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.
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