It goes on. Those two shards from ten days ago appear to have now fizzled, though it took a little longer than expected, and the one enjoyed a brief crackle of sorts.
However, the one higher in my affections and more subjected to careful hope qualified her brush off yesterday evening by text message. Her indifference had grown obvious. She initially gave hope and we loosely arranged a second meeting, then she cancelled – really busy, promising to get in touch the week after, then didn’t.
Part due to my own circumstance and lifestyle, but I have little respect for an excuse of ‘busyness.’ It’s tantamount to not being arsed. Unless you’re a Prime Minister or a President, or James Corden, there clearly ARE enough hours in a day or week.
Added to this sketchiness and inability to fix a date was a frustrating email manner of one-liners, text messages no more developed, minimal words. Yet within them: still responses and questions. If complete indifference, why bother responding at all?
I kept it casual, never mentioning my probable and increasingly imminent departure from London. Yet mindful of ever dwindling time I decided to push the issue, and wondered by text if it was worth my while attempting to ‘challenge her indifference.’
‘Challenge my indifference?’ the three words were returned several hours later.
Perhaps I should have just called her. Verbal conversations about such matters seem to be getting rarer, or maybe our generation is just bad at them, particularly at early stages like this. Also.. well, I was in a cinema at the time and the film was really good.
I explained that I didn’t know if she was that bothered; she apologised for being flaky but was very busy at the moment so it was probably better if we just left it, sorry.
No reply rushed to my fingertips. That was that then.
Perhaps on that evening, when there was that small frisson: if I’d been more direct, more of a slag – who knows if she was actually interested then, and then only.. But then came the discovery of the theft.
Everything was simpler with the brush off, but it raised the ugly narcissistic head of my relentless inability to secure second dates.
What the hell is wrong with you? Ok, at times it’s your own doing and you don’t fancy them and there aren’t many who have moved you enough to try and persuade them they’re wrong (none in fact because you don’t Do persuasion). But the brutal truth is that the ratio is around 50/50. Do you scare them somehow? Are you just not attractive enough? Are you too needy? (You tempered that one quite well last time too, you thought, extremely casual). You wish you could conceal yourself slightly better, not say quite so much, lie about small things – although you’re essentially unashamed that you don’t and can’t. Why should you apologise for yourself? How much of your personal integrity is it necessary to compromise? How much should you lie or fake or bluster?
But when it rolls on like this, the first dates which are only ever first dates, followed by more first dates and no second dates, you can’t help but reflect and look inward. You can do presentable, fairly charming, moderately amusing, even upbeat at a push; you don’t swear, probe insensitively on delicate subjects, talk endlessly about work or football, burp or fart in their faces.
There are often small things I regret saying or not saying, and I know if I possessed more direction, greater ambition and knew how to confidently operate chopsticks, this would be beneficial. On the whole though, I don’t walk away thinking I’ve given an unfair or disappointing representation.
I’m usually excellent at navelgazy self-criticism, but here all I see is fog and murk and confusion. It concerns me.
Showing posts with label dating. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dating. Show all posts
Wednesday, 21 July 2010
Sunday, 18 July 2010
rides
“Horsey!” infants shrieked, riding on my back as I crawled on all fours around our relatives’ large back garden. The previous two hours had been spent playing football with a five year old. Blissfully little of my time at the extended family had been spent speaking with adults. When I finally collapsed into an armchair it was with small alarm that I noted the time. I had little over two and a half hours to make it back to London. How did it get to be that late? It was doable, just, if I put my foot down on the A-Roads. I thanked people for their hospitality, apologised for not going to the park with them, ruffled infants’ hair and hugged and kissed the older generations.
What would this one be like? I pondered while speeding down a pretty A-road bisecting dense forest. Does a date at 8.30pm on a Saturday evening basically mean you’re on a promise?
I still knew next to nothing about her, suspected she wasn’t the sharpest tool, just that she was probably willing. Seemed willing back then, text messages suggested she may still be now. That was ok, just go with it, get drunk, see what happens, don’t think too much.
I was back, showered, out and on a bus in perfect time. She called asking where I was, fifteen minutes before we were due to meet. She’d misremembered the time she’d given and sounded confused. I’ll be there in five.
Painfully thin, a strained, pinched face which suggested nerves, troubles and fragility – please don’t be a bit mental; a whispy, flighty manner, washed-out elsewhere eyes and a strangled, almost puppet-like voice. Ridiculously high heels. She made you want to protect her in a not particularly attractive way. Yet for all that, she wasn’t unattractive.
Her ‘issues’ were confirmed during our early chatter, but never in detail and I never probed. My suspicions that she wasn’t all too bright were also given substantial evidence. Did I care? Should I care? Her grammar appalled me and I couldn’t help but mention it, although I dumbed down my own language. She smoked a lot, had struggled with it for a long time, a clearly necessary crutch which made it more acceptable somehow. Just go with it, get drunk, don’t think too much about it. Live in the moment for once: not before it or after it. Take a stupid decision.
Given a lack of common ground and interests – aside from mutual loneliness and unspoken needs – I expected conversation to flag but, propelled by alcohol, it didn’t. We passed through several bars, eventually ending at a loud, dark, busy venue with a late licence. We had gone there via the station to check her last train times, but I didn’t know if this was merely for show. If she would ‘forget,’ leaving the only option to return to mine. We stayed in the late bar, discussing the music and the venue’s youthful clientele. The time of her last train came and went, unmentioned.
It had been a long day; I’d driven a fair distance across the country and back. I didn’t like this sort of place anyway and wanted to go, she wanted to stay.
We stayed and drank more, too much, but didn’t dance. There was barely any obvious warmth or explicit flirtation between us, no signals being sent or received; simply an implicitly shared assumption. I admired younger, prettier females in the bar: those with height and flesh, confidence and grace.
When she was eventually persuaded that we should leave, we tumbled out and onto the street and she became aware that the short distance to my flat was the only option outside of an extortionate taxi ride. It was likely what we both had in mind all along. A date at 8.30 on a Saturday night?
Just do it, you’re drunk, everything is as it was vaguely forecast. So, she might be a bit mental but you always take that risk.
*
In the morning, following a more concerted Round Two being ridden in an entirely different way from the previous afternoon, she laboured with her hangover. She claimed she wasn’t usually this bad and said “Oh God my head” a lot. I made tea, returned to bed and watched the golf on mute, waiting for her to move, silently impatient although I had no plans for the day at all.
After several aborted attempts she did move, spurning all offers of paracetomol, tea, or anything at all. I pulled on a pair of shorts and a T-shirt while dressed in her only clothes from the night before, complete with precariously high-heeled shoes which took her an age to walk any distance in. She might as well have been wearing stilts.
I drove her back to the station and here conversation struggled as we shared the hungover silence. Token attempts at the weather, this part of town. Despite a relaxed affection and playfulness which had developed in the slumbering bedroom, neither of us spoke about repeating this thing we’d done, doing it again sometime or meeting up somewhere. Was the mismatch starkly obvious? That it was a meeting to satisfy mutual needs and nothing more?
A final snatched lips kiss while the car engine idled outside the station: “thanks, bye then.” She made sure she had everything and left, and stepped out, teetering on her ridiculous heels. The passenger door clunked shut. My eyes didn’t linger on her gallingly skeletal frame. I checked my blind spot, pulled out, looked forward and drove on.
I would prefer never to see or hear from her again.
What would this one be like? I pondered while speeding down a pretty A-road bisecting dense forest. Does a date at 8.30pm on a Saturday evening basically mean you’re on a promise?
I still knew next to nothing about her, suspected she wasn’t the sharpest tool, just that she was probably willing. Seemed willing back then, text messages suggested she may still be now. That was ok, just go with it, get drunk, see what happens, don’t think too much.
I was back, showered, out and on a bus in perfect time. She called asking where I was, fifteen minutes before we were due to meet. She’d misremembered the time she’d given and sounded confused. I’ll be there in five.
Painfully thin, a strained, pinched face which suggested nerves, troubles and fragility – please don’t be a bit mental; a whispy, flighty manner, washed-out elsewhere eyes and a strangled, almost puppet-like voice. Ridiculously high heels. She made you want to protect her in a not particularly attractive way. Yet for all that, she wasn’t unattractive.
Her ‘issues’ were confirmed during our early chatter, but never in detail and I never probed. My suspicions that she wasn’t all too bright were also given substantial evidence. Did I care? Should I care? Her grammar appalled me and I couldn’t help but mention it, although I dumbed down my own language. She smoked a lot, had struggled with it for a long time, a clearly necessary crutch which made it more acceptable somehow. Just go with it, get drunk, don’t think too much about it. Live in the moment for once: not before it or after it. Take a stupid decision.
Given a lack of common ground and interests – aside from mutual loneliness and unspoken needs – I expected conversation to flag but, propelled by alcohol, it didn’t. We passed through several bars, eventually ending at a loud, dark, busy venue with a late licence. We had gone there via the station to check her last train times, but I didn’t know if this was merely for show. If she would ‘forget,’ leaving the only option to return to mine. We stayed in the late bar, discussing the music and the venue’s youthful clientele. The time of her last train came and went, unmentioned.
It had been a long day; I’d driven a fair distance across the country and back. I didn’t like this sort of place anyway and wanted to go, she wanted to stay.
We stayed and drank more, too much, but didn’t dance. There was barely any obvious warmth or explicit flirtation between us, no signals being sent or received; simply an implicitly shared assumption. I admired younger, prettier females in the bar: those with height and flesh, confidence and grace.
When she was eventually persuaded that we should leave, we tumbled out and onto the street and she became aware that the short distance to my flat was the only option outside of an extortionate taxi ride. It was likely what we both had in mind all along. A date at 8.30 on a Saturday night?
Just do it, you’re drunk, everything is as it was vaguely forecast. So, she might be a bit mental but you always take that risk.
*
In the morning, following a more concerted Round Two being ridden in an entirely different way from the previous afternoon, she laboured with her hangover. She claimed she wasn’t usually this bad and said “Oh God my head” a lot. I made tea, returned to bed and watched the golf on mute, waiting for her to move, silently impatient although I had no plans for the day at all.
After several aborted attempts she did move, spurning all offers of paracetomol, tea, or anything at all. I pulled on a pair of shorts and a T-shirt while dressed in her only clothes from the night before, complete with precariously high-heeled shoes which took her an age to walk any distance in. She might as well have been wearing stilts.
I drove her back to the station and here conversation struggled as we shared the hungover silence. Token attempts at the weather, this part of town. Despite a relaxed affection and playfulness which had developed in the slumbering bedroom, neither of us spoke about repeating this thing we’d done, doing it again sometime or meeting up somewhere. Was the mismatch starkly obvious? That it was a meeting to satisfy mutual needs and nothing more?
A final snatched lips kiss while the car engine idled outside the station: “thanks, bye then.” She made sure she had everything and left, and stepped out, teetering on her ridiculous heels. The passenger door clunked shut. My eyes didn’t linger on her gallingly skeletal frame. I checked my blind spot, pulled out, looked forward and drove on.
I would prefer never to see or hear from her again.
Monday, 12 July 2010
struggling with direction
With a move-in date a few weeks away and notice given on my current flat, now I’m unsure about the move.
I've been quite enjoying London in the summer – it feels bigger and more full of chance than in the winter months. Things like this can happen (I never saw or heard from any of them again). Added to which - and it could easily be nothing at all, something I'll feel silly about in a month - but there are two thin shards of recently developed female hope.
One of these was a young lady with whom I reasserted my status as King Fuckwit. Her bossy friend led us up the road to impatiently wait on the station steps, wanting them to hurry down onto the platform for the last train. We walked slowly, pausing deliberately, in no stress about potentially missing her last train, talking nonsense about seasoning biscuits. She clearly didn't want to go, and was aware that I didn’t live far away. It only needed a suggestion on my part that we could go… to mine, we could have childishly run away, around a block, out of sight of her friend. She was drunk, but perhaps not THAT drunk, and totally persuadable. That is, persuadable for any regular man with a grain of self-belief in matters of being direct.
She had at least served to quell the over-replayed memory of another female from twenty four hours earlier. It may have even been memories from the previous evening which hamstrung me into fuckwittage. They did flicker through my brain as we walked up towards the station.
But she was really nice last night … but then, she’s nice here too, but then..
Don’t be an idiot! You have no obligation towards the girl from last night AT ALL. Just as she doesn’t to you, and probably instantly forgot you. You’re simply using it as an excuse to be a gutless little twerp here and now, aren’t you?!
Fnerr! Why is everything so HARD?! I whined in my head.
Because you make it hard, fool.
I sensed the inevitable: that I was about to screw this up and let her make her train without proposing that we run away. I gave her a card and messages have since been exchanged, but still, the immediate opportunity is difficult not to rue.
The night before had been a blind(ish) date. I didn’t figure myself to be her usual type (she seemed to be the kind of girl to have ‘types,’ often narrowing her eyes as if comparing me to an imagined other), and although I certainly warmed to her, I suspected she was out of my league. The evening had ended with the discovery that my laptop and camera had been stolen from my case, irrecoverably denting an amiable, maybe faintly flirtatious atmosphere that had developed. (She had briefly played with my hair. Girls don’t usually do that if they’re repulsed by you, right?) As well as the sickening violation and huge inconvenience of the theft, neither loss was without sentimental attachment: both devices had done some miles with me and contained a considerable amount of personal data. It was as if somebody had suddenly punched me in the guts and pulled off my penis.
*
Even slender shards of female hope don't appear too often. And notwithstanding females, I've been newly unsure of the move: wondering if it's a cowardly retreat to a smaller scale and a place of proportionately reduced opportunity, albeit an improvement in living space. It’s possible I’ve had too much time to mull it over, what with the previous aborted move.
I could cancel or postpone the move, lose a hundred quid deposit, surprise and annoy a few people, retract my notice here.
A friend asked: if something were to be engineered on the female front, would a brief thing, or a six week to six month dalliance be worth it? I replied yes. I’m essentially a sad lonely fool and moving won’t change this. But it’s most likely immaterial. It would come as no surprise if both shards fizzled by Friday.
I've been quite enjoying London in the summer – it feels bigger and more full of chance than in the winter months. Things like this can happen (I never saw or heard from any of them again). Added to which - and it could easily be nothing at all, something I'll feel silly about in a month - but there are two thin shards of recently developed female hope.
One of these was a young lady with whom I reasserted my status as King Fuckwit. Her bossy friend led us up the road to impatiently wait on the station steps, wanting them to hurry down onto the platform for the last train. We walked slowly, pausing deliberately, in no stress about potentially missing her last train, talking nonsense about seasoning biscuits. She clearly didn't want to go, and was aware that I didn’t live far away. It only needed a suggestion on my part that we could go… to mine, we could have childishly run away, around a block, out of sight of her friend. She was drunk, but perhaps not THAT drunk, and totally persuadable. That is, persuadable for any regular man with a grain of self-belief in matters of being direct.
She had at least served to quell the over-replayed memory of another female from twenty four hours earlier. It may have even been memories from the previous evening which hamstrung me into fuckwittage. They did flicker through my brain as we walked up towards the station.
But she was really nice last night … but then, she’s nice here too, but then..
Don’t be an idiot! You have no obligation towards the girl from last night AT ALL. Just as she doesn’t to you, and probably instantly forgot you. You’re simply using it as an excuse to be a gutless little twerp here and now, aren’t you?!
Fnerr! Why is everything so HARD?! I whined in my head.
Because you make it hard, fool.
I sensed the inevitable: that I was about to screw this up and let her make her train without proposing that we run away. I gave her a card and messages have since been exchanged, but still, the immediate opportunity is difficult not to rue.
The night before had been a blind(ish) date. I didn’t figure myself to be her usual type (she seemed to be the kind of girl to have ‘types,’ often narrowing her eyes as if comparing me to an imagined other), and although I certainly warmed to her, I suspected she was out of my league. The evening had ended with the discovery that my laptop and camera had been stolen from my case, irrecoverably denting an amiable, maybe faintly flirtatious atmosphere that had developed. (She had briefly played with my hair. Girls don’t usually do that if they’re repulsed by you, right?) As well as the sickening violation and huge inconvenience of the theft, neither loss was without sentimental attachment: both devices had done some miles with me and contained a considerable amount of personal data. It was as if somebody had suddenly punched me in the guts and pulled off my penis.
*
Even slender shards of female hope don't appear too often. And notwithstanding females, I've been newly unsure of the move: wondering if it's a cowardly retreat to a smaller scale and a place of proportionately reduced opportunity, albeit an improvement in living space. It’s possible I’ve had too much time to mull it over, what with the previous aborted move.
I could cancel or postpone the move, lose a hundred quid deposit, surprise and annoy a few people, retract my notice here.
A friend asked: if something were to be engineered on the female front, would a brief thing, or a six week to six month dalliance be worth it? I replied yes. I’m essentially a sad lonely fool and moving won’t change this. But it’s most likely immaterial. It would come as no surprise if both shards fizzled by Friday.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)