Dumped, Actually(37)

Okay, it probably won’t be as interesting, funny or as exciting, but that’s just the way it is.

I do not need to describe my excruciating thirty-six hours in the New Forest just to get a bigger readership.

I mean, what kind of person would do that? What kind of person would want hundreds of thousands of people to know he sat in front of the eyes of a disapproving doe, grimly clutching his penis for dear life?

It would have to be the kind of person who has a near-pathological need for attention and affection.

Someone who has weighed up the embarrassment that it would cause him against the thrill of being popular with an audience, and come out in favour of the latter.

What kind of deep-seated need for approval and recognition would this person be cursed with?

They’d have to have severe emotional problems, wouldn’t they?





CHAPTER SIX

VANITY, THY NAME IS WOMAN (WITH APOLOGIES TO SHAKESPEARE)

The Deer Porker.

That’s what someone on Twitter called me.

Somebody else called me Captain CampyWank.

A third christened me The Belvita Bandit.

I also got a tweet from the British Deer Society. They weren’t happy with me, let me tell you. Not because I pointed my gentleman’s sausage at a family of their beloved creatures, but because I allowed Bambi to eat human food. They told me at length how foods such as soft oat bakes can be very bad for the deer’s digestion.

I felt awful.

For the rest of the day, I went around with a mental image of Bambi yakking up all over his mother.

So, not only do I get to feel the hot, pulsing embarrassment I have brought down on my own head, I also get to feel the shame of hurting an innocent creature.

I truly am blessed in life.

Needless to say, the third edition of ‘Dumped Actually’ went down a storm again. Partly due to my masturbatory shenanigans, but also due to the way I described nearly sending Samantha that bloody text message, and how I thought about her during my ill-fated five-knuckle shuffle.

I was deeply shocked to find out that I am not the only person who has tried to have a fiddle with themselves after being made single again, only to find themselves crying like a baby.

I was equally as shocked to realise that so many people wanted to share this kind of intimate information with me.

It’s like ‘Dumped Actually’ has uncorked a vast mental dam in the subscribers to Actual Life. The outpouring of heartbreak from across the country has fair taken my breath away.

And all because of me. All because I wrote a silly article.

What a wonderful feeling.

I am basking in the glow of all the attention. I just wish it hadn’t come with being called The Deer Porker.

Erica is obviously delighted with all of this. I’ve hit upon a rich seam of zeitgeist here, and she’s cartwheeling down the hallways because of it.

Actual Life’s engagement figures are way up, the new subscriber count is the highest it’s been in three years, and we’re even starting to get calls from advertisers again.

Benedict Montifore scowled at me like I was the Antichrist yesterday when he came into the office to talk to Erica. He still wants to shut us down – for reasons I can’t quite fathom at the moment – and I’ve now become the number one reason that’s not happened yet, largely because ForeTech’s board of directors are a lot happier with Actual Life’s financial returns these days. You’d think Montifore’s desire to get rid of us would have softened somewhat because of all of this – but no. He still wants shot of us all, the bastard.

This means I am a marked man.

Never mind, though . . . People in the office are starting to treat me like a hero.

As far as they’re concerned, my silly little feature is keeping the wolves from the door, and that makes me Captain Popularity around here. This is infinitely preferable to Captain CampyWank.

It’s all incredibly strange, incredibly embarrassing and incredibly marvellous.

So . . . why am I sitting here chewing on a fingernail, with a cold, hard ball of frozen steel in my gut?

Because of Callie Donnelly, that’s why.

I’ve read through her email to me about a hundred times, and each time I do, an internal war takes place in my mind.

On the one hand, the prospect of actively trying to find another woman makes my toes curl with horror . . . but on the other, it would make an excellent fourth feature for ‘Dumped Actually’.

After all, who hasn’t tried to find a new love, as a replacement for the old?

We’ve all done it. All attempted to fill that void with a fresh face.

I remember when Yukio flew back to Japan, I went online and joined a dating website called A New Love.

I went on precisely one date.

It was with Charlotte.

Charlotte enjoyed knives.

I didn’t know how much Charlotte enjoyed knives until she pulled one out of her jacket about an hour into the date.

I can still see its gleaming tip in my nightmares to this day.

Up to that point, Charlotte seemed like a normal girl, even if she did wear quite heavy and dark eyeliner.

I sat there for a further twenty minutes while Charlotte expounded at length on how she forged the knife herself from some melted-down spoons and a leaf spring from a 1987 Vauxhall truck.

Then I faked a bowel obstruction and ran away.

Given this, you’ll understand my reticence to go out and find myself somebody new.