Attack of the personal space invaders

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[/audioplayer]It’s the shoulders you have to watch out for. If he’s pressing them back as his hand comes out to shake yours, then beware: you’re about to meet a Space Invader.

It’s tricky, being an alpha male in polite 21st-century society. Gone are the days when you could expect other men to gather round, worshipping your medallion as it glistened on a bed of luxuriant chest hair. Now you have to subvert the genre. You have to go to them. You have to get in their face, literally.

There’s a particular breed of alpha who displays his credentials by standing unnervingly close to you, his face just a few inches from yours, eye contact maintained for what seems like centuries. Some of them even avoid blinking. Or is that just how it feels?

The subtext is clear: ‘We are men of the world, you and I. Or rather New Men of the New World. We are not bound by the conventions of the past, the rigid formality of an uptight era. We feel no shame in standing so close to each other that we could compare dental records.’

Space Invaders don’t lean in, they step up, resolutely and proudly vertical as their toes almost meet yours. It’s all done with a conspiratorial smile, recognition that you’re two of the in-crowd, rejecting the other losers around you, two alphas together. Well don’t take this the wrong way, Mr Invader, but get lost, would you? I am defiantly un-alpha. In fact I’m way past beta, so far down the Greek alphabet even an Oxford don would struggle to find me.

It happened at a party the other night. The guy was an inch shorter than me, but no matter, an extra backwards thrust of the shoulders and retinal parity was established.