My Groupon Adventure Page 2

  That evening I got another text from Mum:

  ‘Just been skydiving LOL! It was amazing. But you’d probably hate it haha x ’

  And I felt weirdly angry. I was irritated that own mother had assumed I would hate skydiving. Is that how people saw me? As some sort of pathetic old codger? I wanted to confound them. I realised that although I wasn’t that crazy, spontaneous guy yet I could fake it till I made it. It would be like method acting. I’d just read a book about it. Stanislavski called it the ‘Magic If’. If you want to play the part of someone who is sad, act ‘as if’ you were sad and then you will become it. I’d just have to play the part of a spontaneous guy until it became second nature. So I didn’t need to believe I was adventurous to behave with adventure. I just had to do it. The cast iron belief would appear eventually in the rear-view mirror. This was an empowering epiphany. Now I just had to get on with it. It was time to take a deep breath and step off the cliff. Groupon had made it easy. I’d found my tool, my portal to a better life and I steeled myself to begin my journey. But I wanted to break myself into this wonderful new world slowly. Helicopters and wakeboarding seemed a bit extreme to me. And so when I saw ‘Acupuncture and Massage ’ come up, I thought: ‘This is much more my scene’.

  Chapter Two

  My first Groupon was at a place called ‘Oriental Healthcare’, which boasted it was ‘London’s oldest exponent of the ancient art of Chinese medicine’. You’d probably expect that to be in Chinatown, wouldn’t you? But no, it was in Romford. The Chinese doctor welcomed me in warmly. His name was Ken and he spoke with a really strong cockney accent. Unless he was screaming abuse at his wife, when he used a barrage of Chinese gibberish. I sat in the reception area and sipped tea out of a chipped mug in the shape of Prince Charles’s head. There was a framed faded photo of the snooker player Ronnie O’Sullivan on the grubby wall. On the dirty coffee table in front of me lay a thumbed copy of Take a Break magazine from 2003. The headline read: ‘My husband is a dog’. Ken sat down next to me, a little too close, grinning the sort of smile you might throw a coconut through at the fairground. It was as if he couldn’t believe he had an actual customer.

  ‘Is acupuncture dangerous?’ I asked nervously. ‘Who have you been talking to?’ he said, angrily. ‘Look, it was a mistake. If anything he’s walking more.’ I smiled tensely. ‘This acupuncture guff is a piece of piss!’ he said, through saffron yellow teeth. ‘So don’t be scared! Anyway, ’ave you seen the guest book?’ I had seen the guest book, and it was impressive: testimonial after testimonial from delighted clients, all written in the same handwriting. Finally, Ken began the consultation. He took my pulse, and then asked me to show him my tongue, so I poked it out, and he just stared at it and shook his head. Then he scribbled something on his form in Chinese writing. Well I think it was Chinese writing, it was hard to tell: he might have been drawing a tiny picture of a cat.

  Next, Ken led me into a small dark room that smelt of spoiled meat. He asked me to take my clothes off and lie face down on the bed. So I got totally naked and clambered into position on the sheets, which felt oddly moist, like a used hanky. Ken re-entered ‘Why have you taken your pants off?’ ‘You told me to get undressed?’ I said. ‘Yeah, but obviously keep your pants on, you doughnut! What sort of place do you think this is? We’re from Shanghai, not Bangkok. But I suppose we all look the same to you do we?’ Ken left again. I put on my boxers. Ken returned and started filling my back up with needles. Acupuncture, it turns out, is pretty painful. Especially if the bloke doing it thinks you’re a racist pervert.

  Acupuncturists believe that illness is caused by an imbalance in our life energy, or ‘qi’ (pronounced ‘chee’). Acupuncture is meant to unblock the flow of this energy around our body. And if acupuncture wasn’t my cup of qi, then Ken’s subsequent gambit certainly wasn’t either. The next treatment was called ‘cupping’, which was nothing to do with testicles, thank God. Ken stuck a load of jam jars on my back, but having first burnt out the oxygen with a candle, creating a vacuum that sucked up my skin. It’s a bit like getting a love bite off a hoover (a friend has told me). As he did it, he said, ‘This might leave a bit of a mark, but nothing serious, only for a couple of days’. This is what my back looked like two weeks later:

  A BIT OF A MARK! I LOOK LIKE I’VE FALLEN ASLEEP ON THE HOB.

  Anyway, jam jars removed, Ken told me to lie there and wait for the masseuse. I was nervous about the massage. I’d never had one before and I had one big worry: what if I get an erection? Crikey, that would be awkward, especially after Pantsgate. The masseuse came in. For some reason I assumed I’d have a lovely little Chinese lady. It turned out to be a massive Spanish bloke called Juan. Immediately my erection worries trebled. God, he was good, with his big Catalan hands; and so strong, riding me with his powerful thighs. I was in heaven. Anyway, he flipped me over and finished me off – not like that – lit a candle (nice touch), and with that disappeared off into the night like Zorro, without as much as a kiss goodbye. As if it meant nothing to him.

  Having re-dressed, I wandered back to the reception area. Ken was there giving it the hard sell, like a fruit and veg man down Romford market:

  ‘Juan’s the dog’s bollocks, isn’t he?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘terrific.’

  ‘So I suppose you want to sign up for some more sessions?’

  ‘Umm … to be honest, I’m a bit hard up at the moment.’

  ‘Yes, Juan mentioned.’

  ‘No, as in I haven’t got any money.’

  ‘Alright, twist me arm: I’ll give you six sessions for the price of four and I’ll throw in a bag of turtles’ dicks for free?’

  I politely declined. ‘Would you like me to sign the guest book, Ken?’ I said. ‘Nah you’re alright, we’ll do that for you.’

  I stepped into the bracing November air feeling refreshed, literally and metaphorically. For the first time in years I’d done something new and it was invigorating. I was being spontaneous! And I wanted to keep the momentum up. I knew what I was like: if I stopped, I’d never start again. I’d go back to square one: a dull man eating ready meals for two, alone, in front of Nazi documentaries. I decided to leap straight into my next adventure. I got home and immediately rolled the Groupon roulette wheel again. I landed on something completely bizarre – I went alpaca trekking in Kent.

  Apparently in a car park. You’ll notice I’m wearing an alpaca wool scarf, which is adding insult to injury for the alpaca. That’s like going to meet a pig wearing a bacon bikini. In hindsight, I think the alpaca trek is aimed at children rather than twenty-six-year-old men. I know that because on the trek it was just me and a six-year-old girl. She turned up with her mother and her sister, but farm policy demanded that only two people could go on each trek and so the little girl ended up coming with me. The first thing I did was grooming. (The alpaca, I mean, not the six-year-old girl). Then we all went for a walk around the Romney Marsh: me, the girl, Hershey the alpaca, and our guide, Lara. The little girl was such a brat. She just wouldn’t stop talking; I couldn’t get a word in edgeways.

  ‘Where’s his mummy?’

  ‘Do alpacas go to school?’

  ‘Does he do a wee-wee or a poo-poo?’

  All questions I wanted to ask, but couldn’t. Alpacas are from the camel family. Their faces in particular seem impossibly fluffy, like a cloud with eyes, or a fat boy who’s walked face first into a snowstorm. Their fleece is famously thick and soft but alpacas don’t like you touching it. In fact, they don’t like you at all. They’re prey animals, meaning that where they evolved originally, on the cold mountains of Peru, everything was trying to eat them. Which makes them really jumpy: any sort of noise and they bolt. Hershey scared himself with his own fart and almost took my arm off. Alpacas are also extremely hierarchical animals and walk together in a straight line in a woolly conga. If anyone tries to get above their station and jump the queue they get spat at. Yes, literally spat at. Alpacas have two stomachs, like cows (and
Americans), and they regurgitate green bile from the first chamber and gob it at you. I tell you what though: they can give it out but they can’t take it. When I spat back at my alpaca it went absolutely mental.

  But alpacas aren’t just farmed to provide comic relief to bored morons like me. They’re also often used by farmers to scare off dogs and foxes. Alpacas hate dogs and if they corner one they jump on it until it dies, like canine bubble wrap. Not so cute now, are they? When the little girl heard that fact her face dropped, her naive world view shattered, as if she’d just walked in on her Barbie shooting-up smack. No wonder she was disappointed. We overly romanticise animals, I think, especially for children. But the truth is we are deluding ourselves if we think animals are ethical. Have you ever seen a nature documentary? Animals are nihilistic psychopaths. Dolphins are prolific rapists, female pigs often eat their own piglets, and pandas deliberately refuse to reproduce in a cynical attempt to get handjobs from humans.

  We walked around the boggy fields for an hour or so, and a fun day ended with Lara presenting us with our certificates:

  Lara also pinned a big badge on my chest, with the words ‘Total Star’ written on it, and then ruffled my hair for a bit. It was at this point that I realised Lara thought I had special needs.

  The following lunchtime I’d arranged to meet Dave in the pub. ‘Dave! I’ve fallen in love with Groupon! It’s amazing!’ ‘Tell me about it mate,’ he said. ‘I’ve just bought two tickets to an Audience with Barry Manilow at the Royal Albert Hall for a tenner.’ ‘That’s awesome, mate,’ I replied with zero sincerity. ‘So, are you going to keep going then?’ he asked. ‘Definitely, mate,’ I said, ‘I’ve decided I’m going to do one Groupon every week for a year.’ Dave burst out laughing, a mist of lager expelled into the air by the strength of his guffaw. ‘What’s so funny?’ I said. ‘It’s just I know you’ll never do it! You won’t follow through,’ said Dave, wiping tears from his eyes. ‘I bet I will,’ I said. ‘I bet you won’t,’ shot back Dave. ‘Alright then, let’s formalise this thing.’ ‘What do you mean? Draw up a legally binding contract?’ ‘Well maybe not a contract, but let’s make this a proper bet with rules and stuff,’ I said. ‘Like what?’ ‘Well, I promise to do a Groupon every week for a year, up until my next birthday say, and if I do that then …’ ‘Then what?’ ‘Then I win and you have to give your awful CD collection to charity.’ ‘And if you fail, then what? What’s the forfeit?’ ‘I won’t fail.’ ‘But if you do? How about: if you fail then I’m allowed a crack at Jen.’ ‘What! No way!’ ‘Alright then, if you fail then me and the boys are allowed to choose a Groupon from Hell that you have to do. No ifs, no buts.’ ‘Deal,’ I said. ‘Deal,’ he said. And we shook on it.

  ‘Hang on,’ said Dave. ‘Do you get to choose the Groupons you do? What if you just choose nice stuff like haircuts and face peels?’ Dave had a point. We needed to establish some more ground rules. So we decided that there were three laws I would abide by on ‘My Groupon Adventure’. Firstly, as we’d just discussed, I would have to do an offer every week for a year. So that was 52 offers. I’d already done two, so I had only 50 more to go. Secondly, the Groupon deal at hand would have to be something that I’d never done before. Thirdly, Dave decreed that I must never take the easy option. No matter how well I’d got on with Juan there were to be no more massages. If I was really going to change myself, if I was to transform myself into this new monster of spontaneity, I would have to put in the hard yards. And that meant doing the weirdest deals I could lay my hands on. Dave was to be judge and jury of My Groupon Adventure. If Dave decided that I’d taken an easy option that would count as a failure and would invoke the Groupon Deal from Hell. ‘And finally,’ said Dave ominously, ‘You cannot refuse a Groupon. If someone buys you a Groupon you are banned from saying no.’ ‘No problem,’ I said. Because I could not imagine that ever being an issue. Who would buy me a Groupon? Nobody knew what I was up to and anyway, what sort of person would spunk 50 of their hard-earned pounds on a stupid activity just to make my life difficult? ‘Deal,’ I said again, shaking on it once more. And then Dave told me he’d bought me a voucher for dog yoga.

  Dog yoga, or ‘Doga’, promised to allow me to access my dog on a ‘more spiritual level’. This was a surprise to me. I was previously unaware that dogs had a spiritual level. In my experience, dogs tended to exist very much on a ‘urinating on trees and sniffing each other’s bum holes level’. But no. Apparently when dogs roll onto their backs and writhe about they don’t want you to stroke their bellies. No, they are simply overcome with the existential consequences of living in a godless universe. However there was one major obstacle to my dog yoga plans: I didn’t actually have a dog. I don’t want a dog, mainly because I don’t trust myself to keep it alive. I’ve got a poor record keeping things alive: Tamagotchis, basil plants, and plumbers have all died on my watch. Also, I’ve never understood the idea that dogs are a man’s best friend. That’s a pretty odd ideal of friendship. On that model, a friend is someone who can’t speak, who you’ve got to feed, and whose shits you clean up. If a dog is your best friend then who are your other bezzies? ‘Oh this is Dan, he’s a baby. And this is Gloria, she’s in a coma.’

  Clearly I needed a dog for the session. I couldn’t just put a fake moustache on my mum’s cat. Not again. So I rang around all my friends. Two minutes later I’d spoken to everybody. No-one could help me out, including Dave who said that he would have let me borrow his pug, Shania Twain, but unfortunately Shania Twain was being wormed. I’d reached a dead end, there was only one option left. The absolute last resort: I called my uncle and asked him if I could borrow his Jack Russell, Marmite, for a few hours. He said ‘Yes’ before I could finish the question, because Marmite is mental. Genuinely mad. He never stops moving, leaping around all day long like a popcorn kernel in a hot pan. And he barks, and he licks, and he chews, and he digs, and he farts. He’s a pinball with an anus.

  I picked the dog up from my uncle’s flat in Putney. He was waiting in the road as I pulled in, with Marmite already straining at the leash. I opened the back door to my Peugeot to let Marmite climb in. For once the dog was stationary, looking away nonchalantly. ‘He doesn’t like to go in the back,’ advised my uncle. ‘He likes to ride up front.’ ‘Oh does he?’ I said ‘And what radio station does he prefer?’ I opened the passenger door and Marmite hopped on the seat, propped aloofly on his hind legs. My uncle handed me a small yellow bag. ‘He’s just been for a dump, but here’s a bag just in case.’ He then ran inside and locked the door before I could change my mind. We set off. I put Radio 1 on. Almost immediately Marmite pawed the radio and changed the station to Classic FM.

  The Doga was taking place in a dance studio near Fulham Broadway tube station. There were three other dog owners waiting in the hallway outside our room. They were a mother and her adolescent daughter, replete with Cocker Spaniel and Maltese puppy; and a lady in her early thirties, with blonde highlights and pink leotard, flanked by a disgusting hound that looked like an animatronic beard. The dogs were predictably losing their minds, turning the narrow corridor into a canine Hadron Collider. We all exchanged amusing small talk about the looming absurdity. The blonde lady looked down at her dog and looked back up at me and said, ‘He’s not going to talk to me after this.’ I stared back at her: ‘Does he talk to you now?’

  Suddenly we were joined by a gossiping army of yummy mummies, with their ski-holiday tans and their botoxed brows. This was no great surprise. I lived down the road and I’d always see them in local cafes with their children called things like ‘Sebastian’ and ‘Goujoun’. And they’d order their ridiculous coffees: ‘Hello, can I have a super super super skinny latte please? So that’s no coffee, no milk, and no cup.’ And then they’d order a thing called a ‘Babycino’ for young Taramasalata. Babycinos wind me up. They’re essentially coffee-free cappuccinos for your little darlings. They’re unbelievably pretentious. And they cost about four quid. What’s going on in the world? A cappuccino
for a child? When I was a kid, if I wanted a drink, I’d give myself a nosebleed. If parents are giving their children that to drink, it makes you wonder what they’re putting in their lunchboxes.

  ‘Did you enjoy your packed lunch today, darling?’

  ‘Not really, mother. The lobster bisque was too salty. And was that chorizo from Lidl?’

  Finally our instructor – Shawna – arrived to let us into the studio, handsome muscles swelling proudly out of black Lycra, her thick tan adding prominence to her gleaming prosthetic teeth. She appeared to have a wig tucked under her arm, but on closer inspection it was actually a pathetic looking Shih Tzu. Shawna placed her substantial bag of tricks on a side table and handed out our yoga mats, which we placed on the floor in a circular pattern as if petals on a flower. Then something very strange happened. The dogs started urinating on the mats. Mine in particular came in for a special hosing. Everywhere I looked genitals gushed. ‘Oh, this is totally normal,’ reassured Shawna. ‘It’s territorial.’ I looked down at my mat, which glistened blackly. ‘Errr … shall I go and get some loo roll?’ I wasn’t going to do yoga submerged in piss. I wanted to access my dog on a more spiritual level but I drew the line at water sports. Shawna reached into her bag and pulled out J-cloths and a luminous yellow bottle of Flash.