Noelle McCarthy: Boyfriend game better than the real thing

It is 7 o'clock on a Sunday night and the text comes in. "If we had boyfriends, they'd be hugging us."

I know this one, I don't flinch. Back at her:

"If we had boyfriends, they'd be lovely."

Back at me:

"If we had boyfriends, they'd be making us cups of tea."

And so it goes:

"If we had boyfriends, we'd be HAPPY."

"If we had boyfriends everything would be OK."

Upping the ante:

"If we had boyfriends, they'd be perfect."

And game, set and match, texter:

"If we had boyfriends, so would we."

If We Had Boyfriends. A game for two players. As devised by Noelle McCarthy, and her best friend (who shall remain nameless in deference to the possibility of her ever getting a boyfriend in real life any time soon).

Not a hard one to play, just a variation on the traditional "If I won Lotto" or "If I had those boots" scenarios of aggrandisement and escape we wage-slaves so enjoy.

Like those other scenarios, the focus is on wish-fulfilment here, but what gives this one an added piquancy is the potential for a full realisation of your own self-pity.

When you play this game right, you not only realise how great it would be to have a boyfriend, but also how hard and depressing it is to not.

As such, it is best played at exactly 7 on a Sunday night. Everyone knows that 7 on a Sunday night has been scientifically proven to be the loneliest time in the week.

It doesn't matter who you are, how resourceful or successful, or how self-reliant you've trained yourself to be. If you aren't one of the halves that make a whole at 7pm on a Sunday, you're going to feel it. The icy grip of an existential loneliness that transcends mere boredom or frustration, and goes right to the core of what it is to be alone.

That's your lot on Sunday evening, unless you're shacked up, hooked up, snuggling, or cuddling, preferably a conjoined twin.

Maybe it's worse for females, I don't know. What I do know is that the spiritual condition of being a single woman watching Cameron Bennett on TV One, on a Sunday night in Auckland, is that of the sock stuck down the back of the washing machine, the one that has been, and will be, there for years.

A furry black sock (gold top, if you're a boy. No one misses those). A sock that somehow lost its way, and now languishes in a little crevasse. Alone, unheralded, possibly mouldy, unsung.

And I was not born to be an odd sock, my friends, none of us were. The best friend in Wellington wasn't either.

And so If We Had Boyfriends was born. And you know, it works.

It works because, by acknowledging the inherent desolation of a Sunday, we are simultaneously neutralising some of its sting.

And in its own way, its fun. One of those bad things that makes you feel good. Like scratching a mozzie bite, or drinking Malibu and Coke.

It's not the healthiest of pastimes obviously, and maybe I wouldn't have admitted to it in the past.

But where's the harm in admitting you're lonely sometimes? That you'd like someone to come and make you a cup of tea?

Saying that out loud robs it of its power, it means we're not (as) haunted by the fear we'll always be alone. The best thing about it really though, is that it's just a game.

If we had boyfriends, everything would be OK. Yeah, as they say, right. If we had boyfriends, they'd steal the remote, and make us make the tea.

Or give them foot rubs, or listen to them, or ask for favours of a depraved and gymnastic nature.

If we had boyfriends, they'd be large and complicated, and noisy and sensitive, and we might not like their mothers, or their politics, or their shoes.

Real boyfriends would be talking and wiggling, and wanting answers and conversations and fidelity. Real boyfriends would be on our couches and right up in our faces. But our imaginary boyfriends are perfect. They hug us and they love us and they're quiet, and they always make the tea.

They make us better women just by being, and they disappear without trace come Monday morning, 'til we need them again.

What real man could compete with that?