Sunday night in the Club d'Amour and the alpha wolf can't get a bite. If I'm going to get my mojo back it looks like I might have to get my full name back too
Been on the end of, let's just say, one or two reverses in the game of love recently. I'm not sure if you'd call what I'm going through a drought, but JP and Oisinn are laying bets that Kieran Fallon will be back riding again before I am - and a goy with my rep is going to see that as a serious challenge.
Which is why I've storted to fall back on some of my old favourites, in other words birds who've had the pleasure of my company before but haven't been hurt enough to be scared away permanently.
Jessie Earle is as reliable as an old bulldog - and almost as good-looking. She has one of those faces - looks like she sprinted a hundred metres in a ninety-metre gym - and she played hockey for so many years after she left school that I'm always pleasantly surprised to discover that she's still into the likes of me, if you know what I mean.
Jessie is also a creature of habit and Knackery Doo on a Sunday night is her - as she's so fond of saying - thing.
So it's no surprise to find her, in the same old spot, with the same old friends, watching the dancefloor like a bear at a foxhole, looking every goy up and down and comparing his details against her checklist of qualities that she wants in an ideal boyfriend but is unlikely to ever get.
Not in one boyfriend, anyway. And certainly not here, in the Club d'Amour, on a Sunday night.
Until, all of a sudden, along comes a goy who ticks all the boxes.
She's like, "Ross! Oh my God, hi. Are you here on your own?" and she storts looking over my shoulder - never a good sign.
I'm there, "The alpha wolf always hunts alone," but I don't say it in, like, a sleazy way? She gives me what I would have to describe as the falsest smile I've seen since the night I spent defacing the old man's campaign posters during the last local elections.
Then - and this isn't the three pints of Vitamin H playing tricks with my mind - she turns to her friend and actually turns her nose up, as if to say, no, definitely not him.
I'm thinking, is this the same girl who supposedly cried for a week when I made a move on the singer at her sister's wedding? I move off, a little dazed, if the truth be told. But one of the things I really, really love about myself is that I never stay down for long.
One pint and one trip to the TK Maxx later, I've locked eyes with this absolute stunner, who, if we were in the actual VIP room, you would swear was Katherine Heigl? I sidle up to her, just as she's telling her friend that - oh my God - this song is so me driving from Rhode Island to Connecticut in a rental cor two summers ago and her friend is agreeing that it is.
"I know what you're thinking," I go, using one of my tried and trusted lines. "You're thinking, I could have sworn that goy was checking me out - even though he's obviously way out of my league. Well, here's the sports news, baby - you've just been promoted." She makes, like, a motion, roysh, as if to throw her vodka and cranberry juice in my face, so I get out of there pretty quickly and spend another half an hour, I suppose, licking my wounds.
I never thought I'd end up like that Carrie Bradshaw or one of that crowd, but I'm standing at the bor wondering, what's wrong with me? Why can't I find love? Is it something that needs to be discussed with my friends over brunch? I make the effort with two or three more girls, one an absolute disaster area with an orse like two boy scouts fighting in a tent. But no one wants to know.
There's nothing else for it - at ten-past-one, I decide to split.
On the way out the door, I make a quick detour to where Jessie and her friends are standing and, though I try to be subtle, I end up just blurting it out. "What's wrong with me?" It sounds pathetic. Yep, it's eggs at eleven with Samantha, Miranda and Charlotte.
"I mean, girls generally don't just fall out of love with me," I go.
Jessie shrugs her shoulders. "I don't know what it is," she goes. "Have you, like, changed your hair?" I'm there, "Jessie - it's still the quiff! Big and stiff! Remember you used to say that?" "What aftershave are you wearing?" "Gaultier. Hasn't changed either." "Something has," she goes. "I mean, I've been watching you totally crash and burn since you came in here tonight. It's like, aaaggghhh!" "I know. Tell me about it." She's there, "It's like you've lost your mojo." "I think I know what it is," one of her friends suddenly goes. I don't know what she's called. "A girl I know from, like, the Institute was on your MySpace page the other night and she said you'd changed your name . . ." I'm like, "Yeah, I've announced I've dropped the, er, O'Carroll. See, I don't want people knowing that me and my old dear are related. The pollock." "So you're just, like, Ross Kelly?" Jessie goes. "Plain old Ross Kelly." I'm there, "Nothing plain or old about me. I'm twenty-six with fourteen-inch biceps . . ." "But your mojo, it's obviously all in your name . . ." "What?" "Seriously, Ross. Nobody's going to want to be with someone called Ross Kelly. Oh my God, Ross Kelly could be a salad chef or work in, like, pest control. But Ross O'Carroll Kelly . . . Really means something." I think they're right. It must be that.
I turn around to the two of them and go, "I could actually kiss you right now. Except . . ." "We wouldn't be interested," they both go.
"Exactly - but you might be next time," and I give them the guns, which birds always love.
I head for the door, stopping one last time - force of habit - to throw one or two one-liners at this little Mary Kate Olson lookalike but she makes, like, an L shape out of her finger and thumb and then I know for sure - utter weapon and all as the old dear is, I'm too young and too handsome to take a vow of celibacy.
I whip out my phone and immediately change my voicemail greeting.
"Lucky you," I go. "You're one of the lucky few to have the mobile number of Ross O'Carroll Kelly . . ."