At my friend Siobhan's birthday party a few weeks ago, I mentioned meeting a rather awkward and dull chap who didn't interest me much. So it really was a pity on Monday morning when he wrote me on FB saying, "Hi I really enjoyed talking to you on Saturday night. I am sorry I had to leave relatively early. I was wondering whether you would like to meet up again for a drink sometime best wishes".
(Dude, ever heard of punctuation?)
I tried to gently fob him off, but he didn't take the hint and came back with, "I was wondering whether you would like to meet up for drinks/dinner one night next week or next weekend?"
I again delayed and hemmed and hawed, but I was feeling a bit guilty about the whole thing with the Italian Guy on the Tube, and I rather felt that this guy should be rewarded for the good behaviour of actually asking me out. So after pushing it off as much as I could, I finally suggested some date in the distant future, which got me the reply: "Hi thanks for the message. I hope you have a great weekend in Edinburgh. Next Wednesday would be good. I work nearby just off New Fetter Lane but I am happy to embark on the short trek to St Paul's regards". Still absolutely no familiarity with punctuation, it seems...
During the course of the day at work, The Young Dutchman popped up on GChat just to say hello and make me laugh my head off as usual. Looking forward to seeing him on Friday, he makes me smile so much. And he also put me on chat a bit with his friend David who I get on very well with (has a girlfriend though, alas) and that got me laughing too... Wish there were more boys out there who could do that, make me laugh so much!
Yet after too short a time, I had to sign off and go off on my awful date.
I dressed as severe and business-like as I could, with my grey waistcoat and skirt, hair absolutely straight and pulled back in a ponytail (so I couldn't absent-mindedly play with it, a sign of flirting). I stood with my arms across my chest in a defensive posture, instead of the usual inviting posture of a hand on my hip stuck out that I normally do. I still wonder if he would have picked up on all of my hints however, that I was just not interested.
In order to give myself an excuse to get out of there (dinner would have been torture), I scheduled a conference call for later in the evening so I could only stay for drinks. The call was originally scheduled for 9 PM, but in the end I told him it was at 8 PM, because I just couldn't take it. Even then, it was nearly an hour-and-a-half of checking my watch, desperately trying to keep the conversation going and just surviving the awkwardness. I let him buy me a glass of white wine, but only drank that, I think I deserved it for what I went through.
Among his more annoying habits were constant stuttering and stammering, spiting out words in such rapid blatherings of speech that I could hardly figure out what he was saying, and not carrying on a single thread of conversation by himself without me having to either entertain with my own stories or ask a constant stream of questions. The best though was when we somehow got to talking about interviewing, and he mentioned that he was terrible at making eye-contact with people. Which was true, but unfortunately he seemed to want to try to overcome this by periodically just staring at me with giant bug-eyes, before it became too much and he would just go back to staring at the floor. "The King's Speech" might have been an inspiring movie, but living through a live-action version of it for an hour and a half was killing me. Now I can make conversation with a wall if I have to, but I was suffering so badly I eventually claimed a conference call at 8 PM (it wasn't really until 9 PM) just to get out of there. I seriously think that I deserve some sort of gold star or medal for surviving that, it was such agony to live through.
Luckily no hugely awkward scenes as we parted (I was worried that he might not have picked up on what a disaster the whole thing was, but he barely tried for a peck on the cheek, thank goodness), and then I was gone.
Made my way back home, and then called my old gay Scottish co-worker on the phone, and had a brilliant time chatting to him for the next hour. The Scottish co-worker warned me that if I didn't get my romantic life sorted out soon, he was going to have to come back down to London and do it for me, which I think is a half-serious threat!
Yet I thought to myself, "That all went so badly, I'm sure at least he'll have to acknowledge how spectacularly horrible that was and not ask me out again." So imagine my dismay to receive a message the very next day saying, "It was great to see you last night. I hope your conference call didn't last too long. It was great to meet up again in future, perhaps to go to the theatre or some such larks". Seriously? You weren't absolutely dying in agony like I was the entire time? Yet it's now apparent that the chap unfortunately has no social acuity, and so since that message didn't specifically require a response, you can rest assured he's not getting one!
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