Category: First Dates

A Snorer, A Drunk & A Trump Supporter

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Sep-2017

When one date goes badly it can be annoying but when three dates in one weekend end up in the garbage pile I can’t help but feel like I’m wasting my time. Or maybe I should just date less…

It was the September long weekend, both here in Canada and in the US, which I always think takes the fun level up a notch or two as the Americans cross the border and come to town. And this weekend was no different.

I’d started it spending all day Saturday on the beach drinking with friends. Or more precisely, drinking and swiping. It was one of those weekends when my friends wanted to “play Tinder” for me. Yah, that’s right, my dating life can seem like a game in more ways than one. Though in all honesty I was happy for them to do it on that occasion, I was pretty sure I was getting Repetitive Strain Injury in my right thumb. 

When my phone got handed back to me there were a number of matches, to varying degrees of suitability. I deleted the ones that were clearly jokes on my friends part and started doing the dating admin, as I call it.  The annoying part when you actually have to start a conversation. I like to be efficient and get this done asap so then I’ve done my part and the onus is on the guy to move it on. I also just really don’t see the point in matching with people and not starting a convo. Either delete the matches or start the conversation. I don’t have time to mess around! Definitely one of my online dating pet peeves.

As the day at the beach was wrapping up, I received a response from this 31 year old, tanned and tall guy that, despite his tan, looked like he could be English… I can always tell. If they’re British or Irish, they stand out like a sore thumb to me. I’m not sure if that’s because I’m so familiar with them, being British myself. I’ve always wondered if North American women can spot them as quickly. 

He suggested we meet for drinks that night but, while I was pleasantly surprised by his quick moves to set something up, I was coming off the back of a full day of sunshine and drinks and if I’m honest getting ready to go on a date in a matter of hours seemed like a real hassle. One I wasn’t sure I had the energy for. I cheekily implied that to him “it better be the best date ever if I’m going to make it out the house after the day I’ve had”. He replied saying he actually couldn’t really be bothered either and if he was really honest, he wasn’t looking for anything serious, so maybe he should just come over to mine. 

Well he did say honest. And it was maybe also a little presumptuous. But I didn’t hate the idea. In our few short messages he’d come across as funny and down to earth, and truthfully my laziness took over, so I agreed. I told him I needed to shower and eat something but to come over around 8pm. 

When he arrived he was indeed tanned and tall, half English and half Portuguese. We watched a movie, chatted a lot about our lives here, he told me about his construction business and his plans for the future. He was a little cocky, making a few comments about how much Canadian women loved him because of his mixed background. I wondered if I should remind him that as a Scot we’re hardly the English’s biggest fans and that my ex had strong ties to Portugal so also, not a huge fan…

Still, it was fun and easy, albeit even in the first couple of hours I was sure I probably wouldn’t see him again, even as a casual hookup. He talked about looking for something casual and made the comment that “most women can’t do casual”. Well, buddy, let me tell you, I’ll be able to be so casual with you, I probably won’t ever see you again, how’s about that? 

We then started to fool around and despite my reservations about him, I was interested to see if his bravado was all talk. As it turned out, he didn’t live up to his self-proclaimed hype, it was all very meh. Although he did have a great body and the tan was exceptional. But he kept his socks on… what the fuck. Really? Why do people do that? Is it laziness? Are they in such a rush to get to the good stuff they just forget about them? Is it cause it gives them extra grip? Or maybe they want to remain just that tiny bit unsexy? I’ve never been able to work it out. 

Laying on my bed afterwards, I was now more exhausted than I’d already been after the day of sun, and I couldn’t wait to sleep. And I didn’t really care if he stayed or went. The idea of snuggles is always nice but given how I felt about him, the thought of him staying was much like the sex – also meh. 

He seemed to be getting comfy though so I accepted the fact he’d be staying, until he said “oh by the way, I snore. Is that going to be a problem?”

Um, will my fist going into your face be a problem?! Yeah it was a problem, and not one I intended to put up with that night. And so with that I asked the English Portuguese Snoring Builder to leave, which he duly did. Interestingly it was him who texted me three more times in the weeks that followed asking to meet up. But my promise to myself to do casual with him to the extent I never saw him again stayed true. 

Waking up the morning after, I was glad I’d had a proper sleep, by myself, with no Snorey McSnorerson next to me. And I was ready for another day at the beach! Sundays of a long weekend are my favourite. You’d ordinarily be getting ready for work the following day but instead it’s a whole extra day to do whatever you please. Is it Saturday? Is it Sunday? Who knows!

More of the matches I’d sent first messages to the day before started to trickle into conversation. Admittedly a lot of them had replied the night before, funny how late on Saturday nights are when men are most chatty on the apps…

And there were a lot of visiting Americans. One in particular was in town from Denver, with his brothers and a couple of friends. They were staying in a loft Airbnb in Gastown and were spending Sunday hiking near Whistler. He asked if he could see me on Sunday night. 

Here’s the thing with visitors to the city: after my initial experience with The Tourist, I went back and forth on how I felt about meeting up with people who were only in town for the week/weekend. Sometimes, when I was fully ok with a no strings attached hookup I was absolutely open to it. But other times, when I was going through a stretch of wanting more, wanting commitment, actually looking for a relationship, there really was no point. No matter how pretty or fun they seemed. 

This weekend was the former. Especially after the O saga, I really wasn’t sure I wanted to get into anything serious and at least with tourists you always knew it couldn’t become something more because they’d be gone as quickly as they got here. Hell, some men that lived in Vancouver were like that, but I digress.  

So meeting up with Denver Banker seemed like it would be fun. He was very proper, he suggested dinner, not even just drinks. But given his day in the mountains, he said he’d text me later and we’d make plans. Ordinarily with tourists that can be a slippery slope to never hearing from them again but with him it seemed different. Though I’ve been proven wrong in my first assumptions before. 

I went about my beach day and around lunchtime I got a message from another tourist, this time a guy visiting from Seattle. He was the typical tourist – here with friends, clearly for a good time not a long time, asking where the best bar to “hit up” that night was. 

As my beach day drew to a close and my friends and I made plans for that night, Seattle guy asked me where I was and if I wanted to meet up. He told me he was now in a bar in Yaletown, which I knew wasn’t far from my apartment. I slowly got showered and ready for the night, not sure at all where it would take me.

I don’t really live like that generally, with undefined plans, but sometimes I can allow it. Long weekends were often those times. Generally you know you’re going to end up doing something, even if you’re just not quite sure what. 

While my friends napped and ate before we were going to meet up, I decided I may as well go and meet Seattle Tall Boy. He was 31, 6’4 and big. He even said himself when I was on my way to meet him “you can’t miss me, I’m the big guy, like the “woah he’s big for an Asian” guy”. He was half white, half Taiwanese, worked in finance and had moved from Boston to Seattle in the previous year. He’d been here with a friend who’d apparently had to go home for some reason or another. I wasn’t sure if I bought the story, but that’s the thing with tourists – you have nothing to go on, you really do have to take them at their word, far more than when you’re dating someone who lives in the city. For locals, there are ways and means of confirming a lot of what they say. Tourists? They can tell you any old shit. 

On my way to meet Seattle Tall Boy, Denver Banker messaged to say he was sorry he hadn’t been in touch but they were on their way back from Whistler, and they were all starving so would eat on the way back down but he’d still love to meet me for drinks and he was sorry that he hadn’t come through on the dinner plans. Seeing as I was on my way to meet another Tinder date, I couldn’t exactly be mad, so I told him to text me once they’d had dinner and then we could make a plan. 

I sent my text reply to Denver Banker as I arrive at the Banter Room, the bar that Seattle Tall Boy was in, and he is indeed unmissable. His large frame dwarfed the bar stool and seemed only more imposing when he stood up. He’d clearly already made friends with all the bar staff, having been sat at the bar for a couple of hours, and quickly asked me what I wanted to drink. 

Right away I could tell the bar staff were trying to work out who I was and how I knew him. I couldn’t quite pinpoint if he’d told them I was a Tinder date. But they got plenty of opportunity to interact with both of us as he was seemingly on a merry go round of drinks – Miller beer, followed by a whisky, followed by an espresso martini. And round and round he went in that order… It was the most bizarre combination of drinks, but he seemed pretty happy with his choices, especially when every so often he’d throw in a round of tequila shots for everyone sat at the bar. 

I essentially was just a witness to him having a fun time and while we did chat, I’m not sure he’d have been having any different a time if I wasn’t there. He asked if I wanted food, which I did after another long beach day snacking on anything unhealthy. But when I paused after ordering my Thai beef salad for him to place his order he said he wasn’t going to eat. Ohhhh ok then. I’ll just eat by myself I guess? 

It was clear this was anything but a date, it seemed more like he’d just wanted someone to hang out with him at the bar, and it could have been me or it could have been any other random person he pulled in off the street. It’s so nice to be made to feel special….

Given that I was hardly feeling the vibe, although he was a funny guy with that hardened, Boston attitude and humour, I decided to keep my drinking to a minimum, especially if I had another drinks date later. The same cannot be said for Seattle Tall Boy. His drinking was really maxing out to the point where the bar staff were definitely slowing down between their “do you need another one” enquiries. And I knew they were aware of his increasing alcohol levels when at one point when he went to the toilet, one of the bar staff asked if I was ok. 

I had hoped that I’d have heard from Denver Banker and could have just gone straight to see him but as it was my phone was giving me nothing, and I was starting to lose the will to live with all of the random, and in no way interesting, subjects that Seattle Tall Boy was bringing up, plus his want to have conversations with everyone else in the bar was starting to grate on me. So instead I decided I was going to make my excuses and just go home. 

I’d teed up my story as soon as I’d got there, telling Seattle Tall Boy I was planning to meet friends later but that I could have a few drinks with him in the interim. Whether I went to meet my friends or Denver Banker had remained to be seen at that point and it was in fact neither and I was happily going to head home and sleep. 

Seattle Tall Boy attempted to get me to stay, he also half asked if he could come with me to meet my friends, both of which I shot down pretty quick. I tried to placate him with a “maybe once I’ve met up with my friends and I know what our plans are we can meet up again…” 

I felt bad leading him on and not being straight up with him, but in all honesty, I didn’t trust what his alcohol fuelled reaction would be if I did tell him the truth that I wasn’t into him and there was no chance we’d be hooking up that night. Even just in the time I’d been with him he’d had eleven drinks and I’d had three, and he’d already been there a couple of hours before me. Now he was a big guy, so I’m sure his tolerance was pretty high but still… it was getting sloppy and it was time for me to go. 

I walked the seven minutes home and just as I was waiting at the last crosswalk, imagining me curling up in bed, my phone pinged with Denver Banker apologising profusely for the lateness of his text (it actually wasn’t that late, it was maybe 8pm) and wondering if I’d still like to meet up. Ugh…. 

I mean, I did but I didn’t. But I should. I felt bad flaking on him. Why do I do that? Why can’t I just say no if I want to say no? That was a conversation for another time, because at this point in time I needed to get back to near where I’d just come from to meet Denver Banker in another bar. 

We met at a bar near where I lived that had a good balance of atmosphere but quiet corners to sit and have a conversation. He was as much of an All American Boy as I imagined – blonde hair, blue eyed, cute, well mannered and quite softly spoken. We covered everything from family and jobs, travel, sports – all the standard topics. While I was explaining why I had chosen Canada to move to, I said “and I did consider the US but I’m pretty glad I didn’t with everything going on there just now”. It’s something I’ve said 100 times when telling the same story but the response I got was a first. 

For context, this was in Trump’s first year in office when he’d already implemented the travel ban, and announced his intention to ban transgender personnel in the military, and a large portion of the western (and non-western world) were wondering if the whole presidency was a joke. 

Denver Banker looked confused and said “why do you mean?” I realised he wasn’t joking and simultaneously made the realisation that he was either terribly badly informed about the political goings on in his own country or he was in fact not in any way perturbed by said political goings on. But he seemed too educated for it to be the former, so I had to assume in horror that it was the latter. 

I realised I needed to tread lightly, given that it’s not my style to attack people’s personal beliefs, especially someone I barely know. Thankfully, just as I was trying to figure out how to ask if he was a Trump supporter without sounding incredulous at the same time, the bartender came over. This was the bartender who when we’d arrived had shouted over at us to sit wherever we wanted, that he was drunk from a day at the beach and he hoped we were having a good weekend.

He came over offering us free shots of Jameson, which we gladly accepted and with that I felt emboldened to dive back into the conversation. I don’t think any subject is necessarily off limits on a date, I’m an entirely open book (which is a blessing and a curse) so I’m happy to cover practically any topic. Obviously religion, money, politics and, to an extent, past dating aren’t my first choices of topics of convo for a first date, but I’m always happy to touch on them. It can tell you a lot about someone after all. 

So I explained that since Trump had been elected it seemed like there was a lot of upheaval in the US and so I was “glad” I’d ended up in Canada with nothing but people talking about which Disney prince Justin Trudeau looked like most. He said any new president would always bring about change and it was to be expected. I said “so did you vote for Trump” and he said “yes”. I then realised that wasn’t the real question, the real question was my next one – “would you vote for Trump again now? Given the policies he’s already put in place?”

He looked at me confused, “what policies?” and so I explained in my best “I know I’m a foreigner and don’t exactly think of myself as an expert on Trump’s politics” way about the changes to immigration and military that he’d made, as well as some of his less than savoury Tweets. And while Denver Banker did sit fairly respectfully quietly through my moment atop my soap box, at the end he looked at me in a way which I thought was going to lead to a  “yeah, fair enough” comment but instead he opened his mouth and said “but none of those affect me.”

Hello white male privilege, welcome to the table. 

I’m not sure a single sentence has put me off someone more. I’ve had a lot of firsts while dating but having someone’s politics essentially write them off for me has absolutely never happened. And I can’t figure out if that makes me too quick to judge or simply resolute in my morals? Either way, any attraction I’d had for him, which was far more than I’d had for Seattle Tall Boy, had now evaporated. 

We had a short conversation about whether or not he felt like maybe just because those things didn’t affect him he shouldn’t still have an opinion on them and want the best for his fellow countrymen, and fellow humans. He said he really didn’t think Trump had done anything that bad and if he could just get the tax bill passed that he’d been working on then it would be a huge win. 

I realised there was no point in continuing on the conversation, from what he was saying I was piecing together what was obviously a very conservative background and family, and at the end of the day it was less about his specific politics and more about his complete oblivion to the massive, stinking pile of white male privilege that he was sitting on that just made me unable to want to engage further. 

We finished our drinks, along with another shot from the barman, and despite Denver Banker’s enquiry as to whether there was another bar we could go to, I said I should probably get home, it had been a long day and tomorrow was going to be more of the same. Incidentally I’d told him about the beach I was going to the next day with friends and he’d said he and his friends had been planning on maybe going there too. He mentioned that fact again as we said goodnight outside my building. I was well aware he was hoping I’d invite him up but I just couldn’t. Even as a one night thing, all my attraction for him had gone. And while I’m a massive fan of snuggling, I decided on this occasion I’d rather have the bed to myself than share it with someone whose views I so vehemently disagreed with. 

And I would have had a solid good sleep if it hadn’t been for a drunken 6.30am call (why do I never put my phone on silent?) from Seattle Tall Boy asking if he could come over… Whaaaaaat?! How hammered must he have been for me to have not heard from him since I said goodbye to him around 8pm the night before and only now is he following back up. Wow. I could only imagine how much he’d drunk.

Although later that day, I didn’t need to imagine any longer when he reached out in text, apologising for the early morning wake up call and saying “I think the reason was this”, before texting me a picture of his bar bill from the Banter Room – $627.58. SIX HUNDRED DOLLARS!!! There were the 3 gins I’d had and the Thai beef salad… it was definitely his bill. I wasn’t sure whether to be impressed or horrified. Either way, I was glad I hadn’t stuck around any longer, I could have been in hospital with alcohol poisoning. 

Around the same time, I also got a text from Denver Banker saying he was making his way towards the beach he knew I was at… oh god. I half thought about lying and saying I wasn’t there but if I did that and he turned up it would just be awkward. So instead I told my friends my date from last night was turning up to which they replied “which one is this? The drunk or the Trump supporter?” Those were stark terms, not wrong, just stark. And turn up he did. In full on American flag swimming shorts. Like stars and stripes all in your face. 

It was a perfect “Jesus fucking Christ” end to what had been a “holy mother of God” weekend of dates. A snorer, a drunk and a Trump supporter. I’m sure there’s a joke in there somewhere…

Did Someone Say Sandwiches?

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Aug-2017

You know the internet is crazy when an inanimate object slides into your DMs. And it’s even creepier when said inanimate object messages in reply to one of your instagram stories “hey, that’s my view” when you’ve posted a pic from your balcony. 

The account was a personification of a bar signage board, the type that has witty, daily comments to entice you in to drink their alcohol, watch their sports and play their games. I’d been at the bar a few weeks before, tagged them in a post and I guess that was how they’d found me. But I allowed the conversation to go on far longer than I should have before requesting some personal information about the writer. 

He worked part time at the bar, and wrote the signs, and when I finally got a name I also realised if I scrolled far enough back on the Instagram account there were actually pics of him, and looked fairly normal, which was a relief. But I had to wonder how many times he used the guise of the sandwich board to lure people into convos, far more than if it had just been a personal account I’m guessing. 

It was a long weekend when we started chatting and he was away camping with his friends. I presumed it was going to be a rager but he said while he had certainly taken enough alcohol to sink the ferry he was going over on, it would likely be fairly tame considering all of his friends were taking their kids. 

He was older, and at 39 it wasn’t surprising that most of his friends were settled down but from comments he made and the lifestyle he lived (he had a professional career but still chose to work part time in the bar (and write the signs)) it was clear he was very far away from that point in his life. 

It also turned out we lived across the street from each other. That hadn’t worked out well before but maybe this time would be different. We chatted throughout the weekend and when he was back in the city we made plans to go on a date. 

Somehow, and honestly, I’m not sure how it happened, I truly don’t understand how I didn’t see it happening and stop it before it was too late, but our first date ended up being to a Whitecaps football (/soccer) game. Which would have been fine, except I was still seeing The Whitecaps Player. 

I could have and should have made an excuse, any excuse!, to get out of it but he had the tickets and I just felt like anything I said would sound sketchy because he knew I liked sports, he knew I was a football fan and I’d already said I was free that night. 

It was another “how the fuck did I get myself here” moment as we walked from the concourse out into the open arena to take our seats and there’s The Whitecaps Player warming up on the pitch. I attempted to distract myself from my internal awkwardness but, while Sandwich Board Guy was nice, from a physical attraction standpoint my eyes were much more drawn to the field than the seat to my left. It was only made worse when The Whitecaps Player got sent off during the game and Sandwich Board Guy and I then had to have a long discussion about what an idiot he was. All the while I was thinking, yeah I’ll be messaging that idiot later, no doubt. 

God, I’m an awful person. As I write this story and admit to the proximity of these two strings of my dating life, I know if it was the other way around I would be less than happy about the situation. Does it absolve me of guilt because Vancouver is so small? Because it wasn’t as if I orchestrated the situation? Because this is just the way dating is nowadays? Ugh. I hate that excuse!!

But I wanted to try and give Sandwich Board Guy a chance, he seemed like a standup guy, he was super nice and he’d had an interesting life so we had a bit to chat about. But it wasn’t my proudest dating moment. 

The date ended with a brief hug after we walked the two minutes back to our joint street corner and discussions of another date. It felt like it would be a slow burn but I was prepared to give it a chance. I just couldn’t work out if his self deprecation was kinda cute or kinda off putting. I mean, I don’t want a guy that can’t get enough of himself but a little bit of confidence doesn’t go amiss. 

On our second date we went to a few different bars near where we lived, and with him working in the industry, albeit just one night a week, he knew a lot of people and seemed to get a lot of free drinks, which included shots of tequila, followed by shots of gin. Those were my idea… but there was method to my madness, honestly! I was drinking gin and didn’t your mother ever tell you not to mix your drinks? Actually, my mother told me a lot of things about drinking that I clearly never took heed of, but in this instance it just seemed sensible to do shots of the same alcohol. But shots of gin are not good. 

Still, I kept my wits about me and when he made a “jokey” comment about coming home with me as we walked the few blocks home, there was no doubt in my mind I was going to bed alone. 

He was nice. Like really nice. Like, one of those guys you can totally see falling into the “last guys finish last” categories, and that turned me off. Because us women just can’t seem to appreciate a good guy, can we? Why is that?! I totally understand men’s frustration when they say we overlook good guys for bad boys. I’m totally guilty of it. Although my retaliation is always that men say they hate drama but will also go for the hot girls despite the drama they bring. Wow, so many generalisations in a paragraph. 

When we next met up, after we’d both separately watched the Mayweather MacGregor boxing match, I knew I wasn’t attracted to him. So I’d love for someone to explain to me how he ended up in my apartment kissing me. I’m in no way suggesting he forced that. I’m just suggesting I make the weirdest fucking decisions, that make no actual sense. Was I lonely? Did I just like the attention? Did I hope maybe a kiss would turn things around? 

Worse still, the moment that brought me back to my senses was when he suggested he stayed and share my ice cream…. Um. No. Absolutely not. Hard pass. Kiss me? Sure. Share my ice cream? Get outta town. 

In the days that followed that night, after I’d swiftly said goodnight and ushered him from my apartment so I could eat my ice cream in private peace, I was as honest as I could be with him and said there were other guys I was dating that I was more interested in. Did it matter that I already knew nothing serious would come of the time with The Whitecaps Player? No. All I knew was that I didn’t feel the same way about Sandwich Board Guy so I had to be honest. 

However, despite the honesty, Sandwich Board Guy was persistent. Not in a forceful way, just in that he kind of hung around on the periphery, texting, making jokes about how he was in love with me and I wouldn’t reciprocate, and telling me I’d inspired him to start running prior to his 40th birthday. Well at least I did one thing right!

I often wonder what depth of feeling he did have for me, and if in any way I perpetuated that and led him on. I tried to be aware of it, I told him about other guys I was dating, I even told him about the blog! (His wish is now granted that he’s included in it) I tried to make sure it was clear that I wouldn’t date him, but I’m also not sure if I made it worse by letting him stay on the periphery. 

Months later, I’d find myself back in the same stadium with him, this time watching rugby sevens after he invited himself to join my group of friends. This time there was no player I was dating on the field, though I was awkwardly covering lovebites on my neck from the night before courtesy of some over eager Irishman, and randomly Malaysian Persuasion had pitched up and was now sat next to me fondling my thigh. Another story for another time. 

To say Sandwich Board Guy was always on the periphery feels pretty apt. I just hope he didn’t stay there because of any false hope I gave him. I’ve been on the receiving end of that and it’s not fun. Knowingly not allowing someone the closure to get over you and move on is one of the most selfish things you can do. To this day, I hope that wasn’t the part I played.

…previous post

Same Same, But Very Different

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Aug-2017

They say we look for the familiar, that we find comfort in it. But what happens when the familiar isn’t attractive to you and, in fact, is maybe a whole lot of what you’d tried to leave behind?

Most of my dating stories, start on dating apps – such is the life we live in nowadays. And while this one started as a result of a dating app, in fact it began with a message request on Instagram. I’m always skeptical of those, it’s mostly some “bodybuilder” in India who wants to say hi or, in some instances, just gets straight to a marriage proposal. My favourite ones are men who message my blog instagram seemingly never having considered that a man harassing me in my DMs might be the exact basis of some of my stories.

This time though the message came from someone I thought I possibly recognised and as I read the message, he explained he’d seen me on Tinder and I realised that was where I’d seen the face. He said when we hadn’t matched on the app he decided to reach out to me on Instagram – this was during a period of time when I had my Instagram handle on my dating app profiles.

Sidebar – I’m in two minds about that. Part of me hates people putting their instagram on their dating profile because I feel like a lot of people just do it to get more followers. Especially the people who put their handle on but have a private account. It can be for no other reason then surely than to gain followers? But part of me likes it, and when I do have my handle on my profile, it’s because if people look at my Instagram I think it gives them a pretty good idea of who I am (all the while remembering nothing on Instagram or any social platform is every 100% accurate of real life). But in terms of my interests and a much larger breadth of pictures to see what I actually look like, I think it can be pretty helpful.

But I digress. Although another discussion point is this – if you’ve seen someone on a dating app and swiped right or liked them and you don’t match, especially if you’ve let some time go by, or maybe you’ve even seen them a few times and swiped right or liked them each time, and you still don’t match – maybe they don’t like you? So why would reaching out in another way seem like a good idea? I’ve always thought it was a ballsy thing to do. And you know, sometimes ballsy is good. We always say the men in Vancouver have no balls and never approach women, so I can’t be mad when one does I guess.

Ok, another sidebar. Is this deception – a bald man wearing something on his head for all his pics? I mean, there’s no way to talk about this without being judgey but essentially that’s what dating apps force us to be. It’s not that I care if a guy is bald, some bald guys are hot, just like some guys with hair are hot. And some are not. But, I mean, I want to see what I could be waking up next to. Although then that makes me wonder if the flip side of that argument is that women should put pictures on without make up…. But it’s not the same thing! Is it??? Now I’m conflicted. I hate double standards between men and women. I’ll need to think more on this…

Right, back to the man who seemingly always wore hats in my Instagram DMs. He said he’d seen me on Tinder, and had to reach out because he thought I was “cute” and saw that I was Scottish so thought we were kindred spirits, as he was also Scottish. Now, that sounds nice and I love having a connection to home, but I’ve always kinda liked the fact that there’s not that many Scottish people in Vancouver. I didn’t come out here to hang out with Scottish people. I could have stayed in Scotland for that.

Having said that, meeting people with the same cultural references as you, who miss the same food, and have the same understanding of what it’s like to have your family over 7000km away is always comforting to some degree. So I figured why not meet him, as he had suggested in his first message – definitely bold, definitely not from around here.

We arranged to meet at one of my favourite bars in my neighbourhood, which was close to where we both lived, and to be honest it was one of those dates I felt a bit “meh” about so I was glad not to have to travel too far for it. I was just getting ready to leave my apartment when he called to say he was running late. He got mega props for calling and not just texting, but all of those props were lost when after me saying no worries, I could meet him whenever, he then said “are you drunk?”

Maybe I was a touch blase about the whole date to the point that I didn’t care, but did that come across as drunk!? I thought it was a weird thing to say and I found it kind of offensive. Could I just cancel the date now?

I persevered, hung around my apartment an extra 20 minutes and then headed for the bar, knowing I’d get there before him so I could choose where to sit. Now he was older than I normally date, at 42, and I still wasn’t sure how I felt about the hat thing so I choose a quiet little corner where I wouldn’t be spotted if anyone I knew came into the bar. Is this a bad sign? Trying not to be seen with the guy before the date has even begun? Oh god…

When he arrived, toque (the Canadian name for a woolen hat) in place, I realised what about his pictures had put me off – he reminded me of a million men back home. Men who try to dress like they’re still teenagers, when in fact they’re middle aged. A lot of them come from the west coast of Scotland (Glasgow, I’m looking at you), shopping centres are filled with them on Saturday days and bars are busting at the seams with them on Saturday nights, and it’s something I’ve always found wildly unappealing. This all ran through my head as he walked towards me across the bar.

Despite all of those cultural generalisations I’d just made about my own people, he was very smiley, so at least there was that? And I had to try to remain open minded about it as we went in for the “hi” hug.

That would have been easier had he not recoiled mid-hug and said “wow, you’re terrible at hugging, try that again.” Um, what? I just met you. You don’t know me. We’re on a first date. Why are you trashing my hugging ability?!?

It rubbed me so far the wrong way I can’t tell you. Especially after the “are you drunk?” comment. And it was such a stupid thing, I had to wonder if part of the reason I was so pissed off about it was because something about him inherently annoyed me to begin with? I happily would have ended the date at that point, but then I figured he’d have something to say about that too.

We chatted through the usual – work, why we moved, family, why we wouldn’t move back, things we loved about Canada, things we found tough about Vancouver, and dating. When he told me he was from a place near Glasgow, I almost shouted “I FUCKING KNEW IT!” but I restrained myself and instead focused on the toque sat atop his head, while we were indoors and it wasn’t cold outside… Did I mention it was August?

It was clear from our discussions that we had a lot in common, and if you asked someone on the outside looking in if we were a good match, they would have likely said yes and probably made some comment about it being cute we were both Scottish. Ugh, puke.

I honestly couldn’t wait to get home that night, it was one of those that every five minutes sat in that bar, was five minutes lost when I could have been in my pjs at home, which was definitely the more attractive option. So when after a couple of drinks we finally got the bill, which he paid, I was grateful I only had a six minute walk home.

Talking of which, in our initial conversations we also both agreed that actually the other person being Scottish wasn’t a plus for either of us. He said he’d told his friend that exact thing before our date, while I knew it had been swirling in my head since he reached out. So it was weird to me that he had mentioned us both being Scottish when he’d initially reached out to me on Instagram as if it was a good thing. But I didn’t press him on it, because I’m not an asshole, unlike people who critique other’s hugging ability. Clearly I was so salty about that still.

After the date, which I escaped with no one I knew seeing me, I messaged him later to thank him for the drinks, as I always do when someone pays, and while I already knew I wouldn’t be seeing him again, for some reason I couldn’t be bothered to deal with that on that evening. So instead, I just let his “you’re welcome, it was really great to meet you” reply sit on my phone to be dealt with another day.

That other day was the next day. I replied to his text from the night before and just said that it was lovely to meet him but I didn’t feel the connection I’m looking for, which I usually know right from a first date. I’d expected him to do the usual “oh I felt the same” reply which a lot of guys engage and I can totally understand why they do – saves face, saves ego, saves any further discussion. I’m ok with it. But not this guy. Not “you’re a terrible hugger” guy.

Instead I got a reply from him which stated that he felt like I needed someone to help me make better dating choices and that while we may not continue dating, maybe he could be that guy for me. Are you kidding me??? I got that text while I was in the gym and I honestly almost threw a dumbell at the guy beside me. Why are men so entitled to tell women what we need and always assume they are the ones that can give it to us?????

I thought I was pissed about the “are you drunk” and “you’re a terrible hugger” comments. But this was next level. And, to be clear – I’m aware that I definitely don’t always make good dating decisions, him being a fucking case in point! But a) it is not his place to point that out and b) what on earth made him think he could help me?!

As you can imagine, my reply was less than cordial, which of course he used to suggest that I’d taken what he said the wrong way etc etc. And eventually I just had to tell him that the conversation was over, otherwise I knew it was going to spiral.

The thing was I never really wanted to date him in the first place, he kind of annoyed me before I even met him, more so when I met him and entirely after I met him. It was another proof point that forcing myself outside of what feels “comfortable” and what makes sense for me has never once worked. Even if we are from the same country, even if we have had a similar life experience in moving to Canada. We may have come from the same place but we were very, very different, and not just because I’d never tell someone I didn’t know that they were shit at hugging. See, still salty.

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Do you have the answer?

divorcedanddatingat30Leave a comment

Aug-2017

Questions are good. Curiosity and inquiring minds are the foundation of the world but after a date, should you be left with more questions than answers?

Is it really a good use of my time to meet people who, even from our texts, I’m not convinced about? Is dating a 26 year old really a good idea? Was ditching our first date because he got “sunburnt” just an excuse?

Why did he offer to meet me at my place and then choose a bar such a long walk away? Is a 25 minute walk far, or am I just a moaning minnie? But really, why couldn’t we have just arranged to meet there & I could have cabbed? Or why couldn’t he have just planned better?

Why did he wear a Hawaiian shirt? Weird, why couldn’t I see any of this so called sunburn under the shirt? How was my face supposed to react when he admitted it wasn’t sunburn that kept him from our first date, he’d just got drunk with friends? Other than the unimpressed look I apparently gave him?

When I was already thinking that maybe his age was a problem, what made him think it was necessary to show me his id to confirm his name and thus reinforcing just how young he was? So he lived between Vancouver and Edmonton, how exactly was that going to work if we were dating?

How traditional were his Korean family? And what must it be like for your family to have a say in what you end up doing for a career? Would he have chosen to be a paratrooper, if they hadn’t? Could I feel like my job working in tech was any less meaningful when he’s talking about going to fight forest fires? Do I need a new career?

Is it possible to feel any older when he’s talking about nights out on Granville Street with his friends? When did I get so old that the thought of nights out in Vancouver’s “entertainment district” made me shudder?

When I didn’t want another drink, maybe he could have picked up on the subtle hint and not ordered another one for himself so we could leave? Maybe 25 minutes is a long walk, considering even he commented on it during the walk back?

Why would he park his car in a lot that clearly states it closes at 9pm? After I made fun of his inability to read signage (wow, am I a bitch?), why did he still want to kiss me? Why is it that I know instantly if I like someone by my want to reciprocate kissing them on a street corner in full view of other people? Or in this case, my horror?

Why did he think I’d want to meet up with him again next week before he flew back to Edmonton? How can two people be on such different pages at the end of a date? Did my “thanks but no thanks” text message afterwards do the job of ending this before it begun? Am I getting better at writing those text messages?

Will I, one day, meet someone I don’t have to send one of those texts to? And who maybe has the answer?

Next post…

…previous post

You, Me & Translator Makes Three

divorcedanddatingat303 Comments

Aug-2017

How much do you really need to be able to communicate in a relationship? When you’re from incredibly different backgrounds AND there’s a language barrier, should we just accept that communication is going to be difficult, and maybe this isn’t going to be one of those deep and meaningful relationships?

When I first matched with The Whitecaps Player on Bumble, I wasn’t sure he was definitely a player. (The Whitecaps are Vancouver’s local football/soccer team that play in the MLS) There were pictures of him in some kit but I thought he may have been a member of the coaching or support team and in our first messages he attempted to tell me he was the mascot, Spike. I told him that was unfortunate because I don’t like birds (Spike is a kingfisher) and eventually he gave it up and admitted he played for the team.

The problem was his name on Bumble didn’t match any first name of a player on the squad, so in an attempt not to be scammed by some guy claiming to be a professional football player (yes, I live in North America, but the game you play with the ball at your feet I will almost always call football) I started a pretty in depth Google search and a reverse image google search.

Wikipedia gave me all I needed to know – the name on Bumble was his middle name. He was born in Africa, grew up in the US and had just been traded to Vancouver from a US MLS team. I was going to start dropping some of that info into our messages to let him know I was onto him but didn’t want to seem like a total stalker. I figured it probably wouldn’t be a good look.

In our chats we realised we lived a block from each other and made plans pretty quickly to meet up that night. Unfortunately (or fortunately for me) a friend messaged me and asked if I wanted to go see Lady Gaga in a box at Rogers Arena that night. I wasn’t the hugest Lady Gaga fan but I wasn’t about to pass it up. I had just made plans to meet him though and I didn’t want to do the typical Vancouver thing and bail… but when I mentioned this to my friend she told me to bring him too. God love my friends for their deep understanding about the need not to inhibit any dating opportunities.

The crazy thing is having a first date in a box at a Lady Gaga concert with a bunch of friends of mine probably wouldn’t be the weirdest first date I’ve had. See the date with Canada Day Boat Guy. So I asked him. He called me boujee for going to a box, asked if I always did “such fancy things” and eventually said thanks but Lady Gaga wasn’t his thing. I understood, it was a stretch to think he’d be up for it. But we both lived a couple of blocks from the arena so I thought it might have worked.

Instead he told me to go and text him later. I don’t need told twice so I did. We texted a little during the concert and as it was wrapping up he said he’d walk to meet me at mine. I don’t remember the exact details of the text exchange, but it was clear her wasn’t coming up to my apartment, it was more just that we were so close by that we may as well just meet in person, even if for 10 minutes.

As ended up happening, we sat in the lobby of my apartment building for about 45 minutes chatting. We briefly mentioned going to a bar but that never happened and I think we were both equally just testing the water.

When he’d arrived it was entirely apparent how drastically different we were, at least outwardly anyway. He looked like he should be in a music video. He had a pretty solid gold chain around his neck, and fairly sizeable diamond studs in both ears which glistened under the bright, lobby lights. He was in a designer t-shirt and long basketball shorts, designer sneakers with socks pulled up to mid-calf and a cap. I could not have felt more like a white girl if I’d tried.

There is nothing cool or urban about me, nothing remotely edgy. And here he was looking like he could have been part of Migos and friends with Drake.

I wondered how it looked to people. Not that I cared, at all. But I was genuinely interested in what people thought when they looked at us sat there. Did I look like a groupie? Did I look like his personal assistant? Cause I wasn’t sure I looked like his date (if sitting chatting in my lobby even qualified as a date). By this point, I’d dated a whole host of ethnicities but I think with The Whitecaps Player it was so visually stark, it opened up a whole host of different thoughts for me.

Regardless, he had this really lovely demeanour about him, he seemed pretty quiet but funny, and super relaxed. Like almost horizontal. I was fascinated by what he saw in me. Because again, the quiet and relaxed thing? Yeah, probably not something I’d describe myself as.

Given his texts and knowing he’d been in the US for about 12 years, something I definitely wasn’t expecting was the language barrier. Well, I guess it was less of a language barrier and more of an accent barrier. He had an incredibly thick, French African accent which, much to my surprise, I found incredibly attractive. He was telling me about a game they were going to play in Salt Lake City and I thought he was telling me how the attitude of the other team was terrible, but he was really talking about the altitude and it took us a while to get there. We just laughed when we worked it out, or rather I laughed and he looked at me like he couldn’t understand why I had a problem comprehending the English language. This was to be the first of many of these exchanges.

Thankfully, we did still manage to laugh together. It has always been one of the reasons I’ve said that dating someone who is ESL (English as a Second Language) probably wasn’t something I would want to do. I couldn’t bear the thought of someone not getting my jokes. Although I guess that’s a better reason for someone not getting my jokes, than that they just aren’t funny…

Sitting in the lobby that first night I was pretty intrigued by him. I had so many questions about his upbringing, his family, playing in the MLS, moving to Vancouver… so much. This is why sometimes, just sometimes!, I love dating. Meeting someone who you would likely not otherwise encounter and getting to hear their stories – it’s the best!

But it was getting late so we said goodbye and agreed we’d meet up when he got back from their game in Salt Lake City. He kissed me on the cheek, gave me a slightly awkward hug and started the short walk back to his place. He told me he wished he’d driven, which I presumed was a joke!?

We texted a little during the time he was away and when he was back we arranged to go for dinner. He walked to meet me at my place and we decided on a super casual bar nearby, because “he didn’t want to walk far”. Um, which one of us is the athlete? So we walked at his snail’s pace, part of his whole “relaxed” thing I was guessing, the couple of blocks up the street.

Going into the bar I thought I saw a flicker of confusion from the hostess about whether we entered together or not. Was I imagining it? I mean, I got it, we didn’t look like a likely pairing, but I’d even tried to dress less.. I’m not even sure what… to go out with him. Unfortunately my wardrobe was severely lacking in Gucci sneakers and ostentatious bling so we still weren’t quite on the same level.

Conversation over dinner was slow, in that he even talked at a slow pace. It took a while before I saw him get even remotely animated about a topic. But it was still easy, despite a couple more misunderstandings. We talked sports, and growing up, and working out, and diet – he ate 3 plates of chicken wings.

He walked me home, again kiss on the cheek, awkward hug, and a mention that he wished he’d driven. Maybe he wasn’t joking the last time!?

On our 3rd date he came over to mine. I was pretty tired and he was leaving for another away game the next day so we agreed we’d watch a movie. I don’t even remember what we watched. But I remember being stressed about what we were going to watch. I was pretty sure we’d have very different tastes in movies, not counting the fact that I don’t even really like movies, and what if his preference wasn’t an English language movie. Like is that a part of the choice we’d make?

We didn’t end up really watching a lot of the movie, which is maybe why I can’t remember what it was. Instead we talked, watched YouTube videos on his phone and eventually, finally!, he actually made a move on me.

There had been a few brushes of his hand against my leg, a rub of the back, or a grab of the shoulder but they were all incredibly brief. I was beginning to wonder if he actually wasn’t attracted to me at all (which of course in my head this was down to the fact I was so different to him) and instead maybe he was just a bit bored and looking for company, having not been in Vancouver for long and not having very many friends outside the team.

But after making his move it was very clear there was at least some level of mutual attraction between us. And he had one of the leanest bodies I’d possibly ever seen – yes we got naked, yes there was sex. There was not an inch of fat on him, he wasn’t super muscly in a bulging biceps way, you could just tell he was incredibly fit. His skin stretched over his long limbs in the most perfect way and I’m pretty sure it glistened… or maybe I imagined that.

The sex was also pretty great, albeit my overriding memory was one of having to dodge his gold necklace as it swung at my face every so often when it would slide round from the back of his neck where he tried to keep it out the way while we got down to it. Now, I’ve been hit in the face with worse, but it was kinda off putting. There was also zero post-sex snuggles. Dude was not a snuggler. That much was clear.

In all the times we met up, and hooked up, we never spoke about what we were doing, who else we were (or weren’t) seeing, when we would next see each other, nothing. It was super casual and it was ideal. I enjoyed having that level of understanding with someone without either of us having to say anything. Which was handy considering the language barrier we were always trying to navigate.

I can so often get so caught up in my head and want clarity and something more concrete agreed. But with The Whitecaps Player, maybe it was because I couldn’t see it going anywhere anyway, because he was always likely to move again with his job, because we were so starkly different, I don’t know, but I was really ok with the unknown. With the simplicity that we would text each other every so often, we would see each other about once a week and there were no other expectations.

Generally it was always a dinner, we went to a movie once, or he’d come over to mine. Nothing ever really “happened” on the dates, my friends would ask how the date was and all I could ever reply was “fine”. I enjoyed the chillness of just lying on the sofa with him, him normally falling asleep because apparently training in the MLS is exhausting…

Eventually one night I did end up over at his place. We were both out. Him celebrating after an incredible last minute winning goal he scored against his old team and me at a wedding. We messaged during the course of the night, and for the first time our texts turned more than a little flirty and eventually downright dirty. I got dropped off at his apartment after the wedding and arriving on his doorstep still in my full gown (it had been a VERY fancy wedding) made it even more clear to our differences as he was there in what looked like an outfit almost entirely designed by Balmain, and something that James Harden may have worn.

My point about the differences between us, is not because they mattered to me at all, truly they didn’t. It’s more to highlight how I’ve never encountered the awareness about it before. And I wonder if the Chinese guy or the Persian or any other ethnicity I’ve dated, have felt the same just the other way around? But that I, from my place of white privilege, has failed to notice? Is this what it’s like to truly notice skin colour? I’m aware enough to know that me saying “I don’t notice skin colour” is racist in itself because there are different skin colours and they’re not to be ignored, and more obviously, also not to be the reason for any change, particularly negative, in behaviour or level of respect shown.

It was just a mind frame I hadn’t encountered before in dating and if I was feeling those things I wondered what his thoughts were around dating a white girl. Did he even have any? Was this topic so much part of his daily life that it wasn’t even a separate conversation, it just was life? In some ways I’d wished he and I would have had a deeper relationship to have been at a place where I could have asked him these things, and used the situation as a way to educate myself. But I also knew it wasn’t his place to have to educate the white girl on race.

Instead I read books like The Shock Doctrine and Caucasia, both of which I finished after things with him had kind of petered out, but the experience had awakened something in me whereby I wanted to try and understand more and not just stay ignorant because I could. Again, Whitecaps Player’s lackadaisical approach to everything meant he seemed neither perturbed nor even interested in that aspect of our very casual relationship.

As seemed maybe inevitable, as his season was coming to an end so too did our dates. We never had a conversation about it, I just knew he was going back to visit his Mom in the States and then was heading back to Africa while on the off season. What I hadn’t really banked on was that during said off season, he’d also be traded to a team back in the US and so he was never back in Vancouver as far as I know, and things were just done. No words said, or needed.

It turned out the guy I could communicate the least with, was the guy I didn’t really need to communicate with at all, and it was as refreshing as his cool, taught skin.

Next post…

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Is It Too Much To Ask?

divorcedanddatingat304 Comments

Jul-2017

In the midst of the O saga, when I was trying desperately to retain some distance and not put all the eggs in the world in one O shaped basket, I decided to go out on a first date with another Bumble match. Surely it could only be a good thing?

The Calgarian house painter, had only recently moved to Vancouver to work with his brother and was living in North Van. He seemed nice and had pretty good chat in our messaging. Although it took us a little while to get to him asking me out, when he eventually did he suggested we go for tacos, which is a plan I can always get behind.

He chose a pretty small, kind of hole in the wall taco place in downtown that I hadn’t been to before which I was pretty pleased about because I’m always keen to try new taco places and everyone knows some of the best tacos come from the smallest places.

On my walk to meet him there, I remembered that his pictures had been the type that could go either way. He could have totally downplayed his looks or those couple where he looked pretty good could have been total flukes. It had been hard to tell, there was no real consistency and so I was a little apprehensive.

Meeting him as planned at the taco place, I realised that the latter of those possibilities was true and I knew his personality would have to be sparkling for me to find him attractive. I was a little disappointed. But you should never judge a book by it’s cover so I forged ahead. Plus, tacos.  

It didn’t start well though when on walking up to the counter to order he sort of hung back and essentially made it impossible for me not to go up and order alone. Once I’d placed my order for 3 tacos, I turned around and asked if he was ready to order. He said he wasn’t and to “just go ahead”. Ok, so I guess I’m buying my own tacos?

Now, they were $12 and it’s not about the money, but we’ve had this conversation many times here. Paying on a first date. I am happy to pay, but I’m happier if you at least offer. Especially, if dinner and the venue for dinner were your choice. That for me is kind of a rule I follow – if I suggest the date and/or I suggest where to go, then I will always plan to pay.

Thus I figured he’d suggested the hole in the wall cause at least it was cheap. But he didn’t even offer to pay! Don’t worry, bud, I got the $12 covered.

In the short space of time it took for me to wolf down my tacos – what can I say I don’t like them to get cold – I had done a great impression of an interviewer. That is to say, I asked all of the questions and he asked almost none. I know I can talk a lot so it’s something I’ve worked on to ensure I don’t always lead conversation on a date. Not least because I am looking for someone who can take the lead in a relationship at least half the time, so being the only one to drive the conversation isn’t generally a good sign.

Which begs the question, when he asked if I wanted to go for a drink after we ate, why on earth did I agree? If I’m honest, it was possibly because we’d probably only been on the date for less than 30 minutes at that point and he’d come all the way over to downtown from North Vancouver and I guess I would have felt bad if it had ended there. Although I realise writing that now, it actually wouldn’t have been my problem.

In hindsight, there’s something to be said for valuing your own time and not drawing out something that you already know isn’t going anywhere. Why was I too polite to say no? Why did I allow myself to follow him to the bar when I was already bored.

Add to this, the fact that when discussing where we were going to go for a drink, he suggested an Irish bar across the street because, looking pointedly at me, “it’s Irish!” Um, great, but I’m Scottish. The correction didn’t seem to land with him, whether he didn’t care or he thought Ireland and Scotland were one in the same, I couldn’t be sure…

So we get to the Irish bar, the home of not my people, and I can already tell it was a terrible idea to agree. There was no atmosphere and despite the few other patrons, the service was sloooooooow. My hope for a quick drink followed by a quick escape was dwindling.

And when he suggested he might want a second one, I made a comment about wanting an early night before a 5.30am workout tomorrow but again, the comment didn’t land. Or maybe he just chose to ignore it?

So he had another while I nursed my first cider, and when eventually he was finished and we agreed to leave, of course the server took forever to bring the bill. In the time we were waiting, I decided I’d already wasted enough time and rather than play out the whole “I’ll text you”, “let’s do this again” thing, I decided to just say then and there that it had been good to meet him but I didn’t feel he was that interested in finding out about me, aka “you’ve asked me next to nothing throughout the last hour and a half”.

He said it took him some time to warm up, and he wasn’t sure what he was looking for anyway, having not long moved to Vancouver. Both of those were valid points but would it have been too much to ask for him to have seemed at least semi-interested during our date?

When the bill finally arrived, I made the executive decision not to even offer to pay for my cider. My time was worth the $6.75. In fact, that was a bargain. I was just glad it was over. As I watched him pay the bill though I noticed he didn’t tip. Nothing. Zero. $0. Oh wow. I was mortified. If I’d had cash on me I would have done a Ross in Friends when he tipped on the dinner with Rachel and her Dad. I almost wanted to apologise to the server as we left. Or go back in later and give him a tip. 

Now I was really glad it was over. We hugged goodbye, I hurriedly left and texted O. So much for spreading them eggs around.

Next post…

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OVER & OUT – PART 4 OF 4

divorcedanddatingat302 Comments

Jul-2017

How do you ignore your gut? Should you even try? Or should you just always go with it? Even when you want it to be wrong?

After the weekend of distant texting, by the time O texted on the Sunday night my gut was on full red alert. He sent a half assed text telling me they’d won the basketball tournament, and that was about it. My reply was that I guessed we weren’t doing dinner? He replied apologising, saying he didn’t realise he wouldn’t be back til later. It felt insincere. And I was majorly pissed off.  But mostly, I felt panicked. I felt panicked that things were changing and I couldn’t control them and I didn’t understand them.

I told him that I didn’t want to have to deal with inconsistency. He couldn’t go from being the texter of the century (while always claiming he wasn’t a texter) to essentially being MIA for 24 hours.

Here’s the thing with consistency when it comes to communication – I don’t need 24/7 communication but I do need 24/7 consistency. So if you only text me once every three days, that’s fine, but keep doing that. If you text me once every hour (don’t. I don’t think anyone should text someone that much), then you better be setting your alarm to keep that shit going so I don’t think you’ve died. Granted that’s an extreme example but my point is, don’t fuck with the consistency of communication. Yes life happens, yes it’s not always possible, but that’s why it’s important to think about the levels of expectation you’re setting. And that’s why numerous times I’d questioned O about the likelihood of this high bar being kept up there. And he’d always insisted it wasn’t a problem…

We didn’t end up seeing each other on the Sunday night and, in fact, it was eight days until I saw him again. Over the week his texts became less and less frequent and he dodged every opportunity for us to meet – he was busy. We eventually made preliminary plans to meet on Saturday. I was actually busy on Saturday, I was heading out of town to stay with my adopted Canadian Granny, but I didn’t want to be the blocker so I said it worked for me. And as I headed for the skytrain for a night out the city, I got the text I knew was coming from O – “really sorry, I don’t think I can meet today, I’ve thrown my back out”.

I could have written it myself, albeit the back injury was an added flair of an excuse. I had fully expected it. So why did the disappointment sting my eyes? Why did the expected call off still result in brimming tear ducts?

I think I knew at this point things weren’t going to be the same again. There would be no reverting change in his behaviour that could now not make me question him, question his integrity, question his motives, question his honesty.

Despite being on the Skytrain, heading out the city, I replied and suggested I go over with some food for him and asked if there was anything else I could take him. Banking on the fact he’d decline I didn’t pause my trip to White Rock for a single step. Expectedly, he declined the offer but said “maybe tomorrow”. I decided at that point that I’d be seeing him the next day whether it meant I had to doorstep him or not.

Later that afternoon, sat in Granny’s garden, surrounded by her beautiful potted plants with the sun beating down, I told her the whole story over numerous glasses of wine. And what she said to me still sticks in my mind – “when you’ve explained to someone how inconsistency causes you anxiety, you can’t believe someone only has good intentions for you when they then become inconsistent and seem unconcerned for the anxiety they must know they’re causing you.”

It was followed up with some sage advice about trying to draw a line in the sand and not giving anymore of myself to him. I realised I’d already given more than I would have liked, more than I intended to, more than I felt comfortable with. I’d been swept away by the whole thing and now I was left feeling adrift. Granny did a great job at lifting my spirits over dinner but there was no denying the growing sadness and confusion.

The next day as I returned back to Vancouver, I lured him into a false sense of security – I hate games, but fuck you – getting him to confirm he was still at home in bed and his flatmate was out. With that info in hand, I told him I was taking him coffee and his favourite doughnut from Tim Horton’s and I’d be over in half an hour. I didn’t ask, I told him. I left him no choice.

And here’s where I know I differ from some people. For some, as soon as someone backs away from them they put their own walls up, turn the other way and don’t look back. I, on the other hand, like to get right in amongst the shit pile and stir it up. It’s like I can’t be done with it until I’ve tested it to the nth degree. Partly it’s because I’m a hopeless optimist and hope that one day my gut will be wrong and someone backing away will all of a sudden change their mind and come running back. And I know the retort to that is why would you want someone who wasn’t sure about you? Don’t ask me, I’m all sorts of fucked up.

It’s also partly because if someone wants to end something with me I want them to say it. I want to make them say the words. Both for their discomfort and my closure. I’d rather be stabbed with a knife than slapped with a fish. Does that even make sense as a saying? I’m going with it. Like, if you’re going to walk away from me, then tell me, give me the brutally honest reason, don’t just leave me hanging.

So looking to get into the middle of this shit pile, I went round to O’s and for the first time since I’d known him, it was awkward. Not just because his 6’5 frame was barely able to move – apparently the back injury wasn’t a lie – but it was clear something had changed. He was in pain. And I  wasn’t very sympathetic. I couldn’t be. I couldn’t bring myself to give any more of myself. The doughnut and coffee were the extent of it.

In the 45 minutes I was there, one of his best friends came to pick something up with his girlfriend. It was another awkward interaction, with O briefly introducing me, while I sat on the edge of his bed like some pathetic groupie. They left and there was more awkward chat between us. He commented that I seemed to be enjoying his discomfort. He wasn’t wrong. But I wasn’t enjoying mine.

I left him in bed to go and meet friends at the beach, as had always been my Sunday plan before my impromptu home delivery to the invalid. I never intended to stay at his for long, I just wanted to see him, look him in the eyes, try to get a read on the situation. But I think all I’d managed to deduce in my time there was that the situation was fucked up.

He clearly knew I was pissed off but I couldn’t tell if he cared. We texted a little that afternoon, while I was enjoying a sunny beach day and he was feeling sorry for himself in bed. I still couldn’t muster any sympathy.

When he asked me to go round for dinner the next night, I was slightly surprised but I couldn’t decide if it was a good thing or not. Maybe he was going to take the opportunity to chat about things, have those open and honest (and maybe difficult) conversations that we both agreed during our first date we preferred to games and confusion and things left unsaid.

Turns out, he just wanted someone to snuggle with on the sofa. He’d made it to work that day and we met halfway between our apartments as he walked home. His 6’5 frame stood out even more when he walked with a limp. On this occasion I did feel some sympathy for him. He was clearly in a lot of pain, so I offered to take his backpack, cause I’m nice like that and despite how confused I was by the whole situation, I apparently couldn’t help myself. We stopped for food on the way home and continued back to his for a night of laying on the sofa.

There was no explanation for his distance, no reference even made to it. It was like those eight days of us not seeing each other, and the diminishing texts, hadn’t even happened. We had sex that night, despite his back injury – funny what guys can rally for – but even it wasn’t the same. Maybe because he wasn’t his usual energetic self, maybe because part of me wondered how many times this was likely to happen again, or if in fact this might be the last.

The rest of the week was more of the same, infrequent texts and an inability to meet up. I stopped attempting to make plans by the Thursday. I was sick of suggesting times, making myself available, being accommodating in the hope he might actually say yes. There’s only so many times you can be told no. I wish I was one of those people who only needed to be told no once… alas, I’m a sucker for punishment.

My anxiety was out of control, my mind a constant whirring of how the situation might be rectified, why he might have changed his mind, what I could do to change it back… talk about mental torture. I threw myself into working out. And trying to ignore the deafening silence from my phone.

It got to the weekend and I had no idea what his plans were. I made my own and adjusted to the deep, sinking feeling that had been perpetually in my stomach for the last two weeks.

Waking on Sunday morning at 8am I read a text from him that he’d sent at 3am – “any chance you’re having a late night?” Was it a drunk booty call or was he just finishing work (not uncommon for him) and he wanted to talk?

I responded saying I had but clearly not as late as some people and asked if he was ok. And then I waited. And waited. And waited for a reply. At 4pm, I decided I’d pretty much had enough. “So you’re going to text me at 3am, I reply when I wake up and then you go back to ignoring me as you’ve done for much of the past week? Really?”

Interestingly, that got his attention. He replied saying he’d been meaning to call me. “And yet here we are, texting” I replied. My phone rang almost instantly. I gave myself a couple of seconds to compose myself, or at least try to. There was a fairly high chance I was going to lose it – whether “it” was my temper or my tears, I wasn’t sure.

He said he knew he’d been off, he knew he’d been busy, he knew things had been different. I said I was disappointed with the inconsistency. He said he was sorry, he’d never meant to let me down, but that he also knew he didn’t have space in his life for someone right now, for a number of reasons.

He didn’t have space for someone in his life right now.

The very thing I’d asked him a number of times and he said we’d figure it out. Wow. I guess what he meant when he said we’d “figure it out” is that he would just wait til he came to the startling realisation himself that he didn’t have space and choose to do a great impression of a ghost rather than actually talk to me about it.

So then why the fuck would he text me at 3am and ask if I’d “had a late night by any chance” then? Cause he wanted to have the chat then? I’m going to guess not. Because he wanted to see if he could squeeze one more sexscapade out of me before he ghosted me entirely? More likely.

My mind was racing while he spoke. I had so much I wanted to say to him. So much I wanted to shout at him. And instead I just asked “so that’s it?” and he said “yeah, so that’s it.” And just like that it was done. We said goodbye, I hung up and finally lost it. My tears, that is.

To say I was disappointed, is an understatement. Mostly I was disappointed in myself. Mostly because I knew I shouldn’t have allowed myself to be swept along, because I knew I was opening myself up to getting hurt again, because I knew it was going too fast. But he assured me, he said all the right things, convinced me he wouldn’t be leaving an O shaped hole in my life anytime soon. Four weeks later, that’s exactly what I was left with.

I’ll never understand how he ever thought he was going to make it work with his schedule or with whatever other issues he had going on. I’ll never understand how he could sit and talk about consistency and honesty and communication and then let things go the way they did.

And once again with a guy, I had to go looking for the answers. They just start to drift a little, but not far enough that it’s undeniable, they deny anything’s changed or they feel differently, until it gets to a point where I have to call them out on it. I’m not one of these people that can just let it go or fizzle out. I want that last conversation, I want at least some reasoning or explanation even if it’s bullshit & makes no sense. But it’s always me who has to ask the question. Sometimes I wonder what would happen if I didn’t.

But once again, that feeling of being cast adrift was with me, making itself at home within me. It had become the thing I feared the most. The feeling I don’t know how to quell and the feeling which causes self doubt in me like nothing else. Wondering if anything will ever work out, if anyone will ever live up to what they say they’re going to do, if there’s something inherently wrong with me. I wasn’t sure I could do it again. I honestly felt like I’d reached the tipping point.

I had more questions than answers, and more concerns than confidences. A friend said to me a while afterwards, realising I was struggling to come to terms with the swiftness of the zero to 100 to zero journey we’d been on – “you don’t need to know why he did what he did, just know that it wasn’t an accident.” I have no clue what happened on his end, what changed in his mind. All I know is how I felt and what I did. And those are the things I can learn from.

I didn’t want to write this story. It still stings. Not because I still harbour feelings. Unless that feeling is confusion. I like closure, I like tying up loose ends, I like closing the loop – I was able to do none of that with this situation. Him saying he didn’t have space for me or anyone in his life right now would have been an acceptable explanation (let’s forget the ghosting that took place to get there), except for the fact that two weeks later, I saw him on Bumble again, with an updated profile which now read “looking to date a tall girl”….

To O,

Fuck you.

Sincerely, this 5’4 shortarse

 

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Oh Wow – Part 2 of 4

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Jul-2017

I think I got 2 hours sleep after our first date night of drinks, and meeting friends, and seeing each other’s apartments, and dancing in the living room, and incredible sex… and I was more than a little tired. As was O, so we stayed in bed quite late on the Saturday morning, chatting, laughing at how this wasn’t how we’d expected a date for a few drinks after work would end up, and having more of that – you guessed it – incredible sex (I’m not even going to apologise for it!). While still in bed, I had to reject a WhatsApp call from my Mum and text her that I couldn’t answer it because I wasn’t in my own bed (Mama didn’t raise no liar)… #awkward

We finally got up and showered together before he got ready to go to his parents’ and I headed home. PSA – showering with a 6’5 guy makes for some logistically awkward moments. Also some bloody cold moments, like when he entirely blocks the water flow from reaching you.

We both had busy Saturdays of visiting parents and going on a birthday night out (him) and going to the gym then going on an afternoon long brewery crawl (me). He did say before we left each other in the middle of downtown that he fully welcomed drunken texts and expected to see (me) the next day. Despite him telling me on Friday that he’s not a great texter, it wasn’t long before my phone buzzed with a message from him asking how the breweries were.

We texted on and off during the day and at 9pm he asked what the chances were he’d see me that night. I told him it was pretty high, but when I ended up heading home around 10.30pm I presumed he’d be out later so went to bed and only woke up when some other fuckboy called me at 1.30am. Don’t ask me why I don’t put my phone on silent.

O had messaged at 12.30am asking if I was still awake so albeit that it was then an hour later, I called him to see where he was but he didn’t answer. I then sent him a text that he did reply to and, despite it being middle of the night, me being fully in bed and asleep, I somehow ended up agreeing to get up out of bed and going to meet him at the McDonald’s a block from my place. I know, makes no sense to me either. Even just 36 hours in, he was definitely starting to seriously affect my sleep and I should have hated it more than I did, which was not at all.

By the time I got there though, O’s friend whose birthday they had been celebrating and was visiting from out of town had shown up at McDonald’s (he’d gone MIA earlier in the evening) and now needed to be let into O’s place where he was staying. They were both pretty drunk but O seemed to have his shit together, despite stinking of weed. So I suggested he take his friend home, I’d wait for the food that he’d ordered and and then take it back to mine where O would come once his friend was safely tucked up at home. It really was handy that we lived so close.

Standing in McDonald’s still half asleep, I wondered what the hell I was doing. But there was something about him… Clearly he was making me do crazy things, which worried me slightly. But let’s be honest, I’m never going to turn down the chance to snack on a stray fry.

I texted him once I was home letting him know his McDonald’s was awaiting him, and he replied saying “you’re quickly turning into a unicorn”. Well, you do what you can, right? [insert hair bob emoji lol]

Twenty minutes later I went down to meet him outside my building, as I wasn’t sure the buzzer / elevator instructions would be entirely digestible for him that night. Watching his tall frame come lumbering over the street, he definitely seemed a little worse for wear. As we got into my apartment, he got undressed almost immediately so was sat on my sofa, in his boxers, munching his McDonald’s like it was the most normal thing in the world, which was only marginally strange given I’d known him at that point for so little time. But for being an “8 out of 10 drunk” as he said the next day he was, he was still pretty well put together.

Apparently all his friends loved the story of how I wanted to watch the rugby right after we finished having sex and the love bite (which I’d accidentally given him, did I not mention that? Yeah… good God who am I?) was a constant source of amusement for his friends all day. But his reply to them was always to say the sex was absolutely worth it so he really didn’t care. I, on the other hand, was mortified.

I slept a little more on Saturday night than I had on Friday night but only by a couple of hours. We had a lovely morning of snuggling, which I’m pretty sure is what Sunday mornings are made for and which later led to him calling me “a little cuddle monster”. But he seemed to need more sleep so I left him in bed while I skyped my family back home. After having to reject my Mum’s call the day before, and having to explain why I was kind of whispering that morning, I had to tell them the abridged version of the man in my bed… Always fun family chats!

I went back to bed for a bit but I was pretty antsy which he fully called me out on when he woke up. He asked if he’d done anything stupid the night before but I assured him he really was fine. He apologised for gatecrashing my place after his night out, and thanked me again for getting his McDonald’s. He was very appreciative and maybe a little sheepish.

Part of me felt like I’d done too much, I’d been too nice, too accommodating, too available. Was being willing to get up in the middle of the night to meet him when he was TUI (Texting Under the Influence) me giving myself too easily to him? But I had loved seeing him again, falling asleep next to him again was comforting, waking up beside him again was exciting. But I’d started to feel conflicted about my actions, which only fed my antsy-ness.

He had brunch with friends to go to, which seemed like a total struggle for him in his slightly hungover state – I was intrigued how much alcohol was required to get a guy of that size drunk. Meanwhile I was excited to get up and get the laundry on and get out to exercise. We were very different people that morning! I needed a quiet but productive Sunday after a weekend which had ended up not at all like I’d envisaged.

We texted a little during the day and it seemed like his Sunday was getting boozy, brunch was followed by beers on the beach, then around 5.30pm he messaged and asked when I’d be eating dinner. I had been napping, thanks to a serious lack of sleep the previous two nights, but texted back around 6.30pm to say I’d be eating within the next hour, in my head the text finished with “because I want to be in bed at 8pm” but I refrained from sending that part to him. At which point he said he wanted to cook for me.

He had said something in the morning about making up for his drunkenness by cooking me dinner, but I never really thought it would happen. I wasn’t sure how I felt about it if I’m honest. I was concerned about seeing him 3 days in a row, I didn’t want to see him if he was super drunk (Saturday night drunk was one thing, Sunday day drunk was another) and I felt that maybe I should make myself a little more unavailable. But he was so excited to cook for me and having someone cook dinner was always a treat (a symptom of long term singledom), so soon enough he was at mine suggesting he cook fish tacos. When should I tell him I don’t eat fish?

On his arrival, he was a bit of a drunken, beach mess and I slightly started to regret my decision to say yes to dinner. Plus I could feel my anxiety kick in about my scheduled bedtime not going to plan and just generally not making good decisions. I really like order, I really like routine, I really like knowing what the fuck is going on and this weekend had contained none of those things. I also knew that sometimes I needed to be a little more flexible, a little more easy going and a little more spontaneous. So I was trying to find balance.

We left mine to go back to his place for him to shower and change before we went grocery shopping for dinner, and the whole time dinner just felt like it was getting later and later and I was becoming more anxious… My anxiety was apparently obvious to him and as he was getting ready to shower he questioned why I seemed so reluctant to be having dinner with him. I tried to explain about my general preference for control and plans and that unexpected changes cause me anxiety, all the while feeling very vulnerable sharing these fairly deep seated fears with someone I’d known for such a short time.

He knelt down beside me as I was sitting on the sofa, towel wrapped around his waist, and said “if anyone understands about anxiety I get it, as a result of the basketball injuries, I suffered from depression and from that developed anxiety, so I get where you’re coming from. Just know I understand” and then he kissed me. It was incredibly sweet and my heart skipped a beat. For being such a big, bullish guy, he was also sensitive and tender.

I loved his openness to being sweet and complimentary, like when we were dancing on Friday night and as he stroked my side he said “damn, you’re fit, how did I not notice that before?!” Or when on the Saturday he said he’d found himself checking his phone and hoping I’d texted him while he was with his friends. And despite him not being a texter, he wanted to text me all the time. Or when he was at the beach on Sunday but had apparently just wanted to be hanging out with me.

But was it love bombing (someone blinding you with grand gestures and hollow words) or was it genuine interest. I couldn’t be sure. On both the Saturday and Sunday I’d tried to make sure I wasn’t driving the contact, that he was the one that reached out first both times, but did that really give me an indication of true intent? It was too early to know for sure.

He smoked a joint on our way from his place to the supermarket and it seemed to help him sober up(?) a little. At least that, and the shower, and change of clothes seemed to have helped so by the time we got to the store, shopping was easy and super fun, but everything seemed like it would be fun with him. I finally admitted at that point that I didn’t actually eat fish but I’d try the fish tacos if he promised he wouldn’t be offended if I didn’t like them. He agreed but promised I would love them.

After dinner, and me finding I did actually love his fish tacos, we were talking about how surprising the weekend had been, as we had a few times already since we’d met. My surprises for the three days of the weekend were him kissing me outside Tacofino, him texting me while out on Saturday, and the fact he was able to make me comfortable enough on Sunday night, despite my spontaneity anxiety, to be able to enjoy dinner with him. His 3 surprises were me saying I’d see him after meeting my friend for dinner on Friday (also me giving up my self restraint to sleep with him), meeting him at McDonald’s on Saturday and letting him stay (also the Saturday morning sex being so good), and me agreeing to a drunk guy coming to cook me dinner on Sunday.

It was fair to say neither of us had expected the weekend to go the way it did but lying on the sofa discussing the many events of the past 48 hours, it felt crazily normal.

He ended up staying over until Monday morning, after he’d said something about “well if I was staying…” and I said “well you’re welcome to” which caught him off guard but, honestly, it had been a lovely weekend and having someone cook me dinner on a Sunday night, and to watch Netflix and snuggle with until it was bedtime was unbelievably lovely. I fucking missed that!

Monday morning was interesting though. He for sure was feeling the effects of a heavy weekend, and the lack of sleep had him more than a little grumpy, though I could tell he was desperately trying to be fun and chatty before he headed home to get some more sleep and I got ready for work.

Within our first weekend of knowing each other we’d each met a close friend of the other’s, stayed at each other’s apartments, had sex (including some stuff that maybe takes some people more than a few dates to get to..), drunk texted, watched sports, showered together, went grocery shopping, he cooked for me, stayed over on a school night. It was a lot, and a lot more than expected, but it all felt really lovely.

I noticed throughout the weekend that I kept thinking “oh, people are going to judge me for going this hard and fast” or feeling pressured to make choices based on the so called “rules of dating” – don’t sleep together on the first date, don’t always be available, don’t give him everything he wants right away… I started to really psyche myself out and there were definitely moments of wondering if I should have been doing any of it. But then there’s the other side, when people say “when it feels right just go with it” or “if you want to, then why not?” So it was a conflicted weekend but by the end of it I was feeling more comfortable with my choices.

I also knew that O was nothing like I thought someone I would date would be, yet the ease with which I was finding spending time with him didn’t match that mis-match in expectations. The level of comfort we both had with each other, and had from the first date drinks, was unexpected and was rare in all the dates I’d been on. I hoped it wasn’t misplaced but we seemed to be on the same page.

I’d said to O on the Sunday night that my only concern with things being this unexpected, and ever so slightly full on, is that one of us (but I really meant him) would all of a sudden have a change of heart or get freaked out and run the other way. And that all I hoped was that there would be a conversation rather than just a slow retreat. He agreed, saying he was a much bigger fan of people having difficult, but necessary, honest conversations, than people getting into their own heads and things getting fucked up by not communicating. In that regard, it was like listening to myself.

But…it sounded like his last relationship was a bit of a head fuck with a serious lack of intimacy and I wasn’t sure he’d fully come to terms with that. He was also only just coming out the end of a long injury lay off and was dealing with the effects physically and mentally of that. He was building his business and, despite surrounding himself with seemingly older friends and mentors, he was only 26 (did I not mention that? Oops my bad) and had said himself he was unemotional. So expectations around any blossoming relationship needed to be kept realistic.

Also, up to this point O’s actions hadn’t entirely matched his words – he wanted to go slow but we slept together on our first date. He said he was unemotional but he’d been super open about his feelings (maybe that’s different?)… but each time the actions were “better” than his spoken intentions so I wasn’t complaining, but that’s where it got confusing for me. I didn’t want to be hearing one thing and having to presume he’d do something else. My head doesn’t need that type of messing about.

I remember my therapist Julia saying about the Canadian DJ situation, “you don’t necessarily want fireworks, the fireworks fizzle, they die out and then what are you left with?” At the time I thought “but how can something that feels so incredibly amazing be wrong?!” Turns out she knows what she’s talking about, as if I had ever doubted her. That situation went so wrong, so quickly. So I was glad it wasn’t feeling like crazy fireworks with O, that’s not to say it didn’t feel great but it just felt… easy.

Despite the element of confusion, I felt a sense of calm about and around O, though I couldn’t quite place where it came from. Was it because it was just “right” or was it because I didn’t fully believe it might go anywhere, because it never does? I guessed only time would tell.

Next post…

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O – Part 1 of 4

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Jul-2017

Leaving work on the Friday afternoon, I wasn’t 100% sure what to expect from my date with O. Looking back at his online dating profile I couldn’t quite pinpoint why I’d swiped right but, in all of our messaging, he seemed like a nice guy who could hold a conversation and had the balls to make plans fairly quickly – qualities I admired. I knew he was Persian and 6’5 but when I walked outside and saw him, I really hadn’t expected such an athletic looking, hot, brown guy, with a jawline that could cut glass, albeit covered by a very well trimmed beard. It was a very pleasant surprise.

He’d texted to say he was outside my office, not where I would usually want to meet someone but he lived close by and for whatever reason I agreed for him to come there and then we’d walk somewhere for happy hour.  He was on the phone as I came out so we had a quick hug mid-conversation and he intimated an apology before finishing his call off to the side.

Coming back over, he said “I’m so sorry, let’s do that hi again”, he gave me another, fuller hug with those fairly muscly arms I’d noticed under his t-shirt when I’d been watching him on the phone. It was an incredibly comforting, friendly hug that didn’t feel like it was from a stranger, almost as if I’d known him for longer than a minute. He quickly suggested a place to go for patio drinks and, as we walked from Gastown to Yaletown, we had great chats about working in tech, the business he was starting, how he got there and his basketball background.

He loved our shared tech experience, saying he’d never been able to have those chats on a date before – “those chats” being about software and processes. I’m not sure I’d ever had those chats on a date before either, given that for the most part a lot of people would consider them more than a little boring.

We got a seat on the patio at the bar he’d suggested, but it took us a while to order drinks because we were chatting so much – it was super easy and fun. We seemed to have a lot in common, we talked a little bit about dating and our views on the subject, which we came at from a similar place it seemed – we didn’t have time for games and we were looking for something substantial.

We shared our love of sports and good drinks, and how we both felt like old souls who preferred chilled nights and early bedtimes. I also found out he didn’t like scheduled sex, or waiting, he preferred calls to texts, not to ask him questions I didn’t want the answer to (thankfully I found this out by him telling me and not by asking him a question I didn’t want the answer to) and that the more comfortable I was with him, the more comfortable he’d be with me. He told me he could be unemotional, as a safety mechanism, and wouldn’t want to rush anything.

We covered all this ground before we’d even finished the second drink. It felt like a lot but these are the chats I live for! I don’t want the surface level bullshit, I want to get deep, I want to understand if there is any substance there, I want to know we align on the important stuff. It felt like he was being open, and genuine, and I loved that.

I was going to meet a friend later for dinner, which O had known when we arranged happy hour drinks. It was the perfect way for us to be able to meet knowing it couldn’t go on all night, with a safety net of an end time in case it was a first date fail. Before my dinner, we went for a walk to the seawall for some gelato. At which point I found out he doesn’t like when things bother him, like the gelato melting over his hands.

I had probably learnt more about him in the two hours we’d been on our date than in all the time I’d known some other people.

As my friend texted to say she was ready to meet for dinner, O said he was going to meet a friend over in another part of town but would walk me to the restaurant. It was nice of him to offer but it made me think he’d probably not kiss me, given that we’d be in the middle of Yaletown, crazy busy on a Friday night. And I realised I’d been hoping that our date might end with him laying it on me.

Well, no, being in the middle of after work / weekend crowds didn’t stop him and as we said bye in front of the restaurant, he leant down (there was a foot in height difference) and kissed me on the cheek, as if tentatively checking the response. Then went full in. Like full on, tongue in, hands on the face kiss.

It caught me a little off guard but Jesus! It was far from terrible and gave me total butterflies. My knees also possibly went slightly weak. It was a pretty perfect first kiss.

He smiled, said goodbye and continued walking past the restaurant. While trying to gather my composure, I turned round to the restaurant, and I see my friend standing about 10 feet from where O and I had just had that moment, and her face was a picture. Turns out she’d walked behind us the whole way along the street and had been taking pictures. Like a creeping paparazzo. But the kiss even caught her by surprise. I also realised when looking at the pictures over dinner just how short I was in comparison to him, I barely made it to his big, brawny shoulder.

Before O had left me at the restaurant, I’d told him dinner would only be an hour because my friend needed to go home to pack for a trip she was leaving for over the weekend, so he suggested that maybe we could see each other after I was finished. I was glad we’d both been on the same page about how much we were enjoying the date. It was one of those where you just never wanted to stop speaking to the person – and that had been so rare on dates recently!

Once my friend and I had scarfed down a couple of tacos and had enough of a catch up, and after a couple of texts and a phone call from me – I’d noted his comment about preferring calls to texts – O came to meet my friend and I at Tacofino. Some might say it was an intense addition to a first date but neither of us were phased by it and he seemed to enjoy being interrogated by my friend for 20 minutes.

They got on pretty well, which was actually something I realised during our drinks earlier – I felt like he would have absolutely no problem getting along with my group of friends. And I hadn’t always felt that way with guys I’d been on dates with. O and I had also discussed the spectrum of my life’s activities over drinks – from watching rugby in shitty bars to going to bougie social events – and how I needed someone who could be comfortable at both ends of the social spectrum. He seemed to totally get it and said he identified with it himself.

We left the restaurant and, after saying our goodbyes to my friend, went back to my apartment, so I could drop my laptop off seeing as I hadn’t been home since work, and then we were going to go and get another drink. He offered to wait downstairs at my apartment but I had no issues inviting him up, it was going to be a 2 minute visit and I was super comfortable with him. Albeit a fleeting thought did flash through my mind of jumping his bones when we got up there, I managed to restrain myself.

Over the course of the earlier part of the night one of his best friends had been texting about meeting up so on leaving my place he asked if I’d mind going to see his friend with him. I figured that as he’d met one of mine it was only fair and while, ordinarily, that might have made me nervous, it felt pretty natural.

By the time we met up with his friend though, he’d already made plans to go and meet other friends. I told O he should go as well if he wanted to but he said no, he wanted us to hangout and have a quiet night back at his place. It actually sounded perfect. And again, he’d seen my place so it was only fair I saw his. But again, that thought of jumping his tall, tanned bones flew through my head. I quickly pushed it to the side, as much fun as we were having, I didn’t want it to end up as just a casual hookup.

Meeting his best friend gave me another view of O. He’d made it clear to me already how important his friends were to him, they’d taken the place of older brothers, and finishing conversations with “I love you” was commonplace between them, which I’d witnessed that night while he was on the phone to his friend, and in person. I value well tended friendships, and someone who works for and is grateful for their closest relationships is someone I want to be with. Not to mention guys who are comfortable expressing themselves, especially to each other.

He lived downtown as well, turns out we only lived about 6 blocks from each other, so after a short walk we were back at his condo. It was nice, and clean, and organised and I was so thankful!

It’s a point of discussion with me and my friends – do you prefer to go to someone’s place or have them come to yours? I always want a guy to come to mine, because I know it’s clean and comfortable. You go to a guy’s place and you’ve no idea what’s waiting for you… For others the comfort in the knowledge they can get up and leave at any time and not allowing someone into their personal space makes going to the other person’s place preferrable. I digress.

Fortunately, O seemed to be pretty house proud so we settled in for a night of drinking Japanese whisky and listening to his vinyl collection – everything from Frank Ocean to the Bee Gees.

When he told me he was going to do something really cheesy I wasn’t sure what to expect, but it turns out him taking my hand to dance in the middle of his apartment, in low light, to old school Bee Gees love songs didn’t actually make me as uncomfortable as I thought it might. What did was kissing him while dancing – my neck may never be the same again, damn that height difference! But I wouldn’t have changed it, it was incredibly romantic.

After the dancing, we ended up getting a little hot and heavy on his couch and he started talking about how all week he uses “self restraint” but he didn’t want to with me. It didn’t take a genius to work out he was talking about us having sex. And while I was hugely, massively, almost indescribably attracted to him, I was really conflicted about sleeping with him on the first date. The voices in my head were telling me that this felt like it could actually go somewhere so don’t fuck it up by giving it all up so easily. But those voices didn’t take long to be drowned out by the fact that I really did want to sleep with him and he didn’t seem like he’d just disappear afterwards…

But first I had to shower, I felt pretty disgusting from being in the same clothes from a day at work, I stupidly hadn’t taken the chance to change when I dropped off my laptop. And that was playing on my mind a lot. For the things I wanted him to do to me, I really wanted to feel clean. Why did it feel awkward to ask that? As if me wanting to be clean, meant I must be stinking just now?! As if asking for a shower was maybe somehow asking for too much, despite the fact we were about to have sex? My brain is a riot sometimes.

So I worked up to asking him and said “ok, I absolutely can let go of my self restraint but only if I can shower”. I think O wasn’t sure what to expect after the “but” and he was delighted it turned out to be something he was more than onboard with. I tried to ignore the fact my legs also needed to be shaved but you can’t have everything…

Is it just me that finds that if I haven’t shaved my legs I will always end up having sex? And if I have preened my body hair to within an inch of its life, I will undoubtedly end up having no sexual encounters? It’s like if I want to have sex, I should just not shave and go out – BOOM! Sex guaranteed.

A quick shower later and we were in his bedroom for some incredible sex. His body was in great shape and the height issue during our dance make out was not an issue in bed – what is it they say? You’re all the same height lying down?

The sex was incredible, did I mention that? It was super hot, and comfortable, and that athletic body I’d clocked at the start of the night was a good indicator of his endurance, if you know what I mean. And we had fun! Isn’t that what sex is supposed to be? I know when you’re sleeping with someone for the first time fun can sometimes be passed over for just getting to know each other but it didn’t feel like that at all. Mid-summer, late night sex, with the city bustling 20-odd floors below us, after an eventful, multi-stop first date – this was Sex and The City worthy.

After the incredible sex (wait did I already use that descriptor?), he leaned over to fix the music on the iPad on his bed stand and, as he did, I asked what the time was. It was around 1am and happened to be just after the British and Irish Lions rugby game had started in New Zealand, which had kind of been on my radar to watch, thinking I’d have been home long before kickoff. Knowing how big a sports fan he was I didn’t think he’d mind if I asked to put it on, plus we were finished, so it was fine, right? Thankfully, yes, he not only was keen to watch it, he also loved the fact that was one of the first things I’d said to him after sex – “can we watch rugby?” I guess that’s not usual? Ha! And so we spent a glorious hour and a half post-sex, watching rugby and cuddling. Talk about my perfect Friday night.

Soon after the game ended in a crazy draw, we fell asleep tangled up in the sheets and each other. And it was bliss. When I said “I wasn’t 100% sure what to expect from my date with O”, I really hadn’t expected this. And it was fair to say I 100% didn’t know what to expect from the coming days / weeks…

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Always Say Yes To A Boat

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Jul-2017

If there’s one rule I try to live by in life, and dating, it’s “always say yes to a boat”. But should the answer still be yes if it’s a first date, you’re not even sure you find the guy attractive, and said boat date is going to be with a bunch of his friends on a national holiday?

In my world, the answer is yes, still say yes to the boat. And so I found myself trying to decide what to wear to a first date on a boat on Canada Day when the (obvious) theme was red. At the time I had one thing in my closet that was red – an all-in-one playsuit. I figured I could dress it down with a pair of converse and it wouldn’t be too dressy, but cute and on theme, albeit not ideal for peeing on a boat… but you can’t have everything.

We weren’t supposed to have such an unconventional first date. We had initially arranged drinks on a Friday night, but when I got carried away having drinks beforehand with a couple of friends, they persuaded me to bail on the date and stay out with them. Which I duly did and, if I’m honest, felt very little remorse about because, well, chicks before dicks. But it definitely moved me one step closer to being the sort of Vancouver flakey dater that I hated, so really not something I wanted to get into the habit of.

He was incredibly gracious about the eleventh hour call off though, and instead he suggested we did something over the long weekend we were embarking on, like maybe watch the Canada Day fireworks. I agreed and when he then got invited onto his friends boat to watch the fireworks, he asked me to join him or said we could still just watch them as planned from land, just the two of us, as we’d already made those plans and he didn’t want to back out. A subtle dig at my Friday night bail? Maybe, but he was more than entitled.

And that’s when the “always say yes to a boat” rule came in. Because you never know how big that boat might be! It’s similar to dating, but in dating it’s not a boat whose size is of interest… it’s his brain. Get your mind out the gutter.

He suggested we meet first for a drink to ensure neither of us were crazy and to make sure I felt comfortable getting onto a boat with a total stranger. When I got to the place he’d suggested and it was closed for the day I was more than a little concerned the whole thing was a set up to get back at me for bailing on him. But when he turned up a few minutes later as I was still texting him to ask for an alternative plan, he quickly found an alternative and we sat down to have our first proper conversation after what had been weeks of texting. In fact it had been so long of back and forth that eventually I’d had to say “let’s go on a date or let’s quit the chitter chatter”. I like a text convo as much as the next basic bitch, but not with guys I haven’t even met yet.

It had given me the feeling that he wasn’t the most authoritative of guys, and in our (many days and weeks of) text conversations he’d come across as a super nice guy… Maybe too nice? I definitely had a feeling that could be the case. But nice guys shouldn’t always finish last so I gave it a chance.

He was a 35 year old Canadian, who worked in business development for a food delivery company and had recently moved to the city from Ontario. I knew from our texts that he was pretty active and had travelled a lot so we had a lot to talk about. Thankfully, Canada Day Boat Guy, as he would be known, was friendly and easy to talk to but even before we’d finished our first drink I knew I wasn’t going to be romantically interested in him.

Had we been partaking in a “normal” first date, I likely would have been ready to go after a couple of drinks, so part of me was relieved when the date moved onto the boat with 6 other people. Though as we walked down to the marina part of me was aware that I was about to essentially be stuck with these people for the next four or five hours, whether I liked it or not, as soon as we set sail.

Thankfully all of his friends were lovely, and amazed that I’d agreed to go on a first date with a guy and his mates on a boat, at night. When they put it like that I realised that, yeah, maybe it was a kind of crazy thing to agree to. But seriously… the boat rule! Unfortunately this boat wasn’t the biggest. It was a little sailboat, maybe 25 feet, but it was cute and had a BBQ on the back for some food later. And as Canada Day Boat Guy had promised, they had all the food and drink bases covered, which was pretty nice. So I just showed up with a bottle of champagne for the start of the fireworks.

The night was great, although I was aware that I spent far more time talking to everyone else than I did Canada Day Boat Guy. A couple of my boat mates were visiting from California, there was a couple from Vancouver, and it turned out that one of the other friends knew Chinese Weightlifting Firefighter, so we weren’t short of conversation. And irrespective of the company, watching the Canada Day fireworks from on the water was quite the memory maker.

Unfortunately it wasn’t the romantic moment it might have been, I guess that’s what happens when your first date includes six other people. It ain’t as cute as it sounds!

By the time the fireworks were finished I was really ready to get off the boat. It had been fun, yes, but things with Canada Day Boat Guy weren’t going anywhere and I was pretty damn tired by that point. Turns out the boat wasn’t really going anywhere either – with a severe lack of wind it took quite some time for us to get back to the marina from the harbour where we’d watched the fireworks.

When we finally made it back to land I realised it wasn’t just a matter of saying goodbye to everyone and heading home. Canadian Boat Guy and I should probably have a chat just ourselves. So we made the walk back along the marina and I felt like there was some similar resignation within him that this wasn’t going anywhere and it hadn’t quite been the first date to spark a million more. At least not with each other.

When we finally reached the gate of the dock and he was going to get on his bike and go one way and I was going to walk home the opposite way, we agreed it had been fun but maybe there wasn’t a second date in our future. It was all very amicable but he then ended it by saying “but if you see me around you can buy me a beer as payback for the boat”.

I laughed it off and agreed but afterwards I felt distinctively like it had been a dig at me, as if I somehow owed him because he’d taken me on a date and it hadn’t gone anywhere. It may not have been how he intended it, but that was entirely the way I took it. And I felt uncomfortable about it every time I thought of it afterwards.

Did he think I’d used him for the boat? Did he think I’d been rude by speaking to his friends so much? Had he expected me to go home with him? I wasn’t sure where that had come from but I decided I really didn’t care to find out. I texted him later that night to thank him for the date – as I always do after a date if he’s paid for anything, as Canada Day Boat Guy had when we first met for a drink – and the next day I deleted his number.

You should always say yes to a boat, but you shouldn’t keep saying yes if there’s nothing but the boat that you’re interested in.

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