Life and Laughing_ My Story - Michael McIntyre [44]
‘Really?’ I said. ‘That’s all, just ask if she wants to sit with me on one of the settees?’
‘Sofas!’ Sam corrected. ‘You’re such a pleb.’ And with that, he disappeared.
I now felt I had more purpose. I saw a space open up on one of the sofas and scanned the dance floor. And there she was, without a doubt the best-looking girl at the ball. ‘That’s her,’ I thought. ‘I’d rather kiss her than a hundred of the others.’ I twisted over to where she was dancing as Chubby Checker continued to sing. ‘How long is this song?’ I thought. ‘It must be the long version.’ She had dark hair and beautiful green eyes and fitted perfectly into her obligatory little black dress. It was as if she was the only girl on the dance floor, the only girl in the world. My heart was pounding. I moved in closer, a bit too close. I moved back a bit. I caught her eye.
‘I would like to go and sit down.’ I fluffed my line. Rather than ask her to sit down, I had simply informed her of my own movements. She looked at me, puzzled. I quickly tried again: ‘Would you like to come and sit down on the sof-tee with me?’
This was better. At least it was a proposition of some kind. However, I had forgotten whether sofa or settee was the correct thing to say and ended up creating my own chair, the sof-tee. I corrected myself again: ‘The sofa. Would you like to sit down with me on the sofa?’
There it was, the big question. It was out there. I’m not exaggerating when I say it took her some time to come up with an answer. She literally mulled it over, looking me up and down as I continued twisting to a record I was now convinced was stuck.
‘All right, then,’ she finally said.
I’d pulled!
Just.
Together we found a vacant slot between two other sets of snoggers. She was gorgeous, smelled wonderful and her perfect lips were attached to a perfect mouth, not like the back pages of Tatler at all. We sat down, she took out her chewing gum and within moments we were kissing. In the middle of the Hammersmith Palais surrounded by girls of loose morals, I had finally found one loose enough to kiss me. The sensation of kissing for the first time was extraordinary. Our tongues met with all the passion of a Magimix. Hers was swirling round and round, so mine did the same, chasing it. There was so much swirling that we started to froth a bit and my saliva was in danger of becoming stiff peaks. Then it was over. I thanked her, way too much; she returned the chewing gum to her mouth and stood up to leave.
‘What’s your name?’ I asked, worried I would lose her for ever.
‘Izzy,’ she said.
‘Easy?’ I questioned. Just my luck, the only girl I can pull is actually called ‘Easy’.
‘No,’ she said, ‘Izzy, short for Elizabeth.’
And then she was gone.
Sam’s final total was ninety-one and Alex’s eighty-seven. Mine was one. But I didn’t care, because I was convinced she was ‘the one’. I was in love with her. I told my four friends that I had kissed the most beautiful girl at the ball. They seemed happy for me. ‘Her name was Izzy,’ I told them through my perma-grin.
It transpired that they all knew Izzy. They’d all snogged her that night. I was just a number on her tally. It was also the common consensus that she wasn’t a very good kisser. ‘Kissed like a blender,’ somebody said. I had to agree. I was deflated, but not for long. I was off the mark. Surely things could only get better now. I had a newfound confidence. I had blender-kissed some chick called Izzy, and now I was a player. I had experience.
The next time I saw Lucy Protheroe sitting on the wall outside my school, I played it super-cool. No problems walking the fifty yards now.
‘Hi, Michael, how have you been?’ she asked, between hair flicks.
‘Good,’ I said. As if I couldn’t care less.
‘Are you going to the disco?’ she asked.
The major event on the school calendar was the Arnold House Disco. All the local girls’ schools were invited, and the gymnasium was transformed into a discothèque. I’d been dreaming about