I had agreed to bring my friend Caroline to the Lansdowne for drinks this evening, as I'm doing my bit to introduce smart, pretty, nice girls to all of the other great people I know. You never know when they might hit it off.
I was feeling pretty rubbish after last night's drinks, but after surviving the work day (by not doing much work), I managed to clean myself up and head out to the club. Caroline texted me to say she was going to be an hour late, which slightly annoyed me, but what can you do?
At first there weren't too many people there, which surprised me, as I thought it would have been a popular night for drinks at the club. Perhaps I should have gone to the Georgian Townhouse Ball after all. Oh well, second-guessing at this point is kind of pointless.
Caroline arrived after an hour, and I noticed I had a text from Navy Boy who had been corresponding with me and a few others on Facebook over the past week about doing a club crawl. Apparently he and a few more from the Army & Navy were wondering where I was, so I urged them to come to the Lansdowne. They arrived, and it was nice to have a few more boys for Caroline to meet. In the crowd was Tom, a guy I've known for years who is okay, except that I don't exactly trust him. There was also Navy Boy, who is a super-nice guy, and Navy Boy's girl, who I also like, and a few new faces I hadn't seen before.
I found myself stuck chatting to one of the new guys for a bit, who was one of those classically over-eager types. I was getting a tad bit annoyed by how he kept firing questions at me, ("Where do you live? What do you do?") obviously only interested in talking to me and not appreciating how I kept trying to keep including others in our conversation. Finally, I just made some pointless excuse to get out of there. (It's a funny thing that people don't often learn, you can interrupt people and say, "Can you excuse me for just a second?" and walk off, even for no reason at all, and nobody ever seems to pick up on the fact that you went nowhere).
So I went back to talking to Navy Boy for a bit, who was happy to talk to me about his boat, and how he wants to sail it around the world. Funny enough, he wants to leave the Navy, but in so many ways he actually seems to be one of the people most suited to being on boats on the ocean all of the time! Caroline joined us, and I complimented Navy Boy on taking the champagne bottle from her when she went to pour us refills, being ever the proper gentleman who pours for the ladies. How I love a boy who knows to pour the champagne for the girls so they don't have to do it themselves!
As it got later and colder, we retreated indoors, where I found myself repeatedly being hugged by Navy Boy's girl, who had obviously had quite a bit to drink, and just kept saying, "I love you! I really love you so much!" It was kind of cute, actually... And then somehow the conversation got onto dating and how many single people there are in Clubland, when Navy Boy's girl said, "Well I'm single, why don't you introduce me to more people?" Ummmm.....wait.....what?
I guess the advantage of everybody having had enough to drink at this point was that I just outright asked her, "Wait, I always thought you and Navy Boy were a couple!" She laughed, and said, "Oh gosh, no! I mean, best friends since forever, but absolutely not! No way would I date Navy Boy!"
You ever have one of those moments where you realise you made an assumption that turns out to be totally wrong? And suddenly you find yourself thinking back on things, and realise you had mis-interpreted a lot? Oh my gosh, Navy Boy always wanting to sit near me, talk to me at events, sending me messages on Facebook, wanting to see where I was for drinks... Oh my gosh, I am SUCH an idiot.
And so of course, since I'd assumed he was in a relationship, I'd always been friendly but never very encouraging. To the point that I'd just shuttled him off to talking with Caroline for much of the evening, and it seemed like they were getting on. And when I thought about it, he was incredibly tall, blonde, good-looking, and they seemed to have some shared military interests. He's a good guy, and I like Caroline. If it works, why not? But still I sort of felt like kicking myself since I'd missed all of the signs myself. As I said to Navy Girl (as we'll now call her), I kind of hope that the good karma I generate by setting people up will come back and reward me at some point. I mean, the right guy just has to be out there for me somewhere, right? Let's hope that by passing on Navy Boy and putting some good romantic karma out there, it will come back to me in time.
The crowds then all seemed to be making a move to the Kensington Roof Gardens. And everyone kept trying to persuade me to go, knowing that usually I have the willpower of a gnat when it comes to these things. But I guess people didn't realise quite how rubbish I'd been feeling after last night, because there was just NO WAY I was going out to a nightclub. Caroline seemed up for going, as did Navy Boy, so I insisted that they go without me, and about 10 minutes after they left, I went home myself. Alas to work (another story, but since I hadn't finished the work I needed to, I ended up staying up until 5 AM working. Lesson learned: Don't drink too much on a Thursday, don't be hungover on a Friday, and do your work during the work day!)
Will be interested to hear from Caroline later how things went with Navy Boy...
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