I know I should go home. I know this because we’ve reached that part of the night where I start telling people what I think of them. This is not a “Come here you, you know what your problem is” scenario – it’s much worse than that. Give me two or more glasses of wine and I get chatty. Chatty and affectionate – it’s a bad combination.

I’m at a party and in the last fifteen minutes I’ve told not one, but two, young men how happy I am to have met them, how lovely and interesting and intelligent they are. My friend Adam sits down and since I’m on a roll I don’t stop there – I give him a bit of a pep talk and tell him how great he is, how much fun he is, how much I appreciate him and that he has a great beard. All of these things are true, especially the bit about the beard. God, I love a ginger beard. It’s perverse, but there it is.
My religion teacher should be proud. She was always banging on about seeing Jesus in everybody; and failing that, her practical advice was that if you couldn’t say anything nice, then keep your big fat gob shut, or words to that effect. I have the opposite problem – I’m always saying complimentary things to people. Problem is, most Irish people don’t appreciate it.
Irish people are suspicious of compliments, particularly if these refer to their looks. This is, of course, one of the many idiosyncrasies of the Irish. Sometimes these are charming, like the general inability to pronounce the word “modern”, which comes out strangely mangled as “mod-ren”; others you just have to learn to live with, such as the fact that anyone who is in a pub before they are due to meet you is bound to be at least one round late. But the compliment taboo is a pain in the hole, especially as so many of you lovely people are so charming! I mean it!
My friend Edward explains that this is because for the most part, the Irish do not have high self-esteem. If you don’t believe you have beautiful eyes or an appealing smile, I suppose it is easy to wonder if someone has an ulterior motive for saying that you do...
For some reason I didn’t get this suspicious quirk in my genetic make-up. Oh yes, I got the pale Irish skin and the freckles, both of which should dispose me to regard compliments with misgiving, but I don’t. I blame my parents for this. My entire family was born on this rain-soaked little island, but as a group the Sextons are always telling each other how wonderful we are – although this is possibly because we are the only ones that think so. Then again it may be a bad habit we picked up on foreign shores – we, as it were, went native.
South Africans throw compliments around like confetti at a wedding and the first five minutes of any interaction with friends is pleasantly spent love bombing each other. This is more fun than bitching about the weather, plus it’s good for the auld ego. On the days that you stare in the mirror in despair, at least you can cheer yourself up remembering that Maria thinks you’re perceptive, Jonathan reckons you’re funny “for a girl” and Mark rates your breasts rather highly.
Such carry-on is just not acceptable here – oh no. Despite the fact that I’ve lived here long enough to know that the quickest way to ruin the pleasant afterglow of great sex is to remark positively on your partner, I find it almost impossible to keep quiet. Like wine – but even healthier! – a good orgasm makes me loquacious.
Early on in a former relationship I made the grave error of complimenting my ex on his body. The man in question spent hours in the gym, practised yoga, swam and cycled so it doesn’t take much of a leap to guess that being trim and fit was important to him. However, as soon as I mentioned that it was a job well done, the atmosphere in the room shifted from cosy to frosty.
I suspect he was worried about the possible subtext. In fairness, compliments often have them, but these generally fall into two major categories – either “please be my friend” or “let’s have sex!” Expressing my appreciation for his well-defined set of abs probably did have a good dollop of the latter, but since we’d been having sex for weeks already that hardly seems like something worth getting into a strop over. It ain’t like I wanted his credit card, his babies or indeed to invite him on a three-month cross-country killing spree – I just thought his chest was rather good.
You’re generally safe with compliments on sexual performance, although not always. After complimenting an ex-boyfriend on his overall sexual skill, which was indeed worthy of praise, he wanted me to analyse the component parts and compare them to previous performances, like some kind of sexual Top Gear. Was he good at kissing? What did I like about it? Did he give good head? Was it the best? How about foreplay? What did other men do? Was it better?
Sex is not really comparable, nor is it a competition. Yes, you may remember that X had great stamina and Y had a special trick or two you enjoyed, but overall the way you feel about a sexual experience is bound up with many nebulous and intangible aspects – including the fact that you got cuddles and chat afterwards, not an interrogation.
It’s not just Irish men who suffer from sexual flatter-phobia – women seem to as well. A friend, who best remain nameless, had a bit of a conniption after her new partner complimented her on her oral sex skills. Did this, she wondered, imply he thought she was a bit of a slapper? Obviously she’d had practise. Personally I reckon he probably just meant what he said or at most he was grateful she didn’t scrape him with her teeth or was keen to ensure that more blowjobs were forthcoming. After all, most of us don’t live in Harold Pinter plays where every utterance is loaded with double meanings, implied connotations and ulterior motives.
Before I left the party I felt the need to apologise for strewing compliments at these poor unwitting men. The worst social faux pas you can commit is to make someone feel uncomfortable and since I sincerely meant what I had said, I didn’t want to do that. Luckily my compliments were taken in the spirit with which they were intended. I left with phone numbers and Facebook friendship requests, as well as an invitation to dinner and another to Berlin not to mention a fair few compliments myself. Not bad for a night’s work! Of course the fact that they were gay may, just may, have had something to do with it – they knew I wasn’t coming on to them in some sort of deranged over-enthusiastic way. As if I needed to do that!
Still, I do think I need to tone things down – when in Rome blah blah and all that bullshit. Instead of telling someone I think they are interesting, attractive, intelligent or sexy, I ought to be less glowing. Perhaps terms like “acceptable” or “remarkably average” would do? The next time I have great sex I shall I’ll tell my lover it was “nice.” Damned with faint praise – nothing could be worse than that!