Free Beta Male by Iain Hollingshead

away?’
    I returned to the room with a jolt. You can always rely on Ed to ruin your nostalgic musings with an Anglo-Saxon interjection.
    â€˜Actually, Ed,’ said Alan, peering over his BlackBerry and looking slightly wounded, ‘I was trying to help you guys out. I am devising a spreadsheet.’
    â€˜Oh great,’ said Matt, sarcastically. ‘My life lacks spreadsheets.’
    â€˜Then it is all the poorer for it,’ said Alan in what might, or might not, have been a joke. ‘This, however, is not any normal spreadsheet. It’s to help you guys out with your “kept man” scheme.’
    â€˜I thought you said it was a ridiculous scheme,’ I said.
    â€˜It is,’ said Alan. ‘So you will need all the help you can get.’
    We gathered round while Alan tapped away fluently on the tiny device, sending great blocks of text flying around the screen to reappear in other blocks, everything neatly arranged and colour-coded.
    â€˜Why do I have to be pink?’ complained Ed.
    â€˜Shut up,’ said Alan. ‘This isn’t
Reservoir Dogs
.’
    â€˜I thought you didn’t want to be part of this, anyway, Ed,’ said Matt.
    As Alan typed and tapped and computed, he explained that the sheets represented our ‘strengths and weaknesses’, our ‘threats and opportunities’, our individual chances of success. He jabbed a finger at a blue patch of the tiny screen, obscuring most of it. ‘Take Sam, for example. My “model” shows thatacting is one of the strengths by which he will achieve his goals. His weakness is that he is very unlikely to be able to convince rich, successful women that he is an attractive catch on his own merits. But if he pretended to be something he isn’t… Well, it might just work.’
    â€˜Wow, Alan. Thanks for that insight.’
    Alan twiddled a button and Matt’s spreadsheet appeared, highlighted in yellow. ‘Matt’s unique selling point, or USP, on the other hand, is that he is, or was, a doctor, and is therefore a caring, noble soul who can look after the children when they have colds and his wife is stuck in a board meeting.’
    â€˜You’re not making this sound like much fun, are you?’ I complained.
    â€˜My point is that Matt’s best bet is to play the game straight,’ said Alan. ‘Career women looking for a suitable mate will love him. He’s got charm candy written all over him. Just look at the spreadsheet. Excel never lies.’
    He twiddled another button and the screen turned briefly pink for Ed, flickered three times and faded into nothing. ‘Bloody battery,’ said Alan, stuffing the machine back in his pocket.
    â€˜Oh, what a shame,’ sneered Ed. ‘I’ll never get to find out what the oracle of Orange had in store for me.’
    â€˜All I was trying to illustrate,’ said Alan, pushing his glasses back up his nose, ‘is that you’re going to need a proper plan for it to come off. You can’t just waltz along and hope something falls into your laps.’
    â€˜It did for you,’ said Matt.
    â€˜Well, I’m lucky, I suppose,’ said Alan, looking bashful. ‘And I don’t hold out for perfection.’
    â€˜I’d love Jess to hear you say that,’ I said.
    â€˜I don’t think she’d be all that shocked,’ said Alan. ‘She’d probably say the same thing about me. We’re both settlers, not fantasists. You know that stupid card metaphor you’re always banging on about, Sam?’
    â€˜The blackjack one?’ said Ed and Matt, almost simultaneously.
    I frowned. Was I really that predictable?
    â€˜Exactly,’ said Alan. ‘In that daft metaphor, Jess is a twenty out of twenty-one. Or a nineteen, at least. So why torture myself looking for an improvement that doesn’t exist? If I were to plot a graph representing my relationship with Jess, it might