I am quite rapidly going off men. Present company excepted (F is lying next to me, pretending to be asleep) men seem to be more and more feeding my sense of inadequacy and increasing pessimism re: life, the universe and everything. Perhaps it's because you think entanglements with the opposite sex won't happen once you're safely married, or at any rate won't matter, and so when they do it's all the more noticeable. Perhaps there's just some genetic predisposition that ensures a straight woman will always, if subconsciously, be shaking her metaphorical feathers for the male of the species' approval. Psychiatrists and the cheerful likes of Schoppenhauer and his ilk probably have tons to say on the subject - that you're constantly in search of the ideal mate, that human beings always crave that extra little bit of praise and appreciation. I don't know, because I couldn't be arsed to look it up. But either way, present company excepted, I'm rapidly coming round to the idea that a spot of self-imposed hermitry might soon be in order, because frankly, it's easier that way.

First off, there was Thursday. Thursday has the fortune, or misfortune, depending on how you look at it, as masquerading as my new Friday, largely because there's a karaoke night mere metres away from my front door and, well, it would be rude not to go. So I trotted along with my best friend, who, newly single, was possibly trying - and it turns out succeeding - to exude an air of availableness.

My friend is extremely pretty, smiley and chatty and within the hour there was a little gaggle around her, two of them literally at her feet as she sat poised on a bar stool, as if administering wisdom to her new disciples. Two of the three didn't so much as glance at me, so enraptured were they. The third smiled politely, almost as if looking for my approval, and after a while I felt rather like the sensible elder sibling, keeping an eye on yet cramping the style of my much cooler kid sister. Perhaps because I looked lonely, I was eventually approached (I say approached, more fallen on top of) by a bloke who probably didn't fancy his luck with my friend, but thought I was a possible alternative. One of those ultra-confident men who looks like the obligatory joker who gets thrown out at the interview stage of The Apprentice every year and is probably more middle class than he likes to let on, he started his courtship by settling himself down on my knee, which was more than a little uncomfortable. He then waved the karaoke book in my face and declared "this is rubbish! It's arranged by song! I don't want it arranged by song, I want it arranged by artist." I pointed to where he could find such a book, and he leapt up, thrust his bottle of Peroni into my hand and said "guard this. Don't drink it," and went and deftly retrieved the magic book from the hands of another customer, and plonked himself back down on my knee. Flapping the book up and down in front of me he promised me he would sing anything I wanted, so long as it wasn't Westlife. I suggested the Spice Girls, and watched while he considered whether or not this was a joke. After a little consideration, he suddenly said "Ooh, ooh, what's the one that goes...." and launched into a tuneless and wordless rendition of something I had no chance of placing. "Come on, come on, you know, it was sung by that guy, you know, the one who did that other thing, the Welsh one, the Welsh one who might be Scottish. He's not dead," he added helpfully. In the background, someone had started singing "The Summer of '69". My new admirer leapt unsteadily to his feet, taking me with him, then before I knew it was dangling me a couple of feet above the ground with his hands digging uncomfortably into my ribs and shouting, seemingly to anyone who might want to know, "I'll have this one."

I politely untangled myself, finished my beer and said "Oh well, time for me to go home." He lunged forward in a sort of hug and says "you're going? It's early."
"I've got to get home to my husband," I said, flashing my wedding ring at him in the hope this might help. It didn't. It elicited the response "You're married? That's MENTAL." He turned to his friend. "She's married! That's MENTAL. You're, like, twelve."

"I'm twenty-eight."

"You're twenty-eight? That's MENTAL! She's twenty-eight!" he announced to the chap who looked as he was hoping to soon embark on a tonsil tango with my friend. "That's MENTAL! And she's married. That's MENTAL."

I left. True to my Sensible Older Sister cameo, I went home, made a pot of tea and played internet scrabble. Rock and Roll.

I wouldn't have deemed an outing to a gay bar last night to present me any such problems. After all, it's a gay bar. It isn't somewhere I'd normally go if I was in need of male attention, so seemed a fairly safe bet after Thursday. Not so. As I sat there, a man who has frankly spent too much time agonising over which hair gel to use and, possibly, then hedged his bets and gone for them all at once, stood inches away from me and ostentatiously removed his top. He then bent over with more theatricality than was strictly necessary and pretended to rummage around in a ruck sack. Eventually he took another top out, gazed at it thoughtfully then slowly began to reclothe himself.

Then he nudged me.

"Why didn't you look?"

"Huh?"

"Why didn't you look?"

I'm not used to men in gay bars demanding to know why I'm not staring at their bare chests. Actually it's not that common an occurrence in the likes of the Bentham, King and Queen or any other pub I frequent either.

"Erm..." I indicated F, who was gazing into his pint with an expression that said he'd rather not get involved.

"Oh. You don't want your boyfriend to see? I'm straight."

He added this as though somehow that was OK, that F would be rightly worried if a gay man hit on me, but a straight one baring all is just fine.

"Do you think I'm gay?" he demanded. I tried to make what I hoped sounded like non-commital noises.

"Do I look gay?" he persisted. I looked at him. He wasn't holding his wrist aloft and proclaiming "I'm free!" nor had he burst spontaneously into a medley of show tunes, but he was standing in a gay bar with his shirt off.

"I hate gay bars," he said, scowling.

I suggested to him that perhaps, in that case, he was in the wrong venue.

"Would you sleep with me if your boyfriend wasn't here?

Well, full marks for forwardness, I suppose.

Oh well, at the very least I guess this proves I've still got it, whatever "it" is, but whether I want "it" is another matter entirely. On the upside, this Sensible Big Sister did win at scrabble on this occasion, on account of scoring 72 points for the word "cervical". And if that doesn't do it for you, chaps, then I don't know what does.