentioning them because of what was happening as I was walking past the first two of them to arrive. The older of the two was wandering, looking a little aimless, and fishing through his pockets for a cigarette. So far, so normal. The younger, however, was standing close to the side of the truck with his head down. As I got closer, I realised. He wasn't just standing there. He was peeing. On the side of the road. On his work truck. At 7:30 on a Thursday, right next door to a busy suburban train station. He didn't even have the grace to look shamefaced as I walked by him, even though I was smirking fit to burst.

My other run-in happened on Saturday night. I got a last minute request to play wing-man for a friend who, after much backwards and forwards, had lined up an outing with a dating prospect. The catch was, he had been spending the day with a friend and would only go out if the friend could come along. So I would be there to distract the friend, keep him occupied and entertained. I never realised I could be such a good friend. If I'd known going in just how good a friend I was going to be by agreeing, I would have said no.

I should have known when the tag along friend was at the bar and the date described him as "just like Alan from The Hangover". I should have known again when he was being encouraged to trot out his knowledge of geography in a Rainman like display of regurgitated facts. Or perhaps when we were encouraged to subtly get him onto the subject of Spain, only to see his bored expression vanish and his head fly up, to hear him speaking random Spanish phrases to demonstrate his fluency. But I didn't know, and neither did the friend I was accompanying.

I really started to pick up on it at the second venue, when I was dragged up to dance. And I mean dragged. I finally agreed to go, because it would have seemed churlish not to, and it gave my friend some alone time with the date. His dance style could best be described as original; if I'd seen other people pulling his moves, I would have thought they were joking. He wasn't. When he pulled me in closer to dance, alarms started going off. They should have gone off earlier, when he'd had his leg brushing mine quite a bit, but I'd just put it down to him being drunk. But there was no escaping his meaning on the dance floor.

He should have known I wasn't interested. I pulled away at every possible opportunity after the dancing. In fact, not even after the dancing. During. I walked a fine line between good friend (keeping him occupied) and self-preservation (keeping him at a distance). It was a knife edge balancing act, and I must have toppled off the wrong side, because when we went back to the friend's place to escape the noise of the bar (ie, for friend and date to come up with excuses for alone time), he still hadn't realised that I wasn't interested.

The date engineered a flimsy excuse for me to show him something about the house - he was a tradie, and my friend had been talking about a maintenance issue, so even if everybody else in the room failed to spot it for what it was, I picked up on the hint and took him upstairs to show him the problem. I should have seen it coming. The part where he turned around and launched himself at me for a kiss. His mouth was half open, his bloodshot eyes half closed as he put his hands on my shoulders and tried to pull me in. I should have seen it coming, but really, I didn't. Or at least I did, but only in time to turn him aside and tell him, "Ah, no," rather than in time to stop his lunge and grab. It was the first hint of actual humanity in him all night, as he got all embarrassed and pretended he was just looking at my necklace.

It was an awkward hour or so that we were left with. The happy couple disappeared not long after we got back into the room and left us perched uncomfortably at opposite ends of the couch, too embarrassed to speak. Rainman disappeared to the loo and I texted my friend.

"You have no idea how much you owe me."

Her phone was still downstairs in her handbag.

He returned from the loo and I went. I didn't know it at the time, but he called the date's phone while I was out of the room.

After half an hour or so of increasingly stilted conversation, he called the date again.

"You about ready? Yeah, it's Awkwardsville down here."

There was some relief at hand, finally.

"He said four minutes. I'm timing him."

With the end in sight, I began packing up, content in the knowledge that my run-ins with men could only improve. At least, after public pee-ing and unwanted kiss attacks, I certainly hope so, or I may be at risk of losing my faith in men all together. Not that there was much to start with...