Towards the start of this summer, I matched with a Scottish bloke on Tinder and our first interaction went something like this:
Me: Hey ScottishGuy, whats cracking?
ScottishGuy: ARE YOU GETTING MY MESSAGES?
Me: Is this a joke?
SG: NO, people dont seem to get my messages when I send them
(maybe, they didnt "get" them on purpose)
After about 20 minutes of chatting, I knew already that things with this dude would never go anywhere, but because I apparently am a massive sucker for punishment (or perhaps past me knew that future me would start a blog detailing the ridiculous dating encounters that she goes through and needed fodder), I agreed to go on a date with him.
The Tinder conversation revolved mostly around our respective political stances and him repeatedly and intensively drilling me about my various nihilistic outlooks on certain topics. Eventually, we had gotten so deep into it, he started with the "I can say this over text" thing, so we agreed to meet up the following weekend to finish our very intense Tinder discussion.
We met at Hatfield House, in Hatfield - the filming location for The Favourite, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, V for Vendetta, Hot Fuzz and about 25 other movies on the first very hot day of the summer. I wore jeans, a tshirt and open sandals and was positively melting, so when this guy rocked up in jeans, a formal shirt, formal shoes and a leather jacket, I was rather astounded.
Now I understand first date nerves, and so, put this odd summer day attire down to wanting to be "appropriately" dressed, but the dude was clearly dying in this get up - and, I mean, he is Scottish so I know he cant handle even the slightest slightly too-warm temperature, which made me repeatedly wonder, while watching this poor, lanky, ginger creature struggle to keep his shit together while obviously dying from heat stroke, what the fuck he was thinking by, at the very least, wearing a leather jacket in summer.
As we would say in South Africa: Ag, shame.
We wandered off towards the gardens and popped into the little cafe to get something to drink and - as curiously as the leather jacket - he ordered coffee. A 6'5'' Scottish man in a leather jacket and formal shoes, in 32 degree heat, drinking coffee...Well, words escaped me.
Once the drinks had been obtained, we headed off to stroll through the gardens while chatting and once we had sufficiently baked in the sun, we headed into the actual house and had a little history tour which was very interesting - honestly, even with the evident cellular decomposition that this guy was clearly suffering from, it was a very nice first date - which we ended at a local pub (he got drunk on one pint of beer. Amateur).
The second date was when the wheels started falling off. I had suggested drinks at a pub in Highgate and he had asked if I'd be keen to tour Highgate cemetery beforehand. I had already been to the East side, but had always wanted to tour the West side (George Michael and Michael Faraday are buried there, in case you were wondering), so we agreed to meet there around midday to take the tour and then head off to the pub afterward.
To start off with, the guy arrived nearly an hour late, blaming the traffic. I do understand London traffic is fucking terrible, but in a world of Citymapper, Google Maps and even just GPS, for fuck sake, it does not make sense that you can be that late unless there is an actual vehicular catastrophe - which there was not.
He was also wearing exactly the same clothes - from top to toe - as he had worn on the first date. Fortunately, it wasnt a million degrees outside so he wasnt melting. I was a little irked by this, but I reasoned that I was wearing the same jeans so...
Anyway, the tour started and off we went following a guide around, listening to him tell us the history of the cemetery which was incredibly interesting, however, this dude fancied himself a bit of a history intellectual and kept interrupting the tour guide to ask him questions. Now, this was not a problem in itself, but the way he was asking the questions started to annoy me because he kept asking in a such a way as to try and prove the tour guide wrong. I mean...why do that?
He also kept dropping his water bottle. Repeatedly.
We got to the end of the tour and headed over to the East side as he was intent on seeing the grave of Karl Marx, but not before heading to the bathroom for a quick toilet break - or so I thought. The guy was literally in the bathroom for about 25 minutes.
Like...Twenty. Five. Fucking. Minutes.
I actually wondered a one point if he had left.
He hadnt...but seriously. Is the middle of a date the best time to go off and have personal loo time? IS IT?! FOR TWENTY FIVE MINUTES?
He eventually exited out of the bathroom to find me wandering around the local gravestones, trying not to be painfully obvious about how mortified I was.
By the time we had seen the Karl Marx grave, he had dropped his poor water bottle at least 15 more times, and I was beginning to wonder if he had an actual neurological issue.
Later, while sitting at a pub called the Woodman in Highgate, we ordered a couple of cocktails and I watched in horror as he picked up his cocktail and proceeded to spill more than half of it all over his shirt - this was after I watched him drink a beer and have beer foam droplets hanging off his moustache for about half an hour. I was just so awkward about how haphazard this guy was, but I couldnt stop myself from watching this perpetual disaster in motion happen.
It was both fascinating and horrifying.
Towards the end of the night, I had just returned from the bathroom, he looked at me and asked me, in a very strange tone if I wanted a (actual air quotations) "HUG"? I looked at him with real confusion because, not only was it a very strange question to ask me, but I had a feeling he was not referring to an actual hug.
I was correct - he wasnt.
He actually and honestly meant this as some weird sort of flirting and thought that I knew what he meant.
I didnt, but I could guess.
And because of the idiocy of the question, I purposefully maintained my ignorance and told him that I didnt have a clue what he was trying to say to me*.
(*in case you didnt get it, he was trying to ask me if I was interested in engaging in coitus with him - which I absolutely was not, but also who the fuck asks a person something like that?)
Since we already know that I clearly have the poorest of poor judgement, I begrudgingly agreed to a third - and final - date with this guy.
He asked me to meet him in Welwyn Garden City one Saturday afternoon - I remember wondering to myself what we could possibly do there that would be interesting, but left him to it.
Welwyn is, quite literally, family suburbia; the pubs are family-orientated complete with kids play areas and shitty food, so I was really interested (and anxious) to see what he suggested.
As a matter of contingency, I let one of my mates know that I would be in the area and might pop around later in the evening - and thank god I did!
We met at the central shopping centre in Welwyn and I immediately noted that he, yet again, was wearing exactly the same clothes as the first two dates.
I could forgive this twice and put it down to an error or lapse in judgement. I could not abide this a third time - how can you go on three dates with a person you dont know (and assumingly are aiming to impress) and wear the same crusty clothes each time - and think that it would go unnoticed??
He went to hug me as a means of gretting me and, in the process, patted (read: basically knowcked the wind out of me) my back three times - very hard. Right on my newly inked tattoo. I wanted to head butt him then and there.
He had also arrived about half an hour before I did and, by all accounts, purposefully waited for me to get there to then decide that he wanted to buy, and subsequently stuff his face with, two pies. Like - is it just me that wonders why the fuck he couldn't have done that before I got there??
While standing outside of Gregg's waiting for him, a whole 5 minutes into this "date", I already wished I wasnt there.
(Note: there was a water bottle present and it was, once again, dropped repeatedly)
Once the pies had been consumed, we proceeded to walk aimlessly around WGC while (dropping the fucking water bottle) he told me something about the town planning and then, when I thought I might die of boredom, asked me if this sort of thing interested me - to which I replied "Not in the least".
He seemed surprised by this.
We started on some other track of conversation which ended with him telling me that he didnt watch things like Mtv when he was a teenager as he had always considered himself too much of an intellectual to watch such "drivel" (guess Im not an intellectual then...). He also kept telling me how so many of his friends and family were quite "cerebral" and philosophical.
It took everything in me not to projectile vomit on him in that minute...it was probably the most pretentious one-sided conversation I had ever been party to.
Fortunately, past-Nicole had had this stroke of genius to let my WGC mate know that I'd be in the area and so used it as an excuse to leave the date after an hour. I gave him my (very valid) excuse and suggested we make our way back to the train station where he flagged down a taxi and then proceeded to make it wait 10 minutes while he tried to say good bye to me - which means that he tried to kiss me and I tried to not vomit in his face.
He also proceeded to mate-tap me on the back again - right on top of the large raw tattoo, so not only did he make me want to vomit, I also wanted to kick him in the goonies.
Kind of wish I had to be honest.
I never texted him again after that day, though two months later, when Id just arrived for a 10 day trip to Boston in the US, he texted me asking how I was doing.
I blocked him and we all lived happily ever after. The End.
Wednesday, 18 September 2019
Tuesday, 27 August 2019
That time I got mentally categorised
MexicanishGuy and I decided to meet up about a week after our first date at a speakeasy in Soho (in London...obviously) called Milk & Honey after discovering that we both love the concept of a speakeasy - even if alcohol and merriment are no longer illegal.
I arrived at the place that Google maps told me to go to, and only found a large wooden warehouse type door and nothing else to indicate that I was in the right place. I waited outside for MexicanishGuy to arrive and when he did, it was like a large round balloon (his head, obviously) floated towards me with pursed lips, closed eyes and that weird hmmm sound - I was almost immediately panicked because what if he really was terrible at kissing and it wasnt that he was drunk or nervous the first time we met!?
I remedied this by dodging his balloon head and giving him my cheek.
We went inside and were seated at what I can only describe as a mushroom table - one, because it was mushroom shaped and two, because it was about the size of a mushroom and very uncomfortable. I think he was as uncomfortable and underwhelmed by the place as I was because he suggested that we leave after the first (mediocre) drink.
I suggested then that we head off to a lovely cocktail bar that Id been to before called SixStorey - it was an old six storey house that had been turned into a multi function restaurant/cocktail bar/event space. We unfortunately walked into the middle of an all girl piss up session and had to deal with some rather noisy birds at the table next door, and as I rarely deal with inconvencience very well, I quickly went from being chatty and pleasant to threatening to body slam ever drunken girl I saw. MexicanishGuy seemed concerned by this - or my well being..Im not sure, but kept trying somehow defend my honour every time one of them came into contact with me. Around the time I progressed to wanting to cut a bitch is when I suggested that we leave. He didnt need to see my turn into my dad on the second date.
The one thing that struck me about the way this guy spoke, which is what had perplexed me during our first date, was how he referred to people: which is to say that he seemed to categorise people by their "mental disorders"...we had previously discussed depression and I had mentioned that I had gone through a period of depression in my twenties and that I had a few friends that suffered from it, and since that moment, he kept referring back to my "previous mental health disorder" and was asking about my "friends with the mental health issues". I was oddly struck by this.
For the third date, he'd invited me to an early dinner at an Ethiopian restaurant in Elephant and Castle (there are no elephants or castles here...only filth and traffic) and, while the food was pretty decent, the conversation....it was otherwise.
He told me a story about his week where he had visited a difficult patient of his and how the relative of his patient has been quite rude to him about something. He told me that she, the relative, had had severe mental issues...again, that odd expression. I asked him what he meant by "severe mental issues" and he told me that the way that she was treating and speaking to him gave him the impression that she had mental issues that she had to deal with. I asked him if he knew if she had been diagnosed and he told me that he didnt know, only that it seemed that this woman was mentally disturbed.
It dawned on me at this point that he had said something similar on the first date about the girl that he took Japanese classes with.
Basically, this dude was taking visceral and emotional reactions that people were having to situations, classing them as "mental health issue" and then speaking about these people as though they had been diagnosed with actual clinical mental disorders.
After processing what was going on and having the disbelief dawn on me, I told him that it was possible for people to have emotional reactions to unpleasant situations without meaning that they have mental issues - he didnt get it.
I didnt get him.
What was worse was that he was a qualified therapist and likely knew better than to run around tacking mental disorders to people when he wasnt actually qualified to do so?
Suffice to say, I was wholly stumped and ready to GTFO.
I had fortunately told him that I didnt have time to spend the entire afternoon with him as I had a previous commitment (I didnt), and so after about an hour and a half, I said that I had to leave, so we paid the bill and walked out of the restaurant. He stepped forward to kiss me and, as he did so, I was overcome with physical repulsion: not only was the mental categorising thing really weird and mildly offensive to humanity, I was now also one hundred percent certain that he was the worst kisser in the history of homo sapiens, so when his balloon head and smacking lips started coming towards me, I basically did an upside donkey (or perhaps a wheel pose if you are a yogi? Or maybe just a full on back bend into a crab-like formation) just to get away from his face, half shouted that I had to go and then turned and ran off towards my bus.
I had been puffing on a vape that day and his parting words to me were "oh okay, well...good luck with the vape...bye"
Ummmm....good luck with my vape? Errr....okay, thanks? What a very random thing to say to someone.
He texted me the next morning at 7am to ask me if I had watched the last episode of Game of Thrones - to which I responded questioning his logic being that it was 7am and I was on the way to work so when exactly would i have watched it - considering it came out in the early hours of the morning UK time. Not only was he a terrible kisser, but apparently, he was not hit with the proverbial logic stick very many times in his life.
I texted him about 3 days after that last interaction and told him that, lovely though he was, I was not feeling the spark and that I thought I was looking for something (anything) else. He responded with something along the same lines and there it was: liberation from having my face sucked into a black hole.
I arrived at the place that Google maps told me to go to, and only found a large wooden warehouse type door and nothing else to indicate that I was in the right place. I waited outside for MexicanishGuy to arrive and when he did, it was like a large round balloon (his head, obviously) floated towards me with pursed lips, closed eyes and that weird hmmm sound - I was almost immediately panicked because what if he really was terrible at kissing and it wasnt that he was drunk or nervous the first time we met!?
I remedied this by dodging his balloon head and giving him my cheek.
We went inside and were seated at what I can only describe as a mushroom table - one, because it was mushroom shaped and two, because it was about the size of a mushroom and very uncomfortable. I think he was as uncomfortable and underwhelmed by the place as I was because he suggested that we leave after the first (mediocre) drink.
I suggested then that we head off to a lovely cocktail bar that Id been to before called SixStorey - it was an old six storey house that had been turned into a multi function restaurant/cocktail bar/event space. We unfortunately walked into the middle of an all girl piss up session and had to deal with some rather noisy birds at the table next door, and as I rarely deal with inconvencience very well, I quickly went from being chatty and pleasant to threatening to body slam ever drunken girl I saw. MexicanishGuy seemed concerned by this - or my well being..Im not sure, but kept trying somehow defend my honour every time one of them came into contact with me. Around the time I progressed to wanting to cut a bitch is when I suggested that we leave. He didnt need to see my turn into my dad on the second date.
The one thing that struck me about the way this guy spoke, which is what had perplexed me during our first date, was how he referred to people: which is to say that he seemed to categorise people by their "mental disorders"...we had previously discussed depression and I had mentioned that I had gone through a period of depression in my twenties and that I had a few friends that suffered from it, and since that moment, he kept referring back to my "previous mental health disorder" and was asking about my "friends with the mental health issues". I was oddly struck by this.
For the third date, he'd invited me to an early dinner at an Ethiopian restaurant in Elephant and Castle (there are no elephants or castles here...only filth and traffic) and, while the food was pretty decent, the conversation....it was otherwise.
He told me a story about his week where he had visited a difficult patient of his and how the relative of his patient has been quite rude to him about something. He told me that she, the relative, had had severe mental issues...again, that odd expression. I asked him what he meant by "severe mental issues" and he told me that the way that she was treating and speaking to him gave him the impression that she had mental issues that she had to deal with. I asked him if he knew if she had been diagnosed and he told me that he didnt know, only that it seemed that this woman was mentally disturbed.
It dawned on me at this point that he had said something similar on the first date about the girl that he took Japanese classes with.
Basically, this dude was taking visceral and emotional reactions that people were having to situations, classing them as "mental health issue" and then speaking about these people as though they had been diagnosed with actual clinical mental disorders.
After processing what was going on and having the disbelief dawn on me, I told him that it was possible for people to have emotional reactions to unpleasant situations without meaning that they have mental issues - he didnt get it.
I didnt get him.
What was worse was that he was a qualified therapist and likely knew better than to run around tacking mental disorders to people when he wasnt actually qualified to do so?
Suffice to say, I was wholly stumped and ready to GTFO.
I had fortunately told him that I didnt have time to spend the entire afternoon with him as I had a previous commitment (I didnt), and so after about an hour and a half, I said that I had to leave, so we paid the bill and walked out of the restaurant. He stepped forward to kiss me and, as he did so, I was overcome with physical repulsion: not only was the mental categorising thing really weird and mildly offensive to humanity, I was now also one hundred percent certain that he was the worst kisser in the history of homo sapiens, so when his balloon head and smacking lips started coming towards me, I basically did an upside donkey (or perhaps a wheel pose if you are a yogi? Or maybe just a full on back bend into a crab-like formation) just to get away from his face, half shouted that I had to go and then turned and ran off towards my bus.
I had been puffing on a vape that day and his parting words to me were "oh okay, well...good luck with the vape...bye"
Ummmm....good luck with my vape? Errr....okay, thanks? What a very random thing to say to someone.
He texted me the next morning at 7am to ask me if I had watched the last episode of Game of Thrones - to which I responded questioning his logic being that it was 7am and I was on the way to work so when exactly would i have watched it - considering it came out in the early hours of the morning UK time. Not only was he a terrible kisser, but apparently, he was not hit with the proverbial logic stick very many times in his life.
I texted him about 3 days after that last interaction and told him that, lovely though he was, I was not feeling the spark and that I thought I was looking for something (anything) else. He responded with something along the same lines and there it was: liberation from having my face sucked into a black hole.
Monday, 12 August 2019
That time that my face got stuck
Around March time, when the weather was in the that weird limbo of being too warm for a serious winter coat and too cold to wear a jacket with a light top, I dared venture out on a Friday evening with just a jacket and a light top - and, as my date for the evening was running late, I was sitting outside at a pub in Notting Hill (in London...obviously) having a glass of wine on my ace and enjoying some people watching, freezing my noombies off.
My date for the evening was some new potential from the highly elite dating application, otherwise known as Tinder - a Mexican Spanish Guy, henceforth known as MexicanishGuy.
We'd matched on Tinder some days before and between chatting, I'd ascertained that he was only 3 years younger than me, he was an occupational therapist, he lived with his brother in the house that his parents owned (but did not live in), he was learning Japanese and had grown up between Kuwait and the United States - no major red flags here, folks!
Despite being half an hour late to the date, it started off really well - he took me to a Japanese bar for a few Japanese pints which were very tasty and we engaged in conversation about learning languages, our respective professions and the like. He explained that he had worked in the charity sector prior to becoming a therapist and had decided that he wanted to help people more than he was doing at the time, and that it was the motivation for going back to university to study occupational therapy. We also discussed the shortfalls of the NHS and then progressed onto our families and friends.
He started telling me about a woman that he knew from his Japanese class that had been acting really weird towards him since she had found herself a boyfriend and, without going into the details, explained the story of what had happened with them - which is to say, not very much. They'd been friends and she'd, apparently, become quite attached to him and then, when she found herself a boyfriend, she'd distanced herself and started acting strange. What he said next struck me as a little odd - he said, very specifically, that she suffered from a lot of "mental issues". Now, because this is not a thing that one typically hears people say about other people, unless spoken in jest, of course, I thought he meant that she had been diagnosed as having actual mental issues, which I enquired about and to which he replied that he didn't know if she had been diagnosed. I was a little confused, but I left it at that.
Anyway, I was on the route to being drunk at this stage - after two pints, and plodded off on slightly unsteady legs to the bathroom down a thousand stairs (Why are the bathrooms always in the basement!?) and, once I had returned, he lead me off to the next venue, which was a lovely tapas restaurant just off Portobello Road.
We sat, we chatted, he ordered Sangrias - it was really turning out to be a lovely date.
After about half an hour of drinking and chatting, he suggested that we get a few tapas as it was getting late and dinner time had come and gone. I wasn't sure what I was picking up as everything was in Spanish and, being vegetarian, I was cautious about picking things that might contain sneaky meat, so I ended up with 4 plates - two of which contained variations of olives. As I sat down with my mostly olive-based dinner, he sauntered off to get his tapas and returned a few minutes later with a few extra plates for me because he knew that I hadn't known what to pick.
I was quite impressed - this had, thus far, been the best date I'd been on. This guy was thoughtful, he seemed to have his shit together, we got on well - what more could I ask for?
More importantly - what was I missing? This was definitely a "too good to be true" situation, but where was the catch?
After a few more sangrias, we headed off to another pub for a drink for the road and, all of a sudden, it was 11pm and time to go home.
I was slightly drunk, and felt a little fuzzy on the inside because the date was going so well (although I'll admit the fuzziness might have been because of the alcohol). I had already imagined our future in my head: we had become a mutually respectable power couple - him with his private therapy practice and me with me ever-evolving tech career. We had little Mexican/South African spawn running around; we had a golden retriever named Burt that Eevee (my cat) loved sometimes and we all lived in our lovely little cottage in the English countryside with our 1GB fibre internet connection and weekend trips to Cornwall and the South of France. Perfect, right?
As he walked me to Notting Hill Gate station holding my hand, he leaned over, told me I was "so cute" (errrrr....come again? Cute? I haven't been called cute since I was about 5, but sure...okay...I could deal with "cute"), and then he kissed me...
This was the "WHOMP, THERE IT IS!" moment.
It was like kissing a vacuum cleaner.
To be honest, I didn't actually do any kissing - I just stood there while he, basically, inhaled my face while making strange "hmm mmm" noises.
It was weird.
As fuck.
Towards the end of this, for lack of a better word, experience, he somehow hoovered my top and bottom lip into his mouth and I stood there making a pouting face with my lips stuck between his while he tried to kiss me...in my mind, this was reminiscent of what I would call a "Hollywood kiss" in my youth: two characters kissing each other but swaying their bodies dramatically to make it look far more passionate that it was - except that I wasnt swaying, or doing any kissing.
This lasted a good 5 to 10 seconds and all the while he continued making their weird "hmm mm" sounds - so long enough for me to feel really awkward about it. I think I even opened my eyes at one stage just to check out what actually was going on with him.
I'm pretty sure he was unaware of how awkward it was.
He, thankfully, released my face eventually and took my hand, pulling me towards the station to go home, while chatting along the way. I don't remember what we spoke about, but I remember my prevailing thought being that I didn't know if I could actually deal with someone who kissed so badly and that I hoped it was just because he was drunk and/or nervous.
We eventually reached the station and descended down into the depths of the Lundy Undy before going our separate ways and, just as we parted, he kissed me again and...well, I'd like to say it was better, but it wasn't. This time, I physically pulled my face back from his vacuum-like lip lock and could swear I heard a *smack* sound as the air lock broke.
I, then, hastily said good-bye and ran off like it was the last train home and I was about to miss it (it was, in fact, a 24 hour tube so....)
As I walked to the train platform, I felt my dreams of our perfect little family going up in flames in my Sangria-drunk brain and then berated myself for being so fickle: I told myself that I was a 33 year old woman who couldn't base the worth of a person on their ability to kiss the way I want them to because I wasn't a teenager anymore. I also kept telling myself that I cared about so much more than just their ability to coordinate their bodily movements.
I had to keep telling myself this daily until I saw him again - it even became a sort of mantra, because I really wanted to like him. I really, really did.
I also kept telling myself that I had been drunk that night and he had been drunk that night, and that it couldn't have been as bad as I remembered it being - which is why we went out a second time...and a third time....
Thats a story for another post.
My date for the evening was some new potential from the highly elite dating application, otherwise known as Tinder - a Mexican Spanish Guy, henceforth known as MexicanishGuy.
We'd matched on Tinder some days before and between chatting, I'd ascertained that he was only 3 years younger than me, he was an occupational therapist, he lived with his brother in the house that his parents owned (but did not live in), he was learning Japanese and had grown up between Kuwait and the United States - no major red flags here, folks!
Despite being half an hour late to the date, it started off really well - he took me to a Japanese bar for a few Japanese pints which were very tasty and we engaged in conversation about learning languages, our respective professions and the like. He explained that he had worked in the charity sector prior to becoming a therapist and had decided that he wanted to help people more than he was doing at the time, and that it was the motivation for going back to university to study occupational therapy. We also discussed the shortfalls of the NHS and then progressed onto our families and friends.
He started telling me about a woman that he knew from his Japanese class that had been acting really weird towards him since she had found herself a boyfriend and, without going into the details, explained the story of what had happened with them - which is to say, not very much. They'd been friends and she'd, apparently, become quite attached to him and then, when she found herself a boyfriend, she'd distanced herself and started acting strange. What he said next struck me as a little odd - he said, very specifically, that she suffered from a lot of "mental issues". Now, because this is not a thing that one typically hears people say about other people, unless spoken in jest, of course, I thought he meant that she had been diagnosed as having actual mental issues, which I enquired about and to which he replied that he didn't know if she had been diagnosed. I was a little confused, but I left it at that.
Anyway, I was on the route to being drunk at this stage - after two pints, and plodded off on slightly unsteady legs to the bathroom down a thousand stairs (Why are the bathrooms always in the basement!?) and, once I had returned, he lead me off to the next venue, which was a lovely tapas restaurant just off Portobello Road.
We sat, we chatted, he ordered Sangrias - it was really turning out to be a lovely date.
After about half an hour of drinking and chatting, he suggested that we get a few tapas as it was getting late and dinner time had come and gone. I wasn't sure what I was picking up as everything was in Spanish and, being vegetarian, I was cautious about picking things that might contain sneaky meat, so I ended up with 4 plates - two of which contained variations of olives. As I sat down with my mostly olive-based dinner, he sauntered off to get his tapas and returned a few minutes later with a few extra plates for me because he knew that I hadn't known what to pick.
I was quite impressed - this had, thus far, been the best date I'd been on. This guy was thoughtful, he seemed to have his shit together, we got on well - what more could I ask for?
More importantly - what was I missing? This was definitely a "too good to be true" situation, but where was the catch?
After a few more sangrias, we headed off to another pub for a drink for the road and, all of a sudden, it was 11pm and time to go home.
I was slightly drunk, and felt a little fuzzy on the inside because the date was going so well (although I'll admit the fuzziness might have been because of the alcohol). I had already imagined our future in my head: we had become a mutually respectable power couple - him with his private therapy practice and me with me ever-evolving tech career. We had little Mexican/South African spawn running around; we had a golden retriever named Burt that Eevee (my cat) loved sometimes and we all lived in our lovely little cottage in the English countryside with our 1GB fibre internet connection and weekend trips to Cornwall and the South of France. Perfect, right?
As he walked me to Notting Hill Gate station holding my hand, he leaned over, told me I was "so cute" (errrrr....come again? Cute? I haven't been called cute since I was about 5, but sure...okay...I could deal with "cute"), and then he kissed me...
This was the "WHOMP, THERE IT IS!" moment.
It was like kissing a vacuum cleaner.
To be honest, I didn't actually do any kissing - I just stood there while he, basically, inhaled my face while making strange "hmm mmm" noises.
It was weird.
As fuck.
Towards the end of this, for lack of a better word, experience, he somehow hoovered my top and bottom lip into his mouth and I stood there making a pouting face with my lips stuck between his while he tried to kiss me...in my mind, this was reminiscent of what I would call a "Hollywood kiss" in my youth: two characters kissing each other but swaying their bodies dramatically to make it look far more passionate that it was - except that I wasnt swaying, or doing any kissing.
This lasted a good 5 to 10 seconds and all the while he continued making their weird "hmm mm" sounds - so long enough for me to feel really awkward about it. I think I even opened my eyes at one stage just to check out what actually was going on with him.
I'm pretty sure he was unaware of how awkward it was.
He, thankfully, released my face eventually and took my hand, pulling me towards the station to go home, while chatting along the way. I don't remember what we spoke about, but I remember my prevailing thought being that I didn't know if I could actually deal with someone who kissed so badly and that I hoped it was just because he was drunk and/or nervous.
We eventually reached the station and descended down into the depths of the Lundy Undy before going our separate ways and, just as we parted, he kissed me again and...well, I'd like to say it was better, but it wasn't. This time, I physically pulled my face back from his vacuum-like lip lock and could swear I heard a *smack* sound as the air lock broke.
I, then, hastily said good-bye and ran off like it was the last train home and I was about to miss it (it was, in fact, a 24 hour tube so....)
As I walked to the train platform, I felt my dreams of our perfect little family going up in flames in my Sangria-drunk brain and then berated myself for being so fickle: I told myself that I was a 33 year old woman who couldn't base the worth of a person on their ability to kiss the way I want them to because I wasn't a teenager anymore. I also kept telling myself that I cared about so much more than just their ability to coordinate their bodily movements.
I had to keep telling myself this daily until I saw him again - it even became a sort of mantra, because I really wanted to like him. I really, really did.
I also kept telling myself that I had been drunk that night and he had been drunk that night, and that it couldn't have been as bad as I remembered it being - which is why we went out a second time...and a third time....
Thats a story for another post.
Monday, 5 August 2019
That time that I got it seriously wrong
Sometimes, in the crazy, modern world of dating apps, you match with someone who seems to just get you - you seem to share a similar sense of humour, have similar life values, joke about the same topics, both think kids are gross (but secretly we all know we actually love them a little bit); things you say seem to resonate and things they say perceivably tick so many of your boxes.
In other words, you find people who seem too be good to be true.
That's because they usually are.
Around the beginning of June, I matched with a guy whose profile made him seem like a lovable goof. He had a bit of a non-chalant, messy-but-not-too-messy, cuddly, lovable, jokey aura about him, and his pictures appeared to back this up.
We started chatting and instantly clicked. I teased him about his Britishness, he teased me about my South Africanness; we joked about how noisy and messy children are and how they ruin everything; he told me he had nieces and nephews that he baked for. We discussed our work situations and he told me that he had worked as a curator at a local museum, but was retrenched and was now working for his parents at their "property management company" while looking for something else suitable.
We spoke about life aspirations, and I told him that I wanted to have a child one day, but that I didnt mind if I ended up adopting, and he told me that he wasnt sure if he wanted his own because he thought that having a copy of himself running around wasnt a good idea, but that he was also open to adoption.
We joked about my divorce situation, we joked about being British, we joked about so many things.
In hindsight - and this is the danger with online dating - I believe I had made up my mind about the kind of person he was: the father of my perfect future children, my soul mate, the one I had been looking for, my hartse punt - and everything he said seemed to feed into this idea of how I thought he was.
In reality, if I think back to our conversations, the signs were there and I was, very obviously, mislead.
The problem is that when you are having a mostly jestful conversation with someone, you dont expect them to actually be telling you the cold, hard truth about themselves.
ConservativeTwatGuy (though I didnt realise at the time that this is what he was) and I agreed to meet one Friday evening at a pub in Hampstead (in London...obviously), and as I walked into this lovely pub that I'd randomly picked from Google Maps, I was immediately disappointed.
Not only was he shorter than he looked in his pictures, he also didn't quite look the way he did in his pictures: it most certainly was the same person, but, suffice to say, his pictures didnt quite portray him as the hobbit that he was in real life.
Nevertheless, I persisted. I am, after all, far more interested in people for who they are than (for the most part) how they look (or so I tell myself on a frequent basis), so I greeted him the way I would usually greet a date which starts with becoming really awkward and then wildly over compensating by being loud and funny (so I think) to cover up how awkward I feel, coupled with fake nonchalant-ness while throwing (shot-putting, really) my bag and coat onto the floor and then exclaiming, with wildly gesticulating arms, about how nonchalant I am about my possessions.
Basically, I played it super cool - as you can tell.
We ordered a bottle of wine and then I followed him while he plodded around the pub looking for somewhere to sit, too shy to actually ask if we could sit at any of the open tables. Eventually, getting tired of aimless wandering, I asked a waitress if we could sit at one of them, which she said we could, and so we did.
What transpired is really, almost, beyond words - I mean, I woke up the next morning wondering how the hell this date had spiralled so badly.
He basically began to tell me that he was from a conservative family who supported the Leave campaign and all Tory policies because they, ultimately, supported his and his family's agenda which was that they were a wealthy, Jewish family and wanted to keep it that way.
He told me that his parents "property management company" was actually just him, their son, "managing" his parents numerous properties while they were off living in Spain, and that he was "waiting" for the right job to come along.
In other words, this guy lost his job and was living off mummy and daddy's money with no plans to do otherwise.
I dont have a problem with families who own multiple properties - please dont get me wrong. I do have a problem with people who live off their parents money, support policies that are designed to keep the rich, rich and the poor, poor and then complain about the "state" of the country.
He also told me that he had a very difficult relationship with his parents because he was the youngest child and was convinced that his father intensely disliked him (to be honest, I was starting to understand why his father might feel that way) and that, despite the fact that he bakes for and often fetches his nieces and nephews from school and spends time with them, he actually really dislikes them. I, convinced that he couldn't be serious, made a joke about how we all say that we hate kids, but that we really dont and would love our own - he looked me dead in the eye and told me that he does, in fact, hate children....
You may imagine that, after 20 minutes of listening to this, I might have been necking the white wine. If you were imagining that, you would be correct - I was necking the white wine.
By the time the second bottle of wine arrived (yes, there was a second, because I needed it to be able to deal with this dude and seriously - who hates children!?), we had started discussing books that we were reading and I, innocently, mentioned that I was reading a booked called "How Not to Die" (read it - it will change your life) which is about nutrition and how the food we eat affects the diseases we suffer from in our lives.
Its something Im interested in, okay. Stop judging me.
By this point, he knew that I was (am) a pescatarian and proceeded to army-style interrogate me about my thought process and choices around being a pescatarian.
The way it was going, it really started to feel like he was trying to catch me out - for what though, I wasnt quite sure.
At one point, while talking about empathy towards animals, he asked me why it was okay to kill insects in my house, but not to eat animals because they are all creatures after all?
I stated that I dont kill insects in my house and that it was strictly a catch and release zone (my cat, however, doesnt agree with me on this), and that I was aware that I was a hypocrite because I occasionally eat fish, but that it was something I was working on.
I assume because he was drunk, he missed the hypocrite part and started firing questions about why I think its okay to ride elephants in the East, and to eat meat? (He was half shouting at this point and I was a little shocked, to be honest), so I politely replied that I didnt think it was okay which is why I didnt do, or agree, with either of those things.
Obviously, realising what he had said and that he had made a bit of an ass of himself, he then proceeded to lecture me about how humans are meant to eat meat and that, if we were meant to be vegetarian, we wouldn't have incisor teeth (like, mate. I dont care. Eat whatever the fuck you want).
I tried to diffuse the conversation by bringing it back to the book I was reading - which is all science based, in case you were wondering - and mentioned how so many foods that people eat today causes and/or worsens a myriad of diseases that people suffer from. I started to mention that I have asthma, for example - which is when he cut me off and told me that asthma, like many diseases, is a man-made concept. Shocked, I retorted and told him that I definitely have asthma and have been diagnosed and have taken medication for it for a number of years, and that it is made worse when I eat dairy products. He, then, made a sort-of half laugh, half disgusted sneer at my perceivable "brain washing" and told me that I was imagining it.
Now, we may have finished two bottles of wine by this point, but I was not in a drunk enough state of mind to be able to sit there and pretend like I wanted to be there any longer.
I downed the rest of my drink, slammed the glass on the table and just as he was starting to say something about the date, I stated that I was "fucking leaving", picked up my bag and stormed out of the pub and in that moment I knew how Cameron Diaz's character in "The Holiday" felt when she kicked her ex-boyfriend out for cheating, because I was performing similar sort of actions which, I suppose, sort of looks something like a large, oversized wasp darting about, fists flying while making high-pitched "Humph" sounds and wilding shaking my head while frowning, with that old, familiar thought creeping into my head:
"HOW THE FUCK DO THEY FIND ME???"
As I said, in hindsight, this guy had, in one way or another, alerted me to these character flaws before we met, but because it was wrapped up in, what seemed to be, a goofy, funny, charming package, it essentially me sold a dream that didnt exist.
I spent the rest of the night slightly drunk and raging at myself for such poor judgement. To be honest, I still wonder how I made it through two hours of that.
He texted me later that evening to apologise for it not working out and I responded by blocking him.
The one lesson I learnt that night was that sometimes there is not enough alcohol in the world to turn a bad date into a semi-acceptable one.
In other words, you find people who seem too be good to be true.
That's because they usually are.
Around the beginning of June, I matched with a guy whose profile made him seem like a lovable goof. He had a bit of a non-chalant, messy-but-not-too-messy, cuddly, lovable, jokey aura about him, and his pictures appeared to back this up.
We started chatting and instantly clicked. I teased him about his Britishness, he teased me about my South Africanness; we joked about how noisy and messy children are and how they ruin everything; he told me he had nieces and nephews that he baked for. We discussed our work situations and he told me that he had worked as a curator at a local museum, but was retrenched and was now working for his parents at their "property management company" while looking for something else suitable.
We spoke about life aspirations, and I told him that I wanted to have a child one day, but that I didnt mind if I ended up adopting, and he told me that he wasnt sure if he wanted his own because he thought that having a copy of himself running around wasnt a good idea, but that he was also open to adoption.
We joked about my divorce situation, we joked about being British, we joked about so many things.
In hindsight - and this is the danger with online dating - I believe I had made up my mind about the kind of person he was: the father of my perfect future children, my soul mate, the one I had been looking for, my hartse punt - and everything he said seemed to feed into this idea of how I thought he was.
In reality, if I think back to our conversations, the signs were there and I was, very obviously, mislead.
The problem is that when you are having a mostly jestful conversation with someone, you dont expect them to actually be telling you the cold, hard truth about themselves.
ConservativeTwatGuy (though I didnt realise at the time that this is what he was) and I agreed to meet one Friday evening at a pub in Hampstead (in London...obviously), and as I walked into this lovely pub that I'd randomly picked from Google Maps, I was immediately disappointed.
Not only was he shorter than he looked in his pictures, he also didn't quite look the way he did in his pictures: it most certainly was the same person, but, suffice to say, his pictures didnt quite portray him as the hobbit that he was in real life.
Nevertheless, I persisted. I am, after all, far more interested in people for who they are than (for the most part) how they look (or so I tell myself on a frequent basis), so I greeted him the way I would usually greet a date which starts with becoming really awkward and then wildly over compensating by being loud and funny (so I think) to cover up how awkward I feel, coupled with fake nonchalant-ness while throwing (shot-putting, really) my bag and coat onto the floor and then exclaiming, with wildly gesticulating arms, about how nonchalant I am about my possessions.
Basically, I played it super cool - as you can tell.
We ordered a bottle of wine and then I followed him while he plodded around the pub looking for somewhere to sit, too shy to actually ask if we could sit at any of the open tables. Eventually, getting tired of aimless wandering, I asked a waitress if we could sit at one of them, which she said we could, and so we did.
What transpired is really, almost, beyond words - I mean, I woke up the next morning wondering how the hell this date had spiralled so badly.
He basically began to tell me that he was from a conservative family who supported the Leave campaign and all Tory policies because they, ultimately, supported his and his family's agenda which was that they were a wealthy, Jewish family and wanted to keep it that way.
He told me that his parents "property management company" was actually just him, their son, "managing" his parents numerous properties while they were off living in Spain, and that he was "waiting" for the right job to come along.
In other words, this guy lost his job and was living off mummy and daddy's money with no plans to do otherwise.
I dont have a problem with families who own multiple properties - please dont get me wrong. I do have a problem with people who live off their parents money, support policies that are designed to keep the rich, rich and the poor, poor and then complain about the "state" of the country.
He also told me that he had a very difficult relationship with his parents because he was the youngest child and was convinced that his father intensely disliked him (to be honest, I was starting to understand why his father might feel that way) and that, despite the fact that he bakes for and often fetches his nieces and nephews from school and spends time with them, he actually really dislikes them. I, convinced that he couldn't be serious, made a joke about how we all say that we hate kids, but that we really dont and would love our own - he looked me dead in the eye and told me that he does, in fact, hate children....
You may imagine that, after 20 minutes of listening to this, I might have been necking the white wine. If you were imagining that, you would be correct - I was necking the white wine.
By the time the second bottle of wine arrived (yes, there was a second, because I needed it to be able to deal with this dude and seriously - who hates children!?), we had started discussing books that we were reading and I, innocently, mentioned that I was reading a booked called "How Not to Die" (read it - it will change your life) which is about nutrition and how the food we eat affects the diseases we suffer from in our lives.
Its something Im interested in, okay. Stop judging me.
By this point, he knew that I was (am) a pescatarian and proceeded to army-style interrogate me about my thought process and choices around being a pescatarian.
The way it was going, it really started to feel like he was trying to catch me out - for what though, I wasnt quite sure.
At one point, while talking about empathy towards animals, he asked me why it was okay to kill insects in my house, but not to eat animals because they are all creatures after all?
I stated that I dont kill insects in my house and that it was strictly a catch and release zone (my cat, however, doesnt agree with me on this), and that I was aware that I was a hypocrite because I occasionally eat fish, but that it was something I was working on.
I assume because he was drunk, he missed the hypocrite part and started firing questions about why I think its okay to ride elephants in the East, and to eat meat? (He was half shouting at this point and I was a little shocked, to be honest), so I politely replied that I didnt think it was okay which is why I didnt do, or agree, with either of those things.
Obviously, realising what he had said and that he had made a bit of an ass of himself, he then proceeded to lecture me about how humans are meant to eat meat and that, if we were meant to be vegetarian, we wouldn't have incisor teeth (like, mate. I dont care. Eat whatever the fuck you want).
I tried to diffuse the conversation by bringing it back to the book I was reading - which is all science based, in case you were wondering - and mentioned how so many foods that people eat today causes and/or worsens a myriad of diseases that people suffer from. I started to mention that I have asthma, for example - which is when he cut me off and told me that asthma, like many diseases, is a man-made concept. Shocked, I retorted and told him that I definitely have asthma and have been diagnosed and have taken medication for it for a number of years, and that it is made worse when I eat dairy products. He, then, made a sort-of half laugh, half disgusted sneer at my perceivable "brain washing" and told me that I was imagining it.
Now, we may have finished two bottles of wine by this point, but I was not in a drunk enough state of mind to be able to sit there and pretend like I wanted to be there any longer.
I downed the rest of my drink, slammed the glass on the table and just as he was starting to say something about the date, I stated that I was "fucking leaving", picked up my bag and stormed out of the pub and in that moment I knew how Cameron Diaz's character in "The Holiday" felt when she kicked her ex-boyfriend out for cheating, because I was performing similar sort of actions which, I suppose, sort of looks something like a large, oversized wasp darting about, fists flying while making high-pitched "Humph" sounds and wilding shaking my head while frowning, with that old, familiar thought creeping into my head:
"HOW THE FUCK DO THEY FIND ME???"
As I said, in hindsight, this guy had, in one way or another, alerted me to these character flaws before we met, but because it was wrapped up in, what seemed to be, a goofy, funny, charming package, it essentially me sold a dream that didnt exist.
I spent the rest of the night slightly drunk and raging at myself for such poor judgement. To be honest, I still wonder how I made it through two hours of that.
He texted me later that evening to apologise for it not working out and I responded by blocking him.
The one lesson I learnt that night was that sometimes there is not enough alcohol in the world to turn a bad date into a semi-acceptable one.
Monday, 22 July 2019
That time that the tears flowed
There comes a time - or a few times - in everyone's life where you realise that its time to change things up, and sometimes this means things need to end. WeirdNameGuy (the one from the last week's post) and I had been hanging out for a few weeks and it had been moderately fun - we did a lot of walking because we liked to walk (one particular day, we walked from London Bridge to Wandsworth Bridge which is a considerable walk and took us about 6 hours since it was a slow saunter and included lunch and drink stops in between) and chatted about a lot of random stuff, but ultimately, there was no way I could ever see a future with this guy. He was, unfortunately for himself, too insecure and stuck in his own ways for me to ever take him seriously, and I had just exited a relationship of 8 years with someone who was too similar in those ways for me to ever want to take that on again.
I had been thinking about this quite a bit and trying to devise a way to softly let this guy down, though realistically, I knew he wasnt going to take it too well. What I didnt realise was the just how badly he would end up taking it.
Perhaps around February-time earlier this year and we were due to have a particularly warm winter's day in the upcoming weekend, so WeirdNameGuy asked me if I wanted to hang out. I wasn't really in the mood to leave my house because I wanted to enjoy the sunshine outside on my deck with a glass of wine and told him so, so he sort of invited himself around to join me in doing that which I didnt object to.
Unfortunately for this bloke, the odds were not in his favour because, for whatever reason, I had woken up annoyed with the world and remained that way all day, so by the time he arrived - which was late, by the way (not that it really mattered because we didnt have any real plans, but lateness is not a thing that I can abide) - I was not in the mood for people and was a glass of wine down.
We sat outside on the deck in the sunshine and I poured some more wine while we chatted about general life stuff. General life stuff quickly turned into the topic of animal testing - something that I am vehemently opposed to - and, as I was already generally annoyed at life, his absolute disregard and nonchalance at the subject pushed me to the edge of what would become a very slippery slope. His argument was if we werent testing on animals, what should we test on? (Ummmmmmm...HELLLO?) The conversation seriously began to spiral into the abyss that all conversations go to when you have alcohol and discuss serious subjects and before long we were discussing the concept of happiness and this guy went into full on self pity mode and began a monologue about how he wished he earned more money and had more work opportunity available to him, how he wished he could move, but his dad is sick and therefore had to wait to see what happened to him (his dad had been sick for 8 years at this point), and then, weirder still, he started referring to himself in the third person: "And I just want to know, when is it WeirdNameGuy's turn? When will WeirdNameGuy get what he wants?"
I didn't know what to say to this charade. I was also really weirded out.
Once that little disaster had calmed down and we had returned to "relatively normal" conversational activities, he then suggested we go inside and "cuddle" on the couch - it had gotten dark to be fair.
NOW, two things that people dont necessarily know about me is the following:
1. I dont like to cuddle (unless its on my terms. Like a cat, basically)
2. I dont like to discuss feelings. Ever.
So when I declined to go inside to "sit on the couch and cuddle", he retorted with "sometimes, you are well stand-offish". My response, in its entirety, was to blink at him a few times with a deadpan expression.
What followed was the phrase almost everyone hates hearing: "where is this going?", followed by "because we talk every day (read: he texts me incessantly everyday and I reply sometimes) which is quite coupley"...you may imagine the rotating red lights being set off in my head by this point.
What followed was a rumination of firm words in my "I-am-so-done-with-this-shit" voice something to the effect of being so absolutely not interested in both a relationship and continuing with the conversation.
**Crickets**
After sitting in the dark for ten minutes in silence, I suggested that we go in, which we did. He kept putting out his hand in an effort to try to hold my hand and I kept putting the base of my wine glass in his open palm in response.
Things became increasingly awkward because I had decided I was firmly done with talking and, eventually (and thankfully), he asked me if I would like him to go home.
By his reaction, I dont think he expected me to say that yes, I did want him to go home because his face registered mild shock and he said "Really?" about three times.
When I confirmed that, yes I really did want him to leave, he picked up his coat and bag (which I had noted included a toothbrush and extra shirt, meaning that he had banked on staying over the night which further annoyed me) and stormed outside and down the garden path. I called after him that he was going the wrong way (because he was), so he whipped around and loudly said "Really!?" and then walked back towards me.
Queue a massive flare of rage from me at his passive aggressive attempt to elicit a reaction out of me. I responded to this by telling him that he could take his passive aggressive bullshit and fuck off because I was not interested in the way he was behaving and what he was trying to do.
He asked if he could stay and have one more cigarette which I abided, and then immediately regretted because he lit his cigarette and resumed the "where is this going" tirade.
I had, quite literally, reached tipping point by this time and ended up half shouting at him that he was "too negative" in frustration (but also, he was) because all I wanted was for him to leave. His reaction to this was descend again into a self pity monologue about shit his life is and THEN...
He began to cry.
Whilst he rattled through his monologue, he was crying. A man that I had known for a few weeks, that I wasnt even properly dating was crying because I was, perceivably, ending things with him.
In the dark, I leaned against the wall to the outside of my entrance hall, looked up at the sky and whimsically thought:
"HOW THE FUCK DO THESE PEOPLE FIND ME?"
After about 5 minutes of this sob-cry-rant monologue, I cut in and said to him that we didnt need to discuss this anymore, so he, promptly, stopped talking, looked at me, said okay and then picked up his bag, asked me if we could speak the next day and disappeared into the night.
And that folks, was the last time I ever saw or spoke to him.
I didnt block his number so he could have texted me if he had wanted to, but he never did contact me again. I honestly thought he would, because when I walked back into my house that evening, I saw that he had left an entire bankie of weed on my kitchen counter and I was sure he would want that back, but nope - not a word.
It was most definitely one of the stranger nights of my life.
I had been thinking about this quite a bit and trying to devise a way to softly let this guy down, though realistically, I knew he wasnt going to take it too well. What I didnt realise was the just how badly he would end up taking it.
Perhaps around February-time earlier this year and we were due to have a particularly warm winter's day in the upcoming weekend, so WeirdNameGuy asked me if I wanted to hang out. I wasn't really in the mood to leave my house because I wanted to enjoy the sunshine outside on my deck with a glass of wine and told him so, so he sort of invited himself around to join me in doing that which I didnt object to.
Unfortunately for this bloke, the odds were not in his favour because, for whatever reason, I had woken up annoyed with the world and remained that way all day, so by the time he arrived - which was late, by the way (not that it really mattered because we didnt have any real plans, but lateness is not a thing that I can abide) - I was not in the mood for people and was a glass of wine down.
We sat outside on the deck in the sunshine and I poured some more wine while we chatted about general life stuff. General life stuff quickly turned into the topic of animal testing - something that I am vehemently opposed to - and, as I was already generally annoyed at life, his absolute disregard and nonchalance at the subject pushed me to the edge of what would become a very slippery slope. His argument was if we werent testing on animals, what should we test on? (Ummmmmmm...HELLLO?) The conversation seriously began to spiral into the abyss that all conversations go to when you have alcohol and discuss serious subjects and before long we were discussing the concept of happiness and this guy went into full on self pity mode and began a monologue about how he wished he earned more money and had more work opportunity available to him, how he wished he could move, but his dad is sick and therefore had to wait to see what happened to him (his dad had been sick for 8 years at this point), and then, weirder still, he started referring to himself in the third person: "And I just want to know, when is it WeirdNameGuy's turn? When will WeirdNameGuy get what he wants?"
I didn't know what to say to this charade. I was also really weirded out.
Once that little disaster had calmed down and we had returned to "relatively normal" conversational activities, he then suggested we go inside and "cuddle" on the couch - it had gotten dark to be fair.
NOW, two things that people dont necessarily know about me is the following:
1. I dont like to cuddle (unless its on my terms. Like a cat, basically)
2. I dont like to discuss feelings. Ever.
So when I declined to go inside to "sit on the couch and cuddle", he retorted with "sometimes, you are well stand-offish". My response, in its entirety, was to blink at him a few times with a deadpan expression.
What followed was the phrase almost everyone hates hearing: "where is this going?", followed by "because we talk every day (read: he texts me incessantly everyday and I reply sometimes) which is quite coupley"...you may imagine the rotating red lights being set off in my head by this point.
What followed was a rumination of firm words in my "I-am-so-done-with-this-shit" voice something to the effect of being so absolutely not interested in both a relationship and continuing with the conversation.
**Crickets**
After sitting in the dark for ten minutes in silence, I suggested that we go in, which we did. He kept putting out his hand in an effort to try to hold my hand and I kept putting the base of my wine glass in his open palm in response.
Things became increasingly awkward because I had decided I was firmly done with talking and, eventually (and thankfully), he asked me if I would like him to go home.
By his reaction, I dont think he expected me to say that yes, I did want him to go home because his face registered mild shock and he said "Really?" about three times.
When I confirmed that, yes I really did want him to leave, he picked up his coat and bag (which I had noted included a toothbrush and extra shirt, meaning that he had banked on staying over the night which further annoyed me) and stormed outside and down the garden path. I called after him that he was going the wrong way (because he was), so he whipped around and loudly said "Really!?" and then walked back towards me.
Queue a massive flare of rage from me at his passive aggressive attempt to elicit a reaction out of me. I responded to this by telling him that he could take his passive aggressive bullshit and fuck off because I was not interested in the way he was behaving and what he was trying to do.
He asked if he could stay and have one more cigarette which I abided, and then immediately regretted because he lit his cigarette and resumed the "where is this going" tirade.
I had, quite literally, reached tipping point by this time and ended up half shouting at him that he was "too negative" in frustration (but also, he was) because all I wanted was for him to leave. His reaction to this was descend again into a self pity monologue about shit his life is and THEN...
He began to cry.
Whilst he rattled through his monologue, he was crying. A man that I had known for a few weeks, that I wasnt even properly dating was crying because I was, perceivably, ending things with him.
In the dark, I leaned against the wall to the outside of my entrance hall, looked up at the sky and whimsically thought:
"HOW THE FUCK DO THESE PEOPLE FIND ME?"
After about 5 minutes of this sob-cry-rant monologue, I cut in and said to him that we didnt need to discuss this anymore, so he, promptly, stopped talking, looked at me, said okay and then picked up his bag, asked me if we could speak the next day and disappeared into the night.
And that folks, was the last time I ever saw or spoke to him.
I didnt block his number so he could have texted me if he had wanted to, but he never did contact me again. I honestly thought he would, because when I walked back into my house that evening, I saw that he had left an entire bankie of weed on my kitchen counter and I was sure he would want that back, but nope - not a word.
It was most definitely one of the stranger nights of my life.
Monday, 15 July 2019
That time that I drank 3 bottles of wine by myself
The second series of dates that I went on was with one of the most hopeless human beings that I have ever met.
I met him on Tinder and, from his profile, which contained a few of his key interests (some of which were out of the norm for the standard, boring Tinder profile) and a few pictures of him doing various things and wearing silly hats, he seemed like an interesting enough person, so I swiped right and we started a conversation that lasted about 6 weeks before we actually met.
Usually, Id say a 6 week conversation prior to meeting was a bad sign, but it was the end of 2018 and anyone with a social life knows how bad November and December are for free time. I was in between a lot of social engagements, Christmas parties, a backpacking trip around the Gulf of Naples and Christmas in the Midlands, and he was in between London, East Anglia and Essex, so the first time that we had a matching time slot was just after Christmas.
After six weeks of chatting, he seemed to me to be a stereotypical British person - non-confrontational, relatively safe in terms of his life choices, mild-mannered, liked to complain a little - not entirely contemptible, and, for the most part, he seemed funny and could hold a good conversation. What could go wrong, right?
We met at the Vineyard in Islington (in London...obviously) on a relatively chilly Friday evening and, upon my insistence, sat outside (it was circa 0 degrees) - I've said before: I do love sitting outside, even when it is arctic.
He was very clearly freezing his reproductive organs off, so I reassured him that alcohol would warm us up and promptly made alcohol appear...Im not sure that it did, but after 3 bottles of wine (to myself), I certainly wasnt too bothered by the cold any longer. Before you wonder how I was standing after 3 bottles of wine - I wasnt. I was on the verge of (although if we are being honest here, and we are, I already was) messy drunk. He, meanwhile, was drinking gin and tonics and, from what I can remember, was fairly drunk himself, though I definitely think I won the "who is the functional alcoholic and obvious train wreck?" round that night. We had to move inside at some point because the outside area was closed, so we took our (mostly incomprehensible) conversation to a corner of the bar and continued to shout one another down over the music that was playing. I cant very well remember what we spoke about, but it was must have been a topic that required wild gesticulations because I ended up knocking his glasses off his face and, shortly after, elbowing him in the temple. I also confiscated his glasses for about an hour and, essentially, left him blind as fuck - which is probably why he didnt see my elbow coming towards his face the second time. I didnt do this on purpose, of course - I was reprehensibly drunk by this time and barely knew my elbow was even attached to my body.
As 2am rolled around, we agreed that it was time to head home (thank the Lundy Undy for the night tube) and so began the "short" walk to Euston station. It wasnt until 2 days later that I realised that the walk from Islington to Euston was, on a good day, 40 minutes long - I still dont have the faintest clue how two severely mentally impaired people managed to survive both the temperature and the aggressive night bus drivers at that time of night - never mind actually navigating our way in the correct direction. Fortunately, he seemed to have an idea of where we were going, which meant I could drag my concrete block feet around, blurting absolutely inane things (like "oh, my coffee shop! They have OAT MULK!! DID YU KNOW OAT MULK ISH MADE FRM OATS? WHY ARENT THEY NOT OPEN? IM PRETENTUSH!) while he lead me by the hand to the station.
In case you dont know what a person is like after 3 bottles of wine, the accurate question might be: "How does one describe a hot mess?" I was in the road (in the oncoming traffic), I was out of the road, I walked into a sign post, I walked into people, I walked into the guy...most of all, I definitely made absolutely no sense in anything I was saying because it was around that time that my brain short circuited and all I could make was strange mouth shapes that resulted in illegible noises.
We eventually reached Euston station and descended down the many, many, many stairs to the tube platform. I was holding on to the hand rail with one hand while he held my other hand, and was trying to figure out how to put my foot on the next step down without the end result being my taking the stairs face first, while he was pulling me after him - if you can, for a moment and in your mind's eye, imagine a very drunk flowy curtain flapping in the breeze suddenly try to be sober and rigid, then you would have an idea of what I probably looked like every time i took a step.
I dont remember getting home.
I do remember feeling like 5 day old burger on the top of a rubbish heap baking the midday African sun the next day.
We ended up going on a few dates after this first night and probably hung out for around 2 months before it finally - and spectacularly (though, that is another blog post and, in the words of a Game of Thrones character: Not Today) - ended.
What I happened to learn about this guy in the weeks that followed that he was very peculiar. He lived in a shared fat in East London with three other, by all accounts, hobbits who apparently never cleaned up after themselves because their poor cleaner has resorted to putting a permanent layer of tin foil over their stove because it was so dirty every time she went there; he only wore vintage clothes. From the 60s. From vintage stores...I dont mind the odd vintage piece if it means to enhance an outfit, but pilled, woollen, sleeveless jumpers from the 60s are hideous whichever way you look at them, okay.
He once told me that someone gave him a compliment on one of his uglier jumpers and I asked him if the person that gave him the compliment was blind. Im still not entirely sure why he kept speaking to me after that.
He also spent a lot of time complaining about this job, the people he worked with, his salary, his lack of career progression, his shitty flat - basically, anything and everything he could possibly complain about, he complained about. I, in response, spent my time taking the piss out of him for complaining about everything every time I saw him which didnt bode well because he ended up getting very defensive about everything I said which meant that I argued my point more and we would just descend into childish repartee's at one another's expense.
One particular evening, we ended up at the World's End in Camden having a drink for the road and, while showing me something on his phone, a message from his friend popped onto the screen with words that contained my name. I asked him what he had told his friend about me - he mentioned a few arbitrary things and ended his sentence with words about wanting to see more of me (we were seeing one another about once a week at this stage).
Now, since I knew this little dalliance was going nowhere, I had absolutely no intention of seeing this person more than I was seeing him - in fact, if I could see him less, that'd have been ideal, which - lets be honest - I could have chosen to see him less, but one must not refuse a willing drinking buddy.
Anyway, with the words now hanging in the air, I went into full mental retardation mode and found every excuse conceivable in my panicked brain as to why I could not see this person more than once a week: "My life is so busy", "Im just going through a lot right now", "I cant leave my cat alone that often" (yeah, right - she prefers being alone because there is no one to moan at her when she brings dead mice inside), "Im not ready for such a serious commitment", "I have to do my laundry a few times a week and dont have many free nights"...basically I retched up anything I could think of that might sound like a plausible reason. Fortunately, he took my odd reaction to mean that he had somehow upset me and immediately started apologising and, quite frankly, if it meant that we could stop talking about it, I was happy for him to continue thinking that.
Im not a bad person, I promise.
I met him on Tinder and, from his profile, which contained a few of his key interests (some of which were out of the norm for the standard, boring Tinder profile) and a few pictures of him doing various things and wearing silly hats, he seemed like an interesting enough person, so I swiped right and we started a conversation that lasted about 6 weeks before we actually met.
Usually, Id say a 6 week conversation prior to meeting was a bad sign, but it was the end of 2018 and anyone with a social life knows how bad November and December are for free time. I was in between a lot of social engagements, Christmas parties, a backpacking trip around the Gulf of Naples and Christmas in the Midlands, and he was in between London, East Anglia and Essex, so the first time that we had a matching time slot was just after Christmas.
After six weeks of chatting, he seemed to me to be a stereotypical British person - non-confrontational, relatively safe in terms of his life choices, mild-mannered, liked to complain a little - not entirely contemptible, and, for the most part, he seemed funny and could hold a good conversation. What could go wrong, right?
We met at the Vineyard in Islington (in London...obviously) on a relatively chilly Friday evening and, upon my insistence, sat outside (it was circa 0 degrees) - I've said before: I do love sitting outside, even when it is arctic.
He was very clearly freezing his reproductive organs off, so I reassured him that alcohol would warm us up and promptly made alcohol appear...Im not sure that it did, but after 3 bottles of wine (to myself), I certainly wasnt too bothered by the cold any longer. Before you wonder how I was standing after 3 bottles of wine - I wasnt. I was on the verge of (although if we are being honest here, and we are, I already was) messy drunk. He, meanwhile, was drinking gin and tonics and, from what I can remember, was fairly drunk himself, though I definitely think I won the "who is the functional alcoholic and obvious train wreck?" round that night. We had to move inside at some point because the outside area was closed, so we took our (mostly incomprehensible) conversation to a corner of the bar and continued to shout one another down over the music that was playing. I cant very well remember what we spoke about, but it was must have been a topic that required wild gesticulations because I ended up knocking his glasses off his face and, shortly after, elbowing him in the temple. I also confiscated his glasses for about an hour and, essentially, left him blind as fuck - which is probably why he didnt see my elbow coming towards his face the second time. I didnt do this on purpose, of course - I was reprehensibly drunk by this time and barely knew my elbow was even attached to my body.
As 2am rolled around, we agreed that it was time to head home (thank the Lundy Undy for the night tube) and so began the "short" walk to Euston station. It wasnt until 2 days later that I realised that the walk from Islington to Euston was, on a good day, 40 minutes long - I still dont have the faintest clue how two severely mentally impaired people managed to survive both the temperature and the aggressive night bus drivers at that time of night - never mind actually navigating our way in the correct direction. Fortunately, he seemed to have an idea of where we were going, which meant I could drag my concrete block feet around, blurting absolutely inane things (like "oh, my coffee shop! They have OAT MULK!! DID YU KNOW OAT MULK ISH MADE FRM OATS? WHY ARENT THEY NOT OPEN? IM PRETENTUSH!) while he lead me by the hand to the station.
In case you dont know what a person is like after 3 bottles of wine, the accurate question might be: "How does one describe a hot mess?" I was in the road (in the oncoming traffic), I was out of the road, I walked into a sign post, I walked into people, I walked into the guy...most of all, I definitely made absolutely no sense in anything I was saying because it was around that time that my brain short circuited and all I could make was strange mouth shapes that resulted in illegible noises.
We eventually reached Euston station and descended down the many, many, many stairs to the tube platform. I was holding on to the hand rail with one hand while he held my other hand, and was trying to figure out how to put my foot on the next step down without the end result being my taking the stairs face first, while he was pulling me after him - if you can, for a moment and in your mind's eye, imagine a very drunk flowy curtain flapping in the breeze suddenly try to be sober and rigid, then you would have an idea of what I probably looked like every time i took a step.
I dont remember getting home.
I do remember feeling like 5 day old burger on the top of a rubbish heap baking the midday African sun the next day.
We ended up going on a few dates after this first night and probably hung out for around 2 months before it finally - and spectacularly (though, that is another blog post and, in the words of a Game of Thrones character: Not Today) - ended.
What I happened to learn about this guy in the weeks that followed that he was very peculiar. He lived in a shared fat in East London with three other, by all accounts, hobbits who apparently never cleaned up after themselves because their poor cleaner has resorted to putting a permanent layer of tin foil over their stove because it was so dirty every time she went there; he only wore vintage clothes. From the 60s. From vintage stores...I dont mind the odd vintage piece if it means to enhance an outfit, but pilled, woollen, sleeveless jumpers from the 60s are hideous whichever way you look at them, okay.
He once told me that someone gave him a compliment on one of his uglier jumpers and I asked him if the person that gave him the compliment was blind. Im still not entirely sure why he kept speaking to me after that.
He also spent a lot of time complaining about this job, the people he worked with, his salary, his lack of career progression, his shitty flat - basically, anything and everything he could possibly complain about, he complained about. I, in response, spent my time taking the piss out of him for complaining about everything every time I saw him which didnt bode well because he ended up getting very defensive about everything I said which meant that I argued my point more and we would just descend into childish repartee's at one another's expense.
One particular evening, we ended up at the World's End in Camden having a drink for the road and, while showing me something on his phone, a message from his friend popped onto the screen with words that contained my name. I asked him what he had told his friend about me - he mentioned a few arbitrary things and ended his sentence with words about wanting to see more of me (we were seeing one another about once a week at this stage).
Now, since I knew this little dalliance was going nowhere, I had absolutely no intention of seeing this person more than I was seeing him - in fact, if I could see him less, that'd have been ideal, which - lets be honest - I could have chosen to see him less, but one must not refuse a willing drinking buddy.
Anyway, with the words now hanging in the air, I went into full mental retardation mode and found every excuse conceivable in my panicked brain as to why I could not see this person more than once a week: "My life is so busy", "Im just going through a lot right now", "I cant leave my cat alone that often" (yeah, right - she prefers being alone because there is no one to moan at her when she brings dead mice inside), "Im not ready for such a serious commitment", "I have to do my laundry a few times a week and dont have many free nights"...basically I retched up anything I could think of that might sound like a plausible reason. Fortunately, he took my odd reaction to mean that he had somehow upset me and immediately started apologising and, quite frankly, if it meant that we could stop talking about it, I was happy for him to continue thinking that.
Im not a bad person, I promise.
Tuesday, 9 July 2019
That time I used a bad bird pun
Perhaps the very second date I went on as a newly single Londoner was with a guy that I met on Match.com.
Being new to dating, and having spent years hearing people talk about the likes of Tinder, Bumble, Hinge, Match...I was so curious to see what they were all about, so I, naturally, went a little "bos" (which is South African slang for being a little extreme in the way you do something, but describes it so much better. Bos also means bush in a literal sense...which is totally not relevant in this context....where was I?)
Anyway, on paper this guy seemed funny, quirky, moral, employed...all the good adjectives, basically. We messaged back and forth for a few days about the generic "who are you, what do you do, what do you like" shit, he asked for my number, we agreed to meet and bobs-your-uncle. He did send me some very random texts in the days leading up to meeting - one of which had something to do with him witnessing a bird flying at some woman in the street. I hadnt the faintest clue what this guy was on about, nor how to respond appropriately (...to a guy I hardly knew about a random bird story), so I went with a bird pun (default, right!?) and replied with "Thats Hawkward!"
No reply. Not even a weak "lol". Just radio silence.
I thought it was my bad sense of humour and that he surely thought I was a complete imbecile.
A few days later, I met LibrarianGuy (as he shall henceforth be known) at Covent Garden tube station (in London...obviously). As we politely made first date small talk, I noticed that he stood oddly close to me, almost leaning towards me as he spoke to me. My natural reaction was to lean back - or step back, which is what I did - because personal space, mate. I was desperately hoping that he was a little drunk or something and wasnt a weird leany-in person.
He took me to a pub called Punch and Judy where we had a few glasses of wine - three to be exact. Two of which I paid for. (The reason I mention this will become apparent a little later on)
We chatted about various generic things, including my job and his - he was a librarian for a charity, and I work in the tech sector as a technical person. He took this to mean that I earn a lot of money and kept on lamenting about how much more I must earn than him. A point that I kept trying to either not comment on or defer, but that he kept harping on about throughout the evening.
Another weird thing that happening was that, at one point, I noticed that I had something in my shoe and needed to remove the shoe to get rid of whatever it was and readjust; he watched me with an intense gaze as I did this, even moving back and looking under the table and commented, almost under his breath: "Painted toenails" (assumingly at my painted toenails) - creepy much?
I think we spent about an hour and a half at this pub before he told me that we were going somewhere else and, as I was mildly drunk by this point, I willingly picked up my belongings and followed him out of the pub and through the streets of the West End until we ended up at Trafalgar Dining Rooms in Trafalgar Square.
Trafalgar Dining Rooms (through wine goggles, at least) was lovely - very chic and elegant with well dressed staff and a well populated cocktail menu. We sat down on a couch and ordered a round of cocktails which, still unbeknownst to me, they gave us on the house. At this point, I can scarcely remember what we were discussing, but I do distinctly remember getting to the 20 questions round for the evening...basically, he suggested that we are each given a certain number of questions to ask back and forth which had to be reciprocated with an answer and the follow-on questions could not be related to the previous one, nor could it be the same as the last question the other had asked. I dont know why I am going to into so much detail about this "game", because I dont remember what we asked each other, except to say that he got a little inappropriate with his questions towards the end of the game and got a little annoyed with me when I descended into drunken stupidness when answering his questions in an effort to diffuse, for lack of a better word, his line of questioning.
Being inebriated, I do believe he sort-of kissed me at one point, but then stopped and told me something along of the lines of needing to feel safe, comforted and understood - or some shit like that. All I remember thinking was "ALRIGHT MATE, WE ARENT GETTING MARRIED. CHILL YER BAPS"
By 11pm, it was time to go home, so we asked for the bill which arrived almost immediately. LibrarianGuy then says to me that, since he had bought the drinks at the pub and because I earn more than he does, I should get these drinks... ...... ...... NOW, HOLD THE FUCKING DOOR. I, absolutely, 100%, without a doubt, have no problem with paying for drinks when on a date, but it should be 50/50. End of.
I had paid for two out of three rounds at the first pub and now I was being told that since he paid at the pub (which he did - but ONE round only), and because he assumed that I earned more than he did, I should pay for the cocktails at the bar we were at!?
Anyway, pick your battles right? I paid and we left. He then grabbed my hand and proceeded to drag me through the streets of London to Charing Cross station. Once we had arrived and were in the process of saying our goodbyes, he told me that on our next date, I should wear heels of the same height as I had on that night because he likes me at that height.
We had, much earlier in the evening, discussed a second date (before shit got really weird, obviously) where we would meet in Greenwich for a drink and dinner, and go on a walk through the park, so when he told me to wear heels on this next date, I responded by saying that I would not wear heels if we were going to be spending time walking around a park - his face told me he didnt like that answer.
Very shorty after, we went out respective ways back in the directions of where we lived - fortunately, his direction was opposite to mine. I think he texted me the next day (again, some random text to which I really didnt know how to respond).
I had in fact learnt that my prior-to-meeting bird pun had not received a response because this guy was fundamentally a creepy weirdo devoid of a sense of humour - in fact, had I been so indulgent, Im fairly certain there were a few weird obsessions lurking beneath the surface.
Despite my poor judgement due to the alcohol on the night, I realised the remarkable error of my ways and sent him a "Dear John..." text a few days later and then blocked him - so I have no idea if he ever replied, and thank god for that.
I also deleted my Match.com account shortly after that because fuck that. I was not in the market for the weirdos of London, and by all accounts, Match.com was where they lived.
Being new to dating, and having spent years hearing people talk about the likes of Tinder, Bumble, Hinge, Match...I was so curious to see what they were all about, so I, naturally, went a little "bos" (which is South African slang for being a little extreme in the way you do something, but describes it so much better. Bos also means bush in a literal sense...which is totally not relevant in this context....where was I?)
Anyway, on paper this guy seemed funny, quirky, moral, employed...all the good adjectives, basically. We messaged back and forth for a few days about the generic "who are you, what do you do, what do you like" shit, he asked for my number, we agreed to meet and bobs-your-uncle. He did send me some very random texts in the days leading up to meeting - one of which had something to do with him witnessing a bird flying at some woman in the street. I hadnt the faintest clue what this guy was on about, nor how to respond appropriately (...to a guy I hardly knew about a random bird story), so I went with a bird pun (default, right!?) and replied with "Thats Hawkward!"
No reply. Not even a weak "lol". Just radio silence.
I thought it was my bad sense of humour and that he surely thought I was a complete imbecile.
A few days later, I met LibrarianGuy (as he shall henceforth be known) at Covent Garden tube station (in London...obviously). As we politely made first date small talk, I noticed that he stood oddly close to me, almost leaning towards me as he spoke to me. My natural reaction was to lean back - or step back, which is what I did - because personal space, mate. I was desperately hoping that he was a little drunk or something and wasnt a weird leany-in person.
He took me to a pub called Punch and Judy where we had a few glasses of wine - three to be exact. Two of which I paid for. (The reason I mention this will become apparent a little later on)
We chatted about various generic things, including my job and his - he was a librarian for a charity, and I work in the tech sector as a technical person. He took this to mean that I earn a lot of money and kept on lamenting about how much more I must earn than him. A point that I kept trying to either not comment on or defer, but that he kept harping on about throughout the evening.
Another weird thing that happening was that, at one point, I noticed that I had something in my shoe and needed to remove the shoe to get rid of whatever it was and readjust; he watched me with an intense gaze as I did this, even moving back and looking under the table and commented, almost under his breath: "Painted toenails" (assumingly at my painted toenails) - creepy much?
I think we spent about an hour and a half at this pub before he told me that we were going somewhere else and, as I was mildly drunk by this point, I willingly picked up my belongings and followed him out of the pub and through the streets of the West End until we ended up at Trafalgar Dining Rooms in Trafalgar Square.
Trafalgar Dining Rooms (through wine goggles, at least) was lovely - very chic and elegant with well dressed staff and a well populated cocktail menu. We sat down on a couch and ordered a round of cocktails which, still unbeknownst to me, they gave us on the house. At this point, I can scarcely remember what we were discussing, but I do distinctly remember getting to the 20 questions round for the evening...basically, he suggested that we are each given a certain number of questions to ask back and forth which had to be reciprocated with an answer and the follow-on questions could not be related to the previous one, nor could it be the same as the last question the other had asked. I dont know why I am going to into so much detail about this "game", because I dont remember what we asked each other, except to say that he got a little inappropriate with his questions towards the end of the game and got a little annoyed with me when I descended into drunken stupidness when answering his questions in an effort to diffuse, for lack of a better word, his line of questioning.
Being inebriated, I do believe he sort-of kissed me at one point, but then stopped and told me something along of the lines of needing to feel safe, comforted and understood - or some shit like that. All I remember thinking was "ALRIGHT MATE, WE ARENT GETTING MARRIED. CHILL YER BAPS"
By 11pm, it was time to go home, so we asked for the bill which arrived almost immediately. LibrarianGuy then says to me that, since he had bought the drinks at the pub and because I earn more than he does, I should get these drinks... ...... ...... NOW, HOLD THE FUCKING DOOR. I, absolutely, 100%, without a doubt, have no problem with paying for drinks when on a date, but it should be 50/50. End of.
I had paid for two out of three rounds at the first pub and now I was being told that since he paid at the pub (which he did - but ONE round only), and because he assumed that I earned more than he did, I should pay for the cocktails at the bar we were at!?
Anyway, pick your battles right? I paid and we left. He then grabbed my hand and proceeded to drag me through the streets of London to Charing Cross station. Once we had arrived and were in the process of saying our goodbyes, he told me that on our next date, I should wear heels of the same height as I had on that night because he likes me at that height.
We had, much earlier in the evening, discussed a second date (before shit got really weird, obviously) where we would meet in Greenwich for a drink and dinner, and go on a walk through the park, so when he told me to wear heels on this next date, I responded by saying that I would not wear heels if we were going to be spending time walking around a park - his face told me he didnt like that answer.
Very shorty after, we went out respective ways back in the directions of where we lived - fortunately, his direction was opposite to mine. I think he texted me the next day (again, some random text to which I really didnt know how to respond).
I had in fact learnt that my prior-to-meeting bird pun had not received a response because this guy was fundamentally a creepy weirdo devoid of a sense of humour - in fact, had I been so indulgent, Im fairly certain there were a few weird obsessions lurking beneath the surface.
Despite my poor judgement due to the alcohol on the night, I realised the remarkable error of my ways and sent him a "Dear John..." text a few days later and then blocked him - so I have no idea if he ever replied, and thank god for that.
I also deleted my Match.com account shortly after that because fuck that. I was not in the market for the weirdos of London, and by all accounts, Match.com was where they lived.
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