My submission for ‘The Worst Date Of The Year Award’…

This is a blog by Donna Amey. Donna is the Social Content Creative at Big Fish and self confessed ‘general winner.’  In this blog she talks about a story which leads her to believe she stands a good chance of winning the ‘The Worst Date Of The Year Award.’  Yes, its hilarious but it also is even funnier because I can confirm that each detail is true.

For more lols form Donna follow her on Twitter: @Doonkris 

 

Before I start telling you this, I will warn you that whenever you think this story is over, it’s not. If I ever tell you this story in person, it involves me saying AND THEN a lot. Unfortunately I can’t sensor my repetition very well in when speaking aloud.

I’m a firm believer in doing things you don’t want to do. It doesn’t mean that I actually do this very often – as I am in general incredibly lazy, but a challenge is good – I’d say that’s a fairly universal fact.

It’s this mantra that resulted in me attending the most ridiculous date in modern day history. Dates are generally pretty grim – I’ve not actually been on many. They are in my opinion like interviews with the extra pressure of looking sexy. Well actually that’s probably not the reason I haven’t been on many, I’ve pretty much gone on every date I’ve been asked on. So four.

This date was the result of a Halloween soiree I shouldn’t have been at. There were drinks, high jinx, and lolz in abundance, and to be honest with you; I was loving life. I have a few vague memories of the party, including giving my number to at least one person. I also arrived at the party with a bag full of Halloween accessories and paraphernalia – I left the party paraphernalialess. Actually one of my last memories of that night was seeing a middle aged woman walking out the door wearing a really cool set of Hobbit ears I had bought only the day before.

I received a text in the week, would I like to go for a drink? It asked. It was from a man I had spoken briefly to at the party. My initial thought was no – as I mentioned, dates are like even worse interviews. But you don’t often get asked on one, so best just get it over and done with. I had a few reservations, including the fact I didn’t know what this man looked like – he was wearing full fancy dress make-up at the party.

From what I could remember there was a high possibility he was a goth. Not really my thing, but who am I to judge? I accepted the date invitation with the smug feeling that no, I do not judge a person by what they look like. I’d give anyone a chance; looks mean nothing in the grand scheme of things. Strong relationships are not founded on perfectly symmetrical faces

After texts tooing and froing, we agreed to meet on a Friday night. He told me he was already meeting some friends so I said I could just come along too. Actually this could be better than the tradition interview style date format I thought.

I turned up at the bar with literally no frame of reference to who I’m looking for, other than the fact he has described the jumper he is wearing. I find him, exchange greetings and he’s actually a lot more attractive than I was expecting. He was also Scottish; Glaswegian. For references sake, we’ll call him Scott for the remainder of this story.

Stereotypes and generalisations are pretty much always a negative thing. However, I’m yet to witness a highlander to buy the first round/ not go to the loo when it’s their turn at the bar. However I am aware that tartan is very expensive, and I don’t personally have that regular outgoing.

I asked if he wanted a drink, he said no so I ordered myself a wine. As everybody’s glasses got awkwardly empty I asked around to see if anyone else would like something, and got a round in.

I noticed his friends were all quite flamboyantly dressed, and they all had an over-.friendly quality. Rather than me describing each of them, I’ll just say that they collectively reminded me of the bohemians from Baz Lerman’s Moulin Rouge. One of my all time favourite films so for me, this was not a negative.

I’d spent some time chatting to different people in his friendship group, when Scott asked me if I’d like to come outside for a cigarette. I’m not a smoker, but thought as I was on a date with him, I should probably at least go and chat.

We did the usual small talk, and I asked him to remind me what he did for a living. He explained that he had a coaching business, where he helped people to have confidence with various parts of their life. It could be making business contacts, it could be saving their relationships, and quite often it was talking to members of the opposite sex.

At which point I had a flashback to the party at which I met Scott. Someone said to me ‘Be careful of him, he’s really in to The Game’.

So he coached people on how to be more confident, using a lot of the teachings from the famously shit book The Game. One technique is ‘Peacocking’, which is wearing unusual or flamboyant clothing to encourage woman to speak to you. Of course this was a fairly big a warning sign that this was potentially going to be an extremely strange evening, but I was willing to ride it out.

Everyone decided that they wanted to go to a different bar. There was just one other girl in the group, and we got chatting while we walked to the new venue. We were also walking with a gay guy who had only just joined the group after a play rehearsal. His outfit was particularly eye-catching, being a fan of animal print in myself, I complimented him on his silver snakeskin t-shirt in a way that you compliment someone on something not because you like it, but because it’s so over the top it would be weird if you didn’t mention it. He teamed the number up with red corduroy flares, brown leather jacket with more than it’s fair share of zips, Dalmatian print brothel creepers, topped off with a leopard print trilby. Like a really crap Cruella De Vil.

The conversation between us was pretty deep and intense for people who had just met. It involved one of us saying something like ‘I like your [insert item of clothing here]’, and them replying that the other person is just so gorgeous they can’t bear it. It went on like that for longer than you’d think exactly the same pattern of conversation could go round in a loop, when the gay guy said to the girl…

‘So are you and Scott going out now?’

Scott who I was on a date with. To which she replied…

‘No he has a girlfriend’.

Again, referring to Scott that I was on a date with.

I was obviously a bit confused, but I was interested to see if he would tell me – so I carried on to the second bar without saying anything.

Scott asked me if I fancied a cigarette. As I mentioned before, I don’t smoke. However I was a non-smoker who still hadn’t been bought a drink so I took him up on his offer and just took a few puffs before stubbing it out as I knew that would probably be quite annoying.

‘Now would probably be a good time to tell you something’

‘You have a girlfriend don’t you’

‘Yeah, but hear me out – she’s Asexual, so she’s got no sex drive or interest in sex. She knows I meet other girls. So it’s totally up to you if you want this to go further’.

To sum up what happened here, Scott told me had a girlfriend but then said I could still have sex with him if I wanted before he had bought me even one drink. It was midnight, and I think I’d just bought my third round. He hadn’t actually even given me a compliment; it wouldn’t have even had to be a good one. Something about my personality would have done.

I was feeling lucky, lucky, lucky, obviously to be given such a tempting proposition. After all, it’s not many men who will offer to have no strings attached sex with a 25 year old girl. A chance in a lifetime for me I expect. But I managed to turn down this one opportunity to have meaningless, pointless sex with this charmless philanderer.

I finished my drink, and then headed back to the safe company of animal print loving gay. We got chatting and realised we lived really near each other, he said he knew this amazing coffee shop he’d take me to, and asked for my number. 100% not wanting to give it to him, he seemed like the type to prank call me to check I’d given the right digits – so I just cut my loses and punched my number into his phone. The more we continued to talk, the closer he got into my personal space. I realised he was actually trying to snog me. Alarmed, I mentioned to Scott that I thought his friend was a bit in my face – to which I found out that he wasn’t actually gay. He came across literally gayer than anyone you can ever think of. This put everything I ever believed to be true in a quandary.

The bars closed, so I headed to get my night bus. Scott said that he was hungry; I said I wasn’t and was going to head home. He insisted that I went with him to get Chinese, so I ended up accompanying him to a 24 hour Chinese restaurant in Soho. We sat down; the waiter told us there was a £10 minimum spend per person to sit in and eat. He tried to insist that I ordered food, to which I refused and just asked him to order me some prawn crackers. He requested the food to takeaway, as he wasn’t prepared to pay £20 to stay in the warm. Once the food arrived and I’d managed to salvage my prawn crackers from his takeaway back and dug in he said…

‘So, am I coming back to yours’?

SO HARD TO RESIST but I did. We said our farewells, pretty sure he paused for me to offer him money for the prawn crackers but I managed to ride that awkward moment and slide off. On the way to the bus some Swedish tourists asked me what I was eating, so I gave them a cracker to try and they bloody loved it. They asked where I got them from, but it was too exhausting to explain so I gave them the rest of the bag. A drunken good deed benefiting some weary travellers – I feel like if that happened to me, I would have marked the night as a real success. For that reason, I shall mark it as such.

The end.

Actually, not quite. The next day I got this text.

Hey puppy eyes- thanks for the drink last night.. Can I return the gesture with a coffee in Hampstead ? Guy with nice lips lol

Must have told the-not-gay lurker he had nice lips. Winner.