Blast from the past

More than a year ago, a random boy walked up to me in the pub, did an aeroplane impersonation, and asked me out on a date. With the attitude of “Well, it can’t really hurt, and everyone loves going out for dinner”, I went. It wasn’t super bad, but as you can see here, he wasn’t a keeper.

            He told me on the first date that he was in the throws of breaking up with his very serious ex (warning signs all over the place) and I decided very quickly that I didn’t want to fill her place.

            After allowing the whole thing to fizzle out, I was under the impression that I was free of him until he randomly text me nearly a year later, asking me out for another drink. I lied and said I was seeing someone – it’s so much easier than having to be mean and it’s a pretty hard statement to argue with.

            Unfortunately, people in relationships don’t use online dating sites, so when he found me online and sent me the following message, I drew a blank as to how to reply.

“I met a nice young lady from Pimlico once…lost touch unfortunately! How are you? X”

Damn. How do I get out of this one? 

A clash of personality?

I was dreading my date with The Personality Partner, absolutely dreading it. The more I thought about it, the more certain I was that he was going to be a more actively obnoxious version of The Word Smith, and had it not been for a bit of a wine drinking slip up at lunch, there is a high chance I would have made my excuses and managed to avoid being stood on the steps of St Martins at 6:15.

            However, wine was drunk at lunch, and opting out of the date just felt like delaying the inevitable, so I braved the buzz of Thursday night in Covent Garden, and was at the agreed meeting place bang on time.

            Fortunately I was actually pleasantly surprised by the guy that arrived to meet me. Where with The Word Smith I had taken social incompetency for banter, with The Personality Partner I had learnt from my mistake and had been reading into comments and jokes way too much, inevitable dreading the worst. It turns out, he was utterly hilarious, and everything I had started flagging warning signs at were actually perfectly normal conversations / jokes in the making.

            I think that the test of a date in the world of online is the number of drinks you get through before you call it a night. One drink was a complete and utter failure (The Word Smith), two drinks was nice enough, but having got a round each, you’ve definitely seen enough (The Biking Engineer) and three drinks or more means that you’re both fairly keen to carry on chatting, and the fact that the person sat opposite you is a complete and utter strange doesn’t really worry you too much. This was a three drink date, and I think that we can thank The Personality Partner’s sense of humour and comedy story telling for that one.  

            Conversation started with the safe (work, home, family), branched into the slightly wider spanning (recent trips with friends, holidays, most embarrassing moments) and even reached a slightly uncomfortable low which found us discussing the website that we had met on, and our reasons for being there – yes, I told him about Slutty-Suppers (although not the blog, obviously) and I think it worried him slightly. In fact, his exact words were “Oh good, so you’re going to be discussing this whole evening in minute detail with your friends? Yeah, that’s not intimidating in the slightest.” Imagine the reaction disclosing details of the blog would have inspired…maybe next time.

            I suppose that’s the crux of the matter – whether there will be a next time, and having been asked, I think that, in the spirit of making the most of the situation and celebrating the fact that I didn’t want to kill him or myself within the first few hours of our acquaintance, I think there just might be!

Outed at work

I had a work lunch today with a man that was, for all intents and purposes, an absolute arse – seriously. But, he is a friend of my boss and a man that we could potentially do business with in the future, so the two of us headed over the road to Hawksmoor for steak and what I thought would be some work related chat.

            Unfortunately, due to his fairly close friendship with my boss, chat centred mostly on general banter and news sharing, so when the issue of online dating came up (my boss finds The Word Smith story utterly hilarious and feels the need to share it with pretty much everyone) we ended up dwelling on it for quite some time. The guy we were meeting used Guardian Soulmates when he was online dating a couple of years ago, and as such, felt the need to ask me a barrage of questions about who I was finding, and requested to see all their profiles.

            Having shared a couple of comedy stories whilst point blank refusing to share my or their profile details with him, we went out separate ways so that we could finish up a couple of bits of work before the end of the afternoon.

            Two hours back in the office, and I received the following email (with my boss cc’ed): “I would have thought you could have come up with a more imaginative name than Miss P?!” with my profile content copied below.

            Now I’m not a crazily private person, and the fact that I have shared the most entertaining stories from my online ventures with my office goes to show that I’m not ashamed of the fact that I’m online and making a bit of a hash of it. That said, there is something about a couple of paragraphs where you shameless attempt to sell yourself that’s incredibly personal, and if there is one group of people that don’t need to have access to it, it’s the boys I work with. I get that’s it’s sort of funny, and that in refusing to show him my profile I was just adding to the entertainment factor of the hunt for him, but still, did my boss need to see it?

            One of the main fears of each and everyone of the Sluts when we were discussing making profiles and getting them online was that someone you know might find you on there – either when they’re looking for dates or just for the comedy value of publically humiliating you, but I don’t think anyone thought it would be a work related ousting.  Fortunately, I seem to have reached a point in life where nothing much will shame me into submission. Still, I don’t think I’ll be going for lunch with that guy again, whether there’s steak on offer or not!

In the eyes of God

It’s been boiling away in the background for a couple of weeks now, fuelled by drunken (on his part, not mine) night bus messages and random extensive conversations about his new house and how crap he is at DIY, but tonight I am finally due to meet up with The Personality Twin, and I have to say, I’m not really too excited about it.

            Having just about managed to get over the mentally scaring date with The Word Smith, to have then got through the date with The Biking Engineer without anything going too awry, I have am awful feeling that this evening is going to mark a return to form for me, in that it’s going see a dip back down to ‘dire’ in the enjoyment stakes.

            Whilst on paper The Personality Twin is right up my street (similar interests, fairly closely linked opinions and able to cover a range of conversational topics that don’t make me want to stab my eyes out), he is also dangerously close to being what my Mamu would describe as ‘a bit of an arse’. In fact, he’s not just close, he’s pretty much there – he talks about putting up shower caps, is on some voluntary council thing at work, he sings in a choir three nights a week and he thinks it’s really witty to plan important work presentations in the theme of Faulty Towers. Hmm, if only I had noticed this, oh I don’t know, three weeks ago when I started down this ridiculous path, then I wouldn’t be facing yet another challenging date prospect when all I really want to do tonight is go home and mooch.

            Well, there’s no way out of it now – even if I pulled out a half baked excuse to delay D-day, the amount of background work that has gone into this one would mean that rescheduling would be inevitable, purely serving to prolong the whole process. Nope, when the time comes, I will be standing on the steps of St Martin’s, awaiting his arrival. Well, I will probably be standing somewhere up the road waiting for his arrival so that I can approach with caution and not be caught off guard and to reassure myself that, if I really need to, I can leg it at the last minute and just delete my online account. Ahh, the romance!

This has been great, I’ll give you a call, we should do this again sometime!

We’ve all seen the episode of Friends where Chandler goes on a date with Rachel’s boss (the one with the mascara goop – blurgh), and regardless of how badly each evening goes, he leaves her at the end of it with the parting comment; “Well, this has been great, I’ll give you a call, we should do this again sometime!”

            I’ve always assumed that this was because he’s a boy, he’s foolish and he just doesn’t really know what else to do, but having followed up on dating disasters with Tits McGee, it appears that this is something that actually does happen in real life – and to totally normal people too!

            I’m not sure if it’s been ingrained into us out of a forced politeness, or if it just sounds like the right way to round off an evening when you are 100% certain that absolutely no kissing is going to be taking place - it’s like saying “I’ll see you soon”, but a stranger-friendly version because, let’s face it, you’ve never seen them before, so the chances of randomly bumping into them are fairly slim (I have a horrible feeling that this is going to happen eventually, but until that dreaded day…).

            I suppose it stands as something of a testament as to how well the date went if nothing else; there is absolutely no chance that The Word Smith was going to get anything other than a wave and a cringing sideways glance as the bus failed to race him along the road home, leaving me huddled in a corner to try and avoid eye contact. The Biking Engineer, on the other hand, who is also never going to get a second date, at least got a fairly polite farewell, even if it was laced in lies.

            This might be something that needs to be discussed at a future Slutty Suppers Club – how do you say thanks, but no thanks, without sounding awful and without tying yourself up in tricky potential second date territory. 

Undercover flirting

This weekend, whilst catching up on work in Starbucks (I’ll be honest, it was 50% work, 10% news sites and 40% social networking, but whatever) I got into a Guardian Soulmates conversation with a rather random boy that has the most American style photo imaginable (think big hair, cheesy pose, maybe taken from a work profile of some sort) but the most apparently British background.

            The interesting thing about this one is not the incredibly cheesy photo, but rather than his whole profile is written as though he’s a spy (ie – a rip off of a selection of James Bond movies), and all conversations since initial contact was made has been based around secret service based banter.

It’s all very bizarre, and in fact, it’s the sort of behaviour that I would normally run a mile from (I’ve met crazy once recently, I don’t need to meet him again any time soon) but I am fairly intrigued to see where this one goes – maybe a date in Dans le Noir, a quirky restaurant were you sit in pitch black and can’t see either your date or your food…that could be fun – and definitely worth a blog post or two!

Back in at the deep end

I have to say, the dreaded date with The Word Smith the weekend before last was actually the first mentally scarring date experience that I’ve ever had, and whilst it makes for a funny story to share with the girls over the odd glass of wine, it didn’t do wonders for my nerves when I had to face my first online-source date since then.

What if he was another complete and utter freak? Would I be able to just get up and walk out without feeling an ounce of shame at being such a cow, or would I be tied into a good two-hour chat with a complete and utter arse, again? Surely I’ve done my time in that respect!

In reality it’s incredibly unlikely that I would have been able to silently turn and leave the room mid-conversation, but with the promise of at least a gingo tongo for my troubles, I managed to get myself back to my standard nerve-free state (I’m assuming the fact that I make a tit out of myself all day everyday is responsible for explaining why shame and nerves don’t touch me anymore – they’ve apparently got more delicate people to spend their efforts on) and I stuck to the agreed plan to mill around by the Costa pod outside Victoria Station at seven last night.

Actually, I was milling slightly round the corner and about five minutes early, watching the pod and getting stomach pangs every time a very short boy with the sort of hair I was keeping an eye out for slowed their pace (see my post on only realising at the very last minute that the original date I had lined up for Monday night was a good few inches shorter than me). Fortunately, it turned out that there were just an awful lot of short people buying coffee last night, and at bang on 7pm an insanely tall chap went and stood right by the pod, waiting. No mooching around pretending to shop or thinking about getting a drink. Nope, he was there, waiting. It took me a while to remember that I was actually going to have to go and introduce myself, but with that slightly awkward moment out of the way, it all went rather well.

            We made our way to The Phoenix, a local pub that I really like going to (comfort zones on dates are always advisable), but that doesn’t have the same magical home-from-home vibe as The Queen’s Arms (that’s a very special place for everyone in our house, and there are rules about where you’re allowed to take boys you don’t necessarily intend to keep – plus, I really don’t need to give the bar staff any further amo for mocking abuse; they have more than enough as it is!)

Feeling nothing but eternally grateful that The Biking Engineer was not a patch on the craziness of The Word Smith, conversation covered the entire required selection of dating conversational essentials – family background, schooling, jobs, weekend entertainment of choice, last holiday, future holidays, you know, the basics. Two drinks were drunk, one chair was knocked over (yep, I’m elegant at all times), and two air kisses were offered in farewell.

I won’t say it’s the best date I’ve ever been on, but it’s a long way from the worst one too. The likelihood is that I won’t be seeing The Biking Engineer again (unless I suddenly decide to take up rock-climbing, motor biking or Portuguese lessons as hobbies and require a buddy to help me out), but this morning, I’m just very glad to be back in the saddle and not on the cusp of deleting yet another online profile.