Mar/Apr-2017

You know those times when you make an assumption about someone/something based on it simply being the unknown and then it turns out to actually be wrong? This story has one of those. It also has the other extended version of that: when you make an assumption, it first of all looks like you were proved wrong and then you end up being proved absolutely, 100% right but by then you’ve changed your assumption based on when you thought you were proved wrong. Following me?

As the multi player dating game was heating up with Frenchie, I happened to match with another 25 year old guy at the same time (the age range on my Tinder app still hadn’t been increased from rugby sevens weekend) and so my friends made the joke that if you put them both together I was dating a 50 year old, which might be more appropriate… (but the age debate is for another blog post!)

He was first generation Malaysian Canadian, in that his parents had moved here from Malaysia and he and his younger sister were the first generation to be born here. He worked for a telecom company by day and was also a ticket office supervisor at the hockey arena when there were games or events on there by night. From the outset, he seemed confident and fun. He messaged me first after we matched, asking me about my job as an operations manager as he’d done operations at university. It was a nice commonality to start off with, and he asked me out for drinks pretty quickly after us starting to chat.

We matched over the weekend and began chatting on the Sunday, and the first date was arranged for the following Sunday due to our schedules being busy in between. I liked that it had been arranged quickly but I half expected that the communication may start to fail in the week leading up to the date and thought it unlikely that we’d make it all the way to the Sunday with the impetus to actually still meet up. But we ended up messaging most of those 6 days in between.

He was funny and cheeky and flirty, and our text chats were easy before we’d even met. We would mostly text during the day when we were at work and there were a couple of times that the subject matter got a little Not Safe For Work. Part of me worried that, as is often the case when initial text conversations become sexually charged, he was only going to be after one thing and I did think there was a chance he was a typical millennial fuckboy. They’re truly not just urban myths.

He was 25, from stories he was telling me it was clear he liked to go out a lot (weekends, midweek, it didn’t matter, which to 32 year old me sounded exhausting), he was good looking, seemed to be a bit of a gym rat, his Instagram certainly looked like that of a wannabe insta-famous millennial and one his dating profile pics was him as a shirtless Trojan Soldier when he was doing promo for Trojan condoms at Pride Parade one year. (Fun fact – google Trojan Soldier on urban dictionary. You learn something new everyday. Or at least I did!) So there were all the ingredients for him to turn out to be a total douche but he also came across as sweet and earnest in a lot of his texts so I was interested to meet him.

Meet we did, one rainy Sunday March afternoon at one of my favourite local bars, which I chose because it had a fireplace and it felt like a day for drinks by a cosy fire. He’d never been to that bar and when I introduced him to their own locally distilled gin he was more than approving of my choice. I was struck by how much older he seemed than I expected. But, side note, am I the only person who always thinks people are older when they first meet them? I’m a terrible estimator – of age, height, weight, distance, anything, terrible – and I’m not sure why but when I first meet people I will always automatically assume they’re older than me. Even when I know they’re not, I feel like they’re older than I expect. There must be some psychological reasoning for it… but enough of that tangent for now.

I was also struck by how attractive he was. His white t-shirt was a great choice on his part to show off a hint of the ripped body I’d seen in the Trojan photo. As with our texts, our conversation over drinks was easy and fun but maybe a little less flirty. We talked family, and work, and life goals, and gin. He was just getting into gin so I began to extol the virtues of being a gin drinker on him and introduced him to the classic cucumber garnish. It was a really fun and easy date and the time passed super quickly, which is always a good sign. It was only dampened slightly by his acceptance of my offer to pay half the bill. But that’s what happens sometimes when you offer!

We said goodbye out on the rain soaked street, and I was more than a little disappointed that he didn’t try to kiss me. As I walked home through the puddles, I realised that in spite of how suggestive some of our texts had been he hadn’t been like that in person at all. And I didn’t know whether that was because he was actually all talk and more shy in person, or because when we’d met he had changed his mind about me. I hoped it was the former. This would also allay some of those fuckboy fears.

The next day though, the flirty texts were back and it wasn’t long before he mentioned that he regretted not kissing me the night before. Ok, so it wasn’t that he’d changed his mind about me, maybe he was just a little more shy / reserved / unsure in person. That wasn’t the worst thing and actually only made me want to see him again more.

His regret about not kissing me apparently made him feel the same and so the following night, he was working at a hockey game and with the arena being a five minute walk from my apartment, we arranged to meet up after. Initially it had been planned we’d meet for drinks but he ended up working later than expected so I told him just to come over to mine when he was finished. It was a Tuesday night and the thought of getting ready to go out for drinks at 9pm wasn’t super appealing.

Turning up on my doorstep, he was a smarter version than the Sunday white t-shirt and jeans outfit, in his work attire – and I’m a total sucker for a guy in a suit. I got us a drink each, gin of course, and we settled on the sofa to chat. Our text conversations carried over into real life chats and it wasn’t long before he made good on his regret not to kiss me on the Sunday. It was one of those kisses that makes you go a little weak at the knees and I don’t think we stopped for the rest of the time he was at my place. The only thing that broke up the make out party was the knowledge we both had to get up for work the next day. Otherwise I’m not sure where it might have ended…

We made loose plans for the weekend but they were very much TBC given that we were both busy so when we found ourselves out separately with friends on Friday night but mostly texting each other, we decided that at 1am we should have a McDonald’s rendez-vous. Honestly, I’m not sure there’s anything more romantic to me. A guy that wants to meet to eat junk food at 1am? I’m here for it.

I found my way to the Golden Arches first and started to use the newly installed self-serve order kiosks at the McDonald’s a block from my apartment. In a fairly gin soaked haze I was about $30 into ordering burgers and trying to decide on just how many nuggets to get when someone tapped me on the shoulder and said “I think you need more burgers”. The sound of his voice and his breath on my neck, plus his encouragement to up the burger order, invoked the knee weakness again.

We were both drunk and it made McDonald’s even more fun. We only ordered and waited for our food but somehow even that seemed like a great date. I ordered way too much food, and a tonne of nuggets because as we both agreed; nuggets are life. Plus, of course, all the dipping varieties. We were drunk and hungry and seemingly pretty horny. It was an interesting combo.

Heading back to my apartment, I’m not sure what we were more excited about – being able to fully make out or being able to crack into the nuggets. I actually think the nuggets had a slight edge. So sat cross legged on my living room floor with the coffee table covered in wrappers and boxes, we had ourselves a feast. The lasting memory of the night though, was that in amongst the dips I’d ordered, I’d apparently included a pot of honey… or else they’d thrown it in there by mistake? I don’t ever remember seeing honey in the sauces sections but there we were.

After much debate as to why you would (or wouldn’t) eat your nuggets with honey I decided to give it a try, I reasoned that it must be like having chicken and waffles with maple syrup. So I duly dipped one of the boot shaped poultry delights into the shallow pool of honey. And I can honestly say, in that moment, my life changed. I’m usually a sweet and sour girl with my nuggets but this was a game changer. It was so damned good and I was happy to be proven wrong in my original disgust at the thought of battered chicken with sweet honey nectar.

Malaysian Persuasion, as he would be known to my friends, couldn’t believe it was actually that good. He described my face as orgasmic and so as we made veiled references to having sex, which resulted in him hurriedly trying a nugget and honey, agreeing it was in fact life altering and then proceeding to undress us both in record time, before I knew it we were in my bedroom and all the sexual tension from our texts came spilling out.

I want to pause here to note that, while I welcome a guy who encourages late night McDonald’s, having partaken in said McDonald’s right before you are going to have sex with someone for the first time makes for a lot of mental anguish. At least, it did for me. Thankfully I’d been feeling pretty good about my body in the weeks around this time but after a quarter pounder with cheese, a dollar menu cheeseburger, six or seven nuggets and many fries I was hardly feeling like a sex goddess. But why let belly bloat stop you?

I put the body issues to the side and we got down to it. It was a fun filled night of incredibly hot and sexy, but also sweet and careful at times, sex. And again, as with Frenchie, it was proven that 25 year olds a) are incredibly giving in the bedroom and b) have the stamina of… I guess a 25 year old? After the sex, we slept, then we had sex, then we had more sex, we showered, we slept a bit more, then there was more sex, another shower, some more sleep and finally some more sex before it was mid-morning and we both had Saturday plans to get up for.

To say I was sleep deprived but incredibly satisfied for the rest of that weekend is an understatement. Who cares about eye bags when you lost count of the orgasms you had last night?  I mean, really though?

So it had been a fun first few dates but the following week I was leaving for my trip home to the UK for pretty much the entirety of April and I wasn’t sure what exactly that was going to mean for our daily texting and newly found sexual obsession with each other, as it turned out to be. Let’s just say the texting from then on was almost entirely NSFW.

We decided to fit in a last date on the Tuesday night before I left on the Thursday, so a couple of drinks followed by some fun back at my place was to be our last meetup. But on the Wednesday I found myself organised ahead of time for my flight the next day and so we decided on a last minute dinner at my place We ordered food from a fried chicken place and found to our enormous delight that they had an incredible beer infused honey that they serve with it. It was of course followed by more great sex. Is twice a habit? If so it’s a habit I was pretty happy to be forming. It was a perfect last night.

Before it was over, I decided I needed to bring up what was going to happen when I was away. I made it blatantly clear that I wasn’t in any way expecting him to be in touch and, in fact, if he preferred we could just put a pin in things and then see where we were once I got back at the end of the month. I fully expected him to take that get-out clause

Instead, much to my surprise, he insisted I messaged when I landed because he’d want to know I got there safely. So the next day we texted almost constantly – while I was finishing packing, on the skytrain to the airport, as I was going through security, waiting in departures and up to the point my phone had to go off as we were taxiing to the runway. I guess I was making the most of it figuring that once I’d informed him of my safe arrival that get-out clause I had offered would fully be taken.

Instead, furthering my surprise, once I’d sent him the “made it, jet lag is going to kick my ass but I’m here” text, our texting continued as if we were still in the same city. Albeit with an 8 hour time difference in the stage of our days. And so it would continue for the three and a half weeks I was in the UK. We texted day and night and with my jet lag keeping me up, it meant there was only a short spell while he was sleeping (the majority of my morning and into early afternoon) when we weren’t in contact.

He knew about every friend I caught up with, how all my dental appointments were going (the reason for my extended trip) and the joy I was experiencing with every home comfort food I devoured. I knew how each of his days at work were going, what he was doing each night, his weekend plans or that he was out at a bar craving nuggets, honey and apparently me. Yes, our texts were definitely sexually charged. It was fair to say a lot of it was full on sexting.

With the distance and suggestive texts driving us, the sexual anticipation only grew as the weeks wore on. More than once, one of us wondered aloud how many more nights it was before we saw each other and why we both couldn’t just stop with the sexting?! We’d save ourselves a lot of anguish. Instead we kept on, with each of us almost taking it in turns to start entirely inappropriate discussions when the other was having dinner with family, or trying to concentrate at work.

And I kept expecting the texts to stop, that he’d get bored waiting or get distracted by some shiny young thing when he was out at a weekend with his friends. But they never did. He bemoaned me being away for so long, told me numerous times he missed me and talked a lot about what he was going to do to me when I got home. And it didn’t just involve eating nuggets and honey.

In amongst all the sex chat, we also shared more about our lives than we may have even done if I’d been in Vancouver. He was hearing all about my family and where I grew up and I think it encouraged us to share stories and background that we might have otherwise never got round to covering in in-person discussions. We shared childhood passions and family dynamics. For all that there was a lot of suggestive, even filthy, chat, there was also a lot of foundation building it felt like.

I had a momentary wobble of trying to understand what the hell this would mean for us once I was home but as my very good friend Arms told me “why are you trying to work that out? You don’t need to think about that just now. Wait til you’re home and then you’ll either see for yourself or you can talk to him about it in person. Don’t do it in text!” He had a point, and so I put those fears aside and went back to texting him, likely something about his big, hard… never mind.

So as my trip was growing to a close and I was preparing for the emotional rollercoaster that is the ever-fraught family goodbyes, there was an added excitement about getting back to Vancouver to see him. I’d never had that before. I’d never had someone to come home to. Not that he was “my person” or that I even knew what the hell was going on but it was just nice to know fun awaited. As much as I knew there was definitely a conversation to be had around what the fuck had happened while I was away, with us texting each other everyday, and what that meant when I was back, if nothing else I was expecting some mind blowing sex on my return.

Or at least, that’s what I thought would be waiting for me….

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