Ross O'Carroll-Kelly
Sorcha has been withholding certain privileges from me until I can prove to her that I’m capable of being faithful
So I’m sitting in the other night, rewatching the 2012 Ken Cup final – as one does – when there’s suddenly a familiar whiff in my nostrils that I recognise almost instantly as Love Chloe, a perfume that has always done it for me and which Sorcha sometimes throws on when she wants something.
I look over my shoulder and – roysh enough – she’s standing in the doorway with a slightly embarrassed smile on her face and enough perfume on her to anaesthetise a humpback whale ahead of major surgery.
She goes, “Is this an important match?” which I know from my years of exposure to women is Passive Aggressive for, ‘Can you turn the rugby off please?’
“All rugby matches are important,” I go, because it’s a point that should be made. “What’s up?”
She goes, “Nothing. I was just wondering did you fancy an early night?” My jaw is suddenly on the floor.
Just to fill you in on a little bit of back story here, Sorcha and I have been back living together for a few months now? But she’s been, let’s just say, withholding certain privileges from me until I can prove to her that I’m capable of being faithful. I’ve got a set of nuts on me here like Jupiter and Neptune. But it sounds very much to me like I’m being propositioned now.
“What do you mean by an early night?” I go. “As in, what specifically is being put on the table?” Because I don’t want to spend the rest of the night looking at her with her nose stuck in a book, gasping every 15 seconds and telling me she actually feels sorry for people who’ve never read Jonathan Franzen? She smiles and goes, “Do I have to spell it out for you, Ross?” and suddenly she’s walking up the stairs with me trotting stupidly behind her like Simba after Mufasa.
I’m already unbuttoning my chinos when she reaches the top of the stairs and goes, “Although there is something I want you to do for me first,” and, like probably most males, I’m thinking, ‘Shit, that sounds suspiciously like foreplay to me’. But I follow her into the bedroom anyway and that’s when I see the cordboard box on the bed. A cordboard box I recognise. The one that holds my entire collection of romantic comedy DVDs.
I’m like, “Okay, what’s going on?” Sorcha hands me a black bin bag and goes, “I want you to throw all of these movies out.” I’m there, “What the fock?” which, I think, is a natural enough reaction.
She goes, “I know why you have them, Ross. They were part of your seduction routine.” I’m there, “You don’t know what you’re talking about, Babes.” She’s like, “Ross, I’ve heard you refer to this as your toolbox.” She knows exactly what she’s talking about, by the way. You don’t become Ireland’s leading philanderer without having the right equipment – and the contents of this box have been as vital to me in bedding literally thousands of women as my stock of incredible, incredible chat-up lines.
