The Man Diet: One woman’s quest to end bad romance. Zoe Strimpel

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       Rule Number 2 Cut Down on the Booze

      You need this rule if …

      • Once you start, you can’t stop.

      • The bulk of your sexual encounters as a single woman follow excessive drinking.

      • You can’t imagine not drinking on a date.

      • You worry about being boring when sober.

      • You think you only come alive sexually after a bottle.

      • You frequently do things with men when inebriated that you later regret.

      • Your big nights out involve necessary consumption of ten times the government’s recommended weekly number of units.

      • Your hangovers trouble you far more than ‘my head hurts’.

      • You worry that your boozing is affecting your overall health and mental alertness.

      Goes well with …

      • Refuse to Have NSA Sex

      • Dwell on Your Sense of Self

      • Do Something Lofty

      • Do Not Pursue

      • Know Your Obstacles

      Sarah’s alarm went off. She couldn’t bear the task in hand: getting up and going to work. She prolonged the agony of getting out of bed by trying to decide what was most horrible about her current situation. Was it her physical state – pounding heart, vile aftertaste of red wine sharpened with gin from the G&Ts she’d thought were a good nightcap, inflamed eye sockets and sharp head pain? Or was it the inevitable mental distress that would descend when events from the night before came creeping back?

      Her eyes are still closed, her alarm still beeping. Sarah’s normally a cheerful, emotionally stable woman. But when she wakes up like this, which she does no more than any of her friends or the other millions of women in the UK who occasionally binge drink, she’s not cheerful, or even okay. She feels an intense horror at herself; dread at what she might have done. Or has done. She pictures a massive black well out of which she must pull herself in order to regain her hold on life.

      What happened the night before …

      In this case, what Sarah had done wasn’t particularly bad, but it was the fact that she’d been making a habit of it. The night before had started out as work drinks; some lawyer contacts had hired a space at a bar for a group of her colleagues. A bottle of wine per person was already waiting for them on the table, along with some nibbles. It went fairly rapidly; and suddenly it was closing time. Feeling a naughty pulse rise in her – the desire to make some kind of trouble for herself involving men – she decided to see what she could rustle up. She wanted sex; she felt reckless, wild, her romantic dissatisfaction and fragile ego about to be pummelled under a wave of alcoholic courage.

      It was a multi-pronged attack: first, she dispatched a few texts to men she’d either had something with before, or thought she could have something with now. She didn’t like any of them enough to see them when sober. Then, she started homing in on the seemingly interesting candidates that were out with her. Keeping up this dual-pronged attack, she eventually made headway. None of her textees replied – something that bothered her but that she could deal with in the morning. But thank God, one of the guys that turned up at the after-hours place they went on to seemed up for it. As soon as he showed unmistakeable interest, she suggested they go back to hers.

      What happened when they got back hadn’t been all that great; it was certainly not the intoxicating orgasm fest suggested in some representations of unfettered, big-city casual sex. Rather, it had been made plain how little regard they had for each other, and while Sarah enjoyed faking intimacy, the guy didn’t have the slightest inclination to do so. He banged her (two seconds before condom; 20 minutes post-condom), he came, he suggested anal, she said no, they napped for an hour, and then he said, ‘Shit, I have to go’, got his stuff and left, only just remembering on his way out to ask for her number. It was just a vague politeness reflex; anyone could see that.

      Now she felt horror – why did she always have that impulse to take someone home with her when drunk, even though she was too old for these completely unrewarding encounters? Why did she give herself to some random who couldn’t even pretend to be polite in bed? And, worst of all, what of those seconds of sex before the condom went on? Was she willing to even risk her health when drunk? And for what? Through the cloudy pain of these reflections, she haltingly pulled on her clothes and made it to the Tube without being sick. The day was not pretty.

      The regret had largely faded by night, though, and the next day she was ready to go again, the dark hole of the previous morning forgotten, and the sex of the night before already related to her friends as a highly amusing story.

      It was Saturday night, and Sarah and her flatmate Lynn had a birthday party to attend. They got ready to the sound of their favourite tune, also Lynn’s BlackBerry ring tone: Jamie Foxx featuring T-Pain’s ‘Blame It [on the Alcohol]’.

      Flash forward to midnight. Lynn’s snogging a good-looking guy. Sarah has drunk more than she should have, though less than the other night, and is now in guy-searching mode. Nobody bites, though, and she’s starting to feel like she has no vibe. When a cutie hoves into view and offers to get her another drink, she gratefully accepts, even though she doesn’t really feel like it. But in the presence of her potential ticket out of here tonight, she sucks the double Absolut through a straw and makes flirtatious conversation. She excuses herself to go to the СКАЧАТЬ