S and the weeping woman... (that'd be me)

After the exchange of some fruity post-date texts suggesting we visit Mary W's gravestone in Bournemouth, all went quiet on the S front. Considering the evening had cost him the best part of £150 I thought it only polite to follow up the next day with a sober thank you for the delicious dinner "and post-meal entertainment" which elicited an amused and enthusiastic reply, but this followed what I've learnt is his typical pattern of courteous responses and zero initiation. Hmm... Just maybe I scared him off with my drunken recommendation not to do "the man-nonsense of waiting until it was too late"?!

S somehow manages to have a profound effect on my mood - when he's keen it's like the sun shining down a blessing on me; when he's politely dismissive it's like the thunder clouds have opened over my head and battered out any self-esteem I might have ever possessed.  I enjoy his company and find him exceedingly attractive. I know he's no good for me. I suggest we meet as friends.

My plan was just to have a coffee and brief catch up, possibly with a view towards making myself indispensable as a friend (and perhaps along the way provoke him into realising he'd missed out on a good catch), but avoiding alcohol and anything that could be implicit in "getting my hopes up". This morphed into going to the cinema, and then going to the cinema and getting something to eat (both his idea).

Unfortunately for him, it was the once a month free bar at my work, and we weren't meeting until 7.30. I had been planning to fill the time gap with a spot of light reading, but following a major work-related vexation at 5.29pm, I was persuaded to join my colleagues in the pub. The same colleagues who, on ascertaining my plans for the evening, ribbed me with "Not a date?! Yeah right!" until a few beers and sufficient innuendo later, I was riding the crest of certainty that I was the most desirable woman in London and was essentially heading out to be proposed to.

Within minutes of meeting S, my confidence and mild alcohol-induced elation were doused. 

"I've started seeing someone," he announces as we sit down opposite each other in the restaurant of his choice. "I've taken my profile off the website, we're serious about each other."

"Oh? The One?" I reply nonchalantly, possibly in a slightly higher pitch than usual. "That's nice. How long have you been together?"

"You're going to laugh. Since Tuesday."

Laugh? I should have. But not many people laugh when they receive a metaphorical slap. Today is Thursday. He made categorically clear that he did not want to "rush into" a relationship after first meeting me. I'm starting to feel a little... well, shit.

"I thought you weren't into rushing into anything?" I allow myself (trying to avoid doing the petulant mimc voice and accompanying "talking hand" when quoting his words back at him).

"Yes, well, we'd been writing to each other for three weeks, so we felt like we knew each other well already."

There's a pause as at least one of us contemplates the fact that he and I were writing to each other for three months before we finally met up. He gets up to pay for the meal (you have to pay when you order in this place).

"Wait!" I say. "How much do I owe you?" I'm not accepting dinner from someone else's boyfriend.

He declines to take any money. Guilt? Pity? Flash? Still wanting to be charming? Just a nice guy?

"Come on," I text (he is now in the queue), "you should be saving your money for your new fiancee."

"Yes, weddings are exorbitant nowadays!" He texts back.

Fine. "Can I be a bridesmaid?"

This is what my outfit should say!

Dear reader, before reading his response, note that I was wearing what I'll pretend to think of as my Lois Lane outfit - i.e. a satin pencil skirt, non-slutty fishnet tights, boots and a low cut but smart white shirt. I probably wear this to work about once a week, but it doubles up as my work-to-date-without-looking-like-I've-made-any-particular-effort-for-you outfit.

His reply: "Definitely, if you wear that outfit!"

I shrugged the inappropriately flirtatious comment off with, "What? Office wear?"

But really, what game are we playing here? Is he seeing someone or not? And either way, why is he even meeting me? To take his turn at knocking me back? I was too unsettled to eat much, or to even mentally note infractions of commonly held table manner conventions for later ridicule. Yes, it was that bad.

We go to the cinema. To see Martha Macy Myrtle Margery Miranda... This was my choice and not a good one. Brooding, sinister, alienating, wholly depressing... the ideal film to give a very wide berth when you're exhausted, haven't really eaten, have pmt, are reaching the groggily depressed stage of drunkenness and have just been publicly given the mega-brush off by someone you have been pretending to everyone (yourself included) not to like a quarter as much as you do.

The film is like walking further and further into a dank, deserted forest at dusk. As, three-quarters of the way through, a character submits herself to rape, a tear slips down my face. I lose the will to pretend I'm enjoying myself anymore and the tear's followed by a cascade of more. This is the sort of mood where you need to be in bed with a hot chocolate, a Pixar DVD and a sleeping pill, not out on a date with someone you like but have somehow blown it with. The film ends and I go to the toilet to have a sob (experience has taught me that teariness needs immediate purging or I'll be on the cusp of a breakdown all evening).  I emerge red-eyed and -nosed, hoping the dark will conceal this and I can emerge with a thread of dignity.

No such luck!

S appears to jolly me along: "Remind you of your experiences in a cult, did it?"

"Yes." I retort, flatly.

I recall that S is a psychiatrist. At this moment there are few professions I would less like to be on a date with.

He seems, understandably, in a slight hurry to get his tube. I tell him to go ahead: I need a hot chocolate or I'm going to spend the whole night being haunted by the film (I'm very suggestible). He accompanies me despite my internal pleas that he doesn't decide to benevolently humour me. He gets kinder and more distant by the minute. I feel more and more like a young and foolish patient... I wonder if he has any diazepam.

We have hot drinks and a share a cake. He makes the sort of kindly gestures to cheer me up that a psychiatrist would of course be so adept at - steering the conversation towards my past successes, asking questions he already knows the (cheering) answers to in a bid to buoy my mood, all the while keeping it impersonal and himself detached. This is smart and considerate of him, and truly depresses the hell out of me. The only thing that could possibly make it worse would be if he started telling me what a catch I would be - for some other man. And that's exactly what he does. If I'm that good a catch... but no, I don't labour that point.

Goddam phoney psychiatrists!

The next day I will send him a message apologising, explaining I am not on the verge of a nervous breakdown, do not want a fling, do not go home with men after only meeting them once, am not persistently drunk, have not been in a cult and do not like seeing films with anything higher than a 12 rating. He will write back telling me he accepts my self-evaluation, and how funny and intelligent I am, how I owe him dinner and how he can't wait to see my published work on the 3 for 2 table in Waterstone's: "All I ask is to be a character in your book, so that I can tell my friends."

But for tonight, this week, this month, I have had enough. I listen to assorted tunes of torment on repeat all the way home and snivel into my pillow, with a plan for the morrow to invest my future energies into dull essays instead of phantasmagoric romances.

Here endeth the blog (for the rest of this month, anyway).

Lavish dinner with S and his repellent table manners!

I was very close to cancelling this after the text/conversation debacle. No point spending an evening with a man who makes you feel 100th on his list and who didn't even have the courtesy to text with the venue until the day itself.  I didn't reply while I deliberated. However, perversely the question "are you having second thoughts?? x" made me resolve to show: at least he had realised I was no longer excessively keen!

I set off in a foul mood, trying to negotiate the dress code of "effortlessly irresistible" and the mental code of "fun yet sceptical" whilst having a bad back, period pain and ladders in all my tights. A prescription codeine later and I was a lot more in the mood!  Dinner was at a reputed vegetarian restaurant in Hammersmith, and I was (unintentionally but not regretfully) late. 

I hear you've been dating my daughter, Comrade Stalin.

First topic of conversation: my new haircut ("quite nice, 20s-ish"). Second topic: Collaborators. I adored this play (seen 3 days earlier) - I love the era, the set, the casting, the resonance with another play I'd seen about Anna Akhmatova, the way it starts off so amusingly and ends so chillingly... I was completely gripped. Someone in the play reminded me of S, could he guess who? I had to stifle a laugh when he asked "the dashing young Jewish intellectual who plays the violin?"  No. It was the genial, crafty, stumpy Stalin who was immensely likeable (in the play at least), prior to the revelation of his macabre side. I said I'd tell him at the end of the night if he remembered to ask. Thankfully he didn't.

During this discussion, it became obvious that S hadn't eaten all day. Or perhaps all week. In his (wholly legitimate) eagerness to remedy this evident starvation, he sucked his starter from both his fork and his knife, whilst spattering the table with oil and vinegar from his vigorously dipped bread. There was something unsavoury, Dickensian, about this; perhaps it was "his avaricious manner of collecting all the eatables about him and devouring some with his eyes while devouring others with his jaws in the same manner".  But the conversation and wine were good... and at least his napkin wasn't tucked into his chin and resting on his pot belly (in the interests of fair reportage - he doesn't have a pot belly). Could I overlook these "minor" infractions?

Of course we had to talk about the phone call. He had the cheek to genially suggest he'd feared I might become a stalker (the conceit!), but "could see now that it was unlikely". Then he asked about my other dates. "Depends whether you want to consider me a friend, someone you won't see again, or someone with future romantic potential," I said. "Either of the first two and I'm happy to tell you; the latter, no, I think it's a bit crass." He looked aghast. I continued that I'd make it easy and tell him anyway - "The one exactly half your age," I started, "is taking me to a comedy club on Thursday". Apparently the table next to ours were all ears. Perhaps this was also why he'd ordered the second most expensive wine. 

I think I'd prefer to have sat opposite this...

The main course was almost over. He spent a good five minutes picking his teeth in the most gaping-jawed uncouth manner imaginable. I was almost dumbstruck. Even my usual bazooka-style shootdowns (normally only enhanced by wine) were deactivated.  I only managed a limp "Do you always do this on a date?" when what was actually required was the googling of a video of a komodo dragon (toxic saliva strung between teeth, gorging on live goat entrails, covered in gore) and the subsequent thrusting of said video into the offender's face, whilst simultaneously making finger-throat vomit gestures. Anyway, this sealed it - he could never, ever, be my boyfriend, and once that was out of the way the evening significantly perked up.

Two pictures are required to adequately convey my disgust.

I pointed out that despite having table manners which would offend a beast, we had great chemistry (just like you, dear reader, I am subsequently demanding 'How can this be so?!') and should he stop being such a plonker, I might concede to have a short but torrid affair with him. He took my hand, whilst telling me 50 reasons why it wouldn't work: I was too smart; I didn't watch enough TV; I would find his friends boring; he hadn't heard of Anna Akhmatova before; I would want babies soon (the number of times he has brought this up... I cut it off with "yes, and I don't want them all to be deformed")...  

The best and surely most noble of these reasons however, was that he couldn't stop internet dating, even temporarily (my precondition for anything physical between us), as he might miss out on meeting The One.

"The One?!" I spluttered!  "She could have run rings round you five times by now and you wouldn't have noticed! If you carry on like a headless chicken imagining a woman wearing big badge declaring 'woman of S's dreams' on it is about to tap you on the shoulder, you're going to miss - and have already irreparably missed - anything approaching Genuine Love. If you don't grow up and realise that all relationships need work, and that a partner can't be slotted into your existing life like a new piece of furniture, you are going to wake up on your deathbed horribly alone..." 

"But-"

"And besides, (no, my rant was not yet done) even if you did meet someone who so perfectly fit in to your daily routine that not a smidgen of it changed, what on earth would you have to talk about, and how could you have any respect for her?!"

S's ideal wife?

He whined, but accepted I was right.  He's evidently an internet dating addict who is yet to check into a Priory for a necessary spell of abstinence.

Warming to my theme of indignation, I pointed out that there are four men who have taken international flights to see me in the last year hoping for a similar offer (and not all received it, despite the airfare) and that it was quite indicative that the one English resident I'd liked in that time couldn't even be bothered to make it 30 mins down the District Line - and now, here was another such moron!

I apologise for under-dressing.

"But you turned up in non-date clothes!" 

I was wearing an almost backless green silk dress. 

I asked what I was supposed to have worn... Let's just say it was not second date attire. 

You may think this sounds like I was having a bad evening. I wasn't! There was something extremely refreshing about sitting opposite a man to whom I could say whatsoever I wanted, in the knowledge that he would listen, consider it as being probably true and not jump to taking offence, or argue back with the sole aim of protecting his ego and winning points. 


Case in point: when he leant over to kiss me I made a joke to the waiter about 'the old man thinking he was my boyfriend', and all three of us laughed. In normal circumstances I could easily have been the recipient of a slap. I like a man who has the self-assurance not to batter me (or at least sulk) for my errant tongue.

He ordered more wine, negotiated a made-to-order dessert plate (being a practiced glutton does then have some benefits), and, feeling I was on a roll (though not quite sure where I was rolling to), I upped the temperature by discussing al fresco sex (Mary Shelley losing her virginity to Percy on her mother's tomb). 

About as probable (but as enjoyable)

Over three hours after we'd arrived (we also had post-dinner peppermint tea), he kindly picked up the bill saying he didn't want to bankrupt me, and we ambled contentedly back to the station (me contented from the sense I'd won an argument, him seemingly contented because he'd lost one, but was still having fun).

S wanted to get me a taxi home. I suggested instead that he get my tube and take a circuitous route back. I laid on his shoulder and he had his arm round me, all surprisingly fond. He then made the journey even more circuitous by refusing get off at the first Northern Line junction, so I got off at the next one with him and we giggled our way to the end of the platform for a passionate kiss... Something I have subsequently been informed may well appear on Harry Hill's "Tube Snogs". (is this real, or is someone having mean fun with me?!).


Two trains went by. It was hotting up, and - although he may deny it if asked now - he told me I was very "loveable". Then he asked if he could come back to mine (Reader - quick! Do you see what he did there?!). In light of his earlier refusal to even temporarily halt searching for The One, the fact that he kept getting the place I lived in wrong (obviously confusing it with someone else's he'd been back to recently), and perhaps the subconscious realisation that I'd have to transcribe the result for this blog, I said "Sorry, no!" and jumped on the train currently sitting in the station.  The doors pipped  ("You're not seriously leaving on that train?!").  I was. 
I waved goodbye to the astonished man on the platform.