Mr Scotland

A man's capacity for self-delusion in terms of his own attractiveness never ceases to amaze me. I realise that I can't sweep all men into the same category with a few sharp words typed on my laptop and that is my caveat over. However I find it very much worth commenting upon how men are such a contrast to we women and how complex the interaction is that we have between our actual physical self and our self esteem.

Perhaps I ask for it dating on the internet; but my theory is that the problems in the dating game lie with exactly how many wankers there are out there, not in how one finds them. Admittedly I would have ignored this one had I seen him in a bar - at 5ft 8" he stood too short for my hypocritical tastes (I'm 5ft 1") but I subscribe to my ex-mother-in-law's view that I can't help being attracted to tall men. She used to say that it was an inner biological urging in order that I would have 'normal sized children'. She always did have a special way of putting things.

Simply put, even most totally gorgeous and slim women think they are ugly and fat and if they don't then they at least pretend to in the polite company of other people. Perhaps they prounce around at home stroking their flat stomachs and patting their slim aquiline noses - who knows - but what I do know is that if they do it is because their self esteem is utterly in proportion with the way that they look.

Men, on the other hand, or at least the self-loving Mr Scotland with whom I spent my Tuesday evening struggling not to give him additional reason to further love himself, have no equal sense of appropriate balance between their actual attractiveness and how stunning they believe themselves to be. They think they are studs when their penises are barely more than adequate. They think their bodies are in great shape when they could use to lose a stone or two and spend some time in the gym. They think their faces are attractive when they are an individual call for men to begin to use face products and cosmetics.

I probably should have told him that his jeans ripped at the knee were a pre-turn of the Millennium fashion that he should leave behind with his almost 20 year old body building accolade but I was too busy trying to tune out his obvious pleasure at still occasionally shagging his ex-wife, not being able to count the number of women he claims to have slept with during his life and his much-too-honest admission that he'd had sex two days before our date.

I love a confident man but there's a line between confidence and out-of-proportion to the truth arrogance and this guy crossed the line sometime in the late 80s never to return. My brain was so active trying to extricate myself from the date that when he told me I was gorgeous and he'd an erection all night that I had to do something with before three mins were up that I was too busy to remember to throw up all over him.

On reflection I recall his five minute defence that body builders don't have small penises, it is simply a matter of perspective. Their bodies are so large it makes it look small apparently. I also have to wonder if his 3 min 'touch my penis' deadline was indicative of his usual timescale in such matters. I will however take his point that it's not true that ex body builders muscle will turn to fat because they are two completely different things. However, that does then beg the question of exactly where does the extra 3 stone he is carrying come from?